# Four Dots
> Four Dots is an independent premium digital marketing agency with a decade of expertise in crafting and executing bespoke multi-channel performance-driven marketing strategies.
Our team of 30 seasoned professionals specializes in transforming website visitors into leads and sales by integrating data analytics, SEO, paid performance, and content marketing solutions to meet and exceed our clients’ business goals and maximize their ROI.
We are proud of our no-nonsense, data-driven, results-oriented approach that ensures we tailor every campaign to our clients’ unique business needs and achieve their goals. On budget, and on time.
**Generated:** 2026-04-29 16:02:02
**Site URL:** https://fourdots.com
---
## Table of Contents
### Posts
- [Enterprise Technical SEO Audit: The Forensic Framework That Turns Technical Debt Into Traffic Recovery](#enterprise-technical-seo-audit-the-forensic-framework-that-turns-technical-debt-into-traffic-recovery-15176)
- [Search Engine Marketing Intelligence: What It Actually Takes to Make Every Search Channel Work Together](#search-engine-marketing-intelligence-what-it-actually-takes-to-make-every-search-channel-work-together-14764)
- [How to Hire a Link Building Agency: The Complete Decision-Making Guide](#how-to-hire-a-link-building-agency-the-complete-decision-making-guide-11967)
- [The Naming Wars of an Industry That Doesn't Know What to Call Itself](#the-naming-wars-of-an-industry-that-doesnt-know-what-to-call-itself-11979)
- [AI Visibility Optimization: The Complete Guide to Securing Brand](#ai-visibility-optimization-the-complete-guide-to-securing-brand-11836)
- [AI Visibility Optimization Meets Search Engine Optimization](#ai-visibility-optimization-meets-search-engine-optimization-11801)
- [Types and Purpose of Technical SEO Audits](#types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749)
- [PPC Attribution Models Comparison: Which One Is Right for Your Business in 2025](#ppc-attribution-models-comparison-which-one-is-right-for-your-business-in-2025-11215)
- [5 Signs Your Agency Needs a White Label SEO Partner in 2025](#5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213)
- [How to Filter Spam Links (List Provided) in Ahrefs Using "Best Links" Feature - Update March 2026](#how-to-filter-spam-links-list-provided-in-ahrefs-using-best-links-feature-update-march-2026-11059)
- [Use SSL/HTTPS To Rank & Look Better on Google (Updated 2025)](#use-ssl-https-to-rank-look-better-on-google-updated-2025-2169)
- [How to Triple Organic Traffic & Revenue](#how-to-triple-organic-traffic-revenue-4427)
- [Four Dots Officially Launches “Four Dots Australia”](#four-dots-officially-launches-four-dots-australia-8913)
- [Summary of 2020 Google Search Algorithm Updates](#summary-of-2020-google-search-algorithm-updates-8272)
- [Actionable Guide to Using White Label SEO for Agency Growth](#actionable-guide-to-using-white-label-seo-for-agency-growth-7931)
- [John Mueller: You Don't Always Need hreflang | Google Webmaster Hangout Recap](#john-mueller-you-dont-always-need-hreflang-google-webmaster-hangout-recap-7614)
- [Google Webmaster Hangout Recap - 24/07/2020](#google-webmaster-hangout-recap-24-07-2020-7492)
- [How Four Dots Implemented Advanced Tracking, Analytics & Reporting Solution for SaaS Product - Case Study](#how-four-dots-implemented-advanced-tracking-analytics-reporting-solution-for-saas-product-case-study-6750)
- [Meet ‘The Trustmaker’ - A Brand New Social Proof Tool To Improve Your Conversions](#meet-the-trustmaker-a-brand-new-social-proof-tool-to-improve-your-conversions-6726)
- [25 Best SEO, Social Media, Content & Productivity Extensions for Chrome](#25-best-seo-social-media-content-productivity-extensions-for-chrome-6287)
- [The Role of Content Strategy in Digital Marketing [2025 Update]](#the-role-of-content-strategy-in-digital-marketing-2025-update-1064)
- [Four Dots Digital Marketing Agency and Art&Code Creative Studio Established a Joint Project Called Infostarters](#four-dots-digital-marketing-agency-and-artcode-creative-studio-established-a-joint-project-called-infostarters-6091)
- [3 Free Productivity Tools by Four Dots Essential for your SEO & PPC Efforts](#3-free-productivity-tools-by-four-dots-essential-for-your-seo-ppc-efforts-6004)
- [How to Set Up E-Commerce Tracking Properly and Why It’s Important For E-Commerce Sites](#how-to-set-up-e-commerce-tracking-properly-and-why-its-important-for-e-commerce-sites-5880)
- [How to Improve your Content Writing for SEO, Paid, and Social Media Marketing in 2020](#how-to-improve-your-content-writing-for-seo-paid-and-social-media-marketing-in-2020-5834)
- [Learn About Digital Marketing from the Experts - Four Dots Academy Opens Its Doors](#learn-about-digital-marketing-from-the-experts-four-dots-academy-opens-its-doors-5620)
- [SEO Terms Glossary](#seo-terms-glossary-4495)
- [How We Reached 100k Visitors Using These 9 Simple Guidelines [With Infographic]](#how-we-reached-100k-visitors-using-these-9-simple-guidelines-with-infographic-4189)
- [How to Advertise Crypto Now that it is Banned from Google and Facebook Ads?](#how-to-advertise-crypto-now-that-it-is-banned-from-google-and-facebook-ads-3822)
- [How to Build and Maintain a Spotless Backlink Portfolio](#how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778)
- [Is it Time to Change Your PPC Strategy or Agency or Approach?](#is-it-time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-or-agency-or-approach-3697)
- [An SEO Wizard’s Bag of Tricks: Things to Do in 2018](#an-seo-wizards-bag-of-tricks-things-to-do-in-2018-3590)
- [News: Elevate Digital Launch](#news-elevate-digital-launch-3540)
- [Reportz: Create Insightful Marketing Reports](#reportz-create-insightful-marketing-reports-3497)
- [Climbing Back to The Top After a Drop in Rankings](#climbing-back-to-the-top-after-a-drop-in-rankings-3482)
- [What do you Stand to Gain by Investing in SEO?](#what-do-you-stand-to-gain-by-investing-in-seo-3418)
- [A Tool is Only as Good as its User](#a-tool-is-only-as-good-as-its-user-3391)
- [20 Experts Recommend SEO and WordPress Plugins (Updated)](#20-experts-recommend-seo-and-wordpress-plugins-updated-3288)
- [5 Content Marketing KPIs You Should Keep an Eye on](#5-content-marketing-kpis-you-should-keep-an-eye-on-3255)
- [Creating Content that Generates Links Like Crazy](#creating-content-that-generates-links-like-crazy-3189)
- [INFOGRAPHIC: Avoid these 12 Fatal SEO Mistakes](#infographic-avoid-these-12-fatal-seo-mistakes-3169)
- [Text Will Always be Important for Online Search](#text-will-always-be-important-for-online-search-3101)
- [SEO Project Management and its Challenges](#seo-project-management-and-its-challenges-3091)
- [The Death of SEO: A Hypothesis](#the-death-of-seo-a-hypothesis-3073)
- [CTR in the Digital Marketing Jungle](#ctr-in-the-digital-marketing-jungle-3007)
- [The "Shut Up and Take My Money" Content Strategy](#the-shut-up-and-take-my-money-content-strategy-2945)
- [2017 Content Marketing Calendar (Infographic + Template)](#2017-content-marketing-calendar-infographic-template-2900)
- [An SEO Carol: A Timeless Classic](#an-seo-carol-a-timeless-classic-2866)
- [Content x Account-Based Marketing: How to Adapt & Evolve in a New Environment](#content-x-account-based-marketing-how-to-adapt-evolve-in-a-new-environment-2862)
- [Clickbait Titles in SEO. Risks and Limits](#clickbait-titles-in-seo-risks-and-limits-2634)
- [Why Your Content Isn’t Attracting Links, and How to Fix It](#why-your-content-isnt-attracting-links-and-how-to-fix-it-2691)
- [Ahrefs & Other SEO Bookmarklets](#ahrefs-other-seo-bookmarklets-2672)
- [How PornHub Dominates with Content Marketing](#how-pornhub-dominates-with-content-marketing-2637)
- [Creating Content That Your Audience Will Adore - The Human Oriented Approach](#creating-content-that-your-audience-will-adore-the-human-oriented-approach-2611)
- [Page Speed: Stop Driving in the Slow Lane](#page-speed-stop-driving-in-the-slow-lane-2451)
- [The Inbound Growth Hacking Bible](#the-inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431)
- [Prospect More Links in Less Time With Dibz](#prospect-more-links-in-less-time-with-dibz-2365)
- [Take Part in #BrandME Reputation Management Chat](#take-part-in-brandme-reputation-management-chat-2357)
- [US Elections Inspire New Google Search Features](#us-elections-inspire-new-google-search-features-2344)
- [Changes in Negative Local Search Ranking Factors in Last 3 Years](#changes-in-negative-local-search-ranking-factors-in-last-3-years-2271)
- [Engage your Audience with Remarketing Techniques](#engage-your-audience-with-remarketing-techniques-2233)
- [Wikipedia's Search Engine Will Not Rival Google](#wikipedias-search-engine-will-not-rival-google-2245)
- [Increasing Mobile Search Visibility through Guest Blogging](#increasing-mobile-search-visibility-through-guest-blogging-2223)
- [Four Dots Wishes you a Happy New Year!](#four-dots-wishes-you-a-happy-new-year-2204)
- [12 Ideas to Help you Generate Quality Natural Backlinks](#12-ideas-to-help-you-generate-quality-natural-backlinks-2136)
- [Introducing Dibz.me: A Powerful Link Prospecting Tool for SEO Pros](#introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082)
- [Optimizing for Small Screens in 2016](#optimizing-for-small-screens-in-2016-2108)
- [Overcoming the Challenge of Creating Content that Engages](#overcoming-the-challenge-of-creating-content-that-engages-1922)
- [Penguin Update Postponed to 2016, SEO Experts On Edge](#penguin-update-postponed-to-2016-seo-experts-on-edge-1980)
- [Google Open-Sources TensorFlow](#google-open-sources-tensorflow-1956)
- [Google Tests Digital Ads on UK Billboards: Who will Benefit Most?](#google-tests-digital-ads-on-uk-billboards-who-will-benefit-most-1941)
- [Learning the Alphabet : RankBrain and AI](#learning-the-alphabet-rankbrain-and-ai-1906)
- [Panda 4.2 - Where is it Now?](#panda-4-2-where-is-it-now-1643)
- [HTTP/2: Future of Web](#http-2-future-of-web-1630)
- [Google Gone Toddler: Fun Search Features](#google-gone-toddler-fun-search-features-1624)
- [Importance of Context in Inbound Marketing](#importance-of-context-in-inbound-marketing-1613)
- [SEO Implications of Google’s Thought Vectors](#seo-implications-of-googles-thought-vectors-1593)
- [Analyzing Google Mobile-Friendly Algo Update](#analyzing-google-mobile-friendly-algo-update-1066)
- [Four Dots Team Members at Google Academy](#four-dots-team-members-at-google-academy-1711)
- [7 SEO Mistakes That can Hurt your Business](#7-seo-mistakes-that-can-hurt-your-business-1710)
- [Step-by-step SEO Guide for Small Businesses](#step-by-step-seo-guide-for-small-businesses-1709)
- [Inbound Marketing Strategies for a Holiday Campaign](#inbound-marketing-strategies-for-a-holiday-campaign-1708)
- [Redefining Google Search for 2015 | Four Dots](#redefining-google-search-for-2015-four-dots-1707)
- [6 Holiday Ideas to Help Businesses Boost Website Traffic and Increase Conversions](#6-holiday-ideas-to-help-businesses-boost-website-traffic-and-increase-conversions-1706)
- [Content Marketing in the Mobile Era](#content-marketing-in-the-mobile-era-1705)
- [5 Key Content Marketing Trends for 2015](#5-key-content-marketing-trends-for-2015-1704)
- [New Big Data Tool by Splunk: User-friendliness to Attract Non-IT Users](#new-big-data-tool-by-splunk-user-friendliness-to-attract-non-it-users-1703)
- [Semantic Web - Basic Terms and Principles](#semantic-web-basic-terms-and-principles-1702)
- [Matt Cutts on Guest Blogging and its Risks](#matt-cutts-on-guest-blogging-and-its-risks-1701)
- [Review your fake reviews strategy](#review-your-fake-reviews-strategy-1700)
- [Humming in G(oogle)-minor](#humming-in-google-minor-1699)
- [How ORM can help you with brand problems](#how-orm-can-help-you-with-brand-problems-1698)
- [White and black hat SEO in 2013](#white-and-black-hat-seo-in-2013-1065)
- [To Appease a Hummingbird](#to-appease-a-hummingbird-1697)
### Pages
- [Belgrade SEO Agency](#belgrade-seo-agency-15546)
- [European Enterprise SEO Company](#european-enterprise-seo-company-15523)
- [AI Visibility Guide](#ai-visibility-guide-15472)
- [Business Impact of AI Hallucinations - Rates & Ranks](#business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-ranks-15230)
- [White Label SEO Services Reseller for Australia](#white-label-seo-services-reseller-for-australia-6580)
- [Cookie Policy New](#cookie-policy-new-14958)
- [GA4 Agency](#ga4-agency-14857)
- [Search Engine Marketing](#search-engine-marketing-14740)
- [Results](#results-14081)
- [AI Visibility Audit](#ai-visibility-audit-14080)
- [Data Tracking and Analytics Agency](#data-tracking-and-analytics-agency-13492)
- [Agency-as-a-Lab](#agency-as-a-lab-13324)
- [Client Case Studies](#client-case-studies-13102)
- [New York SEO Agency](#new-york-seo-agency-13035)
- [SEO Outreach Agency](#seo-outreach-agency-11972)
- [](#-11912)
- [AI Visibility Optimization](#ai-visibility-optimization-11891)
- [Enterprise Technical SEO Audit Services](#enterprise-technical-seo-audit-services-11628)
- [AI SEO Services](#ai-seo-services-11552)
- [The Complete White Label SEO Guide for Australian Agencies](#the-complete-white-label-seo-guide-for-australian-agencies-11227)
- [Free PRO AI SEO Tools](#free-pro-ai-seo-tools-10844)
- [Radomir Basta](#radomir-basta-10146)
- [SEO Outreach & Link-building Specialists](#seo-outreach-link-building-specialists-9030)
- [Medior Web Analyst](#medior-web-analyst-8958)
- [Junior Customer Support Specialist](#junior-customer-support-specialist-8474)
- [Four Dots Academy - Module 6](#four-dots-academy-module-6-8000)
- [Digital Account Manager](#digital-account-manager-7943)
- [Four Dots Academy - Module 3](#four-dots-academy-module-3-7906)
- [Four Dots Academy - Module 4](#four-dots-academy-module-4-7878)
- [Academy](#academy-5805)
- [Content Marketing](#content-marketing-6926)
- [Academy LP SR](#academy-lp-sr-6112)
- [Academy - SEO](#academy-seo-6055)
- [Free SEM Tools](#free-sem-tools-5965)
- [Analytics Junior/Intern](#analytics-junior-intern-5491)
- [PPC Specialist](#ppc-specialist-5390)
- [WordPress Developer](#wordpress-developer-5210)
- [TERMS
AND
CONDITIONS](#termsandconditions-3863)
- [GDPR
COMPLIANCE](#gdprcompliance-3867)
- [COOKIE
POLICY](#cookiepolicy-3865)
- [Legal](#legal-3858)
- [Technical SEO Specialist](#technical-seo-specialist-3680)
- [Community & Customer Support Manager](#community-customer-support-manager-3573)
- [Content writer](#content-writer-3571)
- [Full Stack Developer](#full-stack-developer-3456)
- [User Acquisition Manager](#user-acquisition-manager-3278)
- [Four Dots Contributing Guidelines](#four-dots-contributing-guidelines-3221)
- [SEO Link Builder Trainee](#seo-link-builder-trainee-3022)
- [SEO Specialist](#seo-specialist-2799)
- [Content Marketing Strategist](#content-marketing-strategist-2754)
- [Traffic Performance
Monetization](#traffic-performance-monetization-2703)
- [SEO Tools for Digital Agencies](#seo-tools-for-digital-agencies-2279)
- [PHP (Laravel) Developer](#php-laravel-developer-1926)
- [About Four Dots](#about-four-dots-349)
- [White Label SEO Services - OLD](#white-label-seo-services-old-326)
- [Content
Development
and
Production](#content-development-and-production-316)
- [Content
Marketing for
a Greater
Online
Popularity](#content-marketing-for-a-greater-online-popularity-307)
- [Content Strategy](#content-strategy-293)
- [Conversion Rate
Optimization](#conversion-rate-optimization-284)
- [SEO Website Design](#seo-website-design-270)
- [PPC Packages](#ppc-packages-265)
- [AdWords
Managment:
Professional Services
that Bring Results](#adwords-managment-professional-servicesthat-bring-results-251)
- [PPC Management](#ppc-management-245)
- [Services](#services-237)
- [Online Reputation Management](#online-reputation-management-233)
- [Local SEO Search](#local-seo-search-219)
- [Google Penalty
Removal](#google-penalty-removal-211)
- [Blogger Outreach
and Engagement
Improvement](#blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement-201)
- [Advanced Link Reclamation Services](#advanced-link-reclamation-services-184)
- [TECHNICAL SEO: ONSITE AUDITS](#technical-seo-onsite-audits-159)
- [Enterprise SEO Services](#enterprise-seo-services-78)
- [Careers](#careers-66)
- [Contact
Us](#contact-us-56)
- [Site map](#site-map-47)
- [PRIVACY
POLICY](#privacy-policy-44)
- [Blog](#blog-10)
- [Home](#home-5)
### Acme_testimonial
- [Testimonial by Hendrik Kruizinga, Customer Experience Team Leader - Crucial.com.au](#testimonial-by-hendrik-kruizinga-customer-experience-team-leader-crucial-com-au-87)
- [Testimonial Dubravko Opasic, CEO - Younited Agency](#testimonial-dubravko-opasic-ceo-younited-agency-13140)
- [Testimonial Igor Gasparevic, Marketing Specialist - Beko Global](#testimonial-igor-gasparevic-marketing-specialist-beko-global-13139)
- [Testimonial Nenad Janjatovic, Owner - Buro Serbia](#testimonial-nenad-janjatovic-owner-buro-serbia-13138)
- [Testimonial Tamara Dutina, Marketing Manager - SuperAdmins IT4Biz](#testimonial-tamara-dutina-marketing-manager-superadmins-it4biz-13137)
- [Testimonial Zeljko Bosnjak, Digital Marketing Manager - Philip Morris International](#testimonial-zeljko-bosnjak-digital-marketing-manager-philip-morris-international-13136)
- [Testimonial Natasa Djukanovic, CMO - Domain.me](#testimonial-natasa-djukanovic-cmo-domain-me-13135)
- [Testimonial Jovana Grubac, Digital Marketing Specialist - Salveo](#testimonial-jovana-grubac-digital-marketing-specialist-salveo-13134)
- [Testimonial Nemanja Puhalo, CMO - Undrdog](#testimonial-nemanja-puhalo-cmo-undrdog-13133)
- [Testimonial by Aaron Weller, Owner - MissAmara.com.au](#testimonial-by-aaron-weller-owner-missamara-com-au-84)
- [Zeljko Bosnjak, Digital Consumer Engagement Manager - Philip Morris International](#zeljko-bosnjak-digital-consumer-engagement-manager-philip-morris-international-13017)
- [Testimonial by Vladan Dobrenov, Founder - ArtandCode.eu](#testimonial-by-vladan-dobrenov-founder-artandcode-eu-82)
- [Testimonial by Nemanja Veselinovic, Founder - BrandingMagazine.com](#testimonial-by-nemanja-veselinovic-founder-brandingmagazine-com-83)
- [Testimonial by Goran Radovanovic, Project manager - Mobile Shop](#testimonial-by-goran-radovanovic-project-manager-mobile-shop-85)
- [Testimonial by Marko Sekulovic, Manager - Eurodentiste.fr](#testimonial-by-marko-sekulovic-manager-eurodentiste-fr-86)
### Acme_casestudyslider
- [IVC Technologies: +315% Top 3 Keywords in Niche Industrial Market](#ivc-technologies-315-top-3-keywords-in-niche-industrial-market-13032)
- [Regional Fashion Retailer: +76% Conversion Value Across 4 Markets](#regional-fashion-retailer-76-conversion-value-across-4-markets-13031)
- [CuraLife: 711% ROI Through Automated Email Marketing](#curalife-711-roi-through-automated-email-marketing-13030)
- [Percept: +165% Organic Clicks Through Steady Authority Building](#percept-165-organic-clicks-through-steady-authority-building-13029)
- [Network Plumbing: +1,000% Traffic Value in 6 Months](#network-plumbing-1000-traffic-value-in-6-months-13028)
- [DPV Transportation Case Study: +388% Organic Traffic in a Niche B2B Market](#dpv-transportation-case-study-388-organic-traffic-in-a-niche-b2b-market-12940)
- [BeotelNet Case Study: Sustained 11% Month-over-Month Growth in Competitive ISP Market](#beotelnet-case-study-sustained-11-month-over-month-growth-in-competitive-isp-market-12939)
- [How to Rhino Case Study: +28% Organic Growth Through Site Redesign Recovery](#how-to-rhino-case-study-28-organic-growth-through-site-redesign-recovery-12938)
- [Tekto Knives Case Study: Domain Migration Done Right in a Regulated Market](#tekto-knives-case-study-domain-migration-done-right-in-a-regulated-market-12937)
- [Gray Line Miami Case Study: +286% Clicks in the Competitive Tourism Market](#gray-line-miami-case-study-286-clicks-in-the-competitive-tourism-market-12936)
- [Halo Oglasi Case Study: +171% Conversions While Cutting Costs by 47%](#halo-oglasi-case-study-171-conversions-while-cutting-costs-by-47-12934)
- [Alpha Medical Solutions Case Study: +300% Organic Clicks in 7 Months](#alpha-medical-solutions-case-study-300-organic-clicks-in-7-months-12923)
- [Valvoline EU Case Study: Conquering European Markets](#valvoline-eu-case-study-conquering-european-markets-12922)
- [Montessori Generation Case Study: From Startup to #1 Global Ranking](#montessori-generation-case-study-from-startup-to-1-global-ranking-12914)
- [SEO Case Study: Increasing Orange Jordan Organic Traffic for 76.50%](#seo-case-study-increasing-orange-jordan-organic-traffic-for-76-50-3653)
- [Transforming Miss Amara's SEO Strategy for Success](#transforming-miss-amaras-seo-strategy-for-success-2663)
- [Transforming MobileShop.eu into One of Leading E-commerce Mobile Phone Stores in Europe](#transforming-mobileshop-eu-into-one-of-leading-e-commerce-mobile-phone-stores-in-europe-2484)
- [Enhancing Crucial Hosting's SEO Strategy for Improved Online Presence](#enhancing-crucial-hostings-seo-strategy-for-improved-online-presence-2477)
---
## Posts: Enterprise Technical SEO Audit: The Forensic Framework That Turns Technical Debt Into Traffic Recovery
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176](https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176.md)
**Published:** 2026-03-03
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** General, SEO
**Tags:** enterprise seo audit, enterprise technical seo audit, forensic seo audit, log file analysis, technical seo audit services
**Summary:** Your enterprise site is a black box. You're managing 50,000+ pages, JavaScript frameworks, multiple subdomains, and a replatforming project on the horizon. Crawl budget is bleeding. Core Web Vitals are trending red. And you can't prove which technical issues are actually costing you traffic.
### Content
Your enterprise site is a black box. You’re managing 50,000+ pages, JavaScript frameworks, multiple subdomains, and a replatforming project on the horizon. Crawl budget is bleeding. Core Web Vitals are trending red. And you can’t prove which technical issues are actually costing you traffic.
Here’s what makes it worse: Google just confirmed something most SEO teams have never accounted for.
## Table of Contents
- [Google’s 2MB Crawl Limit: Why Code Order Is Now an SEO Priority](#aioseo-googles-2mb-crawl-limit-why-code-order-is-now-an-seo-priority-3)
- [Why Standard Enterprise Audits Fail (And What Actually Works)](#aioseo-why-standard-enterprise-audits-fail-and-what-actually-works-22)
[Prioritization and Roadmapping: From Audit to Action](#aioseo-prioritization-and-roadmapping-from-audit-to-action-283)[Implementation Timeline: 30-60-90 Day Remediation Plan](#aioseo-implementation-timeline-30-60-90-day-remediation-plan-302)[Measuring Success: KPIs That Matter](#aioseo-measuring-success-kpis-that-matter-334)[When to Bring in Forensic Audit Expertise](#aioseo-when-to-bring-in-forensic-audit-expertise-340)[Migration Protection Blueprint](#aioseo-migration-protection-blueprint-355)[Frequently Asked Questions](#aioseo-frequently-asked-questions-386)[The Bottom Line](#aioseo-the-bottom-line-403)
## Google’s 2MB Crawl Limit: Why Code Order Is Now an SEO Priority
In March 2026, Google’s Gary Illyes published [“Inside Googlebot: demystifying crawling, fetching, and the bytes we process”](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/03/crawler-blog-post) – the most detailed public breakdown of Google’s crawling infrastructure in years. The revelations have direct implications for every [enterprise technical SEO audit](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services).**The hard limits you need to know**([source: Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/03/crawler-blog-post))**:**Googlebot fetches a maximum of 2MB per URL, including HTTP headers. Everything beyond that cutoff is ignored. Not fetched. Not rendered. Not indexed. For enterprise sites running bloated templates with inline CSS, base64-encoded images, or megabytes of navigation markup, this means your actual content – and your critical SEO signals – might be invisible to Google.
Here’s what this means in practice:
-**Partial fetching is silent.**Google doesn’t reject oversized pages. It stops downloading at exactly 2MB and treats whatever it captured as the complete file. You’ll never get an error message. Your content just disappears.
-**External resources get separate budgets.**CSS and JavaScript files referenced in your HTML are fetched independently, each with their own 2MB limit. They don’t count against the parent page’s budget. This is why moving heavy scripts and styles to external files matters.
-**The Web Rendering Service is stateless.**Google’s WRS clears local storage and session data between every request. If your content depends on cookies, session state, or authentication tokens to render, Google can’t see it. Period.
-**PDFs get 64MB.**Other crawlers that don’t specify limits default to 15MB. But the HTML crawler that determines your organic rankings? 2MB, including headers.**The audit implication:**Every enterprise audit must now include HTML weight analysis by template type. Your meta tags, title elements, canonical tags, and structured data need to appear as high in the document as possible. If they’re buried below the 2MB cutoff by bloated navigation, inline scripts, or embedded SVG, Google doesn’t know they exist.
This isn’t theoretical. Enterprise sites running WordPress with 15 plugins, [React](https://react.dev/) apps with server-side rendering that injects massive state objects, or ecommerce platforms with mega-menus containing thousands of links – these routinely push critical elements past the threshold.**Byte-level best practices from Google’s own guidance:**1. Keep HTML lean. Move CSS and JavaScript to external files.
2. Place meta tags, titles, canonicals, and structured data near the top of the document.
3. Monitor server response times. Slow servers cause Google’s crawlers to throttle back automatically, reducing crawl frequency.
4. Audit inline content that inflates page weight – base64 images, inline SVG, embedded JSON-LD blocks with excessive data, and massive navigation structures.
This context frames everything else in this audit framework. Code order and byte efficiency aren’t nice-to-haves. They determine whether Google even sees your most important SEO signals.
## Why Standard Enterprise Audits Fail (And What Actually Works)
A basic technical SEO audit won’t cut it at enterprise scale. Those 30-point checklists from agencies? They catch the obvious stuff – missing meta descriptions, broken links, slow load times. But they completely miss the forensic-level issues that tank enterprise sites.
The gap between a standard audit and an enterprise forensic audit is the difference between finding symptoms and diagnosing root causes. One tells you “Core Web Vitals need improvement.” The other tells you exactly which third-party scripts are blocking render, which templates are generating the delays, and provides sprint-ready tickets for your engineering team with measurable KPIs.**Enterprise sites have constraints that demand different approaches:**-**Legacy technical debt**: Multiple CMS platforms, deprecated code, and architectural decisions made years ago by teams long gone
-**Governance complexity**: Changes require approval from security, legal, engineering, product, and marketing – each with different priorities and timelines
-**Scale multiplication**: Issues that are minor annoyances on 500-page sites become catastrophic at 500,000 pages
-**Migration risk**: Replatforming a 100,000-page ecommerce site isn’t the same as moving a brochure site to a new theme
The standard audit approach – run [Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/), export to Excel, hand over a 200-row spreadsheet – creates three problems:
1.**No prioritization framework**: Everything looks equally important, so nothing gets fixed
2.**No business context**: Technical issues aren’t mapped to revenue impact or user experience degradation
3.**No implementation path**: Developers get vague recommendations like “improve site speed” instead of specific, actionable tickets
What changes outcomes is a forensic methodology that quantifies every issue’s impact on crawl efficiency, indexation coverage, and user experience, then maps it to effort and risk. You need a framework that turns “duplicate content detected” into “faceted navigation generating 47,000 duplicate URLs consuming 34% of crawl budget – estimated traffic recovery: 12-18% within 60 days post-fix.”
That’s the difference between an audit that sits in a folder and one that drives actual remediation. For hands-on support, explore our [enterprise technical SEO audit services](https://fourdots.com/technical-SEO-audit-services).
## The Enterprise Forensic Audit Framework
A comprehensive enterprise audit isn’t a single pass with a crawler. It’s a systematic investigation across interconnected domains, each revealing how technical issues compound to suppress visibility and waste resources.
### Phase 1: Discovery, Access, and Objectives Mapping
Before analyzing anything, you need the complete technical landscape and stakeholder map.**Critical access requirements:**- [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console) (all properties and subdomains)
- [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/) or equivalent with historical data (minimum 12 months)
- Raw server log files (minimum 30 days, ideally 90)
- CDN access and configuration documentation (Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, or equivalent)
- Staging/development environment access
- Current sitemap architecture and generation logic
- CI/CD pipeline documentation and deployment schedules
- Existing crawl budget and rate limit configurations**Governance mapping:**Identify who owns what. Who approves robots.txt changes? Who controls CDN configuration? Who can deploy schema updates? Who owns the CI/CD pipeline? Without a clear RACI matrix, even perfect recommendations die in approval limbo.**KPI baseline:**Establish current performance across organic traffic, indexation coverage, crawl efficiency, Core Web Vitals percentiles, and conversion rates by template type. You can’t measure improvement without knowing where you started.
### Phase 2: Crawl, Render, and Byte-Level Diagnostics
This is where forensic audits diverge from basic ones. Standard audits run a crawler and report what they find. Forensic audits analyze what Google actually crawls, renders, and processes versus what you think you’re serving.**HTML weight analysis (new critical step):**Given Google’s confirmed 2MB fetch limit, every audit must now measure HTML payload size by template type. Run this analysis across your major templates:
- Homepage, category pages, product/service pages, blog posts, landing pages
- Measure total HTML size including server-rendered content
- Identify what percentage of the document is consumed by navigation, inline styles, inline scripts, and non-content markup
- Map where critical SEO elements (title, meta description, canonical, hreflang, structured data) appear relative to the 2MB threshold
- Flag templates where bloat could push content below the cutoff
For enterprise WordPress sites, themes with 15-20 plugins can inject hundreds of KB of inline CSS and JS before your content even begins. For [React/Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) apps, server-side state hydration objects can consume significant portions of the HTML budget. For ecommerce platforms, mega-menus with thousands of category links create massive navigation blocks.**Log file analysis workflow:**Server logs reveal the truth about how search engines interact with your site. Here’s what to extract:
-**Crawl budget allocation**: Which sections get crawled most frequently? Are high-value pages being crawled daily while low-value faceted URLs consume the majority of Googlebot’s attention?
-**Bot segmentation**: Don’t treat “Googlebot” as monolithic. Segment by Googlebot Desktop, Googlebot Smartphone, Googlebot Image, Googlebot Video, and AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Bytespider, PerplexityBot). Each has different crawl patterns and priorities. Understanding AI crawler behavior is increasingly important for [AI visibility optimization](https://faii.ai).
-**Orphaned pages**: Pages receiving organic traffic but never crawled because they’re missing from your internal linking structure
-**Blocked resources**: JavaScript, CSS, or image files blocked by robots.txt that prevent proper rendering
-**Status code patterns**: 404s that should be 301s, soft 404s masquerading as 200s, redirect chains wasting crawl budget
-**Bot behavior anomalies**: Sudden crawl rate changes, specific user-agent targeting, or crawler traps
-**Server response time by bot**: If your server is slow to deliver bytes, Google’s crawlers automatically throttle back, reducing crawl frequency. This is a silent traffic killer.**JavaScript rendering validation:**Enterprise sites increasingly rely on JavaScript frameworks ([React](https://react.dev/), [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/), [Vue](https://vuejs.org/), [Angular](https://angular.dev/)). Standard crawlers see the initial HTML. Google’s Web Rendering Service sees what loads after JavaScript executes. The gap between these two views is where products disappear from indexation.
Remember: [WRS is stateless](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics). It clears local storage and session data between every request. If your single-page application stores routing state in localStorage, or your product recommendations depend on session cookies, WRS can’t access any of it.**The rendering budget problem:**Separate from crawl budget. Google has finite rendering resources, and the queue between crawling and rendering can delay indexation by days or weeks. For JS-heavy enterprise sites, this means newly published content might not appear in search results for an extended period – not because it wasn’t crawled, but because it’s waiting in the rendering queue.**SSR vs. Dynamic Rendering vs. Pre-rendering decision framework:**|**Approach**|**Best For**|**Trade-offs**|
| --- | --- | --- |
| Server-Side Rendering (SSR) | Content-heavy sites, SEO-critical pages | Higher server costs, more complex infrastructure |
| Dynamic Rendering | Large JS apps where SSR refactoring is impractical | Maintenance burden, risk of content parity issues |
| Pre-rendering / Static Site Generation | Content that changes infrequently | Build times at scale, stale content risk |
| Hybrid (ISR/streaming SSR) | Enterprise sites with mixed content types | Complexity, requires mature DevOps |
Test critical templates in [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console)‘s [URL Inspection tool](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9012289) and compare rendered HTML against your crawler’s view. Look for:
- Products or content only visible after JavaScript execution
- Navigation elements that don’t exist in the initial HTML
- Lazy-loaded content below the fold that never triggers for crawlers
- Client-side redirects that crawlers don’t follow
- State-dependent content that requires cookies or localStorage**Crawl efficiency metrics to track:**- Crawl to index ratio (pages crawled vs. pages indexed)
- Render success rate (pages successfully rendered vs. attempted)
- Crawl waste percentage (low-value URLs consuming crawl budget)
- Average crawl depth to reach priority pages
- Time-to-index for new content (measuring rendering queue delay)
### Phase 3: Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Poor architecture compounds every other technical issue. Deep page depth means new content takes weeks to get discovered. Weak internal linking means authority doesn’t flow to conversion pages. Orphaned sections mean entire product categories never get crawled.**Architecture audit components:**-**Page depth analysis**: How many clicks from the homepage to reach key conversion pages? Enterprise sites often bury important pages 6-8 clicks deep. Google’s crawler gives up long before that.
-**Hub and spoke structure**: Are category pages properly architected as hubs that distribute authority to individual product/article pages?
-**Pagination strategy**: How do you handle large category pages? Infinite scroll, load more buttons, or traditional pagination? Each has different crawlability implications.
-**Sitemap architecture**: Do you have a single massive XML sitemap or a logical hierarchy? Are sitemaps segmented by change frequency and priority?
-**Faceted navigation**: The biggest crawl budget killer on ecommerce and SaaS sites. How many parameter combinations can generate unique URLs? What’s your canonicalization strategy?**Internal linking assessment:**Run a link graph analysis to identify:
- Pages with zero internal links (orphans)
- Pages with excessive outbound links (link hoarders that dilute authority)
- Broken internal links by volume and location
- Strategic pages that should receive more internal links based on business priority
- Navigation patterns that create crawler traps or circular link structures
Create an internal linking priority matrix mapping business value against current internal link equity. Your highest-priority conversion pages should receive proportional internal linking support. For guidance on content-driven linking strategy, see our [content strategy services](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy).
### Phase 4: Indexation, Canonicalization, and Index Bloat
Having 500,000 pages doesn’t matter if Google’s only indexing 200,000 – or worse, indexing 700,000 because of duplication and bloat issues.**Index bloat diagnostics:**Index bloat is one of the most damaging and underdiagnosed enterprise issues. It happens when your index contains far more URLs than intended, diluting crawl budget and authority across pages that provide no search value.
Common index bloat sources:
-**Faceted navigation URLs**: Filter and sort combinations generating millions of indexable parameter variations
-**Internal search results pages**: Site search queries creating indexable URLs
-**Tag and filter combinations**: Category + tag + price range + color + size = exponential URL generation
-**Print-friendly and PDF duplicate versions**: Separate URLs serving the same content in different formats
-**Session IDs and tracking parameters**: UTM parameters, session tokens, and A/B test variants creating duplicate indexable URLs
-**Paginated archives**: Infinite pagination of blog, news, or product archives**Indexation coverage analysis:**Compare your intended indexable page count against what’s actually in Google’s index:
-**Coverage report deep dive**: Use [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console)‘s coverage report to categorize excluded pages: crawled but not indexed, discovered but not crawled, blocked by robots.txt, redirect errors, soft 404s
-**GSC API automation**: At enterprise scale, manual GSC review is impractical. Automate extraction via the [Google Search Console API](https://developers.google.com/webmaster-tools) for indexation monitoring, query performance tracking, and anomaly detection. Set up daily pulls for indexation coverage and alerts for sudden drops.
-**Duplication classification**: Identify duplication sources – parameter variations, HTTP vs HTTPS, www vs non-www, trailing slash inconsistencies, printer-friendly versions, session IDs, tracking parameters
-**Noindex/nofollow audit**: Verify that noindex tags are intentional and properly implemented. Check for accidental noindex on priority pages after deployments
-**Canonical logic validation**: Test canonical implementation across templates. Are self-referencing canonicals in place? Are cross-domain canonicals properly configured for syndicated content?**Soft 404 detection methodology:**Soft 404s deserve focused attention. These are pages returning a 200 status code but displaying empty, error, or placeholder content. Google’s detection is imperfect, and manual validation methodology matters.
Steps for comprehensive soft 404 detection:
1. Crawl the site and capture response codes, page titles, and word counts
2. Identify pages with abnormally low word counts relative to their template type
3. Cross-reference with GSC coverage report for pages flagged as soft 404s
4. Check for pages returning 200 but displaying “product not found,” “page not available,” or empty content containers
5. Validate against internal database to identify discontinued products or removed content that should return proper 404/410 or redirect**Common enterprise indexation issues:**- Staging or development environments leaking into production via improper canonical tags or missing noindex
- Faceted navigation generating millions of indexable parameter combinations
- International sites with duplicate content across language versions without proper hreflang
- Product pages with minor variations (color, size) creating near-duplicates
- Archive or historical content without proper noindex implementation
### Phase 5: Internationalization and Hreflang
If you operate in multiple countries or languages, hreflang implementation is where most enterprise sites fail quietly. Users in Germany get English content. Search engines index the wrong language version. Organic traffic goes to the wrong regional site.**Hreflang audit checklist:**-**Implementation method**: Are you using HTML tags, XML sitemaps, or HTTP headers? Each has different validation requirements. The method should match your architecture – HTTP headers work best for non-HTML resources, XML sitemaps for massive implementations, HTML tags for smaller sets.
-**Bidirectional validation**: Every hreflang annotation must be reciprocal. If your US page points to your UK page, your UK page must point back to your US page.
-**Language-region mapping**: Verify you’re using correct ISO codes (en-US, en-GB, es-MX – not just en or es)
-**X-default specification**: Do you have a default page for users whose language/region doesn’t match any specific version?
-**Self-referencing requirement**: Each page must include a self-referencing hreflang tag
-**Canonical-hreflang alignment**: Canonical tags must not conflict with hreflang annotations. A canonical pointing to a different region than hreflang creates contradictory signals.**Common hreflang errors:**- Missing return tags (US page points to UK, but UK doesn’t point back)
- Incorrect language codes (using en-UK instead of en-GB)
- Canonical and hreflang conflicts
- Hreflang pointing to redirected or non-canonical URLs
- Missing hreflang for all language versions (if you have 5 language versions, each page needs 5 hreflang tags plus self-reference)
- Hreflang annotations pushed below the 2MB HTML cutoff on template-heavy pages
Validate implementation using [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console)‘s International Targeting report. A single implementation error can cascade across thousands of pages.
### Phase 6: Core Web Vitals – Beyond “Make It Faster”
Google’s Core Web Vitals are ranking factors and user experience metrics that directly correlate with conversion rates.**Current Core Web Vitals thresholds (2026):**|**Metric**|**Good**|**Needs Improvement**|**Poor**|**Common Enterprise Causes**|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | < 2.5s | 2.5-4.0s | > 4.0s | Unoptimized hero images, render-blocking resources, slow TTFB, CDN misconfigurations |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) | < 200ms | 200-500ms | > 500ms | Heavy JavaScript execution, third-party scripts blocking main thread, long tasks, event handler complexity |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | < 0.1 | 0.1-0.25 | > 0.25 | Images without dimensions, late-loading ads/embeds, web fonts causing reflow, dynamic content injection |
Note: Google [replaced First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP)](https://web.dev/blog/inp-cwv-march-12) as a Core Web Vital in March 2024. INP measures responsiveness across the entire page lifecycle, not just the first interaction. If your audit framework still references FID, it’s outdated.**Field vs. lab data distinction:**-**Field data ([Chrome UX Report](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux))**: Real user measurements from actual Chrome browsers. This is what Google uses for rankings.
-**Lab data ([Lighthouse](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview), [PageSpeed Insights](https://pagespeed.web.dev/))**: Simulated tests in controlled environments. Useful for diagnosis but not what Google ranks on.
Your audit must analyze both. Lab data tells you what’s possible. Field data tells you what real users experience.**Origin vs. URL-level performance:**Enterprise sites often pass CWV at the origin level (site-wide aggregate) but fail at specific URL group levels. A fast homepage and blog can mask catastrophically slow product pages. Always segment CWV data by URL group and template type – this is where actionable insights live.**Template-level analysis:**Don’t just look at site-wide averages. Segment by template type (homepage, category pages, product pages, blog posts). Often, one template type drags down overall performance while others perform well.**Third-party script audit:**Enterprise sites typically load 20-40 third-party scripts (analytics, marketing tags, chat widgets, A/B testing tools, consent management). Each one impacts INP and LCP. Audit which scripts are business-critical vs. nice-to-have, and implement proper loading strategies (defer, async, lazy load after interaction).
### Phase 7: Edge SEO and CDN-Layer Optimization
Modern enterprise SEO increasingly happens at the edge – the CDN layer between your origin server and the user’s browser. This is one of the most powerful and underutilized tools in the enterprise SEO arsenal.**What edge SEO enables:**-**SEO fixes without code deployments**: Implement redirects, inject hreflang tags, modify meta tags, and add structured data at the CDN layer using [Cloudflare Workers](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/), [Akamai EdgeWorkers](https://techdocs.akamai.com/edgeworkers/docs/welcome-to-edgeworkers), or Fastly VCL – without touching the application code or waiting for a development sprint.
-**Performance optimization**: Server-side rendering at the edge, HTML minification, image optimization, and response header management.
-**Bot-specific handling**: Serve pre-rendered pages to search engine crawlers while serving the full JavaScript app to users. This is dynamic rendering implemented at the infrastructure level.
-**A/B testing for SEO**: Test title tags, meta descriptions, or structured data variations without application-level changes.**Why this matters for enterprise audits:**Many enterprise sites have deployment cycles measured in weeks or months. Edge SEO provides a way to implement critical fixes in hours. Your audit should assess CDN capabilities and recommend edge-based solutions for high-priority fixes that can’t wait for the next development sprint.
### Phase 8: Structured Data and SERP Features
Structured data markup ([Schema.org](https://schema.org)) communicates with search engines about what your content represents. Proper implementation unlocks rich results, knowledge panels, and enhanced SERP features that increase click-through rates.**Enterprise structured data audit:**-**Coverage analysis**: Which templates have structured data? Which are missing opportunities?
-**Schema type validation**: Are you using the most specific schema types for your content? Product schema for products, not just generic WebPage.
-**Required vs. recommended properties**: Are you including only required properties or also recommended ones that unlock enhanced features?
-**Nested schema implementation**: Complex pages (product pages with reviews, recipes with nutrition info) require nested schema structures
-**JSON-LD placement**: Given the 2MB HTML limit, verify JSON-LD blocks appear early in the document. Large product catalog schemas with extensive offer data can consume significant bytes.**Rich result eligibility testing:**Use [Google’s Rich Results Test](https://search.google.com/test/rich-results) to validate Product, Review, FAQ, HowTo, Event, and Organization schema types. Each has specific required properties that determine eligibility.**Common enterprise schema errors:**- Outdated schema types (using deprecated types instead of current recommendations)
- Missing required properties (Product schema without price or availability)
- Schema-content mismatch (schema claims 5-star rating but page shows 3 stars)
- Duplicate schema (same schema implemented multiple times on one page)
- Schema on non-indexable pages (wasted implementation effort)
- Massive JSON-LD blocks consuming HTML budget when placed inline
### Phase 9: Headless CMS and Modern Architecture Considerations
Enterprise sites increasingly run headless architectures ([Contentful](https://www.contentful.com/), [Strapi](https://strapi.io/), [Sanity](https://www.sanity.io/), [headless Shopify](https://www.shopify.com/enterprise), [commercetools](https://commercetools.com/)). The SEO implications differ significantly from traditional CMS setups.**Headless architecture audit points:**-**Content delivery**: How does content get from the headless CMS to the rendered page? Is there a build step, or is content fetched client-side?
-**URL management**: Who controls URL structure – the CMS, the frontend framework, or a routing layer? Misalignment creates canonicalization problems.
-**Preview and staging**: Can content editors preview how pages will look to search engines before publishing?
-**Sitemap generation**: Is sitemap generation automated and does it reflect the actual frontend URLs (not CMS-internal paths)?
-**Structured data injection**: Where does schema markup get added – in the CMS content model, the frontend template, or via edge workers?
For enterprise sites running decoupled architectures, the audit must trace the content pipeline from CMS to CDN to rendered output, identifying where SEO signals can be lost or misconfigured at each layer.
### Phase 10: Security, Compliance, and Technical Hygiene
Security headers and technical compliance don’t directly improve rankings, but their absence can tank your site or expose you to penalties.**Security header audit:**- HTTPS implementation with valid certificates across all subdomains
- HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) preventing protocol downgrade attacks
- Content Security Policy mitigating XSS and unauthorized script execution
- X-Frame-Options preventing clickjacking
- Referrer-Policy controlling referrer information sent with requests**Robots directives validation:**- Robots.txt accuracy: Are you blocking resources Google needs to render pages?
- Meta robots consistency: Verify noindex, nofollow, and other directives match intent
- X-Robots-Tag headers properly configured at the server level
- Sensitive path protection: Admin panels, development environments, and staging sites properly restricted**Technical compliance:**- Mobile-friendliness: Responsive design, viewport configuration, touch target sizing
- Accessibility basics: Alt text coverage, heading hierarchy, ARIA labels – these overlap with SEO best practices
- Legal compliance: Cookie consent, privacy policy accessibility, GDPR/CCPA signals
### Phase 11: Backlink Risk and Opportunity Assessment
A forensic audit includes a backlink health check because toxic backlinks can trigger manual actions that override all your technical optimizations.**Backlink risk analysis:**- Toxic link clusters from link farms, PBNs, or spammy directories
- Anchor text over-optimization with unnatural exact-match concentration
- Sudden backlink spikes suggesting negative SEO
- Disavow file review for currency and completeness**Link reclamation opportunities:**- Broken backlinks: External sites linking to your 404 pages (redirect opportunities)
- Unlinked brand mentions: Sites mentioning your brand without linking
- Competitor backlink gaps: High-authority links pointing to competitors but not to you
- Lost links: Previously strong backlinks that have been removed or changed
For deeper analysis, explore our [backlink analysis and risk assessment services](https://fourdots.com/backlink-analysis-and-risk-assessment). If you’ve been impacted by manual actions, our [Google penalty removal services](https://fourdots.com/google-penalty-removal) can accelerate recovery.
### Phase 12: Analytics, Tracking, and CI/CD Integration
You can’t optimize what you can’t measure. Enterprise sites often have tracking gaps, misconfigured events, or incomplete instrumentation that makes it impossible to prove SEO ROI.**Analytics audit components:**- Tracking parity: Does your analytics platform accurately capture organic traffic, conversions, and user behavior?
- Event taxonomy: Are custom events properly configured to track key user actions?
- Cross-domain tracking: For multi-domain properties, is tracking configured to follow users across domains?
- Organic traffic segmentation: Can you separate branded vs. non-branded organic traffic?
- Search query attribution: Are you capturing search queries that drive conversions?**CI/CD pipeline integration:**Enterprise SEO fixes go through CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, and QA processes. Your audit should assess how SEO validation integrates into deployment workflows:
-**Pre-deploy SEO checks**: Automated validation of title tags, canonical tags, meta robots, structured data, and hreflang before code reaches production
-**Regression testing**: Automated tests that catch SEO-breaking changes (accidental noindex, canonical changes, redirect removals)
-**Monitoring alerts**: Real-time alerts for sudden indexation drops, crawl error spikes, or Core Web Vitals degradation after deployments
-**Rollback triggers**: Predefined criteria for reverting deployments that negatively impact organic performance**Dashboard and reporting infrastructure:**Create executive-friendly dashboards connecting technical metrics to business outcomes using tools like [Reportz.io](https://reportz.io) for automated, live reporting:
- Traffic impact dashboard with year-over-year comparisons
- Indexation health dashboard with crawl efficiency metrics
- Performance dashboard with CWV percentiles by template
- Conversion impact dashboard with revenue attribution
## Prioritization and Roadmapping: From Audit to Action
The audit deliverable that matters most isn’t a 200-page report. It’s the prioritized backlog with clear owners, effort estimates, and expected impact.**Impact x Risk / Effort prioritization matrix:**|**Issue Category**|**Impact (1-10)**|**Effort (1-10)**|**Risk (1-10)**|**Priority Score**|**Sprint**|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| HTML bloat / byte-order optimization | 8 | 3 | 6 | 16 | Sprint 1 |
| Faceted navigation canonical fix | 9 | 3 | 8 | 24 | Sprint 1 |
| Product schema implementation | 7 | 4 | 2 | 3.5 | Sprint 1 |
| Core Web Vitals – LCP/INP optimization | 8 | 6 | 4 | 5.3 | Sprint 2 |
| Hreflang implementation fix | 6 | 5 | 7 | 8.4 | Sprint 2 |
| Internal linking architecture | 7 | 7 | 3 | 3 | Sprint 3 |
| Edge SEO implementation | 7 | 4 | 3 | 5.25 | Sprint 1 |
| Index bloat remediation | 8 | 5 | 5 | 8 | Sprint 2 |**Priority score calculation:**(Impact x Risk) / Effort
This formula surfaces quick wins (high impact, low effort) and critical risks (high impact, high risk) while deprioritizing low-impact changes regardless of effort.**Sprint-ready ticket template:**Each issue needs a developer-friendly ticket with:
-**Title:**Clear, specific description of the issue
-**Business impact:**Why this matters in revenue/traffic terms
-**Current state:**What’s happening now (with screenshots/data)
-**Desired state:**What should happen instead
-**Acceptance criteria:**How to verify the fix worked
-**Technical implementation:**Specific code changes or configuration updates required
-**Testing requirements:**How to QA the fix, including SEO regression tests
-**Rollback plan:**How to undo if the fix causes problems
-**KPI tracking:**Which metrics to monitor post-implementation
## Implementation Timeline: 30-60-90 Day Remediation Plan**Days 1-30: Foundation and Quick Wins**- Complete audit delivery and stakeholder alignment
- Fix critical indexation issues (noindex on priority pages, robots.txt blocking)
- Implement HTML byte-order optimization on highest-traffic templates
- Deploy edge SEO fixes for redirects and header management
- Implement redirect fixes for broken high-traffic pages
- Deploy product schema on top-converting templates
- Set up monitoring dashboards and alerting via [Reportz.io](https://reportz.io)
- Configure CI/CD pre-deploy SEO validation**Expected outcomes:**5-10% indexation coverage improvement, 3-5% traffic recovery from redirect fixes, rich results eligibility for product pages**Days 31-60: Architecture and Performance**- Implement faceted navigation canonicalization strategy
- Remediate index bloat (remove low-value URLs from index)
- Fix hreflang implementation for international sites
- Address top 3 Core Web Vitals issues by template (LCP, INP, CLS)
- Optimize internal linking for strategic pages
- Deploy structured data across remaining templates
- Implement soft 404 detection and remediation**Expected outcomes:**15-25% crawl efficiency improvement, measurable Core Web Vitals improvement across target templates, 10-15% traffic recovery**Days 61-90: Advanced Optimization and Monitoring**- Complete site architecture improvements
- Implement advanced schema types (FAQ, HowTo, Review)
- Optimize remaining performance bottlenecks
- Deploy headless CMS SEO configuration fixes
- Establish ongoing monitoring and reporting cadence
- Document processes and train internal teams
- Run post-implementation audit to validate fixes and measure impact**Expected outcomes:**20-30% total traffic recovery across the 90-day period, sustainable performance improvements, internal team enablement for ongoing optimization
## Measuring Success: KPIs That Matter**Crawl efficiency metrics:**Crawl to index ratio improvement. Crawl waste reduction. Average crawl depth to priority pages. Render success rate for JavaScript-heavy pages. Time-to-index for new content.**Indexation health metrics:**Total indexed pages vs. intended indexable pages. Index bloat ratio. Coverage issue resolution rate. Duplicate content reduction. Soft 404 elimination rate.**Performance metrics:**Core Web Vitals percentile improvements (75th percentile). INP scores by template type. Mobile vs. desktop performance parity. Template-level LCP and CLS improvements. Third-party script load time reduction.**Business impact metrics:**Organic traffic recovery percentage. Organic conversion rate improvement. Revenue attribution to technical fixes. SERP feature acquisition (rich results, featured snippets). AI platform visibility changes.
For teams looking to operationalize these audit insights into ongoing optimization, our [content strategy services](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy) help translate technical fixes into sustainable content and optimization workflows.
## When to Bring in Forensic Audit Expertise
You need an enterprise forensic audit when:
- You’re planning a migration (replatforming, domain change, URL restructure)
- Organic traffic has declined 15%+ without clear cause
- Your site has 10,000+ pages with complex architecture
- You’re operating in multiple countries/languages with hreflang
- You have JavaScript rendering or single-page application complexity
- Your crawl budget is constrained and you need to optimize allocation
- Your HTML templates exceed 1MB and you’re concerned about Google’s 2MB fetch limit
- You’ve received a manual action or algorithmic penalty
- You’re running a headless CMS architecture and need SEO validation
- You need executive-ready reporting to justify SEO investment
The ROI calculation is straightforward: if a 10% traffic recovery on a site generating $10M annually in organic revenue yields $1M, a comprehensive audit with 90-day implementation pays for itself many times over.
For agencies managing enterprise clients, our [white label technical audit services](https://fourdots.com/white-label-SEO-services) provide the forensic depth your clients need under your brand.
## Migration Protection Blueprint
Enterprise migrations (replatforming, domain changes, URL restructuring) are where technical audits prove their value most dramatically. A thorough pre-migration audit and post-migration validation can be the difference between a smooth transition and a 40% traffic loss.**Pre-migration audit requirements:**- Complete URL inventory, categorized by template type and business value
- Traffic and conversion baseline for every significant URL
- Detailed 1:1 redirect mapping of old URLs to new URLs
- Content parity verification ensuring critical elements survive the migration
- Technical feature inventory: structured data, hreflang, canonical tags, redirects**Migration protection checklist:**- Redirect accuracy testing: Validate every redirect points to the correct new URL (not homepage defaults)
- Redirect chain elimination: Ensure redirects are direct (old to new), not chained
- Status code verification: Confirm 301 permanent redirects, not 302 temporary
- Canonical tag migration: New URLs have proper self-referencing canonicals
- Hreflang migration: International sites maintain proper language-region targeting
- Structured data migration: Schema markup properly implemented on new templates
- HTML byte-order validation: New templates maintain critical SEO elements within the first portion of the HTML document
- Internal link updates: Internal links point to new URLs, not old redirecting URLs
- Sitemap updates: XML sitemaps contain new URLs, submitted to Search Console
- Robots.txt verification: No accidental blocking of important sections
- Analytics configuration: Tracking properly configured for new URL structure**Post-migration rollback criteria (define before migration):**- Organic traffic drop exceeding 15% for three consecutive days
- Indexation coverage drop exceeding 20%
- Conversion rate drop exceeding 25%
- Critical functionality failures (checkout, forms, key user paths)
- Core Web Vitals regression exceeding 30%
Having predefined rollback criteria and a tested rollback procedure reduces migration risk and stakeholder anxiety.
## Frequently Asked Questions**How long does an enterprise technical SEO audit take?**A comprehensive forensic audit typically takes 3-4 weeks for sites with 50,000-500,000 pages. This includes data collection (1 week), analysis and diagnostics (1-2 weeks), and deliverable preparation (1 week). Larger sites or those with complex international implementations may require 5-6 weeks.**What’s the difference between a technical audit and a forensic audit?**A standard technical audit identifies surface-level issues using crawlers and automated tools. A forensic audit goes deeper: log file analysis segmented by bot type, JavaScript rendering validation against WRS behavior, HTML byte-level analysis against Google’s 2MB fetch limit, crawl budget optimization, index bloat diagnostics, and root cause diagnosis. Forensic audits include prioritization frameworks and sprint-ready implementation roadmaps.**Do I need server log access?**Yes, for a true forensic audit. Server logs reveal what search engines actually crawl versus what you think you’re serving. They show crawl budget allocation, orphaned pages, blocked resources, bot behavior patterns, and crawler segmentation by user agent. Without log access, you’re missing 30-40% of critical insights.**How do you prioritize hundreds of technical issues?**We use an Impact x Risk / Effort prioritization matrix. Each issue is scored on business impact, implementation risk, and development effort. This surfaces quick wins and critical risks while deprioritizing low-impact changes. The output is a sprint-ready backlog with clear owners and timelines.**What about Google’s 2MB HTML fetch limit?**Google [confirmed in March 2026](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/03/crawler-blog-post) that Googlebot fetches a maximum of 2MB per URL (including HTTP headers). Everything beyond that cutoff is ignored for indexation and rendering. Our audit now includes HTML weight analysis by template type, verifying that critical SEO elements (meta tags, canonicals, structured data) appear early in the document. External CSS and JavaScript files are fetched separately with their own limits, so moving heavy code to external files is a key optimization.**Can you audit sites built on headless CMS architectures?**Yes. Headless architectures ([Contentful](https://www.contentful.com/), [Strapi](https://strapi.io/), [headless Shopify](https://www.shopify.com/enterprise)) require additional audit steps: tracing the content pipeline from CMS to CDN to rendered output, validating URL management across the frontend framework, and ensuring structured data and SEO signals aren’t lost in the decoupled architecture.**What tools do you use?**The audit combines specialized tools: [Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/) for crawling, [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console) and its API for indexation data, server log analyzers for crawl behavior, [Lighthouse](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview) and [CrUX](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux) for Core Web Vitals, schema validators for structured data, and custom scripts for log analysis and byte-level diagnostics. We use [Reportz.io](https://reportz.io) for automated reporting and monitoring dashboards with daily data updates from GA4, GSC, and [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/).**What happens after the audit?**You receive a prioritized backlog with sprint-ready tickets, an executive summary with ROI projections, and implementation timelines. Most clients engage us for ongoing implementation support and monitoring. We also integrate fixes into CI/CD pipelines so SEO validation becomes part of your deployment workflow rather than an afterthought.
## The Bottom Line
An enterprise technical SEO audit isn’t an expense. It’s risk mitigation and revenue protection. Every day you operate with crawl budget waste, indexation gaps, HTML bloat pushing critical signals past Google’s fetch limit, or Core Web Vitals issues dragging down your INP scores, you’re leaving traffic and revenue on the table.
The sites that dominate organic search won’t be the ones with the most content or the biggest budgets. They’ll be the ones with the cleanest technical foundation – optimized not just for how search engines evaluate content, but for how they physically fetch and process your bytes.
Your crawl budget is finite. Your engineering resources are constrained. Google’s 2MB fetch limit is real. The question isn’t whether to audit. It’s whether you’ll do it before or after your next traffic drop.**Ready to see what a forensic audit reveals about your enterprise site?**Review how similar teams implemented these frameworks in our [enterprise SEO case studies](https://fourdots.com/case-studies), or [request a technical SEO audit consultation](https://fourdots.com/technical-SEO-audit-services) to discuss your specific challenges.
---
## Posts: Search Engine Marketing Intelligence: What It Actually Takes to Make Every Search Channel Work Together
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764](https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764.md)
**Published:** 2026-02-13
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEM
**Tags:** Search Engine Marketing Intelligence, SEM, SEM AI Analysis
**Summary:** Search engine marketing intelligence explained by the agency that builds its own SEM tools. How to connect SEO, PPC, and AI visibility data into one decision-making system.
### Content
The monthly report looked great. Organic traffic up 30%.
SEO team was proud. Client was happy. Everyone agreed to keep doing what we were doing.
Then someone asked the right question. “Can we break that traffic down by query type?”
We could. And when we did, 25 of those 30 percentage points came from branded searches. People typing the company name directly into Google. Not the keywords we’d been targeting. The brand name.
Nobody had run a branding campaign. No PR push. No content marketing blitz. So where was the branded traffic coming from?
The paid search team had been running awareness campaigns. Display ads, YouTube pre-rolls, some search ads on broader terms. People saw the ads, didn’t click, but remembered the brand name. Days later, they Googled it directly. That traffic landed in the organic bucket in Google Analytics. The SEO team was taking credit for growth they didn’t drive.
This isn’t a rare edge case. It happens in most campaigns where SEO and PPC operate as separate workstreams with separate reporting. And without proper [search engine marketing intelligence](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing) – the kind that connects paid impression data to organic branded query volumes over the same time period – you’re making decisions based on numbers that don’t mean what you think they mean.
That story captures what this article is about. Not the definition of SEM intelligence. You can get that from any blog post that lists five tools and calls it a strategy. This is about what search engine marketing intelligence actually looks like when the data from one channel changes how you interpret results in another.
##**The Word That Matters Is “Intelligence,” Not “Marketing”**Search engine marketing intelligence is the practice of gathering, connecting, and interpreting data across all search channels to make decisions that improve business outcomes. Not clicks. Not impressions. Outcomes.
Raw data from Google Analytics isn’t intelligence. A ranking report from Ahrefs isn’t intelligence. Your Google Ads dashboard isn’t intelligence. Each one is a data source.
Intelligence is what happens when you connect those sources, notice that two of them are telling you contradictory things, and figure out which one to believe. It’s the difference between knowing your organic traffic went up and understanding why it went up – and whether it’ll stay up next month.
Three things separate real SEM intelligence from reporting.
Cross-channel connection. Organic data, paid data, AI visibility data, and conversion data need to live in one view. When they sit in separate dashboards managed by separate teams, nobody sees the full picture. Nobody catches the branded traffic problem we just described.
Temporal context. A traffic increase means nothing without knowing what else happened that month. Did you launch a paid campaign? Did a PR piece hit? Did a competitor drop out of the auction? Intelligence requires time-aware analysis. Same data, different context, completely different conclusion.
Causal reasoning. The hardest part. Not just what happened, but why – and whether it’ll happen again. This is where most reporting stops and real intelligence starts.
##**The Validation Loop We Run Before We Commit to Anything**Most search engine marketing [agencies treat SEO](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) and PPC as separate services sold to separate budgets. We’ve always treated them as two halves of the same intelligence system.
Here’s why.
When we start a new engagement, we don’t immediately launch into link building or content production. That work takes three to nine months to produce results. Months of investment before anyone knows whether the keyword selection was right.
Instead, we start with the landing pages. Audit them. Optimize for both organic ranking factors and conversion performance. A well-optimized landing page directly improves Google Ads Quality Score, which reduces cost per click. [SEO](https://fourdots.com/seo) work already fueling [paid performance](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management) before we’ve earned a single organic ranking.
Then comes the step that saves clients from a very expensive mistake.
Before committing months of SEO effort to a keyword set, we run a small, highly targeted paid search campaign on those exact terms. Not a big campaign. $500-$1,000 over two weeks. The campaign isn’t designed to generate ROI. It’s designed to answer one question: do people searching these keywords actually want what this page offers?
Because the worst thing that can happen in SEO isn’t failing to rank. It’s succeeding.
Imagine spending six months building authority, earning links, creating content. You climb to page one for a competitive keyword. Traffic starts flowing. And then you realize the people searching that term are coming to research. They’re comparing. They’re browsing. They’re not converting. The intent was wrong. Your page attracts eyeballs from people who were never going to buy.
Six months of budget. Six months of team time. Six months to discover you optimized for the wrong intent.
A two-week paid campaign tells you that on day fourteen. If the traffic converts, the keyword selection is right. Go all in with SEO. If it doesn’t, adjust before you’ve invested a quarter’s worth of work.
This is SEM intelligence in practice. One channel’s data de-risking decisions in another channel. The channels aren’t separate services. They’re one system with different outputs.
##**Five Data Layers, One Picture**After 14 years running SEM campaigns across 200+ client accounts, we’ve landed on the data layers that produce real intelligence when connected – and produce misleading signals when they’re not.**Search Console plus GA4**is where most people start and stop. Search Console shows which queries bring impressions and clicks. GA4 shows what happens after the click. Connected properly, they tell you which content drives business results versus which content just attracts eyeballs. The gap most teams miss is that these two data sources don’t match cleanly. Query-level data in Search Console rarely maps one-to-one to landing page performance in GA4. Reconciling those discrepancies is where intelligence begins.**Google Ads plus conversion tracking**gives you something organic data can’t: immediate feedback on intent. When you run paid campaigns on keywords you’re targeting organically, you get a preview of what organic success will look like months before you get there. The metric that matters isn’t click-through rate. It’s post-click behavior. Are people filling out forms? Calling? Adding to cart? Or bouncing after 12 seconds?**Competitive SERP data**shows who else ranks for your target keywords, what their content looks like, and how the SERPs have shifted over six months. Competitors increasing ad spend on a keyword cluster might signal they’ve already validated commercial intent on those terms. That’s not just competitive intelligence. That’s a signal for your [SEO strategy](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy).**AI visibility data**is the layer that didn’t exist two years ago. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overview for recommendations in your category, is your brand in the response? We built [FAII.ai](https://faii.ai/) because no existing tool answered that question. FAII monitors how AI platforms mention, describe, and recommend brands across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews in 195+ countries. Not just whether you’re mentioned – what they say about you. Including whether the information is even accurate.
You might rank #3 organically and run profitable ads, but if AI platforms are recommending your competitors when prospects ask for options in your category, you’re losing deals before the search even happens. That’s a blind spot traditional SEM intelligence can’t detect.**Unified reporting**is where these four layers become one picture. We built [Reportz.io](https://reportz.io/) seven years ago because this problem – data living in silos, nobody connecting the dots – existed everywhere and no tool solved it properly. Reportz connects Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn, email marketing platforms, and now FAII.ai into real-time dashboards where organic rankings, paid performance, [AI visibility](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization) scores, and conversion data appear in the same time frame, segmented by the same dimensions.
The platform is rated 5/5 on Capterra. Agencies worldwide license it. Not because we marketed it well. Because the problem is universal and nobody else had solved it.
##**AI Broke the Borders of Search**Two years ago, search engine marketing intelligence meant understanding Google’s organic results and Google’s paid placements. The search universe had clear borders. You knew the playing field.
Those borders are gone.
A B2B buyer researching CRM software today might start with a ChatGPT prompt. Scan the AI Overview in Google. Click on two organic results. Watch a YouTube comparison. Then ask Perplexity to compare pricing. Five search surfaces in one buying journey. Traditional SEM intelligence covers two of them.
The agencies treating AI visibility as a separate service are making the same mistake agencies made ten years ago when they treated mobile SEO as separate from desktop SEO. It’s not separate. Same buyer. Same intent. Same journey. It just happens across more surfaces now.
Our approach combines [FAII.ai’](https://faii.ai/)s AI platform monitoring with [Reportz.io](https://reportz.io/)‘s multi-channel reporting into what we call full-spectrum SERP intelligence. Not just where you rank in Google. Where you appear – or don’t appear – across every surface where buyers make decisions.
When these data streams converge, patterns emerge that are invisible in any single source. A client discovers they rank #1 organically and run profitable ads but are completely absent from ChatGPT recommendations. Or the reverse – AI platforms recommend them constantly, but organic rankings are weak, meaning they’re relying on a channel they don’t own and can’t control.
Real search engine marketing intelligence in 2026 means organic, paid, and AI data connected. Not three reports. One picture.
##**Prediction Used to Be Guesswork. The Data Changed That.**The most valuable form of SEM intelligence isn’t what happened last month. It’s what’s likely to happen next month.
Until recently, prediction in digital marketing was limited by data volume and analytical capacity. Someone had to manually dig through GA4, cross-reference Search Console trends, compare against Ahrefs keyword movements, verify against Google Search results, and synthesize all of it into something forward-looking. That took days. And it was still mostly informed guessing.
What changed: AI-powered data analysis applied to data that was already properly structured.
Today, we take our Reportz.io data – already segmented, time-stamped, organized by campaign and channel – and feed it through internal AI analysis systems. These don’t just produce charts. They produce observations with reasoning. Why did this metric shift? What correlated with the change? If the dataset is large enough, what’s the projected trajectory over the next 60 days?
This hits different when you’re running multi-channel campaigns. This is where search engine marketing intelligence shifts from retrospective analysis to forward-looking decision support. Organic traffic data, paid performance data, social engagement metrics, and email performance flowing into one system. The AI identifies cross-channel patterns a human analyst would miss – or wouldn’t have the hours to find. A spike in email open rates predicting a paid search conversion increase two weeks later. A seasonal branded search pattern that repeats annually with near-perfect correlation.
Before, this kind of analysis required a dedicated data science team. Now it’s becoming standard operating procedure at the agency level. Not because the tools got smarter – though they did. Because the data pipelines got cleaner. Structure your data properly and the analysis takes care of itself.
##**How to Tell If Your Agency Is Doing This**If you’re evaluating [search engine marketing agencies](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing) for intelligence capabilities, here’s what separates the ones that connect data from the ones that just report it.
Do they hand you one integrated view, or separate PDFs for SEO and PPC? If it’s separate reports, there’s no intelligence happening. There’s reporting.
Can they explain where your branded traffic actually comes from? The attribution problem we described at the top of this article isn’t rare. It’s the default state in most campaigns. If an agency can’t separate genuine organic growth from branded traffic driven by paid impressions, their numbers are unreliable.
Do they test keyword intent before committing six months of SEO budget? Any agency can pick keywords from a research tool and start building links. The question is whether they’ve validated that those keywords carry the right intent before they invest your budget in the work.
Do they track AI visibility? In 2026, if your search engine marketing intelligence framework doesn’t include monitoring what AI platforms say about your brand, you’re leaving an entire discovery channel unmanaged. That gap will only get wider.
Do they build or just buy? An agency that builds its own tools understands the mechanics of data collection, the limitations of APIs, and the gaps between what platforms report and what actually happened. An agency that only licenses third-party tools is limited to the questions those tools were designed to answer. We’ve built six platforms over 14 years because the questions we needed answers to didn’t fit the tools that existed.
##**Where This Goes**Search engine marketing intelligence isn’t a product you buy. It’s a practice you build.
It starts with connecting data across channels. Organic, paid, AI, and conversion data flowing into one system instead of four. It continues with asking the right questions – not just “what happened” but “why” and “what should we do about it.” And it matures into prediction. Historical patterns plus cross-channel signals producing forward-looking conclusions that change how you allocate next month’s budget.
We’ve been building this practice for [14 years](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing), across 200+ client engagements, backed by proprietary platforms we designed because the tools on the market didn’t answer the questions our clients were asking.
If you’re running search campaigns across organic and paid channels and the reports don’t connect – or you suspect they’re telling you a simpler story than what’s actually happening – [that’s a conversation worth having](https://fourdots.com/contact).
---
## Posts: How to Hire a Link Building Agency: The Complete Decision-Making Guide
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-link-building-agency-11967](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-link-building-agency-11967)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-link-building-agency-11967.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-link-building-agency-11967.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-16
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** hire a link building agency, how to hire a link building agency, link building, Link Building Agency
**Summary:** Hiring a link building agency is probably the most challenging of all SEO sub-branches. In most industries, highly specialized agencies are usually the smart way to go.
But in SEO, in particular, this can be a trap.
### Content
Hiring a link building agency is probably the most challenging of all SEO sub-branches. In most industries, highly specialized agencies are usually the smart way to go.
But in SEO, in particular, this can be a trap.
Unless the client has an in-house team or external consultant(s) handling technical and on-page optimization, content creation, and website publishing, focusing the entire budget on link building can result in lower or negative ROI.
Without those capabilities or a previously well-optimized website. Clients who focus only on link building risk investing significant resources in links that could be of great quality and then not getting the maximum potential those links can deliver.
Usually, if the website is not fully optimized and prepared, it will not leverage the newly received, so-called link juice or SEO authority that new links provide.
##**Decision Paralysis by Overchoice***There are link building agencies, and then there are link building agencies.*Selection is extensive, but the risk of buyer’s remorse is real and statistically significant/probable.
Fortunately for you, for the first 7 of the current 14 years, Four Dots was a [highly specialized white-label link building outreach agency](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency) that, on a monthly basis, built 1,500 to 2,000 manual guest posts per month.
We worked with some of the most reputable SEO agencies on a global scale, and with some whose loud public stance was that link building is dead, do XY, and then email “Hey Four Dots, we need 300 more backlinks.”
All in all, we know a thing or two about link-building.
Since we are nice guys, we’ll try to clear some of the dilemmas you probably have, which should help you select a good provider, or at least lower the chance of getting that pesky buyer’s remorse.
This guide is built as a practical Q&A.
Steal the questions.
Use them on every agency you talk to.
Watch them sweat bullets :)
##**How to use this guide**For each question, you will get:
-**Why it matters**– what this reveals about risk and outcomes
-**What a strong answer sounds like**– the signals you want to hear
-**Red flags**– the signals you should not ignore
-**Our answer**– how we handle it at Four Dots
The point is not to pick us.
The point is to help you pick the right partner.
If we earn your trust along the way, great.
##**Before the first call: get clear on what you actually need**###**1. “What outcome are we buying with link building?”****Why it matters**Link building is not one thing.
Some teams buy links to lift a handful of money pages.
Others need authority to compete in brutal SERPs.
Some want brand mentions and referral traffic.
If you and the agency are not solving the same problem, you will both be frustrated.**What a strong answer sounds like**- They ask what pages matter – and why
- They ask what the competition looks like
- They talk about time horizons in months, not days
- They define success in business terms, not only SEO metrics**Red flags**- They quote you before they ask you anything
- They only talk DR and number of links
- They promise timelines that sound like wishful thinking**Our answer**We start with your business goal, your target pages, and the SERPs that matter.
We look at baseline link profile, current organic trend, and the competitors you are trying to beat.
Then we map link building to a plan that makes sense for your budget and timeline.
##**Part 1: Evaluating link building methods**###**2. “What types of links do you actually build?”****Why it matters**Agencies use the same words for very different products.
“Guest post” can mean a real niche site with standards.
Or a site that publishes anything for a fee.
You want to understand what you are buying before you buy it.**What a strong answer sounds like**- Clear categories of links, with clear specs
- Relevance explained, not hand waved
- A process for vetting sites beyond surface metrics**Red flags**- “We can get you links on any DR you want” with no discussion of relevance
- They hide the sites until after you pay
- No mention of traffic quality or editorial standards**Our answer**We usually work in three buckets, depending on your goals:
-**Standard quality placements**– good for volume in lighter competition
-**High quality placements**– the usual sweet spot for authority transfer plus budget control
-**Editorial placements**– [earned mentions through real outreach and relationships](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency)
Every placement goes through manual review.
Metrics are a starting point.
Not the finish line.
###**3. “Are you using PBNs, link farms, or other high risk techniques?”****Why it matters**If you have been burned before, this is probably why.
Risky techniques can create short term movement.
Then the floor drops out.
You want an agency whose default is long-term survivability.**What a strong answer sounds like**- A direct answer, with definitions
- Clear boundaries on what they will not do
- A plan for handling historical toxic links, if they exist**Red flags**- Dodging the question
- “Everyone does it” or “Google cannot detect it”
- A sales pitch about speed instead of risk**Our answer**We do not use PBNs.
We do not run link farms.
We do not do manipulative exchanges or unnatural anchor schemes.
We also acknowledge reality.
Links can disappear.
Publishers change policies.
So we build for durability, then monitor what happens over time.
###**4. “How do you find link opportunities?”****Why it matters**The quality of your links is capped by the quality of the sites they can access.
Many agencies recycle the same tired lists.
Those placements look fine on paper and underperform in practice.**What a strong answer sounds like**- A repeatable prospecting process
- Filters that match your niche and brand standards
- Human review before outreach**Red flags**- “We have a database” with no explanation
- Prospecting is 100 percent automated
- They cannot explain why a site is a fit beyond DR**Our answer**We combine software with human judgment.
We built [Dibz.me](https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082) to surface opportunities faster.
Then senior link builders manually review targets before outreach.
###**5. “Do you use mass email outreach?”****Why it matters**Mass outreach burns domains.
It creates low response rates and low quality acceptance.
Good outreach is slower.
It also gets better outcomes.**What a strong answer sounds like**- Personalization is the default
- They show how they pitch and how they follow up
- They can talk about acceptance rates without sounding vague**Red flags**- Template blasts
- “We send 10,000 emails” as a flex
- They use your domain without controls**Our answer**We do manual outreach.
Real people.
Real site reviews.
Real conversations.
That limits volume.
It improves placement quality.
##**Part 2: Understanding their process**###**6. “Walk me through your process from start to finish.”****Why it matters**Link building is a production system.
If the system is weak, quality slips.
If the system is unclear, results are inconsistent.**What a strong answer sounds like**- A step by step workflow
- Clear QA checkpoints
- Clear ownership across roles**Red flags**- They cannot describe the work without buzzwords
- No review steps
- Reporting is an afterthought**Our answer**Our baseline workflow looks like this:
1. Baseline and SERP analysis
2. Prospecting and qualification
3. Outreach and negotiation
4. Content writing
5. Editorial QA
6. Publishing and verification
7. Monitoring and reporting
###**7. “How do I see progress while work is happening?”****Why it matters**If you only see a spreadsheet once a month, you are buying faith.
You want visibility into activity, not only outcomes.**What a strong answer sounds like**- You can see what is in flight
- You can see what is blocked
- They can show you what they are doing before results show up**Red flags**- Reporting is only delivered at the end of the month
- They cannot show outreach status or pipeline**Our answer**We give clients access to Base.me and Reportz.io so you can see:
- Opportunities found
- Outreach status
- Content in review
- Links live
- Link health checks over time
###**8. “What happens when a link gets removed or changes to nofollow?”****Why it matters**This is where ROI quietly dies.
A good agency plans for churn.
A bad agency pretends it never happens.**What a strong answer sounds like**- Monitoring is built in
- Clear replacement policy
- Clear expectations on what is normal churn**Red flags**- “Our links never get removed”
- No monitoring**Our answer**We monitor links through Base.me.
If something changes, you see it.
Then we agree on the next step based on the situation.
We track link survival over time.
Across our portfolio, our audited two year link survival rate is**80.23 percent**across**110,000 plus**tracked links.
##**Part 3: Content quality**###**9. “Who writes the content?”****Why it matters**Your brand gets attached to this content.
It stays online.
It represents you.
You want content that a real publisher would run even if links did not exist.**What a strong answer sounds like**- Named roles and QA
- Clear minimum content standards
- Industry matching when it matters**Red flags**- Cheap offshore content with no oversight
- AI content with no human editing
- Vague claims about “quality”**Our answer**We use an in-house content team with editorial review.
We match writers to niches when the niche demands it.
We keep content useful.
Not padded.
###**10. “Can I review content before it publishes?”****Why it matters**Most clients do not want surprises with their name on it.
Approval workflows protect you.**What a strong answer sounds like**- Several approval options
- A system to track feedback and revisions**Red flags**- “No, we cannot share drafts”**Our answer**You can choose full approval, sample approval, or no approval.
Most teams start with full approval and relax it later.
##**Part 4: Track record and risk management**###**11. “How long have you been doing this, and what have you survived?”****Why it matters**Link building changes.
The safe line moves.
Experience is pattern recognition.**What a strong answer sounds like**- They can explain how their approach evolved
- They can talk about what they stopped doing and why**Red flags**- They rely on a tactic that only works until it does not**Our answer**Four Dots has been doing [link building](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) for 14 years.
We have seen methods rise, get abused, and die.
So we focus on placements that hold up to scrutiny.
###**11A. “Can you share case studies from clients in my industry?”****Why it matters**Generic case studies are easy to sell.
Relevant case studies are hard to fake.
Industry fit affects everything:
- publishers that will accept content
- what counts as a credible mention
- what link velocity is realistic
- what anchors are safe**What a strong answer sounds like**- 2 to 3 examples that match your niche or business model
- context, not only a chart
- what they tried first, what failed, what worked
- what they would do differently today**Red flags**- only screenshots with no context
- they will not show anything due to “NDA” but also provide zero anonymized detail
- case studies that are all ultra short time windows**Our answer**We can share examples by niche and goal.
If we cannot show a comparable example, we say it.
Then we propose a smaller pilot first.
###**11B. “What is your typical link survival rate over time?”****Why it matters**A link that disappears is not an asset.
It is a sunk cost.
A survival rate tells you two things:
- how strict their publisher selection is
- whether they monitor and fix problems**What a strong answer sounds like**- a timeframe definition, like 6 months, 12 months, 24 months
- a clear method for measuring survival
- a plan for replacements or remediation**Red flags**- “links never get removed”
- no tracking after delivery**Our answer**We track link survival in Base.me.
Across our audited portfolio, our two-year survival rate is**80.23%**across**110,000+**tracked links.
###**12. “What do you guarantee?”****Why it matters**Nobody controls rankings.
Guarantees should cover deliverables and standards.**What a strong answer sounds like**- Deliverables, quality specs, timelines
- Clear remedy if delivery slips**Red flags**- Guaranteed rankings
- Guaranteed timeline promises with no caveats**Our answer**We do not guarantee rankings.
We guarantee deliverables and quality standards.
If we miss delivery, we extend work until it is delivered.
##**Part 5: Understanding pricing and value**###**“How do you structure your pricing?”****Why it matters**Pricing shapes behavior.
If pricing rewards volume, you get volume.
If pricing rewards quality, you get quality.
You need to know what you are paying for:
- a deliverable list
- access to a publisher network
- outreach labor
- content production
- account management
- reporting and monitoring**What a strong answer sounds like**- clear deliverables per month
- quality specs written down
- what is included vs optional
- what happens if a placement fails QA**Red flags**- mystery bundles
- “custom” pricing with no explanation
- agencies that sell only DR tiers and nothing else**Our answer**We price around deliverables and quality tiers.
We define what counts as an acceptable placement before outreach starts.
If it does not meet spec, it does not ship.
###**“What should I expect to pay for quality link building?”****Why it matters**If you pay bargain prices, you usually buy hidden risk.
If you pay premium prices, you should see premium proof.**What a strong answer sounds like**- they explain the cost drivers in your niche
- they separate publisher cost from service cost
- they can justify why a link costs what it costs**Red flags**- prices that are too good to be real
- no explanation of where money goes**Our answer**The market price depends on niche, geo, and editorial standards.
On calls, we explain the cost drivers and where we think spending actually moves the needle.
###**“What metrics should I use to evaluate link building ROI?”****Why it matters**If you track only DR, you will get pretty spreadsheets.
You might not get growth.
You need a mix of leading and lagging indicators.**What a strong answer sounds like**Leading indicators:
- relevance of placements
- indexation rate of linking pages
- link survival rate
- URL level strength trend of the linking page
Lagging indicators:
- rankings and traffic on target pages
- non brand impressions in Search Console
- assisted conversions and revenue impact**Red flags**- they refuse to talk about business metrics
- they only report link count and DR**Our answer**We report both activity and outcomes.
We also track link health, indexation, and URL level strength because that is where ROI often dies quietly.
##**Part 6: Advanced capabilities**###**“Do you offer any proprietary technology or methods?”****Why it matters**Tools do not replace expertise.
But the right tooling changes two things buyers care about:
- visibility into work in progress
- consistency of delivery
Most link building problems are not secret tactics.
They are execution and communication problems.**What a strong answer sounds like**- tools support the process, not hide it
- you can see pipeline stages, not only a final list
- they can explain what is tracked, how often, and why**Red flags**- “we have AI” with no practical details
- tooling used as an excuse to avoid transparency
- dashboards that only show vanity metrics**Our answer**Yes.
We built several SaaS tools that support how we deliver link building.
Some are used by other agencies too.
In practice, that means you can see what is happening, not just what happened.
###**“How do you combine manual outreach with proprietary tools?”****Why it matters**Pure automation tends to create spam.
Pure manual work can be slow and hard to scale.
The best teams use tools for speed and control, then use humans for judgment.**What a strong answer sounds like**- tools help find targets and track status
- humans qualify sites before outreach
- humans handle negotiation and editorial back and forth
- quality gates exist before any link is approved**Red flags**- they brag about huge email volume
- no human review of sites
- they cannot show you an outreach pipeline**Our answer**We use tools to discover and organize opportunities.
Then link builders review targets, run outreach, and handle negotiations.
Example of what you should be able to see:
- target approved, rejected, or needs review
- outreach started, reply received, negotiating, agreed
- content assigned, draft ready, edits, approved
- published, verified, monitored
##**Part 7: Risk management**###**“How do you handle Google algorithm updates?”****Why it matters**Many agencies only look calm when rankings go up.
A good partner stays calm when Google changes the rules.
The safest answer is not “we react fast”.
The safest answer is “we build in a way that does not panic when updates roll out”.**What a strong answer sounds like**- they explain risk boundaries
- they do not rely on tactics that need constant patching
- they monitor impact, but avoid random changes**Red flags**- a “secret method” that breaks when Google updates
- they jump from tactic to tactic every quarter**Our answer**We do not run special update playbooks because our link building is built around editorial standards and relevance.
We still monitor.
But we are not rebuilding your link profile every time SEO Twitter has a breakdown.
###**“What happens if my site gets penalized while working with you?”****Why it matters**This is the nightmare scenario.
You want two things:
- a fair process for finding the real cause
- a plan to recover, not finger pointing
It is also common for penalties to show up late.
A site can get hit today for work done months ago.**What a strong answer sounds like**- they do a root cause review before assigning blame
- they look at history, not only the last 30 days
- they can explain recovery steps clearly**Red flags**- instant blame, either on you or on Google
- no experience with recovery
- no willingness to help if the penalty is pre existing**Our answer**We have seen cases where a new client was hit during onboarding, before link building even started.
In those situations, we treat it as investigation work.
Our process:
1. confirm whether it is a manual action or algorithmic hit
2. review historical link patterns and recent changes
3. identify likely triggers, often legacy links from a previous provider
4. propose cleanup and risk reduction**Mini slide: what we baseline on day one to reduce panic later**Think of this as a snapshot.
It protects you.
It protects us.
It also makes root cause analysis simple if anything happens.
- Search Console access and manual actions check
- current technical state, crawl issues, indexation, major templates
- current ranking and traffic baseline for key pages
- backlink profile snapshot plus obvious toxic clusters
- Ahrefs historical link graph review to spot legacy link spikes and patterns
- notes on recent site changes, migrations, redirects, content pruning
We keep this lightweight.
No endless questionnaires.
We rely on a repeatable internal checklist so we do not miss the basics.
If it is a manual action, we support the reconsideration request process through Search Console.
Recovery timelines vary.
But the steps are clear, and we explain them in plain language.
##**Part 8: Post placement ROI**###**13. “What happens after the link goes live?”****Why it matters**A new guest post URL often starts with very little URL level strength.
If the agency stops at placement, you are waiting for the internet to do the rest.
Sometimes it will.
Often it will not.**What a strong answer sounds like**- They monitor indexation and health
- They measure the page that links to you, not only the domain**Red flags**- They treat placement as the finish line**Our answer**We monitor indexation and link health.
We also track URL level strength over time.
###**“How do you verify discovery and indexing?”****Why it matters**A link on a page that does not get discovered or indexed is a link you cannot count on.**What a strong answer sounds like**- they check indexation of the linking URL, not only domain level signals
- they watch for publisher blocks like noindex, canonical issues, or hard paywalls
- they have a remediation plan when a URL stays invisible**Red flags**- “Google will find it eventually” as the only plan**Our answer**We verify that the linking URL is discoverable and indexable.
If we find a technical issue on the publisher side, we either resolve it with the publisher or replace the placement.
###**“Do you measure the URL level strength of the backlink page?”****Why it matters**A strong domain can still publish a weak page.
Most of the value comes from the URL that links to you.**What a strong answer sounds like**- they track the linking page as an asset
- they can show movement over time**Red flags**- they only report domain metrics**Our answer**Yes.
We track URL level strength trends over time so you can see whether your placements behave like real assets.
###**“Can you show GA4 and Search Console proof of impact?”****Why it matters**You do not want vibes.
You want evidence.**What a strong answer sounds like**- they can show Search Console improvements on target pages
- they understand attribution limits and do not oversell causality
- they know how to isolate reasonable signals from noise**Red flags**- they claim every lift is caused by their links
- they refuse to look at your data**Our answer**We can show impact in Search Console and, when relevant, in GA4.
We also explain what you can and cannot attribute cleanly to link building.
If you want to accelerate ROI on certain placements, we [offer](https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613) an optional add on called Fantom Link.
###**14. “What is Fantom Link, and when does it make sense?”****Why it matters**Sometimes the best move is not “more links”.
It is making your best links stronger.**What a strong answer sounds like**- They are honest about when it is not needed
- They define checkpoints and reporting**Red flags**- It is pitched as a magic button
- They cannot explain what actually happens**Our answer**Fantom Link is a post placement amplification workflow.
It is designed to help certain backlink pages get discovered faster, build their own supporting signals, and start acting like real assets.
It is not for every link.
It is most useful when:
- You paid for good placements and the backlink pages stay dead after publishing
- SERPs are tight and small lifts matter
- You want better ROI from an existing portfolio
It is usually not useful when:
- The placement is weak or irrelevant
- The target page on your site is not ready to rank
- You need a result in seven days
We run it with checkpoints and before and after reporting so you can see what changed.
##**How to compare agencies without a spreadsheet war**Most agencies will try to win with metrics.
That is fine.
But process and transparency win long term.
If you want a simple way to compare two agencies, use this scorecard.
##**A quick scorecard you can use on calls**Use this while you are on Zoom.
If you want to keep it simple, rate each from 1 to 5.
- Clarity of process
- Transparency of reporting
- Site vetting beyond DR
- Risk boundaries
- Content standards
- Link monitoring and replacement policy
If the agency wins on process and transparency, you can usually fix the rest.
If they fail on process and transparency, everything else is just promises.
##**Getting started**###**“How quickly can you start, and what does onboarding look like?”****Why it matters**Speed is not the goal.
Control is.
A solid onboarding protects you from misalignment.
It also protects the agency from guessing.**What a strong answer sounds like**- a kickoff process with clear inputs and owners
- first month expectations spelled out
- communication cadence set upfront**Red flags**- “we can start tomorrow” with no discovery
- no briefing or QA stage**Our answer**We can usually start fast, but we do not skip discovery.
The first step is aligning on targets, constraints, and quality standards.
###**“What makes you different from other link building agencies?”****Why it matters**Every agency has a story.
You want differences that change outcomes.
Use this question to force specificity.**What a strong answer sounds like**- one to three concrete differentiators
- proof for each one
- a clear tradeoff, like higher quality and lower volume**Red flags**- generic claims like “we are transparent” with no system behind it**Our answer**Our differentiators are practical:
- we built internal tooling to make delivery visible, not mysterious
- we focus on durability, not shortcuts
- we can optionally improve the value of strong placements after they go live
If you want a proposal from any agency, expect them to ask for:
- Your site and key pages
- Your market and competitors
- Your goals and constraints
- Your current baseline
If they do not ask for this, you are about to buy a generic package.
If you want to talk to our team, you can reach us via [the Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/case-studies) contact page.
We will ask the same questions above.
We will also tell you, directly, if we think you should not hire us.
##**FAQ**###**How much should I budget?**Budgets vary by niche and competition.
A good rule is this:
- If the pricing is far below market, ask what is being compromised.
- If the pricing is far above market, ask what you are getting that is truly different.
###**How long until I see results?**Expect early signals in months, not weeks.
Some niches move fast.
Some do not.
The agency should set expectations based on your baseline and the SERPs.
###**Can link building hurt my site?**Yes, if it is done recklessly.
That is why you ask about methods, risk boundaries, site vetting, and monitoring.
###**Do you work with competitors?**Any serious agency should have a conflict policy.
Ask it early.
###**How many links do I need per month?**It depends on competition and baseline.
A good agency will propose a starting velocity and adjust based on what moves the needle.
##**What The Average Can Bring Vs What You Should Look For **|**Factor**|**Industry Average**|**An OK Choice**|
| --- | --- | --- |
| Link Survival Rate (2 years) | 60-70% | 80.23% (audited with Base.me across 110,000+ links) |
| Penalty History | Common among cheap providers | 1 penalty in 13 years (client insisted on black hat) |
| Outreach Method | Mass email templates | Manual personalized outreach |
| Content Quality | AI-generated or offshore writers | In-house English language techers writers |
| Reporting Frequency | Monthly PDF spreadsheets | Real-time dashboard access |
| Team Tenure | High turnover | LB veterans with avg. 4+ years of tenure (a few is with FD for 8 y.) |
| Proprietary Tools | None – use same tools as everyone | [Dibz.me](https://fourdots.com/blog/link-prospects-in-less-time-dibz-2365), Base.me, Reportz.io, Fantom Link |
| Link Quality Verification and QA | DR/DA metrics only | Manual review + traffic + editorial standards + proprietary SPAM metric |
| Post-Placement Support | None | Fantom Link authority amplification |*Well done, you learned something new today. You deserve a cookie 🍪*
---
## Posts: The Naming Wars of an Industry That Doesn't Know What to Call Itself
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/the-naming-wars-of-an-industry-that-doesnt-know-what-to-call-itself-11979](https://fourdots.com/blog/the-naming-wars-of-an-industry-that-doesnt-know-what-to-call-itself-11979)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/the-naming-wars-of-an-industry-that-doesnt-know-what-to-call-itself-11979.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/the-naming-wars-of-an-industry-that-doesnt-know-what-to-call-itself-11979.md)
**Published:** 2025-12-26
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** AIO
**Tags:** AI SEO, AI Visibility Optimization, AIVO, GEO
**Summary:** GEO. AIO. AEO. AIEO. AIVO. LLMO. Pick your poison. Every conference panel, every LinkedIn thought leader, every martech vendor has a favorite.
Ask five people at a marketing meetup what we call "that thing where you make sure AI mentions your brand." You'll get six different answers. And some fisticuffs.
### Content
Six acronyms. Two years. Zero consensus.**GEO. AIO. AEO. AIEO. AIVO. LLMO.**Pick your poison. Every conference panel, every LinkedIn thought leader, every martech vendor has a favorite.
Ask five people at a marketing meetup what we call “that thing where you make sure AI mentions your brand.” You’ll get six different answers. And some fisticuffs.
### TL;DR
-*Six acronyms*: No agreement. All of them make sense, partially. The industry can’t agree because nobody knows how AI platforms will stabilize monetization yet.
-*A tangible option*:**[AI Visibility Optimization](https://fourdots.com/blog/overcoming-challenge-creating-content-engages-1922)**. Great for explaining it to the clients and managing their expectations.
-*The numbers*: Just ChatGPT handles 18% of Google’s query volume but delivers just 0.6% of Google’s referral traffic. Usage up. Clicks aren’t following, but the industry is emerging. Just needs to be sold differently.
I’ve spent fifteen years in search engine optimization. Built an agency, survived Matt Cutts <3. Created tools that other SEOs use. For the past year, I’ve been elbows deep in AI visibility – building a platform that tracks and optimizes how brands appear across ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. All that and I am still not 100% sure my answer is the right answer to this question, but hell if I don’t try to explain my logic.
The naming chaos isn’t stupidity. It isn’t marketing departments failing at basic coordination. It’s something more interesting and more revealing about where this industry actually stands.
## Why Nobody Can Agree (And Why That’s Rational)
Think back to when SEO became a real discipline.
It wasn’t when someone figured out how to stuff keywords into meta tags. It wasn’t when backlinks became currency. SEO solidified as an industry when Google’s business model became predictable.
Google figured out ads adjacent to organic results. Advertisers learned that organic clicks have measurable value. Agencies could calculate ROI. Budgets could be justified. Apps could be built. Services could be sold.
The money flows stabilized. Everything else followed.
Now look at AI platforms in 2025:
- ChatGPT runs on subscriptions. Will that change? OpenAI keeps hinting at ad-supported tiers.
- Perplexity experimented with sponsored answers before backing off.
- Google’s AI Overviews sit awkwardly above the traditional ad real estate.
- Claude stays subscription-only. For now.
Nobody (or at least we the plebs) knows how AI answers will be monetized in three years. Which means nobody knows what “optimization” even means in this context.
Are we optimizing for citations that drive subscriptions? For placement in ad-adjacent AI responses? For API calls that cost someone money? For training data influence that compounds over years?
The acronym proliferation reflects genuine uncertainty about what we’re optimizing*for*. Until the platforms figure out their business models, expecting the optimization industry to standardize terminology is like expecting architects to agree on building codes before anyone decides whether we’re constructing houses or submarines.
This isn’t confusion. It’s rational hesitation.
### The Shift Nobody Named Properly
The deeper problem: old mental models don’t map onto the new reality.
Traditional SEO tackled what can be called a**selection problem**. Google has XY relevant pages. It picks 10 for page one. It ranks them. User clicks one. Victory.
The game was position. The metric was rank. The win condition was getting picked.
AI systems work differently. They don’t select your page from a list. They interpret your content, blend it with dozens of other sources, synthesize something new, and serve that synthesis to the user. Your words might appear – paraphrased, combined with competing perspectives, stripped of context, embedded in an answer you had no hand in constructing.
This isn’t selection. Its**interpretation**.
That changes everything about what “optimization” actually means.
In the old game, you competed for position. In the new game, you compete for influence. Whose framing shapes the answer. Whose data gets cited. Whose narrative structure survives the synthesis.
Your content doesn’t win by being selected anymore. It wins by being trusted, understood, and preferred as raw material for someone else’s answer.
That’s a fundamentally different optimization problem. None of the existing acronyms quite captures it.
## The Acronym Breakdown: What Each Term Gets Right (And Wrong)
Let’s walk through what’s actually out there. Not the marketing spin. The real trade-offs.**Now let’s dig into each one.**### GEO: Generative Engine Optimization
This one has academic backing. A Georgia Tech research paper in 2024 established GEO as a legitimate discipline with measurable variables. That matters. When you can point to peer-reviewed research, you’re not just making stuff up.
GEO captures the core shift accurately. We’re optimizing for engines that*generate*new content, not just retrieve and rank existing pages. The term is specific enough to guide strategy without being so narrow it excludes important tactics.
The problem? Try explaining it to a CMO who just learned that ChatGPT is eating their organic traffic.
“We need to implement Generative Engine Optimization.”
“Is that… AI SEO? Can’t our SEO team just handle it?”
The term is technically correct. It requires a vocabulary lesson before the conversation can even start.**Best for**: Technical teams, research discussions, specialist conferences.
### LLMO: Large Language Model Optimization
This is the implementation layer. How you structure content so LLMs can chunk it, vectorize it, retrieve it, and cite it cleanly.
Think of LLMO as the technical specification beneath GEO:
- Semantic HTML
- Schema markup
- Clear entity references
- Text chunking patterns that work well with embedding models
- Architectural decisions that make your content machine-readable at a deep level
LLMO speaks directly to developers and data scientists. It’s precise. It’s actionable. And it absolutely requires explaining what a large language model is to anyone in the C-suite.**Best for**: Developer documentation, technical implementation guides, engineering teams.
### AEO: Answer Engine Optimization
AEO has history. It emerged in the early 2010s when Alexa and Siri started pulling “direct answers” from the web. Featured snippets. Voice search results. Position zero.
The term still has legs because some AI systems – particularly voice interfaces – do still operate in answer-selection mode. They pick a single source rather than synthesizing multiple sources.
But the term feels dated. It implies a system that selects*an*answer, not one that constructs a new answer from many sources. It’s tactical rather than strategic.
You’ll still use AEO techniques – FAQ schemas, question-phrased headers, concise answer blocks – but as components of a larger approach, not as the central structure.**Best for**: Voice search optimization, featured snippet targeting, FAQ schema implementation.
### AIO: Artificial Intelligence Optimization
I see this one everywhere. And I wish I didn’t.
AIO is too broad to mean anything specific. Are we talking about optimizing AI tools for marketing workflows? Using AI to create content? Optimizing content for AI consumption? Training machine learning models? All of the above?
The term collapses half a dozen distinct disciplines into one vague category. Worse, it can create confusion with Google’s “AI Overviews” product – a specific feature, not a general optimization category.
When someone asks, “Do we need AIO?” – Yes. And then print an invoice. They 100% need something from AIO, everybody does :)**Best for**: Nothing, really. Internal catch-all references at best.
### AIEO and AIVO Variants
AIEO (AI Engine Optimization) showed up in vendor pitches around early 2024. No research backing. No consistent definition across sources. It’s “AIO” and “AEO” mashed together, inheriting the confusion of both.
AIVO (AI Visibility Optimization) is different. I’ll explain why in a moment.**Best for**: AIEO – skip entirely. AIVO – keep reading.
## The Visibility Problem Nobody Discusses
Here’s what keeps me up at night.
A client’s brand appears in 80% of ChatGPT responses about their category. Accurately described. Properly positioned. Mentioned ahead of competitors.
Traffic increase:*zero*.
### The numbers tell the story clearly
ChatGPT processes about 2.5 billion prompts daily. [OpenAI confirmed this](https://www.theverge.com/news/710867/openai-chatgpt-daily-prompts-2-billion), and a 2025 [research paper](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34255/w34255.pdf) from Harvard, Duke, and OpenAI tracked 18 billion messages per week – roughly 2.57 billion per day. Google handles [over 5 trillion searches annually](https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/ai-personalization-and-the-future-of-shopping/), which works out to around 13.7 billion per day.
Usage ratio? ChatGPT sits at roughly 18% of Google’s daily volume. Not bad for a platform that’s three years old competing against one that’s had 25+ years to become a verb.**But here’s where expectations crash into reality**[Similarweb tracked referral visits in June 2025](https://www.similarweb.com/corp/2025-generative-ai-landscape/). AI platforms collectively sent about 1.13 billion referral website visits. Google Search sent 191 billion. That’s a 0.6% ratio.
Read that again. AI platforms generate less than one percent of the referral traffic that Google does.
This is why naming matters so much.***Call this work “AI SEO” and clients expect SEO-like traffic reports*****.**They’ll measure success by clicks, sessions, conversions attributed to AI sources. They’ll be disappointed.
The usage gap is closing. The traffic gap isn’t – not yet, maybe not ever. Anyone selling AI visibility services needs to set expectations accordingly, or they’re building a retention problem into their business model.**Why so few?**Users got their answer without leaving the chat interface. They never clicked through.
In traditional SEO, visibility and traffic go hand in hand. Rank higher, get more clicks. Simple.
In AI, that relationship breaks down completely. You can have massive visibility – dominant presence in AI responses – and see small traffic movements in your analytics. Conversions are a different story.
This is the measurement crisis hiding behind the terminology crisis. We don’t just disagree on what to call this work. We disagree on what success looks like.
If you sell AI optimization services to clients expecting SEO-style traffic reports, you’re setting yourself up for a retention nightmare. The metrics that matter here are different:
- Citation frequency across platforms
- Sentiment in AI-generated descriptions
- Share of voice in category-level queries
- Narrative alignment with brand positioning
- Accuracy of information being surfaced
These are brand metrics. PR metrics. Reputation metrics. Not traffic metrics.
All that led me to my current preferred term.
## Why “AI Visibility Optimization” Makes Sense
I want to be clear. I’m sharing the reasoning that led me to this personal preference – again, informed by a decade and a half of SEO grind, a lot of learning by building an AI monitoring and optimization tool, and many conversations with clients trying to figure out what they need and what they’re even buying.
Here’s why I lean toward AI Visibility Optimization – or AIVO (maybe even AVO?:), if we need something shorthand.
### It describes the outcome, not the mechanism
When a CMO asks “what does this AIVO do?”, I can answer in one sentence:
“We make sure you show up when people ask AI for recommendations about your industry.”
No explanation needed. No vocabulary lessons. No PowerPoint slides explaining what a generative engine is.
Compare that to GEO: “We’re optimizing content for generative AI engines that synthesize answers from multiple sources.”
Same service. Same work. One lands immediately. One requires a tutorial.
SEO succeeded partly because the term is terrible at describing the mechanism (nobody cares about “engine optimization”) but excellent at implying the outcome (people hear “show up in SEARCH”). AIVO works the same way. The mechanism is complex. The outcome is obvious.
### It fits existing mental models
Marketing budgets have visibility line items. Brand visibility. Search visibility. Social visibility. The concept needs no introduction.
More importantly, “visibility optimization” positions this work correctly. It’s not just another SEO task. It’s a distinct discipline that might live closer to PR and brand management than to technical SEO.
That framing helps with internal resource allocation. This isn’t necessarily your SEO team’s job. Or it’s your SEO team’s job*plus*your content team*plus*your communications team working together.
### It captures what actually matters
Go back to that nightmare scenario – high AI presence, zero traffic. If you’ve been selling “[AI SEO](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services)” or “Generative Engine Optimization,” you have an expectation problem. Clients expect SEO-like outcomes from SEO-like terminology.
If you’ve been selling “AI Visibility,” the win condition is already framed correctly:
- Are we visible?
- Are we accurately represented?
- Are we positioned well relative to competitors?
Those questions have answers that don’t depend on click-through rates.
### It bridges the technical and strategic
At Four Dots, we’ve built tools specifically for this space. FAII tracks brand mentions across ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews – the major AI surfaces where visibility matters. We monitor Chat Intelligence (how brands appear in conversational AI) and SERP Intelligence (how brands appear in AI-enhanced search), AI website visits and use that analysis to identify content gaps that need filling.
When I explain this to technical teams, I talk about citation frequency, schema, crawlability, entity recognition, content chunking, and retrieval patterns. When I explain it to executives, I talk about AI visibility.
Same work. Different vocabulary. Different frames. Both accurate.
A good term should accommodate both conversations. AIVO does.
## The Only Thing That Actually Matters
Cross my heart, I’m not campaigning for AIVO to become the industry standard. I don’t even have a landing page for AI visibility optimization on our website! Which acronym wins isn’t the point.
What matters: my clients understand what I’m selling them. My team can communicate across departments without a glossary.
GEO works. LLMO works. “AI SEO” works (and it’s still catchy). Pick whatever lands with your audience.
The terminology will keep evolving. The platforms will keep changing. The underlying shift – from competing for clicks to competing for influence – is real and accelerating.
The brands that figure this out early will compound advantages. The ones that ignore it will find themselves invisible in the exact places where their customers are increasingly making decisions.
Whatever you call it, that work matters. And it’s starting to gather momentum.
### A Practical Structure That Works
Here’s a practical model that emerged from these conversations.**External communication**: Use [AI Visibility Optimization (AIVO)](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization). It’s accessible, outcome-focused, and requires zero technical education for partners and executives.**Internal technical work**: Use Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO). They’re precise, actionable, and respected in technical communities.**Organizational responsibility**: Treat AI visibility as a shared function – co-owned by:
- SEO (technical foundation)
- Content (creation and optimization)
- PR/Comms (reputation and narrative control)
This dual-track approach gives you clarity without sacrificing precision. You meet partners where they are. You maintain the technical rigor needed for results. And you don’t have to explain what a generative engine is every time you request budget.
### The Timeline Reality
One more thing the acronym debates tend to ignore: the work itself has different time horizons depending on what you’re trying to influence.**Retrieval visibility**(appearing in AI responses that pull from indexed content) can shift in weeks to months. You publish authoritative content, it gets indexed, RAG systems retrieve it, you start appearing in answers.**Training data influence**(shaping what AI models “know” at a foundational level) takes a long time, years potentially. We’re talking about content that exists, gets cited, becomes authoritative, gets included in future training runs, and gradually shapes model knowledge. You plant seeds now. You harvest later.
Most clients want the first thing but don’t realize they need the second thing too. Retrieval visibility is necessary but not sufficient. If AI models fundamentally misunderstand your brand – if the training data shaped their “knowledge” incorrectly – no amount of RAG optimization will fully fix it.
This is why AI visibility optimization is closer to brand-building than to tactical SEO. You’re playing a long game. The terminology should reflect that.
## Where This Goes From Here
I don’t know what the industry will call this work in three years. I don’t know which platforms will survive, how they’ll mutate, which business models will stabilize, which metrics will emerge as standards.
Here’s what I do know – with necessary perspective.
Three years. That’s all it took for ChatGPT to reach 18% of Google’s daily query volume. Google needed over two decades to build what OpenAI is already nipping at. The growth trajectory is undeniable.
But remember the traffic gap we covered earlier. Usage and referral value aren’t the same thing. AI platforms punch at 18% of Google’s weight in queries – and still deliver less than 1% of its referral traffic. That ratio might shrink. It might not.**This isn’t a replacement story. It’s an emergence story.**A new traffic and conversion source is forming. One that operates on interpretation rather than selection. One that’s growing fast from a small base. One that rewards different content strategies than traditional search. One that might never generate Google-level clicks – because users get answers without leaving the chat.
The brands that figure this out early won’t abandon their SEO efforts. They’ll add a new channel while the field is open. They’ll establish positions before competitors realize this matters. They’ll build authority with AI systems now, when the cost of entry is low and the compounding advantage is high.
The ones who wait? They’ll scramble to feed perpetually hungry training crawlers. They’ll wait for the next model update hoping their content finally gets indexed. They’ll watch ROI timelines stretch into months or years because catching up is harder than keeping pace.
This isn’t about choosing between Google and AI. The old game still pays better. The new game is where the growth is happening.
Whatever you call it, that work matters. And it’s worth getting right while the field is still open.
---
## Posts: AI Visibility Optimization: The Complete Guide to Securing Brand
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-the-complete-guide-to-securing-brand-11836](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-the-complete-guide-to-securing-brand-11836)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-the-complete-guide-to-securing-brand-11836.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-the-complete-guide-to-securing-brand-11836.md)
**Published:** 2025-12-04
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** AIO, General
**Tags:** ai search visibility, ai seo optimization, AI Visibility Optimization, ai visibility optimization services, SGE optimization
**Summary:** AI surfaces now decide who gets cited - even when users never click. Search engines and AI assistants surface answers directly, leaving traditional websites invisible. Early movers are locking in category authority while competitors wait on the sidelines.
### Content
## AI Visibility – The Complete Guide to Securing Brand Presence in AI-Driven Search
```***Note**: an updated version of this guide has been [**published on this page**](/ai-visibility-optimization-guide).**Same website, no soft or hard gates, just hard data and good advice.*```
AI surfaces now decide who gets cited – even when users never click. Search engines and AI assistants surface answers directly, leaving traditional websites invisible. Early movers are locking in category authority while competitors wait on the sidelines.
Zero-click AI answers, and [Google AI Overviews](https://blog.google/products/search/generative-AI-search/) shrink traditional SEO traffic. Without a strategy, your brand vanishes from AI citations. You lose trust, visibility, and pipeline to competitors who show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot’s AI-generated results.
This guide defines [**AI visibility optimization**](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization), the signals that matter, and an operating model agencies and enterprises can deploy today. Four Dots pioneered a forensic approach to entity and semantic SEO, then built**[FAII.ai](https://faii.ai)**to operationalize AI-surface optimization at scale for AI brand visibility.
[Why AI Visibility Optimization Matters Now](#aioseo-why-ai-visibility-optimization-matters-now-33)[The AI Visibility Optimization Operating Model](#aioseo-the-ai-visibility-optimization-operating-model-46)[Entity Management: Building Authoritative Digital Identities](#aioseo-entity-management-building-authoritative-digital-identities-66)[Content Engineering for AI Retrieval](#aioseo-content-engineering-for-ai-retrieval-79)[Reputation and Third-Party Validation](#aioseo-reputation-and-third-party-validation-90)[Measurement Framework: KPIs for AI Visibility](#aioseo-measurement-framework-kpis-for-ai-visibility-101)[Agency Playbook: Packaging AI Visibility Services](#aioseo-agency-playbook-packaging-ai-visibility-services-115)[Tools and Platform Requirements](#aioseo-tools-and-platform-requirements-133)[90-Day Implementation Quick-Start](#aioseo-90-day-implementation-quick-start-151)[Industry-Specific Implementation Examples](#aioseo-industry-specific-implementation-examples-162)[Risk Management and Governance](#aioseo-risk-management-and-governance-173)[Advanced Tactics: Vector Embeddings and Prompt Engineering](#aioseo-advanced-tactics-vector-embeddings-and-prompt-engineering-184)[Integration with Traditional SEO](#aioseo-integration-with-traditional-seo-196)[Future-Proofing Your AI Visibility Strategy](#aioseo-future-proofing-your-ai-visibility-strategy-207)[Frequently Asked Questions](#aioseo-frequently-asked-questions-218)[Taking Action: Your Next Steps](#aioseo-taking-action-your-next-steps-235)
## What AI Visibility Optimization Really Means**AI visibility optimization**secures your brand’s presence in AI-generated answers, citations, and recommendations. Traditional SEO chases clicks from organic listings. AI visibility optimization targets mentions and citations in surfaces where users never leave the search results page.
The shift is fundamental. [Anthropic’s](https://www.anthropic.com) Claude, [OpenAI’s](https://openai.com) ChatGPT, and Google’s AI Overviews answer questions directly. They cite sources, recommend products, and guide decisions without sending traffic to your site.
> “AI-powered search experiences are fundamentally changing how users discover and evaluate brands, with citations becoming the new currency of digital visibility.” — Analysis from Search Engine Journal
### Primary AI Surfaces That Matter Today
Four categories of AI surfaces determine brand visibility in 2025:
-**AI Overviews**– Google’s generative answers at the top of search results
-**Chat assistants**– ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot recommendations
-**Knowledge panels**– Entity-driven information boxes with AI-enhanced content
-**Marketplace AIs**– Amazon’s Rufus, shopping assistants, and product recommendation engines
Each surface pulls from different signal sets. Winning requires understanding which levers influence each AI system’s training data, retrieval mechanisms, and citation logic.
### How AI Visibility Differs from Traditional SEO
| Dimension | Traditional SEO | AI Visibility Optimization |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Primary Goal | Rank in top 10 listings | Earn citations and mentions |
| Success Metric | Organic traffic and clicks | Brand mentions and authority signals |
| Core Signals | Backlinks, content relevance | Entity recognition, E-E-A-T, structured data |
| User Journey | Click through to website | Answer delivered in-platform |
The distinction matters for resource allocation. SEO teams chase rankings. AI visibility teams build authoritative entity profiles, secure third-party mentions, and structure content for retrieval by large language models.
### The Signal Landscape: What Influences AI Citations
Six signal categories drive AI visibility. Master these to control your brand’s presence in AI-generated content:
1.**Entity signals**– Knowledge graph presence, Wikidata entries, industry database listings
2.**E-E-A-T markers**– Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness signals
3.**Citations and mentions**– Third-party references, press coverage, expert contributions
4.**Structured data**– Schema.org markup, FAQ schemas, organization and person entities
5.**Document quality**– Passage-level relevance, source attribution, content freshness
6.**Recency and velocity**– Update frequency, trending topics, real-time data integration
These signals feed AI training datasets and retrieval-augmented generation systems. Control the inputs to influence the outputs.
## Why AI Visibility Optimization Matters Now
This field is nascent. Most brands ignore AI citations while focusing on traditional rankings. That creates an outsized first-mover advantage.**Zero-click searches**now account for over 60% of Google queries. Users get answers without clicking. Your website traffic drops while your competitors secure AI citations and build category authority.
Early adopters lock in durable advantages. AI models train on historical data. Citations earned today influence model outputs for months or years. Waiting means ceding ground to competitors who act first.
> “The brands that establish authoritative entity profiles and secure consistent citations across AI surfaces will dominate their categories for the next decade.” — Four Dots Founder Radomir Basta
### The Cost of Inaction
Ignoring AI visibility creates three cascading risks:
- Traffic erosion as AI answers replace click-through behavior
- Brand invisibility when prospects research solutions in ChatGPT or Perplexity
- Lost pipeline as competitors secure citations and recommendations
Your SEO investment protects rankings. AI visibility optimization protects brand presence when rankings stop mattering.
## The AI Visibility Optimization Operating Model
Repeatable execution requires a structured operating model. Four Dots’ AI visibility optimization service maps this six-phase cycle to deliverables and SLAs.
### Phase 1: Discover
Audit current AI surface visibility. Identify where your brand appears in AI Overviews, chat assistant responses, and knowledge panels. Map entity coverage across knowledge graphs and industry databases.
Key activities include citation tracking across 50+ query variations, entity gap analysis, and competitive benchmarking. The output is a prioritized list of high-impact opportunities.
### Phase 2: Prioritize
Score opportunities by impact and effort. Focus on quick wins that establish baseline visibility before tackling complex entity consolidation or large-scale content engineering.
Prioritization criteria span business value, technical feasibility, and timeline to first citation. This phase prevents teams from chasing low-value signals while missing category-defining opportunities.
### Phase 3: Optimize
Execute signal improvements across entity management, content engineering, and reputation building. This phase delivers the technical and editorial work that influences AI citations.
Entity management tasks include knowledge graph updates, schema deployment, and Wikidata entry creation. Content engineering covers passage-level optimization, FAQ additions, and source attribution improvements. Reputation work secures brand mentions through expert contributions and third-party validation.
### Phase 4: Ship
Deploy changes through controlled releases with compliance gates. Review brand safety, legal risk, and hallucination potential before publishing entity updates or content modifications.
Shipping includes technical validation, content review, and staged rollouts. The goal is controlled deployment that minimizes risk while maximizing signal quality.
### Phase 5: Monitor
Track citation coverage, mention volume, and sentiment across AI surfaces. Set threshold alerts for visibility drops or hallucination events that require immediate response.
Monitoring spans AI Overviews presence, chat assistant citation frequency, and knowledge panel accuracy. Weekly dashboards surface trends. Real-time alerts catch regressions.
### Phase 6: Iterate
Refine signals based on performance data and model updates. AI systems change behavior monthly. Iteration ensures your signals stay relevant as models evolve.
This phase closes the loop. Insights from monitoring inform the next discovery cycle. The operating model becomes a continuous improvement engine.
## Entity Management: Building Authoritative Digital Identities
Entities are the foundation of AI visibility. An**entity**is a distinct concept – a person, organization, product, or topic – that AI models recognize and reference.
Your brand must exist as a well-defined entity across knowledge graphs, industry databases, and structured data sources. Weak entity signals mean AI models struggle to cite you accurately or ignore you entirely.
### Knowledge Graph Optimization
Knowledge graphs connect entities through relationships. [Google’s Knowledge Graph](https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/organizing-information) powers AI Overviews and knowledge panels. Wikidata feeds multiple AI systems.
Optimization starts with claiming and verifying entity entries. Add missing attributes, correct inaccuracies, and establish relationships to related entities. Link your organization entity to founder entities, product entities, and category entities.
### Schema Markup Deployment
Schema.org markup makes entity attributes machine-readable. Deploy Organization, Person, Product, and Service schemas across your site. Add FAQ and QAPage schemas to content likely to answer common questions.
Structured data helps AI models extract accurate information. It reduces hallucination risk by providing explicit, validated attributes instead of forcing models to infer details from unstructured text.
### Industry Database Presence
AI training datasets include industry-specific sources. SaaS companies need G2 and Capterra profiles. Healthcare brands need provider directories. B2B firms need industry association listings.
Audit which databases matter for your category. Claim profiles, complete attributes, and maintain consistency across sources. Inconsistent NAP data confuses entity resolution algorithms.
## Content Engineering for AI Retrieval
AI models retrieve passages, not pages. Traditional SEO targets page-level relevance. AI visibility optimization requires passage-level precision.
### Passage-Level Optimization
Structure content in self-contained passages that answer specific questions. Each passage should include context, answer, and attribution. Aim for 150-300 words per passage.
Use clear topic sentences. Front-load key information. Add inline citations to authoritative sources. These patterns match how AI models extract and cite content.
### FAQ Schema and Q&A Content
FAQ content feeds AI answer engines directly. Deploy FAQ schema on pages with question-based content. Structure questions naturally – avoid keyword stuffing.
Answer questions completely in 2-3 paragraphs. Include relevant entities, data points, and source attribution. AI models favor well-structured, factual answers over promotional content.
### Source Attribution and Credibility Signals
AI models prefer content with clear attribution. Cite data sources, link to research, and reference industry publications. Attribution builds trust and reduces hallucination risk.
Add author bios with credentials. Link to author profiles on LinkedIn and industry sites. Establish topical authority by demonstrating expertise and experience.
## Reputation and Third-Party Validation
AI models weigh third-party mentions heavily. Your own content matters less than what others say about you.
### Brand Mention Strategy
Earn mentions in publications AI models trust. Contribute expert commentary to industry blogs. Publish research that journalists cite. Speak at conferences that publish proceedings.
Track mention volume, sentiment, and source authority. A single mention in a high-authority publication outweighs dozens of low-quality directory listings.
### Expert Contributions and Thought Leadership
Position executives as category experts. Publish bylined articles in trade publications. Participate in industry roundtables. Contribute to open-source projects or standards bodies.
These activities generate attributable expertise signals. AI models cite recognized experts when answering domain-specific questions.
### PR and Digital PR Tactics
Traditional PR builds AI visibility. Press releases, media coverage, and industry awards create structured mentions AI models ingest during training.
Focus on quality over quantity. One feature in TechCrunch or [The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com) carries more weight than 50 press release distribution sites.
## Measurement Framework: KPIs for AI Visibility
Traditional SEO metrics miss AI visibility gains. Rankings and traffic measure click-through behavior. AI citations require different KPIs.
### Citation Coverage and Share of Voice
Track how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers across a defined query set. Measure both absolute coverage and relative share versus competitors.
| Metric | Definition | Target |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Citation Rate | % of queries where brand is cited | 40%+ in category queries |
| Share of Voice | Your citations / total citations | Top 3 in competitive set |
| Citation Position | Average mention order in responses | First or second mention |
| Sentiment Score | Positive vs. neutral vs. negative | 90%+ positive or neutral |
### AI Surface-Specific Visibility
Measure presence across each AI surface independently. AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity pull from different sources and weight signals differently.
Track weekly snapshots for 50+ category queries across each surface. Monitor trends over time. Set alerts for sudden drops that signal algorithm changes or competitive gains.
### Assisted Metrics and Pipeline Attribution
AI citations drive branded search and direct traffic. Users see your brand in an AI answer, then search for you directly or visit your site.
Measure branded search lift correlated with citation gains. Track direct traffic spikes following AI surface visibility improvements. Use multi-touch attribution to connect AI exposure to pipeline.
### Dashboard Design and Reporting Cadence
Weekly dashboards track citation coverage, share of voice, and sentiment. Monthly reports add trend analysis, competitive benchmarking, and strategic recommendations.
Set threshold alerts for citation rate drops, negative sentiment spikes, or hallucination events. Real-time monitoring catches issues before they compound.
## Agency Playbook: Packaging AI Visibility Services
Agencies can deliver AI visibility optimization as a standalone service or bundle it with white label SEO services. The key is clear packaging, predictable delivery, and measurable outcomes.
### Service Packaging Models
Three packaging approaches work well:
-**Foundation package**– Entity audit, schema deployment, and baseline citation tracking
-**Growth package**– Content engineering, mention strategy, and monthly optimization
-**Enterprise package**– Full operating model with dedicated resources and custom reporting
Price foundation packages at $3,000-$5,000 monthly. Growth packages range from $8,000-$15,000. Enterprise engagements start at $20,000 and scale with client size.
### Client Onboarding and Data Requirements
Onboarding requires access to Google Search Console, analytics platforms, and content management systems. Gather existing entity documentation, brand guidelines, and competitive intelligence.
Conduct a discovery workshop to define priority AI surfaces, target query sets, and success metrics. Align on risk tolerance for entity updates and content modifications.
### Execution Workflows at Scale
Repeatable workflows enable scaling. Standardize entity audit checklists, schema templates, and content optimization playbooks. Use project management tools to track deliverables across multiple clients.
Four Dots built**faii.AI**to centralize these workflows. The platform handles entity audits, citation tracking, schema validation, and reporting in one interface.
### Reporting Cadence and Proof of Value
Deliver weekly citation snapshots and monthly strategic reports. Include competitive benchmarking, trend analysis, and recommended next actions.
Proof of value artifacts include before-and-after citation coverage, share of voice gains, and branded search lift. Tie AI visibility improvements to pipeline metrics when possible.
## Tools and Platform Requirements
Effective AI visibility optimization requires specialized tools. No single platform covers every need. Build a stack or use an integrated solution like faii.AI.
### Essential Tool Categories
-**Citation tracking**– Monitor brand mentions across AI surfaces and chat assistants
-**Entity extraction**– Identify entities in content and validate knowledge graph presence
-**Schema validation**– Test structured data implementation and catch errors
-**Mention monitoring**– Track third-party references and sentiment across the web
-**Competitive intelligence**– Benchmark your visibility against category leaders
### Why Four Dots Built faii.AI
Four Dots needed centralized control over signals, monitoring, and iteration. Duct-taping multiple tools created gaps and slowed execution. The team built faii.AI to operationalize the full AI visibility optimization cycle.
The platform handles entity audits, schema deployment, citation tracking, and reporting. It integrates with existing SEO tools while adding AI-specific capabilities. Agencies use it to deliver white-label services at scale.**Watch this video about AI Visibility Optimization:**Video: How to Audit & Improve Your [AI Search Visibility](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization) | Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit Tutorial
### Build vs. Buy Considerations
Building in-house makes sense for enterprises with engineering resources and unique requirements. Most agencies and mid-market companies should buy or partner.
Evaluate total cost of ownership. Building requires ongoing engineering, data infrastructure, and maintenance. Platforms like faii.AI bundle those costs into predictable monthly fees.
## 90-Day Implementation Quick-Start
Launch AI visibility optimization in 90 days with this phased approach. Each sprint delivers measurable progress while building toward comprehensive coverage.
### Weeks 1-4: Foundation
Audit current AI visibility. Run citation tracking across 50 category queries. Identify entity gaps in knowledge graphs and industry databases. Deploy core schema markup.
Deliverables include a baseline visibility report, prioritized opportunity list, and schema implementation plan. This phase establishes the starting point and defines success metrics.
### Weeks 5-8: Quick Wins
Execute high-impact, low-effort optimizations. Add FAQ schema to existing content. Claim and optimize Wikidata entries. Secure 3-5 brand mentions through expert contributions.
Quick wins demonstrate value and build momentum. They also test processes before tackling complex entity consolidation or large-scale content engineering.
### Weeks 9-12: Scale and Iterate
Expand optimization across remaining priority pages. Launch mention strategy with PR and content partnerships. Deploy monitoring dashboards and set threshold alerts.
By week 12, you should see measurable citation gains, improved entity coverage, and established monitoring. The foundation is set for ongoing iteration.
## Industry-Specific Implementation Examples
AI visibility optimization tactics vary by industry. Three examples show how different sectors apply the framework.
### Enterprise Ecommerce: Category Page Optimization
An enterprise retailer optimized product category pages to earn AI Overview citations. They added detailed FAQ content, deployed Product schema, and secured mentions in shopping guides.
Results included 35% citation coverage in category queries within 60 days. Branded search increased 22% as users discovered the brand through AI recommendations.
### SaaS Documentation: Assistant Citations
A B2B SaaS company restructured documentation to improve ChatGPT and Claude citations. They broke monolithic guides into passage-level articles, added clear attribution, and deployed QAPage schema.
The changes increased assistant citations by 3x. Support ticket volume dropped 15% as users found answers in AI assistants instead of contacting support.
### Local Services: Knowledge Panel Reinforcement
A multi-location service business consolidated entity signals to strengthen knowledge panels. They unified NAP data, added location-specific schema, and secured mentions in local publications.
Knowledge panel impressions increased 40%. Local pack rankings improved as entity authority signals reinforced traditional local SEO factors.
## Risk Management and Governance
AI visibility optimization introduces new risks. Model updates change citation behavior. Hallucinations create brand safety issues. Governance processes mitigate these risks.
### Model Update Monitoring
AI models update frequently. [OpenAI](https://openai.com) ships new versions monthly. Google tweaks AI Overviews weekly. Each update can shift citation behavior.
Monitor citation coverage before and after known model updates. Run regression tests on priority queries. Document changes and adjust signals accordingly.
### Hallucination Detection and Response
AI models hallucinate – they generate plausible but incorrect information. Hallucinations about your brand create legal and reputation risks.
Set up alerts for negative sentiment spikes and factual inaccuracies. Maintain a response playbook for hallucination events. Work with platform providers to correct training data when possible.
### Brand Safety and Legal Review
Entity updates and content modifications require brand and legal review. Changes to knowledge graph entries or schema markup can have unintended consequences.
Establish approval workflows for entity attribute changes, especially those affecting company descriptions, leadership information, or product claims. Review content modifications for regulatory compliance before publishing.
## Advanced Tactics: Vector Embeddings and Prompt Engineering
Sophisticated practitioners go beyond basic entity and content optimization. Advanced tactics include vector embedding optimization and prompt engineering for retrieval.
### Semantic Similarity Optimization
AI retrieval systems use vector embeddings to measure semantic similarity. Content that embeds closer to user queries gets retrieved more often.
Optimize for semantic similarity by using natural language variations of key concepts. Include synonyms, related terms, and contextual phrases that your target audience actually uses when querying AI assistants. Testing how your content embeds relative to competitive content requires checking responses across multiple AI models simultaneously – Claude interprets entity relationships differently than ChatGPT, and Perplexity weighs source authority on its own scale. Platforms like [Suprmind’s multi-AI orchestration system](https://suprmind.ai) let you query all major models in parallel, revealing which content variations resonate with each AI’s embedding logic and where competitors are winning the semantic similarity race in specific models.
### Retrieval-Augmented Generation Visibility
Retrieval-augmented generation systems retrieve relevant documents before generating answers. Optimize for retrieval by improving document structure, metadata, and passage-level relevance.
Use clear section headings. Add descriptive metadata. Structure content in logical hierarchies. These patterns improve retrieval ranking and citation likelihood.
### Prompt Optimization for Search
Users phrase queries differently when using AI assistants versus traditional search. Optimize content for conversational queries and multi-turn dialogues.
Include question-and-answer pairs that mirror natural language. Address follow-up questions within the same passage. This approach improves visibility in conversational AI interactions.
## Integration with Traditional SEO
AI visibility optimization complements traditional SEO. It doesn’t replace it. The two disciplines share signals and reinforce each other.
### Shared Signal Sets
Entity signals, E-E-A-T markers, and structured data benefit both traditional rankings and AI citations. Investments in these areas compound returns across both channels.
A robust forensic technical SEO audit uncovers opportunities that improve traditional rankings and AI visibility simultaneously.
### Resource Allocation Strategy
Allocate resources based on traffic sources and business goals. Brands with high zero-click rates should weight AI visibility optimization heavily. Brands still driving traffic from traditional search maintain balanced investment.
Track the ratio of AI citations to organic clicks. Shift resources toward AI optimization as zero-click behavior increases in your category.
### Unified Reporting and Attribution
Integrate AI visibility metrics into SEO dashboards. Report citation coverage alongside rankings. Track assisted conversions from AI exposure alongside direct organic conversions.
Unified reporting helps stakeholders understand the full value of search presence, not just click-through traffic.
## Future-Proofing Your AI Visibility Strategy
AI surfaces evolve rapidly. Strategies that work today may need adjustment in six months. Future-proof your approach with these principles.
### Focus on Durable Signals
Entity authority, third-party validation, and structured data are durable. They influence multiple AI systems and survive model updates better than surface-specific tactics.
Invest in foundational signals that compound over time. Avoid chasing short-term hacks tied to specific model behaviors.
### Maintain Agility and Iteration Cadence
Set up monthly review cycles. Monitor model updates. Test new AI surfaces as they launch. Agility beats perfection in a rapidly evolving landscape.
The operating model’s iteration phase ensures continuous adaptation. Build organizational muscle for rapid response to market changes.
### Build Platform and Process Infrastructure
Invest in platforms and processes that scale. Manual tracking and one-off optimizations don’t work at enterprise scale or across multiple clients.
Platforms like faii.AI centralize workflows and enable scaling. Documented processes ensure consistent execution as teams grow.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### How is this different from traditional SEO?
Traditional SEO targets rankings and clicks. AI visibility optimization targets citations and mentions in AI-generated answers. The goal is brand presence in zero-click surfaces where users never visit your site.
### Which AI surfaces should we prioritize first?
Start with Google AI Overviews if you depend on Google organic traffic. Add ChatGPT and Perplexity if your audience uses chat assistants for research. Prioritize based on where your prospects spend time.
### How do we measure ROI when users don’t click?
Track citation coverage, share of voice, and branded search lift. Measure pipeline attribution using multi-touch models that credit AI exposure. Monitor direct traffic increases correlated with citation gains.
### What levers actually influence AI citations?
Entity signals, E-E-A-T markers, third-party mentions, structured data, and passage-level content quality drive citations. Focus on authoritative entity profiles and high-quality content with clear attribution.
### Can agencies deliver this as a white-label service?
Yes. Package AI visibility optimization as a standalone service or bundle with existing SEO offerings. Use platforms like faii.AI to scale delivery across multiple clients with consistent quality.
### How long until we see results?
Quick wins like FAQ schema and entity claim optimization can show results in 30-45 days. Comprehensive coverage and competitive share of voice typically require 90-180 days of sustained effort.
### What happens when AI models update?
Citation behavior can shift after model updates. Monitor coverage before and after updates. Run regression tests on priority queries. Adjust signals based on observed changes. Durable entity and authority signals survive updates better than surface-specific tactics.
### How do we prevent AI hallucinations about our brand?
Maintain accurate entity data across knowledge graphs and databases. Use structured data to provide explicit attributes. Monitor for hallucinations and work with platform providers to correct training data when issues arise.
## Taking Action: Your Next Steps
AI visibility optimization protects and grows brand presence in AI-driven results. Entities, E-E-A-T markers, and authoritative mentions are core levers. A repeatable operating model scales execution and governance. Early adoption locks in durable category authority.
You now have a framework, KPIs, and a 90-day plan to act. Start with a baseline audit. Identify entity gaps and quick-win opportunities. Deploy monitoring to track progress.
Four Dots operationalizes this framework through our AI visibility optimization service and the faii.AI platform. We bring forensic methodology, enterprise-grade execution, and white-label delivery for agencies.
Learn how we can identify your citation gaps and build an AI visibility strategy tailored to your market. Visit our case studies to see results from enterprise and SaaS clients. Contact us to schedule an assessment this quarter.
---
## Posts: AI Visibility Optimization Meets Search Engine Optimization
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-meets-seo-11801](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-meets-seo-11801)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-meets-seo-11801.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-meets-seo-11801.md)
**Published:** 2025-12-04
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** AIO
**Tags:** AI SEO agency, AI SEO company, AI-powered SEO services, best AI SEO companies, conversational search
**Summary:** Enterprise leaders face a split reality. Traditional keyword search still drives qualified traffic, while conversational AI systems now surface answers before users reach your site. Running only one channel leaves demand on the table.
### Content
Enterprise leaders face a split reality. Traditional keyword search still drives qualified traffic, while conversational AI systems now surface answers before users reach your site. Running only one channel leaves demand on the table.
Search behavior has fractured. Users type intent-rich queries into Google while asking open-ended questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and SGE. Treating**AI SEO**as a replacement for traditional methods risks cannibalizing proven channels and missing new discovery opportunities.
The solution: operate both rails in parallel. Build distinct**signal strategies**, KPIs, and workflows for AI discovery and traditional search, coordinated by one technical foundation and unified content architecture.
As a New York [AI SEO](https://fourdots.com/free-pro-ai-seo-tools) agency, we deliver AI-powered SEO services that augment enterprise AI SEO roadmaps and support an AI-driven SEO strategy.
Four Dots applies a forensic audit methodology and operates AI-assisted workflows built around proprietary tooling. Our [white-label SEO approach](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) treats traditional and AI search as complementary operating systems, not competing priorities.
## The Shift: Addition, Not Replacement
User behavior now splits across two distinct patterns. Some visitors type specific queries and scan blue links. Others ask conversational questions and trust generated answers.
This split creates two discovery platforms:
-**Classic SERPs**– keyword-driven results with rankings, snippets, and click-through rates
-**AI answer engines**– conversational interfaces including SGE, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and voice assistants
-**Hybrid experiences**– search results pages with embedded AI-generated overviews
The implication: expand your surface area. Reallocating 100% of budget from traditional SEO to AI experiments abandons proven revenue while chasing unproven channels.
### Why Both Channels Matter Now
User journeys rarely follow single paths. A prospect might discover your category through an AI-generated comparison, then search your brand name directly to evaluate credibility. Another might land on your site through organic search, then ask ChatGPT to explain your differentiators.
Mixed-intent queries compound the challenge. Questions like “best enterprise CRM” trigger both traditional results and AI overviews. Occupying only one format means competitors capture the other half of that demand.
Category creation and mid-funnel education increasingly happen through AI answers. When prospects ask “how does X work” or “what should I look for in Y,” conversational systems provide the first explanation. Missing from those answers means missing from early consideration sets.
## How They Differ: Signals, Mechanisms, Measurement
Traditional SEO and AI discovery operate on fundamentally different systems. Understanding these differences prevents strategy conflicts and measurement confusion.
### Signal Differences**Traditional SEO signals**include:
- Backlink authority and anchor text diversity
- Keyword targeting and semantic relevance
- Site structure and internal linking architecture
- User engagement metrics (CTR, dwell time, pogo-sticking)
- Domain authority and trust signals**AI discovery signals**prioritize:
- Entity recognition and knowledge graph connections
- E-E-A-T vectors (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness)
- Structured data markup and schema implementation
- Content comprehensiveness and source attribution
- Conversational query matching and natural language patterns
### Mechanism Differences
Traditional search follows an**index-and-rank model**. Crawlers discover pages, indexers catalog content, and ranking algorithms order results based on relevance and authority signals.
AI systems use a**retrieve-and-generate model**. Vector search identifies relevant sources, large language models synthesize information, and generation algorithms produce contextual answers. The process bypasses traditional ranking entirely.
### Measurement Differences
Traditional SEO tracks familiar metrics:
- Keyword rankings and position changes
- Click-through rates from search results
- Direct conversions attributed to organic traffic
- Page-level performance and engagement
AI discovery requires different measurement frameworks:
- Answer visibility and source citation frequency
- Assisted conversions and multi-touch attribution
- Brand lift from AI exposure
- Entity recognition and knowledge panel presence
Conflating these metrics creates false conclusions. A page ranking #1 for a keyword might generate zero AI citations. Conversely, content frequently cited in AI answers might rank outside the top 10.
## Where Traditional SEO and AI Discovery Overlap
Despite operating on different mechanisms, both channels share critical technical foundations. Neglecting these shared elements undermines performance across both rails.
### Technical Health Requirements**Crawl accessibility**affects both traditional indexing and AI content retrieval. Broken robots.txt rules, orphaned pages, and redirect chains prevent discovery regardless of channel.**Site speed and Core Web Vitals**impact user experience across all touchpoints. Slow-loading pages hurt traditional rankings while degrading the quality signals AI systems evaluate.**Mobile responsiveness**remains non-negotiable. Both search crawlers and AI systems prioritize mobile-optimized content, reflecting actual user behavior patterns.
### Structured Data and Entity Management
Schema markup bridges both worlds. Traditional search uses structured data for rich snippets and enhanced SERP features. AI systems rely on schema to understand entities, relationships, and factual claims.
Key schema types for dual-rail optimization:
1.**Organization schema**– establishes entity identity and authority signals
2.**Article schema**– provides publication metadata and authorship attribution
3.**FAQ schema**– surfaces directly in both traditional snippets and AI answers
4.**HowTo schema**– structures procedural content for step-by-step retrieval
5.**Product schema**– enables detailed comparisons across both channels
Entity linking strengthens knowledge graph connections. Consistent NAP (name, address, phone) citations, Wikipedia references, and Wikidata alignment help both traditional and AI systems understand your business context.
### Content Quality Foundations
High-quality, experience-led content performs across both channels. Traditional SEO rewards comprehensive coverage and user satisfaction. AI systems prioritize authoritative sources with clear attribution and factual accuracy.
E-E-A-T principles apply universally. Demonstrating experience through case studies, showcasing expertise via author credentials, building authoritativeness through citations, and maintaining trustworthiness with transparency all strengthen dual-rail performance.
Authoritative backlinks remain valuable. Links signal credibility to traditional algorithms while providing source validation for AI retrieval systems. Quality link profiles benefit both discovery mechanisms.
## How to Run Both Rails in Parallel
Operating dual channels requires separate roadmaps with coordinated execution. Treating them as one program creates resource conflicts and measurement confusion.
### Separate Roadmaps, Shared Backlog
Maintain distinct strategic plans for each rail:
-**Traditional SEO roadmap**– keyword expansion, link building campaigns, technical debt reduction
-**AI discovery roadmap**– entity optimization, conversational content creation, schema expansion
-**Shared initiatives**Use a unified backlog to coordinate dependencies. Technical improvements often benefit both channels, while content initiatives may target specific discovery mechanisms.
###**Distinct KPIs and Dashboards****Track performance separately to avoid attribution errors:****Traditional SEO dashboard**monitors:
-**Keyword rankings and visibility scores**-**Organic traffic and conversion rates**-**Click-through rates from SERPs**-**Page-level engagement metrics****AI discovery dashboard**tracks:
-**Citation frequency in AI-generated answers**-**Entity recognition and knowledge panel presence**-**Assisted conversion attribution**-**Brand mention sentiment in AI responses****Cross-reference dashboards to identify crossover effects. Traffic from branded searches often follows AI exposure, while traditional rankings can boost entity authority signals.**###**RACI Framework for Coordination****Clear ownership prevents gaps and duplicated effort:**1.****SEO team**– responsible for technical foundations, accountable for traditional channel performance**2.****Content team**– responsible for conversational assets, accountable for AI citation rates**3.****Data team**– responsible for measurement infrastructure, consulted on attribution models**4.****Legal team**– consulted on AI governance, informed of new content initiatives**5.****Executive sponsors**– informed of performance, accountable for resource allocation**###**Tool Stack Mapping****Different channels require specialized tools:****Traditional SEO tools**:
-**Crawlers (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb) for technical audits**-**Rank trackers (SEMrush, Ahrefs) for position monitoring**-**Log file analyzers for crawl budget optimization**-**Link analysis platforms for backlink management****AI discovery tools**:
- Entity extraction platforms for knowledge graph mapping
- Schema validators for structured data QA
- Prompt testing frameworks for answer quality assurance
- Citation tracking systems for AI source monitoring
We also apply machine learning SEO models for log anomaly detection and AI for technical SEO recommendations.
Our [AI visibility optimization](https://faii.ai) approach integrates both tool sets with unified reporting through platforms like Reportz.io, providing executive-level visibility across channels.
##**Practical Starting Points: 30-60-90 Day Plan**Launch parallel operations through phased implementation. This rollout minimizes disruption while building measurement infrastructure.
### Days 1-30: Foundation and Opportunity Sizing**Technical audit priorities**:
1. Run comprehensive crawl analysis identifying indexation issues
2. Audit existing schema markup for completeness and accuracy
3. Review entity associations and knowledge graph connections
4. Analyze log files for crawl budget allocation patterns
5. Assess Core Web Vitals and mobile experience quality**Content inventory**:
- Map existing content to traditional keyword targets and conversational queries
- Identify gaps where competitors appear in AI answers but you don’t
- Tag content by E-E-A-T signals (author credentials, citations, experience markers)
- Prioritize high-value pages for dual-channel optimization**Opportunity sizing**:
- Estimate addressable demand across both channels
- Project resource requirements for parallel operations
- Set baseline metrics for both traditional and AI discovery
- Define success criteria and experiment parameters
### Days 31-60: Pilot Content and Schema Expansion**Launch pilot content clusters**:**Watch this video about AI SEO company:**Video: A Complete Guide to AI SEO in 2025 (AEO, GEO, LLMO)
- Create 3-5 conversational content pieces targeting AI discovery
- Develop corresponding traditional SEO assets for keyword coverage
- Implement comprehensive schema markup across both content types
- Build internal linking structure connecting related topics**Schema implementation priorities**:
1. Add FAQ schema to high-traffic pages answering common questions
2. Implement HowTo schema for procedural content and guides
3. Enhance author schema with credentials and social profiles
4. Deploy breadcrumb schema for improved site structure signals
5. Add review schema where applicable for trust signals**Measurement infrastructure**:
- Set up separate tracking for traditional and AI-attributed traffic
- Configure assisted conversion reporting in analytics
- Establish baseline citation monitoring for AI answers
- Create unified dashboards showing cross-channel performance
### Days 61-90: Expand and Attribute**Scale successful experiments**:
- Expand content clusters showing positive signals in either channel
- Replicate schema patterns from high-performing pages
- Increase entity linking and knowledge graph connections
- Build authoritative backlinks to strengthen both rails**Attribution refinement**:
1. Analyze multi-touch conversion paths including AI exposure
2. Identify assisted conversion patterns from AI citations
3. Measure brand search lift following AI answer appearances
4. Calculate incremental value from dual-channel presence
5. Adjust resource allocation based on attribution insights**Governance implementation**:
- Document prompt testing protocols for AI content
- Establish fact-checking workflows for generated content
- Create brand voice guidelines for conversational assets
- Define approval chains for AI-optimized materials
## Measurement and Attribution Frameworks
Accurate measurement prevents false conclusions and resource misallocation. Separate KPIs by channel while tracking crossover effects.
### KPI Sets by Discovery Rail**Traditional SEO metrics**:
- Keyword rankings for target terms (track weekly)
- Organic traffic volume and trend (monitor daily)
- Click-through rates from search results (benchmark against industry averages)
- Direct conversions from organic sessions (attribute using last-click model)
- Page-level engagement (time on page, scroll depth, bounce rate)**AI discovery metrics**:
- Citation frequency in AI-generated answers (sample daily across platforms)
- Entity recognition in knowledge panels (track presence and accuracy)
- Assisted conversions with AI touchpoints (use multi-touch attribution)
- Brand search volume changes (correlate with AI exposure timing)
- Answer quality scores (measure relevance and accuracy of citations)
### Experiment Design with Holdouts
Test channel impact through controlled experiments:
1.**Select test pages**– choose comparable content sets for optimization
2.**Define control groups**– maintain unoptimized pages as baselines
3.**Implement changes**– apply AI or traditional optimizations to test groups
4.**Monitor performance**– track both immediate and lagged effects
5.**Measure incrementality**– calculate lift versus control groups
Run experiments for minimum 60-90 days. AI discovery effects often lag traditional SEO changes due to different crawl and retrieval patterns.
### Reporting Architecture
Executive reporting requires unified views across channels:**Weekly operational reports**show:
- Traffic trends by channel with week-over-week changes
- Ranking movements for priority keywords
- New AI citations and entity recognitions
- Conversion performance by traffic source**Monthly strategic reviews**include:
- Progress against roadmap milestones for both rails
- Attribution analysis showing crossover effects
- Competitive intelligence on dual-channel presence
- Resource allocation recommendations based on performance
Platforms like Reportz.io enable automated dashboard creation, consolidating traditional and AI metrics into executive-friendly views.
## Risk Management and Governance
AI-specific risks require dedicated controls. Traditional SEO governance doesn’t address AI system behaviors.
### Content Quality and Hallucination Prevention**Prompt governance protocols**:
- Document approved prompt templates for content generation
- Require human review before publishing AI-assisted content
- Test prompts against known factual errors and biases
- Maintain version control for prompt libraries**Fact-checking workflows**:
1. Verify statistical claims against primary sources
2. Cross-reference product information with official documentation
3. Validate technical explanations with subject matter experts
4. Check competitor mentions for accuracy and fairness
5. Document source attribution for all factual claims
### Brand Voice Consistency
AI-generated content risks diluting established brand voice:
- Create detailed style guides with approved terminology and phrasing
- Provide example content demonstrating desired tone and structure
- Train review teams to identify voice inconsistencies
- Test AI outputs against brand voice rubrics before publication
- Maintain human oversight for customer-facing content
### Legal and Compliance Considerations**Data provenance**:
- Track sources used in AI content generation
- Ensure compliance with licensing terms for training data
- Document permissions for third-party content usage
- Maintain audit trails for generated content**Disclosure requirements**:
- Determine when AI assistance requires disclosure
- Establish labeling standards for AI-generated content
- Review regulatory guidance in your industry
- Consult legal counsel on evolving AI content rules
## Real-World Implementation: Enterprise SaaS Case
An [European B2B SaaS company](/european-seo-company) running only traditional SEO saw flat growth despite strong rankings. Competitors appeared in AI-generated product comparisons while this company remained absent.
After implementing parallel operations:
-**Traditional SEO performance**maintained existing rankings and organic traffic
-**AI discovery gains**achieved citations in 40% of relevant AI-generated comparisons within 90 days
-**Assisted conversions**increased 28% as prospects discovered the brand through AI answers then converted via organic search
-**Brand search volume**grew 35% correlated with AI citation frequency
The dual-rail approach captured new demand without sacrificing proven channels. Total qualified leads increased 43% with only a 15% increase in SEO investment.
These workflows form an AI-driven SEO strategy focused on AI search optimization KPIs.
Explore similar outcomes in our [client case studies](/case-studies) or review how our [white label SEO for agencies](/white-label-SEO-services) enables partners to deliver parallel-rail strategies.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### Should we shift budget from traditional SEO to AI optimization?
No. Treat AI discovery as additive, not replacement. Traditional search still drives the majority of organic traffic for most businesses. Reallocating budget risks losing proven revenue while chasing unproven channels. Instead, expand total investment to cover both rails or start with pilot programs funded separately.
### How long until we see results from AI-focused efforts?
AI discovery typically shows initial signals within 30-60 days. Citation frequency increases faster than traditional ranking improvements. Assisted conversion impact becomes measurable at 60-90 days as multi-touch attribution captures AI-influenced journeys. Full optimization cycles run 6-12 months as you refine entity signals and content approaches.
### Can the same content rank well in traditional search and appear in AI answers?
Yes, but optimization approaches differ. Traditional SEO prioritizes keyword targeting and link authority. AI systems favor structured data, entity clarity, and source attribution. Content serving both channels needs comprehensive coverage with strong schema markup, clear authorship, and both keyword and conversational query optimization.
### What tools track AI citation performance?
Specialized monitoring platforms track brand mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and SGE. Manual sampling remains necessary as AI systems evolve rapidly. Set up Google Alerts for brand mentions, monitor knowledge panel changes, and track branded search volume as a proxy for AI exposure. Proprietary tools like those developed by our team provide automated tracking across multiple AI platforms.
### How do we prevent AI systems from misrepresenting our brand?
Implement strong entity management through schema markup, Wikipedia presence, and knowledge graph optimization. Publish authoritative content with clear facts and source attribution. Monitor AI-generated mentions and submit corrections when misrepresentations appear. Maintain consistent NAP citations and brand messaging across all digital properties. Consider working with an [AI SEO company](/AI-SEO-services) experienced in entity optimization and knowledge graph management.
## Building Durable Discovery Across Both Rails
AI SEO and traditional search optimization address different discovery behaviors. Users type queries and ask questions through distinct interfaces with separate expectations.
Key takeaways for parallel operations:
- Operate both channels with distinct signals, KPIs, and workflows
- Share technical foundations (crawl health, schema, content quality) across rails
- Measure separately to avoid attribution errors and false conclusions
- Start with 30-60-90 day pilots before full-scale rollout
- Implement governance for AI-specific risks (hallucinations, brand voice, compliance)
Running both discovery rails captures intent across typed queries and conversational answers. You maintain existing organic performance while building presence in emerging channels.
The parallel model requires coordination but not duplication. Shared technical improvements benefit both channels. Content strategies complement rather than compete. Measurement frameworks track distinct KPIs while identifying crossover effects.
Explore how a parallel-rail roadmap would work for your organization through our [AI SEO company](/AI-SEO-services) services. We apply the same forensic methodology used in our [enterprise-grade technical SEO audit](/technical-SEO-audit-services) to both traditional and AI discovery optimization.
Request a combined technical and AI-readiness assessment to identify quick wins across both channels. Our [core SEO services](/SEO) integrate seamlessly with AI discovery programs, ensuring coordinated execution without resource conflicts.
Book a Technical SEO Audit and AI discovery workshop to align your Enterprise SEO Architecture and capture demand across both rails.
Start building durable discovery today. The gap between single-channel and dual-channel presence compounds monthly as AI adoption accelerates. Early movers gain entity authority and citation frequency advantages that become harder to overcome as competition intensifies.
---
## Posts: Types and Purpose of Technical SEO Audits
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749](https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749.md)
**Published:** 2025-11-27
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** migration SEO audit, pre-migration SEO checklist, tech audit, types of technical SEO audit
**Summary:** If you're planning a migration, gearing up for a new site launch, or noticing brand exclusion from AI answers, the right technical audit at the right time prevents expensive traffic loss and accelerates results. Most teams run a single catch-all "SEO audit" too late - after redirects go live, after
### Content
## One Line of Code – A Short Cautionary Tale
The phone call came mid-afternoon. Panic on the other end.
“We have zero organic traffic. Everything is gone.”
Here’s the context. This client had been ranking first position for the industry prime keyword – the one everybody in their space wants, the one competitors spend years chasing. First position. Bringing them a lot of money. The kind of organic traffic that actually converts.
They’d built a new website – prettier, faster, better structured, more awesome content. Everything is an upgrade. We were involved in the technical optimization of the new site during the dev phase, but not in migration consulting or the migration follow-up itself.
So when my phone rang with that panicked voice, my first question was simple: “Did you launch the new website?”
They confirmed. Launched it yesterday. Everybody tested it. Everybody was happy.
Next: “Did your developers remove the rel=noindex from the head before they deployed over the old website?”
They didn’t.
So here’s what happened. They launched this super cool, functional website. Team celebrated. But when Google’s next crawl hit – the crawler saw the noindex directive and did exactly what it was told. Google correctly concluded that this website doesn’t want to be indexed anymore and dumped the whole domain from the index.
Gone. Google can’t show your result if it doesn’t have it in the index.
The fix was simple. They removed noindex line from the head. Site got recrawled and re-indexed within a day. But here’s what still hurts: after reindex, Google dropped them to second position. And never put them back.
One line of code. For that industry prime bringing-the-majority-of-their-converting-traffic keyword – the difference between first and second position meant a lot, lot of money lost.
This shouldn’t happen. And it rarely happens. But it happens.
Website launches are stressful. Everybody is on edge. Whether it’s a robots.txt, or rel noindex left in place, or any of the ways you can block Google from crawling and indexing during development – due to stress and pressure, people simply forget to remove.
And that’s just one failure mode. When you launch a new website, somebody also needs to verify the redirects. If old URLs aren’t properly redirected to new ones, even if Google keeps indexing your site, you lose a ton of traffic anyway. All those pages that had SEO value from backlinks, page age, internal link structure – suddenly they’re 404s, or redirected to the homepage, which Google treats as a soft 404 anyway.
This guide breaks down three technical audit types – pre-migration, AI visibility, and development/launch – so you know which one fits your situation, when to run it, and exactly what breaks when you skip it.
## Types and Purpose of Technical SEO Audits
If you’re planning a migration, gearing up for a new site launch, or noticing brand exclusion from AI answers, the right technical audit at the right time prevents expensive traffic loss and accelerates results. Most teams run a single catch-all “SEO audit” too late – after redirects go live, after Core Web Vitals regress, or after AI Overviews start omitting their brand – leading to crawl waste, indexation gaps, and months of recovery.
This guide clarifies three distinct audit types:**pre-migration**,**AI visibility**, and**development/launch**. You’ll learn what each delivers, when to run them, and exactly what can break if you don’t. Based on Four Dots’ 200+ point [Enterprise Technical SEO Audit methodology](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services), FAII AI visibility platform, and 13+ years executing for global brands including Orange and Coca-Cola.
The difference between a successful migration and a traffic disaster often comes down to timing. Running the wrong audit at the wrong time costs you rankings, revenue, and months of recovery work.
## What Makes Technical SEO Audits Different
A**technical SEO audit**examines how search engines discover, crawl, render, and index your site. Unlike content audits that focus on keywords and messaging, technical audits diagnose infrastructure issues that block visibility regardless of content quality.
Technical audits cover seven core areas:
-**Crawlability**– Can search bots access and navigate your site efficiently
-**Indexation**– Are the right pages getting indexed and the wrong ones blocked
-**Renderability**– Can search engines execute JavaScript and see your content
-**Site architecture**– Does your URL structure and internal linking support discovery
-**Performance**– Do pages meet Core Web Vitals thresholds for speed and stability
-**Structured data**– Are schemas properly implemented for rich results and AI extraction
-**Internationalization**– Are hreflang tags and geo-targeting configured correctly
### Why Timing Shapes Audit Scope
The same technical issues require different approaches based on when you discover them. A redirect mapping exercise before migration looks completely different from a post-launch indexation recovery effort.
Three distinct timing scenarios demand specialized audits:
-**Pre-migration**– Protect existing rankings and traffic during platform or domain changes
-**AI visibility**– Diagnose and fix brand exclusion from AI Overviews and LLM answers
-**Development and launch**– Prevent regressions from design through production deployment
Each audit type uses different diagnostic tools, involves different stakeholders, and delivers different implementation artifacts. Running a generic audit misses critical timing-specific risks.
### Who Owns Technical SEO Audit Execution
Technical audits require coordination across multiple teams. Clear ownership prevents gaps and delays.
Typical stakeholder breakdown:
-**Marketing/SEO**– Define business goals, prioritize findings, manage vendor relationships
-**Product**– Approve scope changes, allocate sprint capacity, own launch decisions
-**Engineering**– Implement technical fixes, validate staging environments, deploy changes
-**Analytics**– Establish measurement baselines, configure tracking, validate data integrity
-**QA**– Test redirect mappings, verify schema deployment, run regression checks
Audit deliverables should match team workflows. Engineers need Jira-ready tickets with acceptance criteria. Marketing needs risk quantification tied to traffic and revenue impact. Product needs go/no-go decision frameworks with clear rollback procedures.
## Pre-Migration Technical SEO Audit
Run this audit 3-8 weeks before moving platforms, changing domains, or restructuring site architecture. The goal is protecting existing search equity while enabling the new technical foundation to perform better than the old one.
A**migration SEO audit**inventories everything search engines currently value about your site, then maps how to preserve or improve those signals in the new environment. This includes URL structures, internal linking patterns,**canonicalization**rules, and structured data implementations.
### What Pre-Migration Audits Deliver
The core deliverable is a redirect mapping file that matches old URLs to new URLs with 100% coverage of indexed pages. This file becomes the foundation for preserving rankings during the transition.
Complete pre-migration audit scope includes:
- Full URL inventory with traffic, rankings, and conversion data for prioritization
- Template-level analysis identifying which page types drive organic value
- Redirect mapping with parity checks for metadata, schema, and internal links
- Crawl budget optimization identifying faceted navigation bloat and parameter waste
- Core Web Vitals baseline with performance budget targets for new platform
- Structured data audit ensuring schema parity or improvements
- Hreflang mapping for international sites with geo-targeting verification
- Risk register quantifying traffic exposure by page type and timeline
- Go/no-go checklist with launch readiness criteria and rollback procedures
Deliverables arrive as engineer-ready specifications. Redirect mappings include source URLs, target URLs, redirect types (301 vs 302), and QA test cases.**Robots.txt**and sitemap configurations come with before/after comparisons and staging validation steps.
### Tools and Signals for Migration Audits
Pre-migration diagnostics require both current-state and future-state analysis. You need to understand what’s working now and predict how changes will impact search visibility.
Essential data sources:
-**Crawl data**– JavaScript rendering checks, redirect chains, orphaned pages
-**Log file analysis**– Actual bot behavior, crawl budget allocation, discovery patterns
-**Search Console**– Index coverage, mobile usability, Core Web Vitals field data
-**Analytics**– Landing page performance, conversion paths, assisted conversions
-**Performance monitoring**– Lab and field data for page speed and interactivity
Log file analysis reveals crawl waste that redirect mappings alone won’t fix. If bots spend 60% of crawl budget on faceted navigation pages you plan to noindex, that pattern needs addressing before migration or the new site inherits the same inefficiency.
### What Breaks When You Skip Migration Audits
The most common failure mode is incomplete redirect mapping. Teams map primary navigation and high-traffic pages but miss category filters, pagination sequences, or legacy URLs that still attract links and rankings.
Consequences of skipped or rushed migration audits:
-**Redirect loops and chains**– Rankings drop as bots hit redirect limits and abandon crawls
-**Lost ranking pages**– Unmapped URLs return 404s and lose positions within days
-**Indexation waste**– New site inherits crawl budget problems, delaying discovery of priority pages
-**Canonical conflicts**– Duplicate content issues emerge when canonicalization rules don’t migrate cleanly
-**Hreflang breaks**– International sites show wrong language versions, causing geo-targeting failures
-**Schema regressions**– Rich results disappear when structured data implementations don’t carry over
Recovery from migration failures typically takes 3-6 months and requires emergency redirect updates, indexation cleanup, and manual Search Console submissions. The cost in lost traffic and delayed projects far exceeds the investment in proper technical SEO audit services before launch.
### Pre-Migration Go/No-Go Checklist
Use this checklist 48 hours before cutover to validate launch readiness. If any item fails, delay migration until resolved.
1.**Redirect file deployed and tested**– Sample 50 URLs across templates, verify correct targets and response codes
2.**Robots.txt and sitemap updated**– New rules allow bot access, sitemap contains only indexable URLs
3.**Canonical tags implemented**– Self-referencing canonicals on indexable pages, cross-domain canonicals where needed
4.**Hreflang deployed**– All language/region variants properly linked, x-default specified
5.**Schema validated**– Structured data passes testing tools, covers priority page types
6.**Analytics tracking live**– GA4 and Search Console connected, baseline data collecting
7.**Performance meets targets**– Core Web Vitals pass field data thresholds on staging
8.**Internal links updated**– Navigation and content links point to new URL structure
9.**Staging environment protected**– Staging remains noindexed and/or authenticated; production controls verified; DNS ready
10.**Rollback plan documented**– DNS revert procedure tested, backup redirect file ready
Document who verified each item and when. This creates accountability and provides audit trail if issues emerge post-launch.
## AI Visibility Technical Audit
Run this audit when brand presence declines in AI Overviews or LLM responses, or before launching content that should appear in AI-generated answers. The goal is securing inclusion in the AI answer ecosystem that increasingly shapes how users discover and evaluate solutions.
An**[AI visibility SEO audit](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-meets-seo-11801)**– also called a GEO audit for Generative Engine Optimization – diagnoses why AI systems exclude or misrepresent your brand. This differs from traditional technical audits by focusing on entity recognition, knowledge graph signals, and content formatting optimized for AI extraction rather than traditional search ranking factors.
### What AI Visibility Audits Deliver
The core deliverable is a baseline report showing your brand’s inclusion share across major AI systems: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. This quantifies current visibility and tracks improvement over time.
Complete AI visibility audit scope includes:
-**FAII baseline measurement**– Inclusion percentage across AI platforms for brand and product queries
-**Entity mapping**– How AI systems understand your brand relationships and category positioning
-**Knowledge graph analysis**– Organization, Person, and Product schema implementation and consistency
-**Content credibility audit**– E-E-A-T signals, author bylines, citation patterns, source authority
-**Structured data optimization**– Schema types and properties that improve AI extraction
-**Answer coverage gaps**– Queries where competitors appear but your brand doesn’t
-**Prompt space opportunities**– Question patterns and topics where you should rank
-**Implementation roadmap**– Prioritized fixes with publish-amplify-measure loops
The [FAII platform](https://faii.ai/) tracks your brand mentions across AI systems daily, alerting you to sudden drops in inclusion rates. This early warning system catches visibility problems before they impact traffic and conversions.
### Tools and Signals for AI Visibility Audits
AI visibility diagnostics require different data sources than traditional technical audits. You’re measuring how AI systems extract and cite information rather than how search bots crawl and index pages.
Essential diagnostic tools:
-**FAII platform**– Automated tracking of brand inclusion across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, AI Overviews
-**Schema validators**– Verify Organization, Person, Product, FAQPage structured data
-**Entity graph tools**– Map how knowledge graphs connect your brand to related entities
-**Citation analysis**– Identify which sources AI systems reference for your category
-**SERP feature tracking**– Monitor AI Overview appearances for target queries
Citation patterns reveal why AI systems trust certain sources. If competitors appear consistently because they’re cited by authoritative industry publications, you need a strategy to earn similar citations rather than just optimizing on-site content.
### What Breaks When You Skip AI Visibility Audits
The most damaging failure mode is brand omission from AI-generated answers. Users asking about your category see competitor recommendations while your brand doesn’t appear, shifting traffic and conversions to alternatives.
Consequences of skipped AI visibility audits:
-**Brand exclusion from AI answers**– Lost visibility in the fastest-growing discovery channel
-**Competitor advantage**– Rivals capture AI-assisted traffic and conversions you should win
-**Entity confusion**– AI systems hallucinate wrong information about your brand or products
-**Inconsistent representations**– Different AI platforms show conflicting brand details
-**Snippet eligibility loss**– Content formatting prevents extraction for featured snippets and AI answers
-**Knowledge graph gaps**– Missing schema prevents AI systems from understanding brand relationships
Recovery requires systematic entity building, schema deployment, and content reformatting across your entire site. The work takes 2-4 months and competes with other priorities. Starting with an audit prevents the visibility loss in the first place.
### AI Visibility Implementation Roadmap
Improving AI inclusion requires coordinated content, technical, and amplification work. This 90-day roadmap prioritizes high-impact fixes.**Days 1-30: Foundation and Quick Wins**- Deploy Organization and Person schema on priority pages
- Add author bylines with credentials to expertise-driven content
- Implement FAQPage schema on top-traffic articles
- Format content with clear headings and definition patterns AI systems extract
- Establish FAII baseline tracking for brand and product queries**Days 31-60: Entity Building and Content Optimization**- Build Product schema for key offerings with detailed properties
- Create comparison content answering common “best X” queries
- Optimize existing content for question-answer extraction
- Secure citations from industry publications AI systems reference
- Monitor FAII for inclusion rate changes and adjust tactics**Days 61-90: Scale and Measurement**- Expand schema coverage to secondary page types
- Launch content series targeting answer coverage gaps
- Build relationships with sources AI platforms cite frequently
- Establish monthly reporting on AI inclusion metrics
- Document what works and scale successful patterns
Track progress weekly using FAII inclusion percentages as the primary KPI. Supplement with traditional metrics like featured snippet wins and organic traffic from AI-heavy query patterns. [Learn more about our AI SEO services](/ai-seo-services) for brand inclusion in AI answers.
## Development and Launch Technical Audit
Run this audit from design and development sprints through soft launch and 7-30 days post-launch. The goal is preventing regressions that damage existing visibility while ensuring new features and pages achieve optimal search performance from day one.
A**website launch SEO audit**catches issues before they reach production. Staging environment problems cost hours to fix. Production problems cost traffic, rankings, and recovery time measured in weeks or months.
### What Development and Launch Audits Deliver
The core deliverable is a launch-day runbook that QA teams use to verify every SEO-critical element before DNS cutover. This checklist prevents the most common launch failures: staging controls leaking to production, broken redirects, and template regressions.
Complete development and launch audit scope includes:
-**Design-to-dev SEO requirements**– Crawl rules, pagination patterns, parameter handling specs
-**Environment controls**– Noindex/nofollow for staging, authentication requirements, robots.txt rules
-**Template-level specifications**– Heading hierarchy, internal linking patterns, lazy loading configuration
-**JavaScript rendering checks**– Content visibility to bots, client-side routing, dynamic content
-**Launch-day runbook**– Step-by-step verification of redirects, DNS, HTTPS, schema, on-page parity
-**Post-launch validation**– Log monitoring, indexation tracking, Core Web Vitals, error budgets
-**Regression monitoring**– Automated checks for template changes, performance degradation, schema breaks
Template specifications include visual examples showing correct vs incorrect implementations. Engineers see exactly what heading structure, internal link placement, and schema markup should look like in production.
### Tools and Signals for Launch Audits
Launch audits require comparing staging and production environments to catch differences before they impact users and search bots. Visual regression testing tools complement traditional crawlers and validators.
Essential diagnostic tools:
-**Pre-production crawlers**– JavaScript rendering, authentication handling, staging environment scanning
-**Visual diff tools**– Screenshot comparisons between staging and production templates
-**Log monitoring**– Real-time bot behavior tracking, crawl budget allocation, error patterns
-**Search Console**– Index coverage changes, mobile usability issues, Core Web Vitals regressions
-**Performance monitors**– Lighthouse CI, field data collection, regression alerting
Log file monitoring in the first 7-14 days post-launch catches issues traditional tools miss. If bots hit unexpected redirect chains or encounter server errors on specific templates, logs reveal the pattern before rankings drop.
### What Breaks When You Skip Launch Audits
The most catastrophic failure mode is staging controls reaching production. A single noindex meta tag or robots.txt disallow rule can deindex your entire site within 48 hours.
Consequences of skipped development and launch audits:
-**Staging noindex leaked to production**– Complete deindexation within days
-**Robots.txt blocking critical sections**– Category pages or product templates excluded from crawling
-**Broken sitemap submissions**– Discovery delays for new pages and content
-**Redirect mapping gaps**– Old URLs return 404s instead of proper redirects
-**Template regressions**– Missing headings, broken internal links, schema deployment failures
-**Core Web Vitals hits**– Performance degradation from unoptimized assets or render-blocking resources
-**Mobile usability breaks**– Responsive design issues or touch target problems
Recovery requires emergency fixes during business-critical launch windows when engineering resources are stretched thin. The stress and coordination overhead far exceeds the cost of proper pre-launch validation. For complex implementations, consider advanced tracking and reporting implementation support.
### Launch-Day QA Checklist
Use this checklist immediately after DNS cutover to verify production deployment. Complete all checks within the first 2 hours of launch.
1.**Robots.txt verification**– Staging disallow rules removed, production rules allowing bot access
2.**Meta robots check**– No noindex tags on indexable pages, nofollow removed from internal links
3.**Sitemap validation**– XML sitemap accessible, contains only indexable URLs, submitted to Search Console
4.**Redirect testing**– Sample old URLs redirect to correct new URLs with 301 status codes
5.**HTTPS enforcement**– All pages serve over HTTPS, mixed content warnings resolved
6.**Canonical tags**– Self-referencing canonicals on indexable pages, proper cross-domain canonicals
7.**Schema deployment**– Structured data present on priority templates, validation errors resolved
8.**Internal linking**– Navigation and content links use new URL structure, no broken links
9.**Mobile rendering**– Pages display correctly on mobile devices, touch targets properly sized
10.**Core Web Vitals**– Initial field data collection working, lab scores meet targets
11.**Analytics tracking**– GA4 collecting data, Search Console showing crawl activity
12.**Error monitoring**– 404 tracking enabled, server error alerting configured
Document findings with timestamps and screenshots. This creates an audit trail proving due diligence if post-launch issues emerge.
## Choosing the Right Audit for Your Situation
The audit type you need depends on your timeline, business scenario, and risk profile. This decision matrix helps you select the right approach.
### Audit Selection by Scenario
Match your current situation to the audit type that addresses your specific risks and timeline.
| Your Situation | Audit Type | Lead Time Needed | Primary Risk |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Platform migration planned | Pre-Migration | 3-8 weeks before launch | Traffic loss from redirect failures |
| Domain change upcoming | Pre-Migration | 4-8 weeks before cutover | Ranking drops from URL changes |
| Brand missing from AI answers | AI Visibility | Start immediately | Competitor advantage in AI discovery |
| New site in development | Development & Launch | During build sprints | Launching with SEO blockers |
| Major redesign planned | Development & Launch | Design phase through launch | Template regressions hurting visibility |
| Content refresh initiative | AI Visibility | Before content production | Content not optimized for AI extraction |
### Stakeholder Responsibility Matrix
Clear ownership prevents gaps and delays. This matrix shows who approves what for each audit type.**Pre-Migration Audit Stakeholders:**-**SEO/Marketing**– Approve redirect priorities, review traffic impact analysis, sign off on go/no-go
-**Product**– Allocate engineering capacity, approve timeline, own launch decision
-**Engineering**– Implement redirects, deploy technical fixes, validate staging environment
-**QA**– Test redirect mappings, verify schema deployment, run regression checks
-**Analytics**– Establish pre-migration baseline, configure tracking, validate data continuity**AI Visibility Audit Stakeholders:**-**SEO/Marketing**– Define target queries, prioritize content gaps, track FAII metrics
-**Content**– Implement formatting changes, add schema markup, optimize for extraction
-**Engineering**– Deploy structured data, implement entity schemas, configure monitoring
-**PR/Communications**– Secure citations, build relationships with authoritative sources**Launch Audit Stakeholders:**-**Product**– Approve SEO requirements, allocate sprint capacity, own launch timeline
-**Engineering**– Implement template specs, deploy launch-day fixes, monitor production
-**QA**– Execute launch checklist, verify environment controls, test redirects
-**SEO/Marketing**– Provide specifications, review staging environment, approve go-live
### When to Run Multiple Audits
Some situations require layering different audit types. A platform migration for an e-commerce site might need both a pre-migration audit and a launch audit if you’re also redesigning templates.
Common multi-audit scenarios:
-**Migration + redesign**– Pre-migration audit for URL mapping, launch audit for template validation
-**New site + AI focus**– Launch audit for technical foundation, AI visibility audit for content strategy
-**Replatform + international expansion**– Pre-migration audit with enhanced hreflang analysis, launch audit for new geo-targeting
Coordinate timing so audits inform each other. Run the pre-migration audit first to establish redirect requirements, then use those findings in the launch audit checklist.
## Audit Deliverables and Implementation Timelines
Technical audits deliver different artifacts based on type and scope. Understanding what you receive helps you plan implementation capacity and timeline.
### Standard Audit Deliverables
Every technical audit includes these core components regardless of type:
-**Executive summary**– Business impact quantification, risk assessment, priority recommendations
-**Technical findings report**– Detailed diagnostics with screenshots, code examples, and severity ratings
-**Implementation roadmap**– Prioritized fixes with effort estimates and dependencies
-**QA test cases**– Acceptance criteria for validating each fix
-**Measurement plan**– KPIs and tracking setup for monitoring progress
### Specialized Deliverables by Audit Type
Each audit type includes additional specialized outputs.**Watch this video about Types and Purpose of Technical SEO Audits:**Video: How to perform a technical SEO audit**Pre-Migration Audit Adds:**- Complete redirect mapping file (CSV with source, target, status code)
- Crawl budget analysis with waste quantification
- Performance baseline and targets for new platform
- Go/no-go checklist with launch readiness criteria
- Rollback procedure documentation**AI Visibility Audit Adds:**- FAII baseline report with inclusion percentages across AI platforms
- Entity mapping showing knowledge graph relationships
- Schema implementation guide for Organization, Person, Product
- Content formatting templates optimized for AI extraction
- Answer coverage gap analysis with competitor benchmarks**Development & Launch Audit Adds:**- Template-level specifications with visual examples
- Environment control checklist for staging vs production
- Launch-day runbook with step-by-step verification
- Post-launch monitoring dashboard configuration
- Regression testing automation setup
### Implementation Timeline Expectations
Plan implementation capacity based on audit findings volume and complexity. These timelines assume dedicated engineering and SEO resources.**Pre-Migration Implementation: 4-12 Weeks**1. Weeks 1-2: Deploy redirect file, fix critical crawl issues
2. Weeks 3-4: Implement schema parity, optimize performance
3. Weeks 5-6: QA testing, staging validation, final adjustments
4. Weeks 7-8: Launch window, immediate post-launch monitoring
5. Weeks 9-12: Indexation tracking, performance optimization, issue resolution**AI Visibility Implementation: 8-16 Weeks**1. Weeks 1-4: Deploy foundational schemas, add author credentials, format priority content
2. Weeks 5-8: Build entity relationships, secure citations, expand schema coverage
3. Weeks 9-12: Launch content series targeting answer gaps, monitor FAII metrics
4. Weeks 13-16: Scale successful patterns, establish ongoing measurement**Launch Audit Implementation: 2-6 Weeks**1. Weeks 1-2: Implement template specifications during development sprints
2. Weeks 3-4: Staging environment testing, fix identified issues
3. Week 5: Launch-day execution, immediate validation
4. Week 6: Post-launch monitoring, regression fixes, performance optimization
Timelines extend when findings reveal fundamental architecture problems requiring larger refactoring. Budget extra capacity for discovery work if you haven’t run technical audits recently.
## Measuring Audit Success and Ongoing Monitoring
Technical audits create value through implementation and measurement. Track these KPIs to quantify impact and justify continued investment.
### Core Technical Health Metrics
Monitor these metrics weekly during implementation, then monthly for ongoing health checks:
-**Crawl efficiency**– Percentage of crawl budget spent on indexable pages vs waste
-**Index coverage**– Ratio of indexed pages to submitted pages, error rate trends
-**Core Web Vitals**– LCP, INP, CLS passing thresholds in field data
-**Mobile usability**– Issues reported in Search Console, page experience scores
-**Schema validation**– Structured data error count, rich result eligibility
-**Redirect health**– Chain length, 404 rate, redirect response time
### Business Impact Metrics
Connect technical improvements to business outcomes to demonstrate ROI:
-**Organic traffic**– Sessions, users, and pageviews from organic search
-**Rankings**– Keyword position changes for priority terms
-**Conversions**– Goal completions and revenue from organic traffic
-**Page speed impact**– Bounce rate and conversion rate changes after CWV improvements
-**Rich result wins**– Featured snippets, knowledge panels, AI Overview inclusions
### AI Visibility Tracking
For AI visibility audits, track brand inclusion across AI platforms as the primary success metric:
-**FAII inclusion percentage**– Brand mention rate across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, AI Overviews
-**Answer coverage**– Percentage of target queries where your brand appears in AI responses
-**Entity accuracy**– Correct vs incorrect brand information in AI-generated content
-**Citation frequency**– How often AI systems reference your content as a source
-**Competitor displacement**– Queries where you replaced competitor mentions
Establish baselines before implementation starts. Track changes weekly during active optimization, then monthly for ongoing monitoring.
### Ongoing Audit Cadence
Technical SEO isn’t a one-time project. Sites evolve, search algorithms change, and new issues emerge. Establish a regular audit cadence based on your site’s complexity and change frequency.**Recommended Audit Frequency:**-**Enterprise sites**– Quarterly comprehensive audits, monthly spot checks
-**E-commerce platforms**– Bi-annual comprehensive audits, quarterly focused reviews
-**Content sites**– Annual comprehensive audits, quarterly performance reviews
-**SaaS products**– Audit with each major release, quarterly technical health checks
Trigger additional audits when major changes occur: platform migrations, redesigns, algorithm updates, or unexplained traffic drops. Review results from enterprise technical SEO audits to see typical outcomes and timelines.
## Risk Quantification and Decision Frameworks
Technical audit recommendations compete with other priorities for engineering capacity. Quantifying risk helps stakeholders make informed decisions about timing and resource allocation.
### Traffic Risk Assessment
Calculate potential traffic loss to prioritize fixes and justify investment. This framework estimates exposure based on issue severity and page importance.**Risk Calculation Formula:**Traffic at Risk = (Affected Pages × Average Traffic per Page) × Probability of Impact × Severity Factor
-**Probability of Impact**– 0.9 for critical issues (noindex, redirect failures), 0.5 for moderate issues (schema errors), 0.2 for minor issues (optimization opportunities)
-**Severity Factor**– 1.0 for complete visibility loss, 0.5 for ranking drops, 0.2 for rich result loss
Example: A migration with incomplete redirect mapping affecting 500 pages averaging 100 monthly visits each represents 45,000 sessions at risk (500 × 100 × 0.9 × 1.0). At a $50 customer acquisition cost, that’s $2.25M in marketing value at risk.
### Implementation Effort vs Impact Matrix
Prioritize audit findings using a 2×2 matrix plotting implementation effort against business impact.**Quick Wins (Low Effort, High Impact):**- Fix critical redirect chains (2-4 hours)
- Deploy missing canonical tags (4-8 hours)
- Add Organization schema (2-4 hours)
- Remove staging noindex tags (1 hour)**Strategic Projects (High Effort, High Impact):**- Rebuild faceted navigation to reduce crawl waste (4-8 weeks)
- Implement comprehensive hreflang for international sites (6-12 weeks)
- Redesign site architecture for better crawl efficiency (8-16 weeks)**Fill-Ins (Low Effort, Low Impact):**- Optimize image alt text (ongoing)
- Add FAQ schema to blog posts (ongoing)
- Internal linking improvements (ongoing)**Backlog (High Effort, Low Impact):**- Migrate legacy blog platform (defer until strategic need)
- Rebuild custom CMS features (defer unless blocking)
Tackle quick wins immediately to build momentum. Schedule strategic projects based on available capacity and business timing. Defer backlog items unless they become blockers.
### Go/No-Go Decision Framework
Use this framework to decide whether to proceed with launches or migrations when audit findings reveal issues.**Proceed if:**- Zero critical issues (noindex, redirect failures, complete template breaks)
- Moderate issues have documented workarounds and post-launch fix plans
- Risk assessment shows acceptable traffic exposure
- Rollback procedures tested and ready
- Post-launch monitoring configured and staffed**Delay if:**- Any critical issues remain unresolved
- Redirect mapping incomplete or untested
- Core Web Vitals significantly worse than current site
- Staging environment controls not validated
- No rollback plan or insufficient monitoring**Abort if:**- Fundamental architecture problems discovered too late to fix
- Risk assessment shows unacceptable traffic loss probability
- Engineering capacity insufficient for required fixes
- Business timing no longer supports launch window
Document the decision rationale and who approved proceeding despite known issues. This protects teams if problems emerge and provides learning for future projects.
## Agency and White-Label Considerations
Digital agencies delivering technical audits for clients need additional capabilities: white-label reporting, transparent workflows, and tools that scale across multiple client accounts.
### White-Label Audit Delivery
Agencies require branded deliverables that present findings under their own identity. White-label audit platforms provide:
-**Custom branding**– Agency logo, colors, and formatting throughout reports
-**Client portals**– Secure access for clients to view findings and track progress
-**Automated reporting**– Scheduled updates on implementation status and KPI tracking
-**Multi-client management**– Centralized dashboard across all client accounts
Four Dots provides [white-label SEO](/white-label-seo-services) for agencies through proprietary platforms including Reportz.io for client reporting and Base.me for campaign management.
### Capacity and Specialization Challenges
Many agencies lack in-house technical SEO specialists capable of executing enterprise-grade audits. Common gaps include:
-**Log file analysis expertise**– Understanding bot behavior and crawl budget optimization
-**JavaScript rendering diagnostics**– Troubleshooting client-side rendering and hydration issues
-**International SEO complexity**– Properly configuring hreflang and geo-targeting
-**Enterprise-scale tooling**– Access to crawlers and platforms handling millions of URLs
-**Developer communication**– Translating SEO requirements into engineering specifications
Partnering with specialized providers lets agencies offer comprehensive [audits without hiring full-time technical SEO](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) staff. This model provides capacity during peak demand and access to specialized expertise for complex projects.
### Transparent Pricing and Scope
Agencies need predictable pricing to build audit services into client proposals. Four Dots publishes transparent pricing for standard audit types:
-**Standard Technical Audit**– $1,800 for sites up to 10,000 pages
-**Enterprise Migration Audit**– $3,900 for complex migrations with 50,000+ pages
-**AI Visibility Baseline**– Custom pricing based on query volume and platform coverage
This transparency eliminates proposal uncertainty and helps agencies price services competitively while maintaining margins.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### How long does a technical audit take to complete?
Standard audits typically take 1-2 weeks from kickoff to deliverable. Enterprise migration audits require 2-4 weeks due to redirect mapping complexity and stakeholder coordination. AI visibility audits take 2-3 weeks to establish baselines across multiple platforms and analyze entity relationships.
### Can I run a technical audit on a site that’s already live?
Yes. Post-launch audits identify issues causing performance problems, traffic declines, or indexation gaps. While pre-launch audits prevent problems, post-launch audits diagnose and fix existing issues. The sooner you audit after noticing problems, the faster you can recover lost visibility.
### Do I need a separate audit for mobile?
No. Modern technical audits include mobile-specific diagnostics as standard: mobile usability checks, responsive design validation, and mobile Core Web Vitals analysis. Mobile-first indexing means every audit must address mobile performance and user experience.
### How often should I run technical audits?
Run comprehensive audits annually at minimum. Increase frequency based on site complexity and change rate: quarterly for enterprise sites with frequent updates, bi-annually for e-commerce platforms, and before any major migration or redesign regardless of schedule.
### What’s the difference between a technical audit and a content audit?
Technical audits examine infrastructure: crawlability, indexation, performance, structured data, and site architecture. Content audits evaluate messaging, keyword targeting, content quality, and user engagement. Both are valuable but address different aspects of search visibility. Most comprehensive SEO programs include both audit types.
### Can technical audits guarantee ranking improvements?
No audit guarantees specific rankings. Technical audits remove barriers preventing search engines from properly discovering, understanding, and ranking your content. Fixing technical issues creates the foundation for ranking improvements, but content quality, links, and competitive factors also influence rankings.
### Do I need developer resources to implement audit findings?
Yes. Most technical audit recommendations require engineering implementation: redirect deployments, schema additions, performance optimizations, and architecture changes. Budget engineering capacity before commissioning audits to ensure findings get implemented rather than sitting in backlog.
### How do I know if my site needs an AI visibility audit?
Run an AI visibility audit if you notice declining traffic from informational queries, competitors appearing in AI Overviews while you don’t, or your brand missing from ChatGPT and Gemini responses. Also audit before launching major content initiatives to ensure AI optimization from the start.
## Taking Action on Technical SEO Audits
The right technical audit at the right time protects existing visibility while creating conditions for growth. Pre-migration audits prevent traffic loss during platform changes. AI visibility audits secure brand inclusion in the fastest-growing discovery channel. Development and launch audits catch regressions before they reach production.
Choose your audit type based on business timing and risk profile. Migrations and redesigns require pre-launch audits 3-8 weeks before cutover. AI visibility concerns demand immediate baseline assessment. New development projects benefit from continuous audit involvement from design through post-launch.
Key takeaways for audit success:
- Match audit type to your specific scenario and timeline
- Secure engineering capacity before commissioning audits
- Establish clear stakeholder ownership and decision frameworks
- Quantify traffic risk to prioritize implementation
- Monitor technical health metrics and business impact KPIs
- Maintain regular audit cadence based on site complexity
Technical SEO audits deliver ROI through prevented problems and accelerated results. The cost of a comprehensive audit is a fraction of the revenue loss from migration failures, indexation problems, or AI visibility gaps.
Review Four Dots’ 200+ point Enterprise Technical SEO Audit methodology and sample deliverables on the [technical SEO audit](/technical-seo-audit-services) services page. Get a custom audit proposal tailored to your migration timeline, AI visibility goals, or launch requirements.**Ready to proceed?**[Request an audit proposal](/technical-seo-audit-services) or [schedule a consultation](/ai-seo-services).
---
## Posts: PPC Attribution Models Comparison: Which One Is Right for Your Business in 2025
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/ppc-attribution-models-comparison-which-one-is-right-for-your-business-in-2025-11215](https://fourdots.com/blog/ppc-attribution-models-comparison-which-one-is-right-for-your-business-in-2025-11215)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/ppc-attribution-models-comparison-which-one-is-right-for-your-business-in-2025-11215.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/ppc-attribution-models-comparison-which-one-is-right-for-your-business-in-2025-11215.md)
**Published:** 2025-05-03
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** PPC
**Tags:** Conversion Tracking, Digital Advertising, Marketing Analytics, PPC Attribution, ROI Measurement
**Summary:** Discover which PPC attribution model best suits your business goals. Compare last-click, first-click, linear, time decay, position-based, and data-driven models with our practical decision framework.
### Content
**Are your PPC campaigns truly delivering the ROI you think they are? The answer depends entirely on which attribution model you’re using—and many businesses are unknowingly using models that hide the true value of their marketing efforts.**In today’s complex digital landscape, the average customer interacts with your brand 7-10 times before converting. Yet many businesses still rely on simplistic attribution models that only acknowledge the very first or very last of these touchpoints—potentially missing up to 80% of what’s actually driving their conversions.
With Google Ads and Analytics offering multiple attribution models and the digital privacy landscape constantly evolving, selecting the right approach has become both more important and more complex than ever before.
In this guide, you’ll discover:
- How different attribution models can show dramatically different performance for the exact same campaigns
- A straightforward comparison of each major attribution model’s strengths and limitations
- A practical framework for selecting the right model based on your specific [business](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks) type and goals
- Implementation tips to ensure accurate tracking despite growing privacy challenges
Let’s uncover which attribution model will provide your business with the most accurate view of your [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management) performance—and how it could significantly impact your marketing decision-making.
## Why Attribution Models Matter: Same Data, Different Stories
Before diving into specific models, let’s understand exactly why attribution matters through a simple example:
Imagine a customer who:
1. First discovers your business through a branded Google Search ad
2. Later sees a remarketing display ad but doesn’t click
3. Clicks on a Shopping ad a week later to browse products
4. Finally converts after clicking on a competitor comparison ad
Depending on which attribution model you use, any one of these touchpoints could receive all, none, or some of the credit for the final sale. This directly impacts how you perceive campaign performance and where you allocate future budget.
In fact, according to Google’s own research, businesses that switch from last-click to data-driven attribution models typically see a**6-8% increase in conversions**at the same cost—purely from having a more accurate understanding of what’s working.
This isn’t just an academic exercise—it’s about allocating your marketing budget where it will genuinely deliver the best returns.
## Attribution Models Compared: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Best Use Cases
Let’s examine the five primary attribution models available in most platforms today:
### Last-Click Attribution
This model gives 100% of the conversion credit to the final touchpoint before purchase.**Strengths:**- Simple to understand and implement
- Clear, direct connection between the credited action and conversion
- Works well for short sales cycles or immediate-need purchases**Weaknesses:**- Ignores all previous touchpoints that built awareness and consideration
- Disproportionately values bottom-funnel activities
- May lead to underinvestment in critical awareness campaigns**Best for:**Businesses with simple, single-session purchase journeys (e.g., emergency services, simple e-commerce products) or those focusing primarily on direct response campaigns.
### First-Click Attribution
This model assigns 100% of the conversion credit to the first touchpoint in the customer journey.**Strengths:**- Recognizes the crucial role of discovery and awareness
- Values new customer acquisition channels
- Helps identify effective top-of-funnel activities**Weaknesses:**- Ignores all subsequent touchpoints that drive the conversion forward
- Overvalues initial awareness at the expense of consideration and decision activities
- Doesn’t reflect the complexity of most modern purchase journeys**Best for:**Businesses focused heavily on brand-building, expanding into new markets, or with very long consideration cycles where initial awareness is particularly valuable.
### Linear Attribution
This model distributes conversion credit equally across all touchpoints in the customer journey.**Strengths:**- Acknowledges every interaction’s contribution
- Simple to understand while being more sophisticated than single-touch models
- Eliminates extremes of all-or-nothing credit**Weaknesses:**- Treats all touchpoints as equally valuable, which rarely reflects reality
- Doesn’t account for timing or relevance differences between interactions
- Can dilute the perceived impact of truly influential touchpoints**Best for:**Businesses with moderately complex purchase journeys where multiple touchpoints genuinely contribute relatively equally, or as a starting point when transitioning away from single-touch models.
### Time Decay Attribution
This model gives more credit to touchpoints closer to conversion, with credit diminishing the further back in time you go.**Strengths:**- Recognizes recency as a factor in purchase influence
- Balances recognition of awareness while prioritizing conversion activities
- More accurately reflects how consumer decision-making typically works**Weaknesses:**- May undervalue critical initial touchpoints in longer sales cycles
- Requires configuration of the time-decay parameter
- Uses time as a proxy for influence, which isn’t always accurate**Best for:**Businesses with time-sensitive offerings, promotions, or seasonal products, and those with purchase journeys spanning multiple days or weeks rather than months.
### Position-Based (U-Shaped) Attribution
This model typically gives 40% credit each to the first and last touchpoints, with the remaining 20% distributed among middle interactions.**Strengths:**- Balances recognition of both discovery and conversion activities
- Acknowledges the special importance of first impression and final decision
- Still gives some credit to nurturing touchpoints**Weaknesses:**- The 40/20/40 split is somewhat arbitrary and may not reflect reality
- Middle touchpoints may be more influential than the model suggests
- Doesn’t account for varying importance among middle interactions**Best for:**Businesses with clear awareness and conversion stages, particularly those with defined nurturing sequences between initial discovery and final purchase.
### Data-Driven Attribution
This model uses machine learning to analyze your specific conversion patterns and assign credit based on the actual impact of touchpoints in your unique customer journeys.**Strengths:**- Customized to your actual business data and customer behavior
- Continuously adapts as patterns change
- Based on statistical modeling rather than arbitrary rules
- Considers both converting and non-converting paths for more accurate modeling**Weaknesses:**- Requires significant conversion volume to be effective (typically 3,000+ conversions per month)
- Functions as a “black box” with limited visibility into credit assignment logic
- May not have enough historical data for new campaigns or businesses**Best for:**Established businesses with substantial conversion volume and complex customer journeys spanning multiple channels and campaigns.
## Selecting the Right Model: A Business-Driven Framework
Rather than viewing attribution as a one-size-fits-all solution, consider these key factors to determine which model best serves your specific business needs:
### Sales Cycle Length**Short cycle (same-day decisions):**Last-click or position-based attribution often works well, as the decision journey is compressed.**Watch this video about [ppc attribution](https://fourdots.com/blog/tag/ppc-attribution) models comparison business guide:***Video: Understand the Google Ads Attribution Model | Complete Beginners Guide | iKnowPPC***Medium cycle (days to weeks):**Time decay or position-based models better capture the nurturing process while still valuing closing touchpoints.**Long cycle (months or more):**First-click weighted models or data-driven attribution help recognize the critical role of initial awareness, especially for complex B2B sales.
### Business Model and Industry**E-commerce (consumer goods):**Time decay often works well, as recency typically correlates with purchase intent for everyday products.**B2B services:**Position-based models balance the importance of discovery with final decision-making in complex sales involving multiple stakeholders.**Lead generation:**First-click or position-based models help value early touchpoints that initiate the lead funnel.**Subscription businesses:**Data-driven or position-based models best reflect the nuanced journey to initial signup.
### Marketing Channel Mix**Heavily [search](https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764)-focused:**Last-click may suffice if search is capturing already-developed intent.**Display and video heavy:**First-click or linear models better recognize the awareness contribution of these channels.**Multi-channel strategy:**Data-driven or position-based models help understand cross-channel effects.
### Primary Business Goals**New customer acquisition:**First-click or position-based attribution values channels that bring new prospects into the funnel.**Maximizing ROI/ROAS:**Data-driven or time decay models typically provide the most accurate understanding of revenue-generating touchpoints.**Brand building:**First-click or linear models recognize upper-funnel activities that may not immediately convert.
For a more detailed analysis of which attribution model aligns with your specific business needs, the [Four Dots PPC ROI Maximization Guide](https://fourdots.com/ppc-roi-maximization-guide) offers comprehensive guidance tailored to different business types and goals.
## Implementation Challenges in Today’s Privacy-First World
Selecting the right model is only half the battle—implementing effective attribution has become increasingly challenging due to:
-**Third-party cookie deprecation:**With Chrome finally phasing out third-party cookies, cross-site tracking faces significant limitations
-**Privacy regulations:**GDPR, CCPA, and other regulations impose consent requirements that can reduce trackable user journeys
-**Walled gardens:**Major platforms like Facebook and Amazon limit data sharing, creating attribution silos
-**Apple’s privacy changes:**App Tracking Transparency and other iOS features significantly impact mobile attribution
However, there are effective solutions to maintain attribution accuracy despite these challenges:
### Practical Solutions
1.**Implement server-side tracking:**Reduces reliance on cookies while maintaining conversion accuracy
2.**Adopt first-party data strategies:**Build direct relationships with users to maintain trackability
3.**Use Google’s enhanced conversions:**Leverage hashed user data to improve cross-device attribution
4.**Implement conversion modeling:**Use machine learning to estimate conversions when direct tracking isn’t possible
5.**Consider incrementality testing:**Supplement attribution with holdout tests to validate true incremental impact
The key is creating a resilient attribution system that can adapt to the changing privacy landscape while still providing actionable insights for optimization.
## Making the Transition: How to Change Attribution Models Effectively
If you’re considering switching attribution models, follow these steps to ensure a smooth transition:
1.**Run parallel reporting:**Maintain your current model while testing the new one to understand differences
2.**Establish new baselines:**Recognize that performance metrics will change—establish new benchmarks
3.**Educate stakeholders:**Prepare your team and leadership for shifts in perceived performance
4.**Adjust bidding strategies:**Your bid targets may need updating based on the new attribution picture
5.**Phase in changes:**Consider implementing changes to one campaign or channel first before full rollout
Many businesses find the most successful approach is a gradual shift from last-click to more sophisticated models as their marketing strategy matures. The short-term disruption is well worth the long-term benefit of more accurate performance measurement.
## The Future of PPC Attribution: Where We’re Heading
Attribution continues to evolve rapidly. Here’s what forward-thinking marketers should prepare for:
-**AI-powered attribution:**Machine learning models that combine marketing data with business outcomes for more accurate credit assignment
-**Cookieless attribution techniques:**New methodologies that maintain insights despite tracking limitations
-**Cross-platform unification:**Solutions that bridge walled gardens for a more complete customer journey view
-**Increased focus on incrementality:**Balancing attribution with experimentation to understand true impact
The most successful businesses will combine multiple measurement approaches rather than relying on a single attribution model—creating a comprehensive measurement framework that adapts to both business needs and privacy constraints.
## Conclusion: Moving Beyond the Model to Business Impact
Ultimately, attribution models are tools to help you understand marketing performance and make better decisions—they’re means to an end, not the end itself.
The right attribution model for your business will:
- Accurately reflect your unique customer journey
- Provide actionable insights for campaign optimization
- Adapt to the changing digital privacy landscape
- Support your specific business goals and KPIs
By approaching attribution with a business-first mindset rather than a purely technical one, you’ll extract maximum value from your PPC investments and maintain a competitive edge in increasingly complex digital ecosystems.
Ready to take a deeper dive into optimizing your PPC ROI? Explore our comprehensive [PPC ROI Maximization Guide](https://fourdots.com/ppc-roi-maximization-guide) for advanced strategies that go beyond attribution to ensure every dollar of your ad spend delivers maximum impact.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### Can I use different attribution models for different campaigns?
Yes, many advanced advertisers apply different models to different campaign types. For example, you might use first-click for brand awareness campaigns while using time decay for promotional campaigns. Just ensure you maintain clear segmentation and documentation of your approach.
### How often should I review my attribution model?
Review your attribution strategy quarterly and whenever there are significant changes to your business model, target audience, or channel mix. The right model today may not be the right model six months from now as your marketing strategies evolve.
### What’s the minimum conversion volume needed for data-driven attribution?
While Google officially recommends 3,000 ad interactions and 300 conversions within 30 days, meaningful patterns can sometimes be detected with as few as 1,000 interactions and 100 conversions. Below this threshold, rule-based models like position-based or time decay are generally more reliable.
### How do I handle attribution across multiple platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.)?
Consider using dedicated attribution platforms that integrate with multiple ad networks, implementing consistent UTM parameters, and leveraging Google Analytics 4’s cross-platform capabilities. For more advanced solutions, explore [our PPC management packages](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) that include multi-platform attribution solutions.
### Does attribution model selection impact automated bidding strategies?
Yes, significantly. Your attribution model directly influences how conversion value is assigned, which in turn affects how automated bidding algorithms optimize your bids. Always review and potentially adjust your bidding strategies when changing attribution models.
---
## Posts: 5 Signs Your Agency Needs a White Label SEO Partner in 2025
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213.md)
**Published:** 2025-05-03
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** White Label SEO
**Tags:** agency growth, Agency Scaling, Business Development, SEO Partnerships, White Label Services
**Summary:** Struggling to scale your agency's SEO offerings? Discover the 5 clear signs it's time to consider a white label SEO partnership to expand capabilities and increase revenue.
### Content
Picture this: Your digital agency is thriving with web design and paid advertising clients, but increasingly, you’re hearing the same question during sales calls: “And what about SEO?” You’ve been improvising or referring clients elsewhere, but with each referral, you watch potential revenue walk out the door. Meanwhile, your competitors are promoting themselves as “full-service digital partners” with comprehensive SEO offerings.
If this scenario feels familiar, you’re not alone. According to a 2024 Agency Growth Report by Promethean Research,**76% of digital agencies now identify SEO as an essential service offering**, up from 62% just two years ago. Yet many agencies struggle to develop and scale this capability effectively.
White label SEO partnerships offer a strategic solution, allowing your agency to deliver expert-level SEO services under your own brand while a specialized partner handles the implementation behind the scenes. But how do you know when it’s the right time to pursue this approach? Based on our decade of experience working with hundreds of agency partners, we’ve identified five clear signs that indicate your agency would benefit from a [white label SEO partnership](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services).
## 1. Your Team Is Stretched Too Thin
The first and most obvious sign is when your current team is consistently operating at or beyond capacity. This resource constraint typically manifests in several ways:
- Team members are regularly working overtime to complete client deliverables
- Project timelines are slipping despite everyone’s best efforts
- Quality control issues are emerging as people rush to meet deadlines
- Your agency is turning down new business opportunities due to bandwidth limitations
- Client communication is suffering as account managers juggle too many responsibilities
According to a 2024 Digital Agency Survey, the average agency employee is already handling 4.3 clients simultaneously, with account managers often juggling 6-8 client relationships. Adding [comprehensive SEO services](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services)—which typically require 15-20 hours per client monthly for proper execution—can push your team beyond sustainable limits.**Self-assessment question:**In the past month, has your team had to decline opportunities, compromise on quality, or work significant overtime to meet client demands?
A white label SEO partnership addresses this challenge by effectively extending your team without the overhead of hiring, training, and managing additional staff. This model provides on-demand access to SEO specialists who work as an extension of your team, allowing you to scale service delivery up or down based on client needs without straining your core resources.
As Jake Thompson, Operations Director at Elevate Digital, explains: “Before partnering with a white label provider, we were constantly in a feast-or-famine cycle with our SEO offers. We’d either be turning away business or scrambling to deliver with insufficient resources. Our white label partnership gave us the flexibility to grow without the operational stress.”
## 2. You Lack Specialized SEO Expertise
The second sign appears when your agency faces specific expertise gaps in specialized SEO areas. While many agencies have team members with general SEO knowledge, [today’s search landscape demands specialized expertise](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-meets-seo-11801) in multiple disciplines:
-**Technical SEO:**Core Web Vitals optimization, JavaScript rendering, schema implementation, mobile optimization
-**Local SEO:**Google Business Profile management, local citation building, review management, local-specific algorithms
-**E-commerce SEO:**Product page optimization, category architecture, inventory management issues
-**International SEO:**hreflang implementation, geo-targeting, multilingual content
-**Content Strategy:**Topic clustering, search intent mapping, content gap analysis
-**Link Building:**Outreach campaigns, digital PR, link vetting, anchor text distribution
Each of these specializations requires distinct skills, tools, and experience. According to BrightEdge’s 2024 SEO Skills Report, it now takes a team of 3-5 specialized professionals to deliver comprehensive SEO services, compared to just 1-2 generalists five years ago.**Self-assessment questions:**Can your team confidently handle technical site audits, create comprehensive keyword strategies, build quality backlinks, and optimize for local search? Do you have specialists in each key SEO discipline?
White label partnerships give you immediate access to specialists across all SEO disciplines without the lengthy and expensive process of building that expertise in-house. This is particularly valuable for specialized client needs like [region-specific SEO strategies](https://fourdots.com/australia-white-label-seo-guide) or industry-specific optimization approaches.
## 3. Clients Are Requesting Services You Can’t Deliver
Perhaps the most telling sign is when your existing clients are directly asking for SEO services that you currently can’t provide or are providing at a basic level that doesn’t meet their growing needs.
Recent industry research reveals a concerning trend:**agencies that don’t offer comprehensive SEO services face a 42% higher client churn rate**than full-service agencies. This happens because:
- Clients prefer to consolidate their digital marketing with a single provider
- Lacking SEO forces clients to manage multiple agency relationships
- Competitors actively target your clients with comprehensive service packages
- Search performance increasingly impacts other digital marketing KPIs
When clients need to look elsewhere for SEO expertise, it not only costs you potential revenue but also creates vulnerability in your client relationships. Each outside vendor your client works with represents a potential threat to your agency’s position.**Self-assessment question:**In the past quarter, how many clients have asked about SEO services that you either couldn’t provide or delivered in a limited capacity?
A white label SEO partnership enables you to confidently say “yes” to client requests for comprehensive SEO services. Your clients get the expertise they need while maintaining a single relationship with your agency, enhancing client retention and lifetime value.
## 4. You’re Leaving Revenue on the Table
The fourth sign is financial: you’re consistently missing revenue opportunities by not offering comprehensive SEO services or by referring SEO business elsewhere.
Consider this simple calculation to estimate your opportunity cost:
| Metric | Example Calculation | Your Agency |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Monthly SEO inquiries received | 5 | |
| Average monthly SEO retainer value | $2,500 | |
| Conversion rate | 30% | |
| Monthly revenue opportunity | 5 × $2,500 × 30% = $3,750 | |
| Annual revenue opportunity | $3,750 × 12 = $45,000 | |
| Average client retention (years) | 1.5 | |
| Lifetime revenue opportunity | $45,000 × 1.5 = $67,500 | |
Beyond direct SEO revenue, there’s also the cross-selling potential to consider. Industry benchmarks show that clients purchasing multiple services have:
- 58% higher retention rates than single-service clients
- 37% higher average revenue per account
- 24% lower acquisition cost as a percentage of revenue**Self-assessment question:**How much potential revenue are you currently losing by not offering comprehensive SEO services or by referring these services elsewhere?**Watch this video about agency white label SEO partnership benefits:**Video: Earn $$$ With White Label SEO Partnership (Without Doing Any Work)
White label SEO partnerships typically operate on a wholesale pricing model, allowing agencies to maintain margins of 30-50% on SEO services. This creates a significantly more profitable arrangement than referral fees, which typically range from 10-20% of service value.
## 5. Competitors Are Offering More Comprehensive Services
The final sign appears in your competitive landscape: rival agencies are marketing themselves as full-service solutions while your agency remains limited in its service offerings.
According to a 2024 agency landscape analysis, 82% of growing digital agencies now offer SEO as a core service, putting specialty shops and design-focused agencies at a competitive disadvantage. This competitive pressure emerges in several ways:
- Prospects choosing competitors that offer comprehensive solutions
- Competitors approaching your clients with integrated service packages
- Your agency being positioned as a “specialist” rather than a strategic partner
- Decreased consideration for larger projects requiring multiple disciplines
The SEO service gap becomes particularly problematic in competitive RFP processes where service breadth is a key evaluation criterion. Agencies able to address all digital marketing needs within a single proposal hold a significant advantage.**Self-assessment question:**Have you lost potential clients to competitors offering more comprehensive service packages that include SEO?
White label partnerships allow you to compete effectively with larger, full-service agencies without the substantial investment required to build comprehensive SEO capabilities from scratch. This levels the playing field, enabling your agency to win business based on your unique strengths and client approach rather than losing opportunities due to service limitations.
## Choosing the Right White Label SEO Partner
If you’ve identified with several of the signs above, it’s likely time to explore a white label SEO partnership. However, not all white label providers are created equal. When evaluating potential partners, consider these critical factors:
-**Proven agency experience:**Look for partners with a track record of working specifically with agencies like yours
-**Comprehensive services:**Ensure they offer the full spectrum of SEO services your clients need
-**Transparent reporting:**Verify they provide white-labeled reports that clearly demonstrate value
-**Communication protocols:**Establish clear processes for strategy input and client-facing interactions
-**Scalability:**Confirm they can grow with your agency as client demand increases
-**Cultural fit:**Assess whether their approach aligns with your agency’s values and client promises
The most successful agency-partner relationships function as true extensions of your team, with seamless communication and aligned objectives. The white label provider should feel like a specialized department within your agency rather than an external vendor.
According to agency experience data, the average implementation timeline for a white label SEO partnership is 2-4 weeks, with most agencies seeing positive ROI within the first quarter of implementation. This makes white label partnerships one of the fastest paths to service expansion compared to hiring and training internal teams.
## Conclusion
As client expectations continue to evolve and the digital marketing landscape becomes increasingly competitive, agencies must adapt their service offerings to remain relevant and valuable. The five signs outlined above—team bandwidth limitations, expertise gaps, client demand, revenue leakage, and competitive disadvantage—are clear indicators that your [agency could benefit from a white label](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) SEO partnership.
This strategic approach allows you to expand your service offerings, satisfy client demands, increase revenue, and compete more effectively, all without the substantial investment and operational complexity of building an in-house SEO team from scratch.
Ready to explore how a white label SEO partnership could transform your agency in 2025? [Learn more about our white label SEO services](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) designed specifically for digital agencies looking to expand their service offerings without the overhead of building an in-house team.
### Frequently Asked Questions
#### How quickly can we start offering SEO services through a white label partnership?
Most agencies can begin offering [white label SEO services](https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools) within 2-4 weeks of partnership initiation. This includes setting up communication channels, establishing reporting templates, and defining service packages.
#### Will clients know we’re using a white label partner?
No, a true white label partnership remains invisible to your clients. All deliverables, reports, and communications are branded with your agency’s name and visual identity. The white label provider operates as a behind-the-scenes extension of your team.
#### What profit margins can we expect from white label SEO services?
While margins vary based on your pricing strategy, most agencies achieve 30-50% profit margins on white label SEO services, making them comparable to or better than other agency service offerings.
#### Can we offer specialized SEO services for specific industries or regions?
Yes, reputable white label partners can customize SEO strategies for specific industries or regions, allowing you to offer specialized services to clients in verticals like healthcare, legal, e-commerce, or geographical markets like [Australia](https://fourdots.com/australia-white-label-seo-guide) or other regions with unique search landscapes.
---
## Posts: How to Filter Spam Links (List Provided) in Ahrefs Using "Best Links" Feature - Update March 2026
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059.md)
**Published:** 2025-03-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-16
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** ahrefs best links, ahrefs spam links, ahrefs spam score, link building, spam links
**Summary:** Click to get my list of 2963 spam domains that clutter Ahrefs backlink reports. I created this filter during a late-night analysis session when I got tired of seeing fake referring domains. This solution takes 1 minute to set up - just copy my list, paste it into Ahrefs' "Best Links" filter, and instantly get cleaner, more accurate backlink data. No more wading through automatic redirects and link spam when analyzing websites.
### Content
*The list was updated on March 15, 2025.**Current number of spam domains 3.192 total*.
### Summary
- [The Irritating Spam Backlink Problem We All Face](#aioseo-the-irritating-spam-backlink-problem-we-all-face)
- [The “Best Links” Filter Solution](#aioseo-the-best-links-filter-solution)
- [The Setup Process](#aioseo-the-setup-process)
[3.192 Spam Domains For Filtering via Ahrefs Best Links Feature](#aioseo-2963-spam-domains-for-filtering-via-ahrefs-best-links-feature)[Filter Spam Links in Ahrefs: Quick Setup Summary](#aioseo-quick-setup-summary)[But Wait – Does Ahrefs Actually Have The Spam Score?](#aioseo-but-wait-does-ahrefs-actually-have-a-spam-score)
- [How Spam Scoring Actually Works](#aioseo-how-spam-scoring-actually-works)
- [A Tool That Actually Calculates Spam](#aioseo-a-tool-that-actually-calculates-spam)
- [Coming in 3 weeks: Link Value (including Spam) Analyzer](#aioseo-coming-soon-public-link-value-analyzer)
## The Irritating Spam Backlink Problem We All Face
If you use Ahrefs for [backlink analysis](https://fourdots.com/backlink-analysis-and-risk-assessment), you’ve likely encountered this frustrating scenario: You open Site Explorer for a domain, see it has 40 referring domains and 90 backlinks, but when you click through, you discover most are garbage links from spammy sites that have crawled the entire internet.
This has been a constant frustration for years. Analyzing backlink profiles usually means sorting through worthless link spam that bloats Ahrefs Site Explorer metrics. The reason why both fresh new websites, as well as domains, expired a couple of years ago:
- Auto-redirect to backlink sellers
- Mass-link to boost their own Ahrefs DR
- Create a redirect to “Instant DR boost” websites
- Generate automated links to every new domain they find
- A link towards affiliate pages maliciously placed on analyzed websites
The result is a completely unrealistic picture of a site’s backlink profile, making proper analysis difficult and time-consuming.
## The “Best Links” Filter Solution
During one sleepless night, I decided to tackle this problem. I knew Ahrefs had a “Show me only best links” feature, but the default settings weren’t flexible enough. With just a small adjustment, [good links](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) were getting filtered out along with the bad.
I manually collected as many spam domains as I could find – ones that consistently appeared across different site profiles and added zero value. My goal was to create a custom filter that would show only the links that actually matter.
## Creating a Custom Spam Filter in Ahrefs
The solution combines thorough filtering with an elegant implementation:
1. I compiled a list of known spam domains that regularly appear in backlink profiles
2. Created a custom filter using Ahrefs’ “Show only best links” feature
3. Pasted my domain exclusion list directly into the filter settings
4. Saved it as my default view for all Site Explorer searches
This approach takes about a minute to set up but saves hours of frustration later. Unlike creating a disavow file, this is just for your analysis – it doesn’t affect how Google views these links and is reversible with 2 clicks.
## The Setup Process
Here’s how to implement this yourself:
1. In Ahrefs Site Explorer, click on the “Best links” button
2. When the filter opens, look for the text box where you can exclude domains
3. Copy and paste your list of spam domains (shared below)
4. Save the filter and select “Always show best links first”
Now every time you open Site Explorer, your filter is automatically applied. If you want to see the full backlinks profile, you can toggle the filter off with one click.
## The Results: Cleaner Data for Analysis
The difference is significant. Instead of wading through pages of worthless links, I now see a much cleaner, more realistic view of backlink profiles. What used to show as “40 referring domains” might now display as “8 quality referring domains” – but at least those 8 are actually relevant.
This small change has literally improved the quality of my life for at least 1 to 2% :)
### Building a Better Filter Together
I’ve published my current list of spam domains on this page for you to use. I’ll update it when I spot new batches of spam backlinks. **Important note**: Being on this list doesn’t mean a site is “bad” in Google’s eyes. This isn’t a disavow list – it’s simply domains I want to filter out of my analysis view for clarity. No site will be harmed by appearing on this list.
## 3.192 Spam Domains For Filtering via Ahrefs Best Links Feature
## Filter Spam Links in Ahrefs: Quick Setup Summary
1. Copy the domain list below
2. Open Ahrefs Site Explorer
3. Click “Best links”
4. Paste the list in the exclusion box
5. Save and set “Always show best links first”
No need to activate additional filters, as they might remove links you actually want to see. This simple setup is enough to clean up your view dramatically.
What spam domains would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments, and let’s keep building this resource together.
## But Wait – Does Ahrefs Actually Have**The**Spam Score?
Here’s something that trips up a lot of SEO professionals:**Ahrefs doesn’t have a spam score.**If you’ve landed on this article searching for “**[Ahrefs spam score](https://fourdots.com/careers/technical-seo-specialist-job)**” or “how to check spam score in Ahrefs,” you’ve probably discovered this the frustrating way. Ahrefs has no built-in spam scoring system. The “Best Links” filter we covered above doesn’t calculate spam – it excludes domains you’ve manually flagged or that appear on pre-defined lists.
There’s a critical difference:**What Ahrefs can do:**Filter out domains you already know are spammy. You provide the list. It hides them from view.**What Ahrefs cannot do:**Look at an unknown domain and calculate whether it’s likely to be spam based on its characteristics.
This matters when you’re evaluating link opportunities. Finding a backlink from a DR 45 site doesn’t tell you whether that domain has all the hallmarks of a link farm. Ahrefs will show you the DR. It won’t warn you that the site has 47 external links in the navigation, runs on a .info TLD, lacks any contact page, and has anchor texts like “casino” and “credit cards” plastered across the homepage.
### How Spam Scoring Actually Works
Spam scoring requires analyzing multiple signals simultaneously and weighting them against each other. The approach involves checking factors like:
-**TLD patterns**– certain extensions (.info, .mobi, .cc, .tw) correlate with higher spam rates
-**On-page signals**– excessive ad blocks, missing contact pages, suspicious anchor texts
-**Domain structure**– excessive hyphens, numbers in domain name, unusually long URLs
-**Link profile anomalies**– unnatural ratios between referring pages and referring domains
-**Technical indicators**– cloaked links, sponsored content disclosure, indexation issues
-**Metric thresholds**– extremely low DR combined with zero organic traffic
The value of spam scoring isn’t just identifying obvious junk. It’s catching the 37% of domains with DR above 50 that have less than 100 monthly organic visits – the red flag pattern our link building research identified as the hallmark of PBN networks and link farms.
### A Tool That Actually Calculates Spam**A totally customizable spam calculation with adjustable mathematical values and variables*.*[**Base.me**](https://base.me), the link building management platform we built, includes a spam checker that evaluates 16 different factors. Unlike a static blocklist, it analyzes each domain against configurable thresholds and weights.
The algorithm checks:
|**Factor**|**What It Detects**|**Configurable?**|
| --- | --- | --- |
| Spammy TLD | .in, .cn, .info, .mobi, .ru, .cc, .il, .li, .tw | Yes – add/remove TLDs |
| External Navigation Links | Sitewide outbound links in navigation | Fixed signal |
| Ad Block Count | More than 5 ad placements | Yes – adjust threshold |
| Missing Contact Page | No contact/contact-us pages | Yes – page patterns |
| Numbers in Domain | Domains like “best123sites.com” | Fixed signal |
| Excessive Hyphens | more-than-two-hyphens.com | Yes – threshold |
| Domain Length | Unusually long domain names (>21 chars) | Yes – character limit |
| Missing Social Profiles | No linked social accounts | Fixed signal |
| External Homepage Links | More than 40 outbound links on homepage | Yes – threshold |
| Cloaked Links | Hidden redirect patterns | Fixed signal |
| Backlinks:Domain Ratio | Referring links 5:1 vs referring domains | Yes – ratio |
| Indexation Status | Google indexation issues | Fixed signal |
| Spam Anchor Texts | viagra, porn, cialis, casino, gambling terms | Yes – add keywords |
| Low DR Threshold | DR below minimum (default: 20) | Yes – minimum |
| Zero Traffic | No organic traffic | Yes – threshold |
| Sponsored Content | Disclosed paid placement patterns | Fixed signal |
Each factor has an importance slider. If you think domain age matters more than TLD pattern in your niche, adjust accordingly. The scoring adapts to your definition of spam.
[**Users create a free account**](https://base.me/pricing.html), add their existing backlinks or link opportunities/leads, and the system calculates spam scores automatically. This gives you the missing piece Ahrefs can’t provide: a calculated spam probability for domains you’ve never seen before.
### Coming in 3 weeks: Link Value (including Spam) Analyzer
We’re launching a public tool in early 2026 that goes beyond spam detection. The Link Value Analyzer will score domains across 12+ parameters including spam risk, traffic quality, price efficiency, and decay probability.
Think of it as a comprehensive link quality calculator – paste in a domain or backlink list, get back an actionable assessment. No account required for basic analysis.
We built this because our [**Link Building Health Research**](https://base.me/link-building-health-research.html) showed that 26% of paid links die within 12 months. That $200+ casino backlink? There’s a measurable probability it disappears before delivering real value. The analyzer will help you calculate whether a link opportunity is worth the price before you commit.
---
## Posts: Use SSL/HTTPS To Rank & Look Better on Google (Updated 2025)
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169.md)
**Published:** 2025-01-27
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** https, SEO Trends, SSL
**Summary:** Deciding whether to migrate to the HTTPS protocol has become a no-brainer. Back in 2017, with Google’s push for a more secure and performant web, which included some goodies such as search ranking boost for secure pages; we published a detailed, well-received guide on how to implement HTTPS on your website and why you would want to do that.
### Content
*Updated: January 2025*Deciding whether to migrate to the HTTPS protocol has become a no-brainer. Back in 2017, with Google’s push for a more secure and performant web, which included some goodies such as search ranking boost for secure pages; we published a detailed, well-received guide on how to implement HTTPS on your website and why you would want to do that.
Since the subject is of high importance in 2025 as well, we decided to revamp this post, updating it with recent trends, industry best practices, and the much-needed terminology clarifications, to present you with an exhaustive, all-encompassing guide to setting HTTPS for best SEO results.
Enjoy the read!
Table of contents:
- [Introduction](#intro)
- [What is SSL?](#what-is-ssl)
- [What is TLS?](#what-is-tls)
- [What is SSL/TLS Used For?](#what-is-ssltls-used-for)
- [How Safe is SSL/TLS Protocol?](#how-safe-is-ssltls-protocol)
[Cipher Suites](#cipher-suites)
[Major SSL/TLS Library Implementations](#major-ssltls-library-implementations)
[How to Get a Certificate?](#how-to-get-a-certificate)
- [Note on Self-signed Certificates](#note-on-self-signed-certificates)
- [About Certificate Authorities](#about-certificate-authorities)
[Which Certificate to Get?](#which-certificate-to-get)
- [What’s the Difference Between SSL Certificate Types?](#whats-the-difference-between-ssl-certificate-types)
[DV – Domain Validated SSL Certificates](#dv---domain-validated-ssl-certificates)
- [OV – Organization Validated SSL Certificates](#ov---organization-validated-ssl-certificates)
- [EV – Extended Validation SSL Certificates](#ev---extended-validation-ssl-certificates)
- [Wildcard SSL Certificates](#wildcard-ssl-certificates)
[Recommendation](#recommendation)
[How Does HTTPS Work?](#how-does-https-work)
[How to Get and Implement HTTPS Protocol?](#how-to-get-and-implement-https-protocol)
[What Are the Benefits of Using HTTPS?](#what-are-the-benefits-of-using-https)
- [1. Improved Brand Perception](#1-improved-brand-perception)
- [2. Improved Performance via HTTP/2](#2-improved-performance-via-http2)
- [3. Improved Security](#3-improved-security)
- [4. Improved Google Rankings](#4-improved-google-rankings)
[What Are the Drawbacks of Using HTTPS?](#what-are-the-drawbacks-of-using-https)
- [Content Duplication](#content-duplication)
- [Mixed Content](#mixed-content)
[Advanced Configuration & Additional Security Mechanisms](#advanced-configuration-additional-security-mechanisms)
- [HSTS – HTTP Strict Transport Security](#hsts---http-strict-transport-security)
- [HPKP – HTTP Public Key Pinning](#hpkp---http-public-key-pinning)
- [Expect-CT – Certificate Transparency](#expect-ct---certificate-transparency)
- [OCSP Stapling – Certificate Status Request Extension](#ocsp-stapling---certificate-status-request-extension)
[Encryption as the Future of the Web](#encryption-as-the-future-of-the-web)
[Public Interest, Outcry & Feedback](#public-interest-outcry-feedback)
[Introduction of GDPR](#introduction-of-gdpr)
[Conclusion](#conclusion)
##**Introduction**Right now, there’s a term salad thrown around by less tech-savvy people around this topic, causing some confusion and uncertainty with questionable use of terminology and vague recommendations. That’s why we first have to outline a clear and simple overview of the most important definitions. This way everyone knows what’s what, why do they need it, how to get it and how to implement it in production.
By the end of this article, you should be well versed not only with the meaning behind the terms SSL and HTTPS, why they’re important, how do they work, and how to implement them on your website; but we’ll also take a look at their significance in your overall digital marketing setup.
Without further ado, let’s encrypt… I mean, start (*you’ll get the pun later on*).
*##**What is SSL?****SSL**stands for**Secure Sockets Layer**and is a cryptographic protocol for establishing an encrypted connection between a client and a server (i.e. your visitor and your website*).
An important thing to understand is that**“SSL”**is the**legacy term**from the time when it was the only protocol of that kind on the web.
Nowadays, SSL as a protocol isn’t used much anymore (*or at least it shouldn’t be*) due to its age/weaknesses, which is why its successor**TLS**(***Transport Layer Security***) has taken over. Most of the time, when someone says “SSL”, they actually mean “TLS” without knowing it.
##**What is TLS?**Exactly like SSL, TLS is a cryptographic protocol. However, it’s a more recent and improved protocol that uses stronger encryption algorithms and, compared to SSL, offers unparalleled privacy and performance. Its recent version ([TLS 1.3](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning-resources/tls-1-3/)) is rapidly being adopted by a great number of security-minded web hosting and CDN companies. On the other hand, like with all big infrastructure changes (*e.g. IPv6 address space adoption*), the roll-out has been very slow and will take time to propagate worldwide.
The most significant change brought by TLS 1.3 is that establishing a secure connection will get faster and more secure than it is with the currently used 1.1 and 1.2 protocols.
##**What is SSL/TLS Used For?**The TLS protocol is most commonly used to encrypt connections to web and mail servers, but also to encrypt the connection between your smartphone and manufacturer servers when they’re searching for an update or syncing contact list, as well as when you’re using an e-banking app or endlessly swiping through Tinder and Instagram.
For instance, if you’ve ever configured an email client to receive Gmail or Outlook email, you probably noticed several port numbers to choose from:**TLS ports**(*for modern software*) and**SSL ports**(*for legacy software*) if the company has to support them. Chances are you’re already using TLS without knowing it. It’s also being used by a whole range of IoT devices such as IP cameras, refrigerators, thermostats, smart cars, and basically everything that requires a secure, encrypted connection to its HQ.
In the context of websites, TLS is used to provide a**secure**HTTP protocol (*hence the “S” in HTTPS*), which is basically a bi-directional data tunnel between two endpoints (*the website you’re visiting and the computer you’re browsing from*).
##**How Safe is SSL/TLS Protocol?**SSL/TLS is as safe as anything can be these days. The fact is that the security of your website depends on a number of factors that aren’t necessarily related to the protocol itself.
When someone wants to steal your personal information during an online transaction or communication, there are technical challenges involved. This is usually carried out by highly skilled individuals or groups, often state-sponsored and with budgets and resources of such magnitude that it all eventually boils down to the often-heard maxim: “*If someone wants to get you, they will*“. These kinds of attacks happened numerous times in the past, even to some of the most powerful companies in the world.
Terms such as**“BEAST”**,**“BREACH”**,**“CRIME”**,**“FREAK”**,**“Heartbleed”**,**“DROWN”**all have something in common in a web-related context. They are protocol vulnerabilities which got exploited and resulted in extensive damage to these companies and their users/customers. More detailed info on [SSL/TLS vulnerabilities available here](https://www.gracefulsecurity.com/tls-ssl-vulnerabilities/).
In the best-case scenario, privacy is at stake and the attacker will collect personal information such as names and addresses. Some of the worst-case scenarios include massive leaks of passwords, credit card details, business secrets and a plethora of other real-world impact data.
The bottom line is, certificates should be obtained from the most trustworthy authorities and kept secret, with read-only file system permissions so that only authorized and trusted personnel and applications have access to them.
The moment an unauthorized 3rd-party gets unrestricted access to your web server and its config files is when you’ll likely have to start worrying about much more serious problems than just the security of web traffic.
### Cipher Suites
Encryption strength is dictated by the**cipher suite**, a set of algorithms used by a web server/browser pairing that is, figuratively speaking, their mutual agreement on how to communicate with each other.
There are several groups of cipher suites:
- Modern compatibility
- Intermediate compatibility
- Old backward compatibility
These groups are meant to be used by system administrators and DevOps engineers to designate minimum application end-user compatibility. This allows them to decide, for example, whether or not to support old mobile devices that do not offer modern security features to their owners.
By opting for the modern cipher suite, only the latest and greatest clients will be able to communicate with the server. Mozilla maintains an excellent [resource for developers](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS) on this subject.
Their specifications for the three compatibility groups are (*the following web client versions and above*):
-**Modern:******Firefox 27, Chrome 30, IE 11 on Windows 7, Edge, Opera 17, Safari 9, Android 5.0, Java 8
-**Intermediate:******Firefox 1, Chrome 1, IE 7, Opera 5, Safari 1, Windows XP IE8, Android 2.3, Java 7
-**Old:******Windows XP IE6, Java 6
Another great resource for developers/system administrators is [Mozilla’s SSL config generator](https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generator/) that allows generating web server HTTPS configurations for specific versions and compatibility groups.
##**Major SSL/TLS Library Implementations**Currently, there are several different implementations of the SSL library (*set of reusable cryptography functions*) which are, to some degree, compatible and can be used as drop-in replacements for one another. These [different implementations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_TLS_implementations) are all created in an effort to clean up the code, tighten the security and/or provide additional features, depending on the project or their parent company’s goals.
-**OpenSSL**([project website](https://www.openssl.org/)) – The original open-source library managed by the community, used in the majority of software and hardware implementations. However, the majority of the above-mentioned vulnerabilities specifically apply to this version. Software such as OpenSSH and OpenVPN depend on it.
-**LibreSSL**([project website](https://www.libressl.org/)) – An alternative library forked from the original by the**OpenBSD**project with the aim to modernize the code-base, improve security, and apply best practice development processes. Compared to OpenSSL, it has considerably fewer vulnerabilities and has been gaining adoption within the tech and security community, as well as with some major players such as Apple, who use it as a default SSL/TLS library in MacOS, their operating system.
-**BoringSSL**([project website](https://opensource.google.com/projects/boringssl)) – Another alternative library, forked from the original one by Google for use in their projects. According to the project website, unlike the libraries listed above, it’s not intended for general use. There are ways of using it via operating system pre-built packages. BoringSSL is the default SSL/TLS library in Chrome/Chromium, Android, and other Google apps, while it is also used by some security-focused CDN vendors such as Cloudflare.
-**GnuTLS**([project website](https://www.gnutls.org/)) – Alternative library built to comply with the GPL license. Used in a bunch of open-source projects such as*GNOME*,*Exim*,*Wireshark*,*Emacs*,*CUPS,*and more.
##**How to Get a Certificate?**To be able to use the HTTPS protocol, one needs to acquire an X.509 certificate and key files from the trusted**Certificate Authority**(*CA*) organization by filling a**Certificate Signing Request**(*CSR*) which is a form where the applicant provides company/domain information as proof of identity.
After the CA organization has validated your identity, you will usually be provided with a ZIP archive via download or email, containing the files that are necessary to configure your web server.
There are numerous CAs out there (*Symantec, GoDaddy, GlobalSign, GeoTrust, DigiCert, Comodo*) but depending on your needs, a certificate can cost you money or be completely free.*We prefer and recommend [Let’s Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/), as it provides modern cryptography for free and can easily be automated and used in dynamic environments, during application containerization and migration to the cloud.
Note that the certificates provided by Let’s Encrypt last for 90 days, while those provided by commercial vendors last for a year or more. While this might look like a bit of a hassle, the practice actually serves several important purposes:
1. Shorter-lasting certificates reduce the attack vector from compromised keys and mis-issuance. Since their duration is shorter, there’s less time for the attacker to use the certificate/key combo and cause damage.
2. It encourages automation of certificate renewal as in dynamic and busy environments, system administrators can’t be expected to do this procedure manually anymore as it becomes a legacy workflow. When certificate renewal is automated, their short lifetime will no longer make them less convenient than longer-lasting ones as there’s no need for human involvement in the process apart from occasional infrastructure security audits.
When it was launched back in 2016 by the**Internet Security Research Group**(ISRG*), Let’s Encrypt was a breakthrough because it was the beginning of a more open (*and cheaper*) web, where quality certificates and cryptography didn’t need to be bought anymore, but simply asked for, and anyone could do it. Needless to say, this was a huge blow to the CA industry but great for individual webmasters and SMB’s who didn’t have to pay for web security any longer.
The best part is that the initiative is backed and sponsored by the most prominent companies in the world including the likes of Mozilla, Akamai, Cisco, EFF, Google, Facebook [and more](https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/).
In addition to this, an increasing number of web hosting companies bundle Let’s Encrypt-generated certificates for free with their own offers, so if you’re just starting your business or migrating to the other host, there’s a chance you won’t need to do anything more than click a button to acquire an automatically renewed certificate – basically just set it and forget it.
For those who aren’t so lucky, there’s a [bit more reading](https://letsencrypt.org/getting-started/) and clicking to do, but nothing serious.
#### Note on self-signed certificates:
In the past, when a developer needed to test an application via HTTPS protocol they would generate a certificate themselves, with the help of a couple of OpenSSL utility CLI commands. These are called**self-signed certificates**.
Self-signed certificates can provide you with the same level of encryption, security and privacy (*virtually making you your own CA*). However, unlike certificates obtained from services like Let’s Encrypt, self-signed certificates are not trusted by browsers and when you visit a page using one such certificate, the browser will throw a warning like this one:*While it still makes sense to use self-signed certificates during development and for non-critical stuff, the practice has generally been abandoned as free and trusted certificates exist thanks to organizations like Let’s Encrypt.
Certificates are easily generated with a little bit of command-line fiddling or via web services such as [SSL for Free](https://www.sslforfree.com/), which is basically just a front-end to the Let’s Encrypt service.
### About Certificate Authorities
What the whole story about self-signed certificates above means is that CA companies are being vetted by web browser vendors (Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc.*) and they can either be trusted or distrusted by these vendors and their browsers, which depends on several factors: (*credibility, quality and potentially even money*).
Recently, there was a case of Google [removing Chinese CAs StartCom and WoSign](https://security.googleblog.com/2017/07/final-removal-of-trust-in-wosign-and.html) from Chrome as a consequence of several incidents in which they failed to meet the high standards expected of a Certificate Authority. The result was that domains using certificates issued by these Chinese vendors started showing safety warnings to their visitors because their CA wasn’t recognized by the browser anymore.
Other popular browsers soon followed suit and as a result, StartCom’s business crashed overnight.*Considering all of the above, the reasonable conclusion is that Certificate Authorities are (somewhat) regulated by the browser vendors and, as a result, must maintain a pretty high level of operative standards if they want to be present in the browsers used by most of the Internet’s end users—an absolutely foundational requirement for maintaining their business. As to what constitutes “high-level” or “low-level” operative standards, one pretty clear indicator used to judge these two categories is whether or not the Certificate Authority issues the same certificate for more than one domain.
This indicates that if you possess the website shop.com and the certificate for that domain and I am able to obtain the same certificate for myshop.com, I could pretend to be your business and possibly harm users who confuse my shop with yours. That could hurt your brand and business.
For this reason, it is incredibly important for CAs to carry out business identity validation correctly and completely. Not only is this their primary and most difficult job, one that requires an inordinate amount of time and many more resources than one might guess, but it is also one whose components can be easily passed over and, as a result, whose overall value can be easily underestimated. The certificate itself, after all, is generated in one second with the click of a button.
## Which Certificate to Get?
When there’s a need for a company to communicate a high level of trust to its users/visitors, they’ll purchase an**Extended Validation**(EV*) certificate which displays a green browser address bar or text inside it to indicate that the company underwent rigorous identity verification and that the statement on who they are can be trusted.
EV certificate’s branding segment used to display the geolocation of the website along with the brand name in the browser’s address bar as in this example:*This changed ever since the [browsers stopped directly showing the EV certificate in the address bar](https://www.ssls.com/blog/why-the-green-bar-is-gone-for-good/). The trend decreased the website owners’ need for having an EV certificate in the first place (which caused the EV prices to drop) since the presence of an EV certificate isn’t that conspicuous any more. However, the EV-related information and the geolocation are still accessible by clicking on the padlock icon in the URL, as shown here:
Prices for EV certificates may go from $50 to even $300+, depending on the vendor, but note that today all**EV**,**OV**(Organization Validated*) and**DV**(*Domain Validated*) certificates in the majority of cases work the same way and offer the same amount of security in terms of encryption strength. For instance, Let’s Encrypt issues DV certificates.
### What’s the Difference Between SSL Certificate Types?
#### DV – Domain Validated SSL Certificates
This is the fastest and least costly solution to get as it requires the minimal amount of identity validation work done by the CA which boils down to verifying that the domain is owned by the person or entity listed on the domain’s WHOIS entry. According to vendors, it’s intended for small businesses, small-volume e-commerce stores, and general websites and blogs.
#### OV – Organization Validated SSL Certificates
Issuing this type of an SSL certificate is slightly more expensive and involves checking of online government databases or other publically accessible authority resources to validate the data provided by an individual or organization during CSR submission.
#### EV – Extended Validation SSL Certificates
This is the second most expensive and slowest way to obtain a solution. It involves thorough identity validation which in addition to the steps above, requires uploading existing company legal documents, bank statements and other details so that it can be proven that a genuine company is behind the certification request. Due to the pricing and requirements, this certificate type is aimed at major corporations, businesses and government entities so individuals who are not business owners can’t get it.
According to commercial CAs, reasons to purchase an EV certificate are:
- Increasing transaction conversion rates
- Lowering shopping cart abandonment
- Setting you apart from your competitors
- Showing customers you care about their security
- Protecting your brand from phishing schemes
Also important to know is that commercial CAs often offer what they call “**assurance warranty**” for their certificates which is a promise that they will compensate the end user with up to 2M in case that they get their credit card charged fraudulently by the holder of the certificate.
This is basically a reimbursement and proof that they do their identity validation job properly. Plenty of CAs claim that they never had any such warranty claim which should show how serious they perform the validation.
#### Wildcard SSL Certificates
This type of certificate is the most expensive one and, in addition to all the above-listed requirements and work done, it also involves identity and ownership validation of all subdomains that one wants to secure with the single certificate. This type of certificate is commonly used by large companies with 1 or more subdomains involved in their operation and they want to cover**www**,**webmail**and different language-targeted subdomains such as**fr.domain.com**,**de.domain.com,**etc.
### Recommendation
In a nutshell, if you’re running a big, international company that is under increased scrutiny and you resonate with the reasons to purchase the EV certificate above, do that. But if you’re an SMB or you’re running a small to a medium-size online store or a SaaS-based product website, you should be in pretty good hands with a Let’s Encrypt-issued DV certificate.**Latest Update:****The most recent update coming from Apple states that as of September 2020, all publicly trusted [TLS certificates need to last 398 days or less](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211025). This change affects only the certificates issued from the Root CAs preinstalled with iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
##**How Does HTTPS Work?**A greatly simplified interpretation of client/server communication over HTTPS would look something like this:
1. The client attempts a connection to the server.
2. The server sends a certificate to the client.
3. The client acknowledges that the certificate was signed by an organization it trusts and that this organization certifies that the certificate belongs to the server the client wants to communicate with securely.
4. Then the client generates a random key, encrypts it with the public key in the certificate, and sends it back to the server.
5. The server decrypts the key and uses the shared secret the server and client now have to secure further communications.
##**How to Get and Implement HTTPS Protocol?**There’s a variety of web servers and CMS’s in the wild and each of them is configured in a different way, but the core concept is pretty much the same for all of them:
1. Obtain the certificate and key files and place them in the permissions-restricted path on the server.
2. Edit the main web server or individual vhost configs to enable the SSL engine and specify paths to both the certificate and the key file.
3. Restart web server software to activate the changes.
4. Configure your CMS, if required, to use HTTPS schema and perform the find/replace operation on your database to change all HTTP schema URLs to HTTPS. Countless times before, we used the [WP Migrate DB](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-migrate-db/) WordPress plugin to achieve this successfully for our clients, so we recommend it.
5. Perform global 301 redirect rule(s) so that requests to an HTTP page go to the same page with HTTPS schema in its URL.
6. Create a new Google Search Console property for the website with HTTPS schema and adjust the Google Analytics configuration to contain the new website URL as well.
7. Test your pages using [Qualys SSL Labs tool](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/).
8. Profit!
Needless to say, perform a full website backup prior to this entire procedure, just in case.**Ideal configuration and setup test should look something like this (*when server IP is clicked, more connection information is revealed*):*Since listing plenty of web server software packages and their configurations here would make a topical salad out of this article, we’ll refrain from this and offer a link to one of CAs which did all this for you already. Please refer to DigiCert’s [SSL Certificate Installation](https://www.digicert.com/ssl-certificate-installation.htm) article containing the list of 96+ (at the time of this writing*) web servers and their SSL configuration instructions if you’re using some obscure, proprietary webserver software.
If you’re using modern, widely adopted solutions such as Nginx or Apache, we suggest checking the aforementioned [H5BP project’s Github repository](https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs) as those configurations are crowdsourced and tested for performance/compatibility/security by the community.*##**What Are the Benefits of Using HTTPS?**This is, most likely, the article section you’re here for. If you’re an online business owner, there are multiple benefits to using a secure protocol (HTTPS*) instead of the plain, old HTTP:
### 1. Improved Brand Perception
A couple of years ago, as a part of an initiative to make the web a safer place, the most popular web browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox started marking HTTP-only websites as insecure if they contained any text inputs such as login forms or credit card data fields.
Since October 2017, when you land on an HTTP-only page it displays an icon in the address bar which should get your attention that something is not right with the page/website. After you start entering text in any text input field on the page, the address bar changes and displays a “**Not secure**” label which should prevent you from continuing or at least raise your attention that an unsafe operation is in progress.*This works great in theory, but ask your aunt if she understands this UX or does she want to buy that new magical weight loss ebook so much that she doesn’t care for that small address bar glitch. What’s the worst that can happen, right?
When using HTTPS protocol, there’s a certain dose of credibility in your visitor’s eyes; trust that you know what you’re doing and that you respect their security and privacy. Since trust and credibility are important aspects of online shopping and the general [perception of a brand](https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/marketing-the-importance-of-brand-perception/), avoiding that “**Not secure**” label and instead showing green letters in the browser address bar can do great things for your conversion rate and sales.
When it comes to actual user perception of HTTPS as a security protocol, different reports show that internet users generally pay insufficient attention to online security despite the fact they express concerns about this issue.
When it comes to SSL/TLS, however, it could be assumed that an average user is not familiar with the technical jargon related to it, as [pointed out in a study](https://www.ccsl.carleton.ca/paper-archive/sobey-esorics-08.pdf) by researchers from both Carleton University*and*National Research Council*in Canada.
The study showed that people make little difference in terms of decision making between websites that use SSL and those that don’t. According to them, this is especially important for the Chrome browser, where little space is available for showing security cues.*On the other hand, when a proper trust badge is placed anywhere on a website, users feel more secure using their personal information on it. Some websites decide to place this badge in the footer section and especially on product pages, where users are required to leave their data and perform a transaction. Additionally, there has been a [study by ConversionXL Institute](https://conversionxl.com/research-study/trust-seals/) which tested how trusted these badges really are, and what their efficacy is.
Therefore, despite the fact that average internet users make little difference between**http://**and**https://**protocols, companies should consider using the latter to prevent data loss and gain users’ trust.
With people gradually becoming aware of online data security and privacy issues, business websites need to raise the standards in this respect. Coupled with better search rankings, SSL implementation obviously offers multiple benefits and should be at least considered by most modern companies.
### 2. Improved Performance via HTTP/2
The HTTP protocol is the core of the web and is a way for web browsers to communicate with web servers and display web pages. If you’ve been living under the rock for the last 5 years, you probably didn’t hear about HTTP/2 protocol which is a big upgrade of existing HTTP/1.1 in terms of features and performance. We [wrote about HTTP/2](https://fourdots.com/blog/http2-future-of-web-1630) around two years ago when it started becoming mainstream tech.
Some benefits over HTTP/1.x:
- Data compression of HTTP headers
- HTTP/2 Server Push
- Pipelining of requests
- Fixing the head-of-line blocking problem in HTTP 1.x
- Multiplexing multiple requests over a single TCP connection
All these features help to make HTTP/2 the best foundation for the future of the web-verse by making requests smaller, parallelized and better prioritized.**What does HTTP/2 have to do with HTTPS and ranking in Google you might ask?**As you probably know, web performance and great user experience are Google’s top priorities, that’s why they’re giving a ranking boost to websites which are fast by [making speed a ranking signal](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html).
The connection between HTTP/2 and HTTPS lies in the fact that HTTP/2 can’t be used without HTTPS (it requires it explicitly*) and that visiting the website on port 443 (*default HTTPS port*) triggers HTTP/2 connection when web server is configured to support it. These two are a match made in heaven as you’re getting a more secure and faster website your visitors, as well as Google, will love.
In order to get the most out of HTTP/2 and HTTPS, we recommend checking the [H5BP project](https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs) which offers configurations containing the industry’s best security and performance practices for the most popular web server software such as Nginx, Apache, Lighttpd, IIS and Node.
As for the old myth that HTTPS protocol is much slower than plain HTTP, it is, fortunately, not true anymore (*check*[*this*](https://istlsfastyet.com/)*and*[*this*](https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-expensive-is-crypto-anyway/)) as nowadays web hosting companies with servers younger than 2009 are equipped with modern CPU crypto instructions set (*AES-NI*) and dedicated hardware chips which perform just this one task.
In addition, modern web server software such as Nginx supports several encryption optimizations such as**session caching**and**keepalive timeout**which are speeding up these connection encryption performance-expensive operations and make the sub-second HTTPS page loading a possibility, so the statement that HTTPS is slow is not valid anymore.
####**HTTP/3**HTTP/3 builds on the concepts established by HTTP/2, and although it still isn’t widely used worldwide, HTTP/3 support has been recently added to Chrome and certain platforms have already started using it (like YouTube in the Chrome browser). [Third-generation HTTP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/3) hasn’t yet become the default standard protocol, it does have non-default support and can be enabled in Chrome and Firefox stable versions.
### 3. Improved Security
Since plain, old HTTP is a text-based protocol, it’s easy to intercept the traffic and literally read anything transmitted through it. By using HTTPS, which is a binary protocol, potential attackers can only see the artifacts and not the content of the request itself which means that transferred data is safe from prying eyes, unless they’re able to get a hold of the key and decrypt the traffic to snoop on.
### 4. Improved Google Rankings
Google’s**HTTPS Everywhere**initiative alone guarantees a [slight ranking boost](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html) for websites that offer HTTPS by default. Know in advance that this boost alone isn’t dramatic or, let alone, a silver bullet as people often try to represent it.
This ranking boost is what Google calls a “*very lightweight signal*” meaning that you’ll have a very, very small advantage over your competitors who don’t use HTTPS yet, and that implementing HTTPS alone most likely won’t push you to the top of search results as there are much more important signals, such as high-quality content and high-authority backlinks.
The most important thing to understand about the value of HTTPS for Google rankings is that**combining**the migration itself with the previously mentioned benefits which**also**guarantee improved rankings (*website speed from HTTP/2 –*[*especially on mobile*](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html)*, increased CTR from using HTTPS schema in URL – yes,*[*CTR is a ranking signal*](https://moz.com/blog/does-organic-ctr-impact-seo-rankings-new-data)) makes a combo which can result in a meaningful rankings improvement.
This is what is called a [holistic approach](https://searchengineland.com/way-successful-seo-take-holistic-approach-237787), a synergy of individual components that provides more value than each individual component alone.**HTTPS Everywhere**talk by [Ilya Grigorik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/igrigorik/) and [Pierre Far](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierrefar/) from Google I/O 2014 for those looking into migration to HTTPS. They are discussing some interesting aspects of the entire process as well as busting decade-old myths (*please disregard any mention of****SPDY****protocol as it was*[*deprecated*](https://blog.chromium.org/2016/02/transitioning-from-spdy-to-http2.html)*in 2016 in favor of the HTTP/2*).
Google has a dedicated ‘[Secure your site with HTTPS](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543)’ article in Search Console’s Help section which offers some best practices and points to some common pitfalls in the process. Additionally, their [Site Move](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049) help article has an FAQ covering some burning questions in regards to website migration to HTTPS and its benefits.
##**What Are the Drawbacks of Using HTTPS?**Drawbacks are not related to the protocol itself, rather to the complexity of implementation and possible outcomes. For example, the case that we see most often is that clients implement HTTPS protocol but completely omit the rest of the necessary procedures which should help Google understand the switch.
Implementing HTTPS without configuring precise 301 redirections and path changing so that only HTTPS URLs exist can lead to a multitude of issues, most impactful of which include:
### Content Duplication
Even though the impact of the content duplication is greatly exaggerated in the [SEO community in an effort to sell services](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) to the client, there are some merits to this claim. [Google states](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en) that content duplication can be both non-malicious and malicious, depending on the scope and intention behind the duplication.
By non-malicious duplicate content they consider:
- Regular forum pages that have stripped-down versions of themselves intended for mobile devices.
- E-commerce product page URLs with various sorting/filtering parameters
- Print-only page versions
By malicious duplicate content, they consider pages deliberately duplicated across different domains and subdomains in an effort to manipulate search engine rankings and get more traffic. This results in poor UX since the user ends up getting the same or similar content in search result pages and this causes frustration.
Even though Google claims that they do a good job of consolidating duplicate content so that its displaying is reduced to a minimum, I beg to differ, and believe that the job could have been done better.
For all of website owners who have both HTTP and HTTPS pages indexed, do not fear, you won’t be penalized for this because such a thing as a [duplicate content penalty doesn’t exist](https://searchengineland.com/myth-duplicate-content-penalty-259657), but if you want to provide the best possible experience to your potential visitors, consolidate HTTP and HTTPS site versions by performing global 301 redirections so that only URLs with the desired schema appear in search results.
As a bonus, the value from inbound links will continue to pour into a single page instead of being distributed to multiple. Some will say that redirections are bad because inbound link value is lost during redirection. This is an ages-old myth and Google confirmed that 301 redirects are transferring 100% of the value to the destination, so don’t fear this.
### Mixed Content
This one is a genuine issue. Plenty of websites that migrate forget to alter their static resource URLs (Javascript files, CSS sheets, web fonts, images, etc) so that all**http://**URLs are changed to**https://**schema. This is a problem because web browser security mechanisms are designed to block resources with “unsafe” (*http://*) URL on HTTPS pages.
This behavior may affect UX since the web page might not be displayed as intended, or is lacking features, or is completely unusable.
The mixed content issue is easily identifiable with a web browser on a single page but to find this issue site-wide, crawling software such as**Screaming Frog**is required.
To understand what a mixed content issue looks like, consider this screenshot:*Note the little, crossed shield icon at the right. When clicked, it displays this dialog:
Additionally, a detailed list of all blocked resources on the page can be seen in the Javascript Console of browser’s Developer Tools (press F12*):*This means that the webpage didn’t load fully and that certain resources are missing. Often, this is a benign missing web font or CSS file which does not affect functionality, but it might be a much more serious issue. For instance, when your lead generating event calendar, revenue-earning landing page, or the features for adding a product to the cart aren’t working because a crucial Javascript is blocked from loading.
It is essential that you try to detect and, if necessary, fix this problem after the migration is performed.
##**Advanced Configuration & Additional Security Mechanisms**In addition to SSL/TLS implementation, there are several optional HTTP headers that can be added to the webserver configuration in order to make connections and SSL/TLS implementation even stricter.
### HSTS – HTTP Strict Transport Security
This header tells browsers to cache the certificate for a designated period and to connect exclusively via HTTPS in the future. Use it if, and only if, you’re absolutely positive that you won’t be switching back to HTTP-only; as once instructed by it, the web browser won’t be able to load the HTTP-only version of the website until the time value entered in HTTP header configuration runs out (usually 6-12 months*).
In addition to the root domain, this header can be also configured to cover subdomains as well. Note that this particular configuration**might not be**what you want if you’re using HTTP-only subdomains for any purpose (*staging area, analytics, webmail, etc.*).
Additionally, domains using HSTS can be submitted to the [preload list](https://hstspreload.org/) which is a service for website inclusion into Google Chrome’s (*and some other major browsers*) hard-coded list of HTTPS-only websites, which web browser doesn’t even try to connect to over plain HTTP.
For implementation details consult these instructions for [Nginx](https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs-nginx/blob/master/h5bp/security/strict-transport-security.conf) and [Apache](https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/master/dist/.htaccess?ts=2#L569).
### HPKP – HTTP Public Key Pinning
Note that this is the legacy header and we are mentioning it purely for the contextual value of the next header in this list.
Support for HPKP [was deprecated](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/he9tr7p3rZ8) in Google Chrome back in May 2018 due to usability issues which render this security mechanism difficult to adopt and use by most.
Simplified, HPKP header was introduced to detect certificate public key change for a specific host/domain. This can happen in the case where the CA gets compromised (*or tricked, remember the previous StartCom and WoSign story?*) so that attacker is able to issue or obtain valid certificates for literally any domain.
By adding an HTTP header containing one or more**SHA-256**(*cryptographic hashing algorithm*) values of certificate public keys, a webmaster can limit the number of CAs that can issue certificates for their domain.
### Expect-CT – Certificate Transparency
This HTTP header is introduced and advocated by Google as a safer replacement for HPKP due to the flexibility it gives webmasters to recover from configuration errors which may render a website unusable in certain cases. Additionally, this is supposed to fix some of the structural flaws in the SSL certificate issuance system. More information on Expect-CT can be found on the [project’s official website](https://www.certificate-transparency.org/what-is-ct).
This mechanism allows us to monitor and audit SSL certificates almost in real-time and makes it possible to detect mistakenly/maliciously issued certificates and CAs gone rogue.
Expect-CT HTTP header is meant to be used in conjunction with external monitoring services such as [ReportURI](https://report-uri.com/) where security policy violations can be reported, observed and acted upon. For in-depth material on Expect-CT and implementation, please refer to Scott Helme’s (*security researcher and international speaker*) blog posts on the subject:
- [A New Security Header: Expect-CT](https://scotthelme.co.uk/a-new-security-header-expect-ct/)
- [Certificate Transparency, an Introduction](https://scotthelme.co.uk/certificate-transparency-an-introduction/)
To understand the seriousness of this initiative, at the 39th meeting of the**CA/Browser Forum**(a*group of CAs and web browser vendors who set industry guidelines and shape the industry*), Google had set October 2017 as a deadline for all CAs to log their certificate issuing if they want to continue being trusted by the Chrome. This should say enough on how committed Google is to web security.
### OCSP Stapling – Certificate Status Request Extension
OCSP is a way for a client to check the certificate revocation status. In the case where the web host gets compromised, an attacker is able to steal a certificate and impersonate the website/company by using the same certificate on their own website with similar domain name and branding, for instance, to trick visitors into thinking that they are dealing with a legitimate company and potentially inflict financial damage on them.
The web hosting company can replace the compromised certificate but this won’t stop an attacker from impersonating you as long as the certificate is still valid. This situation requires certificate revocation thus the certificate revocation check, or OCSP is introduced.
Implementation of the OCSP stapling is easy and boils down to adding several lines to webserver’s main configuration file ([Nginx](https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs-nginx/blob/master/h5bp/ssl/ocsp_stapling.conf), [Apache](https://www.digicert.com/ssl-support/apache-enable-ocsp-stapling-on-server.htm)).
This way, one of the overheads of using the SSL/TLS – the task of revocation status checking – is delegated to the webserver instead of to the client. This improved the connection performance as the client doesn’t need to check the Certificate Revocation List (**CRL**) on-the-fly anymore.
CRL is a list of revoked digital certificates by a certain CA and is a deprecated method of doing this check because it was responsible for adding the overhead of up to 1 second (*or even more depending on the situation*) to connection establishing which obviously affected the perceived performance of the website in your visitor’s eyes. OCSP is considered a great SSL/TLS connection performance enhancement.
##**Encryption as the Future of the Web**Google with their**HTTPS Everywhere initiative**said loud and clear that encryption and HTTPS are the future of the web, hence they instructed their crawlers to [check for HTTPS pages by default](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/12/indexing-https-pages-by-default.html). This means that if you have both HTTP and HTTPS pages but no 301 redirections in place – they’ll attempt to crawl both and offer an HTTPS page in search results under certain conditions:
- The page doesn’t contain insecure dependencies.
- The page isn’t blocked from crawling by robots.txt.
- The page doesn’t redirect users to or through an insecure HTTP page.
- The page doesn’t have a rel=”canonical” link to the HTTP page.
- The page doesn’t contain a noindex robots meta tag.
- The page doesn’t have internal links to HTTP URLs.
- The sitemaps lists the HTTPS URL or doesn’t list the HTTP version of the URL
- The server has a valid TLS certificate.
Some might say “Well, why not just leave it up to Google to manage crawling, indexation and ranking of the pages they want?”
Google automates plenty of stuff and this behavior often leads to crappy outcomes such as automatic rewriting of page’s title and meta description snippets, which often looks confusing and totally not what the website owner wants, so better do whatever you can yourself and leave as little as possible for Google to do on their own. That will ensure the best outcome for Google, visitors and ultimately for you as a business owner.
##**Public Interest, Outcry & Feedback**Now, to actually move to HTTPS, you may need to work with a trusted partner and typically pay a little extra to get the necessary security. For companies that are aware of the importance of protecting customers’ data, this should not be an issue and is only a logical step in the process of improving user experience. However, while most companies aren’t willing to compromise on security, the issue of the additional costs seems to be a justified concern for some smaller companies.
To those who brought about this issue on Twitter, John Mueller (*Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google*) replied with this comment:*“Though perhaps not the most actionable advice to give to a startup owner worried about the costs of shifting to HTTPS, Mueller’s answer implies the value of taking this step. **Namely, security is becoming a growing concern and everyone – from end-users to website owners – needs to work on this in order to create a safer web. After all, compensating on security may turn out to be costlier than getting an SSL certificate if a major data breach occurs.**Therefore, SSL represents a long-term data protection strategy and as such should be a focus for webmasters in the following years.”*While the wider use of HTTPS has some evident benefits for the future of the web, many website owners see the*“*imposed*”*transition as an unnecessary burden and extra cost.
It is true that a large number of websites do not have checkout pages or any other data collection forms, so they may not really need to spend extra to secure web traffic. For them, getting an SSL certificate is an additional cost and potentially a technical hurdle.
In relation to this, [Luanna Spinetti](https://www.linkedin.com/in/luanaspinetti/) collected influencer thoughts in order to discover whether there is considerable value in moving to HTTPS. Quite expectedly, the opinions varied with most respondents pointing to the general necessity for improving web security, while emphasizing the fact it’s up to individuals to determine whether this step would be worthwhile for their own website.
[Lukasz Zelezny](https://www.linkedin.com/in/seomanagerlondon/) of*zelezny.uk*notes:*“Do I think HTTPS is necessary? Not really unless you are asking your website’s visitors for confidential information or taking payments through your site. However, in the future it could mean the difference between a page ranking at number 1 or number 2 in search – this makes it necessary.”*From this perspective, it is clear that not all the websites need SSL at this moment. However, this is a general direction in which the SEO world moves and is certainly an important thing to consider as it has been an important ranking signal for quite some time now.
This is illustrated in the case of**The Washington Post**, which took months to redirect all their pages to their secure versions. In a story of the magazine’s [ten-month long transition to HTTPS](https://developer.washingtonpost.com/pb/blog/post/2015/12/10/moving-the-washington-post-to-https/), Will Van Vazer pointed out to all the challenges of the process, emphasizing the fact it was**worth it after all**.
For a publication as large as The Washington Post, it would be expected to face a set of challenges some smaller websites should not be concerned with at all. In fact, as John Mueller pointed out in relation to this undertaking, this only means that the transition to the HTTPS is not just a buzz, but actually an important step in ensuring the credibility of a website.
“*If it takes 10 months for a big site to move to HTTPS, you can assume they’re not just doing it to follow a fad. Moving to HTTPS is getting easier and easier, especially for smaller sites, but even then, there are details that you sometimes have to find solutions for along the way.*“
##**The Introduction & Importance of GDPR***On April 16, 2014, EU Parliament introduced new legislation called [General Data Protection Regulation](https://www.eugdpr.org/) (GDPR*) for which enforcement date started on 25 May 2018. The news hit the major media outlets hard and started causing businesses and management to reconsider their security approaches and procedures in order to avoid facing heavy fines (*weird eyes look at*[*Equifax*](https://www.wired.com/story/equifax-breach-no-excuse/)*and*[*Tinder*](https://www.wired.com/story/tinder-lack-of-encryption-lets-strangers-spy-on-swipes/)).
This relatively new law serves as a much-needed tool that should prevent some of the security breaches mentioned in this article and make the public familiar with them when they do occur [among other things](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/20/wtf-is-gdpr/). The purpose of this law is to make breached companies responsible in a much stricter way than before, because every company which stores and processes**EU citizen**private data (*pretty much all SaaS brands*) is required to acquire a new management staff role, either by direct employment or by using external consultant services.
The**Data Protection Officer**(*DPO*) should act as a person in charge of evangelizing data security and privacy best practices company-wide, along with performing security audits on the company’s assets in addition to informing the authorities on issues when they do occur.
The new legislation will force companies to pay special attention to security and privacy combo as a potentially huge problem these days, because failing to disclose and triage breaches will require companies to pay fines of**up to 4% of annual global turnover**or**€20 million**(*whichever is greater*).
This law perfectly covers the discussed SSL/TLS/HTTPS topic, as failure to disclose a data leakage on insecure websites and applications affects the companies in the described way, which is why those companies will probably have to additionally speed up secure protocol adoption, to the ultimate benefit of every Internet user.*
##**Conclusion**HTTPS is a great (despite being the only*) method of securing web traffic and providing visitors with much-needed privacy these days when cyber crimes such as credit card data and identity theft are on the rise. However, it is important to understand that implementing it has to cover more bases than plain certificate installation. There are crucial aspects to consider, which if unchecked may affect visitor UX, revenue, brand image and your business as a whole.
Although it is evidently a technical thing, setting up SSL on a website does not necessarily have to be that complex or expensive. CloudFlare, for example, has been giving [free certificates](https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/) to its consumers since late 2014 with the aim of encouraging wider adoption of HTTPS. Therefore, all website owners who think that the transition to HTTPS makes sense for their business can find easy and affordable ways to try it.
In addition to the SEO value, there are also different other reasons why SSL should be implemented. After all, getting a certificate for SEO reasons only is not what Google actually tried to encourage. Providing excellent user experience should be the primary motivation for webmasters to secure their website traffic.
The importance of using encryption on the web seems to have started making the headlines only after Google decided to treat it as a ranking signal. Nevertheless, its role in improving a business’ reputation has been vital even before it became one of the search ranking factors. Namely, this security practice may paint a better picture of a company or website, which helps in maintaining a stable online reputation.
In the end, you, as a web-services end-user, have some responsibility of your own. If you care about your privacy and security and want to be proactive rather than wait for a security breach to affect you in some terrible way, monitor your private data and their appearance on the web by using services such as [Have I Been Pwned](https://haveibeenpwned.com/). By entering your email address you can check whether services you’re using suffered a security breach and if your data has been stolen and published. If it has, do change your passwords, especially if you’re one of those who use the same password for multiple services.
Have you moved to HTTPS yet? As a webmaster or business owner, what do you see as the major challenge in this process?**Interested in migrating your website/app to the HTTPS to rank and look better on Google?**[Get in touch!](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-onsite-audits)
---
## Posts: How to Triple Organic Traffic & Revenue
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/triple-organic-traffic-and-revenue-in-2018-4427](https://fourdots.com/blog/triple-organic-traffic-and-revenue-in-2018-4427)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/triple-organic-traffic-and-revenue-in-2018-4427.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/triple-organic-traffic-and-revenue-in-2018-4427.md)
**Published:** 2024-09-24
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-17
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** eCommerce SEO, improve organic traffic, SEO case study
### Content
What kind of promises are you getting from your SEO services provider? Are they claiming to be able to [bring relevant targeted organic traffic](https://fantom.click/fantom-traffic/) to your site and improve your conversion rates and revenue, or are they just limiting themselves to improving your rankings for keywords they will choose themselves?
As much as we would like to condemn that way of thinking, we can’t really blame providers who are not confident enough to make precise revenue related predictions – but we will also never side with those who think their responsibility stops the second they create a link for you.
To show you these aren’t just empty words and that we can proudly stand behind our work, but much more importantly, to show everyone thinking of possibly hiring a full-stack digital marketing agency what exactly is it that they are entitled to expect; we have condensed our campaign for an Australian eCommerce business into a case study that we would like to share with you. While the study will give you a detailed overview of the general strategy we used to improve the client’s organic traffic, conversion rates and revenue; we also wanted to elaborate on specific tactics themselves, and that is the point of this post.
In other words, if you want to do SEO for yourself or for a client, or want to see the results you can expect from those doing SEO for you, you can use our case study to see**WHAT**can be done, while you can use this post to see**HOW**it should be done.
## Onboarding – the most important part of the customer journey
In order to be able to provide your client with a comprehensive service, one that will ensure that all the exposure in organic search that you’ve secured is not going to waste, you need to establish straightforward communication with them. This means being honest about what you might be able to do for them, as well as what it might cost them if the entire plan doesn’t work out quite as you’ve imagined.
It’s not always easy to form that kind of collaboration. Your client needs to be either well-versed in SEO, at least enough to know that [results take time and that nothing is certain](https://www.seo.com/blog/7-difficult-client-expectations-you-will-encounter-in-seo-and-how-to-fix-them/), or they need to trust that you know what you are doing and that you have their best interests at heart.
Unless you have a client who will understand why your onsite and link building efforts are still not bringing obvious benefits even months after they’ve been concluded, we can’t blame you for playing it safe and only promising what you know you can deliver; however, if someone is willing to lend you their trust and provide you with all the info you need to do your job correctly, there is so much more that you could do for them.
Aside from listening, the client has to be willing to talk as well. When you have the chance, before even beginning to draft a strategy, you should learn all that there is about their business, their target audience, plans for future expansion, their current competitors, the market they operate in, their budget constraints, metrics they want to focus on, and their ultimate ambition.
Once you gather this information and perform an initial audit of their existing online assets, you can determine if you might be able to do more for them than just get them to rank better for a couple of keywords. Here’s all you need to ensure that your client actually prospers after working with you.
##
## Find out who your client is competing against
One of the main parts of the onboarding process of a new client is getting them to list the sites/companies they consider [major competitors](https://moz.com/blog/competitor-analysis-for-seo) – both similar in size and scope, and those far larger and more successful. Naturally, as important as client feedback is, in this stage of the process or any other, it should never account for 100% of the info you are at the disposal of.
Once they provide their list, you should start compiling one on your own. Start from the immediate competitors, i.e., those similar to your client in every possible regard – size, region serviced, prices, subset of the audience being catered to, product or service range, etc.
Chances are, exploring the smaller competitors is going to lead you to all the major ones as well – to brands dominating the market you are trying to penetrate. While you may not have the required budget, infrastructure and connections to emulate their strategies, learning from someone who has invested a lot of time and money into formulating their online promotion strategy can only do you good, as long as you stay aware of your limitations.
Regardless of their size, there’s a lot to learn from each of your, at least relatively successful competitors. Some of the most important areas to pay attention to include:
1.**Their backlinks**– the basic step in competitor analysis, sometimes the only way to go through a competitor’s backlink portfolio can reveal a wealth of useful information.**If you are using a tool like Ahrefs to extract their links, we recommend not going into the filtering and selection phase until you’ve gathered all the backlinks from all the competitors you want to analyze. Even a smaller competitor could have upwards of thousands of links, and a lot of them are shared between them and other competitors. In theory, this means that you could run into the same website 10 times if analyzing 10 different competitors, and each time, you’d waste time on dismissing it or making a note of it. That’s why, if you are planning a large-scale analysis, placing all the links in one sheet, removing the duplicates, and using that list for the rest of the process is usually the best idea. The list can later be sorted according to the DR or the sites, you can filter it to remove TLDs that you have no interest in, remove all the sites mentioning bookmarks, or declaring themselves as article directories, etc. In other words, you could get a list of select, ratified prospects just waiting for your outreach.
2.**Their site**– this goes for anything: the site’s design, e-cart solutions, tone of voice, topics they are covering, prices and offers, etc. Competitor websites are invaluable in helping you determine how the audience you are trying to reach might react to a change you are thinking about introducing. Their comments on your competitor’s blog might give you insight into what you should or shouldn’t write about. Naturally, there’s no reason not to extend this research to include their social media accounts as well, time allowing.
3. Their keywords**– if you’re after relevant organic traffic, choosing the right keywords is of paramount importance. Deciding if a high-volume keyword with a lot of competition is worth pursuing would, ideally, be done in concert with the client, but more often than not, these potentially risky choices will have to be made by you and you alone. Examining just how much time and work a particular competitor has invested in ranking for a keyword is bound to give you an idea of how realistic pursuing it would be for you.
## Decide on a set of keywords
Those keywords you’ve extracted from the competitor analysis are a good starting point, but they are by no means enough to inform the rest your campaign. While it is important to identify the main phrases and words targeted by your competitors, that is just the beginning.
The most challenging (and interesting) part of [a detailed keyword research](https://backlinko.com/keyword-research) is finding relevant keyword variations that are not difficult to rank for, but which have a decent search volume and which are likely to attract the exact type of people you are after.
This is where a lot of agencies try to take the easy way out and simply rank their clients for easy-to-secure longtail combinations with only a slight relation to the client’s business and goals.
This is also one of the prime examples of why focusing on rankings as the sole indicator of the success of an SEO campaign can leave the client at a serious disadvantage. If the agency taking care of your search engine optimization focuses exclusively on easy-to-rank-for long-tail keywords, it won’t be difficult for them to reach page one, but the actual benefits of getting there, like an increase in traffic, client base or revenue, will be minuscule to non-existent.
On the other hand, if you hire a reputable provider, with enough integrity and experience to go after much more demanding (and popular) keywords, they don’t have to earn you a spot in the top 10 results right away, but their efforts could still significantly improve the metrics that you really care about. In other words, if you zero in on the wrong set of keywords from the very start, all your subsequent promotional efforts might be completely wasted.
At this stage, we also start with [keyword mapping](https://www.semrush.com/blog/guide-keyword-mapping-improve-seo-content/) – i.e. deciding which pages will focus on which sets of keywords, sometimes building new pages specifically to target high-value keywords, at other times pursuing keywords we might otherwise ignore, just because it so happens that the client already has a page which could easily rank for them.
## Existing assets audit and initial setup
Once you know what your client’s goals are, it’s time to take stock of their current state and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Each client is different, some will have amazing content but terrible site design, others a strong social media following, but no lead generation mechanism, etc. The purpose of the initial setup is to ensure the highest possible growth potential for their site by taking care of fundamentals like:
1.**Onsite optimization**– Ensuring that crawlers can easily find and navigate your website; that your meta tags are indicative of the page’s content and that they encourage click-throughs; that there are no 404s, sluggish pages or dysfunctional forms, etc.**2. Content gaps and existing content audit**– During the competitor analysis, did you notice topics that your competitors are covering, but you didn’t even mention? When researching your client’s audience’s habits on social media and forums, did you see them frequently asking questions that your site should be providing the answers for, but isn’t?**After carefully analyzing the client’s existing content, you should decide what to completely remove, what can be repurposed or spruced up, and [which topics](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189) they need to start paying attention to if they want to keep the interest of their audience and peers.
3. Landing pages and GA goals setup**– Again, some SEOs don’t consider conversions optimization to be a part of their job, and that is perfectly fair as long as they are forthcoming about that. However, those who are willing to help customers track how their organic search campaign is affecting the rest of the funnel are in an ideal position to explain the reasoning behind their decisions and ensure that the client can actually reap the benefits of improved rankings.**Optimizing your client’s landing pages to guide site visitors towards the desired outcomes, and tracking the behavior of those visitors through meticulously set up [goals in Google Analytics](https://blog.adstage.io/2013/11/26/tracking-conversions-with-google-analytics) means that you will, in time, be able to actually show the results of your work to your client in much more detail and with much more accuracy than is typically possible in SEO without this kind of analysis.
## Link building – a proven way to increase your search rankings
Once the client’s site is as recommendable as possible and you have a keyword strategy and an editorial calendar for several months in, it might be time to start thinking about spreading the word about the client. Naturally, just because you’ve reached this point in the campaign, you are not forever done with audits, keyword and competitor research, etc. However, while you still need to keep an eye on your assets and make modifications when necessary, now your focus needs to turn outwards, to all those blogs, directories, magazines, industry hubs, and other platforms capable of exposing you to relevant audiences and lending you some of their authority.
When done with at least a modicum of integrity, link building is just as ‘manipulative’ or ‘unnatural’ as trying to get the name of your business into a phonebook, or making a TV ad. This means that links you create for your client have to not only meet [certain quality standards](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778), but also have to make sense in terms of relevance, their actual usefulness in the context, anchors you use to describe their destination, etc.
However, the stigma that some associate with link building is not the only misconception about it. Across numerous algorithm changes and attempts to manipulate the said algorithm, so much has been speculated on the topic of links that even though you as an SEO probably have a decent idea of what makes a link suspicious or amazingly useful your client could have a completely different idea.
Let’s take business directories as an example. If your client is running a locally oriented business, you know that they could only stand to benefit from you building a moderate number of [high-quality local directory links](https://fourdots.com/blog/negative-local-search-ranking-factors-2271) for them. They get their NAP out there, get co-citations with other local businesses, making it easier for Google to recognize them as entities, and generally, gain a lot for a minor investment.
However, depending on the most persuasive article on the subject that your client has read (which may have even been true at the time of publishing) they might either be of the opinion that you should completely abstain from making links of this type, considering them instant reputation suicide; or they might be of the opposite persuasion – that you should be creating 10 directory links per week, from now till the end of time.
This is why link building is only effective when the client has absolute trust in your expertise and in your intentions, as it is only then that they’ll be ready to understand your explanation how ‘more’ is not always better, and how ‘none’ is not always safe. That trust is achieved through transparent reporting, and of course, consistent exemplary performance, but even in the most ideal of conditions, it might take some time to truly take hold.
## Results of successful strategy execution
Once you have their trust, you can do amazing things for your client. By sticking to the methods and principles listed above, we have managed to help our client out of complete obscurity in just 19 months**, getting their freshly built website to:
- Rank on**the first page of Google results for 37 target keyword phrases**, and on the**second for 34 targeted terms**- Mostly attract the relevant audience, i.e. those from the region the client is servicing
- Engage the audience with increasing intensity, evidenced by improvements in the recorded number of pages per visit and total time on page, and in the consistent decrease of bounce rates
- To**triple the number of organic visits**(benchmarked from several months into the campaign)
- Record a**115% increase in the number of monthly active users**and a**63% increase in the number of monthly unique pageviews**- Start earning significantly more from this channel, with a**200% increase in the monthly organic revenue**If you want to emulate our methods for someone you are promoting, or want to learn what you might be able to gain by hiring someone to promote you – you can download the case study detailing this process as soon as you complete a [short eCommerce survey](https://app.brandquiz.io/four-dots/download-case-study) meant to help us identify the main issues e-store owners are facing in their marketing efforts.
If you, however, think it would be easier to simply hire us to do the same for you, or just want a free consultation or a website audit and advice regarding the steps you could take to improve your online exposure, you can [contact us here](https://calendly.com/katarina-stojanovic/seoconsultation) and schedule an appointment with one of our experts.
---
## Posts: Four Dots Officially Launches “Four Dots Australia”
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-australia-is-launched-8913](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-australia-is-launched-8913)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-australia-is-launched-8913.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-australia-is-launched-8913.md)
**Published:** 2021-05-31
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-25
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News, SEO
**Tags:** Australia, Digital marketing agency, Enterprise SEO, PPC, SEO, small business SEO
### Content
Four Dots is thrilled to announce that we have started offering**SEO, PPC, Content, Analytics, and other digital marketing services****to people and businesses of Australia**. We are now officially entering the Australian market with the main goal to help both small businesses and large enterprises to grow and rule the online world.
Since many respectable Australia-based companies have already experienced**growth in reach and profit**with the help of our Four Dots team of experts (10+ years of experience), it was a logical step to open physical headquarters in**Sydney**.
Going international and going global is nothing new for us. The offices we have already established in [New York](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc), Hong Kong, Belgrade, and Novi Sad and hundreds of successful campaigns across the globe testify that we are ready for the challenges that await us in one of the most competitive and progressive markets such as Australia.
## What Does This Mean for Australian Clients?
Four Dots Australia is a digital marketing agency that covers**°360 digital marketing solutions**and provides the following services:
- [SEO](https://fourdots.com.au/seo-sydney) (Small Businesses SEO, Enterprise SEO services, Link Building services, Backlink Analysis, Technical SEO Audits)
- [Google penalty removal](https://fourdots.com.au/google-penalty-removal)
- [Conversion Rate Optimization](https://fourdots.com.au/conversion-rate-optimization)
- [Google Analytics Solutions](https://fourdots.com.au/advanced-website-analytics)
- [PPC Management](https://fourdots.com.au/ppc-management)
- Content Marketing
- Online Reputation Management
…and other related services that can help you quickly beat your direct competitors.
## With our Help, Your Business Will no Longer be ‘Invisible’
All Four Dots Australia clients can expect our detailed guidance through every step of their custom-tailored digital marketing strategy. We will help them by creating**solutions for their specific business needs**. This means that, if you have a great product and/or service, we will help you quickly reach your potential customers and grow your business fast.
Your website pages will be completely [optimized for relevant keywords](https://fourdots.com/seo) and locations, which will leave your competitors miles, or should we say, many positions on Google search behind you.
The main goal of this new Aussie-based digital marketing agency is to help local Australian businesses – from small companies to large enterprises – achieve the following objectives:
-**Boost their online visibility**-**Reach ideal target demographics**-**Initiate growth **-**Develop custom-tailored marketing strategies and solutions**-**Improve the technical SEO aspect of their website pages**-**Increase ROI**As a proof of success, here are some of the brands Four Dots has been catering to so far:*Coca-Cola, Philip Morris International, IQOS, Orange, Beko, Crucial, MissAmara, Buro, Domain.me, MobileShop.eu, Gulf Coast Cash Relief*, etc.
## Creating Added Value for Australian Businesses
If you already have a website but you are not quite pleased with its rankings, Four Dots Australia will fix it by conducting technical audits and backlink checks. This method will show you what needs to be improved and which strategies must be implemented so**your website’s performance is vastly improved**.
Speaking of keywords relevant to your niche and industry, this digital marketing agency will perform competitor analysis and check if the content on your website should be richer, more original, and in compliance with proven SEO postulates. If so, their content experts will provide you with more quality content that will put you in the spotlight, attract and engage your desired audience and promote your services and/or products exactly where they’re needed.
Regardless of the service that Four Dots Australia performs for you, this digital marketing agency is here to help you succeed from the stage of awareness to the phase of conversion, loyalty, and advocacy of your customers towards your brand. Competitive and budget-friendly prices are another reason to choose Four Dots Australia to help you get to the top.
## Highly Competent People
Who is Four Dots Australia?
As a full-range digital marketing agency with [**decade-long experience**](https://fourdots.com.au/about-us), Four Dots helped quite a number of companies grow and reach online success. We succeeded together by polishing their link portfolio, filling their websites with quality and relevant content, increasing their exposure, making sure the technical SEO part is on point, and helping them reach their target audience in order to provide increased Return On Investment (ROI).
The new Four Dots branch involves extensively knowledgeable marketers with more than ten years of experience within the field of digital marketing. Four Dots Australia core team members are:
- [Radomir Basta](https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta) – CEO
- Milica Dobrenov – COO
- Natasa Bajic – CIO
- Harry James – CMO
[Radomir Basta](https://www.linkedin.com/in/radomirbasta/), better known as Rad within the field of SEO, is one of the founders of Four Dots. Rad, Milica, and Natasa, together and individually, have impressive portfolios filled with countless successful projects implemented across the global digital marketing landscape. It should be pointed out that besides numerous happy clients, Rad successfully passes on his SEO knowledge by participating in lectures, conferences, and academies relevant within the world of digital marketing. He is the one to thank for sharing tremendous SEO expertise by publishing [**The Good Book of SEO**](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08479P6M4/ref=x_gr_w_bb_sout?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb_sout-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B08479P6M4&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2). The book is full of proven and applicable advice for those who work or closely collaborate with [SEO professionals and service](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) providers and it is dedicated to business owners or marketing managers. Giving it back to the SEO community, Rad helps readers to comprehend the universe of Search Engine Optimization and turn it in favor of their business.
Rad is the one to be credited for SaaS-based marketing tools developed by the Four Dots:
- [**Reportz**](https://reportz.io/)– A highly functional software for automated reporting and data-tracking.
- [**Dibz**](https://dibz.me/) – An extremely effective link building tool for automated link scraping and prospecting.
- [**Base**](https://base.me/)– A great tool (Chrome Extension included) for streamlined link management and link building.
- [**The Trustmaker**](https://thetrustmaker.com) – A great social proof tool that can boost your sales and conversions with minimal effort on your part.
-**Kraken Box**(currently in development) – a robust and all-in-one SEO platform consisting of 4 stand-alone tools.
By joining forces with [**Harry James**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/harryjamesau/) – whom we admire for his expertise – we can confidently embark on a new challenge called the Australian market. We can say that our Four Dots team and Harry James separately helped thousands of satisfied clients all over the world, so just imagine what we can do together!
Harry James is an accomplished and experienced marketer who has been focusing his digital marketing efforts on helping small Australia-based businesses gain traction, scale, and grow. Now working as the CMO of Four Dots Australia, he is helping our team to develop presence and success in this competitive market.
Prior to becoming an important part of the team, Harry has worked for numerous acclaimed companies, including Elevate 360 (Operations Manager), Crucial Cloud Hosting (Business Development Manager), Chargebar (Operations Manager), Online Marketing Gurus where he was COO and oversaw the agency operations of all Consulting and Delivery teams, providing frameworks and systems to enable all parts of the business to operate as one scalable unit.
## Interdisciplinary Expertise
- Versatility is our main advantage and having a team of experts that create custom-tailored digital marketing solutions in various fields of digital marketing is the virtue that sets us apart.
- We are eager to accept every new challenge and find a solution that best suits our clients, their businesses, and their KPIs.
- The success of our clients is our personal success.
- Last but not least, Four Dots Australia is the official Google partner.
If you are an Australian business that seeks a premium digital marketing agency to help you reach your overarching business goals, we highly recommend checking out Four Dots Australia.
---
## Posts: Summary of 2020 Google Search Algorithm Updates
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-search-algorithm-updates-2020-summary-8272](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-search-algorithm-updates-2020-summary-8272)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-search-algorithm-updates-2020-summary-8272.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-search-algorithm-updates-2020-summary-8272.md)
**Published:** 2020-12-29
**Last Updated:** 2020-12-30
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** digital marketing, Google, Google Algorithm Update, SEO
### Content
Not too many industries go through as many changes as digital marketing does. From niches like [SEO](https://fourdots.com/seo), [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management), [e-Commerce](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-analytics-tracking-for-e-commerce-5880), and social media, to [content-based marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing), all these specific environments and their business models depend on myriad variables. A huge part of this dynamic landscape is the Google search engine and the fact that its [main algorithm undergoes more than a thousand updates every year](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/).
Most of these updates are small and too trivial to alter the SERPs in a significant manner. Or to even be addressed by Google.
However, every once in a while, Google’s search engine algorithm gets a core update resulting in disruptive and landscape-altering changes that not only take several weeks (often even months) to fully roll out but tend to forever reshape the way we approach SEO.
## Google Core Search Algorithm Updates Explained
Also known as**broad core updates**, these algorithm changes deeply impact the way websites are ranked and can (and usually do) affect the search visibility of millions of websites across the web. These alterations in website visibility can be positive or negative, relative to your role in the search engine mechanism. In other words, Google tries to fine-tune its engine so the users get the results of utmost relevance for each query they type in.
Every new core update rollout recalibrates the way Google determines which pages are relevant, and does that according to the website’s [Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)](https://ahrefs.com/blog/eat-seo/).
Unlike those minor algorithm changes that cause unnoticed tremors, broad core updates tend to have long-resonating aftermaths with a far-reaching impact on website ranking fluctuations and contextual results for search queries.
The tricky part is that there are no surefire quick fixes for the websites that are hit by core Google updates. The only solution that actually works is to [**improve your content quality, substance, and value**](https://fourdots.com/content-development-and-production) by focusing on the aforementioned E-A-T model.
That said, let’s go over the most relevant Google algorithm updates that occurred during this curious year.
##**January 2020 Google Broad Core Update**The very first update of 2020 rolled out on January 13th, and it was a broad core one right away. The news first came through the [Google Search Liaison official Twitter account](https://twitter.com/searchliaison): *“We are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the January 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. “*The consequences were felt after just a couple of days with numerous metrics and algorithm update trackers tarted reporting significant fluctuations.
According to RankRanger and various other data sources, it seems that this update hit those annoying [YMYL (your money, your life) niches](https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2019/10/07/no-nonsense-guide-using-ymyl-and-e-t-seo) the most.* **“YMYL niches got hit very hard.” “This a huge update,”*says one data analyst at RankRanger.*“There is massive movement at the top of the SERP for the Health and Finance niches and incredible increases for all niches when looking at the top 10 results overall.”*(Image Source: RankRanger)
The SEMRush team also reported huge changes in almost every category.*“The most volatile categories according to SEMRush, outside of Sports and News, were Online communities, Games, Arts & Entertainments, and Finance. But Yulia Ibragimova added that all categories saw major changes and “we can assume that this update wasn’t aimed at any particular topics,”*said Yulia Ibragimova of SEMRush.
##**Featured Snippet Algorithm Update – January 23, 2020**The second update that took place in January 2020 prevented the URLs that are shown in the featured snippet (also known as #0 position) to be shown again within the first page of the SERPs for the same search. This update was a logical step toward a better optimization of the first 10 SERP slots, both UX- and SEO-wise.
According to Google’s Public Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, this somewhat expected algorithm tweak mitigates the cluttering of the first Search Results page: *“If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show,”*Sullivan stated.
##**March/April 2020: Algorithm Update or a Change in User Behavior? **There was a noticeable change in algorithm activity recorded during the weeks following the global outbreak of COVID-19 that, in most corners of the world, took place in March and April. There is no official data on whether these spikes in most Google Algorithm Update checkers were triggered by unconfirmed incremental updates to the search algorithm, or it was simply due to an (at that moment) unrecorded change in global search trends induced by the global pandemic.
Most experts seem to think it was the latter as many brick and mortar stores and businesses closed for a while thus resulting in fluctuations in search results, especially local ones. However, Google did confirm it was taking various actions to obviate the spread of fake news reaching the public via their search results. This led to the volatility in rankings within the Health and Wellness industry wherein high-authority websites tend to have assisted exposure.
For example, here’s a search behavior graph showing the rise of queries related to mental health:
(Image Source: Medium)
Although the fluctuations were recorded daily during these two months of 2020, with no official announcements coming from Google itself, we have to ascribe these changes to the unforeseen lockdown-induced circumstances happening across the SEO landscape.
##**May 2020 Google Broad Core Update**The second broad core algorithm update of 2020 happened in early May. It took about 2 weeks to fully roll out, with the impact on the results and rankings lasting much longer. It was exactly May 4th when Danny Sullivan announced the update, and instead of it being a fun Star Wars-themed day ([May the 4th be with you](https://www.starwars.com/star-wars-day)), the SEO community needed to muster as much force as possible to deal with this 2nd broad core search algorithm update of 2020, which simply isn’t as fun.
> Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the May 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog post for more about that:[https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G](https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G)— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) [May 4, 2020](https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1257376879172038656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
However, as we are a resilient community, we had no choice but to tackle yet another algorithmic challenge, this time dubbed “May 2020 Core Update.” Much like it was a time of general turbulence and global volatility, this core update brought similar dynamics to the SERPs as well.
Here’s a graph provided by SEMRush:
(Image Source: SEMRush)
With the peak volatility score of 9.4, this one was even more impactful than the January 2020 core update that had a volatility score of “only” 8 points. The categories that have been hit the most, across both mobile- and desktop-based searches, included Arts & Entertainment (especially in organic), Online Communities, Real Estate, Travel, Events, Health, Pets & Animals, and People & Society (as if the pandemic didn’t hurt those enough).
As for those who were on the better end of this deal, it didn’t come as a huge surprise that the news sector would take the biggest piece of the pie, along with business and industrial:
(Image Source: SEMRush)
Given the coronavirus outbreak context, the news and media outlets would have experienced a significant boost in search trends even without the algorithm update as a major factor. But Google seems to think they needed an additional friendly bump in visibility.
## June 2020 Google Algorithm Update – Unconfirmed
Although Google remained silent about the apparent June update, [the SEMRush sensor](https://www.semrush.com/sensor/?db=US&category=) recorded major volatility scores going up to 8.6, which is undoubtedly well within the core algorithm update ballpark. Especially as other ranking trackers caught big fluctuations as well.
[CognitiveSEO Signals](https://cognitiveseo.com/signals/#:~:text=cognitiveSEO%20Signals%20tracks%20how%20Google,can%20spot%20significant%20Google%20fluctuations.), for example, reported a higher volatility score for the end of June than for the official May 2020 Core Update.
The categories that experienced the biggest oscillations include:
- Health
- Law & Government
- Science
- Computers & Electronics
- Finance
These see-sawings became more apparent when they compared the average monthly fluctuations for certain websites with volatility scores for specific days after this unconfirmed update. There’s always the possibility, [as some experts claim](https://www.seroundtable.com/big-google-search-ranking-algorithm-update-29662.html), that these scores happened as a result of May’s core update rollback. The jury is still out on this one.
## August 2020 Google Algorithm Update – Unconfirmed
Another mysterious event occurred in the summer of 2020. This time around, dramatic changes were recorded on August 10th when an alleged bug in the system (or an algorithm test that went haywire) allowed low-ranking websites to reach the top of Google’s SERPs, with certain top-tier pages with high authority being bumped down as a result.
It took several days for Google to reverse the damage.
On August 16th, they rolled out another algorithm update. On a Saturday night, because, you know, it’s 2020 and certain rules simply go out the window. Luckily, this patch-like update managed to roll back the algorithm to May 2020 parameters, thus overriding all the minor changes that took place over the summer.
##**December 2020 Google Core Update**The SEO community got an early Christmas present called the [**December 2020 Google Core Update**](https://moz.com/blog/googles-december-2020-core-update#:~:text=On%20December%203rd%2C%20Google%20announced,spiking%20at%20112.4%C2%B0F%3A&text=(The%20dotted%20line%20represents%20the,average%20prior%20to%20December%203rd.)). It started rolling out on December 3, and as it’s the case with most core changes, this one should also take weeks, if not months, to fully roll out and display its impact on rankings and how Google’s search engine fetches relevant results for our queries.
On December 4, the Semrush Sensor [showed the average SERP volatility score of 9.4](https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-december-2020-core-update-1/), which is neck-to-neck with the volatility caused by the May 2020 core update.
(Image Source: SEMRush)
Health, Real Estate, and Law & Government are the industries that were most affected across both desktop and mobile searches. The Travel and Finance saw high volatility rates on desktop, while Jobs/Education and Pets/Animals sectors were hit the most on mobile-based searches.
And while we wait for this rollout to happen in its entirety, let’s go over some of the most interesting takes on what might be happening under Google’s search engine hood in the following months.
Below are fellow SEOs’ insights that have been featured in this informative [SEJ article on the subject](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/december-2020-core-update/391254/?utm_source=SearchHerald&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=SearchHerald&utm_content=Timeline), describing the potential changes we could be expecting in the months to come:
- Google is adjusting weight ratios for different types of links, and their signals.
- The rollout of No-follow 2.0 (that started back in September 2019) may not yet be complete and is being tweaked during the December 2020 update. Especially in terms of how much power which No-follow link has and in which context.
- More adjustments of Google answer boxes (probably in order to boost their own real estate). Cheeky, indeed.
- Google is working on making PBN (Private Blog Network) links less relevant, which may affect the [link building niche](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778) in the following years.*“Mass devaluation of PBN link networks and quite obvious footprints of outreach link building.”*This SEO also adds,*“Just because someone sent an outreach email doesn’t make a paid link more natural, even if it was paid with content or exchange of services.”*- Cascading signals are causing temporary drops in rankings, but once the [pages bounce back, many end up performing even better](https://fourdots.com/blog/climbing-after-rankings-drop-3482).*“Many sites we work with started with losses and ended with wins, and vice-versa,”*another expert says.*“So clearly it had something to do with a signal or signals that cascade. That is, where the change caused one result, but once that new calculation worked its way through the system, it produced another.”*
- A huge chunk of the SEO community is convinced that the rub of these recent updates is to improve the algorithm’s content interpretation abilities.*“If we think about the timing, and how it ties to the rolling out of passage indexing and that it’s a Core Update, I suspect it ties to content interpretation systems and not links or signals along those lines.”*- Google algorithm core updates should not be looked at as isolated events but perceived as smaller pieces of a larger story arc.*“We as Search/Discoverability people need to stop thinking about Core Updates as individual events and instead look at Core Updates as a continuum of ongoing tests and ‘improvements’ to what we see in the SERPs… …The December core update is just one event of many,”*this SEO claims.
The SEO community isn’t too happy with the timing of this core update. Although it was released after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Google apparently couldn’t wait for Christmas to pass as well. However, [John Mueller doesn’t seem to think the timing was all that bad](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-core-dec-update-timing-30551.html) for an update this big, despite the fact that many businesses have lost countless sales during the pre-Christmas period when sales surge the most.
## Wrapping Up: The Core of the “Update Problem”
Google core updates are a great way to test your adaptive skills. There’s rarely much one can do during the rollout period but [track the metrics, draw insights](https://fourdots.com/blog/advanced-tracking-analytics-reporting-solutions-saas-6750), and keep an eye on what other SEO experts have to say on the topic.
And although [Google provides guidelines on what can be done if you get negatively hit](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates), it is probably best to put off any dramatic actions for after a core update finishes its rollout.
And that’s pretty much the core of the algorithm update issue – you cannot pinpoint what is being changed and why exactly your pages are suddenly underperforming – and thus you can’t be sure which components need fixing. But that’s what keeps our industry that much more dynamic and fun.
---
## Posts: Actionable Guide to Using White Label SEO for Agency Growth
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/guide-to-using-whitelabel-seo-for-agency-growth-7931](https://fourdots.com/blog/guide-to-using-whitelabel-seo-for-agency-growth-7931)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/guide-to-using-whitelabel-seo-for-agency-growth-7931.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/guide-to-using-whitelabel-seo-for-agency-growth-7931.md)
**Published:** 2020-11-02
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** agency growth, client acquisition, cost optimization, SEO, White Label Services
### Content
Let’s start with some interesting facts and stats. In 2019 alone, Google has accounted for 2.3 trillion inquiries performed across its search engine. Nearly 68% of the clicks that take place on the first page in the SERPs go to the first five organic results, while the results ranked 6 to 10 account for only 3.73% of the clicks. And with [81% of daily users searching for either a**product**or**service**](https://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/), what does this mean for your agency, your clients, and their (as well as yours) direct competitors?
It means we are all in a modern warfare scenario.
But unlike in Call of Duty where the enemy is a team of Russian forces (who else?) and the objective is conquering a geographical location, we are here battling for a different kind of real estate – the coveted**first page in Google results and that sweet [sweet organic traffic](https://fantomtraffic.com/)**. Top ranking results is*the*place to be, for both you and your clients. But every once in a while, a digital marketing [agency](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) hits the proverbial wall and start threading water with its own productivity, strategies, resources, expertise, and overall success. Or, a company is simply at the very beginning of its digital marketing journey and is merely lacking funds.
Somewhere along the line, this can happen to anyone. But unlike those businesses that refuse to admit their predicament and tend to turn a blind eye to obvious workflow bottlenecks, an agency that recognizes its own bind is already [one step closer to bouncing back](https://fourdots.com/blog/climbing-after-rankings-drop-3482) than those that don’t.
This is where**white label SEO**comes into play as either a quick-fix or long-term solution, depending on your strategy and your overarching goals.
So, whether you are an [SEO agency facing certain issues](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-project-management-challenges-3091) in terms of resources or you are simply looking to expand your services portfolio by offering SEO solutions to your clients in order to grow as a business – white label SEO is a highly effective solution.
But before we delve into the actual benefits and best practice tips, let’s cover the basics.
## What Does White Label Mean?
The term “white labeling” comes from the practice in which a manufacturer’s brand (or logo) is removed from the product and/or service so the product/service can be labeled by another brand, a brand requested by the party purchasing the product or service. The purchaser then resells the product/service to the end-user as their own product.
## How Does White Labeling Work in the SEO Context?
In the SEO industry, this notion isn’t too obscure as these deals happen quite often. Most typically, an agency that is lacking [SEO resources](https://fourdots.com/about-us/seo-tools-for-digital-agencies) would partner with an external [European SEO company](/european-seo-company) that will tackle the SEO work for the clients of the former agency. The concept is also known as “**Private Label SEO**” and is often used by digital marketing agencies and website/software development companies to either resolve certain workflow issues or round up their service portfolio without increasing their overhead costs.
### The Fine Line Between White Label SEO & Outsourcing SEO Services
For those of you wondering –*How is white label different from outsourcing?*– let’s clear this up. Though outsourcing SEO services and offering white label-based SEO may seem like two identical concepts, they are not. Cut from the same cloth, yes. But not exactly the same.
Essentially, outsourcing SEO services involves hiring a company to do the work for you in a transparent manner, without re-labeling the services or assimilating them with your own brand. Outsourcing SEO-based projects most typically happens because the company isn’t ready to allocate any major resources or in-house personnel to these projects at that particular moment.
Hiring white label services, however, involves**purchasing an unmarked product or service**and**reselling it to your own clients**as one of your own assets. Not only do you get the finished product with this arrangement, but you are also provided with all the underlying data, processes, and resources to back your “work” up.
##**Tangible Benefits of White Label SEO **Opting for a [proper white label SEO company](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213) and knowing how to leverage it for the most prolific results can do wonders for your agency in terms of building your brand, entering new markets for future opportunities, increasing revenue, and – ultimately –**growing as an agency**.
Let’s tackle some of the most prominent advantages of hiring [white label SEO services](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services).
### Extended Reach and Improved Client Acquisition Strategy
White labeling, regardless of the niche, is a two way street in terms of benefits. Both sides of the deal gain some kind of advantage, whether it’s financial or an opportunity-based one. This is especially true in terms of**client gain**. Both the SEO service provider and the agency reselling the service can use this type of collaboration to grow their client base, [boost organic visits](https://fourdots.com/blog/100k-visitors-using-9-simple-guidelines-infographic-4189), and tap into new demographics for lead generation purposes.
The vital aspect of gaining new clients is improving your reach across wider target audiences and doing that as diversely as possible. Reaching potential customers outside your target demographic improves your online visibility and helps you further build your brand.
### The Single Point of Contact for Your Own Clients
Your clients will be happy to get an entire set of digital services from a single agency. When they have a single point of contact in terms of hiring all the services they need, they will obviate a lot of hassle that comes with finding the right agency capable of providing them with**all-encompassing marketing and SEO solutions**.
As the digital marketing landscape is currently quite saturated, and with agencies and solopreneurs offering a seemingly similar quality of service – finding the perfect SEO agency for your (and your clients’) unique needs and wants can be a tiresome process. The screening process that is involved in choosing an SEO partner can be a tall order in a niche wherein the agencies and solo-consultants tend to over-sell their expertise and overall capabilities. When your clients get an all-round service from a single company they trust, this hassle is curbed.
### Cost-Efficiency
In a brand-driven ecosystem, where we tend to overpay for products and services just because they feature a recognizable logo (a certain biblical fruit comes to mind), it is hard to track down a logically priced product and/or service. The same rule of thumb can be detected in the SEO market where the pricing deals can be overblown, especially when you know the backend of the industry.
Opting for white label SEO is typically a less costly alternative when compared to the current pricing standard. This is partially because the absence of a brand creates an environment in which**you are only paying for the actual services**performed in the project, without the added brand value. When you subsequently stamp your own brand onto the finished product, you can sell it at competitive rates to your own clients.
Marketing agencies are then capable of overriding the need for a dedicated, in-house SEO team of their own, resulting in the opportunity to**relocate a huge portion of their resources**to other projects.
### Improved Scalability
As more customers will be coming your way, your business is bound to expand. Buying white-labeled SEO services without doing the actual heavy (and time-consuming) lifting enables you to fix the areas of your business that require more resources, improve on your agency’s strengths that make your brand unique, as well as optimize your other non-SEO workflows.
Most marketing agencies start at a micro-scale level and aren’t capable of hiring highly-skilled experts right away, let alone assembling avid teams in all departments. Choosing to go with white label SEO services elegantly bridges this gap until you have enough resources to build your own in-house team of experienced SEOs.
##**Actionable Tips for Creating an Effective White Label SEO Strategy**###**Create a Spoke-Hub White Label Control Panel **Quality communication channels are the very basis of a white label deal. We suggest creating a**spoke-hub dashboard**where you can properly communicate with both – your own clients and the team that performs SEO-related tasks for you. Ideally, the white label company should provide you with the type of workflow where everything is streamlined – from content delivery to metrics tracking and analysis of your client’s data.
Practical tips:
- Be sure that this control panel is customizable so your agency can stamp its own branding and therefore keep the entire experience consistent and the whole workflow as tight as possible
- Be sure that the reports are visually consistent with your brand
- Create URLs that act as your website’s subdomains
- Make sure your [reporting tools are white label-friendly](https://reportz.io/) for personalized client correspondence
- Emails through which you communicate with your own clients should have no traces of the “other” company’s involvement
- Should your agency have its own dashboard, be sure to ask your SEO partner for APIs through which you can easily incorporate vital features
###**Put the Right Price Tag on Your Own Services **[As our co-founder and CEO Radomir](/about-radomir-basta) like to quote, “*Something is worth*just what*somebody* is willing to *pay for it*.” You have to figure out what the optimal price of your SEO services would be for reselling them to your own clients. In order to do that, you must have a clear overview of the SEO market in the white label context. In other words, to have quality insight into:
- How much regular SEO services cost and how the price should be scaled according to the scope of work.
- What the average price for buying white label SEO services is and how the price is typically scaled in the white label context.
- How much you should be charging for the reselling of those SEO services to your own clients so that your profit margin is optimal.
Once you’ve done thorough research and gained sufficient insight into this data, you can tailor your own pricing plans accordingly.
###**Consider Using an All-Round White Label SEO Tool**There’s always an option to utilize an all-encompassing white label SEO tool like [**SE Ranking**](https://seranking.com/) capable of performing and automating all SEO-related tasks for you. This strategy is cost-effective and quite economical in terms of time consumption. A robust and multi-faceted platform can provide you with all the pertinent metrics and help you make data-driven decisions when creating and tweaking your SEO, social media, or B2B strategies. SE Ranking is built for SEOs of all expertise levels with scalable pricings for easy cost optimization.
###**Bundle Up SEO With Other Services **If possible, make sure that your agency doesn’t focus on one type of service only. Startups typically tend to put all of their eggs in one basket and then, if that doesn’t pan out the way they planned and as quickly as they hoped, their business soon starts to face serious resource-related issues.
It is perfectly ok for an agency, especially a young one, to have one main expertise as their primary source of income. However, offering a wider range of services**increases your revenue opportunity manifold**, which is one of the main reasons agencies opt for white label services in the first place.
Digital marketing agencies have a great opportunity to provide a wide array of services that complement one another perfectly, thus creating a bundle deal opportunity that will turn your one-off clients into a recurring source of revenue. For example, when a company offers web design services, these are typically one-off deals and are not a constant source of income. Bundling up SEO services into this equation will solve this problem as SEO projects take at least 3 to 6 months in order to produce tangible results.**This way, you can snatch long-term clients from the previously untapped market. **## Wrapping Up
To take the long view of your agency’s potential and future success, one must pay equal attention to both – assembling an avid and capable team of skilled individuals, as well as mastering your workload- and service-based allocation strategies. Only then will you be able to optimize the utilization of your resources and achieve high ROI. Opting for white label SEO services can be one of the main pillars of this type of strategy.
---
## Posts: John Mueller: You Don't Always Need hreflang | Google Webmaster Hangout Recap
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614.md)
**Published:** 2020-08-26
**Last Updated:** 2020-08-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Digital News
**Tags:** Google, hreflang, John Mueller, SEO, Webmaster Hangout
### Content
Google Webmaster Office-Hours Hangout is a way for SEOs all around the world to get search-related questions answered by one of Google’s very own Webmaster Trends Analysts – John Mueller.
If you haven’t had the time to participate in the hangout live or catch it on YouTube later on, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered!
In this edition of the Google Webmaster Hangout Recap, we’ll skim through the following topics:
- You Don’t Always Need The hreflang Tag;
- Can Negative Reviews Hurt Your Ranking On Google?
- Heading Tags Are Important – Regardless Of Their Level;
- Is Google Showing Fewer FAQ Rich Results Than It Used To?
Let’s dive right in!
## You Don’t Always Need The hreflang Tag
A huge portion of this hangout was dedicated to the [*hreflang*](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en)tag and how confusing the right usage of it can be.
Hreflang is an HTML attribute that you can use if you have multiple versions of a page for different languages or regions. It helps Google figure out which version should be served to a specific user.
However, there’s a difference in the way Google treats*hreflang*in a situation where there are different language versions of a website available, versus how it treats it when the language is the same, but there are still different versions (URLs) for different countries that use that language.
>*“Different language version is a lot easier than the same language – different countries. Different languages are almost one of those situations where I’d say, well, maybe you don’t even need to use hreflang, because people are automatically searching in your language and that matches that specific language version.”*– explains John Mueller.
But what if you have a website that has different versions in a way that the language is the same, but each version is aimed at a different region? (For example, German for Germany, German for Austria, and German for Switzerland.) Even with the*hreflang*tag properly set up, there’s no guarantee that Google Search will manage to serve the right version to the user. If those pages are completely or nearly identical, Google might pick one version as a canonical and always serve that one. So, what do you do in this case? Here’s what John said:
>*“The easier you can make it for us to understand that these pages are specific to one country, the more we can follow that. So things like local phone numbers, local addresses, all of that can play a role there.”*So, to conclude and give you some extra tips:
- If you have your website available in several versions, each in a completely different language, check if people searching in language 1 are landing on the page that’s in language 1, as well as if users searching in language 2 are landing on the page that’s in language 2. If they are, you don’t really need*hreflang*. It’s still okay to use it, but Google has obviously figured it out on its own.
- If you have different versions for different regions but in the same language, you can build more local signals to help Google realize these pages are not the same after all, and that it’s important to treat them as separate entities.
- Ask yourself if you really need different versions for those regions that use the same language. If there is no specific reason to use that kind of setup – then don’t. Keeping things simple will help both users and Google to experience your website better.
## Can Negative Reviews Hurt Your Ranking On Google?
Could a bad reputation a business has online affect how it ranks on Google? It turns out the algorithm might take negative reviews into account, but only if there’s a lot of them. Like, really a lot.
Here’s what was asked in the hangout:
>*“If you have a “bad” reputation online and you see a lot of negative stuff about your company… Would that hurt, potentially, your Google ranking for keywords? …Could Google look at that and say – Oh this is a bad company, we’re not going to rank it as well because they have a lot of negative reviews?”*John Mueller was pretty direct in his answer here, stating that having*some*negative reviews is absolutely normal and not something you should be upset about – Google won’t mind anyway. However, if your website has predominantly bad stuff written about it, Google’s algorithm might pick that up and it could hurt your rankings.
Here’s exactly what John said:
>*“If you’re talking about, there are a handful of people that are upset, and they’re writing these random things online, and there are lots of people that are happy with your site, and everything is normal, then that’s not something I would really worry about.”*Then a bit later, he added:
>*“If it’s something where we see that everything is really bad about this site, that might be something that our algorithms try to pick up on… It really needs to be a strong signal for us to say – OK, we really can trust kind of this problematic information and apply it appropriately for the site’s ranking.”*So, if your site has a couple of negative reviews here and there, keep calm – that’s perfectly normal! And if your site has a ton of them, maybe SEO shouldn’t be the first thing to worry about in that case, to be honest. Focus on making your users or customers happy and improving your content/products/services first.
## Heading Tags Are Important – Regardless Of Their Level
One publisher asked an interesting question about the heading tags, and John’s emphasized their importance in his answer.
This was the question: “A page without an H1 title – will it still rank for keywords which is in the H2 title?”
>*“Of course”*– answered John. Then went on to add:
>*“Headings on a page help us to better understand the content on the page. Headings on a page are not the only ranking factor that we have. We look at the content on its own as well. But sometimes having a clear heading on a page gives us a little bit more information on what that section is about.”*Using heading tags on your pages is very important. It helps Google understand more easily what your page and its parts are about. Which heading tag you use, however, is not. Here’s what John said:
>*“When it comes to text on a page, a heading is a really strong signal telling us this part of the page is about this topic. And whether you put that into an H1 tag or an H2 tag or H5 or whatever, that doesn’t matter so much. But rather kind of this general signal that you give us that says… this part of the page is about this topic. And this other part of the page is maybe about a different topic.”*So, don’t be lazy and always add heading tags to your texts. Although users won’t see them, Google will!
## Is Google Showing Fewer FAQ Rich Results Than It Used To?
Properly marked up Frequently Asked Questions pages may be eligible to have a Rich Result on Google Search. [Rich Results](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery) take up extra space in the SERPs – that’s why you, as a site owner, would want to have as many of those showing up for your site as possible.
In the hangout, John touched on a topic of criticism that’s seen in some SEO communities online – Google showing fewer FAQ Rich Results than it used to.
>*“From my point of view, that’s kind of natural development, where we try to find the right balance between showing these everywhere and showing these for pages where it kind of makes more sense… Suddenly everyone has added FAQ markup to their pages and we can’t show every search result with FAQ markup. So we have to kind of fine-tune which ones, which queries, which pages we would be showing the FAQ rich results type for.”*That means that even if your FAQ page is properly marked up, it might not automatically be shown as a rich result. What’s the best you can do in this situation? Here’s John’s advice:
>*“In general, if the markup is on the pages and is findable with the Rich Results Test, then that’s what you should be aiming for.”*Just do your part well and hope Google will figure out its own part well, too.
## See You Again Soon!
It was a pleasure having you with us, we hope you’ve gained valuable SEO insights from this post, and see you again next time!
If you wish to watch the whole Hangout videos, you can do it here:
---
## Posts: Google Webmaster Hangout Recap - 24/07/2020
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-24-07-2020-7492](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-24-07-2020-7492)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-24-07-2020-7492.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-24-07-2020-7492.md)
**Published:** 2020-08-05
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Digital News
**Tags:** Google, Google Algorithm Update, John Mueller, Webmaster Hangout
### Content
Google Webmaster Office-Hours Hangout is a way for webmasters and SEO enthusiasts to get search-related questions answered by one of Google’s very own Webmaster Trends Analysts – John Mueller. If you have a question – you can ask it, too! Sometimes the reasoning behind John’s answer is very simple and pretty much expected, but every once in a while he surprises us with some big-time actionable advice.
If you haven’t had the time to participate in the Hangout live or catch it on YouTube later on, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered! In this edition of the [Google Webmaster Hangout](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614) Recap, we’ll skim through the most interesting topics discussed in the chat with Mr. Mueller held on July 24th.
Subjects covered include:
- Should you display charts as images or as HTML?
- What to do when a competitor copies your content?
- Google makes small updates to the algorithm all the time
- Some things to keep in mind when merging websites
- What can you do about slow AdSense scripts?
- Is it okay to use the same internal link multiple times on a page?
No time to waste, let’s get started right away!
## Show Charts as Images or as HTML?
A site owner wanted to know, in a situation when there’s a chart in a blog post, if it was better to display it as an image or as some kind of code (HTML, for example). *“I don’t think you would get a lot of value out of making that chart into HTML and putting the numbers and labels into text, because that’s something that you could just as easily put in the body of the blog post or in the alt attribute as well.”* – John said.
The same caller also asked if Google can understand the difference between an infographic and a regular image.*“I don’t think we need to understand the difference, why should we need to understand the difference?”*– replies John with a smirk on his face, then adds –*“**If you’re doing something like an infographic, like a really long thing, I recommend making sure you have the text in some kind of a blog post, or in another textual format as well.”*To conclude, what John is trying to say is:
- Display charts and infographics as images with a descriptive alt attribute so Google can pick it up as text;
- Also, always have other textual content accompanying the image that explains what the visual [data](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) is all about.
## Competitor Copies Your Content? Don’t Rely on Content Only!
Have you ever been in a situation where you invest a lot of time, effort, and other resources to write high-quality original texts for your website, and then a competitor blatantly copies your content and ranks better for it than you do? Well, a webmaster in Friday’s hangout has, and he wanted to know what he can do about it.
John’s answer was not really encouraging:*“Sometimes that’s frustrating, but the important part to keep in mind is that we use a lot of factors when it comes to ranking… I would recommend making sure that you’re focusing on all of those signals as well. Like trying to find ways to improve your site overall, not just specifically with regards to the (textual) content.”*So, when a competitor has the same content as you do, even when you got it first, you have to outperform them in other ranking factors and that’s not something you can achieve overnight. *“That’s not something that happens, like, you fix the HTML code today, and then tomorrow everything is perfect – that takes a lot of time sometimes, to really improve overall.”*– John added.*“Sure, sure, thank you”*– replied the caller, understandably not too thrilled with the options John presented.
## Google Makes Algorithm Changes All the Time
Mr. Mueller was asked if he can confirm a [major Google algorithm change happening](https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749) right now. A publisher noticed a ranking loss for their Australia based website and wanted to know if an update to the algorithm might have been the cause.
John did not confirm a core update but he did say, as he often does, that Google makes incremental changes to the algorithm*“***all the time***“*.
How can you make your sites more robust to those changes? John suggests:*“Think about what you can do to improve your sites overall so they are a little bit more stable and not reliant on this one particular factor that you happen to be working on.”*
## Merging Sites? Do it Step by Step!
If you’re moving your website from one domain to another, you should expect things to go well since Google has a lot of practice with picking up on that.*“If you’re just moving one-to-one, all of the URLs, from one domain to another, I would expect that to just work out. Maybe you’ll see some fluctuations (in rankings) for a couple of days, maybe a week or so, but usually, that should settle down fairly quickly.”* – says John Mueller.
But if you’re merging sites – moving site one to site two, and site two already had some content – it takes significantly longer for things to settle down and you should generally be more careful. John’s advice:**Do it step by step**!*“…moving from one domain to another, and at the same time you change your CMS, your URL structure, you change the layout of your pages. And if you do all of that at the same time, and something goes wrong in Search, then figuring out why that happened is going to be really hard. Whereas, if you do it incrementally… by being able to separate out those individual parts, it makes it a lot easier to figure out what you need to change.”*
## What to Do When AdSense Ads Slow Down Your Pages?
Two webmasters submitted a similar kind of question for this hangout: What can you do when an ad from Google AdSense makes your Page Speed Insights score and Core web Vitals metrics go down?
John’s answer was simple. You can check with the AdSense team to see if they can give you any [specific guidelines](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169) on what can be done. Or, you can make things a little better by simply putting those AdSense scripts to load further down the page.
It is a bit weird, though, that Google’s very own product can make your pages slower, but it is convenient that other Google’s tools are willing to report that problem to you. Here’s how John sees it:*“It’s not going to be the case that our speed testing tools will say – Oh, this ad script is perfectly fine because it’s made by us, even though it’s really slow. – …Users don’t care where the slowness is coming from, they just care that a page is slow.”*
## Same Internal Link Multiple Times on a Page?
One publisher was concerned about the number of times the same internal link can be used on the same page, in regards to SEO. Mr. Mueller assured them it’s okay to “use as many internal links as you want to”, as well as it’s okay to use the same link multiple times.
He did go on to add the following, though:*“The one thing I would watch out for is that your site has kind of a clear structure. In that when we crawl your website, that we can understand which pages are related to each other, which pages are kind of equally important, and which pages are kind of subpages of existing pages, so that we can understand the context of your pages a little bit better.”*That makes sense when you think about it. If you use a very flat structure, where every page links to every page, the Googlebot crawling your site won’t really be able to understand the relationship between the pages. It will see all pages as they were on “**level one**”, and that might not be a good thing.
Thanks for reading, we hope you’ve got some insightful SEO tips from this post, and see you again next time!
If you wish to watch the whole Hangout video, you can do it here:
---
## Posts: How Four Dots Implemented Advanced Tracking, Analytics & Reporting Solution for SaaS Product - Case Study
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/advanced-tracking-analytics-reporting-solutions-saas-6750](https://fourdots.com/blog/advanced-tracking-analytics-reporting-solutions-saas-6750)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/advanced-tracking-analytics-reporting-solutions-saas-6750.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/advanced-tracking-analytics-reporting-solutions-saas-6750.md)
**Published:** 2020-02-03
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-22
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Growth Hacking
**Tags:** Analytics, data analysis, Metrics Tracking, reporting tool, SaaS
### Content
Creating, developing and launching a SaaS product is a fun and edifying journey. It teaches team members how to work together towards a mutual goal and typically involves both positive and negative experiences. However, the journey doesn’t stop once the product has been successfully rolled out.
In order to make sure your SaaS gains traction quickly, the team behind the product needs to figure out how to reach as many potential users as possible, without spending an arm and a leg on advertising campaigns and without any reaching for low-hanging fruit. This can be done organically via the**tracking implementation process for a SaaS product**, which is a very effective and data-driven way of increasing your**Conversion Rate**, overall**ROI**,**cost-effectiveness**, etc. **Article Structure: What’s inside**1. [About Reportz](#about-reportz)
2. [About Four Dots](#about-four-dots)
3. [Tracking & Analytics Challenges](#tracking-and-analytics-challenges)
4. [Tracking & Analytics Goals](#Tracking-and-analytics-goals)
[Highly Customized Implementation to Meet our Specific Tracking Objectives](#Highly-Customized-Implementation-to-Meet-our-Specific-Tracking-Objectives)
5. [Definition of the Most Important KPIs Tracking & Reports](#Definition-of-the-Most-Important-KPIs)
6. [Conversion Rate Optimization and UI & UX Improvements with A/B Testing](#Conversion-Rate-Optimization-and-UI-and-ux-Improvements-with-A/B-Testing)
7. [Easy & Centralized Tag Management Solution](#easy-and-centralized-tag-management-solution)
[Approach: Tracking, Analytics & Reporting Process & Deliverables by Four Dots](#approach-tracking-analytics-and-reporting-proces-and-deliverables-by-four-dots)
1. [Tracking Audit & Health Checkup](#tracking-audit)
2. [Stakeholder Interviews](#stakeholder-interviews)
3. [Measurement Plan](#measurement-plan)
4. [Tracking Implementation & Testing](#tracking-implementation)
5. [Tracking Manifest](#tracking-manifest)
6. [Reporting](#reporting)
7. [Testing & Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)](#testing-and-cro)
8. [All Eventual Tracking Changes in the Future](#all-eventual-tracking-changes-in-the-future)
[Overall Case Study Results](#overall-case-study-results)
[Conclusion and Additional Tips](#conclusion-and-additional-tips)
1. [Data accuracy](#data-accuracy)
2. [Focus on important metrics only](#focus-on-important-metrics-only)
3. [KPI Reporting that suits the needs of your stakeholders](#kpi-reporting-that-suits-the-needs-of-your-stakeholders)
In this transparent, data-packed case-study-like article, we will granularly approach the following segments of the aforementioned process:**challenges, goals, approach,**and**results**; and delve deeper into each of these components that helped the reporting SaaS tool**Reportz**overcome all the challenges mentioned below.
But before we do just that, a word or two about the two entities involved. **About Reportz:****[Reportz](https://reportz.io/)**is a dashboard-based, white-label, client-reporting and data tracking tool that can help you reduce the time-consuming process of client reporting to mere minutes and clicks. Reportz helps you**automate the reporting process**and bring your dashboards to life with an**intuitive interface**that allows you to assemble informative, real-time, metrics-packed but concise reports in the form of fully customizable dashboards and widgets.**About [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/contact):**[**Four Dots**](https://fourdots.com/) is a Digital Marketing Agency with more than 60 specialists located in New York, Belgrade (Serbia) & Hong Kong providing [**SEO**](https://fourdots.com/seo), [**PPC**](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management), and**Analytics Services**to more than 200 clients worldwide. Led by [CEO and lead SEO strategist, Radomir Basta](https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta), the company specializes in Advanced Tracking, Analytics & Reporting Solutions for SaaS Products, and this is one of 20+ implementations the company has successfully tackled.
That said, let’s delve deeper into the raw data and processes that permeate the process of tracking and analytics implementation.
##**Tracking & Analytics Challenges**- Spending money on advertising without proper Conversion Tracking
- Google Analytics installation by copy/pasting code without an advanced website and in-app behavior tracking
- Strategic decisions based on vanity metrics instead of data-driven decision making
- Tracking and calculating SaaS KPIs
- Missing proper channel/campaign attribution which identifies top-performing channels/campaigns
- Tracking a complete user journey
- No efforts towards Conversion Rate Optimization and UX website improvements by A/B Testing
- Missing email automation for user activation
- Product & Marketing Team spend so much time on reporting and deeper understanding of in-app user behavior
- GDPR Compliance for websites and in-app platforms
##**Tracking & Analytics Goals**###**1. Highly Customized Implementation to Meet our Specific Tracking Objectives**At the end of 2018, we’ve implemented tracking for Reportz, one of our SaaS Products. Four Dots, as an all-around digital marketing agency, had the right mindset and the technical expertise to implement a tracking solution in a short period of time for this complex product.*“Four Dots Team did a remarkable job of understanding our business needs and guiding us to build a Tracking & Measuring Solution that provided us with actionable insights. The end result is that we now have tools in place that help us measure the ROI of all our testing efforts. Also, we have data that helps us understand the behavior of our customers.”*says**Nina, Product Manager at Reportz**One of our suggestions was to separate blog from Marketing Website so blog articles wouldn’t affect trial conversion rates. Reportz blog generates a significant number of sessions on a monthly basis and we wanted to analyze Blog in another GA Property. This number of sessions on a Blog website would make any other conversion data from Marketing website useless.
Reportz needed advanced Intercom integration with**custom events**and**custom attributes**that should be sent to Intercom for highly customizable email automation based on the user’s in-app activity.
Also, we wanted a full GDPR-friendly website since a huge amount of Reportz’s customers are based in the European Union. Four Dots introduced a custom solution for Cookie Policy and after the implementation,**Reportz is now 100% compliant with the GDPR Regulation**.
###**2. Definition of the Most Important KPIs Tracking & Reports**Since Reportz.io was a new tool at the time, there was no tracking set up, neither within the app itself nor on the marketing website or the registration funnel. Tracking SaaS apps can be tricky. Most SaaS tools are**single-page applications (SPA-s)**and tracking them properly demands a bit more effort than implementing the Google Analytics snippet to the website’s code. This was just one of the challenges Reportz Product Team faced when they tried to implement the tracking by themselves.
Our Analytics Team developed a SaaS Tracking & Measuring Framework that contains two parts:*“The level of insight we had after the Tracking implementation phase was incredible. We were able to track an individual new user from their first exposure to our brand all the way through Sign Up and purchase. That level of detail completely removed personal opinions from the decision-making process and empowered us to be data-driven marketers. Now we are using Multi-Channel Funnel which goes beyond the last-click attribution model to give us insight into the full path to conversion over a 30-day period. Now we see each channel’s and campaign’s contribution to conversions and how all the channels work together to create a sale. Also, Data-driven decisions allow us to scale our growth and skyrocket our MRR.”*says**Nina, Product Manager at Reportz**### 3. Conversion Rate Optimization and UI & UX Improvements with A/B Testing
Conversion rate optimization is an ongoing process and if you want it to be successful and get all of its benefits, you need to create and test a huge backlog of testing hypotheses. In order to define all these hypotheses, you need to understand the**intent**and**behavior**of your users and the problems they are facing on your website/landing pages. Four Dots’ Analytics Team**defined over 60 testing hypotheses**and**created a testing calendar**with a plan to test them one at the time, running tests for a minimum one week period. A/B testing yielded an**annual return on investment 20 times the cost.**We are always striving to make it easier for website visitors to find the best flow from the homepage to their first interactive dashboard inside the platform without the need to speak/chat with customer support. A/B testing helped us achieve this goal by improving the onboarding flow and changing website segments for a better understanding of the tool.**One of A/B tests resulted in an 83% increase in the Trial conversion rate**. For this particular test, we changed the registration flow that led from the homepage “Free trial” buttons to the pricing page, and then to the register page, by simply cutting out the middle step. Now when someone clicks on the “Free Trial” button, they get directly to the register page and into the application, which**i****ncreased****conversion rate for trial users from 3.15% to 5.76%**.
This works mainly because Reportz still offers a free trial period without credit card information needed, so users can focus on the features of the tool and the quality of the reports rather than on the price itself.
Also, we ran several tests with the goal of boosting the effectiveness of the landing pages and growing the conversion rate. One of them was**CTA Personalization**. Call to Action Buttons’ copy was changed from “Claim Your Free Trial” to “Start my Free Trial” and this change**increased conversion rate by 73%**.
Increasing the conversion rate was one of the most important and effective goals & strategies, as it not only gave Reportz additional revenue through a greater number of leads but also enabled Product & Marketing Teams to allocate marketing spending on traffic acquisition more wisely.
###**4. Easy & Centralized Tag Management Solution**We decided to use Google Tag Manager for Tag Management, thus enabling a much faster publication of tags to both the marketing and the product development team. All tags can now be managed centrally with the Four Dots Analytics team as an overseer. This has increased the publication frequency of new tags significantly. It has also led to increased efficiency and security within the organization and its partners.
Our overall Tracking Implementation resulted in 140 Tags, 136 Triggers and over 50 Variables. Some of the platforms where we track conversions and/or send in-app engagement data: Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, [Google Ads](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages), Bing Ads, Facebook Pixel, Google Optimize, Amplitude Analytics, Hotjar, Capterra, LinkedIn, Quora, Intercom, etc..
Later on, we configured one Web+App property which goes beyond Session-based tracking to User & Events based tracking.
##**Approach: Tracking, Analytics & Reporting Process & Deliverables by Four Dots**Our Tracking, Analytics & Reporting Process involved several phases with each of them having deliverables for the client. **Tracking Audit & Health Checkup**– Since Reportz didn’t have any tracking previously set up, we jumped straight into getting to know the website and the app itself – all of the features it has and all of the different actions users can take.**Stakeholder Interviews**– The Product Management team knows the app the best. Neat and orderly communication with their product team was crucial. In order to get most out of the Tracking setup, we had to sit down with them, define KPIs and plan out the tracking strategy that best suits their needs.**Measurement Plan**– Based on the first two phases, we gained a clearer picture of what needs to be tracked and the next step was to develop a comprehensive and tangible Measurement Plan with detailed implementation instructions.**Tracking Implementation & Testing**– For implementing and testing the tracking, we used Google Tag Manager, a tool that allows us to implement all the tracking codes in one place, at ease. Their developers’ engagement was needed on a couple of occasions and our Analytics & Technical teams provided full support for them during the entire implementation process. **Tracking Manifest**– We like to document all the Tags, Triggers, Variables from Google Tag Manager, so everyone who would work with Google Tag Manager container in the future could have a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve. Tracking Manifest is a comprehensive document containing all parts of the tracking implemented by our Analytics team.**Reporting**– Once the data started to accumulate, we’ve created specific reports for all of their stakeholders based on the KPIs defined in the Interview phase, and we grouped these reports periodicity according to the following bases: Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, Mid-Annually, and Annually. All these reports combine data from multiple data sources and help them to get a broad picture of all of their marketing efforts. **Testing & Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)**– After the initial Tracking Implementation & Testing Phase, when all conversions were set up properly, we provided A/B Testing & CRO Services to the Reportz team. We wanted to run these tests to optimize website conversion rates for certain landing pages and the entire website.**All Eventual Tracking Changes in the Future**– We provided additional tracking Implementations on an ad-hoc basis. For example, when they implemented new CTAs, new Landing Pages, or features inside the app, etc; all those changes and additions were followed by our tweaks in Google Tag Manager in order to make the data up-to-date.
##**Overall Case Study Results**→**Overall Tracking Implementation**resulted in**140 Tags**,**136 Triggers**and**over 50 Variables. **→**Avoided vanity metrics**with developed SaaS Tracking & Measuring Framework
→**Improved Onboarding Flow**by eliminating pain points
→**Saved 50+ hours**on a monthly basis with predefined Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, Mid-Annually, and Annually Reports
→ A/B testing yielded an**annual return on investment 20 times the cost**→ CTA Personalization**increased Conversion Rate by 73%**→ Improved Onboarding resulted in an**83% increase in Trial Conversion Rate**→**Conversion Tracking**for all our Marketing Assets & Platforms
→ Easy & Centralized**Tag Management Solution**→ Complete**Intercom Integration**&**Onboarding Email Automation**based on In-App activity
→ Saved 35+ hours for the**Product & Marketing Team with Comprehensive Tracking Manifest Documentation**→**GDPR-friendly**Custom Cookie Policy Solution
→**Over 60 testing hypotheses**for A/B Testing with Schedule & Calendar
→**Tracking Conversions**and/or**sending in-app engagement data**to**Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Pixel, Google Optimize, Amplitude Analytics, Capterra, LinkedIn, Quora, Intercom,**etc..
→ Going beyond session-based tracking to user-and-events-based tracking by**configuring Web+App Google Analytics Property **→**Tracking a complete user journey**from the first exposure to the brand to purchase and retention
→**Tracking, Calculating & Reporting SaaS KPIs**such as**ROI**,**MRR**,**CAC**,**LTV**,**Trial Conversion Rate**,**Trial to Paid Conversion Rate**,**Churn Rate**,**Average Order Value**,**CAC/LTV Rate**, etc.
##**Conclusion and Additional Tips**
The Decision-Making Process based on Data is an important part of growing and scaling up both your product and your company, but it comes with a few prerequisites:
1.**Data accuracy**Data is only as good as the quality of its collection process. Making decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete data is often worse than making decisions with no data at all.
1.**Focus on important metrics only**Avoid the decision-making process based on vanity metrics. It’s more important to focus on user actions that benefit your business the most. For that purpose, create a comprehensive measurement plan that helps you understand user journey from the first touchpoint and brand interaction to Conversions, Purchases & Retention.
1.**KPI Reporting that suits the needs of your stakeholders**Identify all the SaaS KPIs such as**ROI, MRR, CAC, LTV, Trial Conversion Rate, Trial to Paid Conversion Rate, Average Order Value, Churn Rate, CAC/LTV Rate**, etc – as these influence the company bottom line the most. The level of detail in your reports should be tailored to the Stakeholders. For example, C-Level Stakeholders should get general reports that provide an overview and a broader picture of all marketing efforts, while reports for marketing and product teams should cover more detailed data with advanced breakdowns that provide additional insights.
And remember, always strive to design your measurement plan and the entire tracking implementation process based on client needs and be sure to devote your know-how and efforts to client success.
---
## Posts: Meet ‘The Trustmaker’ - A Brand New Social Proof Tool To Improve Your Conversions
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/cue-new-social-proof-tool-to-improve-your-conversions-6726](https://fourdots.com/blog/cue-new-social-proof-tool-to-improve-your-conversions-6726)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/cue-new-social-proof-tool-to-improve-your-conversions-6726.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/cue-new-social-proof-tool-to-improve-your-conversions-6726.md)
**Published:** 2020-01-31
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News
**Tags:** Conversion rate optimization, Cue, E-commerce, SaaS, Social Proof Tool
### Content
### Trustmaker is a brand new social proof tool that helps SaaS and E-Commerce clients and businesses boost their conversion rates, cut ad campaign costs, and build credibility around their product
The current digital marketing landscape is as over-saturated as ever, and making sure your brand and product stand out can be near mission impossible, especially for those trying to emerge from the noise that currently envelopes the SaaS and E-Commerce markets.
Both organic and paid visits to your landing page often prove to be insufficient for increasing your ROI, resulting in a need for one final nudge in the right direction towards converting your visitors into paying customers.
This is where [**social proof tools like The Trustmaker**](https://thetrustmaker.com) come into play.
Our user-friendly and affordable tool can assist you in the following growth and revenue-driving efforts:
-**Boosting overall conversions**– The Trustmaker can help you create validation and build trust around your product and/or business, which can inevitably result in converting more page visitors into leads, and – ultimately – more leads into paying customers.
-**Boosting the effectiveness of your ad campaigns**– Utilizing social proof tools can improve your ad campaign efficiency and help you save big via decreasing acquisition costs.
-**Building credibility within your client base**– Customers that know how much you care about their experience and overall satisfaction with your product are the customers who will stay with your [business](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks) for a long time to come and are likely to recommend your services to other potential customers.
## How Does “The Trustmaker” Work?
[Paid ad](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) campaigns can be quite effective for the user acquisition process, but word-of-mouth advertising is the one with a much more substantial shelf-life, credibility, and conversion-driving power. Trustmaker leverages this power and helps businesses show, prove and validate the quality of their product and/or [service](https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company) to their potential clients by displaying data about recently acquired users, thus showing your potential customers that your client base is growing by the day.
In case you’re still kind of confused about what we’re on about, here are a couple of screenshots to paint you a more vivid picture. *So, basically, what The Trustmaker does is pulling data from either your**Intercom**or (your custom data source) about your freshly acquired customers, leads and purchases, and presents this info to a new visitor in a form of a notification.
There are 3 versions of The Trustmaker notifications:
-**Cue – shows individual, user-level information. For example: **David from Paris, France created an account 2 hours ago.*
-**Hot Cue – shows how many users performed an activity within your website over the last 7 or 30 days. For example: ***47 users created an account in the last 7 days. Verified by Cue. *-**Urgent Cue – is a fully-customizable Cue where you can insert any data, content or action you want. For example: ***24 people are currently viewing this page. *Hot and Urgent Cues are generally displayed more rarely than regular Cues, while you can choose the number of regular Cues after which a Hot or an Urgent Cue will pop up.
As for the options in terms of content, design/position and the granularity of data shown in your Cues, you have the following choices: ***Friendly Tip:**There’s a very useful custom option for both regular Cues and Hot Cues wherein you can override the Intercom (or custom source) data and insert custom info text that suits your overall goal better. **Urgent Cue**, on the other hand, is a Cue variation created with the [notion of “fear of missing out” or FOMO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out) in mind, which can additionally enhance social proof signals by creating**fully-customizable**Cue notifications.
With the right tactic and combo of Cues, Hot Cues, and Urgent Cues – you can create a potent, conversion-driven social proof strategy that will surely help you widen your client-base more quickly and grow as a brand. This option is typically leveraged by newly-founded organizations that are yet to display their full potential and need some initial traction.
## Client Testimonials
Although Cue is a fairly young project developed by the [**Four Dots**](https://fourdots.com/) company, the tool has already managed to form quite a tangible user base. We asked some of them to weigh in on why they like using Cue: **Aaron Weller**, owner at Lucid.com:
“My marketing team wasn’t even aware we needed a tool like Cue. So far this simple software allowed us to improve our lead generation by circa 14%, which will definitely be projected onto our conversions. Looking forward to this month’s reports.”***Daniel Smith**, SaaS owner:*“As a SaaS developer, I always knew I could somehow leverage all the unused client data that we get through Intercom, but I never had enough time to really crack it. The team behind Cue did it, and they did it the right way. Turning data into insight and leads has always been the holy grail of online marketing. Cue managed to remove the “holy” part out of the equation.”***Ella Huffington**, startup owner:*“As our startup company doesn’t have an inhouse advertising team, I have to do most of the heavy lifting myself. This free tool helped me cut my efforts in half. Recommending Cue is a no-brainer.” *## Summing Up
We recommend Cue to both**young businesses with brand-new products/services**, but also**established companies and brands**that already have substantial databases but are looking for new, user-friendly and highly-affordable ways to boost their conversion rates.
And the Premium account price? This bargain is right on cue.
---
## Posts: 25 Best SEO, Social Media, Content & Productivity Extensions for Chrome
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-seo-and-digital-marketing-6287](https://fourdots.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-seo-and-digital-marketing-6287)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-seo-and-digital-marketing-6287.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/best-chrome-extensions-for-seo-and-digital-marketing-6287.md)
**Published:** 2019-12-09
**Last Updated:** 2025-06-30
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Chrome Extensions, content, digital marketing, Extensions, Google Chrome, SEO
### Content
When**Google Chrome**appeared back in 2008, the browsing game was changed forever. Especially when Chrome blessed its users with extensions. These convenient plugins helped users to improve their efficiency, productivity, and the overall browsing experience.
Google Chrome is the most popular browser today, and people use it for many different purposes like social media, online shopping, and plain browsing. However, a lot of users find that Chrome is rather convenient when it comes to work as well. So, for example, most**SEO experts and digital marketers**use this browser every day, mostly because it is very straightforward and easy to use, but also because its user experience can additionally be improved by utilizing a variety of practical and handy extensions. These plugins are helping them to increase their productivity and automate those tasks that would otherwise take a lot of time and effort to perform manually.
Therefore, if you come from the SEO and digital marketing niche and you want to boost your performance and daily output, here are some of the best Chrome extensions you should definitely try.
We classified them in a few categories for easier browsing:
- [Site and Page Info Chrome Extensions](#siteinfo)
- [Keywords and Ranking Chrome Extensions](#keywords)
- [Link Analysis and Management Chrome Extensions](#linkanalysis)
- [Social Media Data and Automation Chrome Extensions](#automation)
- [Content Creation and Curation Chrome Extensions](#curation)
- [Productivity Chrome Extensions](#productivity)
- [Email and Contact Management Chrome Extensions](#contact)
## Best Chrome Extensions: Site and Page Info
### 1. [MozBar](https://moz.com/help/research-tools/mozbar/overview)
→ [Get MozBar extension here.](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mozbar/eakacpaijcpapndcfffdgphdiccmpknp)**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**3.9 out of 5 stars (based on 1,912 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**665,832 *This extension is simply a must-have for every [CEO of SEO](/about-radomir-basta) agency, or an SEO expert or a digital marketer out there. MozBar allows users to create custom SEO searches based on the search engine, city, or country. It also offers users access to SEO metrics while surfing the web and allows marketers to test the difficulty of the keywords they are targeting. MozBar is also rather useful for understanding the SEO of competitor sites and better optimizing your own site.
#### Our Favorite Mozbar Features:
-**On-Page Content Suggestions**– This is a great feature for those who want more flexibility in terms of analyzing the pages and keyword combinations, aside from the ones you are (probably) already tracking within your Moz Pro Campaigns. Moz does this by taking the top results for the keyword you’re optimizing for, recognizing and fetching the most popular topics, and finally ordering these topics by the level of relevancy.
-**Page Optimization**– This handy feature allows you to obtain instant Page Optimization details for the keyword.page of your choice. You can simply enter the keyword according to which you want to optimize a certain page, and Moz will provide you with Page Optimization factors and actionable suggestions – all in one view.
-**Link Explorer’s Spam Score**– Moz users with a paid API subscription have the privilege of seeing Link Explorer’s Spam Score. Quite a useful feature for SEOs.
### 2. [SEOquake](https://www.seoquake.com/guide/index.html)
→ [Get SEOquake extension here.](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seoquake/akdgnmcogleenhbclghghlkkdndkjdjc)**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.6 out of 5 stars (based on 2,469 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**621,549
Seoquake displays a lot of different SEO ranking factors for any site. It can highlight nofollow links, text density on a page and can compare one site to another based only on URLs. This extension serves as a convenient reference tool that can help users to improve their SEO and on-site optimization.
#### Our Favorite SEOquake Features:
- Review all major metrics easily
- Get a detailed analysis of SERPs and export the data in CSV format
- Estimate keyword difficulty
- Set parameters for a specific search query
- Run a complete SEO audit of a webpage and check mobile compatibility
- Use a wide range of default parameters or create a custom set
- Get a detailed report for internal/external links
### 3. [SEO META in 1 CLICK](http://www.seo-extension.com/)
→ [Get SEO META in 1 CLICK extension here.](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-meta-in-1-click/bjogjfinolnhfhkbipphpdlldadpnmhc)**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.8 out of 5 stars (based on 517 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**124,754
SEO Meta in 1 Click is an extension you must always have at your disposal because it displays all meta tags and main SEO information for a web page with just one click. It provides users with valuable data like the length of titles and descriptions, URL, headers in order of appearance, and the number of images without alt text.
#### Our Favorite SEO META in 1 CLICK Features:
We mainly use this tool for extracting page-level data and obtaining quick snapshots of relevant page elements. It is especially useful for quickly viewing image files, headings, metadata, etc. And we really dig the fact that it displays the website data under different categories:
- Headers
- Images
- Links
- Social
- Tools
- Ads
It also provides a**summary tab**containing all categories. See screenshot below:
### 4. [BuiltWith Technology Profiler](https://builtwith.com/)
→ [Get BuiltWith Technology Profiler extension here. ](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/builtwith-technology-prof/dapjbgnjinbpoindlpdmhochffioedbn)**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.4 out of 5 stars (based on 483 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**260,963
BuiltWith Technology Profiler is a technology tracking platform that is designed to provide data about the technology a certain company uses. This extension allows marketers to see which sites are using shopping carts, analytics, hosting and other technologies. They can also filter data by location and traffic. This tool helps marketers to better identify customers.
#### Our Favorite BuiltWith Technology Profiler Feature:
This extension allows you to see what a website is built with by a simple click on the BuiltWith icon!
## Best Chrome Extensions: Keywords and Ranking
### 5. [Ahrefs SEO Toolbar](https://ahrefs.com/seo-toolbar)
→ [Get Ahrefs SEO Toolbar Extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ahrefs-seo-toolbar/hgmoccdbjhknikckedaaebbpdeebhiei).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**3.8 out of 5 stars (based on 97 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**51,264
When it comes to keywords and rankings, going with Ahrefs is probably the most viable option. Their SEO toolbar in Chrome examines various site properties and produces keywords, links, and ranking profiles. This kind of insight allows users to make SEO improvements on their sites. It’s rather intuitive and it will provide you with detailed reports.
#### Our Favorite Ahrefs SEO Toolbar Features:
With this extension you can get a quick on-page SEO report for any page you visit. This report includes:
- Title and Description (it compares them in raw HTML and rendered versions)
- Canonical URL
- Indexability and crawlability (Robots Meta Tag and X-Robots-Tag)
- Headings and Subheadings
- Word count
- Social tabs
- Localization
### 6. [Keywords Everywhere – Keyword Tool](https://keywordseverywhere.com/)
→ [Get Keywords Everywhere – Keyword Tool extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/keywords-everywhere-keywo/hbapdpeemoojbophdfndmlgdhppljgmp).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.7 stars out of 5 (based on 5,179 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**889,948
(Source: Chrome Web Store)
Keywords Everywhere is indeed a handy tool. It shows three different types of data for keywords on Google:
- monthly search volume
- cost per click
- Google Adwords competition
If you install this in-browser extension, you won’t have to go back and forth from Google Keywords to your open browser page. Pretty neat.
#### Our Favorite Keywords Everywhere – Keyword Tool Feature:
Keywords Everywhere displays**related keywords**as well as**people also search for**keywords in widgets on the right-hand side.
### 7. [FATRANK – Keyword Rank Checker](https://fatjoe.com/fatrank-keyword-rank-checker/)
→ [Get FATRANK – Keyword Rank Checker extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fatrank-keyword-rank-chec/jcnfkjjanbdfabigknbedgkfjkljhbdn).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.1 out of 5 stars (based on 179 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**40,430
This Google Chrome extension helps users to find out where their site ranks in the Google search engine. It also allows them to easily download the CSV reports from the Fat Rank mobile app and Chrome extension.
Here are the best features this extension offers:
- Unlimited Keywords and Domains – FATRANK provides users with unlimited keywords and domains
- Graph Feature – Graph feature helps users to see the changes in the ranking of websites during a certain period
- CSV and PDF Reporting – It mails detailed reports to the user in both CSV and PDF formats
#### We found it most useful for:
We mainly use handy this SEO Chrome extension for fast spot-checking keyword rank. It is extremely useful when you need to quickly check the keyword ranking without having to activate another, more robust piece of software. KW ranking at a glance!
### 8. [SeoStack Keyword Tool](http://www.seostack.net/)
→ [Get SeoStack Keyword Tool extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seostack-keyword-tool/labjajhkfjfncpiddbgdimcaldgeognn).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.5 out of 5 stars (based on 70 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**29,447
This handy extension generates and displays data about long-tail keywords relevant to the user’s business.
It doesn’t matter if you are looking for long-tail key phrases to add to one of your existing pieces of content or writing a new article, SeoStack will provide you with a library of potent long-tail keywords for your business.
#### We found it most useful for:
Getting a quick list of keywords (as well as related keywords) is among the most prominent selling points of the SeoStack Keyword Tool. We mainly use it for finding blog post topics, creating potent lists of tags, and for a more in-depth exploration of content generation for a given topic.
## Best Chrome Extensions: Link Analysis and Management
### 9. [LinkMiner](https://linkminer.com/)
→ [Get LinkMiner extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/linkminer/ogdhdnpiclkaeicicamopfohidjokoom).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.2 out of 5 stars (based on 19 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**15,129
LinkMiner is an effective backlink checker tool everyone who is in the SEO business should have in their toolbox. The main purpose of this tool is to help you identify broken links. Besides this, it provides you with information like DA, Facebook likes, backlinks from Ahrefs, Moz, and similar handy data.
#### Our Favorite LinkMiner Features:
- Powerful Backlinks – it helps you identify Do-follow or No-follow backlinks by applying advanced filters
- Link Strength – it evaluates the strength of the backlinks based on Citation Flow, Trust Flow, and Alexa Rank
- Advanced Backlink Analysis – it provides link building opportunities by finding new backlinks
### 10. Check My Links
→ [Get Check My Links extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/check-my-links/ojkcdipcgfaekbeaelaapakgnjflfglf).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.1 out of 5 stars (based on 436 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**198,509
Check My Links is rather useful because it crawls through your pages and looks for broken links, reports them and allows you to copy them all with one click.
This is a page-specific extension and it’s also easy to use. It will make your life much simpler.
#### Our Favorite Check My Links Feature:
This extension quickly finds and checks all the links on a page. It highlights valid and broken ones, so you know which ones to repair.
### 11. NoFollow
→ [Get NoFollow extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nofollow/dfogidghaigoomjdeacndafapdijmiid).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.3 out of 5 stars (based on 229 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**85,734** **This extension outlines nofollow links, detects nofollow and noindex meta tags on webpages. It also features website filtering and custom CSS outline styles.
Main features:
- supports nofollow, UGC, and Sponsored attribute values
- supports search engine specific robot meta tags
- disables or enables the extension for defined websites
#### Helpful Reviews by Users:
“Absolutely fantastic. Shows NoFollow links with a red box around them. Plenty of options as well. Outstanding plugin :)”*– Mike B. *“Fantastic little extension that runs in the background, essential for anyone working in SEO! Thanks”*– Daniel Cook. *“This is great plugins for every SEO expert”*– Ferdous Alam
### 12. [Bitly](https://bitly.com/)
→ [Get Bitly extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bitly-unleash-the-power-o/iabeihobmhlgpkcgjiloemdbofjbdcic).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**3.8 out of 5 stars (based on 2,159 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**560,401** ***(Source: Chrome Web Store)
Bitly can help you to shorten, measure, and optimize your links with ease.
This Chrome extension is fully integrated with your Bitly account. This means you can copy, customize, and share your links straight from your browser! This will save you a lot of precious time.
This extension allows you to:
- Save content from your browser directly to your Bitly account
- Brand your Bitlinks by adding your domain or creating a custom link
- Tag Bitlinks to easily organize and search for them in the Bitly app
- Share Bitlinks via Twitter and Facebook
#### Our Favorite Bitly Feature:
Making sure you have the best and most effective version of your platform should be among your highest SEO priorities. Bitly gives you a checklist of 13 URL shortener features you’ll want to consider:
1. Custom branded domains
2. Link customization
3. Link tracking and analytics
4. Usability
5. Browser extensions
6. Search engine optimization performance
7. Link expiration
8. Safety and security
9. HTTPS support
10. Mobile application
11. Application integrations
12. Mobile deep links
13. Upgrade features
Read more about [**Bitly’s URL shortener powers here**](https://bitly.com/blog/how-to-find-the-best-url-shortener-the-definitive-guide-and-13-feature-checklist/)!
## Best Chrome Extensions: Social Media Data and Automation
### 13. [BuzzSumo](https://buzzsumo.com/)
→ [Get BuzzSumo extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/buzzsumo/gedpbnanjmblcmlfhgfficjnglidndfo).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.3 out of 5 stars (based on 24 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**24,098
BuzzSumo allows you to quickly get social engagement data for the page or website you’re viewing without having to open BuzzSumo.
#### Our Favorite BuzzSumo Features:
- Includes Twitter sharers no longer available officially
- View who shared the page on Twitter
- View backlink count for URL
- See the most shared content for the current website
- Analyze top-performing content formats
- Easily share content via Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest
### 14. [Buffer](https://buffer.com/)
→ [Get Buffer extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/buffer/noojglkidnpfjbincgijbaiedldjfbhh).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.7 out of 5 stars (based on 3,145 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**387,222
(Source: Chrome Web Store)
Using Buffer’s Chrome extension is the easiest and simplest way to share content to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn from anywhere on the web, with just one click. Buffer also allows you to easily track which posts had the best performance.
#### Our Favorite Buffer Feature:
This extension can help you to manage your day better by scheduling posts to go out at specific times.
### 15. ShareMetric
→ [Get ShareMetric extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sharemetric/lhnijlahkclijpefbcimahdcgcjbmnnp).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.2 out of 5 stars (based on 12 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**3,019
ShareMetric loads social media share counts, link metrics, and organic search visibility metrics for the current browser URL. Social share counts are loaded into the icon badge, as well as a drop-down menu that displays a full list of metrics.
Here is the list of metrics this extension includes:
- LinkedIn shares
- Reddit votes
- StumbleUpon stumbles
- Pinterest shares
- Moz Open Site Explorer Link Metrics
- [Ahrefs Link Metrics](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059) (requires a paid subscription to their app)
- SEMRush organic search visibility (requires a paid subscription to their app)
#### Helpful Reviews of Sharemetric:
“Probably the best extension on my computer. Awesome information with the ability to check automatically or when you select (this is big deal if you like to have a lot of tabs open)**Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush, Topsy, Whois, all major social media company data.”*– Thomas Zickell.*“A great tool to quickly determine the popularity of content and what channels your audience is using. Thanks Kane and team!”*– Lauren Hall-Stigerts.
### 16. [CrowdTangle Link Checker](https://help.crowdtangle.com/en/articles/2566227-the-crowdtangle-chrome-extension)
→ [Get CrowdTange Link Checker extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/crowdtangle-link-checker/klakndphagmmfkpelfkgjbkimjihpmkh).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4 out of 5 stars (based on 24 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**64,366* (Source: Chrome Web Store)
CrowdTangle Link Checker allows you to see how often a link has been shared, who shared it and what they said. It shows the specific Facebook posts, Instagram posts, tweets, and subreddits that mention a certain link.
#### Our Favorite CrowdTangle Link Checker Feature:
It works for:
- Articles
- YouTube videos
- Facebook videos
- And similar content on social media
## Best Chrome Extensions: Content Creation and Curation
### 17. [Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder](https://nimbusweb.me/screenshot.php)
→ [Get Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nimbus-screenshot-screen/bpconcjcammlapcogcnnelfmaeghhagj).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.6 out of 5 stars (based on 11,247 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**1,449,722
This Chrome extension allows you to “Screen Capture” the entire Web page or any part of it. You can also edit screenshots and record screencasts – record video from your screen.
Main features:
- Screen capture whole or partial screenshots
- Edit and annotate screenshots
- Screencasts — record video from your screen and webcam
- Trim and Crop screencasts
- Convert video to gif and mp4
- Quickly Upload and Share screenshots and screencasts
#### What We Find Most Useful About Nimbus:
We think that the fact that this screen capture tool features a blur tool is its biggest selling point. With Nimbus, you can now easily hide sensitive pieces of data captured along within your screenshot, which can be extremely annoying and time-consuming when you have to activate another piece of software for this action alone.
We also dig the Color fill and transparency editing option very much.
### 18. [Evernote Web Clipper](https://evernote.com/features/webclipper)
→ [Get Evernote Web Clipper extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/evernote-web-clipper/pioclpoplcdbaefihamjohnefbikjilc).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.7 out of 5 stars (based on 133,004 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**4,356,907
(Source: Chrome Web Store)
You can use Evernote Web Clipper to save interesting things you find on the Internet into your Evernote account. This extension allows you to clip any page, highlight and annotate things, and take screenshots. The best thing about Evernote Web Clipper is that you can access that information at any time and on different devices.
#### What We Found to Be Evernote’s Best Feature:
The fact that this tool is both a screenshot/video capture extension AND a planner-based extension can be extremely useful to some. Aside from letting you to capture awesome screenshots, you can use Evernote to make to-do lists, take informative and actionable notes/checklists/memos, easy-to-format word processor, etc. It is also quite useful that you can save your notes in a variety of formats: text, sketches, photos, audio, video, PDFs, web clippings…
### 19. [Grammarly for Chrome](https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us)
→ [Get Grammarly for Chrome extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/grammarly-for-chrome/kbfnbcaeplbcioakkpcpgfkobkghlhen).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.6 out of 5 stars (based on 37,527 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**10,000,000+
Grammarly is a rather useful extension that helps you eliminate writing errors and find the most appropriate words. It also corrects grammar, spelling, and helps you find the correct tone. The extension will provide you with suggestions as you write on Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other sites. If you choose to register your account, you will receive a personalized writing report each week and this will help you track your progress and see what you have to improve.
#### Our Favorite Grammarly for Chrome Features:
- Detects your tone – Grammarly’s built-in tone detector allows you to figure out how your message will sound to your readers. This gives you the opportunity to add a little more confidence or warmth before you send your message.
- High-quality writing – Besides spelling and grammatical mistakes, Grammarly will help you fix punctuation issues, rewrite wordy and unclear sentences.
## Best Chrome Extensions: Productivity
### 20. [Todoist: To-Do list and Task Manager](https://todoist.com/)
→ [Get Todoist: To-Do list and Task Manager extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/todoist-for-chrome/jldhpllghnbhlbpcmnajkpdmadaolakh).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.6 out of 5 stars (based on 45,491 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**693,659
Todoist for Chrome allows you to add blog posts to your reading list, save items to your wishlist, add work tasks to follow up on.
You can also plan your day by easily organizing your tasks directly from the extension.
Todoist allows you to complete tasks from the browser. So, once you finish your tasks, check them off without switching context.
Here are some of the reasons why you should use it:
- Capture and organize your tasks with ease
- Use reminders and due dates to remember your tasks
- Collaborate on different projects by assigning tasks to other users
- Use priority levels to prioritize your tasks
- Utilize the personalized productivity trends feature to track your progress
#### Helpful Reviews of Todoist that May Turn You Into Their User:
“Been using todoist for 7 years and I still use it. Its a great place to catch all the info happening in your daily life and its so integrated into different platforms. You will get the most out of it by doing quick tasks for work or life. Use Asana and Tello for group projects or giant notes if thats what you are looking for. Todoist is all about keeping it simple and clean. I have no more than 5 projects and my productivity has increased. Todoist saved my life.”*– Ritza Francois
### 21. [Chrome Remote Desktop](https://remotedesktop.google.com/access/)
→ [Get Chrome Remote Desktop extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desktop/inomeogfingihgjfjlpeplalcfajhgai).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**2.8 out of 5 stars (based on 953 reviews)**Number of Current Users:**5,705,314*This extension allows you to remotely access another computer through Chrome browser or a Chromebook. You can access other computers or make yours available on a short-term basis for things like ad hoc remote support. You can also allow remote access to your applications and files on a more long term basis, depending on the situation.
#### Our Favorite Chrome Remote Desktop Feature:
Chrome Remote Desktop provides remote assistance to Windows, Mac and Linux users. Users can access Windows and Mac desktops at any time, all from the Chrome browser.
### 22. [LastPass: Free Password Manager](https://www.lastpass.com/password-manager)
→ [Get LastPass: Free Password Manager extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lastpass-free-password-ma/hdokiejnpimakedhajhdlcegeplioahd).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.6 out of 5 stars (based on 28,937 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**10,000,000+
LastPass saves your passwords and gives you secure access from every computer and mobile device you are using. All you have to do is remember one password – your LastPass master password. You can save all your usernames and passwords to LastPass, and it will auto-login to your sites and sync your passwords. LastPass is free to use on any computer, laptop, or phone.
With LastPass you can:
- Store your login usernames and passwords
- Attach docs, PDFs, images, audio, and similar files
- Manage your data from a simple, searchable vault
- Add, edit, view, delete, and organize your passwords
#### Why We Use LastPass:
Being a digital marketing agency with a myriad of employees and (happy) clients, we needed a reliable, quick and easy-to-use solution for all the bloody passwords and accounts that we use in our daily workflow – and there are LOTS of them. LastPass provided us with this solution as it lets you add your credential info in just a couple of clicks!
## Best Chrome Extensions: Email and Contact Management Extensions
### 23. [Yesware Email Tracking](https://www.yesware.com/feature/email-tracking/)
→ [Get Yesware Email Tracking extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yesware-email-tracking/gkjnkapjmjfpipfcccnjbjcbgdnahpjp).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.2 out of 5 stars (based on 1,156 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**150,009
Yesware Email Tracking allows you to see who opens your emails and clicks on your links.
This handy extension can help you to create and grow lasting business relationships. It makes tracking, managing, and staying up to date with your connections easy and simple.
#### Our Favorite Yesware Email Tracking Features:
- Follow up smarter with email tracking
- Save precious time with email templates
- Create personalized campaigns
- Schedule emails to send at the exact day and time
### 24. Google Mail Checker
→ [Get Google Mail Checker extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-mail-checker/mihcahmgecmbnbcchbopgniflfhgnkff).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.2 out of 5 stars (based on 37,683 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**4,284,244
(Source: Chrome Web Store)
This simple, but incredibly useful extension displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. You can also access your inbox easily by clicking on the button.
#### A Google Mail Checker Review You May Find Useful:
“Google Mail Checker is not as extensive as the Checker Plus for Gmail and the Google Mail Checker Plus, but it does not spam you with popup ads as those other extensions recently started doing. There are no options that need to be saved with Google Mail Checker; it simply works. I’ve used all three mentioned here, and after years away I’ve come back to the original for its clean simplicity.”*– Ibraheem Opeyemi Abdulaleem.
### 25. [Hunter: Find email addresses in seconds](https://hunter.io/)
→ [Get Hunter: Find email addresses in seconds extension here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hunter-find-email-address/hgmhmanijnjhaffoampdlllchpolkdnj).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.7 out of 5 stars (based on 11,895 reviews)******Number of Current Users:**374,199
Hunter helps you to immediately find out who to contact when you visit a certain site. Besides the email addresses, you can get names, job titles, social networks and phone numbers of people you are trying to contact.
If you already know the name of the person you would like to reach, simply type it in the search field. You will get the email address along with a confidence score and sources.
Hunter is the perfect extension for:
- salespeople
- marketers
- bloggers
- reporters
- and other professionals who are always trying to reach potential customers or find reliable information
### 26. [Voila Norbert](https://www.voilanorbert.com/)
→ [Get Voila Norbert](https://www.voilanorbert.com/).**Current Chrome Web Store Rating:**4.5 out of 5 stars ******Number of Current Users:**5.000+
Voila Norbert is an email verification and prospecting tool. The Chrome extension allows you to visit a website and see people’s email addresses. If you’re managing outreach campaigns, this tool is a real timesaver.
The Chrome extension works alongside the software. You can go to your Voila Norbert dashboard, type in the person’s name and company domain, to find a person’s emails. Meanwhile, you can use the email verification tool to clean your email list. This helps improve deliverability rates.
For more useful and easy ways to find emails and reach out to prospects, we recommend reading the following article: [How to Find Someone’s Email Address: 8 Simple Ways](https://respona.com/blog/how-to-find-someones-email-address/).
## Closing Word
These days, every second counts and properly chosen extensions can save you a lot of time and money. These 25 Chrome extensions we selected for you will definitely improve your workflow and boost productivity.
---
## Posts: The Role of Content Strategy in Digital Marketing [2025 Update]
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/role-content-strategy-digital-marketing-1064](https://fourdots.com/blog/role-content-strategy-digital-marketing-1064)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/role-content-strategy-digital-marketing-1064.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/role-content-strategy-digital-marketing-1064.md)
**Published:** 2019-11-26
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-11
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, content strategy, digital marketing
### Content
Today, content strategy is one of the crucial aspects of every successful site or digital marketing business. Without it, creating engaging, relevant, and easy to find content that is appropriate both for the demographics you are catering to and for search engines, would be complicated and almost impossible.
The duties of a content strategist are varied and include everything from research of the potential audience to creating a sensible content flow. In order to help you better understand how important good content strategy is for digital marketing, we have decided to familiarize you with the steps in the process, which can help you not only with your future marketing endeavors, but also with [creating potent and engaging content](https://fourdots.com/blog/improve-content-writing-seo-paid-social-media-marketing-5834) for your website.
Here’s how to create the best possible content strategy for your business.*## Define Your Goals Clearly
Before you start writing your content strategy you have to set your goals. As you probably know, a lot of sites and businesses know what*they’re doing and*how*they’re doing it.**What**represents the products and services they are offering to their customers and target audience.**How**stands for the way they are providing their products and services to their customers. The thing that sets them apart from their competitors.
Knowing these things is important, but without determining your**why**, you won’t get far in digital marketing. The why is your ultimate goal, the thing you want to achieve, the very reason why your business exists.
To define your goals clearly, you have to ask yourself these questions:
Is your goal to…
- [drive traffic to your online shop](https://www.monsterinsights.com/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-online-store/) or office?
- increase sales, conversion rates or generate new leads?
- educate customers and your target audience on what you do?
- inform your customers on what’s going on with your business?
- build a brand?
If you have many different goals, you shouldn’t try to achieve all of them at once. Fighting on five fronts at the same time is not a good strategy simply because you are not able to commit to one task and do it properly. It’s usually a waste of your time, effort, and resources.
So, you should try to have one primary goal and stay committed to it until you accomplish it.
## Identify The Audience
The two things you have to consider when making a content strategy are**the message**you are trying to get across and**the expected consumers**of the content you created.
The audience will determine the style and the topics that you will use, so you really can’t do anything before [**finding out who your target audience is**](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/identify-your-true-web-audience/324443/) and what they might find useful, informative or entertaining.
There are numerous ways to do this and the most effective ones are:
- browsing social networks
- checking the comments on the sites of your competitors
- performing different surveys
- and generally immersing yourself in the culture of the people you expect to find your content interesting
## Offer Something of Value
Once you have identified your potential audience, you have to find a way to produce something that they will find**engaging**and**useful**. If you are working on a website that already has some content, your first task will be to [review that content](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-audit-checklist/237731/), and determine the reactions of visitors, what it was that they liked or didn’t like and [whether there are any gaps in the provided content](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-gap-analysis/223421/).
If you are, however, starting from scratch, you’ll have to determine key themes and the right register, as well as define the goals your content is meant to achieve.
Basically, your content has to:
- satisfy the expectations of your visitors
- offer something useful or interesting
- be relevant when you consider the time of publishing
- be future-proof (which means it won’t get outdated in a couple of months)
- be something that your visitors will gladly share with their friends on social media
In order to be able to create such content, you have to have extensive knowledge of the subject matter and be aware of the norms and demands of the culture or group you are creating the content for. You must be well acquainted with current trends and people’s expectations, all the while keeping in mind that the content you create is meant to satisfy not only the needs of its consumers, but also the needs of your website or business.
## Making The Content Work for You
Creating a potent and thorough [**content strategy**](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy) necessitates a holistic approach to content creation, just like a piece of content has to serve more than one purpose, you must view it as a part of a whole, and not an isolated item.
This is to say that you have to keep a number of factors in mind, one of which is**appropriate publishing frequency**and**content flow**. Most people will publish several average (but still interesting and engaging) pieces of content, followed by a superb one, which will seem even better in contrast with the previous ones.
Naturally, if you are capable of constantly publishing amazing pieces of content you shouldn’t force yourself into mediocrity, but it usually takes too much time and resources for people to maintain that tempo for too long.
Your content must also meet other demands. First, it must help **promote your brand**by painting a clearer picture of your ideology and reaching new audiences.
If you want your content to attract new visitors,**you can’t ignore SEO**while producing it.
This doesn’t just mean that you should merely sprinkle a keyword here and there, but that you have to have an idea of where your content might be shared and to make it while having that notion in mind as well.
That said, here are some of the [content marketing KPIs you should keep an eye on](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-content-marketing-kpis-3255) when creating your content, while you can also check out this interesting [**content marketing timeline interactive infographic**](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) to get a better idea of how the industry has been evolving.
## Make Sure to Choose Potent Keywords to Target
Besides coming up with engaging and relevant topics, a big part of your content strategy is choosing the appropriate keywords to target. This means you have to [conduct a**thorough keyword research**](https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-research/) process.
Remember, without potent keywords, your content, no matter how good it is, will probably have a hard time ranking high on Google. Unfortunately, this means your organic traffic will suffer.
However, this doesn’t mean your keywords should determine what you will or will not write.
You must not abandon your writing methods and techniques in favor of keywords and other aspects of optimization. Instead, **these two should coexist,**and only then will you be able to produce engaging, entertaining, and SEO-friendly content.
Therefore, here are three things you have to remember when it comes to using keywords in your content strategy:
- Find the keywords with high search volume and low difficulty
- Write inspiring blog content that includes those keywords in the title, body, subheadings, and image alt text
- Try to use those keywords as anchor text to [get backlinks to your site](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency). However, you must be careful because Google doesn’t like to see too many optimized anchors in the text
## Create The Content Calendar
Having a content calendar is rather helpful because it allows you to stay organized and on top of your tasks. It is the simplest way to ensure that your content is always well-written and published on time.
[Creating a content calendar is easy,](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/create-content-marketing-editorial-calendar-5-steps/264811/) and it provides you with a chance to make real-time updates and corrections, organize all of your content, and have the most accurate information on your writers, their tasks, and deadlines.
In case you never made a content calendar before, you can use tools like [Trello](https://trello.com/en) or Google Calendar.
## They Will Judge a Book by Its Cover
The duties of a content strategist overlap to some extent with those of an information architect and web designer. You are not only in charge of creating the content, but you also have to think about the way it is organized and presented to the visitors.
Other members of your team will handle most parts of this, but you can’t ignore this aspect of content strategy and have to offer your input whenever it might benefit the way content is perceived.
## Reaping The Benefits
If you consider all of this, the content you create will attract a lot of attention and do wonders for promoting your brand. If skillfully made, your content can become both the message and the means for spreading that message, with your audience doing most of the work of attracting new people.
---
## Posts: Four Dots Digital Marketing Agency and Art&Code Creative Studio Established a Joint Project Called Infostarters
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-content-design-project-called-infostarters-6091](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-content-design-project-called-infostarters-6091)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-content-design-project-called-infostarters-6091.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-content-design-project-called-infostarters-6091.md)
**Published:** 2019-11-01
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** Company News, News
### Content
We are proud to announce that our [Four Dots Digital Marketing Agency](https://fourdots.com/) has started a brand new project, [Infostarters](https://infostarters.com/), in cooperation with [Art&Code Creative Studio](https://www.artandcode.eu/).
Infostarters is an online platform that offers two types of services to its users –**digital content creation**and**exclusive graphic design solutions**– both crucial for a successful marketing strategy.
As long-time partners, Four Dots Digital Marketing Agency and Art&Code Creative Studio decided that combining their extensive experience and establishing a joint project was the next logical step forward. They created a platform that allows them to deliver great content and innovative design solutions to businesses looking to create a consistent brand image and presence.
Designed to facilitate the process of creating materials for both digital and print promotion, [Infostarters](https://fourdots.com/blog/category/company-news) offers its users outstanding quality graphic design, as well as content research and creation at an impressive speed, which is what makes this service so unique.
As Vladan Dobrenov, the CEO of Infostarters said: “Infostarters offers the speed of an online service and custom work of a digital agency. When people need branded promotional material for a marketing campaign that’s just about to be rolled out, or even an ongoing one – they come to us because they know they will receive the products they need faster than ever, without compromising on quality.“
Infostarters online platform offers infographic research and creation, custom illustrations, tailor-made logo and icon designs, product catalogs, brochures, and eBooks. The orders are placed through a simple and time-efficient ordering system.
Depending on clients’ needs, when choosing a [service](https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company), there is a full package option, that includes both content creation and design, as well as to choose individual content or design services.
Established in August 2019, Infostarters has offices located in Serbia, New York, and Hong Kong, and their services are offered in English and Serbian.
For more information, visit [infostarters.com](https://infostarters.com/).
---
## Posts: 3 Free Productivity Tools by Four Dots Essential for your SEO & PPC Efforts
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/free-productivity-sem-tools-by-four-dots-6004](https://fourdots.com/blog/free-productivity-sem-tools-by-four-dots-6004)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/free-productivity-sem-tools-by-four-dots-6004.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/free-productivity-sem-tools-by-four-dots-6004.md)
**Published:** 2019-10-17
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News, SEO
**Tags:** Advertising, PPC, SEM tools, SEO, SKAG
### Content
Ever since the very first website saw the light of day back in 1991… Ok, just kidding, we’re not doing that. We won’t be providing you with an unnecessary SEO history lesson.
Instead, we’re going to cut right to the chase.
We have some great news for all you fellow**SEO**and**PPC**warriors out there as our company –**Four Dots**– just released a brand new set of [**free SEM tools**](https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools) to help you with your KWR (Keyword Research) and ad targeting efforts. Taking into account the success of our previous marketing tools – [**Dibz**](https://dibz.me/) and [**Reportz**](https://reportz.io/) – we decided to give back to both the industry and the community that has been so nice to us, and thus launch these potent SEM tools and make them available to everyone free of charge.
So, if you need a user-friendly and intuitive SEO and PPC platform that can help you:
- Find just the right keywords (according to language and/or geolocation)
- Get valuable insight about your keywords (average search volume, CPC, competition)
- Automate the tedious process of creating a myriad of ad groups and ads
- Improve your CTRs and Quality Scores
- Fetch overall more relevant results for your [Google Ads](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) campaign
…we strongly suggest you read on.
## The Keyword Merger Tool and How to Use it
Keyword Merger is SEM’s little helper that can save you a ton of time by creating a list of potential keyword phrases and long-tail keywords. Typically, you would have 2 or 3 lists of potential keywords that are divided both semantically and in terms of syntax, so the merged results would make sense on both linguistic levels.
Here’s an example.
Say you want to create a list of potential keywords for SEO/PPC/SEM tools. It is likely that you would create 3 lists of words that look something like this:*
Now, instead of combining these keywords manually (which can be a rather tedious process, especially if you come up with keywords lists much larger than the example we provided) you can simply insert the words and phrases relevant to your topic, and after hitting the**Combine Keywords**button, you get a scrollable list (along with the downloadable CSV file) containing your combined keywords.
Pretty neat.
## Search Volume Tool and How to Use it
Once you have a list of keywords and keyword phrases that you feel comfortable with, you can insert it into our Search Volume tool and quickly obtain valuable data on each of the keywords. This data includes:
-**Search volume**-**CPC (Cost Per Click)**-**Competition**After hitting Submit, the results will look like this:
Naturally, the results for the same keyword may vary depending on your**Geo-Location**and**Language**input.
The list of your keywords and the CPC/Competition/Search Volume information can be downloaded by clicking on the**Download CSV**button located below your data.
## The SKAG Generator Tool
Using the**SKAG**(Single Keyword Ad Group) method helps advertisers keep their campaign tightly focused, improve Quality Score, and [bring the overall performance of your PPC efforts to a whole new level](https://fourdots.com/blog/time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-agency-approach-3697).
The SKAG method is pretty self-explanatory: One keyword per ad group, with its own set of ads.*This approach allows advertisers to make their Google Ads campaign uber-targeted and thus optimize their campaign costs by spending money only on the users who are searching for that exact keyword that will, therefore, [lead them to your product/services/business](https://elevatedigital.hk/blog/growth-hacking-a-noob-friendly-guide-3866).
As PPC campaigns often require merciless bidding wars over desired keywords, it can result in the ad-creating process taking far too long, but more importantly – it can cause a problem with match type, which is something that [caused quite a kerfuffle a couple of months ago](https://searchengineland.com/are-skags-dead-after-googles-latest-match-type-changes-320681) when Google updated their match type policy.
This is where our**SKAG Generator**comes into play as it can help you reduce the SKAG campaign creation process to mere minutes and clicks by:
- Creating all possible SKAG combinations according to the keyword match types
- Pairing them accordingly with negative keywords
- Dynamically inserting desired keywords into headlines and ad text
- Creating ads for all possible ad groups ↔ SKAG combinations
Here’s an example of how to properly fill in our SKAG Generator form:
## The Ball’s in Your Court Now
We sincerely hope you will find these free**PPC**and [**SEO tools**](https://fourdots.com/about-us/seo-tools-for-digital-agencies) as handy as our existing clients already have. They harbor a huge potential that can help you lessen the ad creation stress by reducing the PPC campaign creation process to mere minutes and clicks.
Last but not least, as we always value the feedback coming directly from our immediate clients, we would appreciate your honest opinion about our new SEO and PPC tools so we can work on improving our platforms further and thus make them more effective and easier for you to use for all SEO agencies, especially our [neighbors in New York](https://www.designrush.com/trends/seo-agencies-new-york) :)
Also, do not forget to check out our [**link prospecting (DIBZ)**](https://dibz.me/) and [**client reporting and data tracking (Reportz)**](https://reportz.io/) tools!
---
## Posts: How to Set Up E-Commerce Tracking Properly and Why It’s Important For E-Commerce Sites
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-analytics-tracking-for-e-commerce-5880](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-analytics-tracking-for-e-commerce-5880)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-analytics-tracking-for-e-commerce-5880.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-analytics-tracking-for-e-commerce-5880.md)
**Published:** 2019-09-27
**Last Updated:** 2025-02-19
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Growth Hacking
**Tags:** Ecommerce, eCommerce SEO, Google Analytics, Metrics Tracking
### Content
The realm of digital marketing and e-commerce is an ever-changing world in which the art of adapting is crucial for success. The new and advanced technologies, business models, services, and strategies are setting new standards rather often and if you want to keep up with your competitors and thrive in this market, you must always stay ahead of the curve.
Achieving this is rarely possible without the [use of Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/provision/?authuser=0#/provision).
This potent tool allows you to track the majority of crucial metrics, including:
- how many people visited your site or a certain page
- how long they remained there
- their location
- how the chosen keywords and strategies are performing
- bounce rate
- lead generation costs (cost per conversion), etc.
Website owners, regardless of their niche, should use [Google Analytics 4](https://ga4.rs) on a daily basis. This is especially important for e-commerce website owners as, without this type of valuable data, they probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with new trends and their competition.
So, if you are in the e-commerce business, you should stick around because we are going to talk about how to set up E-commerce tracking properly and why it is important for e-commerce website owners.
## Why E-Commerce Tracking Is Crucial For E-commerce Websites
It is hard to imagine the [success of E-commerce websites and online stores](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ecommerce-guide/on-page-seo/) without the daily utilization of Google Analytics. This is because the E-commerce business thrives on data.
More precisely – correct and actionable data that can help you improve your strategy and make better, data-driven decisions.
Look at it this way – accurate data can help you to convert new leads, find new customers, and drive revenue. On the other hand, misinterpreted data, or simply not having access to valuable data, can cost you your business. For a startup company or an online store that is trying to make a breakthrough on the market, every sale counts. So, if you want to succeed, you have to use Google Analytics and [E-commerce tracking](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ecommerce-metrics/323811/) in order to get the most accurate data related to your business. Acquiring information about your online marketing and sales strategies allows you to easily beat your competitors who perhaps don’t have this kind of information or don’t know how to use it to their advantage. Knowing which trends are welcome on the market and which are not provides you with a chance to avoid potential damage and loss of profit.*Also, this type of insight allows you to better observe the behavior and shopping habits of your customers. This can help you anticipate the changes in the market which allows you to adjust your marketing strategies, introduce new products, and keep people interested in your brand.
## How To Set Up E-commerce Tracking In Google Analytics On Shopify and Woocommerce
In case you are new to Google Analytics or the E-commerce business in general, you might not know how to set up E-commerce tracking. Don’t worry, we will take you through the steps.
However, before we start with the walkthrough, you should know that there are two types of E-commerce tracking –**standard**and**enhanced**(the difference between these two types of tracking is explained later in the article). We will show you how to set up both of them in Google Analytics. To do this, we will use examples from the two most popular platforms out there – Shopify and WooCommerce.
### Setting Up Standard E-commerce Tracking On Shopify
Step 1: In your Google Analytics account, click**Admin**.
Step 2: Next, in the**View**menu, click**E-commerce Settings**.
Step 3: Click the**Enable E-commerce**toggle to turn on tracking
As you can see, turning on E-commerce tracking is rather simple. However, if this is not good enough for you and you want to acquire more information, you should set up Enhanced E-commerce tracking in your account.
However, this is just one part of the process. If you want E-commerce tracking to work properly, you have to send acquired data from your online store to GA in a required format. This is done within the platform itself by copying the GA code into Shopify or WooCommerce, depending on which one you use.
### Setting Up Enhanced E-commerce Tracking On Shopify
Step 1: Again, click on**Admin**.
Step 2: Click**Online Store**>**Preferences**.
Step 3: Then, in the Google Analytics section paste the UA code and click the**Use Enhanced E-commerce**checkbox.
Step 4:**Save**Step 5: In your Google Analytics account, click**Admin**again.
Step 6: In the**View**menu, click**E-commerce settings**.
Step 7: Click the**Enable Enhanced E-commerce Reporting**toggle to turn it on.
### Setting Up Enhanced E-commerce Tracking On WooCommerce
Before we start with the steps, you should know that having Google Tag Manager for WordPress by Thomas Geiger* plugin is the fastest and simplest way to set up enhanced E-commerce tracking in WooCommerce.
You can download it [here](https://gtm4wp.com) or directly from WordPress.
Also, you can find the instructions on how to install this plugin [here](https://gtm4wp.com/how-to-articles/installing-the-plugin).
Step 1: Enable enhanced E-commerce tracking in plugin settings
- Open**plugin settings**page in your WordPress which is located under**Settings / Google Tag Manager**- Click on the**Integrations**tab
- Click on the**WooCommerce**sub-tab
- Check the**Track Enhanced E-commerce**box
- Save changes
Step 2: Make sure your GA Pageview tag is set to Universal Analytics
- Go to**Workspace**and click on**Tags**- Find**GA Pageview**tag and make sure it’s set to**Universal Analytics**Step 3: Enable Enhanced E-commerce in Universal Analytics tags
- Go to Tag Configuration and check the**Enable overriding settings in this tag**box
- Then, go to More Settings > E-commerce and set Enable Enhanced E-commerce Features to**True**- Check the**Use Data Layer**box
Step 4: Make sure the Trigger Type is Page View – DOM Ready
- Go to Trigger Configuration and set Trigger Type to Page View – DOM Ready
- Check the**All DOM Ready Events**circle
Step 5: Create a Custom Event trigger
- In the Trigger Configuration menu set Trigger Type to**Custom Event**- Use the Event Name we will provide in the screenshot below (event name: gtm4wp.addProductToCartEEC|gtm4wp.productClickEEC|gtm4wp.removeFromCartEEC|gtm4wp.checkoutOptionECC|gtm4wp.changeDetailViewEEC )
- Make sure to check the**Use regex matching**box
- Name your trigger as you want and save it (for example: Event – E-commerce Events)
Step 6: Create a Universal Google Analytics Tag
- Chose Universal Analytics Tag Type
- Select Event as a Track Type
- Define values for Event Category, Event Action & optionally for Event Label (for example Event Category = E-commerce Helper)**Event Action = {{Event}}
- Enable every feature you already enabled in other Analytics tags (like display features, enhanced link attribution, etc.) or select your Google Analytics settings variable if you have created one previously
- Click on the More Settings**section and under**E-commerce features**select**TRUE**from the**Enable Enhanced E-commerce Features**dropdown and then check**Use Data Layer**checkbox
- Attach previously created a**trigger**to this**Tag**and save your tag
## The Importance Of Dynamic Conversion Value
Tracking your conversions is a great way to see exactly how much your customers have spent on specific products and which items and ads are bringing you the most profit.
Also, not all consumers will buy the same amount of a certain product, so [if you are interested in having**accurate reports**](https://reportz.io/), the dynamic conversion value should be one of your priorities.
This feature allows you to keep track of all your ads across different platforms, which means you can easily see which ads are bringing in most of the money. This way you can calculate ROAS (return on ad spend) and ROI (return on investment), which is crucial for every E-commerce website.
The steps below will show you how to set up this feature for Shopify (steps for WooCommerce are linked below this section).**Step 1: Create a conversion action in Google Ads**To set up Google Ads conversion tracking, follow these [Google Ads instructions](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6095821).
In order to track purchases so you can see how effective your ads are at generating sales on your website, set the category to**Purchase/Sale**, and the value to**Use different values for each conversion.**When you’re done creating your conversion action, click**create and continue**.**Step 2: Install the global site tag**After creating the conversion action, you need to install the global site tag in your Shopify theme code.
Here’s how to do this:
- When you get to the “Set up the tag” step in Google Ads, choose**Install the tag yourself**option.
- In the Global site tag section, select the option that applies.
- Copy your global site tag.
- Open your Shopify admin in another window and go to the**Online Store**.
- Click**Actions**>**Edit code**.
- Open your theme.liquid file.
- In case this is the first time you’ve installed a global site tag, paste the copied global site tag between the****and****tags to apply the tag to every page across your store.
Source: Shopify
- If you’re editing an already installed global site tag, then locate the tag in your theme.liquid file and change the code according to the instructions given by Google Ads.
- Click**Save**.**Step 3: Install the event snippet**After setting up the global site tag, you have to install the event snippet. This snippet tracks a conversion any time somebody clicks one of your ads and then later reaches the checkout page on your website or an online store.
Here’s how to do this:
- In Google Ads, in the Event snippet section, select**Page load**.
- Copy the event snippet code.
- In your Shopify admin click**Settings > Checkout**.
- Paste the event snippet in the**Order processing section**, in the**Additional scripts text**box. In case you have code in the Additional scripts text box, add the event snippet in a new line below.
- To prevent duplicate conversions, you have to add tags before and after the event snippet. This way it will trigger once per customer.
- On the line before the snippet, paste**{% if first_time_accessed %}**.
- On the line after the snippet, paste**{% endif %}**.
- The default currency is USD. If you don’t sell in this currency, replace ‘USD’ in the event snippet with**‘{{ shop.currency }}’**.
- The default transaction ID is blank. To prevent duplicate conversions, next to ‘transaction_id’: replace ” with**‘{{ order_number }}’**.
(Source: Shopify)
- Click Save**Step 4: Make the conversion value dynamic**If you’re tracking purchases on your online store, then, logically, the value of each conversion is different.
To track a different value for every conversion, you need to edit your event snippet to use values that are specific to each transaction made on your website or an online store.
Here’s how to do this:
- Open your Shopify admin and click**Settings > Checkout**.
- In the**Order processing section**, in the**Additional scripts text box**, find the event snippet you added in the previous step.
- Replace the line beginning with ‘value’: with one of these snippets:
– To exclude taxes and shipping from the conversion, replace it with this snippet:
**‘value’: {{ checkout.subtotal_price | money_without_currency }}**,
– To include taxes and shipping in the conversion, replace it with this snippet:
**‘value’: {{ checkout.total_price | money_without_currency }}**.
Source: Shopify
You can see the instructions for setting up Dynamic Conversion value on WooCommerce [here](https://gtm4wp.com/how-to-articles/how-to-setup-dynamic-remarketing-in-google-adwords).
## Standard E-commerce Tracking vs Enhanced E-commerce Tracking
The majority of [small business owners](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-guide-for-small-businesses-1709) and new E-commerce websites tend to use standard E-commerce tracking because it’s much simpler and less time-consuming. This is perfectly understandable, especially considering the fact that the standard type of tracking is sufficient for their business. However, for someone who is in charge of a bigger corporation or a more popular E-commerce website, enhanced e-commerce tracking should always be a go-to option.
Therefore, let’s see what these two tracking options can offer you.
With the Standard E-commerce tracking you can track these things:
- Total Orders
- Total Tax Cost
- Total Shipping Cost
- Total Quantity Purchased
- Products Purchased
- The Number of Products Purchased
- The Category of Products Purchased
- Conversion Rate
On the other hand, here are the things you can track with Enhanced E-commerce tracking:
####**Purchases**- Total Orders
- Total Refunds
- Total Tax Cost
- Total Shipping Cost
- Total Revenue
- Total Refund Amount
- Total Quantity Purchased
- Products Purchased
- The Number of Products Purchased
- The Category of Products Purchased
- Order Coupons
- Buy to Detail Conversion Rate
- Cart to Detail Conversion Rate
- E-commerce Conversion Rate**Cart Stats**- Products Added to Cart
- The Number of Products Added to Cart
- Products Removed from Cart
- The Number of Products Removed from Cart
- Product Checkouts**Products**- Product Detail Views
- Product List Clicks
- Product List Views
- Product Coupons
Enhanced E-commerce tracking also allows you to see how many users have gone through the checkout process and how many of them abandoned your site without buying anything. Besides the behavior of your customers, Enhanced E-commerce tracking provides you with a chance to see whether or not your banners and promos have been successful.
## Conclusion
It doesn’t matter what business niche you are in, if you want to succeed in your field, you have to use Google Analytics to track your conversions and get the most accurate data. This is especially important if you are in the E-commerce industry. Using old or inaccurate data can literally cost you your business. This is why people from this niche often say –*it is better to make decisions from scratch (without any data available), than to make data-driven decisions based on false metrics*. However, in order to avoid any shots in the dark, you should set up E-commerce tracking for your online store.
---
## Posts: How to Improve your Content Writing for SEO, Paid, and Social Media Marketing in 2020
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/improve-content-writing-seo-paid-social-media-marketing-5834](https://fourdots.com/blog/improve-content-writing-seo-paid-social-media-marketing-5834)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/improve-content-writing-seo-paid-social-media-marketing-5834.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/improve-content-writing-seo-paid-social-media-marketing-5834.md)
**Published:** 2019-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, content strategy, content writing tips, Paid Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing
### Content
If you ever did or read something remotely related to search engine optimization or digital marketing, you definitely came across the famous phrase –*content is king*. This is now considered to be a rather old saying, but if you are a beginner, you should know that content still rules the SEO kingdom. In other words, you simply can’t achieve online success without producing high-quality content. It doesn’t matter which niche you belong to, [reaching your target audience](https://fourdots.com/blog/100k-visitors-using-9-simple-guidelines-infographic-4189) and properly promoting your service and/or product is absolutely crucial within the modern digital marketing landscape.
This is where well-written, [AGI actionable](_wp_link_placeholder), substance-packed content comes into play.
Finding the right things to write about is, of course, important, but you should also make sure your writing style and tone are on point. However, writing for your target audience and writing for Google are two completely different things. So, if you want to [create high-quality and engaging content that ranks well and converts](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189), you have to produce content that meets [Google’s requirements](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169), while also satisfying the needs of your readers.
Balancing these two aspects of content writing is not a simple task.
This is why today we are going to share with you some practical tips on how to write SEO, paid, and social media marketing friendly content.
## Content Writing Tips for Improved SEO
### Perform Thorough Competitor Analysis
It doesn’t matter how good of a writer you are, you can’t just sit in front of your computer, start typing, and expect to instantly write perfect, Google-friendly content. You must have a proper strategy, the two most important parts of which are:
- Thorough keyword research
- Quality content analysis
To perform these tasks properly right from the get-go, you have to study your successful competitors closely, look for the keywords they are targeting for similar topics, get a grasp of the demographics they are targeting, and try your best to implement keywords with high volume and low difficulty. This might sound a bit complicated to someone who is a beginner, but tools like [**Ahrefs**](https://ahrefs.com/) can help you with these tasks and make your job much easier.
Besides keywords, you should also analyze the content of your competitors through the process of**content analysis**.
Simply put, content analysis involves studying the writing styles, methods and tactics of your competitors and trying to see what kind of content generates a lot of traffic and resonates well with the target audience. This way, you will be able to learn from their mistakes and pick up some valuable tricks of the trade along the way. This strategy can give you that initial push that is so important, especially for someone who is new to SEO and digital marketing.*To find out more on how content analysis can help you write better and rank higher, visit this informative article from Search Engine Journal – [Content Analysis and Better Ranking](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-analysis-and-ranking/317797/).
### Use Your Keywords Wisely
Finding the right keywords is crucial if you want to rank high on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages, but knowing how to use them properly is where you can get the edge. For example, polluting your content with too many keywords is not a good strategy because Google has no tolerance for keyword stuffing. If you do this, Google will most likely recognize your content as spammy*and untrustworthy content, which can ruin your chances of ranking high.
To find out more on how to successfully execute this task, we recommend delving deeper into this holy grail of keyword research articles by Ahrefs: [How To Do Keyword Research for SEO](https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-research/).
### Build Yourself An Inverted Pyramid
If you studied journalism, you probably know all about the [*inverted pyramid*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)) writing method. For those of you who are not familiar with it, we will explain what it is and how it can benefit your writing.
The inverted pyramid is a style of writing where the writer starts with the conclusion. Back in the day, journalists and writers wrote their news and articles like they were essays. The introduction was almost always too long and too detailed, and the most important information was placed at the end of the text.
In this modern-day and age, people simply don’t have time for this style of writing. They want to know the most important things right away. Therefore, if you are planning to mainly write short, concise pieces of content, we suggest you invert the pyramid and start with the end. Share the crucial information at the beginning of the article and answer the legendary***who**,**what**,**when**,**where**,*and***how***questions. Once you do this, you can write about less important things in detail. However, in order to grab your reader’s attention and reduce the bounce rates on your website, you have to go straight to the point. ***But remember:**a truly great piece of content**keeps your reader engaged**throughout the entire article, whether it is a 400-word or a 4000-word article. If you can achieve this, you know you’re on the right track. [SEO and content marketing](https://elevatedigital.hk/blog/seo-content-ultimate-combination-3509) can be powerful weapons if you use them correctly. Here’s an informative, interactive infographic depicting [how the content marketing industry has been evolving over the decades](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/).
Which brings us to…
### Adjust Your Writing Style To Your Target Audience
In the introduction, we talked about how important it is to find the perfect balance between writing for Google and writing for your audience. Meeting Google’s requirements is crucial, but so is connecting with your target audience, especially in the long run. Some would even argue that the bond you have with your readers is more important because Google’s rules and algorithms come and go, and the loyal audience stays.
Therefore, if you want to [have more organic traffic](https://fourdots.com/blog/triple-organic-traffic-and-revenue-in-2018-4427), you have to adjust your writing style to your target audience.**For example: **Say you are writing about surfboards, you probably shouldn’t be too formal with your readers and shouldn’t use complicated language. Instead, try to keep it simple, funny, and informative, as your target audience are surfers who are looking for some tips on how to maintain their surfboards and where they can find new and affordable ones. So, you can perhaps try to bond with your audience by telling a joke about surfers or using a clever surfer slang.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which audience you are targeting, in order to engage your readers and keep them interested, you have to speak their language.
### Be Trustworthy And Use At Least Three Different Sources When Writing
Although proper use of keywords and writing style are important, they mean nothing if your content is misleading and untrustworthy. Last year in August, Google had no mercy for misleading websites when they introduced its now-famous [medic update](https://yoast.com/googles-medic-update/). Albeit this update affected mostly health-related websites, hence the name, it also warned others to check their facts before they publish anything online.
So, if you want to rank well on Google, you have to build your business by showing these three things:
- Expertise
- Authority
- Trustworthiness
Building the three pillars of E-A-T is not a simple task, especially if you are new on the market, but there are simple ways to achieve this. Here are the things you can do to build a better reputation in the world of SEO:
- Have a detailed, informative, and well-optimized “About Us” page on your website
- Provide bio pages of your authors so your audience can see they are experts on the subject
- Build your authority on other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, or LinkedIn
- Feature contact information on every page or have a Contact Us page with your phone number, physical address, email, social media pages, etc.
- Use at least three different respectful sources
- Insert relevant links leading to various high-profile sources, providing valuable additional information on the subject matter
When it comes to ranking high on Google, gaining the trust of your target audience is half the battle. The best way to achieve this is by working on your E-A-T and by being transparent.
## Content Writing Tips For Paid Marketing
### If You Want Your Ad To Be Persuasive, It Has To Be Informative
Praising your product is one of the crucial things you have to do if you plan on selling it. However, it doesn’t matter how good your product is, you won’t be able to convince people to buy it based on your praises alone. If you want your ad to be persuasive, it has to be informative.
Let’s take those surfboards we mentioned earlier as an example. If you are selling surfing equipment, you should never address only the professional surfers or people who have been your loyal customers for years. You should also consider women, men, and children who are new to the surfing world, or have never taken up this sport but are your potential customers. Pros and loyal clients most likely already know how to find you and your product, but the newbies and potential customers don’t.
This is why you have to**anticipate their search queries**.
Put yourself in the shoes of a surfer newbie and think of the questions they might have. It is likely they are trying to find surfboards for beginners and similar basic equipment. You should keep this in mind and target keywords like – affordable surfboards, surfing equipment for beginners, best surfboards for kids*…
Also, you should use the space you have in your ad to explain why people should buy your product. Don’t just write about how good it is; try to be more specific. Talk about its characteristics, the proper way it should be used and maintained, what separates it from the competition, mention the pricing, etc.
General rule of thumb is: the more informative yet concise the ad, the better.
For more information on how to write perfect Google ads check out this article – [5 Classic Tips to Write Effective Google Ads Copy](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/writing-google-ad-copy/264669/).
### Offering Scarce Products Is Still A Good Strategy
One of the golden rules of advertising is offering scarce products. The more limited something is, the more people want to have it. So, if you are writing an ad, make sure to tease your target audience and customers with limited offers. The two most effective ways to do this are:
- Offering limited quantity
- Offering certain products for a limited time
This definitely is one of the best strategies in advertising, but you also have to be careful when applying it to your business. This strategy works only if your product really is scarce. If you are offering 50% discounts and limited offers every month, people simply won’t take your “hurry up, it ends soon” and “once in a lifetime offer” ads seriously. They will realize your product isn’t really scarce and they won’t be motivated to buy it because they know they will get a chance to do so next month. Save this strategy for important dates, holidays, anniversaries.
### Play The Empathy Card
It’s safe to say that**empathy**is one of the crucial aspects of every ad. If you want your customers to buy your product, you have to understand their needs. The best way to achieve this is by putting yourself in their shoes.
For example, if you are offering some kind of medical treatment or a product, you have to let them know that you understand their problems. Also, make sure to provide them with certain facts and data that confirm how effective and helpful your product really is.
This information will make them feel good and more confident about buying your product.
After all, it IS always about them, never about you!
## Writing Tips For Social Media Marketing
### Use The Language Familiar to your Audience And Try to Entertain Them
When you are writing an ad on social media, you should always be aware of the language your audience uses. Your content should be relatable, easy to understand, and entertaining. This is why you shouldn’t hesitate to use slang, phrases, and grammar your readers use – even if it goes against your preferred writing style.
Simply put, your brand voice should always imitate the language your audience speaks.
Recently, we published an informative article on our Reportz blog providing our readers with actionable tips on [How to Build and Grow a Successful Facebook Group in Under a Month](https://reportz.io/blog/how-to-build-and-grow-a-successful-facebook-group-in-under-a-month/). Take a look.
### Make Sure You Have The Answers To All Of The 5 Ws
The first thing you have to know when writing social media ads is that likes and shares are not the only two metrics you should keep an eye on. In fact, they mean nothing if you fail to inform your potential customers. In order for your audience to have all the information they need, you have to answer all of the 5 Ws in your ad.
For example, if you are running a bicycle shop, you have to tell your customers the next 5 things:
- WHO you are
- WHAT your business is
- WHEN they can visit your shop
- WHERE they can find you
- WHY they should choose you
### Know-How To Be Concise
Saying as much as you can without using too many words is something you should try to do when writing social media ads. The rather overused phrase “less is more” is true in this case. People don’t have time to read long posts and ads, so in order to grab their attention, you need to learn how to be concise.
You can do this by:
- Going straight to the point
- Avoiding long sentences
- Using bullet points
## Conclusion
Writing for SEO, paid, and social media marketing are three completely different things. In the first case, you have to impress your readers by creating thorough and high-quality content. On the other hand, paid ads and social media marketing don’t require long and detailed articles. However, without informative, relatable, and empathic content, they probably won’t achieve their full potential. Therefore, the bottom line is this – it doesn’t matter what kind of marketing campaign you are running, you simply won’t get far without**well-written**and**well-optimized content**.
---
## Posts: Learn About Digital Marketing from the Experts - Four Dots Academy Opens Its Doors
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-academy-opens-doors-5620](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-academy-opens-doors-5620)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-academy-opens-doors-5620.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-academy-opens-doors-5620.md)
**Published:** 2019-08-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** MIlica Dobrenov
**Categories:** Company News
**Tags:** academy, four dots academy, SEO
### Content
Four Dots has been providing digital marketing services for more than 6 years now. This has made us more than qualified and eager to share some of that knowledge with anyone interested in the subject matter, which is why we are proud to announce the opening of the Four Dots Academy.
The Academy will offer live lectures where people can learn about digital marketing directly from experts, some of whom have been in the industry for more than a decade. Attendees will get a chance to ask questions about issues not discussed in forums or blogs; meet other people in the industry; get advice pertaining to their specific situation, etc.
The first course offered,*An Introduction to SEO & Practical Link Building,*starts on Saturday, September 14th and will consist of 6 modules, one presented each Saturday. During the course, participants will get to learn the basics of [SEO and link building](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-link-building-agency-11967), including:
- how Google algorithms work
- what it means to cooperate with them instead of trying to manipulate them
- how to actually apply that knowledge in practice…
To celebrate the opening of our Academy, our first course will be completely free, and, as it will be held in our Novi Sad office, if you are in the area and are interested in the subject, we welcome you to read more about the course and how you can apply for it on our [Academy](https://fourdots.com/academy) page.
## Why are we doing this?
As speculative and experiment-based as digital marketing is, it requires us to work together, to share our insights, observations, and guesses so that others may draw upon them and perhaps fill the gaps in our knowledge somewhere down the line. While we have been sharing what we know through our blog posts, ebooks, and videos, we realized that it’s time to start doing so in the most direct way possible.
As a digital marketing agency, we have worked with more than 1000 businesses, and have trained more than 100 link builders. Some of them are still with us, some have moved on to in-house positions with companies of all sizes, some are working for other agencies, or have built successful careers as independent SEO consultants, content writers, bloggers, etc.
The Academy is based around the idea that people in this industry need a place to network, freely exchange ideas, test their suppositions and learn about the options presented by the industry from people actively involved in it – and that is exactly what we will try to provide.
## Who should come and why
Digital marketing should not only be of interest to digital marketers and them alone. Whether you like it or not, if you are using the internet in any capacity, you should try to learn as much about it as you possibly can.
This means that you don’t have to be directly involved in digital marketing to find value in our courses. So, aside from the in-house, freelance, or agency-employed digital marketers, our modules also have a lot to [offer](https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613) to:
- Freelancers of all profiles
- Bloggers
- Social networks influencers
- Small, medium or large [business](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks) owners
…and just about anyone else who could benefit from learning a bit more about how the Internet works.
While our first course is going to be focused mainly on different aspects of link building, our subsequent lectures are going to be dealing with a much broader subject matter. That means that, depending on your reasons for being interested in this topic, you might be able to learn all about:
- The most common SEO myths and mistakes
- Client acquisition and management, including progress tracking and reporting
- Competitor and keyword research
- The best tools, platforms and tactics for specific occasions
- Evaluation of links and sites you might be thinking about adding to your portfolio
- Outreach and contact management
- Workflow [optimization](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide) and task automation
- Promoting your freelance services, your blog, or your business online
- Estimating how much time and money you should invest in this kind of promotion and what the potential benefits may be
## What’s to come
Those who attend our course and successfully complete the test at its end will receive a certificate of completion, and hopefully go on to further expand their knowledge, whether by working in the industry or through further education. On our side, we will listen to your feedback, find out which specific areas of digital marketing you are most interested in, and try to tailor our future courses based on what we learn.
If you want to become a part of this community where knowledge will be shared freely, without discrimination or fear of divulging ‘industry secrets’, we would be glad to welcome you and teach you all we can.
---
## Posts: SEO Terms Glossary
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-terms-glossary-4495](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-terms-glossary-4495)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-terms-glossary-4495.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-terms-glossary-4495.md)
**Published:** 2018-10-05
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** SEO education, SEO jargon, SEO terms explained
### Content
One of the reasons that SEO is getting a bad reputation in some circles is that the terminology so casually used by providers of search engine optimization services is sometimes so obtuse and inscrutable that it might seem as an attempt to throw dust in the client’s eyes.
On the other hand, no one can argue that saying “We’ll improve your bounce rates” is infinitely more efficient and succinct than claiming that you’ll: “Ensure that your users don’t leave your site before interacting with a particular element on a page they’ve reached your site through, before lingering for a while, or before visiting another page.”
If you’ve hired an SEO agency and aren’t quite sure of what exactly is it that you’ve been promised, or if you are an SEO agency looking for a third-party provided elaboration of your offer, this glossary might be able to help you out.**[0-9](#0-9) | [A](#A) | [B](#B) | [C](#C) | [D](#D) | [E](#D) | [F](#F) | [G](#G) | [H](#H) | [I](#I) | [J](#J) | [K](#K) | [L](#L) | [M](#M) | [N](#N) | [O](#O) | [P](#P) | [Q](#Q) | [R](#R) | [S](#S) | [T](#T) | [U](#U) | [V](#V) | [W](#W)**## 0-9**301 (redirect) –**301 is the HTTP status code describing a permanent redirection of traffic from one URL to a new one, with negligible losses in link juice.**404 –**HTTP status code notifying that the requested resource (usually a web page) could not be found on the provided URL.
## A**Above the Fold**– The topmost part of a webpage, the one that is visible as soon as the page loads.**Affiliate link**– Links leading to external webstores, and earning commission for each sale that they contribute to. For instance, link from a photography blog leading to a camera product page on Amazon, containing the ID which allows Amazon to easily track where the traffic that link is bringing is coming from, and to pay the commission. **Algorithm**– Generally in computer sciences, a set of steps or rules involved in solving a problem. When mentioned in relation to SEO, usually refers to Google’s algorithm (more accurately set of algorithms) used to evaluate and rank web pages. **Alt text / Alt Tag / Text Attribute / Alternate Text**– Text describing what the images on your web page contain. The text can be seen on image hover, and is used to explain the content of the image to search engine crawlers and to site visitors with impaired eyesight.**Anchor text**– The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, describing its purpose or destination.**Authority / Trust**– Perceived value of a website in terms of the number and source of relevant links it is getting.**Average time on site**– A Google Analytics metric describing the amount of time users average on your site once they’ve reached it.
## B **B2B**– Business to Business, describing a business which is primarily offering its products or services to other businesses, institutions or organizations. **B2C**– Business to Consumer, describing a business which is primarily offering its products or services directly to consumers, i.e. general public.**[Backlink](https://dibz.me/everything-about-backlinks) / back link / inlink / incoming link**– A link to one of your pages coming from a different domain.**Black hat / Black-hat SEO**– A set of, mostly outdated, SEO techniques aimed at manipulating and deceiving search engines instead of working with them and following Google Webmaster Guidelines. Much more likely to get you into trouble with Google than to help, even in the short-term.**Boolean search**– Type of search that allows you to modify your query by adding operators like OR, AND, NOT and others. Typical Google search is a good example, except AND is implied, and therefore redundant, and NOT is replaced with a minus sign.**Bot / Googlebot / robot / spider / crawler**– When used in this context, it describes a script or a program which indexes the known web by following the links it comes across, and sends the information back to Google.**Bounce rate**– The percentage of visitors who’ve reached one of your site’s pages and left it without interacting with it further or visiting any of your other pages.**Branded keywords**– Keywords containing your brand name.**Broken link**– Any kind of a dysfunctional link, like the ones leading to pages that no longer exist, or the ones with typos in the destination URL.**Browser**– Software you use to access the Internet – Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are some of the most popular web browsers.
## C**Canonical URL**– Page duplication, a frequent consequence of allowing for creation of dynamic pages, can lead to issues with duplicate content. Designating one URL as the canonical version of a page ensures that search engine crawlers know they need to treat that page as the ‘original’ and that they understand its relationship with the ones derived from it.**Cloaking**– Deceiving both users and search engine bots by serving different content to each. There are a number of ways to do this, from making the text you want registered by crawlers and ignored by users (usually exact match keywords) the same color as the background it is displayed on, to hiding it behind images. Regardless of the chosen method, this black-hat technique is only attempted by those who don’t know anything about SEO, or don’t care about their clients in the slightest. **CMS Content Management System**– Platforms and frameworks allowing webmasters to focus on the less technical aspects of building and running a website. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento are just some of the examples of popular Content Management Systems.
[**Content**](https://fourdots.com/blog/role-content-strategy-digital-marketing-1064)– Informative or entertaining materials that site visitors could benefit from. Videos of cute cats or detailed whitepapers, it’s all content, as long as it serves a purpose and answers a user’s query.
[**Content marketing**](https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945) – Marketing approach relying on creation and distribution of valuable, engaging content meant to build brand awareness and authority, convert leads into customers, and improve the loyalty and retention rates of those already converted.**Conversion (goal)**– Visitor action that benefits you and that can be tracked. From making a purchase, to simply signing up for your newsletter, there are a number of steps in the buyer journey that bring leads closer to the end of the funnel, and each of them could be treated as a conversion.**CPC Cost Per Click**– The amount that the Pay Per Click Advertiser has to pay for each click that their ad receives.**Crawl Frequency**– How often your site is crawled by Google’s spiders. Depends on its authority, update frequency, number and velocity of incoming links, etc.**Crawling**– The process of discovering, indexing and (up to a point) classifying new web pages, or revisiting old ones. Carried out by bots, crawlers, spiders, or whatever you want to call them, it is constantly performed by Google and other search engines, but private crawls with custom bots are perfectly commonplace.
[**CTR**](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007) – Click Through Rate, most commonly used to track the effectiveness of PPC campaigns, this metric shows the ratio of people who have clicked on your link to those who have just seen and disregarded it.
## D**Dead link**– A link that is no longer working, usually because the domain or the exact page it is leading to is no longer functional or online.**Deep link**– Any link leading to a page that is lower in your site’s hierarchy than the home page.**Deep link ratio**– The ratio of the number of deep links to your site compared to number of those leading to your home page.**Directory**– When mentioned in relation to SEO or digital marketing, referring to online, usually publicly available lists of websites, businesses, organizations, etc. submitted for inclusion by the owners of the property, the general public, or discovered through manual or automated research and vetting by the owner of the directory. The ones most commonly discussed and sought after are directories of businesses servicing a particular area, providing a particular type or service, or those doing both and specializing in, for instance, IT services in New York. Vendors usually submit the business details themselves, for free or not, depending on the directory; and aside from getting their essential pitch and information in front of the customers who are likely to be looking exactly for what they are offering; they are getting their Name, Address and Phone information cited on a number of easily verifiable sources, helping their local SEO, and making it easier for Google’s algorithm to recognize them as an entity.**Disavow**– A way to distance your website from links you don’t want to be associated with, at least when it comes to Google. It consists, ideally, of a detailed backlink portfolio analysis of your website; taking note of the links that you think might be harming your website; and trying to remove them on your own. The ones you cannot remove even after several attempts should be listed in a disavow file, that you should submit to Google, along with your reasons for wanting to disassociate your site from them.**Domain**– Usually used when referring to the URL or the root domain of a website, including the Top Level Domain (TLD).**Duplicate content**– One of the main reasons that Google started paying special attention to duplicated content were websites which were doing nothing else than copying others’ content, publishing it without permission or attribution, but still managing to rank. Even the most stubborn of black-hat SEOs have largely abandoned the ‘content farm’ approach, as these sites were known, so these days, more often than not, content duplication is accidental. Either caused by laziness or lack of precaution when allowing for creation of dynamic pages, while having content that can be found elsewhere on your site or anywhere online will make you less interesting to Google, you’d really have to overdo it to get your pages removed from the results.**Dynamic content**– Showing different versions of certain pages to different users, based on their preferences, past actions or personalization data. That means that dynamic pages don’t have one basic form, but are created on the go when a user requests them.
## E
[**Engagement metrics**](https://fourdots.com/blog/overcoming-challenge-creating-content-engages-1922) – Web metrics showing how involved your audience is with your site, how interested they are, and how driven to interact with it. This includes values like average time on page, bounce rate, pages per visit, time on site…**Ethical SEO**– Search engine optimization practices which don’t go against Google Webmaster Guidelines, and are not meant to deceive the search engine and get a site ranking undeservedly, but instead aim to actually improve the site’s visibility through meaningful improvements of its technical aspects, its crawlability, UX and content.**Everflux**– The perpetually changing nature of Google, its algorithm, rules regarding individual ranking factors, result pages layout and content, etc. Also sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to the same mercurial character of the Internet as a whole.**External link**– Any link leading away from the site it is found on, so any link on your site that is not targeting one of your pages.
## F**Fresh content**– Refers to the tendency of newer content to rank better for certain keywords until that ‘freshness’ period expires, when it usually drops in rankings. It is mostly reserved for ‘query deserves freshness’ searches which are, at the time, spiking in popularity, making it reasonable to assume that users want current, fresh information.**Fuzzy search**– A flexible type of search where the returned results don’t have to match the provided query exactly – Google’s SERPs are an example of this kind of search.
## G**Google AdWords**– Google’s advertising system giving businesses a chance to have their ad displayed in search results, for a price determined by the popularity of the targeted keywords.**Google Analytics**– Google’s utility allowing webmasters to easily track their site’s performance, visitor behavior, and the efficiency of their marketing efforts. **Google dance**– Most often describing the fluctuations in rankings of a site, or a number of websites, either caused by an algorithm update, or by the inscrutable micro-forces endemic to the search ecosystem.
[**Google Hummingbird**](https://fourdots.com/blog/hummingbird-algorithm-1697) – While often referred to as an algorithm update, just like Penguin or Panda, Hummingbird was actually a major rehaul of the entire algorithm, much closer to Caffeine when it comes to the scope of the changes made and their impact.
[**Google Panda**](https://fourdots.com/blog/panda-4-2-where-is-it-now-1643) – A string of Google’s search algorithm improvements, aimed mostly at improving the search engine’s understanding of the value of the content a site is publishing. The first version of the algorithm rolled out in February 2011, but it has been modified countless times since.**Google Penguin**– A set of Google updates focusing on link quality and on the discovery of link schemes. First unrolled in April 2012, Penguin has since gone through a number of iterations and changes at one point becoming a part of the core algorithm and becoming granular.**Google Pigeon**– Rolled out in July 2014, Google Pigeon update was aimed at improving the accuracy and relevancy of local results, among other things, by paying more attention to search proximity signals. **Google Sitelinks**– Ever since 2005, Google has been showing additional links with certain suggested results, usually leading to site’s most important pages or categories. Since they vastly improve click-through rates, they are highly valued, and often given special consideration during the development of general site optimization strategies.**Google Webmaster Guidelines**– A set of best practices recommended by Google, meant to guide webmasters in the creation and optimization of their websites. Adherence to these principles ensures you’ll have a crawlable, functional website, which focuses on users and delivers on is promises.**Google Webmaster Tools / Google Search Console**– Rebranded into Google Search Console in 2015, Google Webmaster Tools allow webmasters to get data regarding their site’s performance in search, the backlinks it is getting, etc.
[**Growth hacking**](https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431) – A process focused on improving business growth and expansion. While sharing some techniques and goals with marketing, it is broader in scope and demands a wider range of skills. Unlike marketers, growth hackers are not averse to actually modifying the product or service they are promoting, as long as that will serve the overall goal of attaining new customers.
[**Guest posting**](https://dibz.me/guest-blog-prospecting)**/ Guest blogging** – One of the most effective inbound marketing tactics, it involves identifying influential blogs covering subject matter related to what your client is offering and coming up with an idea for an interesting and insightful article that would hold a link to your client, and that you would offer for publishing to the blogs you’ve found. The links to your client’s site should naturally fit in the context of the article, without being promotional – they are not ads, they are there to boost your authority with search engines and to send relevant, qualified traffic your way.
## H**HTML**– Hypertext Markup Language, markup language predominantly used for the creation of web pages.**HTTP**– Is short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which is a set of rules regulating how data is transferred over the web.**HTTP status code**– Hypertext Transfer Protocol response codes are sent by the server hosting the requested page and notifying the client from which the request was made of the current state/availability of the page in question.
## I**Index**– as a noun, a repository of sites and information on them that Google has managed to gather and organize; as a verb – the act of a site being added to that repository by being discovered by crawlers.
[**Influencer**](https://reportz.io/blog/people-to-follow-2019-building-a-marketing-agency/) – A person with a significant number of highly engaged followers, and the ability to guide their purchasing decisions. From celebrities and industry thought leaders to highly specialized bloggers and other micro influencers, they are not necessarily famous the world over, they simply need to be perceived as trustworthy by their audience.**Internal link**– Any link leading from one of your site’s pages to another (or, technically, the same) page on your site.**IP address**– Internet Protocol address is the number associated with a device or a range of devices in a network, used to convey identity and location information.
## K**Keyword / Keyphrase**– one or more words entered as a query in search.**Keyword position / Keyphrase rank**– The position in search results that a page occupies for the specified keyword.**Keyword cannibalization**– A result of suboptimal keyword distribution and mapping, where a number of your strong pages are competing to rank for the same keyword, instead of each of them having their unique focus, i.e. pursuing different keywords.**Keyword density**– The number of times a keyword is repeated on a page compared to the total word count of the page in question – usually expressed in percentages.**Keyword Not Provided**– While webmasters were once able to use Google Analytics to check which keywords was their organic search traffic coming from, in 2011, Google stopped providing this info, allegedly in the interest of user privacy and data security. Interestingly enough, the data was only withheld from webmasters without active AdWords campaigns – those paying to advertise through Google’s service continued receiving keyword-related information like nothing ever happened.**Keyword research**– Naturally, can refer to any kind of research that has to do with keywords, but usually describes identification of the most lucrative keywords for the purposes of organic or paid promotion, i.e. finding the keywords that would bring you relevant traffic and that you have a chance to compete for.**Keyword stuffing**– Excessive and unnatural repetition of a keyword to get your site or a particular page to rank for that keyword. Disliked and immediately detected by search engines and users alike.
[**KPI**](https://reportz.io/blog/key-elements-great-reports/) – Short for Key Performance Indicator, this term describes values which have been taken to be an adequate interpretation of performance of a particular activity, campaign or company. As the goals of your projects are changing, so will the KPIs you use to describe how close to reaching them you actually are.
## L**Landing page**– The visitors gateway to your site, and your gateway to conversions. In a broader sense, landing pages are those that visitors are reaching your site through, in a narrower, those that you*want*the users to be reaching your site through and that you have optimized for that purpose.**Link bait**– A page created to attract links on its own, passively. Most often, this is done by offering valuable, informative and citable content that people will share and reference on their own initiative.
[**Link building**](https://dibz.me/every-question-that-confuses-beginners/) – The practice of improving a site’s visibility in organic search by expanding its link portfolio and exposing it to relevant audiences. **Link checker**– Most often, tools you can use to check your internal links, but some of them, often appropriately labeled as backlink checkers, also allow you to check the links your site is getting from other domains.**Link churn**– The rate at which you are losing backlinks to your site.**Link equity / Link juice / Google juice**– the trust and authority passed on by a dofollow link coming from another website to the one you’re promoting.**Link velocity**– The speed at which you are acquiring new backlinks.**Long tail (keywords)**– Specific keywords or queries containing more words than the broader exact match. While having lower volume due to their nature, they are also usually easier to rank for.
## M**Manual penalty**– Unlike with automated, algorithm-based penalties, receiving a manual penalty means that an actual (Google-employed) person has taken a look at your website and decided it needs to be removed from search results.**Meta description**– Text describing the page it is associated with, often (but not necessarily) provided along with the URL of the page being recommended in the search results.**Meta keywords**– While search engines were more trusting of people, webmasters used this tag to inform crawlers of what the page is about. While you can still add meta keywords to your pages, since this has been abused by black-hats in the past, search engines largely stopped paying attention to these tags and people largely stopped providing them.**Meta title**– The crawler-readable title of your page, and along with meta description, one of the most direct ways to let users and search engines alike know what the page is about.**Monetizing**– Finding a way to make money off of something, in this context, usually a website.
## N**Negative SEO**– The practice of trying to get a site removed from the SERPs or to compromise its ranking by intentionally building suspicious and outright harmful links to it. While the ability to disavow links, along with the search engine’s growing competence in detecting foul play have made negative SEO mostly ineffective, some people are still trying to undermine their competitors in this manner.**Nofollow**– A tag instructing crawlers not to pass on PageRank to the linked pages. It can be used in the link code, for individual links, or in the ‘head’ element of a page to designate all the links that the page contains as nofollow. While often claimed to be useless for SEO purposes, even though they don’t pass any link juice, they are still sending traffic your way, and are a part of every natural backlink portfolio.**Noindex**– A tag used in the head section of a page to instruct crawlers not to index that page. The same tag could be used to prevent indexing of certain parts of the page, but since crawlers can be set up to ignore this tag, and since Googlebot is only interested in it when it prevents indexing of entire pages, most people don’t bother using it any other way.
## O**Off-page SEO / Off-site SEO**– Every action meant to improve a site’s position in organic search without making changes to the site itself. Link building, influencer outreach and creation of linkless citations of your business information are all examples of off-page SEO.**On-page SEO / On-site SEO**– Direct modifications of your website, meant to improve its exposure. Some of the essential on-page techniques include meta elements optimization, page loading speed improvement, inner linking structure modifications, etc.
[**Organic link**](https://fourdots.com/blog/12-ideas-to-help-you-generate-quality-natural-backlinks-2136) – If a tree falls down in the woods and there’s a happy lumberjack at its base, did the tree fall or was it cut down? This dilemma is at the core of organic links discussion. At its basest, this definition refers to links that were created solely for the purposes of identification, attribution, elaboration etc. in other words, links that the webmaster giving them felt an actual need to provide. By that definition, ‘pursuing organic links’ is an oxymoron, as solicited links are not completely voluntarily given, but they can still make more sense in certain contexts than in others. These days, the phrase organic links is most often used to describe links that don’t seem out of place and which meet the expectations of those following them, regardless if they were created spontaneously, or if they were negotiated.**Organic Search Results**– Search engine’s recommendation of the pages it found to be the most relevant for the entered query. These suggestions are made based on the page’s technical optimization, traffic and engagement metrics, freshness, number of links leading to it, etc. and shouldn’t be confused with the [paid ads](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) also displayed on the search engine results pages.
[**Outreach**](https://dibz.me/blog/6-kick-ass-outreach-email-examples-168) – In the context of SEO and digital marketing, denotes the activity of reaching out to influencers, bloggers, or webmasters with the goal of establishing some kind of mutually beneficial collaboration.
## P**PageRank**– Part of the of the Google’s algorithm which assigns value to pages based on the number of links they are receiving and the number of their outgoing links. A rough estimate of this value, expressed on a scale from 0 to 10, used to be available through Google Toolbar, but since PageRank is now just a minor part in the overall algorithm, and since a lot of webmasters and SEOs have been focusing on it too much, Toolbar Pagerank is no longer supported since 2016.**Paid search results**– The paid-for ads displayed at the top of search engine page results.**Penalty**– Having your site or some of its pages completely removed from the SERPs, either manually or algorithmically.
[**PPC marketing**](https://fourdots.com/blog/time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-agency-approach-3697) – Pay-per-click marketing allows advertisers to promote their business in the search results pages or on sites involved in the program. Each time their ad is clicked (or shown to a visitor, depending on the setup) the advertisers are charged a fee, based on the popularity of the terms they are focusing on.
## Q**Query**– The string entered into the search box, in other words, the keywords and phrases you want to look up.
## R
[**Rankbrain**](https://fourdots.com/blog/rankbrain-and-artificial-intelligence-1906) – A machine learning powered part of the Google’s search algorithm, claimed to be one of the most important ranking factors.
[**Ranking factor**](https://dibz.me/blog/new-study-of-1-million-google-search-results-reveals-top-seo-factors-34) – One of more than 200 aspects of a website which are contributing to determining how it is going to be ranked in Google search for particular keywords. Including things like domain age, page loading speed, number of incoming links, keyword distribution, etc. the list of known ranking factors was never fully complete or stable, as they are rarely openly identified by Google, and often get outdated and replaced before they are even recognized.**Reciprocal link**– A link you got from a domain in exchange for linking to that domain from your website. While sites linking one to another are not necessarily suspicious, and might be just the result of actual partnership, overdoing it with this can land you in hot water with Google.**Redirect**– Diverting the incoming visitors from one URL to another. There are numerous ways to change the destination a URL is leading to, most popular ones being the 301 and 302 server-side redirects.**Relevance**– In the context of SEO, usually referring to topical connection between two sites, and the appropriateness of linking from one the other. For instance, a plumbing website could create relevant links on a home improvement site, but it would be out of place on a site about the string theory.
[**Reputation Management**](https://fourdots.com/blog/online-reputation-management-can-help-with-brand-problems-1698) – A range of SEO, [content marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) and related services focused on tracking the type of exposure a person or a brand is getting online, and trying to minimize the number of negative mentions in the top search results pages.
[**Retargeting**](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-engage-your-online-audience-using-effective-remarketing-techniques-2233) – Visitors to your site who accept your cookies can later be identified on other sites offering advertising and presented with your ads. While this is the most common type of this technique, there are also CRM, email and search retargeting.**Robots.txt**– A text file you can edit to easily modify what authorizations should different bots have when crawling your website, for instance which pages can they crawl or index and which are off limits on both accounts.**ROI**– Return On Investment, how much you earned from a particular tactic or campaign, compared to how much it cost you to implement it.
## S**Scrape**– Crawling a website, usually with custom bots, and retrieving relevant information, including, for instance, the site’s inner linking structure, meta elements of individual pages, word count, etc.**Search engine (SE)**– A program designed to search smaller or larger databases for the requested keywords. In this context, usually referring to internet or web search engines like Google or Bing which rely on crawlers for data gathering and complex algorithms for the assessment of individual pages to be returned as results.**Search engine marketing (SEM)**– Describes promotional efforts meant to improve your site’s visibility in the SERPs, both when it comes to paid and to organic results. While some consider SEM to be a broader category also including search engine optimization, others only use the term search engine marketing when referring to PPC and other paid search campaigns.
[**Search engine optimization (SEO)**](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-invest-in-seo-3418) – A range of web design, content creation, influencer outreach and social media promotion strategies meant to help make a site rank better for the keywords that they wish to pursue. The goal of SEO is to create a crawler-friendly website which visitors will enjoy and engage with.**Search marketing**– A term encompassing both SEM and SEO, used by those who think that the term search engine marketing should refer only to paid search advertising, and not also include SEO.
[**Semantic web**](https://fourdots.com/blog/semantic-web-1702) – A shift from “strings to thing”, semantic web describes the evolution of the World Wide Web in which the increasing amount of used data formats and protocols are conceived so as to allow machines to “understand” as much of the information they encounter as possible.**SERP**– Search engine results page, listing paid ads and organic search results that were estimated to be the best match for the entered query.**Site map**– Usually a hierarchically or topically organized list of links to pages of your website that users are meant to have access to, and that you want to make as easy to crawl as possible.
[**Social media marketing**](https://reportz.io/blog/how-to-build-and-grow-a-successful-facebook-group-in-under-a-month/) – A range of strategies using social media channels to build brand awareness, engage audiences through giveaways or contests, build industry authority, or supplement your other digital marketing efforts.**Spamming**– Can refer to a range of intrusive advertising techniques which offer no value but rely solely on brute force and quantity. From buying contact and lead lists and inundating the people found there with poorly targeted and composed emails, to squeezing in clumsily anchored links in pointless blog or forum comments, many of these techniques have been completely devalued, but new ones do crop up.
[**SSL**](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169) – Secure Sockets Layer is a data transfer protocol, safer than HTTP, implemented by getting an SSL certificate. Sites with a valid certificate would display the HTTPS prefix at the beginning of their URLs instead of HTTP. Even though it has been replaced by TLS (Transport Layer Security) as cryptographic protocol of choice, the [term SSL](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169) is is still often used simply to indicate a secure connection.**Static page**– Pages the content of which is not dependent on session info or user requests, i.e. which are not created on the go, but saved in their final form, making them easier to index and display to visitors.
## T**Top Heavy**– Referring to sites which, according to the 2012 Google’s Page Layout Update have too many ads above the fold. Sites that were found to be too Top Heavy dropped in organic search results and even if they promptly responded, sometimes had to wait quite a bit before reclaiming their old positions.
## U**URL**– Uniform Resource Locator, or a web address is one several types of Uniform Resource Identifiers used to specify different resources, but most commonly, web pages. **Usage data**– Information retrieved from various analytics utilities, detailing the way visitors interact with your site and its content. Often represented through various engagement metrics, like bounce rate and average time on page.**User generated content (UGC)**– Content created by site’s visitors, instead of by its owner/webmaster/staff. Includes everything from forum and social media posts to blog comments.
## V**Vertical search**– A search focusing on a single category of content. The category can be determined by the industry or niche, content format, or anything else. Some examples include Google Image Search, specialized directories like Yelp, etc.
## W**Web beacon**– User behavior tracking method, often combined with cookies, relying on miniature, transparent images placed on web pages, which help gather information on the visitor’s browser type, IP, etc.
[**White hat / White-hat SEO**](https://fourdots.com/blog/white-black-hat-seo-2013-1065) – A collection of Google-endorsed optimization best practices, meant to improve a site’s visibility in organic search through legitimate tactics instead of through manipulation and spam. The only way to ensure lasting results with SEO.
---
## Posts: How We Reached 100k Visitors Using These 9 Simple Guidelines [With Infographic]
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/100k-visitors-using-9-simple-guidelines-infographic-4189](https://fourdots.com/blog/100k-visitors-using-9-simple-guidelines-infographic-4189)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/100k-visitors-using-9-simple-guidelines-infographic-4189.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/100k-visitors-using-9-simple-guidelines-infographic-4189.md)
**Published:** 2018-08-01
**Last Updated:** 2020-10-23
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News, Growth Hacking
**Tags:** content marketing, content strategy, infographic, site visitors, website growth
### Content
Recently, the number of Four Dots website visitors reached 100k on the dot (or four), which made us revisit some of our main digital marketing tactics, take a closer look at some of our previous moves, and delve a bit deeper into what exactly helped us reach the 100k visitors mark.
Digital marketing has always been a stormy sea to sail upon, but since we know that smooth seas never make skilled sailors (cliche-metaphor count: 1), our brave Four Dots team decided to pivot our ship towards the turbulent, open sea and progress bow-first into the unknown.
In hindsight, the ride was sometimes jumpy and sometimes smooth, but enjoyable and edifying, nonetheless.
As we are predominantly an SEO company, our blog’s main goal isn’t reaching as many unique visitors as possible within a short timeframe. But hitting 100k does feel good, we won’t lie about that. Which is exactly why our team felt determined to share some neat and, more importantly, actionable guidelines we assembled, tested and deployed throughout the years. Guidelines that will hopefully be quite helpful to both young digital marketing companies and aspiring freelancers.
But first, let’s go over some of the most useful metrics we gleaned from our website, and why they were more than helpful.
## Some stats, stat!
The metrics we tracked are mainly about who is coming to our website. Knowing your target audience is vital for any business, so here’s what we found about our valued users:**Most read blog posts:**1. [Use SSL/HTTPS To Rank & Look Better on Google](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169) (35.50%)
2. [How PornHub Dominates with Content Marketing](https://fourdots.com/blog/pornhub-dominating-content-marketing-2637) (8.08%)
3. [The Inbound Growth Hacking Bible](https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431) (2.71%)
4. [2017 Content Marketing Calendar](https://fourdots.com/blog/2017-content-marketing-calendar-2900) (2.42%)
5. [19 Experts Recommend SEO and WordPress Plugins](https://fourdots.com/blog/experts-advice-best-seo-and-wordpress-plugins-3288) (1.87%)
But what exactly drove 100k visitors to our website? What helped us attract this loyal audience? The answer lies within the following 9 tips.
## 1. Have a Fast, Responsive and Intuitive Website
Much like the eyes are the window to your soul, your website is the window to your business (cliche-metaphor count: 2). Your web pages are often the very first impression you get to make on your potential clients, so you must be sure to come off as professional as possible right from the get-go.
This is why having a [fast, responsive and intuitive platform](https://fourdots.com/blog/page-speed-2451) makes all the difference. Making sure it is easy on the eyes won’t hurt either.
## 2. Create Quality, Engaging and Informative Content that Covers Relevant Topics
Once you have a cool-looking, working, and easily reachable shop, it is time to fill it with quality products. Offering useful and relevant content is the main ingredient for audience engagement, brand growth/development, and your ultimate success in the annoyingly metamorphic digital marketing landscape.
[Quality content](https://searchengineland.com/what-is-quality-content-251071) and a deep understanding of what your audience responds to the most can make or break all the other efforts you’ve previously made or will have made in the future.
## 3. Know Your Target Audience and How to Find Them
One of the most vital yet for some reason often overlooked aspects of a [successful digital agency](https://www.designrush.com/agency/search-engine-optimization/new-york) is – knowing your target audience. This is why tracking the right metrics, and more importantly, knowing how to utilize them efficiently, is the key to fast clientele growth.
Barking up the wrong tree results in nothing but noise and a waste of both energy and time. However, finding a tree with a squirrel isn’t always a walk in the park (cliche-metaphor count: 3). This is where defining your target audience and knowing how and where to reach them comes into play.
After all, you probably wouldn’t try opening a death metal band t-shirts stand in the middle of the Disney World, right? (though this does sound like a true Sunday-funday)
## 4. Make Sure You Have Flawless and Fast Customer Support Service
Establishing a professional relationship with your clients is a must, but treating them like family and making them feel like they are all members of a small community is what truly makes an impact on your customers. So, having a [resourceful and reliable customer support](https://www.livechatinc.com/blog/customer-service-skills/) service should be one of your top priorities. This includes engaging in constructive conversations with your users via:
- On-site customer support
- Facebook group
- Email
- Other social media networks…
Here’s an informative article on how the team behind one of our marketing tools – Reportz – managed to achieve fast growth: [How to Build and Grow a Successful Facebook Group in Under a Month](https://reportz.io/blog/how-to-build-and-grow-a-successful-facebook-group-in-under-a-month/).
## 5. Skills. Expertise. Experience.
In the cruel and oversaturated [world of content marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/), only the best survive. And to be among those, your company must be comprised of people who are:
- eager to learn
- eager to acquire new skills
- hungry for experience
- not afraid to step out of their comfort zone
Chain is only as strong as its weakest link, especially in the world of SEO (cliche-metaphor count: 4), so don’t hesitate to say goodbye to your weakest links whenever there’s the apparent need for it.
## 6. Data Transparency and Security
Clients are what makes the business world go round, so making sure they always get what they need is more than necessary. In the online world, clients don’t only seek quality service, they also want to know that their data is secure. This is something we at Four Dots take very seriously and our clients reciprocate by staying loyal to us.
## 7. Guest Blogging on Websites and Platforms With High Rep
One of the best inbound marketing strategies that can help you [drive traffic to your website](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-invest-in-seo-3418) is to write blog posts for other successful platforms. This way you will be able to:
- Get more visitors
- Reach new audiences
- Increase exposure
- Build credibility
## 8. Develop Your Own Tools that Can Help Others within Your Niche
Aristotle once said: “*We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence/Quality is not an act, it is a habit, and every once in a while there comes a time when you need to take matters into your own hands and build your own quality software.*” Ok, this last part wasn’t by Aristotle, but it IS true.
When our company got fed up with Google captchas and other bottlenecks inherent to manual link prospecting, we went out there and created our own potent link prospecting tool – [**Dibz**](https://dibz.me/).
When we realized we have too many clients for which we need to create monthly or weekly reports, and that we were “wasting” hours and hours on assembling metrics and creating reports, we developed a potent data-tracking and reporting piece of software –**[Reportz](https://reportz.io/)**.
When we needed a smart and intuitive way to check the status of our links and a place where we could have all the details related to our links right at our fingertips, we developed an advanced link management tool – [**Base**](https://base.me/).
These useful pieces of software helped us gain thousands of satisfied new users in a very short period of time.
Wanna grow? Then create.
## 9. Quality Social Media Marketing Campaign
Social media networks have become the very fulcrum of online marketing. Devising a powerful social media marketing strategy is obligatory for any digital marketing agency that wants to reach new customers and seeks fast clientele growth.
Create profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn… and use these omnipresent and rather influential platforms to promote your content. Of course, make sure you don’t overdo it by posting too often and commenting wherever and whenever you can. This will almost instantly create a spammy vibe around your brand.
Thank you for reading all the way through. We hope you found these tips as helpful as we have. Now go and deploy some of these tactics to your own business and wait for your own 100.000th visitor. Remember, opportunity only knocks once (cliche-metaphor count: 5).*For a quick overview, we have compiled the methods that allowed us to reach these visitors and presented them in this infographic:*If you find this infographic and tips useful, feel free to share them with your friends on social media.
### Share this infographic made by [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com) on your site
Share this infographic made by Four Dots on your site
---
## Posts: How to Advertise Crypto Now that it is Banned from Google and Facebook Ads?
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/advertise-crypto-now-that-it-is-banned-from-google-and-facebook-ads-3822](https://fourdots.com/blog/advertise-crypto-now-that-it-is-banned-from-google-and-facebook-ads-3822)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/advertise-crypto-now-that-it-is-banned-from-google-and-facebook-ads-3822.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/advertise-crypto-now-that-it-is-banned-from-google-and-facebook-ads-3822.md)
**Published:** 2018-05-04
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Growth Hacking
**Tags:** crypto, crypto advertising, cryptocurrency
### Content
It is not surprising that the recent boom in cryptocurrencies brought about a host of those wanting to exploit the confusion and unrealistic optimism surrounding this growing market. For a system that, at its very core (i.e. blockchain), relies on complete and absolute transparency, the crypto market is not always that transparent itself.
Even those who put in the necessary work, get comfortable with the terminology and the basic concepts, only have to look forward to the next challenge, i.e choosing between a staggering number of businesses. These businesses, legitimate or not, couldn’t have been around for too long, which means that you don’t have much to go on in terms of their track record and past performance. So, in a lot of cases, it comes down to you having to trust someone you don’t know, someone no one really knows yet, without a way to really hold them accountable for their performance or your investment.
The proliferation of scammy ICOs, fake crypto investment companies and other attempts of robbing people got too rampant to be tolerated. It even made two of the worlds largest advertisers of anything and everything, Google, and Facebook, draw a line in the sand and make crypto related advertising join the ranks of other potentially highly profitable, yet ultimately unfeasible endeavors like gambling and adult industry. In other words, despite the copious amounts of money they knew they could make and despite fully acknowledging the validity of the crypto industry itself, they decided that there are just way too many bad apples there for them to keep advertising businesses offering related services.
Facebook was the first to do this, [in January 2018](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/30/facebook-is-banning-cryptocurrency-and-ico-ads/), when they cut the strings with their current advertisers’ binary options, cryptocurrency, and initial coin offerings, and prevented new ones from signing on. While they fully realized this would also reflect on the multitude of legitimate businesses advertised under the same umbrella, they made a salient point regarding their inability to effectively regulate advertising on a case-to-case basis. If it wasn’t already clear to everyone why they were right, even after the ban, some of these businesses managed to get through by relying on intentional misspellings. If these advertisers managed to get the best of Facebook’s system, even with the ban enacted, it’s not difficult to imagine what was happening before.
Google followed suit soon after (well, [announced that they’ll be following suit as of June 2018](https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/7648803?hl=en&ref_topic=29265)) when, just two months later, in March, they also decided to distance themselves from everything crypto related. Like Facebook, they’re not denouncing the entire industry, but simply facing up to the fact that they don’t have the means to discriminate between scammers and legitimate businesses, and that the number of those scammers is simply overwhelming. Just a little bit later, in April, they also decided to[remove crytpojacking extensions from their Web Store](https://blog.chromium.org/2018/04/protecting-users-from-extension-cryptojacking.html) solidifying their stance on everything that has to do with this industry.
So what do you if you are a provider of legitimate crypto related services, and you’ve just realized that you can no longer advertise your services on two major promotional channels? Well, first you finish reading this article, and then decide if focusing on organic search might be just what you need to set yourself apart from your competitors, and especially from those just pretending to be in the same line of business.
## Benefits of Organic
While there is a lot to be said in favor of focusing on organic search as opposed to paid, even when talking about standard, non-stigmatised industries; in this instance, getting the approval of crawlers is even more beneficial.
If nothing else, it’s a matter of public perception and proof of trust ([not the one might be thinking about](https://steemit.com/crypto/@kyriacos/proof-of-trust-pos-the-future-of-network-chains)).
You see, even if you could advertise through AdWords or Facebook, most people are quite aware that you don’t have to do anything special to qualify for showing up in the ads – you just have to pay. There are no guarantees that you actually do what you claim to be doing, which is rarely a problem for businesses in other industries. However, with these bans in force, and with all the news regarding numerous frauds and fraudsters in the the world of cryptocurrencies, even if you were able to get an ad out, you can be sure that people would be apprehensive about how much they can believe what you are saying (at least until a reliable vetting process is developed).
This is where being found through organic search lends you more credibility than paid, even more so than it does for those operating within some of the more stable and established industries. While cryptocurrencies did become quite popular with people of all profiles and backgrounds, it is safe to assume that most people with a serious intention of getting into this market have at least a basic understanding of how search engines work. That is to say, they know that if you want to rank on the first page of Google, especially for keywords as contested as the crypto related ones currently are, you need to earn the trust of both people and the search engine.
To really get to the top of search results, you need endorsement from an army of readers who will keep coming back to your site, staying on it for long enough to indicate real interest, and promoting it to their friends or colleagues. You also have to earn the trust of all those bloggers and influencers you’ll outreach in the course of your link building campaigns as well as the trust of their readers. Finally, you also need the trust of a search engine that already made it abundantly clear how trusting it is when it comes to your line of work.
It boils down to this: if people see you are ranking well for crypto-related terms, especially when they consider how competitive that market currently is, they know how many people, businesses, and institutions have already had to have given you their approval in order for you to show up that high in the results. While this kind of credibility is welcomed by any business, it bears additional weight in this particular situation.
So, what kind of crypto SEO strategy could a versatile, experienced search engine optimization company formulate for your cryptocurrency business, and how exactly would you benefit from it? Read on to find out.
## Step One: Keyword and market research
You know the ancient proverb, “To every Bitcoin, there’s an Ethereum”. Remember what we said about the general public having trouble differentiating between scammers and reliable, honest crypto investment advisors, payment processors or cryptocurrency exchanges? Well, we usually can tell the difference, and we know that you can probably do so 100% of the time.
That’s one of the reasons why the first thing we do is have a nice, long talk with you about your goals, audiences you want to attract, and other businesses similar to yours that you consider actual competitors, in regards to keywords both of you, are retargeting, service quality, targeted market, etc. In other words, you tell us whose results, a way of operating or even just content you admire, and we get a clearer picture of where is it that you want to be.
Then we do our bit of research and tell you approximately how much time, work and money might it take for us to help you reach those goals. However, what might turn out to be even more important, we also tell you which other goals should you also be pursuing or completely replace your current ones with.
In practical terms, this means that once we have identified your direct and indirect competitors and checked which keywords they are targeting, we can suggest which other keywords you should pursue, which will, up to a point, guide the further development of your strategy.
While it’s not until later that we’ll formulate a complete content strategy for you, this initial phase also includes research into which types of content are performing the best, and whether there are content gaps, i.e. topics or approaches which deserve to be discussed and that the audience would be interested in, but which are not getting the coverage they deserve.
## Step two: Online assets audit
We make a detailed account of where you currently are, and what needs to be done to create a perfect foundation for the rest of promotional efforts for your crypto business. We’ll take a look at, and if necessary fix, your:
1. Onsite – from page loading speed and meta elements optimization to keyword mapping, inner linking structure, redirects and canonicalization, [every aspect of your website](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-onsite-audits) is brought in line with Google’s recommendations.
2. Backlinks – after a detailed analysis of your link portfolio, we make recommendations on which links you might want to remove, modify if possible (for instance by changing the anchor or the page a link is targeting), or even try to replicate. Once we get your approval, we will implement all the changes that we can with the authorization we are granted.
3. Content – after we have reviewed the content on your website, and, again, checked with you first, we can optimize it by adding relevant keywords, expanding on it, making it more suitable for the audience you are hoping to attract, adding images, and basically, doing everything we need to ensure that your content is informative, accurate and engaging.
## Step three: Promotion
Once step two is completed, you’ll have a site that search engines can crawl the way they are supposed to, and that the users can trust – if it’s a cryptocurrency exchange site, you’ll want the people to know that transactions are safe; if you are providing crypto investment consultations, you’ll want to clearly state your identity and credentials, and so on. It is then that you really want to show off, and we help you do that by putting you in touch with all the right people.
While offsite optimization methods mostly come down to different types of link building, there’s much more to it than just asking people to link to you. What we really do is:
1. Identify reputable industry information sources, create content specifically for them and their audience, and contact them to see if they would be willing to publish it. Aside from getting the [link equity](https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-link-equity) and establishing relevance, this directly brings targeted traffic and helps you build brand awareness and trust.
2. We keep checking what people need to know and make sure to provide them with answers. Sometimes we’ll formulate that answer as post that we’ll publish on your site and leverage it as excellent[link bait](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189), that will keep passively bringing in links to your domain; sometimes we’ll give the answers directly on the forum or community website where the question was asked, establishing you as an active and helpful member of the community; and sometimes, we’ll move the discussion to another, related website, benefiting both you and them, and perhaps, creating a lasting partnership.
3. Depending on the exact part of the crypto market you are focused on, there are different directories, resource hubs, and other websites you might want to get your name on. We’ll find them, identify reputable ones and the ones best avoided, and do what it takes for you to be included in those that are worth the effort.
4. Competitor backlink analysis – we take a more general look at your competitors during step one, so at this point, we have already identified the most interesting ones. That means we already know whose backlinks we need to meticulously go through until we’ve identified each and every one that might be suitable for you.
5. When the fundamentals are covered, we move on to advanced strategies like [broken link building, skyscraper method](https://dibz.me/blog/create-links-existing-content-304), and whatever else seems adequate. While other tactics (building guest post links for your crypto related website, or sifting through competitors’ links etc.) are most effective when done on regular basis, formulating and executing an advanced link building campaign can be done as needed, and can sometimes be more similar to growth hacking than traditional SEO.
## Step four: Monitoring and reporting
Sadly, links, exposure, and even reputation, all have a shelf life. Sites that you were thrilled to get a link from a couple of years ago may have changed into something that you don’t want to be associated with, or have simply removed that link. While this is relatively common in any industry, cryptocurrency related businesses are (as long as the scammers abound), especially prone to sudden and catastrophic falls from grace. In other words, if one of your linking partners who you’ve put good faith in turns out to have been duplicitous, you’ll want to be able to immediately distance yourself from them.
That’s why we keep a close eye on your links, and aside from reporting on the ones you might want to to have removed or altered, we also send [consistent marketing KPI reports](https://reportz.io/blog/agencies-to-rethink-the-quality-and-frequency-of-reports/) summarizing every part of your campaign that you might be interested in.
By giving you full transparency and constant access to dashboards tracking your essential metrics and the performance of our campaign, we ensure that you can always take a quick look and decide if what we are doing is working for you, or if you want us to change our approach in any way.
## What it comes down to
Even if the paid advertising channel was still available to them, providers of crypto-related [services would stand to benefit quite a bit from SEO](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services). Even if there was a way to instantly recognize scammers and those concerns went away, you still wouldn’t be in the clear. You see, with all the legitimate competition around, you couldn’t hope to get noticed without an immaculately technically optimized website, filled with expert content, written for carefully targeted audiences. Naturally, you’d also need a wide network of influencers as your link partners and everything else a well-conceived [crypto SEO strategy](https://fourdots.com/seo) is capable of doing for you. If you are interested in having us develop and execute one for you, don’t hesitate to contact us and tell us what you need.
---
## Posts: How to Build and Maintain a Spotless Backlink Portfolio
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778.md)
**Published:** 2018-04-10
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-01
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** backlink portfolio, link building, link prospecting, link quality
### Content
“Nothing gold can stay” said the poet almost a whole century ago. Go figure.
Even if this means that Frost would have been insulted by the longevity his poem has achieved, obviously condemning itself by the standard it describes, he’d have to agree that just writing or publishing a poem isn’t worth quite as much as having it remain in people’s minds.
The same goes for links – as a lot of SEOs are too eager to forget – just creating a link won’t do you much good if that link is removed soon after, or if the site holding it goes to the dogs in terms of quality.
That’s why the links you’ve created (or hired someone to create) will only keep working for you if you: A) Make sure you are only reaching out to relevant and reputable websites; and B) Keep periodically coming back to those links and checking if they have been removed, or if the site linking to you has changed so much that you would prefer them removed.
If you are doing SEO for yourself or for just a couple of clients, you can do both manually. However, inbound marketing agencies with dozens or hundreds of clients couldn’t even dream of spending this much time on prospect assessment or backlink revisions, and usually have to look for SEO tools that can help them do this – or, like in our case, develop those tools from scratch.
So, regardless of whether you are a one man SEO agency; a huge [white label services provider](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services); or a business owner who either wants to take care of your own SEO or simply monitor the performance of someone you’ve hired to take care of it for you; here’s how to keep your backlink portfolio pristine, with or without help from specialized tools.
## Prospect quality indicators – Manual
The number of conditions that a site needs to meet in order to qualify as an [interesting backlink opportunity](https://dibz.me/guest-blog-prospecting) can seem daunting. Especially if you consider the fact that, while you might benefit enormously from a link on a particular site, not everyone would get the same value from it. That’s why manual prospecting is not always about determining which sites meet all the required conditions, but instead, often turns into scanning the site you’re analyzing for unforgivable faults, and once you find any, removing it from the list of potential prospects. After all, it’s much easier to determine if a site has one negative feature than it is to verify that it has a bunch of the ones recommending it. This process of elimination begins the second you start your search.
### Google SERP
Once you enter your query, you can whittle down the offered results to only the most pertinent ones. So, before you even begin looking at specific results, you can eliminate the ones you know you don’t want in a number of ways:
- If your**location**isn’t the same as that of your target audience, you might want to change your region in the search settings, use one of the [safest VPNs](https://cybernews.com/best-vpn/most-secure-vpns/), one of many [free local search tools](https://technicalseo.com/seo-tools/local-search/), or a number of other methods. While in search settings, feel free to set the number of results to 100, but you can always to that later by appending the `&num=100` [search parameter](https://dibz.me/blog/link-prospecting-with-google-search-parameters-340) to the end of your search URL string.
- Search tools allow you to specify the**date range**, again, something that you can also do with the help of advanced search operators (by combining years with a range operator – `2011..2013`, or through the more convoluted Julian date format reliant `datarange:`), or parameters (`as_qdr=x`, replacing “x” with “d” for Day, “w” for Week, “m” for Month and “y” for Yeah, we get it!), whichever way is more convenient for you.**You might want to search for date ranges in the more distant past, if, for instance, you want a selection of sites that you know have been around for a while; or you could focus on the more recent periods, if you want to be sure you’ll only get currently active websites in the results.
- While you can do this when composing the query, there’s no harm in checking the initial results first. Either way, you final query should include**negative specifier**s, excluding certain sites, or specific notorious TLDs from being displayed in the results. You can do either by adding `-site:` operator to your query, followed either by the specific site you don’t want to see in the SERP (-site:facebook.com) or an infamous TLD (-site:.info).
- Finally, there are**vertical search option**s, allowing you to focus on images, videos, news etc, but to be fair, they are only useful in very specific circumstances.
Once you have a final set of results, it’s time to take a look at each of them individually. You can do this from the SERP itself, or you can export them to a spreadsheet and do it from there ([Scraper Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scraper/mbigbapnjcgaffohmbkdlecaccepngjd) does a wonderful job of this, allowing you to not only copy results URLs but also page title and description elements). For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume you’ll be looking directly at the SERP. So, what is it that you can tell about a website, without even clicking on a result?
-**Domain name.**A treasure trove of information. If it’s too long, contains too many hyphens or numbers, or one of the spammy TLDs that you forgot to exclude with `site:` operator, you might consider skipping the site. It takes some experience to reliably decide how many (total characters, numbers or hyphens) is “too many”, and even then, you might miss out on a great prospect just because the webmaster decided to get creative with their domain name, but in the long run, the time you save will more than make up for the wasted opportunities. Likewise, if the root domain contains words like article directory, submit, bookmarks, infographics, etc, they might just be remnants from the Dark Ages of SEO and should be either skipped or at least, scrutinized with extra caution.
-**Used protocol.**While taking a look at the domain, you can’t fail to notice the [http:// or https://](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169) preceding it. While the secure**https://**protocol used to be more of a recommendation than a necessity, and only important for certain websites (those requiring textual input from visitors), Google seems to be nudging the entire internet towards adoption of this standard, and is likely to take everyone’s willingness to comply into consideration when tallying the final account.
-**Meta elements.**Spammy sites write spammy meta descriptions and titles, there are no two ways about it. If you notice signs of keyword stuffing or extreme illiteracy, you might want to just move on.
-**Snippets.**While the absence of rich snippets is not a definite sign of a site’s inferiority, their presence is usually indicative of adherence to webmaster best practices, and a signal that you are dealing with someone taking good care of their site.
Once you’re done with the browsing section, it’s time to do some serious clicking. Now, we are aware that a lot of results will lead to deep pages, but let’s assume that your first direct contact with a site will be made through its:
### Homepage
You’ve read the advert, and now you’ve bought the car, so how does it feel? Did you get what you expected when you clicked on the result in the SERP? If not, you’ve experienced the same kind of [user frustration](https://theblogpress.com/blog/19-web-design-blunders-that-can-increase-bounce-rate/) that others visiting the site may feel, and this might be a red flag on its own, but one that might be purely context-dependent, and that shouldn’t cause you too much worry. However, site homepages are exactly where you’ll usually find the most blatant and [unforgivable SEO transgressions](https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749), common sense violations, and linking ethicacy faux-pas. Here’s how to identify them.
-*Too many external links*. Allowing for exceptions, the homepage is usually a site’s main link juice silo, one that you use to boost your own pages, not promote other sites. If you notice that someone is being extremely generous with external links from the homepage, you are completely in the right to assume that something fishy is going on. Likewise, if you see similarly unrelated external links in the site’s main navigation, give it a wide pass.
-*Suspicious anchors.*There doesn’t have to be too many links on a site’s homepage for you to start worrying about their suitability as a backlink opportunity. As a matter of fact, even if they only have one external link, as long as that link has an anchor suggesting adult or gambling related content, you probably don’t want to have anything to do with the site.
-*Design, responsiveness and layout.*While noticeable from other pages as well, you’ll pay attention to these elements as soon as you hit the homepage. If a site’s homepage is difficult to navigate, if it displays poorly on smaller screens, has unforgivable aesthetics, or simply looks like something that was just thrown together; it’s relatively safe to assume that the rest of the site won’t look or perform much better.
-*Contact information.*They don’t need to have it directly on their homepage, but if not, they better have a link to a “Contact Us” or “About Us” page, which will have at least a phone number or a physical address of the entity you are considering for collaboration. While there may be valid reasons for the omission of this info, (you wouldn’t expect it from someone running a personal blog, for instance) if you run across someone representing themselves as a company, agency, government or nongovernment organization, startup, or basically any kind of legal entity, and you can’t seem to find any verifiable contact info apart from an email address, give them a wide berth.
-*Too many ads.*Again, something that you’ll have to look out for with other pages as well, but it is never as unbecoming as when it happens on the homepage. If you come to a website and see more than four or five ads above the fold, the site really needs to be somehow exceptional to still keep your interest.
-*Blog archive.*If it’s a blog, of course. Usually in the right sidebar, taking a look at the blog archive is the fastest way to determine how long have they been around, what’s their publishing frequency, and if they are still active.
-*Social media profiles.*Which social networks is the site active on? How many followers do they have, how many shares of their domain, how engaged is their audience? You can’t see all of this from the homepage, but it’s a great place to start exploring this aspect of a website.
If you’ve gone through these points and the site still didn’t disqualify itself as a prospect, you’re almost there, but not before you examine another one of its critical segments.
### Content
Ideally, beautiful, informative, heartfelt, accurate and engaging content would be everything you need to reach people. But, with Google ignoring you or misinterpreting your intentions if you’ve failed to mention the relevant keywords often enough; and readers giving you a pass if you don’t have plenty of images, minuscule paragraphs, and enough shiny things to keep their attention by slightly distracting them; just enjoying someone’s content is, sadly, not nearly enough for you to try and get a link from them. Here are other conditions they have to meet.
-**Relevance.**Does it make sense for you to get a link from the site? Are they talking about your industry, or at least a closely related one? Would their audience have a genuine interest in your link, and then perhaps, the rest of your site? Are you just trying to shoehorn your way into the site, or would its webmaster find it perfectly natural that you are inquiring about a cooperation? Naturally, just like with most of the other entries, this is not something to be adamantly fanatical about. Yes, a huge majority of your backlink portfolio should be made up of links from relevant sites, but it would be unnatural if absolutely all of them came only from sites that have a direct topical correlation. As a matter of fact, the more successful a site is within its own field, the more it stands to reason that it will eventually extend beyond the tight bounds of its niche, well into other disciplines, industries and spheres of interest. Of course, you can’t use this as an excuse to try and get a link to your car parts page from a site dealing with postnatal depression.
-**Content quality.**You could claim that this is a fairly subjective category, but when you know that Google can see the word count of individual articles; calculate their readability based on sentence and even word length; detect most of the grammatical or orthographic errors; recognize synonyms – on lexical and on phrasal and idiomatic level; flag you for plagiarism; and pretty much do everything else apart from accusing you of selling out, because “You used to write from the heart, man”, you can be sure that complaints about the subtlety and tenuousness of the artistic expression would only be falling on the cold dead ears of a mechanical spider. To make the matters worse, while the spider is incapable of subjectivity it also paradoxically abhors exactness, which is why no one can say exactly how many words your content should have, what should its [Flesch–Kincaid readability score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests) be, or how informal can you get with your writing before Google starts believing you’re illiterate. While numerous studies have tried to correlate these elements with rankings, and while longer content of average readability, written in a semi-formal register seems to be performing the best, the studies are fairly inconclusive. Basically, if what you’ve read there is literate, informative, and seems to engage the site’s audience – through comments or social networks activity; you shouldn’t worry too much about Google being pedantic about it.
-**Sponsored posts.**They’re everywhere, and they’re not always disclosed, either. Popular and established websites with a faithful audience can get away with openly publishing paid-for content, but smaller blogs doing the same can easily find themselves in Google’s disfavor. So, while seeing something like a paid post, sponsored post, paid review, etc. shouldn’t immediately send you running, it should serve as an incentive for you to be additionally cautious when assessing the site.
If you’ve ever read anything about content before, chances are you’ve seen people attributing it with royal origin. And what is true royalty if not honest, direct, attention-grabbing and eloquent – but not to the point where the people can no longer understand its proclamations? If that’s the kind of content the site you’re considering is publishing, you just might want to go ahead and try to get in their good graces.
### Links
All of them. The ones leading from the site, and the ones coming to it. Are they linking out to suspicious sites, which would place you in a bad neighborhood, or have they resorted to dubious link building tactics in the past, leaving their backlink portfolio as sketchy as a drawing of a stick figure. Have they been getting or handing out links with suspicious, unnatural anchors, or have they gone so far to actually try to cloak outgoing links by hiding them from visitors? Are their total backlinks to unique referring domains ratio skewed too heavily in favor of the former? Are you likely to get a dofollow or a nofollow link from them? If you really want to get into it, this part of the analysis is usually the most time-consuming one; and while you can allow yourself to only perform a slightly more casual research of this aspect of a site, you must never disregard it completely if you are hoping for any kind of success with your link building.
### Done?
There you go. Now do this for each and every prospect you come across, and in just a couple of short hours, you may have yourself a respectable list of some 10 to 20 decent prospects. Ok, this might be a bit of an exaggeration, you’ll probably do a bit better than that even with completely manual prospecting, but now have a look at how it all works when you have a specialized link prospecting tool at your disposal, in this case, our own [Dibz](https://dibz.me/).
## Prospect quality indicators – Tool-Assisted
People are often wary of automation because they feel like it precludes subtlety. And while some processes cannot be automated without making them clunkier or less sophisticated, there are those that can. Remember how in the manual prospecting section we mentioned that finding the right result is done by eliminating all the rest? This kind of approach is perfect for automation, as it allows you to only eliminate the sites that you are certain are undesirable. So, by raising or lowering your standards, you’ll have fewer or more websites to go through and directly evaluate, but if you are cautious, you’ll never have to worry about missing a potentially interesting prospect. So, here’s how the described process of elimination works with [Dibz](https://dibz.me/).
Remember all those vertical searches, parameters, operators and social media info that you had to think about? Most of this will be taken care of by the tool, you just need to set the guidelines. The first part of this is done through the [spam filter](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059) page.
This page allows you to set your [preferred standards](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169) when it comes to 17 separate ranking factors (apart from the ones you can see in the image, this also includes stuff like domain name length; presence of cloaked links, social profiles or sponsored content; number of external homepage links; total number of site’s indexed pages etc.). You can attribute a spam value to each entry, depending on how important you believe it be. So, for instance, you don’t like websites which have too many ad blocks. Dibz gives you a chance to decide how many is too many (in this case, 5) and to determine how many “spam points” (36, in our case) will be added to the site’s total if it has more than that. You can specify these values for each of the 17 factors, and then decide on how many points can a site have before it is removed from the list of filtered results in Dibz (you can still find these sites in the ‘all results’ tab). So, even before you begin your search, you’ve taken care of 17 separate considerations.
The same page also allows you to provide list of preferred TLDs, so you can request them from the search page; to define research type templates; and to compose a list of websites that you never want to see return as results (for instance social networks, which otherwise thickly populate results pages, and are not interesting as link building prospects).
Once you’ve done this, it’s time to move on to search proper. Here’s what this looks like in Dibz.
While the right-hand side provides great time-savers on its own – preferred language for the results, desired TLD and date range; the truly important part is on the left, where you get to interchanging the actual values. basic search terms, as well as specific modifiers that you want to combine with those terms.
What does this do that Google can’t? Nothing, but, it does some things that Google won’t:
- it combines each row from the Search Term field, with each row from the Custom Search Parameters field (or the ones from our Custom search templates);
- performs a search for each of the combinations, with all the modifiers on the right considered;
- pools all of those results together, remove duplicates and hides the sites that don’t meet your standards as defined through spam filter
- gives you a convenient, export-ready list of prospects with last remaining bits of info that you still need about particular sites, including a list of their top anchors, spam filter value for the site, Domain Rank value, number of unique referring domains and pages, contact email, as well as the number of domain shares and followers on all major social networks.
The convenience of different filters and clearly displayed essential metrics aside; what we are most proud of, and what is probably the main benefit of Dibz is the ability to perform a string of operator-modified searches in succession, which is something that you couldn’t do in Google without having to complete a new captcha every couple of minutes. It’s difficult to believe how much times this saves you until you [try it](https://dibz.me/pricing).
The sites in the list you are left with satisfy all the machine-measurable standards mentioned in the manual prospecting section, and since spam filter needs to be set only once, all you had to do to spare yourself the trouble of going through countless sub-par sites was to enter you search terms and custom operators.
You still have to visit each of the sites, decide if they are relevant enough, and generally, if they are someone you’d want to deal with. However, since a huge portion of unsuitable websites has been removed by our utility, you’ll get a much higher percentage of valid prospects than you would with even the most refined Google search.
##**Link Monitoring – Manual **So you’ve made a beautiful link, now you just have to make a record of it. You fire up your trusty spreadsheet of choice, copy the URL of the page linking to you; perhaps make a column for the root domain, purely for organizational purposes; make a note of anchor text and target; whether the link is a dofollow or nofollow; contact details of the person you’ve negotiated the link with; date the link went live; if you’re a part of an agency, note the name of the link builder responsible for the link; name of the client the link was made for; a brief note about the link; and anything else you might need.
Now, if you are only doing this for yourself, or a couple of clients, creating this kind of a list, and retrieving info from it is fairly manageable; but anyone with more than two or three clients and employees creating links for them; and this quickly turns into an organizational nightmare.
Even if you simply had to record all the links and never look at them again, doing it manually is a hassle. However, you are not etching them in stone for future archaeologists to find, you will have to keep coming back to them, assessing their suitability for other clients, taking stock of used anchors and targets to prevent over-optimization and ensure appropriate diversity, and what’s most important, checking their health, i.e. if they are still live, dofollow, and if the site holding them is still acceptable.
Now, this is not even going into monitoring the actual benefits you are getting from the link, like the traffic it is sending your way, which you’d had to turn to Google Analytics and Console for. So, just to check if your links are still there, you’d have to visit each of the sites from your sheet, check your link’s target and anchor, and at least get the site’s DR. Doesn’t sound too bad? Not even when you realize that you’d have to do this for every link you’ve ever made, and then repeat the entire process at least once a month? We thought so.
Naturally, there are agencies that believe their job is done the moment a link is live, but they and by extension, their customers, are thusly deprived of a complete overview of their backlink portfolio, and the ability to draft appropriate future strategies. Basically, you can’t plan a trip if you don’t know your starting point.
So, how do you eliminate monthly spreadsheet juggling, and carpal tunnel worth of clicking?
## Link Monitoring – Tool Assisted
As our agency grew, so did the number of our clients and employees. Synchronising efforts of dozens of link builders, some of whom were sharing clients and link contacts, turned out ot be an incredible, time-consuming chore, one that opened countless opportunities for human error and miscommunications. Do we already have a link for a client on a particular site? Did we outreach a site for a client, and how did it go if we did? How many links were created with a specific anchor in a specific period? And finally, what’s the current status of those links, and the sites they’re on?
After listing each and every issue we encountered with manual approach, we set out to create a tool that would eliminate, or at least alleviate all of those problems. That’s when [Base.me**](https://www.base.me/) was born. Its main purpose being facilitating link data entry and retrieval, it became a self regulating system which organizes the workflow, performs scheduled or on-demand health checks of our links, and basically solved most of our issues with link building management and monitoring. However, since this utility is still being jealousy kept for internal use and for a handful of our friends and partners, the only way for you to see what this looks like in practice is to [register your interest](https://base.me/#popup-contact-form) and perhaps qualify for beta access.
Until that happens, or we make the tool available to everyone interested, how do you replicate some of the features it offers, and cover other essential areas of link monitoring it was never meant to address?
It’s simple, you turn to our latest utility, a beautifully versatile digital marketing KPIs dashboard reporting tool, [Reportz](https://reportz.io/). We decided to develop this tool as soon as we took exact stock of how much time we were wasting on manual reporting. While we have been working with a more modest number of clients, patching reports together by copying data from different sources we were using to track campaign performance and trying to organize it so that clients have no problem understanding them, wasn’t too unbearable, even though it could take up to several hours per client. However, when you consider the fact that reports had to be created, or at least checked by people in middle to upper management, whose time is too precious to be spent on hours of copy/paste/format/repeat; and when you also account for a steady, fast-paced growth of our client base, the urgency of finding a way to automate as much of the process as possible couldn’t be ignored for too long.
We solved this by creating a tool which can be connected to the data sources you usually rely on for your KPIs; extract the data you specified through one of our offered templates, or your own custom setup; organize, contrast and compare that data in a way that a particular client finds optimal; and which can either send scheduled reports without you needing to move a muscle or simply be made constantly available to clients, who could check up on the exact, current state of their KPI’s.
While it was initially conceived as an [SEO agency tool](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213), the fact that it allows for convenient tracking of metrics from a single dashboard makes it just as suitable for business owners who want to keep a watchful eye over the performance of their digital marketing campaigns, whether they are run by someone in-house, or by an outside agency.
This is what the process looks like in practice, for agencies and for DIY SEOs alike – if you want to follow along, [Reportz has a free trial](https://reportz.io/pricing/), which we encourage you to make use of.
- You start by creating a dashboard. Dashboards are pages containing all the data you want to observe. You can have one dashboard for several projects or clients, or several dashboards for a single project or client, it’s completely up to you. They can be set to observe any time range you’re interested in, customized with yours or your clients branding, password protected, and easily shared with your clients.
- If you didn’t do so earlier, you will be asked to add your data sources. Even though we already integrate most of the major players (Google Analytics, Console and AdWords, Ahrefs, Rank Ranger, etc.) we don’t intend to stop adding new sources any time soon.
- Data from these sources is displayed in individual, customizable widgets, which you can have an unlimited number of in a single dashboard. So, for instance, one widget can display a particular metric, graph, or list from Google Analytics (with the option of hiding data segments you are not interested in); another can be the overview of your rankings from Rank Ranger; and the third could be a merger of two separate Google Console widgets, for instance, Top Clicks (Pages) and Top Impressions (Pages).
- Once you’ve populated the dashboard with all the metrics you want to track or report on, all that’s left to do is to customize the dashboard and share it with your clients or management. If you want the same kind of report for several clients, you can easily clone the dashboard, imitating its layout and only changing the actual values.
If you’re working in an agency, you’ll probably be able to figure out how to do all of this on your own, but if you can’t, or if you are not a professional SEO, but just want to monitor a campaign someone else is running for you, you can contact us for a live demo, where we’ll guide you through each step of the process.
So, let’s say that you know how to do all of this, which metrics should you take a look at? While you can connect your Base account (if you have been granted access), and monitor your links from a Reportz dashboard, this would be missing an opportunity to do so much more. Namely, Reportz gives you a way to extract and organize all the metrics you need to track the efficiency of individual links, and your entire link-building strategy.
Ahrefs – New and lost domains
If you want to be alerted of being linked to from a new domain, or losing links from a domain, having a widget with Ahrefs ref domains data is not just convenient, but essential. This allows you to promptly intervene if you want the removed links to be restored, or if you realize that domains you would rather not be associated with are linking to you.
Rank Ranger – Page Rankings
Not much to say here – by setting custom dates in Reportz, you can observe the rankings of your target pages in the period you were building links for them, and get another piece of the puzzle.
Google Console – Avg position (pages)
Similar to what you’re getting from Rank Ranger, but coming from your Console, and showing average page position in the selected period, along with the position change. The same logic applies – if you see that a page was dropping in rankings while and soon after you created a bunch of links for it, you might want to go back and give those links another look. Likewise, if you see a page has skyrocketed in rankings, and you don’t have anything else to attribute it to, examining the [links created in that period might reveal some sites](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059) that you might perhaps want to contact again in the future.
Google Console – Top Clicks (queries and pages)
All the SEO talk can make people forget that links are there for the traffic, this is still their purpose and their greatest value. So it makes sense if you want to know which of your pages people like coming to, and which anchors seem to be doing a good job of directing them there. Crucial for your overall SEO strategy, when observed in appropriate periods, it also shows which of the links you’ve created are actually doing their job instead of just showing up for it.
Google Analytics – Top keywords and landing pages from organic
Pretty much the same as above, but from a slightly different angle. Might show you data that the previous combination didn’t, so it’s definitely worth your time to add these two widgets as well.
Google Analytics – Organic visits rate
Shows fluctuations in the number of organic visits you were getting in the observed period. Again, correlating your rankings and your link building efforts at a certain time is never completely straightforward, but when you account for algorithm updates, the effect of your other inbound channels, etc. you can get genuinely valuable insights.
## Is that it?
Well, yes. You abstain from creating suspicious links and stay vigilant when it comes to removing those created without your intervention, and you should be fine. As long as the number of these links is relatively low, you can manage without specialized tools, but for larger volumes, even if you are not an SEO agency, but a business owner who wants to keep an eye on the way their site is being promoted, do yourself a favour and give our utilities a go.
---
## Posts: Is it Time to Change Your PPC Strategy or Agency or Approach?
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-agency-approach-3697](https://fourdots.com/blog/time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-agency-approach-3697)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-agency-approach-3697.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/time-to-change-your-ppc-strategy-agency-approach-3697.md)
**Published:** 2018-02-20
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** PPC
**Tags:** paid search feasibility, PPC, PPC agency evaluation
### Content
Being a full service digital marketing agency, we are used to working with elusive data and fickle metrics. While we, for instance, know that getting a link on a relevant, authoritative site will work towards improving your metrics, quantifying its exact contribution is practically impossible, even after the fact.
If you’ve ever had to explain your methods and their purpose to a client, and you are professional instead of a snake oil salesman, you’ll welcome the chance to support your work, assumptions, and suggestions with some hard, clear, unambiguous numbers. PPC allows for this kind of accountability, by allowing you to track each investment and measure its final impact. This transparency means that miscommunications between agencies and clients should be easy to avoid.
That’s why we’ll open this collection of advice on how to decide between changing your [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) agency; steering them in an alternate direction; or accepting that your approach to collaboration was the problem and making the necessary adjustments; with a general, rule of the thumb type rules, and slowly move on to the more specific ones.
But before we begin, just a little caveat – despite PPC being the least blurry part of digital marketing, that doesn’t mean it lends itself to sweeping statements and dogmatic rules much better than some of its cousins. So, even though we’ll try to emphasize this when talking about specific issues, let’s straighten it out right off the bat – even though a [certain type of behavior](https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/04/09/ppc-agency-management/) in an agency you’ve hired to manage your PPC advertising may be a cause for alarm in 99% of the cases, don’t cut the strings before giving them a chance to explain their actions (or lack thereof).
So, if you want to take an intensely closer look at your PPC agency, you might want to focus on:
## Their Reporting/Progress Transparency – The More You See, The Less You Owe
We’ve already made the common sense based assumption that, if an agency you hired is willing to provide you with detailed insight into everything they are doing for you, chances are they have nothing to hide. Well, that might be the conventional wisdom and might be true in the majority of cases, but there are chillingly creative examples of agencies using transparency to hide the truth instead of accentuating it. We’ll elaborate.
Imagine working with an agency which:
1. Denies you any kind of access to the AdWords account used to manage your campaign
2. Are slow to answer your questions, and the answers they provide don’t do much towards dispelling your confusion – i.e. they don’t solve your quandaries, only misdirect them until you can no longer follow the thread and give up
3. Lingers in vagueries, promises and meek attempts at infecting you with their obviously false optimism and enthusiasm
Seems like a clear-cut case of shenanigans, right? Well, most of the time.
In other instances, they might have a decent to completely valid reason for the way they act – respectively:
1. Ok, this one is tough. If you are, even upon inquiring about it prevented from accessing your AdWords account, there are really not many valid excuses that they can give you. If, however, they are using third party software or services; relying on proprietary, in-house tools for certain parts of the process, or anything along those lines; their decision to keep certain aspects of your campaign from you might be completely devoid of any malice or manipulation, they just might be protecting their methodology, resources, partners or whatever. After all, when you order a Coke in a restaurant, it doesn’t come with a recipe.
2. While they might be purposefully misleading you, and it might seem that they are using an improvised Creole of half [jargon marketing speak](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/pay_per_click/ppc_terminology.htm) and half empty phrases, you need to remember that the responsibility for the effectiveness of a conversation rarely rests on just one of the involved parties. In case we’ve failed to communicate our point – sure, they might be trying to confuse you, but, as uncomfortable as it may be to admit, they might actually be doing the best they can to involve and inform you, but are unable to do so because of your lack of appreciation for some of the finer points of the process. While this failure to describe and substantiate their decisions or tactics to a client can also be seen as a failure on their part, it’s not nearly as unforgivable or unmendable as trying to lie to a client.
3. Pretty similar to the last item, but distinct enough. Again, it revolves around manipulation of client’s perception, but instead of relying on withholding critical information or anything so elaborately devious, agencies that are resorting to over-inflation of your expectations are, sometimes, doing nothing more subtle or sophisticated than straight out lying to you. If you’ve had any kind of contact with digital marketing, you have probably already learned to be wary of people making too specific promises. Even in data-driven PPC, those claiming to know exactly where you’ll be at the end of a campaign either don’t have the beginning of a clue how the whole thing works or are hoping that you don’t and that they can exploit your inexperience and trust. All that being said, if they seem too eager, it is still possible that they are perfectly honest, and simply take pleasure in their work.
As long as they provide you with all the info you ask for, and don’t try to over-inflate or avoid answers to your question, you should be good, right? Yeah, no. The final and the most brazen technique for stringing you along for as long they can is not based on skewing or hiding information, but instead on showering you with amounts of data that you couldn’t handle even if you were as skilled in PPC as they are.
Agencies attempting this will send mile long reports that you cannot make heads or tails of; list metric changes without giving you a clue on why you should care about them, or whether the fact that one of them is rising is good for you or a signal of imminent disaster; and as a coup de grace, if you haven’t been made dizzy enough by swarms of context devoid numbers, they’ll spice the entire thing up with a couple of graphs that are, somehow, always climbing, but never really lead anywhere.
If this chapter seems like a needlessly elaborate way to say that sometimes people lie, and sometimes they don’t, here’s a brief summary of what you should be able to expect from your PPC agency.
- Being able to**access your AdWords account is a must**- They provide you with clearly presented**info that describes actual campaign progress**and do their part to ensure that you understand what they are saying
- Aside from regular progress reports, they need to provide any other information you request. If they refuse and fail to provide a valid reason for that refusal, they are either hiding something or simply can’t be bothered to assuage your doubts – neither is good
- They should keep the conversation focused on results they’ve achieved, not sidetrack it to tasks completed. If they seem eager to accentuate the latter, they might be more interested in what they can charge you for than what they’ve actually done for you.
If you want to avoid misunderstandings, have your expectations as defined as possible before commencing a relationship with an agency – starting from the results you’re after, and ending with the type, extensiveness, and frequency of the reports you expect them to send.
## Their Reputation
If you are thinking about reassessing your current PPC agency or hiring a new one, and have no other criteria to go by, checking their references, reviews, and, if you are prepared for a somewhat more demanding research, their past clients’ performance; should give you some insight into what you can expect.
You’ve probably conducted a similar research when hiring them, but now, after working with them for a while, you might be able to extend it or find new meaning in the info you have. For instance, you might have learned about their other clients, and perhaps even when exactly was it that they worked together. You can either choose to contact those former clients directly and ask about their experience with the agency or, if you prefer a sneakier approach, you can use tools like [SEMrush or SpyFu](https://www.g2crowd.com/compare/semrush-vs-spyfu) to observe the performance of your agency’s past clients at the time of their collaboration. Naturally, data provided by these tools will sometimes be sparse or outdated, and interpreting it correctly will demand quite a bit of expertise.
While we’re on the subject of these or similar tools, if you get comfortable with them, you can also use them to get info on your current performance, as well as on the performance of your competitors. Aside from maybe giving you a chance to come across interesting strategies that you might want to later try yourself, comparing your campaigns with those done for your competitors might help you identify major faults, minor errors, or strong points of the agency you are working with.
Once you’ve learned what you could this way, you may as well give online reviews a go. Sure, they are often unreliable; people writing them might be intentionally spreading misinformation about the agency (positive or negative), they might be driven by strong emotions when leaving a review (we say emotions, plural, but if we’re being realistic it is usually just one – frustration); or they may have the purest of intentions and the ‘levelest’ of heads when leaving a review, but they simply may not have too firm a grasp on the subject they are talking about.
Even so, if you find enough reviews of the agency you are working with, you might:
1. Begin noticing patterns, which can, depending on how organic they look either indicate foul play, for instance, noticing the same, specific phrases used across different reviews, apparently left by different people, but clearly suggesting an organized promotional effort; or, on the other hand, the tendencies you start noticing may turn out to be a product of genuine shared enthusiasm, like different people praising the same aspects of the agency’s service, without it looking like a part of a coordinated effort.
2. Actually come across verifiable info on the agency, that you can use to expand your research.
Again, whatever it is that you conclude in the course of this research, we would suggest giving the agency you are working with the benefit of the doubt, and approaching them openly about what you’ve learned.
Just one final quick tip. If your agency (or the one you are thinking about hiring) claims to be a Google Partner, there is a slight possibility that they are one of a decreasing number of agencies who still think they can get away with lying about something like that. Naturally, someone who believes that it’s a good idea to use a rough approximation of Google Partners logo to con people, probably couldn’t fly under your radar for too long before exposing themselves through sheer incompetence, but if you want to know instantly whether you are dealing with one of these insultingly lazy grifters, you can search their agency by name in the official [Google Partners Hub](https://www.google.com/partners/?hl=en#a_home), and in just a couple of minutes either expose them as frauds, or verify their credibility.
## Their Performance
Most of the items listed so far come down to nothing better than circumstantial evidence, hearsay, and hunches that you may or may not want to listen to. While all of this can give you an idea of who you are working with, ultimately, the most straightforward and sensible method is to take a close look at what they are doing for you. Here are some of the things that you should consider.
### Basic Campaign Setup
Chances are, you’ve already been keeping an eye on the way your campaign is being led, and if you haven’t, the agency in charge of your PPC may not be to blame if you are not receiving the expected returns from this channel. You can perform as extensive a research as you feel you have the time for, but if you just want a quick run through, the checklist of essentials would include:
-**Targeted keywords**– are the keywords you are pursuing relevant, realistic, and potentially feasible
-**Targeted audience**– has the agency supplied a list of negative keywords to eliminate pointless impressions/clicks; is their geo-targeting adequate; and basically, have they done their best to save you money will still reaching everyone you want to reach
-**Goal setting and tracking**– are you meeting your goals? If you are, is that because the agency was less than ambitious when setting them? The same goes for metrics, are they only observing those they can count on improving, or are they [focused on true KPIs](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ppc-marketing-kpis/212400/)?
-**How is your budget allocated?** – PPC is transparent when it comes to expenditures, however, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to decide how much to invest in which segment of your campaign. One strategy might be a complete flop with a daily budget of $50 and an amazing success with just another $50 invested. The truth is, even though you should give this a look, chances are you can’t really ever be sure that there’s not a better approach than the one you are trying at the moment.
Having worked with a number of clients who were trying to stay interested in their campaign, but didn’t really have too clear an idea of how to do so, take it from us – while you should be as involved as possible, this doesn’t mean that your agency is supposed to update you on every single thing they do for you. In other words, while your campaign is being set and after it starts unrolling is the ideal time to learn all you want about it, and specify all the details with the agency you’ve hired to carry it out for you.
At this point, no question is too inane, and no suggestion obsolete.
However, if you keep pestering your agency every couple of days, expecting them to account for every minuscule detail of how they are managing your campaign, they might drop you as a client long before you decide on whether or not to give them the boot.
This is something that applies to just about every suggestion given in this post – while you shouldn’t allow anyone to manipulate or deceive you, you also can’t act paranoid with people who are just trying to do the job you’ve hired them for. Once you’ve decided that you are working with a credible agency, they will need a fair amount of your trust if they are to actually formulate and execute a successful campaign.
### Account Change History
While there are campaigns which, once you set them, don’t require too much attention, they are very rare, and usually, just something that you have on a backburner, i.e. they are as optimized as they are ever likely to get, and are probably not costing you too much. However, for a huge majority of campaigns, constant monitoring and tweaking is absolutely essential. When you consider the daily changes in the market you are after; shifts in keyword popularity; degree and type of competitor activity; and a host of other unstable factors that have relevance on how your campaign is led, it becomes clear that a “set and forget it” approach is by no means adequate.
Luckily, your AdWords account gives you easy access to Change History log, where you can review campaign modifications made in the recent past, and check first-hand how vigilant the agency you are working with really is.
Are they trying to respond to the trends cropping up in the market you are after? Are they considering better keyword combinations? Are they performing an adequate number of tests with ad copy, landing pages or targeted audiences (if they aren’t, is it because you’ve been too stingy or controlling, preventing them from exploring anything but the safest options)?
Naturally, you can see as much activity and as many changes as you like, this still doesn’t necessarily mean that your agency is [doing a good job](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/06/17/ppc-worst-practices), but a serious lack of activity, especially with newer, larger, or stubbornly underperforming campaigns is usually a bad sign. The same goes for A/B testing – just because they are doing it, doesn’t mean they are doing it right; but if they aren’t it might be because they are:
- Not interested in providing you with better worth for your money
- Not capable of doing so
- Too constrained by the terms you’ve given them, or by the type of relationship you have formed to even consider doing something without direct payoff – in which case, you should really reconsider your approach, as most serious agencies wouldn’t be willing to work with a client of that type
### Results
What all of it boils down to. Is your ROI close to what they’ve promised or perhaps even better? Is this marketing channel performing better than the other ones you are investing in? Have you had an open and honest collaboration? Even if all the answers are positive, could you have done even better, and if you do want to do better in the future, do you stick with the same agency, but refine your communication, or do you try to sign another one?
Take it from us, once you build a relationship with an agency, and once you determine them to be credible, dedicated and capable of reliable, if not always too precise forecasting, you should stick with them as long as you are not planning to drastically change the scope of your campaign.
## The Final Verdict
Even after taking a long, hard look at your agency’s reporting, reputation and performance, you might still be at a loss regarding your next step. If in doubt, we suggest you start from first taking the least severe approach – changing your attitude and approach to your collaboration first, then, if that fails to appease your doubts; trying to force a change in their strategy; and eventually, if neither of the less drastic tactics works, consider finding a new [PPC agency to take care of your AdWords campaigns.](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management)
As disappointed with the results as you may be, you may stand to lose more by hiring, briefing and getting accustomed to another company; but at the same time, as well as an agency may be performing for you, there’s no point in sticking with them if you find out they have been lying to you.
If you are still having a hard time making up your mind, hiring another agency for a detailed PPC audit may be the perfect way to go. Even if you are not planning on changing the agency handling your PPC, affording them and yourself with a fresh perspective provided by an outside consultant can only help you refine your marketing efforts and reassess the way you work with agencies of this kind.
---
## Posts: An SEO Wizard’s Bag of Tricks: Things to Do in 2018
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-wizards-bag-tricks-2018-3590](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-wizards-bag-tricks-2018-3590)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-wizards-bag-tricks-2018-3590.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-wizards-bag-tricks-2018-3590.md)
**Published:** 2017-11-21
**Last Updated:** 2021-03-30
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** SEO, SEO 2018, SEO Trends, SEO tricks
### Content
Even though SEO has been around for decades now, it’s still a complex subject for most people. For those who don’t really understand how Google works, SEO is nothing short of wizardry. It’s like a magical book of spells that specific people know how to use to trick the world’s most popular search engine into favoring their own (or their client’s) site in search, instead of their competitor’s.
By those who aren’t really familiar with modern digital marketing practices, these individuals are often referred to as “wizards”. Heck, Rand Fishkin, one of the most well-known SEO professionals today, took the whole situation to the next level by calling himself “The Wizard of MOZ”.
For the sake of this story, let’s humor these ludicrous interpretations and say that SEO professionals are actually wizards, in a way.
If this is true, it means everyone can become an SEO wizard.
As you probably know, people are not born wizards, they become one by learning and practicing magic.
In this particular case, the magic in question is SEO.
However, becoming a wizard is no easy task. The path to becoming an SEO wizard is filled with various obstacles and challenges. The better you get, the harder the journey becomes. As many things begin to hinder your progress, you’ll be forced to learn faster, work smarter, and think of ways to reinvent the entire magic of SEO for yourself.
There are no simple instructions on how to become an SEO wizard. No. You have to constantly read, adapt, learn, and try new things. It’s a repetitive process that demands a curious mind and an undying thirst for knowledge.
In order to prepare you for the upcoming year, I have decided to share my 2018 SEO spellbook with you. In the following segments of this article, I’m going to acquaint you with some of my favorite SEO tricks that will surely help you improve your organic reach before you can finish saying your hocus-pocuses and abracadabras.
## 1. Powerful Content Campaigns, Designed for Specific Users
Content is still powerful. It’s still one of the best tricks in every SEO wizard’s book of magic. According to numerous sources and statistics, more than [2 million blog posts get published every day](https://websitesetup.org/news/internet-facts-stats/). You can say that we are [drowning in content](https://www.wired.com/2016/04/youtube-app-redesign-recommendations/). Even though a lot of people have admitted they now only skim through blog posts and that we are basically being bombarded with all sorts of content – the truth is, there is still need for more. Google still wants more content. The users do too. The engine still likes to see that you have an active website that frequently provides its users with a lot of useful information.
Emphasis on useful, of course.
Data says that longer blog content tends to perform better in search, and the average word count per article continues to increase. [The demand for visual content has also experienced significant growth](http://www.jeffbullas.com/6-powerful-reasons-why-you-should-include-images-in-your-marketing-infographic/) in these last 12 months and so has the need for the [paid promotion of your content](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/08/content-amplification-promote-distribute/).
Content still generates traffic, that’s a fact. Believe it or not, [90 percent of B2B buyers trust the content](https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) and use it to help them shape their opinions and decisions concerning specific products and services. The same study has shown that these people are interested in reading more content from industry leaders. Companies that blog frequently still receive far more traffic than those who only blog a couple of times per month. That is why content will continue to be a top priority for most inbound marketers.
According to everything written above, if you create smart and powerful content, and optimize it for search – it will continue to bring fresh leads to your site. The only thing you need to adopt (if you want to make content a big part of your SEO strategy for 2018), is an approach that will ensure success in this department.
This brings us back to the whole [10x content](https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday) concept.
If you want to create something that will bring you traffic and help you rank high in search for your desired keywords, you need to produce content that is at least 10 times better than anything that can currently be found in search for the same keywords.
But this is just one type of content you need to be producing. The key is to have a plan and work your hardest to meet your objective. For example, in our company, we produce the following types of content:
-**10x content/skyscraper**– well-optimized authority content that provides the best and most detailed answers to some of the industry’s burning questions. Studies have shown that these kinds of posts generate 6 times more traffic than standard articles.
-**Link-earning content**– well-optimized, evergreen, user-friendly resources, not just blog posts, that [generate links from other sites like crazy](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189). They usually come in the form of ultimate lists, infographics, case studies, research, white papers, statistics, etc.
-**Link-building content**– you can read more about this particular type of content in the following segment of the post.
-**Easy-win content**– material designed around relevant long tail keywords, important lower difficulty topics and themes.
-**Persona + use formula**– well-optimized content, meant for encouraging those who are familiar with the service/brand/product to finally make a move and see the value of investing in a particular product/service.
-**Potentially viral content**– material that provides different, unique, and interesting insights into popular topics, that will get people sharing and talking.
That is our plan.
Regardless of what you are doing or creating, it’s always best to do the research first and look for easy-win topics or those that are currently trending. Once you find your subject, do your best to create something genuinely useful, educational, evergreen, and unique.
Track your efforts and [optimize your content campaigns](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-content-marketing-kpis-3255) according to the numbers and always think about the “link-worthiness” of your work. Don’t just pursue top-of-the-funnel content, create material that influences people in [every stage of your buyer’s cycle](https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945).
## 2. Earn and Build Links (No, It’s Not the Same Thing)
Link building will still be one of the most valuable tricks in every real SEO wizard’s spellbook. In 2018, it will become more important than ever to create a strategy that seeks out quality links all over the web. It doesn’t really matter how good you get at creating 10x content or how well your work in that particular department starts to pay off in incoming links – you’ll still need to do a lot of link building on the side to ensure success.
As I already pointed out in my “[The Difference Between Link Building and Link Earning](https://dibz.me/blog/link-building-vs-link-earning-247)” article, these two concepts are not really the same. Even though they look like two sides of the same coin, I have already explained that the first practice revolves around creating links, while the second one focuses on developing valuable resources that encourage people to FREELY AND NATURALLY link back to your site or particular pages.
If you want to maintain a steady growth and grab as much traffic as you possibly can in the upcoming year, you’ll have to add both of these strategies to your marketing mix.
You can earn top quality links through the 10x content that you’ll start (or continue) creating on your blog and specific landing pages, and you can build your links where your efforts will actually mean something.
However, regardless of the fact that 10x content has the power to earn you some quality links, it still demands that you work on its promotion. Creating the best piece of content for a given keyword is not really enough to help you climb to the top of Google’s SERP for a particular theme or topic. Especially if you don’t have a strong [domain authority](https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-domain-authority/). If you have a small website, going against big names like Ahrefs, MOZ, Kissmetrics, and HubSpot won’t be easy. You cannot expect your content alone will beat them for the top positions. A quality piece of content (depending on the niche and industry, of course) will organically earn around 30-80 links. If you want to outpace the big guys, you’ll need to get more authority. Even if you do create the best-in-the-class content for a specific keyword or combination of keywords, you’ll still need to keep manually building links for it if you want to see it on top. This isn’t the fastest growth model, but it works.
Even though link building has earned itself some bad rap in certain marketing circles over the last couple of years, it’s still one of the most effective and intelligent strategies for driving traffic to your site. The only thing that has changed in this game in the last year is the very reason why pros build links. There is no longer a need to aim for new links that don’t really bring value to your site or pages. If your link building efforts aren’t aimed at helping your brand increase its authority in your niche or market – you should immediately stop what you’re doing.
The best links don’t necessarily come from popular sites. If you want your link building efforts to pay off in 2018, you’ll need to look for coverage on sites that are relevant for your business. Referral traffic from those particular sites won’t just help you increase your site’s organic search ranking. No. It will also help you drive quality visitors to your site that have an extremely high potential of becoming your loyal fans/paying customers.
Having all that in mind, we can wrap this segment up by saying that your 2018 link building strategy should be oriented towards building relationships with relevant websites that have the power to help your brand develop powerful contacts, and not just highly rated links. Your link building efforts should be focused on improving your exposure, without hurting your brand’s reputation.
## 3. Re-Optimize Your Existing Content
Before you even start to think about spending your time and money on creating new content, you should always first try to get the most of what you currently have. As someone who has a business website with more than a few blog posts and content pages, I don’t need to be a bearded wizard in rags to know that you have more than a couple of diamonds in your inventory that could use some polishing.
The process of re-optimizing content is not really magic. You don’t have to flash your wand or keywords around and say ludicrous words in order for it to work. Nope. In fact, it’s quite simple. The process starts with creating a list of all your pages/assets that have the potential of bringing more quality traffic to your site. These pages usually come in three groups:
- Low-performing pages (in terms of traffic and engagement) that target mid to highly competitive keywords.
- Blog posts or pages that cover important topics, but are now outdated.
- Information-rich pages that should be earning you links, but aren’t because of bad UX and UI.
Once you locate these pages and classify them in the appropriate groups, the idea is to start working on improving and transforming them into valuable assets.
I lied before – this is where “the magic” happens.
Depending on which page you’re updating, the protocol often goes in a similar order:
- Fix the entire content structure, make it easily digestible and user-friendly. Focus on bringing more value to the topic, and maybe even introduce related topics.
- Optimize the title tags for [better CTR](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007), which has always been important, but is along with dwell time and [other user satisfaction indicators](https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year) becoming even more critical.
- Build new topically-relevant internal links.
- Improve the targeting for your secondary keywords by reviewing and analyzing each keyword you’re currently chasing on that page via Google’s Search Console.
The general idea is to figure out why some of your existing pages don’t work, and what can be done in order to add more value to them and increase their organic visibility in search. All of this will, of course, automatically have a positive effect on your traffic.
## 4. Make Use of Google’s Rich Answer Box
You may have noticed that when searching for a topic, any topic, Google now provides a list of results, accompanied by an information box close to the top of the page that basically displays quick answers to your search query.
This featured snipped in now a part of [Google’s new Rich Answer Box system](https://www.stonetemple.com/the-growth-of-rich-answers-in-googles-search-results/) that serves to provide searchers instant, highly relevant answers to their questions.
A snippet can contain any number of things. It can be a cold fact, a historical date, a suggestion, a list, a recipe – basically anything that could instantly put an end to your search. The need for this particular feature came with a growing number of mobile users who don’t really have the time or the patience to open various sites in order to find simple information.
Pretty sweet, right?
Well, not really, if your competitor gets their content displayed in this box. Google Rich Answer gets a lot of prime real-estate in your search. It’s extremely user-friendly, and it basically grabs almost all of the searcher’s attention, if the person is looking for something simple.
Google doesn’t always promote top ranking content here. We have seen that through numerous examples.
So what’s the trick? How does one get featured in this box? Do people need to cast magic spells, sacrifice goats, or even carry dozens of horseshoes on their necks for luck?
Not really, there is a way to optimize your content for the answer box:
- Implement a schema markup code;
- Structure data properly;
- Create 10x content, in direct response to a specific query (yes, just like I wrote above for long-tail keywords);
- Create Wikipedia pages;
- Get listed on Google Maps and Google+;
- Use Google Search Console to re-crawl your pages.
That’s it. No magic, no sacrifices.
## 5. Mobile-First Index
This is going to be a significant change for the upcoming year. Google has announced that the company is rolling out a new [mobile-first index](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html) update. This means that the world’ most popular search engine will start to calculate search listing based on the mobile version of the content, even for results that are displayed for users that search via a desktop computer. It is now evident that the team of people behind this engine has noticed the number of poor mobile sites and that they are doing everything in their power to fix this issue, and provide users who primarily search via mobile a better experience.
According to numerous studies, over [50 percent of the entire traffic](https://www.stonetemple.com/mobile-vs-desktop-usage-mobile-grows-but-desktop-still-a-big-player/) comes from mobile devices, and that number is only going to grow in the near future.
Even though the people behind Google have said that this change shouldn’t really worry those who have responsive sites, to us who know a thing or two about SEO, this announcement has literally changed the world.
If you want to keep your positions in Google’s SERP for your desired keywords, you need to make sure that your mobile version is just as optimized as your desktop site. Maybe even better, because Google has publicly said that it’s now more interested in mobile.
So, what does an apprentice wizard need to do in order to win a couple of leading positions in search in 2018, and thus generate tons of quality traffic? Turn every competitor into a frog? I don’t think so. There’s a nicer way to overcome the odds:
-**Use a responsive site**: Duuh, this is a no-brainer, but it’s still important to mention. Mobile-friendly and responsive sites are not really the same. Don’t lose your rankings and traffic over a dumb misunderstanding.
-**Optimize your content for mobile**: It’s imperative that from now on you focus on providing killer content that looks the same on mobile and desktop. Make sure to use shorter sentences and smaller paragraphs in your articles. Do your best to mix up your content strategy with various types of content, like videos (which are becoming more popular and important regardless of the platform you are optimizing for), images – basically anything that looks better on mobile and makes it easy for people to digest your information through their favorite devices.
-**Don’t forget voice search:**While particularly important for your mobile-focused efforts, the growing number of voice submitted queries is something that will influence all types of search. People formulate questions differently when making these kinds of queries, and expect succinct answers, making brevity your friend.
The key is to prepare for the change in time and adjust your strategies to Google’s liking. If you play by the [engine’s rules](https://www.seroundtable.com/semrush-seo-ranking-factors-2017-study-24765.html), you will certainly get on its good side and probably be rewarded for your efforts.
## Your Training Begins Now, Young Sorcerer
Thank you for taking the time to read this article from top to bottom. I hope it has taught you everything you needed to know in order to become a real SEO wizard. Every single one of the tips mentioned in this article is directly pulled from my own book of spells. Read them closely and practice everything you’ve learned here, and I promise – you’ll see a significant growth in your organic visits.
---
## Posts: News: Elevate Digital Launch
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/elevate-digital-launch-3540](https://fourdots.com/blog/elevate-digital-launch-3540)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/elevate-digital-launch-3540.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/elevate-digital-launch-3540.md)
**Published:** 2017-10-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** Company News, News
**Tags:** elevate digital
### Content
Four Dots is thrilled to announce that we have partnered with some amazing people and that, together, we have started offering our SEO, PPC, Content and Web Design services to fine people and businesses of**Hong Kong**, under one goal, promise and name – [**Elevate Digital**](https://elevatedigital.hk/).
Four Dots remains as accessible and excited to help you with your digital marketing efforts as we ever were, but we couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to solidify our cooperation with people we’ve known and worked with for so long; to pool our resources; and offer businesses, startups and entrepreneurs in the bursting Hong Kong market a way to differentiate themselves from the crowd, attract the attention of desired audiences and establish an online presence which reflects their values and does credit to their name.
### Our Team
Joining forces with [Aaron Weller](https://www.linkedin.com/in/weller/) and [Alexandra Tanya](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-tanya), people whose expertise we respect and whose drive is to be admired, we feel more confident than ever that we can give you a voice which will be clearly heard over the clamor of your competitors.
Hong Kong has for years been near or at the top of lists of cites with most competitive markets; can boast a rapid and consistent increase in number of startups, and gathers people from all over the world, as long as they can keep up with the pace that this kind of environment dictates. This is exactly what we are here to help you with. While this makes our job more challenging, it is also the reason why we have chosen this marvelously chaotic city as our home.
Regardless of whether you are a small, locally oriented business, or an enterprise working at a global level, Elevate Digital can find and accentuate everything that recommends you over your competitors; as we have, together or individually, already done so for hundreds of satisfied clients from all over the world.
### Our Services
As a full range digital marketing agency, Elevate Digital can help with any or all aspects of your online strategy. If you don’t have a website yet, we can build one for you, optimized for keywords and locations you’ll choose yourself, or with our help. If you do have a site already, we can scrutinize it through backlink and technical audits and suggest or implement improvements in any of the potentially lacking areas, including but not limited to inner linking, meta elements, information architecture, page loading speed, canonicalization, etc.
Based on keywords you are after, or the ones we recommend you pursue, we can perform a competitor and content analysis to determine what works for them and what is or isn’t working for you. After we have polished your site to perfection we can, should you so choose, keep enriching it with content that we know will set you apart as an authority in your industry, and that will keep bringing you attention, customers and links for long after our collaboration has concluded.
Since content marketing doesn’t stop at content creation, we can promote your content by placing it in front of people you want to attract. There is not a single area of off-page SEO that we haven’t had success with, from local citation building to influencers and editorials outreach. Improved rankings in [organic search](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services) are not all that you are getting – the boost to your credibility and brand awareness that stem from our efforts will often benefit you just as much.
Once you are happy with your site, [backlink portfolio](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778) and rankings, there is still more that we can do for you. Our [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) campaigns can place you in front of targeted audiences you couldn’t reach before, with a message that we will help you refine until there is no more room for improvement.
### Our Mission
We are here to help you succeed. It doesn’t matter if you need all the listed services or just some of them, we will do everything that you authorize us to do that can help improve your visibility, reach, conversions, and ultimately, profits. If you would like to discuss your options and prospects, Elevate Digital is now open for business.
---
## Posts: Reportz: Create Insightful Marketing Reports
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/reportz-automated-reporting-tool-3497](https://fourdots.com/blog/reportz-automated-reporting-tool-3497)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/reportz-automated-reporting-tool-3497.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/reportz-automated-reporting-tool-3497.md)
**Published:** 2017-09-20
**Last Updated:** 2025-06-30
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** digital marketing, reporting tool, reportz, whitelabel reporting
### Content
Quality client reporting is critical for customer satisfaction and retention. It’s the only thing that can ensure successful communication between all involved parties and shine a light on what has been done so far and what needs to be done in order to improve a client’s business on numerous different levels.
These concise, data-driven documents have the ability to help us accurately evaluate and analyze all past and current business- and marketing-related activities, regardless of how tricky and overwhelming they may be. They are the ones that put everything into the right perspective and fuel bulletproof marketing strategies that turn brands from zeros to heroes, regardless of their size, industry and stature.
As such, quality client reporting demands extra care and attention.
Especially from companies and freelancers which generate a higher volume of reports and work in fields like SEO, content marketing or [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages), where it’s imperative to keep your client constantly in the loop.
If you run an agency like [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/), this tends to become a problem. At the end of each week, month or quarter (depending on specific client needs) of every single year, this particular activity takes your top level employees hostage. It keeps your top talent away from what it does best, which is naturally something that cannot be tolerated.
But this doesn’t concern only us. Our research has shown that marketing agencies and freelancers from all over the globe**spend 5 or more hours on average, per month, on client reporting per client**. They lack the necessary resources and the time needed to guarantee the overall quality and promptness of their reporting.
With that in mind, we decided to work on this issue and develop a tool that [optimizes the entire process of quality marketing reporting](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services).
## Hello, Reportz!
Created by marketers for marketers, [Reportz](https://reportz.io/) is envisioned and created by [our CEO and SEO Radomir Basta](/about-radomir-basta), as an open,**fully customizable marketing reporting software**that significantly speeds up the process of generating powerful data-driven documents.
Reportz eliminates all the confusion and all mind-numbing manual work that comes with this activity.
By making it possible for the user to instantly access real-time data from multiple points and integrate their favorite marketing sources in a single platform, our utility basically cuts corners at every turn and allows everyone who uses Reportz to complete their monthly reporting per client in 5 minutes, instead of 5 hours.
## How does it Work?
Reportz is an extremely user-friendly platform that doesn’t require any prior knowledge to operate. Everyone can find their way around this tool. In order to create your first dashboard, all you have to do is:
- Add a data source
- Name your first dashboard
- Choose a template
- Adjust the style of your dashboard
- Click on the “Create a new dashboard now” button.
Easy, right?
From there, you can add, remove or adjust anything you want, in order to make your reports look just as you have imagined them.
## What Makes Reportz Special?
Even though it isn’t the first and only automated marketing reporting solution out there, Reportz is definitely unique. This tool was created out of pure need: it was designed to fill the gaps, as other competitive tools lack the features needed.
The main things that separate Reportz from the bunch are:
### Custom Digital Marketing KPI Dashboards
Reportz is a platform where users can easily collect, merge, rearrange and display all their favorite data using the custom widget builder option. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMRush, Rank Ranger – these are just some of the sources which you can add, track and analyze from your KPI dashboard.
Each dashboard is basically a giant, flexible blank space where you can add literally an unlimited number of widgets. This option makes it possible for everyone who uses Reportz to work on even the most complex of projects from one, centralized location.
### Custom Date Ranges for Reporting
As a user of Reportz, you have the option to set predefined and custom date ranges for your reports. You can sort them by days, weeks and months, or you can list them by custom date ranges. For example: March 2016 compared to June 2017, and the first 17 days of March 2016 to the last 5 days of June 2016. This is extremely convenient for those who have specific campaigns and details to compare, in order to test and locate particular options and activities.
### Free Brand and In-Depth Customization for Your Reports
With Reportz, everyone has the luxury to fully customize their reporting to their liking. As a user, you can upload your client’s/company logo, colors and fonts – basically everything that will improve the overall visual experience of your reporting. This is where the whole [white label](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) part comes to shine. Users also have the option of transferring their client’s reports to a specific subdomain, where they can easily work on the design and forget about issues like accessibility and the size of their reports.
### Custom and Predefined Templates, Automated Regular Client Reporting
Reportz is all about saving time and cutting boring and complex processes down to size. In order to help users focus on what’s important, we have added a wide variety of preset standard marketing reporting templates to Reportz.
Apart from that, our developers have also enriched the whole system with the option to set and save custom KPI dashboard templates, and recycle them for further use. The days of creating the same reports from scratch are now long gone. You can clone your best reporting templates and reuse them on numerous different clients. This option basically comes as a blessing from the skies to every single one of us SEO professionals who do the same thing for different clients.
But that’s not all. Reportz also provides its users with an automated reporting solution, so they no longer have to waste time on reporting for regular clients. Basically, all you have to do is customize your dashboard and tell the tool when and to whom to send a specific report. The software will automatically update the numbers and allow you to keep your clients constantly in the loop, without even investing a single click in the process.
## Give Reportz a Go!
Reportz is our third marketing utility, right after Dibz and Base.me, and we’re extremely proud of it. All the experience we have gathered in this business so far has been poured into the development of this tool. It was made out of sheer need and with a desire to actually optimize reporting, as we still currently know it. After months and months of continuous testing and tweaking, we have finally finished polishing everything, so when we finally launch it, the tool will be 100% ready to use.
Be sure to take it for a spin and let us know what you think!
So far, we have been receiving only positive feedback from the colleagues who have had the opportunity to test it in its beta phase.
We hope you like it and find it useful!
Thank you for your time and patience,
‘Till next time,
Love, Rad
---
## Posts: Climbing Back to The Top After a Drop in Rankings
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/climbing-after-rankings-drop-3482](https://fourdots.com/blog/climbing-after-rankings-drop-3482)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/climbing-after-rankings-drop-3482.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/climbing-after-rankings-drop-3482.md)
**Published:** 2017-09-18
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Ranking Factors, SERP
### Content
SEO is a complex game that can turn your life upside down overnight. It doesn’t really matter how diligently you work on your brand and traffic online – your site could still end up in the gutter. And by the gutter, I mean Page 2 of Google’s search results, which is basically a ghost town that only 1% of all searchers ever visit.
Search engine optimization can be your best friend, but it can also present itself as a real hornet’s nest if you don’t take it seriously enough. Keeping your position in SERP is as simple as putting a bear on a tiny unicycle and teaching him how to do laps around the circus.
Why? – Because so many things could go wrong. It doesn’t really matter if you’re employing only the best and most acceptable [white hat SEO](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) practices, you could still experience a drop in rankings. An instant drop in rankings could be caused by literally anything. These are some of the more common causes:
-**Links**– The links pointing back to your domain could negatively affect your rankings in a couple of different ways. If you create low quality or unnatural links for your site, you could end up on Google’s naughty list. Broken and lost links could also cut your rankings down to size.
-**Dropped redirections**– Removing or modifying redirects can often negatively affect rankings. Link equity gets lost, and a whole lot of different issues immediately start to surface.
-**Links**– The links pointing back to your domain could negatively affect your rankings in a couple of different ways. If you create low quality or unnatural links for your site, you could end up on Google’s naughty list. Broken and lost links could also cut your rankings down to size.engine penalties – Employing spammy linking techniques and producing rubbish content can also butcher your rankings. If you don’t play by the rules and stop investing only in [recommended SEO practices](https://dibz.me/blog/sweet-seo-tips-215), you could lose your hard-earned positions in SERP.
-**Algorithm changes**– Many position drops can often be traced back to algorithm changes. Back in 2015, Google rolled out the new [Panda update](http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-panda-update), and the SEO community provided analysis and reports, in order to understand what has changed. In these reports, there were clearly some winners and losers.
-**Page speed**– [Speed also plays an important role in your overall ranking performance](https://fourdots.com/blog/page-speed-2451). It doesn’t really matter how tight your design and content might be, if users have to wait for ages for your site to load, you’ll start to sink in SERP. That’s why it’s always important to check your server and hosting, and make sure that your visitors can fluidly navigate through your site.
-**Alterations in search performance**– If you notice a slight drop in your website’s rankings, it might not have anything to do with your SEO techniques or the inbound links you’ve built so far. Google is committed to improving the web surfing experience for its users, which is why it can alter results to stay up to date, i.e. have in mind new queries.
In case there is suddenly an increased number of searches for a specific topic, Google will give a slight boost to articles that contain fresh, updated information. This means evergreen content might end up on page two, as it is interpreted as less relevant.
-**Technical, on-page issues**– [Basic elements that power the crawling and indexing of your site](https://www.semrush.com/blog/semrush-study-on-site-seo-issues/) can also be a source of your ranking problems. Bad canonical tags, no index tags, content that cannot be rendered – these are just some components that could butcher your ranking performance.
-**Changes in CTRs**– If your [click through rate](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007) has dropped, that could be the reason why your rankings have changed. Google focuses on user experience, more than anything else.
## How to Recover from such Issues?
As a person who has some significant experience in this field, I can tell you first hand that I have truly felt what it means to get screwed by the world’s most popular search engine. Some of the clients I used to work with had the misfortune of seeing their ranking drop in Google’s search results like a stone in water.
Every single one of these scenarios starts the same, like a trashy ‘80s horror movie. You wake up, same as every other day, sit in front of your computer, all mellow and chill, and do a simple Google search for your brand, keywords and site, only to see that your hard-earned rankings have suddenly nosedived from the top of Google’s SERP.
Whenever this sort of thing happens, people immediately enter a state of panic. They start running around like a cat being chased by Pepé Le Pew, stressed that they won’t be able to figure out what went wrong.
That’s not good. You should do the opposite. It’s important to stay calm, act fast, figure out what caused the drop and work from there.
As a person who runs an SEO agency that works with 200 clients from all over the globe, I constantly find myself in situations where it’s up to me to examine specific rank drop scenarios, locate problems, and provide my team and clients with an action plan to expressly recover from these unwanted changes.
Truthfully, in order to survive a sudden drop in rankings, all you really need is a solid plan, a checklist, if you prefer, categorized according to source and complexity.
It’s all about having the right tools, principles and processes at your disposal, so you can immediately understand the cause of a specific ranking drop and reverse the damage. You want to pick up the problem as soon as it occurs, so you can work on it, before Google marks you an awful source that keeps piling up garbage.
In the following segments of this article, I’m going to provide you with a reliable checklist to easily detect and work on some of the most common ranking issues:
## The Diagnosis + Solution Phase
## The Duh Factor – Check for Algorithm Updates
The first thing you need to do when analyzing what has caused a certain drop in ranking is go through your list of possible issues and write off those that don’t really apply to your current troubles.
For example, whenever I start working on my ranking problems, the first thing I always look for are Google’s algorithm changes. Why? – Because this is extremely easy to determine. This sort of thing usually happens overnight. If you notice that your site has dropped more than 10 positions in SERP for multiple queries at once, this could mean nothing other than that you have been penalized.
When that sort of thing happens, you need to determine if you have received a manual or an algorithmic penalty. The difference between the two is that automatic penalties come with Google updates, while the latter are usually manually applied by someone who works at Google.
Manual penalties are usually caused by malicious behavior. If you don’t want to get one, you need to avoid conducting shady SEO activities. If you do everything by the book, you won’t have anything to worry about. Recovering from a manual penalty is nothing short of a nightmare. In order to detect why you’re being penalized, you need to open your Webmaster Tools and search for messages that explain why you are experiencing a certain drop in traffic.
This usually means that you have created some unnatural links, or have other on-page issues. Whatever you have done, you need to identify the root of your problem and [remove it](https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/3068/automatic-unnatural-link-detection/). When you fix the issues that have gotten you blacklisted, you need to submit a reconsideration request. Have in mind that you’ll probably have to wait a couple of days until the guys at Google start working on your case, but if you have fixed the issues – they’ll restore your rankings.
If you want to avoid an automatic penalty, all you really have to do is visit some of the most popular SEO blogs (like [SEJ](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/), [SEO Roundable](https://www.seroundtable.com/), [Search Engine Land](http://searchengineland.com/), [MOZ](https://moz.com/), [SEO by The Sea](http://www.seobythesea.com/), the [Ahrefs blog](https://ahrefs.com/blog/), etc.) and check if they have written something on that topic. These types of changes are usually announced by Google and all sorts of different publications that write about SEO.
If this is your issue, if Google has done something to its ranking system, the first thing you need to do is familiarize yourself with what’s new, what the engine has changed and why, what it is penalizing now, and how to update your SEO playbook, so you don’t chance to do things that Google now hates.
## Loss of Links
If there were no recent algorithm changes, your next move should be to check your links. Do you notice any suspicious site-wide link rank activity? Has there been a noticeable loss for some of the pages that you used to rank high in SERP? What about the pages that link back to those pages?
These are just some of the questions you can easily provide answers for by using tools like [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/), [Seomator](https://seomator.com/) and [Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/).
By doing a simple link analysis or checking the internal link counts for pages that were connected to the affected pages, you can locate where the problem occurred. Check your site’s links for the last 90 days, go through every link individually, and figure out the reason why they were eliminated. From there, once you pinpoint the issues, you can work on regaining your lost links. Again, the cause of the problem might be traced back to unnatural linking. Open Webmaster Tools and look for messages.
## Technical Screwups
Once you eliminate algorithm changes and link loss from the equation, you should always start looking at manual errors. Has someone altered the URLs of the affected pages? What about keywords? Are they all still there? Site load speed? CTR issues? What about the content? Is it visible to Google?
Even though this is probably the dumbest cause for a rankings drop, it’s also a blessing in disguise. How come? – Well, because you can easily fix these issues. If, for example, you’re having URL issues, all you really need to do is change them back, or see if you can do a better 301 redirect from an old URL to a new one. The same goes for content. Just revert the changes. However, if your site is no longer visible to Google, if that’s the case, you need to talk to your dev team and get them to fix the issues.
## Double Check Your Internal Linking
Once you go through all these options, you’re left with internal linking.
This phase is focused on the link equity flow through your site and checking if something has changed.
Top navigation, side navigation, the footer, suggested pages and posts – these are just some of the main locations that you need to double-check for errors.
You need to figure out if some of your internal links have been removed and are not pointing back to your suspected pages. Your job here is basically to look for cracks in your site’s navigation. Once again, Screaming Frog can help you here. All you need to do is compare an older version of your site with the new one, and mark all the navigation changes until you find your problem.
## Competitor Analysis
In case you don’t really have any penalties or errors on the site, a drop in rankings can often be traced back to your direct or indirect competitors. Maybe they have gotten better at what they do and pushed you out of the picture? Maybe they have created tons of quality links or perhaps improved their overall CTR score? – It could happen. This is not an unlikely scenario.
In order to truly figure out how someone can push you down SERP, you need to analyze their recent behavior. Keep close track of their social profiles, content tactics and link building activities. Having a tool like Ahrefs at your disposal could really help pinpoint activities that work well for your competitors. It’s important to closely follow your competitors, analyze their backlinks and look for success moments that you can easily replicate and beat them on their own home court.
### Over to You
Once you figure out what has caused a certain drop in rankings, you can start working on the cure. Every single one of these scenarios demands a different approach, so it’s best that you really invest a bit of time and attention in mastering every single one of these tactics. There isn’t a universal action plan that you can apply to all of these problems.
That’s why it’s always best to keep your eye on the ball, surround yourself with quality tools and keep calm when errors surface.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post from top to bottom. I hope it has helped you understand how certain ranking drops occur and what you need to do in order to fix them ASAP.
That’s it for now,
See you again soon,
Rad @ Four Dots
---
## Posts: What do you Stand to Gain by Investing in SEO?
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/why-invest-in-seo-3418](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-invest-in-seo-3418)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/why-invest-in-seo-3418.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-invest-in-seo-3418.md)
**Published:** 2017-07-26
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** SEO, seo agency
### Content
SEO is now something that interests many businesses from diametrically different niches and industries.
And the reason for it is?
Intelligent traffic, of course.
Search is still the best channel for getting the right type of audience to visit your site. [Search Engine Journal says](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/) that search still beats social media as the no.1 traffic generator by roughly 300%. That’s more than enough reason to make you rethink your current digital marketing strategy and see whether you should allocate a larger part of your current social media budget to SEO.
Dozens of respectable sources confirm that [93% of all online experiences start with a simple search](https://www.imforza.com/blog/8-seo-stats-that-are-hard-to-ignore/) via a user’s favorite search engine. As the study shows, more than 70% of today’s internet users only click on organic links, ignore paid ads and never scroll past the first page of search results.
That’s why search engine optimization still matters.
These above-mentioned findings prove that [SEO is a lucrative practice](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services), perfect for attracting the right type of users to visit your site, read your posts, or buy some of the products and service that you’re marketing and selling online.
## Bright Future in SEO
According to the last year’s study conducted by Borrell Associates, SEO as an industry is now [worth an amazing $65 billion](http://searchengineland.com/seo-industry-worth-65-billion-will-ever-stop-growing-248559). These statistics have once and for all closed the door on the whole “[SEO is a passing fab](https://fourdots.com/blog/death-seo-hypothesis-3073)” story.
Even though major game-changers like Google’s Panda and Penguin have entered the scene, dozens of different statistics claim that [SEO is still on the rise](http://www.webpresencesolutions.net/seo-statistics-2017-seo-stats/).
People continue to value it.
As [MarketDrive](https://www.screencast.com/t/O3lpo7oeee0) explains, most marketers strongly believe that search engine optimization is getting more and more effective, and thus advise businesses from all over the globe to set aside bigger chunks of their overall marketing budget for this way of promoting your brand, products, services and website on the Web.
In the previously mentioned study, more than 82% of questioned industry professionals agree that investing in SEO in the following years will continue to bring even more ROI to those who do it right.
Borrell Associates seconds these claims. Their individual research predicts that the SEO industry will continue to grow to an estimated $72 billion by 2018, and $79 billion by 2020.
Assuming these projections are accurate at least roughly, we can confidently claim that SEO is a practice which actually brings some significant return to those who know what they’re doing, and that everyone who’s interested in making some serious cash online should start to focus on improving their position in search.
## SEO is a Difficult Game that Demands Continuous Learning and Experimenting
Even though the interest in it is rapidly growing, SEO continues to be difficult to master for many businesses. It’s a complex game, filled with a lot of different technical aspects and other modern marketing practices (like [content marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/), social media, etc.) that are closely tied to Google’s constant and frequent updates.
In layman’s words – SEO is constantly changing, what makes it hard for people to get it right.
If you’re one of many marketers, webmasters and entrepreneurs who don’t follow closely everything that’s going on in this industry – you’re gonna fall behind easily. That will naturally affect your general success in this particular department, and thus – cost you a lot to pursue trivial things that no longer generate great ROI for your business.
That’s why most businesses do everything in their power to either employ SEO specialists or get someone outside of their company walls to help them pull the right moves in this endless game of chess against Google.
## In-House Team Vs. Freelancers Vs. SEO Agency
Getting the right type of people to handle your SEO is nothing less than a complete nightmare. Why? – Because there are so many so-called experts out there who only suck their clienteles’ money and leave them with even more problems on their hands. Apart from that, there are also various different ways to do SEO. Everyone has a different interpretation of what you should be doing in order to win big in this field.
When it actually comes to doing SEO, there a three possible solutions to choose from:
- Hire your own SEO in-house team;
- Employ freelancers;
- Outsource to a [white-label agency](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) that specializes in search engine optimization.
Every single one of these options has a lot of pros and cons to it.
For instance:
### In-House SEO Department
Having an in-house SEO team can be quite beneficial for your company. These guys can help you instantly fix all your SEO-related problems the very moment they occur. They are solely dedicated to you, so that gives them all the time in the world to constantly work on improving your domain authority, link profile and exposure.
However, you cannot employ just one or two people and expect them to do the impossible.
No way.
You need to create an actual team of SEO professionals. That, as you can probably guess, costs a pretty penny. If you don’t have a lot of SEO-related work or money to truly make a difference in this field – hiring an in-house SEO crew might not be the most ideal option for you.
### Freelance SEO Experts
Working closely with a freelance expert also comes with a lot of ups and downs.
The good thing about it is that these guys are usually less expensive than agencies.
They also don’t take too many project at once, so they can really dedicate themselves to you, as a client.
That means that a certain SEO expert can provide a killer plan on what you need to be doing to drive more and more top quality traffic to your site.
The only real downside when it comes to working with a freelance SEO expert is that they can’t help you execute most of the plans they draw for you. They can try or even teach a group of your employees how to create killer content and quality backlinks, but that will take ages. And additional funding, of course.
That’s why, out of three, hiring an actual agency to do your SEO is often the best possible option.
### SEO Agency
Cheaper than building your own in-house team, more profitable than working with a single freelancer – a good agency usually has a team of SEO experts, senior marketers, content writers, strategists, link builders and project managers who work together from the same office.
Outsourcing your SEO to an agency is the best way to make sure your efforts in this particular department are handled by experienced people who do SEO for living and have the actual manpower to meet all your desires and demands.
They can see any project or task from the beginning ‘till the very end, because they have the necessary know-how and resources to do such a thing.
But hiring the right [SEO agency](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213) isn’t really an easy task. You cannot just pick a random one from the yellow pages and expect to see killer results in no time. Watch the following video to understand how this process works and what you need to keep in mind when choosing the right company to help you win big with SEO:
## So, How Do Agencies Actually Help their Clients?
A good SEO agency works on a single principle: advising a particular client what they need to do in order to get from point A to B and doing all the necessary labor in order to meet those goals.
For example, whenever we get a new client, we at Four Dots always go through their site first and look at it from every possible angle. This helps us determine the best possible strategy for improving our client’s overall traffic and visibility online. Our analysis usually includes things like:
- Site structure analysis: checking robots.txt, indexation status, sitemap, page load speed, looking for site errors, duplicate content, duplicate title tags, missing title tags, etc. – basically, all the necessities that need to be structured properly for Google (and any other search engine) to successfully read your site.
- Content analysis: Checking all the existent content on our client’s site to determine if there are any missing pages, duplicate content issues, poorly optimized post, etc. – this sort of thing helps us figure out what works for our particular client and what doesn’t – what we need to eliminate and what we need to replicate in order to keep things moving forward.
- Off-page analysis: The third and final part of our analysis focuses on finding what people are saying about the client online and how we can turn that buzz to their advantage. This usually involves coming up with ideas on how to increase the client’s organic search, customer loyalty and retention, list their business in various relevant directories, and so on.
Once we finish all that and collect the necessary data to help us come up with an actual plan on how to improve their SEO, we usually start with the technical tasks.
### Technical SEO
Every good SEO agency will first work on their client’s website from a tech perspective in order to make sure that it’s fully optimized for search. This usually means we’re gonna check your UI, UX and site’s navigation. We need to make sure your visitors can easily surf your site and find what they initially came for.
Second step is focused on cleaning up the code and eliminating all the errors. In this phase of the process, we also focus on internal linking and adding an XML sitemap, so your site can run faster and Google can crawl its pages easily.
### On-Site Optimization
Once all that has been taken care off, our specialist start working on your on-page content. The reason why content comes so late in the process is because it’s usually not a one and done job. It requires constant monitoring and editing.
Sure, the first part of the on-site optimization process is usually all about removing or rewriting duplicate content, adapting webpage copy to perform better, formatting existing text, adding all the right keywords and page titles that help Google acknowledge the true value of your pages, ultimately ranking them high in SERP for the desired topics and queries.
But that is only the beginning. What [SEO agencies like Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) do best is create a lot of different high quality content that serves to bring people to the client’s site and earn them a bundle of top notch links. We design custom content strategies for our clientele based on extensive research, and offer to create the material for them.
Good SEO agencies also design and optimize landing pages. Everyone who knows a thing or two about digital marketing is familiar with the fact that you cannot just design a landing page, fill it with random words and leave it like that for ages. No way. Especially if you want people to convert through it. If you want to win big via your content, it’s imperative that you constantly optimize your pages and create a lot of fresh pages for your site.
### Off-Site Optimization
The third and final part of our job is all about building links. As we have already mentioned on our blog, [backlinks are the lifeblood of your SEO](https://dibz.me/everything-about-backlinks). Creating tons and tons of high-quality backlinks is a crucial part of just about any intelligent SEO strategy out there. They make an enormous impact on a specific website’s position in SERP. Backlinks are the most effective resource for improving a site’s ratings. That’s why all SEO agencies constantly advise their clients to invest in link building.
This sort of practice involves things like:
- Broken link building;
- Searching for link opp;
- Claiming unliked mentions;
- Guest blogging for links;
- Locating good directories and listing where you can add your business;
- Creating and submitting PR content about new services your firm offers and other newsworthy items;
Once we finish doing all that, we track, test, tweak and repeat all the actions on this list. In order to actually improve a certain client’s position in SERP for the desired keywords and topics, it is of great importance that we keep a close eye on all our efforts. We need to monitor conversions, DA, and site visits on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, as well as use that data to determine which of the above-mentioned practices are the most beneficial for our clients.
## Closing Words
Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope it helped you understand why [57% of all B2B marketers](http://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/a-snapshot-of-digital-marketing-in-2017-key-statistics/)claim that SEO generates more leads than any other practice in 2017. If you have anything to add or ask about something that was included in this blog post – be sure to write your thoughts in the comments section below and I’ll do my best to get back to you ASAP.
---
## Posts: A Tool is Only as Good as its User
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/tool-is-good-as-its-user-3391](https://fourdots.com/blog/tool-is-good-as-its-user-3391)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/tool-is-good-as-its-user-3391.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/tool-is-good-as-its-user-3391.md)
**Published:** 2017-06-07
**Last Updated:** 2021-03-30
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** Growth Hacking
**Tags:** seo tools, tools
### Content
Achieving a digital transformation is imperative for most businesses. Especially for those which make their bread and butter online. There’s always a need for experimenting, optimizing processes and trying out new things. But unfortunately, most people still don’t really understand this.
Not long ago, the [MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting](http://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/embracing-digital-technology/) conducted a solid research, from which they learned that more than 60 percent of the questioned subjects feel that technological change is happening far too slowly at their workplace.
There are many things that prevent a company from implementing change. Most organizations have a long and proud history behind them. Long-standing organizations have established their way of operating a couple of decades ago. In their opinion, their particular way of running their business is the reason why their brand has survived so long on the market, so they feel that it’s in their best interest to [stick to their guns](https://stateofguns.com) and follow the “winning formula”.
Of course, this theory is full of enormous holes.
## Evolve or Perish
Remember Kodak?
Back in the 90s, [Eastman Kodak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak)was a popular camera and film company that has literally branded the phrase “Kodak moment” as the ultimate photo opportunity.
It basically meant that something was worth saving.
Ingenious, right?
Kodak sold lower-priced cameras. That was the core of their business. And thanks to their creative marketing at the time, the company achieved global success. People all over the world knew about this brand.
But, even though everything was going great for Kodak at the time, the company failed to keep up with the innovations brought on by the digital age, and was forced to [file for bankruptcy in 2012](https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/eastman-kodak-files-for-bankruptcy/?_r=0).
As the popularity of digital cameras grew, the demand for Kodak’s merch began to fade. Given that their main products were film and affordable cameras, it was quite[challenging for the company to remain lucrative](https://hbr.org/2016/07/kodaks-downfall-wasnt-about-technology)in a market where its customers were falling in love with a whole new concept.
Ironically, in the early 70s, Kodak’s research team had actually thought about developing a digital camera before everyone else, but the idea was shut down by the company’s board of directors, because they didn’t really see any potential in investing in such a product.
A similar thing happened to [Blockbuster](http://www.blockbuster.com/).
Just like Kodak, Blockbuster, once known as the largest video rental company, also failed to adapt to the digital age. The very moment when video streaming and video downloading became real options, and people no longer had to make an actual trip to a physical store to get their movies – their love for Blockbuster turned cold over night.
But change doesn’t only affect analog businesses. Digital companies perish as well, if they don’t keep a close eye on what’s happening around them. [MySpace](https://myspace.com/), once known as the biggest and most popular social network, basically disappeared the very moment [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/) entered the scene. Even though MySpace had a lot of users at the time, Facebook’s design and UI was just too much for the company.
## Sometimes, Leaders Need to Follow, in Order to Survive
We live in a fast and ever-evolving world. Like it or not, we have to face facts and accept that everything is constantly changing. Now faster than ever. If a certain organization is dominating a particular market today, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to stay like that forever.
Especially if they don’t keep a close eye on what’s happening outside company walls.
The thing most people who run such long-standing businesses forget is that their company is optimized for the environment in which it currently operates. If anything in that environment changes (and we know that it certainly will) – the company will have a hard time adapting to the new world, which means that another one will take its place at the top.
Suddenly, as we have seen with the Kodak, Blockbuster and MySpace examples above – the “winning formula” will stop delivering top results, and as the new players start to enter the market and outperform yesterday’s leaders in every aspect of business – empires will start to crumble and fade into oblivion.
That’s why you always need to be ahead of the curve and prove to your users/clients/customers that you have something new to offer.
Just look at [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/). Even though, in the beginning, their product was only recognized as a powerful backlink checker, the guys behind this brand did their best to demonstrate to everyone in their niche that it’s much more than that. They have managed to convince their target audience that Ahrefs is the ultimate SEO tool. Ahrefs follows trends and generates great content on their blog, which helps users understand the true power of their tools. They present themselves as innovators and people who actually teach other marketers how to achieve success via SEO. In this case, the tool is as good as the people who stand behind it are, who communicate its value.
[Intercom](https://www.intercom.com/)is another crazy successful business, which understands the [value of improving its service](https://fourdots.com/adwords-management) and communicating its worth through killer branded content. This company has reached a [$50 million annual recurring revenue](http://okdork.com/marketing-ideas-from-intercom/) faster than other “big-name” SaaS startups, like [Shopify,](https://www.shopify.com/) [HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/), etc.
Branded content pieces are at the very core of Intercom’s marketing and customer acquisition strategy. They help them get their users on board with their new ideas. But naturally, the very reason why this business has grown so much can still be traced back to the overall quality of their product. Intercom understands their clients, all their troubles and needs, and does everything in its power to guide their success.
## A Lack of Urgency is Just One of Many Scenarios
Apart from a “lack of urgency”, arrogance and scepticism, the thing that holds most companies back from achieving a digital transformation can be traced back to its employees. Getting people to try new software and actually think about improving their work is always a challenge. It doesn’t really matter if you’re offering a tool that has the most intuitive interface in the world – you will still need to do some [additional convincing](https://fourdots.com/blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement).
People don’t really like to leave their comfort zone and invest their time in learning how to successfully operate a new system. Even if their so-called comfort zone isn’t really all that comfortable.
Software that requires multi-day training programs and hefty user manuals is most likely to generate some genuine hate from all types of new users. Even though it guarantees improvement, it will most likely be ignored.
But, that’s not all. Apart from “wasting” their time learning how to successfully operate a new software, people also don’t really trust it. A lot of them feel that new tools won’t actually help them achieve better results.
This brings us to the main point of this article:
## Paying for a Great Tool is Not Enough
The Internet is full of articles that recommend a certain tool or a group of tools to basically everyone who searches the Web for any work-related queries.
In these articles, tools are presented as the ultimate problem-solvers.
According to the vast majority of these above-mentioned posts – if you have a problem, all you really need to do is find the right tool for you, and boom – your troubles will instantly disappear!
Unfortunately, in real life – things aren’t really that simple.
These articles do nothing more than confuse people. They feed them false promises, which naturally get users enraged and distrusftull of all software solutions.
I know more than a couple of guys who have paid for a tool that didn’t deliver what was promised. When I asked how much time and effort they have actually invested in using that particular software, the answer was always the same: “A couple of times.”
This is the root of the problem.
The above-mentioned articles constantly forget to mention that tools (even great ones) are only as good as their users are.
## Understanding the Problem
Tools are extremely valuable, and they certainly do help us get the job done. The proper tools have the power to significantly speed-up boring processes, increase productivity, and improve users’ overall work quality. [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/) can help you understand your audience and where your site visits come from, [Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/) can surely assist you in conducting killer site audits and analyzing web pages from an on-site perspective, [SISTRIX](https://www.sistrix.com/) will definitely help you locate valuable keyword opportunities from your competitors’ websites – and so on, and so on. The list is endless.
If used right, these tools can turn your business around.
But in order for them to aid us in our journey to success, we need to understand that these utilities, regardless of how good they actually are, don’t really possess magical powers.
Tools don’t really solve problems, at least not in the way most people believe they do. What tools really do is optimize processes – which is great, but not enough in most cases.
For example:
Let’s say I’m a person who has finally figured out that Google values high-quality backlinks. My business is mentioned in an article on Entrepreneur, and I instantly start seeing the benefits of that particular link. After a couple of days, I earn a mention on The Next Web and again – I notice some benefits.
Naturally, it’s now in my interest to replicate that process and create links for my site on all known domains across the Web. Link building is something that I value now, so I immediately start to read everything I can find about this practice. After going through a couple of articles, it becomes crystal clear that if I want to achieve success via link building, I need to generate loads of links from various types of publications.
A few mentions ain’t gonna cut it.
So, I start to contact all the familiar sites within my niche. But what happens when I exhaust all my options? The same as with everything else – I ask Google for help. I do a quick search for my problem and see that I need to do some serious prospecting. Prospecting for links isn’t really an easy or a fun job. It eats up all my time and makes me open a gazillion bad sites in the process of finding great ones. Again – I have a problem that requires Google’s help. I ask the engine for aid and it tells me that there’s a tool like [Dibz](https://dibz.me/) that could help me significantly speed up my process and filter the results, so I don’t need to waste my time looking at bad sites.
However, even though this is a powerful tool that can certainly help me get what I need, the success of my [link prospecting](https://respona.com/blog/link-prospecting/) campaign is still dependent on me. If I don’t really think about what I’m doing, this tool cannot help me create quality links for my site. If I don’t really know what a quality prospect is for me, and what I need to do to turn it into actual links – Dibz can’t help me improve my rankings in Google’s search.
So, having all this in mind – we can agree that tools are only as good as their users are.
## Knowledge + Software + Strategy = Success
Many people have forgotten that tools don’t drive results, knowledge and strategy do. The only problem is – it takes a lot of time and effort to acquire them.
Tools are there to supercharge your efforts. They won’t work for users who don’t really know what they’re doing, or have an interest in learning how to use the software’s full potential and all its features.
A car is just a machine for those who don’t know what to do with it. It cannot get you places on its own.
The same goes for SEO.
For example, if you’re trying to get your site featured at the top of Google’s search results for your desired keyword – you cannot just pay for a great SEO tool, kick back, and expect it to work its magic on its own. A tool can certainly help you come closer to your goal, but you’ll still need to learn how to actually do SEO. Tools are only a piece of the puzzle.
So, having written all that – before you start blaming a certain tool for your failures, be sure to think about what you’ve read in this article and analyze if you are the real source of your problems.
---
## Posts: 20 Experts Recommend SEO and WordPress Plugins (Updated)
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/experts-advice-best-seo-and-wordpress-plugins-3288](https://fourdots.com/blog/experts-advice-best-seo-and-wordpress-plugins-3288)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/experts-advice-best-seo-and-wordpress-plugins-3288.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/experts-advice-best-seo-and-wordpress-plugins-3288.md)
**Published:** 2017-05-25
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-25
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** plugins, SEO, seoexperts, seotools, tools
### Content
Search engines are still major sources of traffic for most websites. Even though we live in a fast-paced world, where everything is constantly changing, one thing remains the same – investing in SEO still pays off. It’s something that every single person, brand and business which operates online should think about.
In case you didn’t know, more than [75 percent of the global desktop search traffic](https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=0)comes through Google. With mobile and tablet devices, the results are even higher. As the same study from NetMarketShare reports, the world’s most popular engine accounts for a whopping 94 percent of all mobile/tablet search traffic globally. Having in mind that [Google counts 3.5 billion searches per day](http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/) on average, we could easily agree that these are some truly impressive numbers. Especially when you add these findings to [MarketingDive](http://www.marketingdive.com/news/study-creating-content-is-most-effective-and-most-difficult-seo-tactic/430335/)’s study, which claims that effectiveness via SEO is still on the rise.
Looking at it from this perspective, SEO now certainly seems worth the hassle.
However, even though it has proven it’s worth, [search engine optimization](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services) is still a complex task for most webmasters to tackle. A whole lot of variables come into play, which, naturally, tends to create a lot of confusion. Your success is dependent on a lot of different factors and details. SEO is like a sand castle – if you make a bad decision, you’ll have to start from scratch. Luckily for us, there are a lot of tools and plugins out there that have the power to significantly improve our efforts in this particular department.
This is why we have decided to reach out to various industry experts and ask them to share some of the most useful SEO utilities and WP plugins they use (and why), to help them improve their rankings, increase traffic and optimize their pages and websites for search.
### These 20 SEO experts and digital marketing gurus were kind enough to share their very own lists of the essential tools they use to maximize their efforts and get things done:
1. [Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré ](#1)(Authentic Curation)
2. [Tara M. Clapper](#2)(Express Writers)
3. [Mike Isaac](#3)(SEMrush)
4. [AJ Ghergich](#4)(Ghergich & Co)
5. [Sean Si](#5)(SEO Hacker)
6. [Kevin Cotch](#6)(TopRank Marketing)
7. [David Rosam](#7)(Writing For SEO)
8. [Dr. Chester Branch](#8)
9. [Andrew Dennis](#9)(Page One Power)
10. [Sam Hurley ](#10)(OPTIM-EYEZ)
11. [Jon Clark](#11) (Fuze SEO)
12. [Wesley Bradley ](#12)(Vend)
13. [MJ Thompson](#13)(lotus823.com)
14. [Maddy Osman](#14)(The-Blogsmith.com)
15. [Richard Lorenzen](#15)(Fifth Avenue Brands)
16. [Nichola Stott](#16) (The Media Flow)
17. [Robert Jones](#17)(exodus-digital-marketing.co.uk)
18. [Teresa Walsh](#18)(Cazana)
19. [Jimmy Rodriguez](#19) (3dcart)
20. [Radomir Basta](#19)(Four Dots)
## 1. Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré – SaaS Consultant & Customer Success Evangelist. Founder @ Authentic Curation. Moderator @ ProductHunt & @ GrowthHackers.**Bio:**Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré – SaaS Consultant & Customer Success Evangelist. Founder at [Authentic Curation](http://nicholeelizabethdemere.com/). Moderator at [@ProductHunt](https://twitter.com/ProductHunt) & [@GrowthHackers](https://twitter.com/GrowthHackers). Previously: Growth at [@Inboundorg](https://twitter.com/Inboundorg). INFJ.***Quote:***> “I am hugely reliant on tools to make my business run smoothly and efficiently (and my client work too). I’m almost always ready to try something new if it looks promising, but when asked what my favorites are… I have a list of Tried-and-Trues.”**Nichole recommends:**Tools:
- [**Buffer**](https://buffer.com/app) – I use this for all of my social media scheduling, publishing and analytics.
- [**IFTTT**](https://ifttt.com/) – These “applets” are little apps that do simple, useful things across platforms, like an applet to “save your Gmail attachments to Dropbox” or “Save and share your Instagram photos across your social media.” They’re useful shortcuts.
- [**Segment**](https://segment.com/) – When you’re optimizing a website, marketing plan or social media strategy, Segments gives you all the customer data you could want in one easy place.
- [**Zapier**](https://zapier.com/) – This tool lets me connect my apps and automate workflows with apps like Slack, Google Sheets, Gmail, Quickbooks – the only downside is that there’s so much you can do, it can be overwhelming to start.
- This probably goes without saying, but I will always recommend referring to [**Google Webmaster Guidelines**](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en). If you’re actually doing search engine optimization, you realize that it isn’t a collection of tricks, it’s just following the guidelines and ensuring that your site is both user-friendly and search-engine friendly. Optimizing for people, on the other hand, is a much more complicated process!
Communities:
If you write quality content and want to get your work shared and to discuss it with your peers:
- [**GrowthHackers.com**](https://growthhackers.com/) – Transforming how companies approach sustainable customer and revenue growth.
- [**Inbound.org**](https://inbound.org/top) – A community of inbound marketers sharing the best new ideas, events, jobs and more.
If you’ve created a product that you want to get shared:
- [**Product Hunt**](http://producthunt.com/) – The best new products, every day.
WordPress Plugins:
- [**Algolia Search for WordPress**](https://community.algolia.com/wordpress) – Bring instant and relevant search to your WordPress blog.
- [**Hello Bar**](http://wpstash.io/resource/hello-bar/) – The social sharing bar that follows users as they scroll, allowing them to share your content with friends and followers.
- [**HTML to WordPress**](https://htmltowordpress.io/) – Convert a HTML website to a WordPress theme in seconds.
- [**Insert Headers and Footers**](https://wordpress.org/plugins/insert-headers-and-footers/) – The simple interface of the Insert Headers and Footers plugin gives you one place where you can insert scripts, rather than dealing with dozens of different plugins.
- [**Slack + WordPress**](http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-integrate-slack-with-wordpress/) – Have the whole team notified when an article is published so that everyone can share it across their social media channels.
- [**Sublime Text Package for WordPress Customizer**](http://wpcustomizer.xyz/) – Stupid-simple, tab-triggered Sublime snippets for WordPress Customizer.
- [**Sumo**](https://sumo.com/) – Free tools to automate your site growth.
- [**WPCore**](https://wpcore.com/) – Create and manage collections of the plugins you use on a regular basis. Then bulk upload them to any WordPress website.
## 2. Tara M. Clapper, Content Development Specialist @ Express Writers**Bio:**Tara M. Clapper is a digital marketer with more than a decade of experience in digital publishing, editing, and SEO copywriting. Tara is a content development specialist at Express Writers, where she connects clients with content solutions, attends events, and accepts speaking engagements. She’s also an avid collaborative storyteller by way of LARP (live action role play) and the founder and senior editor of The Geek Initiative, an online community about women in geek culture. Connect with her on [LinkedIn](http://www.linkedin.com/in/madrigalblue) and [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/irishtara).**Quote:**> “I also make sure to do what hasn’t been done. If you’re not innovating, you’ll never be an influencer. That’s why I take [storytelling pieces from my hobbies](https://expresswriters.com/what-is-larp-and-how-it-made-me-a-better-brand-storyteller/) and other areas of life and business to strengthen my marketing strategies and advice to our clients at Express Writers.”**Tara recommends:**Tools:
- [**AnswerThePublic**](http://answerthepublic.com/)(free)
-**[SEMrush](https://www.semrush.com/)**(has a free version). To begin, make sure you know what your keywords are with SEMrush – and identify those high-value, low-competition keywords (usually long tail keywords).Take those keywords and look them up in AnswerThePublic. This will show you what people are asking about your topic, which means you can provide readers with helpful information they need. Helpful, keyword-driven content is the right combination. To take it a step further, find topic experts on BuzzSumo – link out to their authoritative posts or contact them for a quick quote.
-**[Mention](https://mention.com/en/) **is also a helpful tool – it shows you what people are saying about you and your brand. You can discover your audience’s affinities more naturally than the cold data from Google Analytics. For best results, use these together and explore in AnswerThePublic.
WordPress Plugins:
You can never go wrong with the two most useful WordPress plugins:
- [**Yoast SEO**](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/)(free version available)
- [**CoSchedule**](https://coschedule.com/)(monthly fee, varying levels).
With these, I can check my SEO details from within the post page on WordPress and schedule my social media promotion surrounding it – all without leaving WP. As a blog editor, this combo is a big time saver. My editors at [The Geek Initiative](http://www.geekinitiative.com/) enjoy this, too. I recently ran them through instructions on how to thoroughly prepare a post for publication and promotion.
They particularly liked the red/yellow/green button Yoast provides on the SEO check and the user-friendly interface of CoSchedule. Yoast SEO will also help you naturally build your website’s structure with cornerstone content.
## 3.Mike Isaac, Customer Success Content Manager @ SEMrush**Bio:**Mike Isaac is the Customer Success Content Manager at SEMrush. He has been working at SEMrush for over 3 years and is constantly pushing out new content to keep users educated and engaged. Connect with him on[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-isaac-99133368) or follow him on[Twitter](https://twitter.com/I_Am_Misaac).**Quote:**> “Well, of course, I would have to mention SEMrush as one of the best SEO tools of 2017. I mainly use SEMrush for all of my SEO and keyword research. However, I would have to say AnswerThePublic as another great resource. Their website is great for generating new keyword ideas and opportunities if you are really stuck in your brainstorm process.”**Mike recommends:**-**[SEMrush](https://www.semrush.com/)**-**[Answer The Public](http://answerthepublic.com/)**## 4.AJ Ghergich, Founder @ Ghergich & Co.**Bio:**AJ Ghergich is the founder of [Ghergich & Co](http://ghergich.com/)., a marketing agency that focuses on integrating SEO, social media and content marketing. He has experience in running his own consulting agency and an e-commerce enterprise. You can find him online on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/seo)**Quote:**> “Since everyone is going to say Yoast’s SEO plugin which of course is a must, here are 3 plugins I recommend for just about any site.”**AJ recommends:**- [**Redirection**](https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/)– Easily and properly redirect your content
-**[All-in-One Rich Snippets](https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-schemaorg-rich-snippets/)**– No developer required :)
-**[Broken Links Checker](https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/)**– Because you know you have a ton of them and you are not going to actually check them yourself.
## 5.Sean Si, CEO and Founder @ SEO Hacker and @ Qeryz**Bio:**Sean Si is the CEO and Founder of [SEO Hacker](https://seo-hacker.net/) and [Qeryz](https://qeryz.com/). A start-up, data analysis and urgency junkie who spends his time inspiring young entrepreneurs through talks and seminars. Check out his [personal blog](http://seansi.org/) where he writes about starting up two companies and life in general.**Quote:**> “On our website, we integrated MaxCDN. It’s one of the largest Content Delivery Network providers and I personally consider it to be the best CDN provider out there. “**Sean recommends:**-**[SEO Ultimate](https://www.seoultimateplus.com/) **With the use of SEO Ultimate, on the first glance, you can update the titles of your posts and meta descriptions en masse. It can really help you out especially if you’re prone to missing creating META descriptions. It allows you to update your posts without having you to open them one by one. In addition to that, you can monitor 404 errors in your blog, create a custom robots.txt file and edit .htaccess file, applying “noindex” and “nofollow” attributes for different content types, adding deep links in pages in your blog, and integrating Facebook, Twitter and other apps in your blog to make your content more shareable, among other things. It’s pretty much a powerhouse tool that I believe everyone should integrate in their website. Bonus: A lot of people use Yoast SEO. That’s also a really good plugin. It’s just that I like SEO Ultimate better.
- [**MaxCDN**](https://www.maxcdn.com/)
- [**Qeryz **](https://qeryz.com/)The third plugin I’m recommending is Qeryz. It’s an “as-you-go microsurvey tool” that helps you know what your visitors are thinking. It’s great for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) that helps you direct your marketing and product efforts to what your market needs and thinks*.* We’ve used it for clients and it has been a tremendous help in leads generation, site design improvements, page prioritization and so on.
## 6.Kevin Cotch, SEO Analyst @ TopRank Marketing**Bio:**Kevin Cotch is an SEO Analyst for TopRank Marketing. He focuses on all things related to search engine optimization but gets the most enjoyment spending time uncovering technical SEO tactics to help clients get the highest return on their investment. In addition to SEO, Kevin has experience in the paid, usability experience, and content marketing areas.**Quote:**> “At TopRank Marketing, we use SEMrush for multiple reasons including site audits, keyword research, and backlink monitoring.”**Kevin recommends:**Tools:
-**[SEMrush](https://www.semrush.com/)**-**[Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/) ** for site audits that are focused on the technical SEO side of things.
-**[Answer The Public](http://answerthepublic.com/)** is a great keyword research tool that leverages the Google Suggest API. We use this tool to identify long-tail keyword opportunities for certain types of content.
WP Plugins:
-**[W3TC](https://www.w3-edge.com/products/w3-total-cache/)**for site speed performance
-**[Yoast](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/)**to help implement SEO recommendations for metadata.
There are other plugins that we typically recommend and/or use, but those two are important.
## 7.David Rosam, Digital Marketing Consultant**Bio:**David Rsam is a UK-based Digital Marketing Consultant, SEO and Content Marketer with 20 years experience. He is online at [Writing For SEO](http://www.writingforseo.org) and @davidrosam on Twitter. You can also see him on the [Dumb SEO Questions](https://dumbseoquestions.com/) Expert Panel every Thursday.**Quote:**> “I’m enjoying working with Google Data Studio for data presentation. It’s free, powerful and helps overcome the muddle that is Google Analytics’ interface and native reports.”**David recommends**:
Tools:
-**[Keywordtool.io](http://keywordtool.io/)**– I’m a sucker for key phrase research tools. Keywordtool.io has a great balance of speed, simplicity, depth and power. Its Questions tab is a great way of getting to grips with searcher intent.
- [**AnswerThePublic.com**](http://answerthepublic.com/) is one I use for bigger projects which require a wider net.
-**[StoryBase](https://www.storybase.com/)** I’m liking my first experiences with StoryBase.com, which provides some missing parts of the research jigsaw. It’s early days, so come back in a couple of months for a more informed view.
-**[SEMrush](https://www.semrush.com) **But there’s one tool I use more than any other. SEMrush.com is so comprehensive, it finds its way into almost everything I do for clients – SEO, PPC, Performance Tracking, Social Media, Key Phrase Research. There’s even a workable site audit. And I like the way the suite is always being updated – and not just with little tweaks.
WordPress plugins:
-**[Yoast](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/) **I always install Yoast, but frankly, there’s almost as much I don’t like about it as I do.
Other favorites are:
-**[BJ Lazy Load](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/bj-lazy-load/)**for speeding up image-heavy sites, particularly on shared hosting
-**[CloudFlare](https://www.cloudflare.com/)**-**[Header & Footer](https://wordpress.org/plugins/header-footer/)**for adding pieces of code to sites
-**[Google Tag Manager for WordPress](https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-tag-manager/)**as I encourage clients to migrate to GTM.
## 8.Dr. Chester Branch, Transmedia Marketing Expert**Bio:**Transmedia Prof | Best-Selling Author | Media Marketing Expert Featured in Forbes, Inc, Hubspot & Yahoo Finance. Dr. Chester Elijah Branch is a best-selling author and Transmedia Architect, teaching digital media courses internationally. Over the last 10+ years, he has worked as a director, producer, screenwriter, editor, professor and digital media marketing strategist.**Quote:**> “I honestly like all things Hubspot. Inbound Marketing is the future and their SEO tool ‘keyword grader’ makes use of that marketing strategy. It tracks your search engine and your competitors over time, helping to build rich content. Rich, quality content always leads to improved SEO.”**Chester recommends:**-** [Hubspot](https://www.hubspot.com/)**## 9.Andrew Dennis, Content Marketing Specialist @ PageOnePower & Linkarati**Bio:**Andrew is a Content Marketing Specialist at the link building company Page One Power. When he’s not discussing all things link building on the [Page One Power blog](http://www.pageonepower.com/linkarati) or his column on [Search Engine Land](http://searchengineland.com/author/andrew-dennis), Andrew enjoys watching live sports. Andrew always loves talking SEO and link building, and you can connect with him on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/AndrewDennis33).**Quote:**> “The only WordPress plugin I have much experience with is [Yoast SEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/), which is a worthwhile plugin and one I would recommend for WordPress users. All of these tools are helpful, but at the end of the day effective link building and SEO comes down to manual effort and human creativity.”**Andrew recommends****: **Working at Page One Power, my toolset skews towards link building. Some of my favorite tools include:
-** [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/)**-**[Google Search Console](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en)**-**[BuzzStream](http://www.buzzstream.com/)**-**[SEMrush](https://www.semrush.com/)**-**[Majestic](https://majestic.com/)**-**[Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/)**-**[Open Site Explorer](https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/)**-**[BuzzSumo](http://buzzsumo.com/)**-**[Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/)**-**[Moz Keyword Explorer](https://moz.com/mozpro/lander/keyword-research)**-**[URL Profiler](http://urlprofiler.com/)**-**[Authority Labs](https://authoritylabs.com/)**-**[Check My Links](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/check-my-links/ojkcdipcgfaekbeaelaapakgnjflfglf?hl=en-GB)**-**[Mozbar](https://moz.com/products/pro/seo-toolbar)**-**[Mention](https://mention.com/en/)**## 10.**Sam Hurley, Founder @ OPTIM-EYEZ****Bio:**[Sam Hurley](https://optim-eyez.co.uk/) is a #1 ranked Digital Marketing Influencer, Founder of OPTIM-EYEZ. Holding a fluent understanding of Digital Marketing, Sam is a hard working and loyal individual who will always impress due to a highly dedicated work ethic. The desire to make a difference allied with an energetic willingness to learn ensures this flexible and adaptable marketer will not disappoint. Join him on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Sam___Hurley), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hurleysam/) & [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/samhurley.now/).**Quote:**> “Mention is SWEET for what I refer to as ‘link hustling’. To begin your link building hustle, you need a paid tool like Mention; which can alert you immediately whenever you get mentioned anywhere across the public web including social media – which presents opportunistic links!”**Sam recommends:**-**[Mention](https://mention.com/) **You are able to use advanced Boolean filters to prevent wasted energy and ensure you only get the results worth pursuing. I explain this and other [awesome link building tactics for 2017](http://www.digitalcurrent.com/seo-engine-optimization/link-building-boosters-2017/) on Digital Current.
-**[WP Social SEO Booster](http://wpsocial.com/seo-booster-free-download/) **Search engines are now placing much more emphasis on social impact when it comes to ranking signals. This WordPress plugin ensures your website is social friendly. We’re talking social media sharing buttons, microdata, Facebook’s Open Graph, Twitter Cards and even an optimized htaccess file for you to use – among other features. All of the above (and more) ensure your website is displayed attractively across search and social.
## 11. Jon Clark, founder @ Fuze SEO, Inc.**Bio:**Jon Clark has been providing [SEO and SEM services](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) for the past 11 years. Most recently he founded and launched Fuze SEO, Inc. an Internet Marketing [Agency in New York](/seo-agency-nyc) serving small and medium-sized businesses. You can connect with him on Twitter @jonleeclark.**Quote**:
> “Here are a few WordPress Plugins that are default recommendations for my clients Broken Link Checker, Redirection, Yoast SEO”**Jon recommends:**-**[Broken Link Checker](http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/)**– When you start posting frequently, you will soon have so many posts and pages that it will be hard to manually check them one by one. This plugin does the dirty work by automatically checking all your content and informing you of any broken links.This will preserve crawl budget and improve user experience.
-**[Redirection](https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/)**– Applying redirects is such an important factor in preserving SEO value throughout the evolution of a website and, yet, it is so often forgotten or disregarded. This plugin will manage 301 redirects and keep track of 404 errors in a very simple interface without the need to modify .htaccess files.
-**[Yoast SEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/)**– The holy grail of do-it-all SEO plugins – it’s the first plugin I have clients install when beginning an SEO project. It helps you optimize your on-page SEO (META Title, Description and Keywords) and generates a XML sitemap for search engines to easier find and index your content.
-**[Media Alt Renamer](https://wordpress.org/plugins/media-alt-renamer/)**– updating image alt tags across a site is often a large undertaking. With this plugin, you can alter your images’ alt-tags directly within the media overview, streamlining the process.
## 12.Wesley Bradley, Online Marketing Specialist @ Vend**Bio:**SEO Specialist for more than 4 years. Currently in-house at [Vend – a SAAS company](https://www.vendhq.com/us/) providing the point of sale software.**Quote:**> “If there was only one tool (apart from Search Console and Google Analytics) that an SEO should use, it’s SEMrush. The ability to track keywords in multiple locations, the depth of competitor analysis and the new SEO ideas tool all provide you with extremely valuable data and insights to help spark ideas to increase your organic traffic.”**Wesley recommends**:
-**[Search Console](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en&pli=1) and [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com) **Having a tight grip on the numbers is key to running successful SEO campaigns. If you don’t know where your traffic is coming from or how many leads you are getting, then how do you know what you’re doing is working or not? Search Console is also great for keyword discovery – I use it to find out which KWs that we rank on page 2 for but get a lot of impressions. I then optimize that piece of content to increase its rankings.
-**[Asana](https://asana.com/) **Not exactly an SEO tool, but hear me out. There are literally a 1000 different things that you can do for SEO, and it’s sometimes hard to stay focussed and not get distracted by all the small things that pop up. SEO only works if you are actually finishing and implementing tasks, not just starting heaps and never actually accomplishing anything.I use Asana to keep myself on task – whenever I am at my desk thinking what I could do – I look to my ‘big three’ – the three biggest things that I should be working on that I believe will have the biggest impact. I plug my ‘big three’ into Asana and then using their subtasks, break that down into everything that I need to do to accomplish that task.
## 13.MJ Thompson, Digital Marketing & Design Manager @ lotus823**Bio:**MJ Thompson, Digital Marketing & Design Manager at [lotus823](http://www.lotus823.com/). Experienced in writing, graphic/web design, and marketing with a focus on using digital media to deliver integrated messages to key audiences and building strategies applying data from analytics to create balanced and effective campaigns.**Quote:**> “The best SEO tool you can invest in is Moz Pro. As a collection of branded tools that together gives you both high-level and deep dives into link equity, keyword ranking, and website errors, Moz Pro provides actionable insights when auditing your site.”**MJ recommends:**-**[Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/) **If you are looking for a free option, Screaming Frog offers a fast web crawler specifically designed for SEO that scans up to 500 URLs per year and connects to Google Analytics to gather user data.
-**[Yoast SEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/) **still reigns supreme in WordPress SEO plugins and is the tool we use on lotus823.com. With stress-free user interface and invaluable focus keyword suggestions for bloggers, Yoast delivers a simple solution to fundamental SEO issues.
## 14. Maddy Osman, SEO Specialist**Bio:**Maddy Osman creates engaging content with SEO best practices for marketing thought leaders and agencies that have their hands full with clients and projects. Learn more about her process and experience on her [website](http://www.the-blogsmith.com/) and read her latest articles on Twitter: @MaddyOsman.**Quote:**> “After testing a number of options, my favorite WordPress plugin for social media is Social Warfare. Social Warfare creates beautiful social share buttons for blog posts and pages, with a customizable look and feel. Counters on the social share buttons act as social proof, encouraging others to share posts with their own audience. It also has a built-in click to tweet feature, further encouraging social sharing. There are both free and paid versions of the plugin available.”**Maddy recommends:**- [**Social Warfare**](https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-warfare/)
## 15. Richard Lorenzen, Founder and CEO @ Fifth Avenue Brands**Bio:**Richard Lorenzen is an American entrepreneur, investor and speaker. He is the founder and CEO of the New York public relations firm [Fifth Avenue Brands](http://www.fifthavenuebrands.com/). The firm focuses on media relations serving the tech, finance and policy spaces. He is regularly cited as one of the most influential millennial entrepreneurs in America.**Quote:**> “I would suggest Ubersuggest for keyword research. Recently acquired by marketing expert Neil Patel, Ubersuggest goes beyond the Google keyword planner and gives you suggestions for marketing campaigns and onsite SEO improvement.”**Richard recommends:**- [**Ubersuggest**](https://ubersuggest.io/)
## 16. Nichola Stott – Managing Director themediaflow.com**Bio:**Nichola Stott manages business direction at [The Media Flow](http://www.themediaflow.com/) and is responsible for the approach to client marketing strategies. With extensive digital communications experience, Nichola speaks regularly at industry events.**Quote:**> “When it comes to tools it’s very hard to pick the most useful or indispensable as it is very much a task-oriented decision, so if I may; I’m going to give you my top 3 scenario-based tools or little tips for hidden gems within a tool.”**Nichola recommends:**-**[Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk)**to determine page duplicates. If you’re not using Screaming Frog in your site crawl and technical arsenal then I’m not sure how you’re coping at life. However, here’s a funky little tip that might not have come up yet in your use of it. In the internal crawl view, if [you scroll along to the “Hash”](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/tabs/) column and sort by hash value, any that match indicate pages with exactly the same content (to each other).
-**[Sistrix](https://www.sistrix.com/)** to find keyword opportunities from competitor sites. We love Sistrix for pitching new clients, benchmark reporting and general awesome data intelligence and whilst it has many nifty features, [one pretty cool discovery tool](https://www.sistrix.com/tutorials/finding-new-keywords-through-your-competitors/) can be found in the Opportunity section. Firstly select your client or target site and go to the Opportunities section. Click the “Unused Keywords” button to add your competitor sites.You can then add the keywords to your client dashboard or export for a sense check and further analysis if required.
-**[SEMRush](https://www.semrush.com/) **Using SEMRush Domain vs. Domain to quantify competitor size. SEMRush is a fab tool for both SEO and PPC pros with a number of research tools and I’m sure heaps of on-site type stuff that can benefit owner operators right up to large SEO agencies managing multiple projects. Our favourite way to use this data when benchmarking client performance is to monitor the growth or “share of voice” equivalent for our clients in-SERP.It’s another way to monitor expansion of site performance – so rather than just progress on traffic for ranking pages that already exist, this gives a way to monitor and compare the lateral spread of rankings.To do this go to your client or target site and click on [Domain vs. Domain](https://www.semrush.com/features/domain-vs-domain/). Enter your competitors (up to four) and click go to generate the data. As well as the table view which you can interrogate there’s also a chart view which works great in client benchmarking documents!
## 17. Robert Jones – Chief Marketing Officer, Exodus Digital Marketing**Bio:**Robert Jones ([Exodus Digital Marketing](http://www.exodus-digital-marketing.co.uk/)) is a “Jack-of-All Digital Marketers”. Specialties: Identify target markets, curate viral content to drive traffic organically, optimise content for search engines, supplement organic traffic with high ROI [PPC & retargeting adverts for Facebook](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages), Adwords, and Twitter. He creates lead generation and sales funnel systems and tests neuromarketing evidence with A/B testing software to generate the highest return on customer acquisition costs.**Quote:**> “I’ve been creating websites to be found online for about 10 years. I have three main tools I use to accomplish good results in search engines.”**Robert recommends:**-**[Traffic Travis](https://www.traffictravis.com/)**– allows me to monitor my results in search engines and monitor backlinks.
-**[Squirrly](https://www.squirrly.co/)**– Allows me to optimize each page for particular keywords.
-**[GT Metrix](https://gtmetrix.com/)** – Allows me to monitor page speed and troubleshoot web page loading times.
But before you start optimizing for results, be sure that your page acts like a landing page. Have interesting content, call to actions, and images that resonate with web visitors. It’s great to rank for key terms, but many businesses fail to spend time learning and implementing those elements that foster great conversions.
## 18. Teresa Walsh, Marketing Executive @ Cazana**Bio:**Teresa Walsh is a Marketing Executive at [Cazana.com](https://cazana.com/uk). Cazana is UK startup that is making buying and selling used cars more enjoyable and safe. Teresa has 3 years of marketing experience, specialising in SEO and Social Media Marketing and enjoys regular cups of tea.**Quote:**> “Having worked on SEO outreach now for almost 2 years, I would be lost without Buzzstream ‘s competent software and its handy Chrome extension.”**Teresa recommends:**- [**Buzzstream**](http://www.buzzstream.com/)I can compile different prospect lists, assign myself days to outreach them, reminders to follow up, keep track of any links achieved, how many emails I have sent and who has responded and who has not. basically, puts the organisation into my SEO outreach. The Chrome extension is great when you come across a blog or website you know you want to contact, you click on the Buzzstream extension and you can save it directly to the relevant prospect list without ever leaving the website. Time-saving wizardry.
-**[Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/) **This easy-to use-software is a great way of tracking and reviewing your own backlinks along with your competitors’ backlinks. This allows you to get a good feel of where your competitors links are coming from and you can replicate these and improve upon them in your own SEO link building efforts. Its in-depth keyword explorer is every bit as good as Google’s and this along with its content explorer gives you a fantastic indication of what content you should be creating. Their blog also offers free and useful SEO insights and tips.
- [**All in One SEO Pack**](https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/) When it comes to SEO optimizing your blog I highly recommend you use a plugin like All in One SEO Pack. This is a fantastic plugin especially if you are new to SEO, it allows you to add keywords, titles, meta description and it also allows you to set noindex tag, set canonical url, and exclude from sitemap, etc.
## 19.**Jimmy Rodriguez, COO at 3dcart.****Bio:**Jimmy Rodriguez is the COO & Co-founder of**[3dcart](https://www.3dcart.com)**, a leading [eCommerce solution](https://www.3dcart.com/ecommerce-solutions.html). As an e-commerce authority, he’s focused on helping internet retailers succeed online by developing strategies, actionable plans and customer experiences that grow and improve performance.**Quote:***“Different SEO tools and plugins offer different benefits. Some are meant to help you brainstorm your SEO efforts while others provide the perfect feedback loop to help you determine if you’re on the right track, and some do both. Here’s my toolkit for SEO. “***Jimmy Recommends:***Tools*:
-**Ahrefs**– Ahrefs, in my opinion, is the best “A to Z” tool for SEO. While I’m sure a lot of SEO’s recommend SEMrush, I find that Ahrefs offers slightly more data and in a much easier to absorb fashion. What can take ten clicks to accomplish in SEMrush, I can usually do in about 5 in Ahrefs.
-**MonitorBacklinks**– when it comes to getting feedback on how your SEO progress is going, MonitorBacklinks is my favorite tool. It has an easy to use dashboard that summarizes your average keyword position over time, your traffic, and link building, all in one, easy to read chart. This helps show you how your efforts all correlate. On top of that, it allows you to dive into individual data and see how specific keywords change over time and where your new links are coming from, as well as any links that you may have lost in the process.
-**Keywords Everywhere**– this tools allows you to pull keyword data directly into Google search while you’re performing your searches within Google Chrome. This makes keyword research and content title brainstorming a breeze. I recommend every SEO has this extension.*Plugins*:
-**Yoast SEO**– this is the most recognized WordPress plugin and for good reason. It makes SEO easy for everyone without having any programming knowledge. Even those that don’t know SEO are much better of if they just install and use this plugin.
-**All in One Schema Rich Snippets**– Schema snippets are one of the modern ways to win in Google. Whether you want to show off product reviews or be part of the answer box snippet in the SERP’s, this plugin makes it easy to do schema markup without having to code.
## 20. Radomir Basta, Co-founder and CEO at Four Dots.**Bio:**Radomir Basta is a Co-founder and CEO at [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com). CEO and product architect at [Dibz](https://dibz.me/), [Reportz](https://reportz.io/)and [Base](https://base.me/). SEO lecturer at the Digital Marketing Institute. Growth hacking specialist working on several projects simultaneously, pushing them towards scalable growth. He also leads a digital marketing agency called Four Dots and writes about growth techniques and strategies on their blog.**Quote:**> “I love tools that speed up boring processes and actually allow people to get more things done in less time.”**Radomir recommends: **Apart from our very own Dibz, my all time favorite SEO tools:
-**[Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk)** is an awesome tool! It is extremely powerful and easy to use. Everyone can instantly see how it works and what’s it for. Even the free version is great! It provides users with enough functionality to help them get a lot of things done. In a nutshell, Screaming Frog is an SEO spider that [crawls websites](https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749) and provides users with data that can be used for search engine optimization.Once acquired, the collected data can be exported to Excel or viewed in the tool’s interface itself. Meta tags, 404s, inlinks, outlinks, status codes – these are just some of the things you can view in this tool and see if any of them are in need of further improvement or optimization.
-**[Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/) **Everyone is familiar with this tool. Ahrefs collects rankings data for over 300 million different keyword searches. Impressive, right? This is a superb utility for checking links and researching organic search traffic of your competitors. It far more than just a powerful backlink checker.
-**[SEMrush](https://www.semrush.com/)** I like it because it allows you to do in-depth keyword research, including PPC. If you can take a look at your competitors’ ads, you can see what’s working and what isn’t. With that kind of data in your hands, you can easily figure out how to overshadow your competitors.
-**[SEMscoop](https://semscoop.com)**is a new keyword research and SERP analysis tool for digital marketers, bloggers, and small businesses who are interested in improving there site’s overall SEO situation.
It can help find low SEO difficulty keyword and create smart and competitive content.
## Conclusion:
There you have it. Nineteen experts have shared some of their favorite SEO and WP utilities which they use on a regular basis in order to optimize their (and their clients’) websites for search and acquire much-needed data that has the power to help them take their digital marketing efforts to the next level.
Even though a lot of different brands have found their way into this post – if you take a closer look at what people have been mentioning in their comments, you will see that some tools pop up more frequently than others.
For example, [SEMrush](https://www.semrush.com/) and [YoastSEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/) have been mentioned by 8 different marketing professionals in their quotes, which makes them the absolute champions of our list. No other tool has even come close. [Screaming Frog](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/)came in third with 5 mentions, while [AnswerThePublic](http://answerthepublic.com/) took the fourth spot (along with [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/)) with 3 tributes. This should mean something to all of you who are reading this article.
Before we part ways, on behalf of everyone at Four Dots – I would like to thank all the experts who have taken the time out of their busy schedules to respond to our query!
Even though the two above-mentioned utilities have generated the most approval from our interviewees – it’s important to keep all the other tools on this list in mind as well. In a dynamic and ever-evolving industry like online marketing, there is never one solution or hack for a particular problem or situation – so you’d better keep looking for alternatives.
Each individual circumstance is different. Maybe some tools will work better for you than others. You can never know in advance. It’s important to give every single one of these mentioned solutions a test drive before you decide to commit yourself to a single option.
Hopefully, the tips shared by these top digital marketing experts will influence your own strategies and future SEO efforts for the better.
---
## Posts: 5 Content Marketing KPIs You Should Keep an Eye on
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/5-content-marketing-kpis-3255](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-content-marketing-kpis-3255)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/5-content-marketing-kpis-3255.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-content-marketing-kpis-3255.md)
**Published:** 2017-05-17
**Last Updated:** 2025-03-14
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, content strategy, kpi
### Content
Even though the Internet is full of articles that praise content marketing, recent research has shown that less than [6% of those who invest in this type of promotion](https://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/blog/state-of-content-marketing-survey/) feel they’re doing it right.
With more resources than ever being poured into content marketing, it has become crystal clear to everyone that most people are struggling to get their content to work for them. It’s getting harder and harder for all sorts of companies, entrepreneurs, freelancers and marketers to justify their efforts in this department.
Why is this happening? Why are people failing to get their targeted audiences to interact with their content?
[**Content marketing**](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) is still a tough cookie to crack. Regardless of all the hype that constantly surrounds this practice online, things just aren’t falling into place for most people who invest in it.
Even though most people feel that their success via content marketing is limited by their fierce direct and indirect competition, studies have shown that the cause of this problem can usually be traced back to the publisher.
## The Difficulties of Running an Effective Content Marketing Campaign
As [HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)reports, a miserable 32% of all surveyed B2B marketers say they have a documented content marketing strategy, while 55% of them have publicly declared they aren’t really sure what content marketing success looks like.
This is a huge problem. The above mentioned statistics clearly state that a lot of people who invest in content marketing don’t really have a genuine strategy for their efforts. They just produce random articles that they think their targeted audiences will love, and hope for the best. None of their efforts are data-driven, which, of course, is the main reason why they continue to fail with their content marketing.
If you want to achieve success in this department, you need to plan your moves carefully, learn how to analyze your performance, what you need to do in order to improve the overall quality of your content and feed your audiences with what they actually need from you.
Here is a definitive list of KPIs you should be measuring for your content marketing initiatives:
## 1. Unique Visits + Site Retention + Geography
It’s all about traffic. But not just any type of traffic. If you want to make your content marketing really work for your brand and business, you need to know what kind of audience you really want on your website, where does your current traffic come from, and what type of content generates the most views on your site. Once you figure all that out, you can easily come up with a bulletproof pattern to replicate (and even exceed) those numbers with your future content marketing efforts.
Google Analytics can help you acquire that information. If you’re interested in finding out which page brings the most traffic, head over to Google Analytics > Behaviour > Overview. From there, you can start analyzing your unique visits, site retention, and geography.
These 3 KPIs provide the necessary insight that could help you understand how a specific piece of content is performing. Measuring how many people have viewed a single piece of content in a given time-frame and from what location will help you get a clear view of the actual size of your audience.
Combine that with the average time your users spend on your site per session, and you’ll understand if your visitors are actually reading your content, or are they just scrolling through it in order to find the information they’re looking for.
If you’re a brand, it’s in your best interest to get as many intelligent visitors to your site as possible. If you see that the majority of your visitors comes from a specific location, you should probably think about personalizing your future content marketing efforts for that area.
If you’re a brand, you also don’t want to chase page views or people who don’t have a real potential to become your actual paying customers. Your goal is to stimulate a specific group of people to hop on your pages and follow your chosen path through the site, not stuff your funnel with garbage.
On the other hand, if you are a niche publisher, you may not have a huge audience, but it may show loyalty and engagement by clicking deep into the site and generating page views.
Both examples have one thing in common – having a real, data-driven understanding of just how satisfied your visitors are with your content could help you significantly improve your efforts in this department.
If, for example, as I have already mentioned, you see you have a lot of unique visits to a particular page, but your visitors are just scrolling through your content, because the average time spent on your page per session is low – this probably means something is standing between them and their desired information. Maybe you have a big opening that bores them to death, maybe you have written your content in a tone or voice that doesn’t really suit your targeted crowd – the possibilities are endless.
The important thing to have in mind is that you have something truly good on your hands. All you have to do is figure out a way to make your information attractive to your viewers.
## 2. Exit Rates
Exit rates are often confused with bounce rates. [Unlike bounce rates](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2525491?hl=en), which give us an overview of the people who have landed on one of our pages and immediately left, exit rates provide us with the percentage of visitors who have actually clicked away to a different site from one of our pages.
While bounce rates are only based on sessions that begin with the page you’re currently analyzing, exits go beyond that. Exits may have viewed more than one page in a particular session, meaning they have not really landed on that page, but simply found their way to it while browsing through your website.
This KPI is extremely important for content marketers, because it helps improve user experience. It helps us locate the problem areas of our site and content. Exit rates are there to help us tweak the pages that should naturally lead to further interactions with our site, but simply don’t. They need to be revised and optimized, yet again.
Even though exit rates could provide great insight about your user experience, pages and content, you need to be cautious with them. If, for example, you write a [10,000 word article about backlinks](https://dibz.me/everything-about-backlinks), but you decide to cut it into 4 different pages, and you see the exit rate on the last page is high, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Your visitors have reached the end of the article, so it’s quite natural for them to exit your site.
## 3. Heat Maps
Every successful content marketing professional is basically an obsessive person who constantly reviews and fine-tunes his work. Myself included. In order to win big with my efforts in this particular department, it’s imperative for me to constantly analyze and revise my work. I need to take a deep dive into my content and start messing around with the details. This is a delicate business. Even the smallest of errors can really hurt you.
As we have already mentioned in one of our [previous blog posts](https://fourdots.com/blog/web-page-text-importance-3101), the average attention span of internet users is constantly decreasing. In 2017, the average attention span of people who frequently surf the Web is down to a miserable [8 seconds](http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/). The age of smartphones and instant information has left us with the attention span of a goldfish.
Having all this in mind, one could interpret content marketing as nothing more than the practice of tailoring custom information for impatient audiences. If we want to achieve success in this field in 2017, we constantly need to have a close eye on how our desired audience is engaging with a particular page on our site and its content.
Luckily for those who make their bread and butter by writing and publishing content on multiple domains, there are great tools for that. In addition to [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/)that can provide you with great on-page insights and help you track click patterns, there are tools like [CrazyEgg](https://www.crazyegg.com/), that make it possible for all of us to create [heat maps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map)and easily understand what section of a given page is getting the most views, and which are just being skipped.
This information is critical for everyone who wants to maximize their blogging ROI. Once you figure out which sections of your post have a negative effect on your overall page views, you can easily optimize them and improve your overall user satisfaction.
## 4. CTR (Click-Through-Rate)
We have already discussed [the importance of tracking CTR](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007)scores on our blog.
You can read more about this metric in the post linked above.
As we have already mentioned, CTR is an important metric for everyone who engages in any type of marketing online, not only those who spend their days clicking and optimizing everything in Google AdWords.
Every successful content marketer tracks his CTR.
If you figure out how to maintain a good CTR score, you’ll improve your impression numbers, which will automatically help you position your creatives at the very top of your targeted search results. Once you do that, you will significantly increase your chances of being discovered by your desired audience, which will certainly have a positive effect on your overall conversion numbers.
## 5. Backlinks
Backlinks matter. They influence the popularity, relevance, and overall authority of a certain website. The more high-quality backlinks you have pointing back to your domain, the better. [Backlinks help improve organic rankings](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059) in search and attract great referral traffic. In addition to that, backlinks also help Google index pages a lot faster, which naturally has an insanely positive effect on SEO. Even though they are extremely important for overall success online and everyone wants to get as many quality links as possible to point back their site – in 2017, in the [post-Penguin era](http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-penguin-update), [backlinks cannot be built – they have to be earned](https://dibz.me/blog/link-building-vs-link-earning-247).
This is where content comes to shine. Even though it’s now quite difficult to find a relevant subject that hasn’t already been covered thousands of times on various different websites across the Web, you can still come up with [amazing material that has the potential of generating tons of shares and links](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189) for your website. All you really need to do is analyze what’s currently trending in your niche or industry, and build your story on that. If you want to earn a lot of links with your content marketing efforts, you’d better do your best to come up with authoritative content that answers popular questions, original research results, content that discusses trending topics with amazing insights, etc.
## Closing Word
I hope this article has helped you understand how to elevate your content marketing efforts to the next level. As you can see from everything written above, there’s more than a few metrics to consider when designing a proper content strategy for your brand and business. Some of them may be more challenging than others, but it’s important to have in mind that every single one of these KPIs is there for a reason. Be sure to monitor them to ensure you’re building your content strategy on the right foundations.
That’s all for now,
Thank you so much for reading this article from top to bottom.
All the best,
Goran @ Four Dots.
---
## Posts: Creating Content that Generates Links Like Crazy
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189.md)
**Published:** 2017-04-25
**Last Updated:** 2025-06-30
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, Content Marketing Trends, content strategy
### Content
“WRITE AMAZING CONTENT!” – Almost every blog post about link building has some version of this sentence in it.
It’s like they were all written by the same mad man who carries a bible-like [SEO book](https://thegoodbookofseo.com/) around and screams random search engine optimization tips at people who walk by him on the street.
According to these blog posts, [content is the essence of every decent link building stew](https://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-seo-chapter-7/).*“Ingrédient secrète”*, as the French would say.
You just cannot avoid it.
I mean, you technically can – but it won’t end well for you.
If you try to ignore it, your dish will most likely taste like dirt. It will give people that awful aftertaste which will almost immediately make them resent your “cooking”.
Content gives your link building efforts that necessary kick. A pinch of magic, so to say.
It makes everything a lot easier to swallow.
[HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) claims that**82% of marketers who blog on a regular basis see positive ROI from their inbound marketing.**According to these guys,**B2C companies that have published more than 11 blog posts per month have had more than 4X as many leads than companies that blog only 4-5 times per month.**The people at [Social Media Examiner](http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/report/) have underlined these claims. Their independent research has shown that**81% of marketers now plan to increase their use of original written content.**Judging by everything written above, we can confidently say that producing content on a regular basis works wonders for your brand and business online. As [Joe Pulizzi](https://twitter.com/JoePulizzi) of [CMI](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/)recently said in an interview for CMO: “[A content-first business is the future of marketing](http://www.cmo.com/interviews/articles/2017/2/22/a-conversation-with-joe-pulizzi-putting-content-marketing-success-in-context.html#gs.3=yp3jo).”
## Creating Valuable Content is No Walk in the Park
Regardless of the niche or industry, 9 out of 10 digital marketing experts will tell you that you need to hop on that content train ASAP, if you’re interested in creating [high-quality backlinks](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778) for your website.
“*If you write and publish great posts on your blog, people will be naturally drawn to them.” – experts say.*“*You should focus all your time and energy on creating amazing content that actually touches upon your desired audience’s pain points and solves real problems for them. If you manage to produce such material, people will be drawn to naturally link back to your site and reward you for your efforts and expertise.*”
Sounds easy, right?
Even though, in theory, all of this feels pretty straightforward, in practice it’s a whole different story. Back in 2015, Steve Rayson and his [BuzzSumo](http://buzzsumo.com/blog/) crew**analyzed over a million randomly selected blog posts**and found that a staggering**70% of them were never linked to**.
The worst thing about this research is that the final results don’t really surprise me at all.
If you have ever tried to create a piece of content that has the potential to organically earn you a ton of links, you probably know that this sort of thing ain’t no walk in the park. Regardless of the subject, the competition is ALWAYS fierce.
Believe it or not, over [2 million blog posts get published every day.](http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/27698/2-million-blog-posts-are-written-every-day-heres-how-you-can-stand-out) Ridiculous, right? And that’s just blog posts. What about all the other types of content, like informative infographics (check out this one depicting the [**evolution of content marketing**](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) over the decades), whitepapers, case studies, webinars, etc?**Naturally, this type of content overkill has the ability to overwhelm people. Everyone is writing about everything all the time, and people are starting to suffer from a so-called “content shock”.
In 2017, the chances of finding a relevant subject that hasn’t already been covered on dozens of popular websites are slimmer than ever.
However, even though this may be true, that still doesn’t mean it’s impossible to create a bundle of links for your site with a single piece of content. All you have to do is follow my recipe:*## 1. Chase Authoritative Content that Answers Popular Questions
Creating content that generates both numerous shares and links is truly something special. This type of material has the power to significantly improve your website traffic and thus, help you generate tons of new leads and sales, so it kinda goes without saying that producing such a thing is basically the same as digging a tunnel with a tea spoon.
But it’s worth it.
Even though you really need to put your back into it, the end results are always satisfying.
At least in my experience.
As I have already mentioned in the sub-headline above, one of the most powerful types of content when it comes to generating backlinks is definitely one that provides answers for core questions**. For example: “What is link building?*”; “*The ultimate guide to link building*”; “*Link building bible*”, etc.
This is where power words such as “ultimate”, “amazing”, “exclusive”, “complete”, “best”, “proven”, “latest”, “extraordinary”, “inspiring”, “sensational” and “remarkable” come to shine.
This specific type of content is more likely to attract both links and shares because the headline alone promises everyone who clicks on it a detailed introduction to a subject that’s important for the user.
For example, a few weeks ago, I created this 10,000 word post: “[Every Damn Thing You Need to Know About Backlinks](https://dibz.me/everything-about-backlinks)”. Apart from putting all my knowledge about backlinks into one place and sharing it with the world, one of the reasons behind designing such a specific type of content was to put this above mentioned theory to the test.
And you know what? – It worked.
“Every Damn Thing You Need to Know About Backlinks” has generated 5X more traffic than our regular blog posts do.
Even though a lot of people have written about backlinks on their websites, none of them have gone the extra mile to create a piece that LITERALLY puts all the information under one roof. The key to creating powerful content that has the ability to generate links like crazy is to produce something that instantly reflects quality.
That’s why you should be tactical with your content. As I have said numerous times, the best way to win big in this particular field is to find posts that are currently performing well for your targeted keywords, analyze them, and do your best to produce 10X better content.
Don’t be afraid to overdeliver in your content. If you have something to offer to your readers – go for it! Don’t hold back. It doesn’t really matter if you’re creating content as any [CEO for SEO](https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta) agency, a startup, a small arts and crafts shop, or something completely different – your extra effort will always be acknowledged and rewarded by your audience.
If you posses the necessary know-how, you won’t have to reinvent the next wheel in order to beat a particular post that’s currently ranking high for your desired keywords. All you really have to do is to acknowledge all the gaps and work them to your advantage. There are dozens of different ways you can beat a particular post at its own game. Invest in better design, create a more powerful story around the subject, add more examples, transform it into a different format, etc.
Remember – the key isn’t to just stuff everything you know about a particular subject into a single blog post. No way. Your goal is to produce a piece of content that keeps giving more and more while you keep scrolling down.
## 2. The Persona + Use Case Formula
This strategy is especially great for those who are marketing a specific tool or service. Regardless of who you are and what you do – you’ll always have to start from the ground up. It doesn’t really matter if you already have a big network or other successful ventures – you’ll still need to create leads for your new business.
Real leads.
You cannot really sell everything to everyone. If you want to make your new venture independent, you’ll need to find a way to communicate its worth to the people who actually have the potential to become your customers.
How does one accomplish such a thing? – Easily, by producing [content that explains the right people how to get the most out of your products and services](http://www.jimmydaly.com/the-blank-slate-problem/).
Here’s the thing – people LOVE tools. Myself included. I love tools so much that I focus all my time and energy on creating more of them. After completing [Reportz](https://reportz.io/), I’m moving to the next thing on my list. That’s why Product Hunt is such a popular site. But, interest is not enough. If you want to stimulate people to stick with your tool, you need to prove that your solution really works. You need to demonstrate with a real, precise example how they can achieve success via your software or service. [Evernote](https://evernote.com/) does a great job here. [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/) also. This particular type of content is extremely relevant for a specific type of user, and that’s why it always generates a ton of links.
## 3. Content that Provides Original Research Results
Data is power. Nothing generates links faster than a compelling research report.
As you already know – in 2017, data plays a significant role in your overall marketing success.
Especially in content marketing.
It’s the backbone of almost every popular B2B piece of content.
Including this one.
If you scroll up, you’ll see that I basically built this post around a couple of interesting studies. Data helps people come up with amazing insight that speaks volumes to their readers.
Lots of B2B brands conduct their own original research. For example, HubSpot. Even though this popular site frequently publishes practical “how to” content, from time to time – they go all out and publish their [ultimate list of marketing statistics](https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics). Naturally, this sort of compelling report significantly outperforms their other content, when it comes to links.
This sort of thing goes beyond B2B. You can use numbers to your advantage in almost every industry. Yes, even in porn. Just look at [PornHub](https://fourdots.com/blog/pornhub-dominating-content-marketing-2637). We wrote a separate article on how this brand dominates with their online marketing .
Even though PornHub knows that a lot of people don’t really care about their company or what it stands for, they still know how to use their statistics to their advantage. In order to reach out to audiences all over the world, PornHub creates all sorts of different [interesting and entertaining data](http://www.pornhub.com/insights/) that often gets picked up by major publications. Their carefully segmented and researched numbers have earned them links from all sorts of relevant websites, like [The Daily Bot](http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/porn-viewing-american-british-data/), [Mashable](http://www.pornhub.com/insights/the-united-states-duration-nation) and [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/which-browsers-users-are-the-most-porn-crazed-1585187988).
Take a page out HubSpot’s and PornHub’s playbooks – invest in original research. It will surely reach a much greater number of links than any other type of content.
## 4. Content that Empowers Trending Topics with Intelligent Insights
In marketing, timing is everything. That’s why it’s necessary to keep an eye on trends, analyze what’s currently generating a lot of buzz, and where and how you can board that hype train. Even though trending topics tend to take the entire Internet hostage, their lifetime isn’t really that impressive. These topics explode quickly and then they just die. While they’re often great for raising awareness, in most cases – these types of topics rarely generate long term traffic.
Newsjacking isn’t really a great option, if your goal is to create tons of backlinks for your website. The best way you can make trending topics work for you is add value through insight or practical tips.
For example, let’s focus on the hype around the upcoming Justice League movie. Apart from the plot, costumes, and production values, there’s a lot of buzz about the main villain in the film. Only hardcore comic book geeks know who [Steppenwolf](http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Who-Justice-League-Probably-Fight-Their-First-Movie-130287.html) is. The guys at Cinemablend know that, so they made it their top priority to produce an article ASAP, called “[5 Big Things To Know About Steppenwolf, The Justice League’s Possible Villain](http://www.cinemablend.com/new/5-Big-Things-Know-About-Steppenwolf-Justice-League-Possible-Villain-130417.html)”.
This particular post created 85 links for them, which, when you really sit down and think about it, is a pretty decent number of backlinks:
Combining practical, informative and valuable insights with a trending topic will always give you a proper chance to win big. Always do your best to bring additional value to the topic, and not just blindly follow trends. Make your work stand out. Put in a little extra effort, and you’ll be rewarded with at least a bundle of new links to your website.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I hope it has helped you understand what you need to do in order to generate tons of links and traffic to your domain via content. If you have anything to add or ask about this particular topic – feel free to write your thoughts in the comment section below and I’ll do everything in my power to get back to you ASAP!
That’s it for now,
See you again soon,
Rad @ Four Dots.
---
## Posts: INFOGRAPHIC: Avoid these 12 Fatal SEO Mistakes
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/infographic-seo-mistakes-3169](https://fourdots.com/blog/infographic-seo-mistakes-3169)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/infographic-seo-mistakes-3169.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/infographic-seo-mistakes-3169.md)
**Published:** 2017-04-18
**Last Updated:** 2025-02-24
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** SEO, SEO mistakes
### Content
*“When the Grim Reaper comes to call, words fail – they’re just too small.”*― Dixie Lyle, To Die Fur
The Grim Reaper, a.k.a. Death, is probably one of the most recognizable figures of all time. Often depicted as a tall, pale, skeletal entity shrouded in a ragged, black, hooded cloak with a scythe in his hand – the Reaper is basically a symbol of despair.
When the Reaper comes, the curtain falls on your show. That’s it. Your days are numbered. We all know who he is and what he wants. The Reaper’s one and only job is to harvest souls. Nothing more, nothing less.
He is a creature of few words. When he moves, he floats. Death doesn’t say much, he just has a slight grin on his face and takes care of business. He comes for everyone at one point in life, with an hourglass in his hand, waiting for that last grain of sand to fall.
Creepy, right?
How does one avoid meeting this figure?
The sad news is – there’s no way of escaping Death. As the saying goes: “Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes.”
However, even though the Reaper cannot be avoided, he can certainly be cheated. You can buy yourself some extra time if you beat him at his own game. Have you seen the movie Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey? If so, then you know that Death got played by two complete boneheads. What kind of an idiot lets two peabrain metalheads sink his battleship and beat him in a game of Twister?
The Reaper loves to play games. We have seen that in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal as well.
With this in mind, you can rest assured, knowing that the Reaper is always up for a challenge. The only thing you need to figure out is how not to get suckered into playing games that he knows best.
Even though most people don’t know this – the Grim Reaper also works online. Most people don’t recognize him, because he wears a different coat on the Internet. For those who are trying to make their bread and butter online, the Reaper comes in the shape of a panda, a penguin and a hummingbird. But don’t be fooled by the cute exterior – this is still not a sight you want to see.
Unlike in “analog life”, the Reaper has a different set of rules online. He’ll leave you alone forever, if you don’t give him a good reason to come after your site. So, if you don’t want to see Death creeping all over your digital home or office, you’d better make sure you avoid making the following mistakes:
---
## Posts: Text Will Always be Important for Online Search
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/web-page-text-importance-3101](https://fourdots.com/blog/web-page-text-importance-3101)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/web-page-text-importance-3101.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/web-page-text-importance-3101.md)
**Published:** 2017-03-21
**Last Updated:** 2020-09-15
**Author:** MIlica Dobrenov
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content, text
### Content
For years now, I have been listening to numerous digital marketing experts preach about the end of written content as we know it. They think its days are pretty much numbered. Even though the entire Web is basically built on it, more than a few experts believe that sooner or later, video is going to take over. It’s going to push written content right out of the picture (pun intended). Ok, maybe not LITERALLY, but you get the drift. They believe it will become redundant and secondary to basically everything else online.
Why is that? – There are two reasons, mostly. The first and more important one being: ***The average attention span of people who visit the Web is drastically decreasing****.*Looking at[the numbers from various relevant research results](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/opinion/the-eight-second-attention-span.html?_r=0) – the situation is constantly getting worse in this department. In 2017, the average attention span of humans who currently walk the Earth is ridiculously short.
So short, it hurts.
I can not believe that the average attention span is**just 8 seconds**.
The age of smartphones and instant information has left us with the attention span of a goldfish. No. Scratch that – a senile goldfish. A fish with Alzheimer’s disease who doesn’t want to take its meds.
A lot of research has shown that these days [people just scan content on the Internet](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/), instead of actually reading it. Everything that demands some effort and genuine focus has become repellent. Users don’t want to work for information anymore. That’s a fact! The days when people used to go to libraries and manually dig through dozens and dozens of books to learn a thing or two about a specific subject are long gone, my friend.***They want their information NOW, served on a shiny silver platter, with a sweet red apple stuffed in its mouth.****Even though people tend to display some genuine interest and click on various blog posts and share them on their social media profiles, the sad truth is – they don’t actually engage with the content. Instead of taking the time to truly acquaint themselves with the topic and material at hand and read it word for word – they just hover over the text and look for highlighted information. Headlines, sub headlines, bullet points, bolded words – these are the only things that grab their attention these days.
## Why is This Happening? Why are People Scanning Content, Instead of Actually Reading It?
According to [the results of numerous different surveys online](http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/), “**lack of time**” seems to be**the no.2 reason**for this witch hunt on written content. Although I think this is undoubtedly true, I also feel that there’s more to it.
Judging solely by my own experience,**content overkill**also plays an important role. Even though I enjoy reading, as an educated person who writes content for a living and interacts with other educated individuals – sometimes it’s hard for me to sit down and actually digest a certain text or book the way I initially wanted to.
The clock works against me and, like any other marketer, I have to go through tons and tons of material in order to find information that will kickstart my creative juices.
Even though today, almost every brand is creating and publishing at least some type of content on a daily, weekly or monthly basis – the overall quality of it has never been lower. Mass production has taken its toll on the general state and quality of textual content online. These days, people are basically pushing generic texts just for the sake of staying active and finding their place in Google’s search engine results for relevant queries. Having all this in mind, I can surely understand why a lot of users feel that written content is on its way out.
However, regardless of how many people feel that this form of information will soon be laid to rest, there are literally dozens of facts which prove that text will never die. Especially on the Web. Here are just the major ones:
### 1. Text Will Forever Be More Convenient Than Video
I don’t know how you feel about video on social media for example, but I despise it. And I am not the only one. A lot of people share my opinion.
SM video just doesn’t work for me. I feel that it doesn’t really go down well with anyone who is constantly on the go. The same goes for Facetime. It’s just not convenient. Most of us aren’t really comfortable with people listening to our conversations or shouting at our screen. Sure, you can use headphones or any other number of devices to tone it all down and buy a couple of more spheres of privacy – but that still isn’t enough.
Unlike video, text let’s you stay in the moment. It gives you the option to stop exactly where you want to stop and really wrap your mind around a certain piece of information.
### 2. It’s Adaptable**Unlike video and images, text can be easily updated and upgraded.
The important thing to have in mind if you’re in the business of creating content for the Web is that things change fast.
What’s hot now will tomorrow probably be just another thing of the past. It will become démodé*before you even realize it.
This is a huge disadvantage everyone needs to keep in mind when creating videos and images for their brand. Sure, some campaigns could become evergreen, but lets face it – most of them won’t. A vast majority will feel almost embarrassing in 5 year’s time.
The problem with video is that it cannot really be rebuilt. You can reuse it for various different purposes, but if the production sucks – you’ll need to start from scratch. If you try to play with it, it will certainly become a whole new thing.
With text, the story is quite different. You can always rewrite and republish your best posts. Google will even reward you for your efforts.
### 3. B2B Decision Makers Still Prefer Text Over Video
Here are some interesting stats I’ve found online:
- 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
- 96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders.
- When it comes to content, B2B buyers consume: whitepapers (78%), case studies (73%), and webinars.
In addition to these [Demand Gen Report](http://www.demandgenreport.com/) numbers, the latest findings from the guys behind [SnapApp](https://www.snapapp.com/) have also shown that content is constantly getting bigger.
Especially in the B2B world.
Most decision-makers still spend far more time going through all sorts of whitepapers and case studies. They are not really interested in videos or webinars. They want to get a deeper understanding of a product and service they’re thinking about buying. Video can’t deliver that. It’s usually all about raising awareness and giving users a simple run through the process. Text is more flexible for them.
Even though [NewsCred Insights](https://insights.newscred.com/data-from-10000-articles-prove-that-content-marketing-really-does-work/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10000-articles-content-works&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWTJFNE0yUmpOamt5TkRnMSIsInQiOiI2N0NWNTRESjdweUF5#sm.0001p5nwdrcg1dt8tfk2l8b3p6nj3)says that the average reader only spends 37 seconds reading an article or blog post**, marketers are still going all out in this department. [Long-form content is becoming the norm](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/). In 2017, all sorts of industry experts are investing more and more time and money in creating in-depth pieces of content that deliver higher value for their targeted readers.
### 4. Text Stimulates the Mind Like Nothing Else
Even though we as humans have evolutionarily acquired vision before the ability to think metaphorically, I still feel that our mind works better when it isn’t drowning in various types of information. Sure, at first it might seem that it’s easier to watch a story unfold than to read, process, and then imagine everything in our head, but it really isn’t.
Let me ask you a question: why do people still read books when they can watch the movie adaptation of the same story? Why do thousands and thousands of individuals go through books about physics when they can watch, for example, [Cosmos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Spacetime_Odyssey)? Why is [J.K. Rowling](https://www.jkrowling.com/) still banking hard on the [Harry Potter](http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Harry_Potter) books? Why haven’t big media houses like [The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/) and The [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/) moved to video? Because words offer a different type of value than video (or images).
The problem with video is that it instantly communicates many different things all at once. For an untrained eye, the whole process of learning through video can get a bit overwhelming. All sorts of factors come into play. Every little detail can steal your attention and destroy your focus. The protagonist’s appearance, tone, voice, gestures, the setting – everything.
That’s not the case with text.
Text is a lot more flexible format. It allows us to visualize things in the way that suits us best.
Since its very birth, text has been a quintessential symbol of intelligence, knowledge, education, and even status. To reveal that you simply don’t enjoy reading, is (in most circles) akin to committing a socio-intellectual suicide. Even though I’m not really okay with that, I still feel that you should give this instrument for distributing information a chance. By no means is reading easy. However, those who still remain faithful to it know that some things can never be effectively communicated in any other way.
We need to make text matter again. It’s our job to cut the garbage from the equation.
Even though most of us who produce content try our hardest to constantly come up with [10x content](https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday) and feed our audiences with information that’s relevant to them, we also have to face facts and accept the psychology of an average internet user who comes into contact with our material. Apart from making sure that we always deliver on the promises we have made in our headlines, we need to cater to our readers’ other needs as well. In order to keep text alive, we need to work on it and constantly reinvent it. If you really think about it, text has evolved so much since the day it was invented. My opinion is that it has survived only because of its ability to shapeshift and be constantly in sync with the times, so we must nurture that in our business and keep adapting it to the demands of the general audience.
Thank you for reading this post from top to bottom.
I hope it will help you see the value behind nurturing written content.
That’s it for now, see you again soon!
Love,
Milica @ FourDots
---
## Posts: SEO Project Management and its Challenges
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-project-management-challenges-3091](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-project-management-challenges-3091)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-project-management-challenges-3091.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-project-management-challenges-3091.md)
**Published:** 2017-03-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Project Management
### Content
*I would love to pursue the career of a project manager!*– Said no one ever.
I am not disrespecting this vocation (you should also know that I manage dozens of projects daily), but it’s not like this profession is something that you can just pick up and apply.
On the contrary, SEO project management is a though cookie to crack. It takes a talented, well-organized individual, who will stay loyal to the cause, and grow along with your company. Their responsibility is to pinpoint bottlenecks, scale projects and break them down into individual milestones. They have to work hard on development of your business model overall, with intelligent solutions, while dealing with people.
If you are looking for a way to improve your SEO project management, know that this process varies depending on the industry you are working in. There are series of steps that you need to test and implement in order to develop a fully functional and profitable model, and it depends on various factors.
However, if you are working in the SEO industry, you are about to hear the inside scoop from a CAO, a legitimate hard worker who has dealt with countless [SEO projects for the past 5 years](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) or so.
Yup, it’s me. I’m the showrunner.
So, without further ado, let me tell you about the 3 inevitable deadlocks and impending challenges that await you if you are looking to manage SEO projects. And hold on, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
## The Question of (Ir)responsibility
How many times have you heard the following phrase:*– Not my job, not my problem.*This is the favorite excuse of any employee. The harsh reality is – not everyone at your workplace will be highly motivated to do even their own job, and this is the number one issue which can make or break a company.
According to Gallup, only 33% of US workers were actively engaged in their work[during the year 2016](http://www.gallup.com/poll/193901/employee-engagement-steady-june.aspx). So, you have to count on the fact that 7 out of 10 of your employees won’t care about your business at all. Horrifying, but that is the best-case scenario.
Now imagine any of those 7 non-motivated workers spotting an issue they could report and prevent your project from failure, but it’s not their responsibility. It’s not their job, so it’s not their problem, right?
Steve Jobs had a system which I would advise anyone to implement, no matter the industry. What Steve insisted on was that each Apple project had a[directly responsible individual](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/10/02/how-well-does-apples-directly-responsible-individual-dri-model-work-in-practice/#233ec9c0194c). So, if there is any factor/task/issue that no one is responsible for – your DRI always is. This seemingly simple fix helped Apple organize their project management in the best way possible.
Always keep in mind that this industry is in expansion, and chances are – the challenges that your business model will face during implementation will be unique to your case.
So, whatever happens, always have one responsible individual who will monitor the progress of each project individually. It isn’t their job to fix every issue that someone finds, but it is their responsibility to be aware of this issue and have their team report about any problem that your project might come across.
## Creative & Unmanageable Employees
Designers, writers, developers – they all have one trait in common, and that is – creativity. The thing about creativity is that it sometimes takes more than it gives. Scaling projects which depend on someone’s motivation to produce engaging content can sometimes be a real nightmare.
Knowing the weak spots of your creative team is half the battle. More than often, the two following duties and responsibilities may present a challenge for your exceptionally creative worker:
1. Time management
2. Discipline
Of course, both are vital for a productive workplace. You want (need) all your employees to follow the practices that your business model enforces.
One of the simple hacks which might help you address the first challenge (time management) is to simply keep your actual delivery dates undisclosed. So, when you have a project that is due on the 20th of the month, just move that final date of delivery to the 15th of the month. Or even sooner, depending on the size of the project and priority.
Just keep insisting that they deliver their part of the work within the timeframe set. Another challenging thing about [working with creatives](https://hbr.org/2013/04/seven-rules-for-managing-creat) is that, quite often, they are very intelligent individuals as well. Know that they are expecting to face the drama when they are late, and if you fail to at least make a remark about them missing the (bogus) deadline, they’ll start asking questions very soon.
Keeping your creative workers interested in their job may seem like a bit of a hassle, but the truth is – creative workers are in demand. According to Richard Florida, [creativity is the new economy](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-florida/creativity-is-the-new-eco_b_1608363.html), and while regular workers are slowly dying out (not literally), creative individuals are rare to find, and are highly appreciated as a working force.*When it comes to discipline, the solution is far from simple, but there is a simple thing that needs to be done:
– Be a leader, never a boss.*Creative people connect with ideas, with people, with goals – they don’t respond well to authoritarian attitudes. On the contrary, if they find themselves in a situation that is limiting their talent, they will fail to deliver even the simplest tasks. Not to mention repetitive tasks!
Which brings us to one of the biggest challenges of project management in any industry.
## Repetition is the Mother of all Failure
There is probably a graveyard of failed startups brought to closure by the same plague which devours businesses on the regular – inconsistency. No matter the model, no matter the industry, you probably have a set of tasks that are not automated, that cannot be automated, and you have a certain number of employees who are performing these tasks daily.
Repetitive tasks are mind-numbing. Especially for your creative workers who need challenges and excitement to keep delivering. And they will accept almost any activity, but performing the same task repeatedly.
Except for the lunchtime that your employees will gladly spend in front of the PlayStation in the break room, each day of the week, they will hardly be motivated to deliver the same enthusiasm for any of the chores they should be doing daily.
We have addressed this problem by implementing a gamification model for our repetitive tasks. The approach is quite simple if you have a time tracking tool. We use the [Active Collab SEO project management platform](https://activecollab.com/seo-project-management), which is has a time tracker option available, and overall because it is a great application that we recommend.
The concept of our gamification model is simple – we keep a scoreboard of the average time needed for our most repetitive duties to be finished. If you beat the average time – you get a prize.
The prizes vary, but we make sure that progress is rewarded, no matter how small that prize is. If any worker shows continuous improvement within this system – we consider giving them a raise of course, as we are trying to keep this model alive and improve our overall performance continuously.
However, I would advise this approach only for the tasks that absolutely cannot be automated. If there is a way for any duty to be performed without you depending on an unmotivated worker to deliver it – seize that opportunity and implement that automation.
## Before you start
Could you be bothered to leave the name of a project manager you find admirable in the comments section? Without googling, I can think of hardly two names that I would like to mention. One of them is definitely the late Steve Jobs that we have mentioned already, and the other project manager that I find has to mentioned is [John Wallace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Findley_Wallace).
John was the project manager responsible for the construction of the Panama Canal, and at that moment, there was only one person in the US who received a paycheck larger than John did at the end of the month. And that was President Theodore Roosevelt.
So, yes, it is no secret that project managers receive no credit while they handle all the work. And it is our unflattering responsibility to locate and address all the deadlocks and challenges of our business, but the one thing you should never doubt is our importance. We’re the ones who make things move.
We’re the showrunners.
---
## Posts: The Death of SEO: A Hypothesis
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/death-seo-hypothesis-3073](https://fourdots.com/blog/death-seo-hypothesis-3073)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/death-seo-hypothesis-3073.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/death-seo-hypothesis-3073.md)
**Published:** 2017-03-13
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy, SEO
**Tags:** death, resource indexing prohibited, SEO
### Content
***While some discuss if near the other graves**Be room enough for this, and when a day**Suits best for carrying the corpse away,**With care about the banners, scarves and staves,**And still the man hears all, and only craves**He may not shame such tender love and stay.**“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”**Robert Browning*SEO is dead.
Again!
It has died more times than Sean Bean.
Its pulse has gone silent, faded slowly into the night – experts say.
If you’re someone who’s interested in digital marketing and especially SEO – I’m willing to bet that you’ve read your fair share of similar claims and arguments.
The death of SEO is probably one of the oldest and most often revamped cliches on the Internet.
Every time Google rolls out another update (Groundhog, Panda update, Penguin 2.0, Hummingbird, etc.), people start freaking out and claiming how everything we ever knew about search engine optimization should be instantly forgotten. We should immediately throw our playbooks into the bin, ‘cause everything has changed. Every single thing that we used to do in order to improve our rankings and position our resources higher in SERP has now become completely irrelevant.
If you do a quick search for such keywords as “SEO is dead” or “death of SEO” – you will instantly come into contact with an insane number of links that claim search engine optimization is now a thing of the past.
There are hordes of people who desperately want it to be true.
## Why It Probably Won’t Die*For you to understand our reasoning, first you need to know to whom and to what we would be willing to affix the covetous [label](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) “SEO”. You see, for us, an SEO expert in not just someone who optimizes your meta-tags, and SEO as a practice is not just blindly poaching links left and right.
Call it a grotesquely romanticized interpretation, but as far as we are concerned, we are surfers on the Everflux, and are only to stop when the current fades. We are translators from Human into Googlian, and since Human is a constantly expanding language, always growing and updating, we don’t think our job will ever be fully complete. The development of the semantic web does seem to emphasize the ticking of our Doomsday clock, but here’s why we think our pendulum will be swinging for some time yet to come.
In time, [SEO has grown to encompass everything](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) from content creation, syndication and audit; technical, UX and keyword optimization; social network management, PR, branding, conversion rate optimization, and a host of other practices that can help your business, regardless of the current mood of search engine algorithms.
As things are now, Google (and other search engines, of course) only sort through information, it is not really capable of confirming or creating it on its own. It relies on human input; human provided information, then evaluated by human behavior towards it. The veracity of any kind of data can only be confirmed or denied by people, and Google is trying to correlate the signals it can interpret with what people who are sending those signals actually feel. This is not something that can change easily. In this kind of a setup, SEOs are people who try to bridge that language gap – they are instructing people how to talk to Google if they want to fully and most effectively convey their message.
While a lot of SEOs will place themselves in some kind of opposition to Google, it is our efforts that are helping the search engine grow more sophisticated and accurate. This goes for white-hats and black-hats alike. White-hats will help through accurate markup, transparent and informative sitemaps, proper canonicalization, etc., while black-hats will educate through negative examples, for instance teaching Google that a keyword repeated a dozen times in a single sentence is not necessarily a sign of a page’s quality or relevance in search.
This [reliance on human input](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/ai-learn-like-humans-little-uncertainty/) is a limiting factor to the growth of search engines, but no one has ever said the input has to be voluntary and purposeful. Every query that any person enters is input. Every decision you make when presented with the search results page, or the destination page, is informative. Every[mail](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-scans-all-emails-new-google-terms-clarify) you’ve sent in the recent past has been adding to the search engine’s knowledge base. Every university or organization which has adopted Google’s open source AI framework is doing the same, only on a much larger scale. We are constant sources of information, and as adept at collecting it as Google may grow to be, it still can’t conjure it out of thin air, and it is SEOs that are best equipped to understand how it gathers and interprets all that data.
You might think that as its algorithm grows more sophisticated, the search engine should become easier to communicate with, but, in fact, because of the always present potential for abuse and manipulation, it also grows less trusting as time goes by. This has led to a situation where it’s not enough for you to be honest and truthful, you need to know how to formulate that truth if you want to be noticed.
Why is this not something that any versatile webmaster can do on their own? Because tracking Google’s reaction to different kinds of input is a full-time job. SEO is one of the industries where your time is not measured in regular, but in paradigm shifts. Changes are coming at an exceedingly fast pace, so tracking and anticipating them is not something you can do recreationally. This is why the search engine’s growing capacity for interpreting input does not reduce the need for SEOs, but in fact, increases it.
Ultimately, as long as you view SEO as a way to help Google improve user experience, you don’t need to worry about your career going the way of switchboard operators or chimney sweeps.
##**What We Might Need to Worry About**Most scenarios that would end up in SEO being made obsolete are so utterly dystopian that being out of a job probably wouldn’t be your most pressing problem. Why? Because, even if we don’t go to extremes like the development of some kind of AGI that (who?) has decided that we are just an inconvenient variables generator, it would mean that:
a) Search engines no longer need human help in validating and finding information*Big data is [biggening](https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/08/20/roundup-of-analytics-big-data-bi-forecasts-and-market-estimates-2016/#5bca9e726f21), IoT is becoming more of a thing, and Google is already using SERPs to display direct answers (although still dependent on information supplied and vetted by people). Should they choose to do so, search engines are in an ideal position to actually start providing their own information. In this scenario, they don’t need someone to write about the average energy consumption in a certain period, they can just draw the data directly from the source.
Depending on the availability of the data gathered by the appliances in the Internet of Things, as well as that already being generated by countless sources – institutions, companies, people themselves – search engines just might become able to provide you with an accurate answer without first checking with us.
b)*It’s no longer the people’s web*Another scenario that might tie in lovely with the previous one might start with the loss of [anonymity on the web](https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/jun/22/anonymity-internet-battleground-data-advertisers-marketers). We are already incredibly easy to find online, and there is little we do when logged on that isn’t tracked by one entity or another. After all, if they want to advertise to you, and later charge you, they need to know who you are. That’s why it’s hard to believe that the Internet will be quite as leisurely a place forever. This is to say that if the web gets more tightly regulated and people’s freedoms and their ability to easily publish content and interact with other sites or people online starts decreasing, it wouldn’t be unimaginable to assume that if search engine results continue being a thing at all, they might be decided on different basis than we are used to.
c)*User-friendliness triumphs over freedom of speech*We already have SEO plugins, coddling CMS frameworks and other ways to ensure we’re in compliance with SE standards. As the Internet is still under construction, you still need an expert to tell you what is advisable and what isn’t. If the online real-estate commodities distribution goes the way it seems to be heading now, a future in which the dominant search engine provides complete templates for different kinds of websites, leaving minimal options for individuality and distinguishing yourself from the rest of your ‘category,’ doesn’t sound all that farfetched.
That being said, while some of these circumstances might actually eradicate the need for SEO, it is by no means certain that they would. Automated systems, especially ones working with this wide of a scope, are inherently inflexible, and finely tweaking them without human intervention is not easily done. Likewise, even if you took all the technical aspects out of it, SEOs will still know how to create content and where to distribute it, they’ll be able to tell you how your efforts are converting, how your competitors are doing, and what upcoming changes you should prepare yourself for.
> In case you don’t agree that SEO is likely to exist as long as the Internet does, take a look at an article called ‘*Is SEO Dead?***’ we have scheduled for publishing in 2023, and try to find one thing you can call completely unfeasible.***##**Is SEO Dead? Another Arrow Taken from our Quiver**Constantly trying to choke independent enterprise, Bingle is once again on our case with its new ‘Boreas’ algorithm update. The update is focused on refrigeration tracking, and is expected by some to [completely destroy what we knew as SEO](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-link-building-agency-11967). In order to better illustrate just what we stand to lose when it completely unrolls on, symbolically chosen, December 21st, first we need to cover some of the recent history related to this aspect of SEO.
Since just a few short years ago, data gathering appliances became more of a norm than an exception, storage SEO has been rapidly growing and developing sub-branches. Refrigeration optimization was one of the first to blossom.
At first it was simple. You buy a product, place it in your fridge, the appliance scans the bar-code, and sooner than you could say “I still can’t believe people used to eat fruit”, it knows when you’ll need to go to the store, adds the item to your shopping list, offers meal combinations based on other items in your fridge, and, of course, runs an ad for a related product (mishaps with people being presented with ballet tutu ads as soon as they placed a cup of low fat yogurt in the fridge were at first frowned upon, but we soon accepted them as one of the prices for convenience).
Naturally, it wasn’t long before the first attempts at manipulating the results were made. Since the data gathered from refrigerators from all over the world was hard to dispute as an objective measure of consumption, rather than staying a representation of reality, it became something building that reality.
After all, if the entire nation gave their trust to a particular brand of, for instance, water, there had to be a reason for it. The reason in this case was the fact that they’ve distributed their sales throughout the entire US, at a huge cost at times, willing to practically give it away if the buyer was prepared to pay for transport. This kind of explosion in the number of distribution locations (they’ve previously only been sold in three states) was the first obvious exploit of the storage algorithm.
Bingle naturally kept up, adding quantity and consistency checks to prevent this kind of abuse, which, of course, in turn resulted in a response from black-hats. Independent refrigeration facilities were organized into networks, each facility holding dozens of refrigeration units. Products were being rotated between different facilities, simulating an increase in consumption in a given region. This worked until Bingle decided to start devaluing product signals after several end location changes.
The algorithm started distinguishing between private homes and different storage facilities, mostly thanks to the peoples’ constantly growing willingness to exchange privacy for convenience. In order to be able to use calorie tracking, shopping schedulers and reminders, expiration date alerts, and benefit from all too useful similar product suggestions, they gladly supplied household information that the search engine didn’t already have, and confirmed or corrected the data it did.
That’s when Bingle started being suspicious if it saw that you are storing a certain quantity of a particular product longer than you usually do. It started calculating the plausible number of tracker activation i.e. taking the product out of the fridge and placing it back – with the number being determined based on the size, general average consumption rate, your household average consumption rate, number of household members, and who knows what else. Once you exceeded the expected number by large enough a margin, your entire trust rating as a signal would go down.
Another metric they started actively tracking was time of purchase and time of consumption. Aside from making the data available to distributors interested in the exact times certain products were consumed (if most people open a beer between 10 and 11 PM, seeing a timely ad might persuade them to open a particular one), search engines looked for patterns which implied manipulation.
That’s when we came to the most intrusive way of black-hat manipulation yet. There was one product that was cheap, purchased by everyone, taken out of the fridge at varying times during the day, could [last for years](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency), and generally, represented a blank unit for SEO value. To make things easier, there was a complete monopoly on its production and distribution, all of it being handled by the same company. So how was it that cans of that highly nutritious ham derivative known as Spam came to be misused?
Their omnipresence, made possible by the low price and desperate populace was well exploited, and they soon stopped needing extra promotion from search engines. At that point, they became ideal vessels for barcodes of other types of groceries. In other words, cans of Spam were used to simulate other products. At first they were only used for products with the same expected refrigeration duration (a twelve-ounce can was used to replace a standard jar of pickles, half a pound of cheese, and any number of popular items). There were allegations that this couldn’t be pulled off without the cooperation of the distribution company, the NSA (North-American Spam Association), but since every inquiry into the matter was, by definition, ham-fisted, nothing truly incriminating was ever found.
What was so disruptive about this strategy was the way in which Spam was distributed. People organized giveaways, raffles and competitions where they distributed either individual cans, or, by managing to convince people that getting a yearly supply of the stuff was actually a prize, they managed to find long-term hosts for their cuckoo’s egg. Another aspect that made Spam a perfect delivery method was, of course, its price, which means that this kind of inception was as far from expensive as it was from honest.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The most brazen Scam (Spam Cans Allocation Management) artists didn’t wait for you to come to them, they came to you. Posing as electricians, plumbers and different kinds of inspectors, they would go through one home after another, seeking opportunities to replace your cans of Spam with modified ones, or simply hide one in your fridge and hope you don’t remove it right away.
While some claimed that this horrible intrusion into people’s homes was, if a bit deceitful, still relatively harmless, there was a darker side to it. For one, people coming into your home may have introduced themselves as plumbers, but they knew about plumbing as much as they did about real, white-hat product promotion, i.e. nothing. Their job was to get in and out as quickly as possible. Sometimes, this meant giving bad advice, making false repairs, and generally, glossing over a still existing issue. While this caused more inconveniences than actual problems, there was another, far more sinister kind of negligence in this industry.
Seeing how the difference between severely, toxically spoiled and perfectly edible Spam is not discernible by naked eye or taste buds, some of the least conscientious black-hatters actually used cans that were well past their expiration date. After the first couple of deaths attributed to this practice, it wasn’t just Bingle that started hunting Scammers, everyone took part. Soon enough, regular electricians, plumbers etc. stopped buying and carrying Spam with them, afraid of being labeled (no pun intended) a Scammer and promptly lynched. So, is SEO dying along with unconscientious, self-proclaimed SEOs and the introduction of Boreas?
Of course not. It is as alive as ever, it just stopped relying on Spam. If you’ve been forward-thinking and you know how any kind of attempted SE manipulation eventually turned out in the past, you’ve never even come close to using any of these techniques. In hopes that you continue to be as discerning, we wish you a happy Ascension Day tomorrow, and hope that neither you or any of your loved ones are chosen.
---
## Posts: CTR in the Digital Marketing Jungle
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-marketing-jungle-ctr-3007.md)
**Published:** 2017-02-09
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** PPC, SEO
**Tags:** ctr, digital marketing, marketing strategy
### Content
As a person who makes his bread and butter online, I see the Internet and digital marketing as a great, big jungle. But not just any jungle – a very, very vicious one. Big cats rule the land here. They’re everywhere, and they’re hungry!
If you don’t understand how to make the most out of your efforts online, sooner or later – you’re gonna become their lunch.**It doesn’t really matter what you do or sell online, or how good your products and services might be – someone out there is always trying to get you. If you lose focus for even a second – the chances are, you’re gonna get eaten alive. Some big, angry tiger or lion is gonna catch up, clobber you to the ground, and then swallow you whole.
How come? – Well, because he can. He wants your place in the SERP as well as your customers. That nasty tiger knows you’re small and that you can easily be pushed out of the picture. Sometimes that cat in question is Google – other times your competitors, or even your customers/clients.
If you fail to provide your customers and site visitors with everything they expect – they’re going to leave. Your pack will abandon you, and we both know what happens to animals who ride solo through the jungle, don’t we?
Remember what happened in Jungle Book? – You don’t want your very own version of Shere Khan to chase you around. That’s why you cannot really afford to be careless with what you do online.
Unfortunately, in 2017, running and promoting an online business is no walk in the park. You cannot just prance around, expecting things to magically fall into your lap just because you’ve spent a few bucks on creating a cool website and campaign. Nope. The Internet doesn’t really work like that. It’s not like a Disney cartoon. This isn’t a type of jungle where animals help you with your chores. Bears and jaguars don’t sing songs here. They’re not really interested in protecting you from everything that’s willing to eat you or push you out of the way.
######*So, How Does One Survive Online? What do You Need to do in Order to Avoid Being Torn to Shreds by Vicious Beasts that Roam this Digital Jungle?*There’s only one thing you can do – focus on your CTRs.
Click-through-rate is the king of this digital marketing jungle! It’s the golden-haired lion that rules the land.
It is an extremely important metric for everyone who engages in any type of marketing online. Not only those who spend their days clicking and optimizing everything in [Google Ad](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) Words. Email marketing, organic search, social media channels, conversion rate optimization – these are all channels and practices where CTR is of crucial importance for your overall success rate.
## There are a lot of benefits in chasing a high CTR
The higher the quality score, the lower the CPC**– If you manage to maintain a remarkable CTR score, you won’t just save a lot of money on your advertisements – you’ll also improve your impression numbers. Every additional point you get in SERP is great for your business. If you position your creatives at the very top of your targeted search results, chances are – you’ll get a lot of mileage on your ads. **Your organic results will improve as well**– Having great user engagement will surely influence how Google looks at your brand. The more of your pages beat the average CTR percentage in your niche – the better chances you’ll have of appearing in leading search positions. So, if you want to move up in SERP and claim those leading positions for relevant queries, you should definitely focus on raising your overall CTR score.**Your conversion rates will also go up**– If you figure out a way how to, for example, increase your CTR.**Good CTR numbers will actually help your chances of getting discovered by your targeted crowd**– This is especially true with email. A lot of messages crash and burn, thanks to their poor CTR percentage. For example, if you don’t engage with most of the messages a certain brand sends your way – Gmail will figure out that you’re not really interested in that type of content, and it will immediately be relocated to your promotions or spam folder. Gmail regularly filters emails you receive on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. If your emails have great CTR numbers, then your messages have a better chance of actually being seen, opened, and clicked on by your recipients. If your CTR percentages are terrible, your emails will be rounded up and thrown in the trash.
Unfortunately, even though all this sounds pretty simple, important, and straightforward, optimizing your CTR isn’t really an easy task. A lot of different things come into play. Having a below average CTR can be soul crushing. Especially when you know that better click-through-rates are beneficial to your company on all sorts of different levels. The whole pressure of earning more site traffic, higher rankings and cheaper CPC tends to get people obsessing over all the wrong details.
In order to increase your overall CTR percentage, you should focus on the following things:
#### Create Better Content
Improving the quality of your content should be your no.1 task. Why? – Because it’s the only thing that actually communicates with your audience.
Your content is like a river running through the jungle where all sorts of animals come to drink water. If the river runs dry, the animals will be forced to look somewhere else.
As simple as that.
If your site content doesn’t offer your user everything they want from you, if your content doesn’t convince them that you’re the real deal – then they’re going to leave. They’re going to go somewhere else for answers. Some other cat will provide them with everything you failed to. This will naturally destroy your CTR.
That’s why you need to do everything in your power to create content that’s valuable to your crowd. You need to come up with blog posts, case studies, use cases, white papers, videos – basically everything that would be of interest to the people you want to visit your site. But this is old news. We have talked about this in our previous article: “[The Shut Up and Take My Money Strategy](https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945)”.
As someone who’s trying to climb up the ladder in SERP, you need to constantly solve problems for your readers, demonstrate your value, and everything else that makes you better than your competitors. You need to influence your readers in every part of your buyer’s funnel.
It’s your job to make sure that your content is far better than your competitor’s. If you want to become the golden-haired lion in your niche or market – you need to come up with [10x the content](https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday).
####**Leverage the Right Keyword**Focusing on the right keywords is of great importance to everyone who’s interested in improving their overall CTR. If you want to create smart blog posts, infographics, and advertisements that grab people’s attention – you need to make sure that they’re built around relevant keywords.
You want to target users who are already in the market looking for products and services that you sell. It’s always better for you, as a publisher, to create creatives that feed a particular ongoing demand, instead of investing in something that’s still looking to raise a particular level of interest.
[Leveraging proper buyer keywords](http://backlinko.com/commercial-intent) in your content and advertisements will surely help you skyrocket your CTR percentages.
####**Add Great Images**As the saying goes: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This is particularly true in advertising. A great photo has the power of selling almost anything, offline and online.
People love strong pictures.
They love to absorb information through images.
The modern Web is a place where good and interesting visuals make all the difference.
Although content still plays a key role in SEO and getting people to spend more time on your site and constantly revisit your web address – visual content really is the one which ties the entire story together. It helps people make deeper and more powerful memories of your efforts. Terrific visual content does everything for the user. It stimulates emotions and helps them connect with your words, intent and creatives on a more personal level, and thus – drastically improves your CTR.
####**Go Big On the Text**Even though creating compelling and interesting visual content is of great importance, you still need to focus on producing smart texts. Yes, cool colors and graphics help catch a user’s attention – but they still don’t really have the power to successfully guide them through your sales funnel.
They provoke interest, but they do not sell.
This is where long, smart content comes to shine!**Because Content Is King (Kong)**.
That was a cheap shot, wasn’t it?
But I’m not talking about those annoying sales letters that go on for days. No. The only content that truly works online and helps brands improve their CTR is one where a certain writer does a great job of answering the most frequently-raised objections about his niche, products, and services.
It’s essential for your business that you continue to produce well-crafted and well-written content that serves to educate your users and relieves them of any bad thoughts or opinions they might have about your products, services, niche, or industry.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re working on a blog post, an ebook, or just another search/display ad – you should spend some additional time on crafting the right title for it.
####**Make Sure that Your Headlines Roar**Why are headlines so important, you ask? – Well, because that’s the first thing your target audience will see. If you don’t win them over with your headline, chances are – they’re not going to click on your text/advertisement.
Naturally, this doesn’t really mean that you should use your headlines to manipulate your audience to click on your site. As we already wrote in one of our previous articles: [They used clickbait titles for SEO. What happened next will blow your mind!](https://fourdots.com/blog/clickbait-titles-seo-2634) – Google is paying close attention to the quality of your articles and headlines. It’s time to stop focusing solely on vanity metrics and start thinking about things like how many people actually get what they need from your content and advertisements.
That’s why your headlines can’t be built around something that won’t be delivered in your content or ad.
Nothing has the power to improve your CTR like a smart and engaging headline.
It doesn’t really matter where you rank in SERP, if your headline is attractive – users will be drawn to click on it. The strategy behind this is simple – the better the headline, the more people will be provoked to engage with it and thus, improve your overall CTR.
Even though this all seems pretty straightforward, crafting powerful headlines is not really that easy to do. There’s an entire science behind this particular way of instantly grabbing people’s attention. Regardless of the fact that a lot of industry experts say that you should always try to stuff your headlines with important keywords, numbers, and a general sense of urgency – in my experience, the only thing you should really aim to do is come up with titles that feel relevant, natural, and what is most important – appealing to the users. You literally have to hypnotize them from the very start with your wit and expertise.
Luckily for us, the guys over at [Copyblogger](http://www.copyblogger.com/) have dedicated an entire section of their blog to helping people learn how to design amazing headlines. Visit their site and browse through their amazing content. You’ll learn a lot, if you truly pay attention to their content.
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post from top to bottom. I hope our latest article has provided all the necessary insight to help you improve your overall CTR and become the golden-haired lion of your niche or market.
That’s it for now,
See you again soon,
Best wishes,
Goran @ [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/academy)
---
## Posts: The "Shut Up and Take My Money" Content Strategy
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945](https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945.md)
**Published:** 2017-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content strategy, ideal customer, Sales funnel
### Content
## A Guide to Creating Content Strategy that Influences Every Stage of Your Sales Funnel
You know the meme:*Perfect, isn’t it?!
Regardless of what you do or sell online, one of your top business goals is always to attract this type of customer.
Why is that? – Well, this is**the archetype of an ideal shopper/client/customer**.
The picture says it all.
Even though it’s mostly used as a joke, when you really sit down and look at it from all sorts of different angles – you’ll see that this is undoubtedly the image of a completely satisfied customer.
It conjures up a clear image in everyone’s mind, of a guy who is literally blown away with the deal that’s being presented to him.
This is what everybody wants. Everyone loves a happy customer. Both salesmen and shoppers. There’s no question about it.
Why? – Because**both parties are winners in this scenario**.
That’s why we have decided here at Four Dots to set this image as one of our goals. Especially in the content marketing department. We want to create something that generates this level of excitement, so we have invested a lot of thought into designing a strategy that will take us there.
In this post, we’re going to teach you how to reach**The Fry***. We’re going to share our method on how to generate this level of interest from your users, by adding a smart content strategy to your already existent marketing processes:
## The Search for the Ultimately Satisfied Customer
It’s clear as daylight – every single entrepreneur, business and marketer dreams about transforming their regular, cold leads into raging fans and customers, like [Philip J. Fry](http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Philip_J._Fry_I)here.
They all wish to impress their target audience to such an extent, that they literally start throwing money at them!
Even though getting people to go bananas over our brand, products and services is something that every single one of us desires – it’s important to have in mind that this isn’t really an easy task to accomplish.
A lot of people fail miserably.
Why is that? – There are literally thousands of different reasons, but the most prominent of all are:
- Most businessmen don’t really know [how to successfully communicate their values to their leads and customers](http://www.jimmydaly.com/the-blank-slate-problem/).
- They don’t really [understand their shoppers’ intent](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/buying-cycle-and-triggers/)or how to successfully connect with them across various channels and influence their decisions.
This is where [content marketing](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862) comes to shine.
All of you who follow our blog know that we have already talked about the importance of designing effective customer personas and creating content that ignites an actual conversation with your customers.
Yes, we’re referring to the famous human-oriented approach post [here](https://fourdots.com/blog/creating-content-audience-will-adore-2611). However, that was only the first part in our general content strategy. In this text, we’re going to expand on that idea and take you deeper into our process!
## All Aboard the Content Marketing Gravy Train!
Content marketing was HUGE in 2016. And judging by everything that’s currently going on in [digital marketing and its evolution over the recent decades](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) – it’s going to get bigger. A LOT bigger.
Just like Mario when he pops that bad-ass mushroom!
But, again – why is that?!
Well, there will always be value in content marketing. It’s not going to go away. Content marketing may change a bit over time or evolve into something slightly different – but there will always be a need for educating your audience and feeding them all sorts of different information that’s created with the purpose of establishing a deeper, more profound connection with your brand.
Don’t believe us?! – Just watch!
The guys at [Curata](http://www.curata.com/blog/content-marketing-statistics-the-ultimate-list/) claim that in 2016,**51% of all B2B buyers used content as a guide for making B2B purchasing decisions.**Apart from that, the results of this particular survey also point out that**95% of B2B buyers said they are willing to consider vendor-related content as trustworthy.**###**This All Sounds Great – But How Does One Exactly Use Content Marketing to Turn their Regular, Unmotivated Leads into Philip J. Frys?**By developing a smart content strategy that actually influences your target crowd throughout every stage of your sales funnel.
You have to be smart.
You cannot really pour all your efforts into one big blog post and expect to sky-rocket your sales.
No. It doesn’t really work like that. You cannot just write that one big, fat, informative article and ask your users to read your content, like your page, sign up for your newsletter, tell their mom you’re awesome, and immediately buy everything on your website.
Nope. Not really an option.
Content marketing is an exhausting game, and it requires you to choose your battles and take time to actually win over your customers. If you want to win big here, you need to focus all your energy on crafting material that actually solves problems for your crowd.
Apart from that, you also need to dig in deeper and do everything in your power to set up a strategy that efficiently streamlines this process and amplifies your work.
As a brand interested in generating tons of new sales in 2017, it’s your job to be omnipresent online. You need to keep chasing your customers with content that convinces and converts even the coldest of leads. In order to do that, you cannot just sit down, write a piece of content, share it on all your social media profiles and wait for a miracle. Nope. You need to invest in its actual distribution and figure out alternative ways on how to spike interest in your work.
It’s of crucial importance that you continually survey your target audience, design buyer personas that are actual built on more than just basic details about your shoppers, and add them to proper case formulas. After that, you need to optimize your content, reach out to wherever there’s a chance your material might add some additional value and grab some new customers, monitor your bounce rates, etc.
As you probably know, content is an important piece of any sales process, but in order for it to work, marketers must cater to their buyers’ preferences by producing readily-available, cross-channel material that buyers can access on their terms, to aid them in the decision-making process.
That’s why, apart from vividly describing your ideas and values through your content, you must focus on creating compelling materials that actually speak to your potential customers in every stage of this process.
In order to drive more sales and make your users scream “Shut up and make my money!” as loud as they possibly can, your content must be created for 3 different purposes.
### 1. Top of the Funnel: The “Who Goes There?” Stage
The “awareness” stage focuses on developing content that has only one purpose in mind and that is to charm your target audience.
It’s all about making a great first impression.
Awareness content should generate some genuine interest in your brand.
Your job is to establish that first contact and get people to acknowledge your existence. Apart from that, it’s also important to get your leads to remember your style, your mission in business and accept you as a relevant source in your niche or industry.
There are a lot of examples of great brand awareness content out there. Personally, I really love what [Rand Fishkin and MOZ](https://moz.com/rand/) are doing in this department. Mr. Fishkin’s amazing blog is doing wonders for his business. By producing all sorts of interesting videos that cover some of the most popular subject in his industry, Rand has managed to turn his blog into a real lead magnet. And not just that, he has actually managed to develop a community of experts that selflessly share their knowledge and expertise on his site. This has naturally helped Mr. Fishkin build his authority online and make MOZ an industry leader when it comes to learning about SEO and digital marketing.
Even though this sounds quite easy, in order for this particular type of content to work, you need to make sure that it stimulates a deeper curiosity for your brand, products and services. It’s not enough for people to remember your name and website address.
No. The crucial part of your strategy should be focused on helping your target crowd see you as a website or business that’s worth revisiting on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
So, who’s your target here? – Basically all kinds of people looking for answers, resources, education, research data, opinions, and insight.
The types of content that usually work well in this stage are blog posts, webinars, guides, ultimate lists, how-to articles, videos, infographics, etc.
### 2. Middle of the Funnel: The Research and Consideration Stage
In this part of the funnel you focus on turning your newly-acquired leads into actual customers. The research and consideration stage is all about the people who are doing heavy research on whether or not they should actually do business with you.
They are looking for any type of information that could tell them if your products or services are worth their money. This stage is basically all about stating your case and forcing the people who now frequently re-visit your site to see what’s really going on there.
Your mission in this stage is to create some urgency and help your potential buyers recognize all the value behind your business. You need to show them what separates your from your competitors.
How can you do that? – By publishing all sorts of different testimonials, success stories, detailed pricing information, advanced guides and support information, white papers aimed towards decision-makers, comparisons and targeted case studies that showcase how you have helped someone achieve their goals.
Focus on proving your concept. Nothing will be more persuasive for your targeted potential shoppers than content that actually promises and showcases success.
### 3. The Final Phase: Decision time, a.k.a The Big, Fat Sell
If you’ve done everything right in the previous two stages, then this is where the “Shut up and take my money” moment happens.
This “Big, fat sell” stage is where you capture your leads in your funnel. It’s where people figure out exactly what kind of customer they want to be. Are they interested in, for example, a beginner or a premium package. Do they want to start small, and then work their way up to a more serious deal; or are they willing to immediately go for the whole shebang.
The important thing is that they’re actually ready to buy, but something is still holding them back. They need a little push. It’s your job to anticipate their desires and immediately provide them with options that will help your leads easily transition into sales. This is where things such as free trials, compelling call-to-actions and data sheets tend to do the trick.
Once you accomplish all that, once you finally generate a sale, it’s time to focus all your energy on retaining these customers. It’s always easier to sell your products and services to people who are already familiar with your brand and the quality of your work. That’s why developing a proper customer retention and brand loyalty strategy should be on top of everyone’s priority list. There are numerous tactics that could help you increase your customer lifetime value and loyalty. The things that usually do the trick are success stories, exclusive offers, special mentions in your content. Focus on quality, not quantity, when it comes to producing your content, monitoring its performance and help your audience achieve something that they love, etc.*Thank you for taking some time out of your busy day to read this article. I hope it has helped you understand how to fully communicate your value to your customers and set up an effective content marketing strategy that will smoothly guide them through your entire sales process.*
---
## Posts: 2017 Content Marketing Calendar (Infographic + Template)
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/2017-content-marketing-calendar-2900](https://fourdots.com/blog/2017-content-marketing-calendar-2900)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/2017-content-marketing-calendar-2900.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/2017-content-marketing-calendar-2900.md)
**Published:** 2017-01-17
**Last Updated:** 2017-01-17
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** Content Marketing Trends, content strategy
### Content
We felt bad about not getting you anything for Christmas, so here is our little present for you, our beloved reader! We’re just going to assume that you haven’t been naughty, and we got you a brand new Content Marketing Calendar.
Here you’ll find an infographic of all notable events/campaigns, and a sign up form to receive our Google Sheet Content Marketing Calendar template, that is filled with actionable tips, and an editorial calendar that you might appreciate.
## Do I really need a Content Marketing Calendar?
God yes.
Start of the year is a great time to take stock of the previous one, and begin making plans for the year ahead of us. While digital marketing tends to allow some liberties with how and when you do certain things, any success that you achieve without a carefully planned and timed strategy is more a fluke than something you can hope to scale.
For instance, while on its own, one month might be as suitable as the next one for a social media contest you’ve thought about running, you shouldn’t just go ahead with it without first taking a close look at how that particular campaign fits in with the rest of your strategy for the client in question. So, do you have enough credibility to actually engage audience on social media? If not, you might want to first associate your brand with influencers in your niche, get published on important blogs, etc. Would you benefit more if the contest coincided with a new product release, an important industry event or something your competitors are doing?
The fact that you are not isolated and have to respond to the changes in your market will necessitate some flexibility in your strategy, i.e. you might have to change some plans as you go; but if you want any kind of consistent success, you’ll need a schedule and you’ll need to stick to it as much as possible.
Basically, no tactic or promotional method is an island, they exist in the context of your industry, competitors, moment in time, your other tactics, desired audience, etc. This is why the only way to make sure that your promotional efforts are complementing each other and bringing you as much benefit as possible, is to have a detailed plan for their rollout.
Here is to another productive year our dear colleagues! Happy (end of the) holidays!
---
## Posts: An SEO Carol: A Timeless Classic
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-carol-timeless-classic-2866](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-carol-timeless-classic-2866)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-carol-timeless-classic-2866.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-carol-timeless-classic-2866.md)
**Published:** 2016-12-23
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Google Algorithm Update, Hummingbird algorithm, Panda algorithm, penguin algorithm
### Content
>*We have endeavored in this Ghostly little article,**to raise the Ghosts of Google updates,**which shall not put our readers out of humor with themselves,**with each other, with the season, with us.**May it haunt their digital strategies pleasantly,**and no one wish to lay it.**Their faithful Friends and Experts, F.D.**December, 2016*>*>
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> In the light of the upcoming holidays, we’re going to take advantage of a Dickens classic to metaphorically describe the state of the SEO industry and help you prepare for the inevitable changes.
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> My dear marketer, this Christmas, we’re taking you on an almost two-decade-long journey; you’re about to be visited by three ghosts, who will teach you everything you need to know about the major Google algorithms that have affected website rankings; present the current state of affairs and guide you on your path towards the top of SERPs.
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> ##**Stave 2: The ghost of updates’ past**>
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> On the first night, the ghost takes us to the year 2000. It’s December 11th and the then-just-a-startup Google grants us a powerful information search and retrieval companion that enables us to search for… well anything. Any kind of information can be found on websites without their own search capability, quickly highlighting and jumping to search terms on any page.
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> Now we jump to 2003, to the cross-linking battle for the elevation of link quality, with the goal to put an end to massive linking from co-domains and hidden text and links; Dominic was like a cold war; we all knew something was going on, but no one could really put a finger on it. Then came Esmeralda to announce that it’s not just Google Dance, it’s the Everflux, and the [Search](https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764) Engines were definitely experiencing huge structural changes in regards to Google.
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> And here we are, where it all truly began – November 2003, Florida – the land of suspense; a multitude of sites losing their rankings, raging business owners regretting their low-value SEO tactics, like keyword stuffing, that should have died at the turn of the century. Out of bed and straight into their worst nightmares, no more hidden tags, invisible texts.
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> As we float through time, we see Austin and Brandy, cracking down on tricky on-page tactics, paying more attention to anchor text relevance, as well as Latent Semantic Indexing, boosting keyword analysis, increasing Google’s ability to find synonyms for search terms.
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> Exactly 5 years into the 21st century, we are introduced to the new ‘no follow’ attribute, enacted to seize control over outbound link quality. Even though it wasn’t a traditional algorithm update, for the first time we managed to effectively respond to spammy blog comments. ‘Member link farming? The Jagger series of updates washed them off the face of the Earth, together with reciprocal and paid links.
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> On February 23, 2011, we met with Panda, at that time the biggest update of them all. Affecting almost 12% of all search results, it hit content farms, giants among websites with low quality content, thin affiliate websites which lacked content, websites with a large ad-to-content ratio and over-optimized websites; all with the aim to provide users with results of the highest quality.
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> April was the cruelest month, the coldest of them all; introducing Penguin and aggressively punishing websites which excessively used exact match anchors. No, by now we could see that it wasn’t the first update to fight [spammy content](https://fourdots.com/blog/clickbait-titles-seo-2634), it’s just that Google keeps getting better and better at this game of cat and mouse.
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> Next, we flew side by side with the Hummingbird, an update which helps Google better understand queries, synonyms, search intent and conversational search. By then, it was surely considered the friendliest update of them all, designed for search engines and users equally.
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> What follows us on this flight is Google’s Pigeon, providing more accurate local search results, mostly affecting the rankings of local businesses.
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> ##**Stave 3: The Ghost of updates’ present**>
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> On the second night, we find ourselves hovering over the masses, while hypnotized by their small screens. Although much smaller than expected, Mobilegeddon peaked on April 22 [last year](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) and is putting pressure on web designers and marketers to think mobile-first.
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> Naturally, with nearly [60% of searches](http://searchengineland.com/report-nearly-60-percent-searches-now-mobile-devices-255025) happening on mobile devices, Google started giving mobile-aware pages an advantage over unoptimized ones in mobile searches.
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> More than half of present-day consumers won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile website, and [40% will turn to competitors](https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/mobile-marketing-statistics-for-2016) instead. Another reason for marketers to pay extra attention to the mobile experience is related to the fact that the average smartphone conversion rates are up by more than 60% in comparison to desktop ones.
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> To put it simply, mobile optimized websites are flash-less, written in large font, scrollable only vertically, and when it comes to links – they are placed far enough apart, so that the user can easily tap the correct one.
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> ##**Stave 4: The Ghost of updates’ future**>
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> Embrace the change, as it is the only constant in the SEO world; we have tried to depict the biggest of them all, but the fact is that they occur up to 600 times a year. Certainly, it is a stressful environment to work in; still, panic and hasty reactions are counter-productive. Instead, once a major algorithm update is announced, wait to see whether your website’s impacted at all. If there is a change in your metrics, learn more about the aspects of your website the update in questions was designed to target.
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> All this sounds almost effortless, but what happens more often than not is that Google keeps the details of its work to itself. It always seems to be one step ahead of you – can you reverse the situation?
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> With so many changes occurring in the last year, it’s only natural to expect to see them develop further in 2017. Although this way Google keeps marketers on their toes, we can look back on some co-occurring trends to come up with a plan of attack (or rather defense):
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> ###**1. All about the user**>
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> As we’ve seen in the past, search engines have become better listeners; users have picked up on that and are no longer afraid to express their minds more freely. Namely, users have formed a habit of entering full queries and phrases, and consequently, they are being provided with better results.
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> It’s not that specific keywords are no longer important, but brands will have to optimize their content with user intent in focus: what is it that they are searching for in order to land on your page?
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> ###**2. Quick but rich answers**>
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> There’s not a content writer in the world who hasn’t been bothered by the fact that optimizing website content for Google is not the same as optimizing for users. Once it was imperative for a web page to have at least [250 words of content](http://seocopywriting.com/whats-the-best-word-count-for-seo-copywriting/) in order to rank, and that, too, was considered thin content. As a result, a consumer would arrive on your services or products page only to be bombarded with, in some cases, 500+ words of rather unnecessary content, even when it all could have been explained in a few sentences. Thankfully, schema markup has gained momentum, helping website owners achieve enhanced listings on SERP, while providing users with the most relevant information for their query.
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> ###**3. Be present**>
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> Everywhere. And we mean it. Multi-channel marketing has been around for some time, and now we’re looking at cross-channel marketing as its extension. Although the two concepts seem similar, understanding the difference could make or break your future marketing efforts: multi-channeling refers to establishing a presence on more than one platform, whereas cross-channeling implies using more than one channel to market your brand in an integrated way (e.g. sending social media users targeted ads based on their searches). Cross-channel aids brands in creating a consistent brand presence across multiple channels, allowing users to move seamlessly between devices and platforms to make a purchase.
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> ###**4. Voice search on the go**>
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> Although the popularity of smartphones keeps growing, they are far from flawless. Despite the fact that they allow users to have access to everything at the palm of their hands, just a finger tap away, it’s that same finger that keeps getting in the way of instantly accessing much needed information. Mobile keyboards are difficult to handle, especially on the go, and that is why many turn to voice search.
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> Speech recognition continues to improve, with [error rates](http://www.popsci.com/google-ai) going down from 25% to 8% in only two years. With more people performing longer and more natural queries instead of the keywordy ones, it has been a challenge for marketers to adapt to these demands. As Google focuses on providing users direct answers, it means content will have to be written in a way which gives concrete answers to certain questions in order to benefit from increased exposure.
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> ###**5. Better safe than sorry**>
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> For some time now, Google has been putting emphasis on the importance of HTTPS in order to deliver the best search experience. Marketers and SEOs are advised to secure their websites with a 2048-bit encryption, as modern-day consumers are familiar with the HTTPS protocol and will look for it on websites that ask for personal information.
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> ##**Stave 5: Not the End of It**>
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> Our postmodern vision of this timeless classic, like its contemporaries, has no ending. The Google dance will last for many years, and in order to keep up – do dwell on the past while stepping into the future.
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> You’ll never find out just how*Google improves [spam filters](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059), but keeping track of all the metrics it targets is the best medicine for the prevention of Post-traumatic Search Syndrome. Tying the construction of your website to anyone perceived algorithm signal is a risky business, leaving you in fear of Google’s constant tweaks. Instead, focus on what Google puts emphasis on when making changes to get one step ahead and avoid turbulence in organic search traffic.
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> Don’t look at Google as the enemy; its primary goal is to provide users the best possible results, thus pushing webmasters to design better websites and create better content. The updates are not working against SEO as a whole, they’re working against black-hat SEO exclusively.
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> The New Year countdown is about to start, and a new battle for rankings is ahead.
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> May the metrics be ever in your favor!
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## Posts: Content x Account-Based Marketing: How to Adapt & Evolve in a New Environment
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862.md)
**Published:** 2016-11-29
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** Account Based Marketing, B2B, content marketing, content strategy
**Summary:** The process of production and implementation of content is reversed completely. Therefore, your strategy for development needs to match not just the needs of an account that you are targeting, but also the content consumption cycle of the members of one particular account.
### Content
As one of the latest trends in the world of digital marketing, ABM is triggering a lot of confusion and even controversy among experts and stakeholders. This technique is already proven to be highly beneficial for enterprises and large corporations, and now we are witnessing an increase in demand for this particular method of marketing even among mid-sized enterprises and moderately smaller businesses.
While [agencies worldwide](/) are remaining reluctant in offering ABM as a part of their service, some pioneering companies are seeing this trend as their best chance to keep a competitive edge on the market.
ABM is rumored to be the best form of marketing in terms of ROI. While it’s not unreasonable to expect impressive results when you are investing time and effort on one account alone, one company or even on one prospect individually – getting from point A to point B (and M) is still a challenging mission.
Adapting your content marketing strategy to this new environment can also be an intimidating operation. While it is relatively easy to comprehend the system behind this setup, implementation of the actual strategy can be quite difficult due to several obstacles.
## Account-Based Marketing Basics and Main Challenges (The Oversimplified Explanation)
When thinking about marketing strategies and campaigns, the great majority of B2B marketing companies follow this train of thought:*1. What message are we trying to send?
2. How do we plan on distributing it?
3. Who will respond to our message?*The ABM approach is completely different, however. The process of production and implementation of content is reversed completely. Therefore, your strategy for development needs to match not just the needs of an account that you are targeting, but also the content consumption cycle of the members of one particular account.
So, you want to start rethinking your strategy and tailor your research-production-distribution process so that it fits the needs of just one (or few at most) accounts individually. Just flip the buying cycle, and provide answers to the following questions:*1. Who are we trying to reach?
2. How do they consume content?
3. What is the message that we want them to receive?*With this process in mind, you are certainly saving a lot of time and resources when establishing a connection with your desired clients. By measuring engagement across your marketing channels, you can pinpoint your targets and contact the right person with a clearly defined goal and minimal investment.
Now, doesn’t that sound wonderful?
In theory – of course. But in reality, responding to inquiries and interests that require immediate attention can be extremely demanding.
>*For example, let’s say that you have a client who is manufacturing furniture.*>*Now let’s say that there is a certain fast food franchise that is looking for a company that will supply dozens, or hundreds of their facilities with a completely new set of chairs.*>*This account could bring your client a six-figure profit, and, naturally, your client wants to have a go and is willing to invest in an ABM campaign that will target this prospect particularly.*## How Does That Affect Your Content Marketing Strategy?
Content production, without a community, is a waste of resources. This is a painful fact that we are all aware of – a great deal of content that is shared online will never be read. While B2B marketing is more focused on the pull instead of push marketing techniques in general, inciting that initial spark of interest still has a lot to do with how you are delivering your content, and via whom.
The impact of the content delivered highly depends on the person and the resource that is delivering the content. So how quickly can you recruit and educate the right influencer, whom you can rely on to boost the efforts of your push strategy? Or, once you spot a distribution channel used by the members of the target account, how fast can you make sure that your investment will inspire the right action?
>*A CEO of a fast food franchise company won’t go shopping for chairs, naturally. They will just sign the contract once they are provided with the key turn solution by their Heads of Departments, or Senior Managers.*>*You want to target someone who matters, and go further down the decision pyramid. On the example presented here, that would be a project leader, or someone who oversees the obtaining of offers and performs the primary evaluation.*Of course, the tricky part of ABM is the fact that you cannot utilize a package or just one principle procedure that will be adapted to all accounts. On the contrary!
Each account that you are targeting will have a different hierarchy that you have to analyze and penetrate in order to get your content noticed by your target. You should address the individual organization, consider trends of that industry, follow the best practices based on the location, and their digital behavior. Knowing which CRM system they use can be quite helpful as well.
Some companies believe that they’ve already successfully utilized this form of marketing before, and that the only thing that’s changed in the meantime is the name of the actual practice. In all honesty, here in Four Dots, we also develop individual**account-based campaigns**sometimes, but we do not claim that we are providing specifically ABM marketing services. At least not yet.
In terms of organization, management, and, what concerns us the most, content marketing – ABM is a game changer. So, before you start considering adapting to the model, you have to be sure that you are actually ready for any challenge in this field, and you have to start with your workforce.
## ABM is a Talent Acquisition Nightmare
Inability to find an experienced ABM marketing coordinator is just the tip of the iceberg. But when it comes to inbound marketing tactics in general and how they can be translated to this model, my recommendation would be to either focus your team on a few branches of industry or acquire talent once the client is already onboard and the strategy is determined.
In my humble opinion, these are the skills and practices that you need to have at your disposal to be prepared to provide actual results in the ABM marketing industry and justify your client’s investment:**Competition analysis***(including SEO, [SMM](/search-engine-marketing) & Content Marketing research + comparative research)***Lead generation***(including creating buyer personas, target market analysis, ideal customer profile development etc.)***Marketing strategy development***(setting up campaigns for each channel, determining deliverables, establishing a system of content performance analysis)***Content development***(basic design, copywriting skills, landing pages)***Content distribution***(thorough knowledge of social media platforms, [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages), off site SEO techniques, content promotion, email marketing)***SEO, CRO & Sales funnel optimization***(including [on site SEO](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services), CRO monitoring, knowledge of Google Analytics, search console)*In short, you don’t need a content manager who will handle and direct your ABM content marketing clients. You need a team of experienced employees to handle the integration of this size. The harsh reality is – organizing a team, and making sure that they can deliver direct ABM solutions in a record amount of time is… well, let’s say that it’s quite daunting Because once your client reaches out to you and outlines that they want to target one account especially, you will rarely have the time to test the best practices and establish what works and what doesn’t.
The main challenge of Content x ABM integration is urgency. Being prepared to deliver custom-built [marketing](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-platform-for-agencies) solutions in a record amount of time is sometimes difficult, even for big agencies.
In terms of resources, we are all aware that [80% B2B decision makers](http://b2bprblog.marxcommunications.com/b2bpr/top-b2b-pr-mistakes-to-avoid?utm_content=10778068&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Webbiquity.com) prefer to learn about companies and opportunities through intelligent content marketing, and through a series of articles and similar assets. Everything that usually works in B2B marketing will fly in ABM as well – white papers, emails, webinars, blog posts, presentations, infographics, eBooks, podcasts, surveys, interactive content and so on.
So it’s not the question of what should be produced, that’s not the issue. The mindset of how we are approaching production of this content is the thing you want to change.
## Content x Decision Making Process – The Actual Difference
While your options remain the same, the purpose of ABM content is somewhat different from traditional B2B marketing content. Whereas with the latter, you target as many potential leads as possible, with ABM content, you are looking to influence only a handful of important people who decide on the actions within a company (or a few of them).
At the core of**account-based marketing**is the fact that you are targeting only a small number of potential or existing accounts. The logical result is that such focused content will be far more personalized than your traditional B2B content. Remember that personalized methods are often not reusable.
But that’s not the only thing you should worry about.
Content mapping process needs to take all the aforementioned into account. This means that you should have a resource ready for each step of the decision hierarchy of the company at hand.
Sometimes, you will be creating content for a single person, a single decision-maker in a single organization. At other times, it will be content tailored to the CIO’s of five different organizations in a certain industry you are targeting. Sometimes it will be aimed at all of the decision-makers in the key accounts in a certain industry.
Depending on how many people you are targeting, the level of personalization will vary. As [the experts from Engagio point out](http://www.engagio.com/5-account-based-content-creation-hacks/), personalization is a spectrum in**account-based marketing**, not a binary issue. In any case, it will still be far more personalized than with other types of B2B marketing.
## Content x Research
All successful ABM campaigns have one thing in common – they have been backed by a lot of research of**key accounts**, i.e. the organizations and the decision-makers within those organizations. When it comes to creating ABM content, knowing [the target content consumer](https://fourdots.com/blog/creating-content-audience-will-adore-2611) is more important than with any other type of content creation.
Who is this person? Where did they go to school? What did they major in? Do they have an opinion on the type of service/product you provide? What would be their major need considering their position (CEO, CFO, CIO, CMO)?
Even if content is not personalized as much as it sometimes is in ABM, there will still exist a need for increased amount of research into potential accounts and content consumers.
## Where Content Meets Sales
Usually, sales experts are happy to leave it to marketing people to come up with marketing content. Likewise, marketing people will usually be quite content working in isolation, crafting their content without too much outside influence. Then, once their content gives birth to leads, sales can move in and close the deal.
In**account-based marketing**, this is not how things work.
In ABM, sales and marketing work together for a number of reasons. For one, sales are very likely to know the account and the decision-makers. Also, they will be more knowledgeable about what certain accounts need and how certain decision-makers can be better influenced. They will also have a better grasp of [the customer journey](https://hbr.org/2010/11/using-customer-journey-maps-to), which will enable them to provide invaluable input for the marketing team.
Contrariwise, marketing people can give their opinion on the traditional sales content which gets sent to existing and potential accounts as part of the sales process. With their input, such content and messages can become much more creatively put-together, enticing and effective.
It should be pointed out that the sales department is not the only one that can get involved in ABM campaigns and efforts. For instance, if marketing people are crafting content for a CIO of a certain company, they will probably benefit from expert input of their own developers (in case they are selling software of some kind, for example). The same is true for every other department whose account counterpart might be one of the decision-makers targeted by ABM practices.
## The Closing Word
Account-based marketing (ABM) content is heavily personalized, well-researched and it often requires input from additional departments. As such, it is also more difficult and time-consuming to create, which is a nightmare when you know you need it as soon as possible.
That being said, [the numbers](http://triblio.com/account-based-marketing-statistics/) are clearly in favor of ABM and it will pay off to put one’s money into creating great content that will support a superbly crafted and executed ABM strategy.
We are interested in hearing your opinion as well. Let us know what do you think what is the main challenge of content marketing and account-based marketing integration :)
---
## Posts: Clickbait Titles in SEO. Risks and Limits
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/clickbait-titles-seo-2634](https://fourdots.com/blog/clickbait-titles-seo-2634)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/clickbait-titles-seo-2634.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/clickbait-titles-seo-2634.md)
**Published:** 2016-08-29
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** clickbait, Content Marketing Trends, content strategy
### Content
Clickbait is all our fault.
Media companies, news sites and basically the entire Internet have been reduced to clickbait titles like “19 flavoured mojitos you never knew you needed.” Hollow articles without any substance that exist only to show you ads on your journey to see [that youtube clip of the chewbacca mom](https://www.facebook.com/candaceSpayne/videos/10209653193067040/).
But the good people of the Internet are fighting back.
The rise of adblockers, metrics that ignore clicks and views, and the decline of visits to “classic” clickbait outlets all spell a story of recovery. Have we reached a peak in clickbait? Are clickbait titles and articles dying?
##**Yes: they’re dying a slow, horrible death**[Digital publishing behemoths](http://www.stateofdigitalpublishing.com/) like Buzzfeed have built their empire on clickbait titles. Buzzfeed has amassed “only” $170m in profits in 2015, and is currently valued at $1.5bn. This was arguably the main incentive for other media outlets to hop on the clickbait train and transform their meaningful headlines into meaningless garbage.
All in the name of page views, which means more eyes on ads, which means more revenue.
But this revenue model is slowly being pushed out. Even Buzzfeed isn’t immune to the shift in people’s attention spans and the fact that they are getting better at smelling BS from miles away daily . Buzzfeed had to slash their[expected revenue for 2016 in half](http://www.recode.net/2016/4/12/11586082/buzzfeed-revenue-advertising-2016-facebook):
“What may be more consequential than the size of BuzzFeed’s miss is the reason for BuzzFeed’s miss. One theory is that BuzzFeed’s core ad product — “native” stories it writes on behalf of marketers — no longer works as well. Another theory, favored by people who would like BuzzFeed to succeed, is that last year’s BuzzFeed’s content strategy moved faster than its monetization strategy. That is: Last year BuzzFeed started focusing on creating content for other people’s platforms — in particular, video that appears on Facebook — but hasn’t been able to make much money from that content, because those platforms are still figuring out their ad models.”
One old idea that’s becoming fashionable is evident in the success of [The Wirecutter](http://thewirecutter.com/), a relatively small website that posts reviews on an eclectic collection of gadgets. When Brian Lam founded Wirecutter, he had no ads. Instead, he used special links to products he reviewed, which lead to Amazon. For every person who came from Wirecutter to purchase the reviewed product on Amazon, Lam gets a cut of the sale. For those of you not familiar with this process, it is called affiliate marketing.
With just a few dozen articles per month, Wirecutter drove $150m in 2015. “We move as much product as a place 10 times bigger than us in terms of audience,” Lam said in a Bloomberg Technology interview. “That’s because people trust us. We earn that trust by having such deeply-researched articles.”
The shift in mentality is in staggering contrast to the classic goals of clickbait articles and sponsored content.
##**Search Engine Optimisation – SEO – is the nail in clickbait’s coffin.**The higher up you are in search results, the more people will find you and – you guessed it – the more eyes you’ll get on your site, which means more revenue for you.
How do you get yourself up there within the top 1% of search results? Search Engine Optimisation. Now, there’s an entire shady industry behind SEO, but the easiest way to get optimised quickly is to write a lot of articles that reference your website. That way you’re signaling Google you’re a popular address on the internet, and this will push you up its results.You could even hire a talent-outsourcing company (and its legion of highly trained monkeys – no offence to the poor, unfortunate souls) to produce empty content for you.The only problem is that you’re making trash content. Empty shells of copy-pasted opinions that improve nothing, serve no one, and live on the Internet as future link rot.
Content writers are tasked with producing articles on strange, non-relevant and non-sensical topics like “Fashion trends for working parents” or “Iconic Actors and Islands Related to Them” just so they could remotely mention your website in the article. Anything below 750 words, or even 1000, is considered trash and will not be graced with high rankings by Google’s algorithms.*Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/845091-tldr*The Internet is drowning in 1000-worded articles on gibberish. All because [Google’s web crawlers prefer](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614) that length over shorter articles.
As [David Weiner of the Awl.com puts it](https://theawl.com/a-few-thoughts-on-longform-inspired-by-the-current-debate-over-its-significance-and-necessity-in-4d8853fbe98f#.pkq7khx4a): Most longform is bad. The problem arises from the “long” part. If you need more than 600 words to say what you need to say you are trying too hard for accolades or you’re getting paid by the word. It is unfortunate that society conflates length with depth and quantity with complexity, but no one who signs the checks will agree to pay more for less. Any writer who tells you he cannot reduce his prose to a digestible number of sentences is lying because he’s afraid that if he does he’ll blow the whole scam for everyone else.
The end result is a systemic, machine-led approach to writing pointless, longform content that has no choice but to be slapped with clickbait titles so you’ll be tricked into viewing it. Because who in their right mind would want to read about clothes for working parents? What does that even mean?
But the golden age of clickbait – and hollow articles – is over. The very hand that fed the clickbait hysteria is killing it slowly.
People are becoming averse to this kind of deception, and they can smell the bullshit from miles away. Better yet, Google’s own AI just beat a human at the Chinese game of Go. It also started writing poetry. And soon it’ll come for bullshit articles, and be able to sniff them out and punish them with a burning passion.
It’s suddenly not too hard to imagine Google simply announcing the change to its algorithms in a quick blog post. A lot of written content will be downranked in search results. The content writing industry will [scramble for a way to save itself](http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-think-about-google/) in the aftermath of the bloodbath.
##**Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.**Most clickbait content online follows [the same formulas and patterns](http://www.copyblogger.com/content-creation-formula/). They are incredibly predictable. There’s no shame in following general guidelines – like Hollywood movies do with their act structures and narratives – but such content feels and reads the same as the other 99% of pointless writings online.
The formulaic approach to writing is coming to an end. Readers have become more resilient to clickbait and native advertising (or sponsored content).
Tony Haile is the CEO of Chartbeat, a company that measures and monetizes audience attention for content creators. In his lenghtly post on Time.com titled “[What You Think You Know About the Web is Wrong](http://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong/)” he lays out and debunks online publishing myths: “For quality publishers, valuing ads not simply on clicks but on the time and attention they accrue might just be the lifeline they’ve been looking for. Time is a rare scarce resource on the web and we spend more of our time with good content than with bad. Valuing advertising on time and attention means that publishers of great content can charge more for their ads than those who create link bait.”
The digital publishing platform [Medium](https://medium.com/) decided from the very start not to measure when people view articles — open the link to an article, see it’s trash, then close it immediately – but instead counts when people actually read the article – open the link, stay long enough on the website and read it. They call this metric the “Total Time Reading”.
Ev Williams, founder of Medium, wrote a lengthy post about this metric and why [Medium is concerned more with making an impact](https://medium.com/@ev/a-mile-wide-an-inch-deep-48f36e48d4cb#.tth6lw7z5) on people’s minds than the number of clicks on an article.
“We pay more attention to time spent reading than number of visitors at Medium because, in a world of infinite content — where there are a million shiny attention-grabbing objects a touch away and notifications coming in constantly — it’s meaningful when someone is actually spending time. After all, for a currency to be valuable, it has to be scarce. And while the amount of attention people are willing to give to media and the Internet in general has skyrocketed — largely due to having a screen and connection with them everywhere — it eventually is finite.”
As the writer of this piece, I don’t really want your time — I want to make an impression on how you think. If my rhetorical skills let me do that in less time (for me and you), all the better.
At Medium, we don’t really want anyone’s time. We want to create a platform that enables people to make an impression on others. To make them think. To change their minds. To teach them something or connect emotionally. It’s hard to measure any of that.”
Buzzfeed has also [changed the way it measures the success](https://www.buzzfeed.com/daozers/how-buzzfeed-thinks-about-data-and-some-charts-too?utm_term=.fbWkJjMARW#.bePp8GP1zv) of its content. [Dao Nguyen](https://www.buzzfeed.com/daozers?language=en), a publisher and resident data scientist at Buzzfeed added: “We can measure some kinds of impact, and we do it regularly for our advertisers, especially since they have clear objectives. But some kinds of impact are not quantifiable in the sense they you can’t say that one instance is larger than another. And trying to do so diminishes our ability to make a difference and connect with people.”
The obvious shift in the analytics trend is that content can provide, and should provide, more than the sum of its likes, shares, and views. [People don’t read the articles they share](http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/14/5411934/youre-not-going-to-read-this), and even if they open them, [they rarely read them through](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/how_people_read_online_why_you_won_t_finish_this_article.html) to the end. What about the content that actually gets the views and the reading time it deserves? Content that’s expertly written, does not push a product or a brand – or worse, a “personal” brand – to you directly but educates you? What separates the garbage content from the grey-area content?
It all comes down to trust.
And lots of it.
##**A game of trust.**Gary Vaynerchuk’s Snapchat account has been on fire lately. Or, rather, all the time.
Gary has been the loud hero of [**content marketing**](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/), promoting it as a tool for building trust with customers. “You’re in it for the long run, playing the long game,” he says in one of his videos. Open his Medium profile and voila: a sea of content ready to be consumed.
What sets Gary’s content apart from the majority of other clickbait is that Gary always tries to produce value – or so he claims. It is through this value, he argues, that customers will read and enjoy his work and in return, he’ll gain their trust.
The downside of this dogmatic approach to content is Gary’s flagship advice: [PRODUCE. PRODUCE. PRODUCE](https://medium.com/@garyvee/content-on-content-on-content-ef99b16815bb#.c3fu5fy38).*Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/*Create an endless stream of content, always be publishing, and remain “in the game.” In one of his recent posts, he even suggests writing content that originated as video content that originated from another written content that was a reaction to a comment that was written on a piece of content that… you get the idea.
The pitfall of this approach is that it lessens the value of the content being produced. There’s a hard line between having enough experience to cover over 100+ posts, and writing repetitive hollow articles filled with advice and how-tos that have no value.
Some writers swear on their mother’s graves that clickbait titles still have life in them. They suggest using a clickbait title and using a funny spin on it. Say, “15 tricks IronMan can teach about better SEO” or “[What Game of Thrones Can Teach Us About Ux](https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/what-game-of-thrones-can-teach-us-about-ux-design-1da410f90d7f#.3coq3c26y)”.
Spoiler alert: nothing. It’s a TV show.
The artisanal comedic genius who has thought of those headlines believes them to be a funny way to attract clicks. Maybe there’s some good material that makes you laugh a bit, too.
…you just don’t want to be there when the laughter stops.
And it stops the second you cease counting clicks, and start counting metrics that favor value like reading time, and how further down the article people scrolled. God forbid you take into account the immeasurable.
##**Where are we to gather?**Google is paying close attention to the quality of your articles (and will get even better at sorting the wheat from the chaff thanks to its AI, which by the way wrote its first lines of poetry the other day). Mix that with the fact that people are becoming better at spotting bullshit and you get the million dollar question: should we focus on making quality content?
[Hahahaha](http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/12/adele-and-the-death-of-clickbait/).
Eric Schmidt famously wrote the line “[Revenue Solves All Known Problems](https://twitter.com/ericschmidt/status/507219358246903809)” on the wall of Google’s early offices. And it still rings true today. Even if you’re producing soulless articles that are [a rehash of someone else’s ideas](http://99u.com/articles/53863/the-creative-worlds-bullshit-industrial-complex), so long as your company makes more money – you’ve won. That’s great for the short term, quarterly revenue.
But what are we to do when the money dries out?
We’ll do what the rest of the Internet has already done: close the tab and move on.
---
## Posts: Why Your Content Isn’t Attracting Links, and How to Fix It
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/why-your-content-isnt-attracting-links-2691](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-your-content-isnt-attracting-links-2691)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/why-your-content-isnt-attracting-links-2691.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-your-content-isnt-attracting-links-2691.md)
**Published:** 2016-07-25
**Last Updated:** 2021-03-09
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, link building
### Content
Content marketing is everywhere today. Thanks to the success that a couple of brands experienced within this field, a lot of companies have started to allocate significant chunks of their budget into content marketing. They have finally figured out that by [producing and publishing different types of blog posts, webinars, images, infographics](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing), videos, newsletters, case studies and use cases, their online presence could be significantly influenced for the better.
[Content marketing is extremely important for everyone in the SEO world](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-is-content-marketing/). How come? – Well, because it helps earn quality links and build authority online.
When Google sees that a particular piece of content is earning links for a specific keyword group, the Engine interprets that content as relevant and valuable (for those keywords), and rewards it with good rankings in SERP. The more links your content generates, the higher you’ll go in Search Engine results for that particular keyword or phrase. It’s what Google’s algorithm uses to determine a page’s rank. Naturally, this will significantly improve your exposure and get a lot more people to visit your site and check out what you’re all about.
If you’re, like me, in the business of turning new businesses into real powerhouses online – this is something that you just cannot afford to ignore.
In today’s world, content marketing is not a luxury, but a necessity for most brands. Regardless of the fact how great and [compelling content influences your SEO](https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-or-content-marketing-here-s-how-to-rock-both/) and turns even the dullest of enterprises into major players online for those who leverage it right, content marketing also has the capacity to drive in more conversions by complementing your sales tactics in every part of your marketing funnel.
As the latest findings from [The Content Marketing Institute](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2016_B2B_Report_Final.pdf) indicate, 72% of ALL marketers have a content marketing strategy in place. This means that every single one of these individuals is on the mission to create compelling and valuable content that will help them capitalize on popular and relevant queries on the Web, and thus – build up their SEO and beat their direct competitors in SERP.
Even though this sounds like a pretty straightforward deal, like in every other aspect in business, most young and inexperienced businessmen fail to make this technique work for them. Nonetheless – they’re still pretty determined to see their plans through. The content keeps piling up, but most of it isn’t really generating any new links.
Even though they’re investing a significant amount of effort to keep up a steady flow of fresh content on their or their client’s website, they still haven’t seen any real fruits of their labor.
Anyone can produce “content”, but creating something that actually serves a higher purpose (in this particular case, build links) and does wonders for your brand online – well, that’s quite rare these days.
Generating backlinks is extremely hard today -especially those great and natural ones. That’s why we need to be extra sharp with our link building efforts. Even though a lot of SEO experts praise content marketing and call it our lord and savior when it comes to creating new internal and external links for your site, it’s not really easy to make your content work for you. Publishing random stuff isn’t going to cut it here. If your content isn’t attracting any new backlinks, that means that you’re probably doing something wrong. Here’s a list of top 5 things that you should check and improve if your content isn’t really helping you in this department:
## 1.Your Content Isn’t Really Worth Linking To
I know this might seem harsh to some of you, but it’s the truth. [**Content marketing**is a complex game](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) with a lot of different aspects and formats. Before you go on and curse the Gods for your failures, you first need to take a step back and look at your work without the pink glasses.*Image credit:modernmom.com*For example, if you want to create content that a lot of sites will link back to, you need to come up with something that truly speaks volumes to your targeted crowd. You need to produce something that is actually worth linking to.
To [create linkable content](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-ways-to-create-linkable-content-assets/141926/) – first, you need to choose a popular topic. You can do that by using tools like [Buzzsumo](http://buzzsumo.com/)and [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/). Once you do that, you need to look over all the top content that covers that exact same topic that you want to write about and figure out how to add new value to that already existent content. Your mission here is to go for that extra mile and feed people additional and fresh insights.
### Solution No.1: Update
In most cases, the content that you’ll find to have the most links pointing back to it, will be quite old. Don’t believe me? – Type in any set of keywords into your search, and you’ll see that Google will (in most cases) feed you with links that were published back in 2011 or 2014. This is great for you. This means that you could easily win big here if you just update that already existing content. Once you choose a topic and add fresh insights to the established topic, all you have to do is reach out to the sites that are linking to the original content and offer them your new, fresh, and updated content. Believe it or not, 9 out of 10 of these publishers will be interested in at least reviewing your work.
### Solution No.2: Create a Bigger and More Detailed Post
More often than not, the content that earned the biggest number of links isn’t just dated, it also isn’t that well written. When I say it isn’t well written, I’m not thinking about grammar here, of course. I’m talking about depth. Sure, there are exceptions of course, but in my experience – this is usually the case. Almost every dated and well-ranked page I find while conducting my analysis, I see as something that could be made better with a little more words and insights to it. I feel like there’s still room for improvement there, and I often take on myself to come up with a bigger, better, and more informative post.
For example, when I find a post that covers the 10 best link building tools out there, I focus all my time and energy to come up with something like: “30 best link building tools, and how to use them right”. This is just an example, of course, but you get the picture.
## 2.You’re Not Reaching Out – Spread the Word, Promote Your Content
It doesn’t really matter how good or well optimized your content may be if you don’t do a good enough job of distributing it all over the Web – the chances are it will never live up to its full potential.
As I already wrote above, thanks to extreme content saturation, it’s insanely hard to earn quality links today. Everywhere you turn, you are bombarded with all sorts of different blog posts, tweets, pins, social media promo post, etc. Believe it or not, around 2 million new blog posts get pumped out online every single day. Insane, right? Thanks to that, these days you really need to push on all cylinders if you want your content to get picked up by a lot of people.*Image credit:vox.com*### Solution: Get Your Content to The Right Address
You don’t get backlinks without trying.
It’s also highly improbable that a major publisher will accidentally come across your blog posts, read it from top to bottom, and link some of his work to it. Nope, that almost never happens. And when it does -well, you got lucky. Don’t get me wrong – usually, this has nothing to do with the overall quality of your work.
In most cases, these publishers are quite swamped with their own work, so they don’t really have any time or patience to browse the Web and look for alternative content. As in every other part of this text, there are exceptions, of course. But all in all, getting authoritative domains to link back to your site is almost never that easy.
It has to be you who looks for linking opportunities and offer major publishers your work as something that would be in their best interest to read. Your job here is basically to convince your targeted domains that your content will serve as a supplement to their already existing work. Naturally, it’s far better if you arrange to publish a guest blog post on their site and really earn that backlink, but hey – this is great as well.
## 3.You’re Knocking On All the Wrong Doors
Sometimes, regardless of how hard you try, your link building efforts might seem like a total waste of time. You keep reaching out, offering this and that, and no one seems to be responding. There’s literally nothing more frustrating in business. However, you shouldn’t let that sort of thing discourage or sabotage your future link building efforts.
There are many different reasons why your content link building strategy is failing, but in most cases, it usually boils down to that one and the same thing – you’re reaching out to the wrong domains.
###**Solution: Analyze your Prospects, Make Sure You Have Something That Really Works for Them**Going out and requesting backlinks from all corners of the Web is nothing short of an utter and complete waste of your time. If you want to see your efforts pay off, you need to develop a smart and intelligent link building strategy. You need to choose the right prospects. For example, if you run a web hosting company, you don’t really need a backlink from a website that sells gardening supplies on it. It won’t harm your domain, but it certainly won’t help you out win big in business. That’s why you should focus your energy on earning links from publishers that work in the same or related niche as you do. You want to appear in front of the crowd that could actually be interested in your products and services.
Sure, everyone is interested in acquiring backlinks from sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, and such, but 8 out of 10 people forget that when reaching out to these publishers, you cannot just focus on creating great and compelling content. In order to get featured or receive a backlink from these sites, you need to focus on a topic that’s really interesting to them. You cannot just write about anything and everything, and expect from them to reward you with a link. You need to focus on something that’s currently relevant and interesting to them. You need to come up with a piece of content that covers a fresh topic and do your best to make it worth their while. Only then can you expect from these publications to acknowledge your efforts.**Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post from top to bottom. I hope it helped you understand how to improve your content marketing and link building strategy. If you have anything to ask or add, feel free to write your thoughts in the comments section below.**
---
## Posts: Ahrefs & Other SEO Bookmarklets
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-bookmarklets-2672](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-bookmarklets-2672)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-bookmarklets-2672.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-bookmarklets-2672.md)
**Published:** 2016-07-04
**Last Updated:** 2025-03-14
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** ahrefs, bookmarklets
### Content
## Some Common Knowledge First
Let’s face it, [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com) rocks!
Pretty much anyone knows that and rare are those SEO pros who don’t use Ahrefs almost daily in their routine. It offers plethora of data and valuable insight in company/client online performance.
Also, Ahrefs is huge application and as [SEO software developers](https://fourdots.com/about-us/seo-tools-for-digital-agencies) ourselves, we know precisely how big efforts behind the app are as well. Thing is that being engaged at multiple fronts often get little things neglected for a while until someone stands up and saves the day for everybody.
## Prelude
About a year ago, they published an article on their blog about [Ahrefs bookmarklets](https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-bookmarklet-ahrefs/) intended for people who don’t want to run fully blown [Ahrefs browser extension](https://ahrefs.com/seo-toolbar) but as time passed, things changed and Ahrefs evolved, so did their URLs. They changed and bookmarklets broke and they remained like this for quite a while.
If you don’t know what are bookmarklets and aren’t familiar with them, they are tiny bits of Javascript code which are used as bookmarks in web browsers and when clicked while on certain web page, they will perform the action they coded for.
They’re super easy to install by just drag and dropping the bookmarklet link to your browser’s bookmark bar. What’s more important is, they’re extremely useful and lightweight in contrast to browser extensions which are eating RAM the moment browser is started no matter you use them or not, like small digital leaches.
Here’s the llittle resources list for those interested in boosting their productivity:
- [69 SEO Bookmarklets to SuperCharge Your Internet Marketing](http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/5714/69-amazing-seo-bookmarklets-to-supercharge-your-internet-marketing/) by CognitiveSEO
- [30 SEO Bookmarklets to Save You Time](https://moz.com/blog/30-seo-bookmarklets-to-save-you-time) by Moz’s Rand
- [Nifty SEO Bookmarklets To Make You More Efficient](https://moz.com/blog/some-nifty-seo-bookmarklets-to-make-you-more-efficient) by Moz’s Tom Critchlow
- [SEO Bookmarklets](http://xn--skmotoroptimering-zzb.se/bookmarklets-seo/) by sökmotoroptimering, (*original Ahrefs article Author*)
## Time to Act
Personally, I’m huge purist in terms of software so I usually restrain from bloated installations of any kind and mostly run portable apps. I’m also big fan of UNIX and its philosophy which is best portrayed by this quote by [Doug McIlroy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_McIlroy):
> Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
>
As I work mostly online and got used to using plethora of web tools to get things done, next natural step for me was usage of bookmarklets wherever possible (*list is long*) instead of feeding already resource-hogging browser (*weird eyes to Chrome*).*Aw, snap! anyone?*So, whenever I [fired Ahrefs bookmarket](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059) to check domain metrics or backlinks it gave me 404 error which is rather annoying if you’re in a hurry and have to do thing manually by copy/pasting URL to SiteExplorer like it’s ’95.
I investigated a bit and noticed that bookmarklet’s Javascript code isn’t that much complicated to fix as URLs were only thing that changed so it should be easy to hack on.
Old bookmarklet URL:
`https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains?target=dibz.me`
New bookmarklet URL:
`https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/fresh?target=dibz.me`
Old bookmarklet code:
```
javascript:(function(){ var url=location.href; var url=url.replace(/^(http|https):///i,''); window.open('https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/?target='+encodeURIComponent(url))})();
```
New bookmarklet code:
```
javascript:(function(){ var url=location.href; var url=url.replace(/^(http|https):///i,''); window.open('https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/fresh?target='+encodeURIComponent(url))})();
```
Voila, working bookmarklet in under 2 minutes.
## Now, What About the Rest, Dude?
Now, I would find this task complete if all of these poor broken things weren’t fixed so here they are, listed as in original Ahrefs article. Also, note that you have to be logged in to Ahrefs for these to show you data.
- Show Referring Domains
Show the referring domains of the currently visited domain.
- Show Dashboard Page
Show the dashboard page for the currently visited domain.
- Show Inbound Anchor Page
Show the anchor page for the currently visited domain.
- Show Backlinks
Show the backlinks page for the currently visited domain.
- Show New Backlinks
Show new backlinks for the domain.
- Show Lost Backlinks
Show lost backlinks for the current domain.
- Show Pages
Show the pages for the current domain.
- Show Outgoing Anchors
Show the outgoing anchor texts for the current domain.
- Show Outgoing Linked Domains
Show which domains this domain link to.
### Now, How About Some Extra?
- Show Domain’s Organic Keywords
Show which keywords this domain ranks for.
- Show Domain’s Best Page by Backlinks
Show which page has best backlinks.
- Show Domain’s Best Page by Social Shares
Show which page has most/best social shares.
- Show Domain’s Paid Keywords (*very useful*)
Show which keywords this domain bids for.
- Show Domain’s Ad Copy
Show ads domain pays for.
- Show Domain’s Broken Links (*also very useful*)
Show domain’s broken links on external sites.
## Outro
If you’re not using them by now, I’m quite positive you’ll find them very useful and joy to use in plenty situations. Problem I encountered with them is that eventually you can end up having tens of bookmarklets laying around so my best advice is try organizing them by folders, by function they perform like SEO, Web Development, Reading and you should be good.
Great thing is that they’re synced as regular bookmarks so upon getting them, they’ll be in all your connected browsers at home and work. Yes, also on your tablet and phone too. Just instead of tapping them in browser bookmark manager, search for them in mobile browser’s address bar and they’ll fire up (*well most of them will*).
One of my favorite is non-SEO one, called [Spritzlet](http://www.spritzlet.com/) by [Spritz](http://spritzinc.com/), awesome speed reading technique which gets me through pretty much all lengthy articles I have to read. Awesome productivity tool.
Do you have awesome bookmarklet to share?
Tell us in comments bellow or hit us up on social media!
---
## Posts: How PornHub Dominates with Content Marketing
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/pornhub-dominating-content-marketing-2637](https://fourdots.com/blog/pornhub-dominating-content-marketing-2637)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/pornhub-dominating-content-marketing-2637.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/pornhub-dominating-content-marketing-2637.md)
**Published:** 2016-06-21
**Last Updated:** 2020-09-15
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content strategy, PornHub Content Marketing
### Content
Content marketing this, content marketing that – everywhere you turn, marketers are continually praising this technique. They cannot restrain themselves from talking about the importance of adding content marketing to your overall marketing arsenal.
It’s no secret that content is peaking right now. Everybody is doing it. These days, every type of brand, regardless of the size, niche or industry, is investing significant chunks of their overall budget in content marketing. Why? – Well, because a good content marketing strategy can redefine any type of brand and transform even the most obscure enterprises into real powerhouses.
Content marketing is all about bringing value to your readers and prospects. If you, as a publisher, figure out how to create a constant flow of useful and interesting blog posts, infographics, newsletters, use cases, cases studies and white papers – you can grow into a real industry titan in no time.
We live in a day and age where almost all B2B decisions are influenced by content and data. People from all corners of the world are constantly turning to the Web to check out if they’re making the right decisions by doing business with a certain brand, product or services. They are all eager to learn more about their choices.
I know that right about now some of you are probably thinking: “*Great, but what if my brand doesn’t really sell stuff worth writing about? What if I, for example, work in a shady or unsexy industry where content marketing isn’t really an option?*”
Content marketing is ALWAYS an option. We at [Altus Host](https://www.altushost.com/) truly believe that. It doesn’t really matter if you offer web hosting services or work in a fashion, retail or automobile industry – content marketing is here to help you reach out to your desired audience and feed your prospects with all the necessary information that they need in order to start seeing you as a real expert within your niche.
There’s no such thing as a brand that isn’t a*good fit*for content marketing. All you really need to do here is develop a custom-centric strategy, locate that***sweet spot***between your story and data, and push it to the max.
Don’t believe me? Please, continue reading…
In a day and age where more than 50% of all companies that invest in this sort of thing are claiming that they’re still waiting to see some real ROI from their content marketing efforts, this one unlikely brand is crushing it on all sorts of different fronts with its content. I’m talking about**PornHub**here, of course.
For those who still want to pretend like they don’t know this brand,**PornHub**is probably the biggest and most popular search engine in the adult industry today. Launched in Montreal back in 2007, this pornographic video sharing site now counts more than 60 million daily visits. Regardless of the niche you operate in, these are some pretty impressive numbers.
Even though they distribute adult content that isn’t quite considered to be*friendly*or*appropriate*for most social circles, scenarios or publishers, these guys are absolutely dominating it with their content marketing strategy.
Despite the fact that PornHub cannot bluntly advertise its service like most SFW companies can, the geniuses behind this engine have really put their heads together and came up with tons and tons of cool campaigns that make it possible to include their brand in above-the-line marketing.
But how did they do it? How does someone transform a freakin’ adult content site into a real lovemark online? Sex was, is, and forever will be a taboo subject to a lot of people. How do you market a site that basically sells such a thing to people which “customers” don’t want to admit they use?
I think this has a lot to do with taking a fresh approach to all your available channels of communication.
Before we dive deep into what really makes PornHub such a great marketing machine, let us first acknowledge the fact that this brand isn’t predestined for success. PornHub isn’t really special, when you strip it down to it’s undies. It’s just another adult content sites. Looking over at their content and offers (yeah, I looked), they’re basically the same as any of their direct competitors. There are literally hundreds of other sites that offer the same things as PornHub does, and yet, they’re still on top. The only thing that really makes them special is how they sell their services.
I don’t know about you, but knowing this – PornHub as a phenomenon now seems even more interesting to me. They have really set the bar high for everyone who works in marketing. Their success is a living and breathing testament to the power of creativity. You can market anything to everyone, if you figure out a way how to make your messages stand out from the crowd.
Now that we got that behind us, let us dissect this publisher and see what really makes its marketing so great. Let us learn by example, how even the most obscure of brands have the possibility and capacity to create big noise in digital era:
## 1. Leverage Humor In Your Content Marketing
As I wrote thousands of times on many different websites across the Internet:
Whenever you can, ALWAYS add humor to your marketing mix.
People are addicted to humor. Always were, and always will be. Go to any of your social media networks and look at what others are sharing. Now look what kind of posts are generating the biggest number of clicks, likes and comments. Long and boring blog posts or funny statuses and gifs? Yeah…the second ones.
PornHub is no stranger to humor. In fact, humor is the no.1 reason why their marketing is doing so great.
Example:
On 1st of April, they’ve created an entire subsite titled “Corn Cub” in order to celebrate the April Fools Day.*I cannot remember the last time I laughed so hard. This was an amazing idea. People acknowledged the humor behind this stunt, so it was no shock when mainstream brands started to pick it up and post it on their publications. Great content all round.
Another great example of leveraging humor in your content marketing strategy:
During the winter holidays, [Officer & Gentleman](http://www.offandgent.com/#home1), Spain-based two-man ad agency that’s in charge of PornHub’s marketing in that department, was awarded with the task to create video ad for PornHub that will generate a lot of buzz on social media.
Even though this seemed like a great idea, these guys knew that, thanks to their strict content rules, Facebook and Instagram would never, not in a million years, allow them to directly market PornHub’s service via their platforms.
These guys had their work cut out for them. They needed to think outside of the box and actually come up with something that doesn’t really scream adult content, even though you know that the whole ad is basically about it.
Take a look at their Christmas premium gifting card ad. You cannot deny its brilliance. They have done a great job here. I love everything about this ad. Especially the final sentence: “….the most touching*gift.”
Hilarious.
These are just some situations where PornHub truly made us cry from laughter. If you take a look at their [Twitter account](https://twitter.com/pornhub?lang=en), you’ll see that their Community Manager really knows how to engage their audience, and run fun, light and playful conversations with everyone who writes about their brand. The content PornHub shares on that account is pure gold, so I recommend that you go and check it out for yourself. Who knows, maybe it’ll inspire you.
## 2. Be Authentic, Be Bold – Always Try To Push The Limits and Surpass Your User Expectations
One of the greatest things you can do with your marketing is to surprise your audience and exceed their expectations. In order to do that, you must truly apply yourself. You have to think outside of the box, be bold, and courageous enough to continuously push the bar higher for your brand – only then will your audience see you as an enterprise that wants to change the world.
Taking a page from [Red Bull’s Stratosphere Jump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f-K-XnHi9I), PornHub decided to also venture into the great unknown. Back in 2015, PornHub launched an [Indiegogo campaign](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pornhub-space-program-sexploration#/), titled: “Sexploration”. The sole purpose of that campaign was to raise the funds for their first ever space-based sex scene. PornHub sought to crowdfund a budget of $3.4mil, so that they have enough cash to pay for the shuttle transportation and video equipment necessary to successfully capture Eva Lovia and Johnny Sins boinking in space. Reportedly, the company was willing to cover everything rest in order to see this bizarre idea come to life.
Even though they’ve failed to raise their goal, PornHub still profited like crazy from this campaign. Every big or small media house in the world wrote about their insane mission. PornHub was everywhere. You cannot even buy PR like that.
Just look at the number of views on their Vimeo video alone. 2.5mil? Jesus. Great stuff!
[Pornhub Presents: Sexploration](https://vimeo.com/130377725) from [Pornhub TV](https://vimeo.com/pornhubtv) on [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com).
Another great example of killer content can be found on their subsite “[Give America Wood](http://www.pornhub.com/event/arborday)”. This cheeky slogan stands for more than just a silly wordplay. Behind it, there was an entire site dedicated to planting one tree per every hundred views they count in a specific category. Another great idea to show the people that your brand isn’t just another company that only cares about making money.
## 3. Provide The Data, Do Some PR and Get Featured On Top Sites
Data is power. Today, data plays a significant role in your overall marketing success. Especially when it comes to [content marketing and how it has been evolving over the years](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/). A lot of brands still fail to see the importance in using data as your guide on your journey to figuring out your audience, creating the right content for the right type of users and understanding its impact on your future strategic plans.
But not PornHub. Even though this brand knows that a lot of people don’t really care about their company or what it stands for, they still know how to use their statistics to their advantage. In order to reach out to audiences all over the world, PornHub creates all sorts of different [interesting and entertaining data](http://www.pornhub.com/insights/) that often gets picked up as newsworthy stats. This is the core of their content marketing. Their carefully segmented and researched numbers have earned them links from all sorts of relevant publications online, like [The Daily Bot](http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/porn-viewing-american-british-data/), [Mashable](http://www.pornhub.com/insights/the-united-states-duration-nation) and [Gizmodo](http://gizmodo.com/which-browsers-users-are-the-most-porn-crazed-1585187988).
## 4. Amplify Your Content Like A Boss
It doesn’t matter how good, well-written or intelligent your content may be, if it fails to reach your targeted crowd and stimulate them to engage with your messages – it’s basically worthless. I know that there isn’t a single person alive on this planet who wants to hear such a thing – but, hey – it’s the truth.
Getting people to read and share your content is no easy task. How come? – Well, because millions of blog posts get published every single day. Twitter counts 500mil new tweets every day, while Facebook generates a mind blowing number of 510 000 comments, 293,000 status updates, and 136,000 photo uploads per minute. That’s right. Per minute. You read it right.
Looking at these numbers, one could say that it’s nearly impossible to rise above the crowd and get the right people to see your content. There’s just too much noise everywhere around you. However, brands now have a better chance than ever to spread their messages everywhere they want to. All they have to do is follow-up on their targeted audiences activities and study their behavior. Once you know what your prospect like and dislike, as well as where do they usually hang out online, it will be quite easy for you steal their attention.
Like in any other part of this case study, PornHub is killing it here. As I already mentioned, their Twitter account is especially great at amplifying their messages. The guys behind this brand are smart enough to know that there’s no chance in Hell that people would retweet a photo of a naked girl, or something even more explicit.
They know that in order to go viral, you have to produce something truly clever. This is where PornHub again uses humor to their advantage. Almost every tweet they post receives a significant number of favs, comments and retweets.
Example:
> Happy Birthday [@JustinBieber](https://twitter.com/justinbieber). We’ve extended your FREE Premium membership by a year since you’re such a huge fan! [#HappyBirthdayJustinBieber](https://twitter.com/hashtag/HappyBirthdayJustinBieber?src=hash)
> — Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) [March 1, 2014](https://twitter.com/Pornhub/status/439769650315161600)
But, unlike most brands who use social media channels solely for the purposes of blasting their messages to their targets, PornHub really cares about their followers. They read their mentions, follow-up on what’s going on in their network and respond to the weirdest of scenarios.
Just look at this guy’s tweet:
Now look what PornHub did:
Great stuff, right? This is how you use your content to your advantage. Unlike most brands that have the option of writing useful posts that serve to educate their followers on how to improve their understanding of certain things in life, PornHub operates in such a niche where that kind of strategy isn’t really plausible. But, as you see from everything written above, there are still a lot of opportunities out there for them to truly win big by producing and distributing original content.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I really love what PornHub is doing with their marketing, so I felt that I needed to write a special post dedicated to their greatness. I hope you had as much fun reading this article, as I did writing it. If you have anything to add or ask about this subject – feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below, and I’ll do my best to answer them ASAP.
That’s it for now,
See you again soon :)
---
## Posts: Creating Content That Your Audience Will Adore - The Human Oriented Approach
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/creating-content-audience-will-adore-2611](https://fourdots.com/blog/creating-content-audience-will-adore-2611)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/creating-content-audience-will-adore-2611.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/creating-content-audience-will-adore-2611.md)
**Published:** 2016-06-09
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, content strategy
### Content
These days, a lot of brands are adding content marketing to their existing marketing mix. They have finally figured out that this type of promotion can really influence their online exposure for the better. Creating various types of interesting images, how-to texts, case studies, white paper researches, guides, webinars, reviews and classic blog posts that serve to educate your existing and potential customers about your brand, company culture, products and services, is definitely*the new black*in this ever-expanding digital world.
However, all that aside – [content marketing (along with its evolution)](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) – is still a pretty tough cookie to crack. There are just too many factors that you need to understand and take into consideration when creating content for your brand.
If you want your content to fit you, your core values, and your audience’s expectations, you need to invest more than just money into its production. You need to live and breathe your content and become one with its recipients, so that you’ll know how to perfectly tailor it to their needs and desires.
I know this is something no one really wants to hear, but you have a much better chance of failing with your content marketing efforts than actually succeeding.
I’m not trying to rain all over your parade here, but the numbers speak against you. According to the study conducted by [The Content Marketing Institute](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2016_B2B_Report_Final.pdf) in the first quarter of this year, only 30% of B2B businesses that invest in content marketing claim that their efforts are paying off. Bummer, right?
##**The Misconception of Success in Content Marketing**Even though a lot of big, medium and small B2B businessmen around the world are pouring large portions of their budget into this type of marketing and employing dozens of content specialists to help them craft posts that might resonate well with their targeted crowd, they’re still pretty much stuck in the same place they’ve started from. Yes, they’re constantly creating new links and improving their rankings, but still – their content isn’t really making any new sales. The number of conversions isn’t growing, and they’re starting to freak out and question just how good content marketing really is for their business.
And why shouldn’t they? – I don’t know about you, but if I work so damn hard on something and I have nothing to show for it – I tend to think of myself as a failure. I get all gloomy and depressed, and start to think how all these so-called digital marketing experts are feeding me garbage advice only for the purpose of generating more clicks on their dumb links.
Yeah. As you can see, I can go from zero to full Kafka in a matter of seconds.
But that’s wrong.
Even though abandoning ship seems like the logical move when things start to go south, it’s still important to avoid acting on that impulse, at least when it comes to content marketing. My advice here is to clear your head and approach the problem at hand from a whole different perspective, rather than just go and burn down everything you worked so damn hard to build.
Most of my colleagues don’t agree with me here, but my experience has taught me that the key to successful content marketing cannot be solely found in your [data](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency). It cannot be found in your personal and unique story either. They key to creating a successful content marketing strategy lies in the middle of these two things. I’m talking about that***sweet spot***in between that covers the best of both worlds.
Let’s face it, if you use your content marketing to sell ice to an Eskimo – you picked the wrong strategy. My advice here is to immediately stop what you’re doing, before you create some serious problems for your brand. Earning a bad rep in this digital world is basically a death sentence for your business. If people perceive you as a source that distributes garbage, you won’t be able to recover from that. They’ll think of you as a noob or a spammer, which means that you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone and everyone to do business with you.
With having all this in mind, it’s better to have no content at all, than content that isn’t relevant to your targeted crowd.
On the other hand, if you see that your targeted audience is interested in learning more about your products and services through your content, but they still aren’t buying anything, that means that you’re onto something. You have something that’s tickling their interest. You’re almost there. All you need now is to figure out how to craft your story and transform your words and values into something that’s gonna tip your prospects over the edge and convince them to actually do business with you.
In the beginning, we at**AltusHost**experienced some problems with our content marketing. When I say “some”, I mean I wanted to jump off the top of the tallest building in my neighborhood, face first. Sure, traffic kept increasing, the number of shares, likes, favs and retweets continued to rise and reassure us that we were doing something good, but still – that wasn’t good enough. Even though it felt satisfying to see hundreds of likes and shares next to our posts, the sad truth is – they didn’t really mean squat. We’re not in the business of gathering likes, so this type of metric was, is and forever will be pretty useless to us.
We cannot run a web hosting business solely based on the number of shares and likes. In our line of work, the only way to make your efforts pay off is to make money and continue to generate new quality leads from what we do online. That’s it.
So, having this in mind, we needed to rethink our entire strategy. We needed to dig deep and look for solid and data-backed reasons on why people aren’t converting through our content.
We started with a couple of plain questions, like:
##**What Type of Content is Considered to be Great Content?**The kind that is data-driven, goal oriented, and that provokes people to make some sort of action once they’re exposed to it.
When you really take the time to properly look at the sentence above and let it sink in your head, you’ll notice that these four words really pop out:**data**,**goal**,**people**,**action**.
I don’t know about you, but**the people**part really stuck with me.
I started to obsess on how to make it truly work for us. This got us all the way back to the center of our content marketing strategy, and that is**customer engagement**. Everything basically revolves around that, doesn’t it?
Some of you are probably thinking that you have already heard this story before. But, have you really? I’m not talking about creating customer personas like most other brands do. Why? – Well, because most of them focus on all the wrong details. The key to truly figuring out who your customers are, and how to engage them cannot be found just in data. No. Apart from the numbers, you need to consider your target’s human traits as well. We are creating content for the customers, not ourselves, so it’s quite normal to make their satisfaction the center of our universe.
##**The Breakdown**Cutting corners and looking for some quick wins isn’t gonna cut it anymore. We need to do all the heavy lifting of developing a sound**customer-centric content strategy**.
Why? – Well, because, at the end of the day, your goal here is to [create content for the searcher, not the search engine](https://www.altushost.com/create-content-for-the-searcher-not-the-search-engine/). If you sit down and really think about it, your products and services are purchased by humans, and not some tiny robots that crawl websites. Sure, it is of [crucial](https://fourdots.com/case-studies/crucial) importance to make your content SEO-friendly, and to back it up with as much firepower as possible, but it’s also imperative that you design it in such a way that it directly caters to the human nature of your prospects.
Having all this in mind while going over our existing content strategy, I figured out that every piece of content needs to provide answers to these four following questions, if we want it to spike the interest of our targeted crowd and get some real, living and breathing humans to truly convert through it:
1. How is this topic relevant to my targeted audience?
2. What kind of emotion do I want to provoke with it?
3. Would they promote it? And if so, why? What’s in it for them?
4. How/where/when will my targeted audience acknowledge my content?
In order to answer these four questions, you need to know a lot about your targeted audience. You need to know them better than you know yourself. You need to know who they are, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, where do they hang out, what kind of content do they usually consume, share and like, where do they go for fun, and where do they go to learn new relevant information. Apart from that, you need to figure out if your products or services are somehow age or gender oriented.
##**Designing The Right Customer Personas For Your Content Marketing Efforts**In order to get your hands on this type information about your customers, you need to:
1.**Go over your user database and figure out how your active clients found your brand and what made them choose to do business with you**. Even though this might seem stalkerish to some of you, the answers might end up surprising you. Some people shop on impulse, which can be triggered by all sorts of unusual things.
For example, there have been multiple cases where people chose to do business with us, instead of our competitors, because they liked our company colors best. Some of them said they liked the general tone I use in our content. A few guys said that they enjoy that I tend to write about business lessons from fictional characters and add a lot of gifs to our blog posts. These are just some of the things that we haven’t really considered as our strengths. These answers came as a surprise to us all.
Ask your audience everything. Ask them what they think are your strengths and weaknesses. The idea here is to look for patterns that tend to repeat in your usual customer’s journey.
1.**Start actual conversations with your customers**. Many markets forget that their customers are more than just numbers, and that they cannot really understand them solely by looking at their stats. No. In order to truly get to know someone, you need to have an actual conversation. And once you do that, you need to treat your interlocutor like an actual person. You cannot ask him or her soulless survey questions and expect to learn something deep and real about your subject. No. It doesn’t really go like that. Engage with them, person-to-person, start a back-and-forward conversation, and I promise you you’re efforts will payoff.
1.**Develop and employ forms and surveys that seek to capture all the necessary information about your customers**, that you can later use to directly and intelligently apply to their needs and profiles.
1.**Sales stats**. Most business owners forget that their salesmen hold a lot of key information that could positively influence their content marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter if you have a team of 2, 4, 5, or 100 sales reps, the important thing is that they’re constantly in communication with people outside of your company walls who may or may not be interested in doing business with you. They have access to all types of different leads, so they know what kind of people usually go for your services, and what don’t. They also know what makes them reject your services, and what could improve your products and services. This is all extremely valuable intel for your future content marketing efforts.
These are just some of the ways you can gather important data for creating [intelligent buyer personas for your content marketing](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing). Naturally, the list goes on and on. Buffer has an interesting post on [designing customer personas](https://blog.bufferapp.com/marketing-personas-beginners-guide). You should check it out. It doesn’t matter which approach you choose, the only thing that is truly important here, is to figure our where to look for this type of data and how to make it easy for your target crowd to say**YES**on participating in your data collecting activities.
Now that you’ve completed your customer personas, and you know everything you need to know about your current and potential customers, what kind of content do they prefer, which sites do they visits the most, and what kind of problems are they usually facing, it’s time to get down to small details and build the foundation of your content marketing strategy:
##**Choosing the Right Keywords – Pick an Adequate Chariot For Your Personas That Focuses On Intent**Now that you know whom exactly (and how) you’ll be addressing with your content, is time to start looking for those topics that will surely provoke some significant engagement from your targeted crowd.
Apart from providing answers to frequently asked questions that your users tend to ask your sales reps and (or) customer relationship specialist, which is always a great idea, you need to go one step further and actually look for hot topics that currently generate a lot of noise within your niche. That’s why it’s so important to frequently look for good short and long-tail keywords.
Producing a piece of content that is build upon a foundation of smart keyword research + fresh customer avatars is a recipe for success. You can rest knowing that this type of content will surely resonate well with your targeted crowd.
##**The Hummingbird Twist and How to Take Advantage Of All The Changes**Even though the Hummingbird has changed the way on how Google interprets user queries, keywords still play an important part in every successful digital marketing strategy. They still matter.
Yes, Google’s core algorithm has been completely rewritten and updated, for a number of different reasons (mostly, to enable voice search), but it still works on the same set of principles. Google still provides answers to questions, which means that there’s still need to conducting solid keyword researches. Figuring out different ways on how for to capitalize on most popular short and long-tail queries that directly concern your business is still a legitimate strategy. However, the only thing that has really changed here, is how Google understands intent. This means that exact phrase match content will no longer dominate the SERP.
This is what the Hummingbird is all about. For example, if you type in the search “how web hosting works”, you won’t get a lot of exact match results. No. You’ll get tons of links*about*web hosting. These are all good topical matches that suggest that you, if you truly want to dominate the SERP in a specific niche, need to focus a lot on SEO + related keywords.
Choosing the right related keywords will certainly give your content that additional push you need to climb up the ladder in SERP. That’s why it’s necessary to keep an open mind and think from your customer’s perspective when doing keyword research for your future content marketing efforts. This means that you need to find some themes in your data, not just search volume.
Analyzing and singling out key themes that best cover your customer personas needs, wants and key pain points is what you should be adding to your content creation worksheet.
I hope my formula for producing engaging content will help you overcome your very own content marketing issues. Content marketing can be extremely powerful player of your digital marketing team, if done right. I used this process over and over again, and it always delivers the desired results. I hope it does the same for you, as well!
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you have anything to add or ask, please, feel free to write your thoughts in the comments section below!
‘Till next time,
Take care!
---
## Posts: Page Speed: Stop Driving in the Slow Lane
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/page-speed-2451](https://fourdots.com/blog/page-speed-2451)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/page-speed-2451.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/page-speed-2451.md)
**Published:** 2016-05-26
**Last Updated:** 2025-05-12
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Page Speed, SEO
### Content
Think about the people you see around you every day. How many of them have smartphones and how much time they spend with them.
Numbers are telling us that almost half of the world’s population is actively using internet in one way or another. Out of all of them, half access the internet via their mobile devices. The number is even higher in the U.S. where 75% of users prefer surfing on their handheld devices. With such state of affairs it is no wonder that Google, the world’s biggest search engine, has put an emphasis on websites that are responsive.
What does this mean for you, your website and your business?
In short, it can create a difference between a customer and a passer-by. However, the story goes well beyond that…
## Sales/conversions/UX
Recent research conducted by [BuzzBoard](http://www.thelsa.org/Uploads/Public/Documents/FreeReports/BuzzBoard-Mobile-SMB-report_v2.5.pdf)showed that even though [Google’s Mobilegeddon](https://fourdots.com/blog/optimizing-for-small-screens-6-things-that-will-make-a-difference-in-2016-2108) has been wreaking havoc on unresponsive websites since April 21st 2015, still 47.3% of all small business websites are not mobile-ready. Some researches even go as far as to claim that only 33% of SMBs have mobile-ready websites. Regardless of which research is more accurate, they both point out the same devastating facts: half or more SMB websites are in danger of being left behind.
Mobile-ready, or responsive website, is a website which bolsters content that scales with different screen sizes. For example, if you change viewports from desktop’s 24” fHD screen to, let’s say, a 1280 by 720, 5” mobile screen, you will get a bit different form of content, but the same user experience. Unresponsive sites have content which doesn’t scale and looks terrible on mobile devices, thus increasing bounce rate drastically. That is something that Google noticed as well and has updated its search algorithm in such a way that it places mobile-ready sites in far superior positions. Think of it like this: you might be missing out on some serious money, given that in 2015 alone, B2C e-commerce sales have gone past $1.5 trillion, while mobile influencing retail sales accounted for 1 trillion.
## Speed Force
Having a responsive website is not all there is to ranking well in mobile search engine results. There are numerous other factors impacting a website’s position and their number is constantly changing. One of the factors that became an important part of Google’s search algorithm is page speed.
The fact that page speed does and will impact rankings is not based on some kind of predictions, but rather on Google’s latest activity in the field. They’ve launched an initiative called Google AMP project. AMP, which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, is an open source project which is not only ran by Google, but also backed by many media giants and tech companies.
Google isn’t the only one running a project that improves page loading speeds – Facebook is working on its own version of a solution for a faster web as well – [Instant Articles](https://instantarticles.fb.com/). They are pretty open about what the initiative is all about, stating: “We built Instant Articles to solve a specific problem — slow loading times on the mobile web created a problematic experience for people reading news on their phones.”
Nevertheless, Google wouldn’t be where it is if it sat on its bottom while others worked. That’s why Google AMP project is up and running for some time now – you can see the documentation and try Google’s solution for yourself by visiting [GitHub AMP](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml) dedicated page. [In this video](https://youtu.be/WrpkFROqR0Q) you can see how fast websites powered by AMP actually are.
This is not the first time big companies such as these are taking interest in improving user experience in similar manner. Bootstrap was created by [@mdo](https://twitter.com/mdo) and [@fat](https://twitter.com/fat)from twitter, with mobile first experience in mind and it really kicked off – [150K websites from the top 1 million are using bootstrap](http://trends.builtwith.com/docinfo/Twitter-Bootstrap).
People are the main reason page speed is gaining importance. Due to the attention span that is getting lower and lower, most websites that take 3 or more seconds to load cause 40% of visitors to give up on them. The longer it takes for a page to fully display, the higher the bounce rate. Things get even worse on desktop computers.
Conversion rates, purchases, page views and many other metrics that are severely impacted by slow pages are just some of the reasons for you to devote more time and resources into speeding up your website. Just a single second delay in loading a page of your website can cause a 7% decline in conversion and annually nearly $500 billion are lost in the e-commerce trade because of slow websites in the U.S.
## Attaining the speed force
Image: http://speedaroo.deviantart.com/
Whether your site was designed to be slow (was slow to begin with) or it became such with time, there is an abundance of possibilities for you to make it snippy. Just like Barry Allen got his speed force back on the last week’s The Flash episode, so can your website and here are some insights on how to achieve just that.
First step would be to see how your existing website fares regarding the page speed metrics. This is done via either [GTmetrix](https://gtmetrix.com/)or [Google PageSpeed](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/) insights. Both tools will crawl website several times in order to capture all the things that are making your website load longer than it should and present you with the results, as well as ways to improve. For example:
- – Check the size of the files (media) you are using on your website. You are bound to see benefits just from decreasing the size or amount of resources your page has to load.
- – Avoid Flash – Flash is dead (not Barry Allen or Gordon Flash, but Adobe Flash). Google is effectively killing Flash by entirely removing it from Chrome which is the final nail in its coffin.
- – Though far superior to Flash in regards to loading speeds, javascript (when used excessively and in the wrong places) can make your website sluggish. If you have javascript-based content that is below the fold, its loading can be scheduled so that it doesn’t load until the user scrolls down.
- – Some other fixes include leveraging browser caching for your website, creating expiration dates for cached resources, minification of the code (though this isn’t always recommended) and using a [CDN (Content Delivery Network)](https://www.maxcdn.com/one/visual-glossary/cdn/).
Both GTmetrix and Google page speed Insight will not only calculate page speed metrics for your website, but will also give you recommendations on how to improve them. These are important insights for any web design or SEO agency that will be working on your website. Considering that page speed impacts SERPs, SEOs have to work with web designers in order to deliver the best possible user experience (quality content, responsiveness, short loading times, etc.) in combination with high rankings. It is futile to have good user experience if you are far from page one or two in the results and on the other hand, you will see little to no benefits of high ranking[if your site hasn’t got anything to offer.](https://fourdots.com/blog/overcoming-challenge-creating-content-engages-1922)
### Closing words
In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, what we need now more than ever is “speeeeeeeed”, because the more media we require (images, videos, gifs, etc.) the more cluttered and slower the web pages will become. Therefore, a balance has to be made between the abundance and quality of your content, while factoring in page speed as well. All of those frameworks from Google, Facebook, Twitter and others can help, but in the end. it is mostly up to you and how much heavy content you cram on your website.
---
## Posts: The Inbound Growth Hacking Bible
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431](https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431.md)
**Published:** 2016-05-16
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Growth Hacking
**Tags:** growth hacking, Inbound marketing
### Content
> “The end goal of every growth hacker is to build a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself.”
>*~**Aaron Ginn*Back in 2012, Bill Lee wrote a [cheeky piece for Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2012/08/marketing-is-dead) declaring marketing a dead paradigm. His observation was right on the spot: whether marketers like it or not, traditional advertising approaches eventually lost the battle for corporate growth to an increasingly marketing-sensitive consumer market. The long-drawn-out passing of conventional marketing was when the growth hacking bubble popped up: a term originally coined by Dropbox’s first marketer Sean Ellis back in 2010, growth hacking is a mix of creativity, analytical thinking, product tweaking, and social metric monitoring often deployed by 21st-century startups in pursuit of rapid expansion and increased brand visibility. But isn’t this really what traditional marketing was all about?
##**Growth Hacking vs. Traditional Marketing**>** **“Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph.”
>*~**Sean Ellis*Successful startups such as AirBnB, Dropbox, Twitter, PayPal, and many others had at least one growth hacker on their marketing team who ventured beyond the boundaries of what is normally regarded as outside-of-the-box thinking and brought growth medals home. In essence, growth hacking does require knowledge of mainstream advertising tools (especially online marketing), but it also involves collaboration on product development and distribution. For this reason, it is not uncommon to see coders and engineers stepping into growth hacking limelight: just like a new product model builds on its predecessor but is subtly tweaked, redesigned, and upgraded, marketing tools also need to be fine-tuned to the point where merchandise becomes a perpetuum mobile driving sales and corporate growth forward at full speed.
In this respect, a growth hacker is pretty much like a mechanic with a stack of magical tools up his sleeve: they will step up, inspect the entire mechanism, poke and prod at various levers and buttons, grease the cogwheels, adjust the settings to optimal, turn on the engine, and bow out. Unlike conventional marketers, however, [growth hackers do not rely on standardized advertising alone](http://growthdevil.com/difference-growth-hacking-traditional-marketing/) to boost corporate performance metrics: they are far more tech-savvy than that. Growth hackers often have technical skills and knowledge required for product reevaluation, so they can identify weak spots and room for improvements, and point out the aspects in which the offerings can be dialed up for optimal performance. So, how exactly do growth hackers use their magical tools?
##**How do growth hackers do their magic?**> “Their job isn’t to ‘do’ marketing as I had always known it; it’s to grow companies really fast — to take something from nothing and make it something enormous within an incredibly tight window.”
>*~**Ryan Holiday*Growth hackers are driven by passion for innovation, and they are deeply committed to the mission of modifying and marketing merchandise through a hands-on, full-stack approach. Such a comprehensive task calls for a thorough analysis of product features, inspection of distribution methods, assessments of previous campaigns, multivariate testing, landing page redesign, tapping into new promotion avenues, and every other action that can propel growth. From client acquisition and activation to user retention and referrals, growth hackers will keep turning every stone until they fish out the golden nugget of startup success.
Still, growth hackers cannot replace an entire marketing team: they will provide valuable cues and practical assistance on the path of corporate growth, but they are not a substitute for in-house marketing strategists. One more thing a growth hacker cannot do is strike the gold vein overnight and keep bleeding it for a steady stream of revenues endlessly: long-term growth requires long-term efforts, regular system updates, consistent implementation of effective marketing strategies, and commitment to innovation and business expansion.
To bring new customers to your doorstep and foster sustainable growth, growth hackers will engage in various procedures [that can but do not necessarily have to follow a uniform formula](https://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-3/). The list of steps in the growth hacking process includes:
- analysis of current product state;
- proposing growth-oriented design/feature adjustments;
- scaling efficiency of marketing campaigns to date;
- landing page assessment and tweaks;
- examination of brand visibility and ratings;
- evaluation of existing distribution channels;
- monitoring customer acquisition and retention ratios;
- assessment and/or redefinition of user profile;
- deployment of various analytics to track efficiency changes en route;
- performance of A/B and other tests;
- all other activities relevant to growth.
If handled properly, growth hacking will eventually result in a series of changes in the business model, product, marketing, and distribution, and produce a custom-built growth strategy that draws on successful experiences from the past modified in line with new conditions and current market outlook. Of course, few growth hackers will be able to pull all that off at first attempt – shots in the dark can hit bulls-eye through sheer luck, but deep-reaching growth-driven changes require due considerations, careful execution, and cross-comparison.
##**Examples of successful growth hacking campaigns**> “If you want to go viral, it must be baked into your product. There must be a reason to share it and the means to do so.”
>*~**Ryan Holiday*One of the best-known growth hacking endeavors, [AirBnB’s automatic ad posting on Craigslist via API integration](https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb) was a precedent of a kind in the LOBA domain. AirBnB offers services aimed at connecting people in need of accommodation with homeowners who have spare rooms to let, and the beauty of their cunning growth campaign lies in the fact that they managed to expand their audience to tens of millions of Craigslist users with the help of simple and smooth ad-hoc integration, no extra costs attached. This is where traditional marketing experts would have failed miserably: AirBnB’s team came up with a tech tool few marketers, however experienced and open-minded, would have been able to think of, let alone implement.
Another successful growth hacking stunt, PayPal’s friend referral bounty played a major role in the company’s early growth. [What PayPal did to attract tens of millions of new customers](https://www.quora.com/How-did-PayPals-early-viral-growth-work) was pay USD 10 to every new user, plus another USD 10 to every user who brought along new sign-ups by referral. What ensued was fast, viral, and investment-exponential growth which could not have been achieved through any other means (they did try costly advertising and BD deals with major banks, but to no avail): with a little gift, PayPal finally had the buzz needed for a global takeoff.
Instagram is another brand that built its early success with the help of growth hacking techniques. To attract and activate new users, Instagram tapped into Twitter and Facebook user databases (only unlike AirBnB, the Insta-team opted for fair play), leveraging product distribution to the internet’s most populous social platforms. Other [tricks that helped Instagram hack its way to massive popularity](http://adambreckler.com/2012/12/28/4-ways-instagram-hacked-early-growth/) included high service speed, default public picture posting, and asymmetric follow model based on Twitter’s system.
##**Down the growth hacking funnel**> “Basically, growth hacking is a scientific method that requires a full-stack approach to growth – total marketing, engineering, and product integration.”
>*~ Bronson Taylor*Though Dave McClure’s Pirate Metric funnel may be more popular, Neil Patel and Bronson Taylor’s brainchild is in most cases better suited to up-and-coming businesses looking to avoid detours on the growth track. In essence, the funnel is an instrument online startups use to steer the behavior of visitors from the moment they arrive on the website to the moment they convert and come back for more. The funnel can broadly be divided into three sections:
- Attracting new viewers
- Transforming viewers into users
- Retaining users
All of the steps in the process are important for sustainable growth, and each of them requires a different skill set and approach. While acquiring new visitors will boost brand visibility, it will not on its own result in conversion increase unless activation and retention are handled properly. For this reason, growth hackers will look into all the stages in the funnel with due care and devise methods to streamline the viewer-to-user transformation with maximum efficiency.
###**Step 1: Visitor acquisition**A top priority for online marketers, visitor acquisition can be achieved by different methods, which are generally divided into*Pull*and*Push*tactics based on approach subtlety, or lack of it thereof.*Pull*strategies comprise use of infographics, webinars, slideshows, podcasts, eBooks, guest posts and other types of content that can present the brand as a niche authority. SEO and social media campaigns also fall in the*Pull*bucket as their ultimate goal is to leverage audience from other blogs or online communities and draw its attention (ergo,*pull*) to the company’s website in hopes of conversion growth. Many growth hackers prefer the*Pull*method to*Push*tools as it entails lower costs and is less intrusive (as we already mentioned, 21st-century consumers are very sensitive to blatant marketing tactics).*Push*marketing is less subtle than the*Pull*method, but it can be used to ensure steady inflow of website visitors and improve brand visibility. Most common*Push*tools include [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages), ad purchase, collaboration with non-competing brands, point-of-sale displays, promo swaps, etc. However, before investing in a*Push*campaign, you need to educate yourself about the user’s lifetime customer value and cost per conversion to avoid losing a fortune on advertising which may not result in satisfactory ROI.
In addition to these two techniques, growth hackers have come up with a third method to attract new visitors: with product-oriented tactics, the merchandise can be tweaked and updated to promote itself. This is usually achieved through analysis of consumer-relevant info gathered by means of social networks, API integration, built-in social sharing options (e.g. network updates automatically posted from fitness, travel, and other lifestyle-oriented apps), or by insertion of backlinks into the product.
###**Step 2: User activation**Once visitors come flocking to your website, you need to cajole them into taking action and becoming users. This can mean prompting them to sign up for an account or a newsletter, entrust you with personal information such as name, age, and e-mail address, complete a survey, post a comment, join a discussion, or anything else that will make them a part of your user database. To this end, you can utilize on-site optimization, compelling call to action buttons (people love to click those), gamification,*Thank You*pages, etc. Rather than sticking to one user activation tool, growth hackers often experiment with different methods to optimize the site for maximum activation efficiency – although customer behavior generally follows a relatively uniform pattern, certain niche or user profile specificities can break startup success even before it hatches.
###**Step 3: User retention**An army of loyal customers is the best proof of service or product quality, but converting a first-time buyer into faithful follower does require special considerations. To maximize retention, growth hackers often use drip-mail campaigns, event notifications, feedback prompts, and other means of communication with users. In this regard, the job of a growth hacker is more flexible than that of a marketer: in case existing customers are not satisfied with the service or product or have suggestions concerning merchandise features or design upgrades, they can use the feedback to fine-tune the product for improved user experience. That said, A/B testing is still a critical (and commonly used) tool in this part of the funnel, but direct feedback is usually more valuable as it can point to certain product/service aspects which a traditional marketer would never think of reevaluating.
As for successful user activation and retention examples, Twitter and their tutorial stand out proud and high. By identifying the AHA moment (the point when the customer begins to appreciate product value and benefits), the social network managed to adjust their business approach and increase retention rates. Adding prompts for new users to follow existing and influential Twitterers, the platform made the experience more interesting to new members, boosting retention rates and visitor engagement, and the tactic helped hack early growth which the network continued to build on to this day.
If tackled properly, user retention can result in referrals, effective testimonials, and other means of organic brand promotion. Of course, product/service quality are essential for this to happen, but growth hacking combined with certain marketing tools can help attract the type of clients which will show their love and care by spreading the good word about your startup’s offerings.
##**Final Thoughts**> “Growth hacking is not a 1-2-3 sequence, but instead a fluid process. Growth hacking at its core means putting aside the notion that marketing is a self-contained act that begins toward the end of a company’s or a product’s development life cycle. It is, instead, a way of thinking and looking at your business.”
>*~**Ryan Holiday*Growth hacking is a challenging and creative job which requires resourcefulness, solid knowledge of marketing, distribution, and product development procedures, razor-sharp analytical skills, a penchant for experimentation, and critical thinking. The tactics and procedures listed above are only the tip of the iceberg – and the iceberg is growing fast as the internet continues to evolve and search engines are turning extremely wary of marketing shortcuts and promotional pick-me-ups. For this reason, growth hackers are nothing short of magicians in 21st-century marketing and product development – and their willpower cannot be swayed easily. Capable of enduring series of failures, let downs, and dead-end alleys, a deft growth hacker will finally strike the mother load and return home with hands covered in blisters and gold dust.
###**References:**- – [Growth Hacking Tactics That Every Startup Needs To Know](https://ahrefs.com/blog/growth-hacking/)
- – [Harvard Business Review: Marketing Is Dead, Bill Lee](https://hbr.org/2012/08/marketing-is-dead)
- – [The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking, Neil Patel & Bronson Taylor](https://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking-chapter-1/)
- – [The Difference Between Growth Hacking And Traditional Marketing](http://growthdevil.com/difference-growth-hacking-traditional-marketing/)
- – [Growth Hacking is the New Inbound Marketing](http://positionly.com/blog/inbound-marketing/growth-hacking-new-inbound-marketing)
- – [13 Critically Important Lessons from Over 50 Growth Hackers](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/lessons-from-growth-hackers/)
- – [21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics, Jon Yongfook](http://yongfook.com/actionable-growth-hacking-tactics.html)
- – [Defining A Growth Hacker: Debunking The 6 Most Common Myths About Growth Hacking](http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/08/defining-a-growth-hacker-6-myths-about-growth-hackers/)
- – [Top 10 growth hacks of all time](http://adambreckler.com/2013/10/09/top-10-growth-hacks-of-all-time/)
- – [What are the top 10 consumer internet growth hacks that have been A/B tested?](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-10-consumer-internet-growth-hacks-that-have-been-A-B-tested-1?redirected_qid=939263)
- – [Inbound Marketing Vs. Growth Hacking — Why One Outperforms The Other](http://www.square2marketing.com/blog/inbound-marketing-vs.-growth-hacking-why-one-outperforms-the-other)
- – [Growth Hacking is the New Inbound Marketing](http://positionly.com/blog/inbound-marketing/growth-hacking-new-inbound-marketing)
- – [Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing](http://andrewchen.co/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/)
- – [Difference Between Push & Pull Marketing](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-push-pull-marketing-31806.html)
- – [Airbnb: The Growth Story You Didn’t Know](https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb)
- – [Growth Hacking Tactics: The Ultimate List](http://growthsimple.com/resources/growth-hacks/)
---
## Posts: Prospect More Links in Less Time With Dibz
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/link-prospects-in-less-time-dibz-2365](https://fourdots.com/blog/link-prospects-in-less-time-dibz-2365)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/link-prospects-in-less-time-dibz-2365.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/link-prospects-in-less-time-dibz-2365.md)
**Published:** 2016-04-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News, SEO
**Tags:** link building, link prospecting, SEO
### Content
Change is the only constant in the SEO world, and with that in mind we aimed at providing our colleagues worldwide a cutting-edge tool to simplify their job and make it less stressful. After the finishing touches have been done by our development team and a limited number of SEO professionals, [Dibz](https://dibz.me) is finally ready for its official public release.
Building quality links is the very foundation of a highly-ranked website. Ignore it and you will hardly see the top of SERP; abuse it and you will feel the full wrath of the relentless Google. That is why we have taken on the task of creating a link prospecting tool for all the SEO experts who work in line with Google’s strict “code of conduct”.
Although the diversity of link builder’s job is what makes it so appealing, there are some more tedious parts of the process. The ride from finding a website to getting an actual link is bumpy and in some cases quite sluggish. As most of link builders are limited by time, it is important to cut corners whenever possible without taking a hit on quality.
Featured on BetaList, one of the biggest hubs for pre-launch startups, Dibz has received a high level of attention from the people in the industry and had a successful beta phase, which resulted in today’s launch.
During the private beta test trials, we stumbled upon a couple of features that we thought required several fixes and adjustments. Upon expert fine-tuning, we are proud to present you with the official version of our link building automation tool.
## A stroll down the Dibz lane
The idea for creating Dibz came from the need to shorten the time span required for preparing prospects for [outreach during a link building campaign](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency). All the experience we’ve gathered during the [years of practicing SEO](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) has been invested into this tool – spam parameters, the role of social media, Google metrics, as well as some custom additions that we found useful. So, let’s take a stroll through some key Dibz features.
## 1. Search Options
Before actually launching the [search](https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764), several key parameters need to be filled out. These include:
- Search terms field – where you fill out the desired keywords;
- Research type – here you choose the appropriate predefined queries based on the type of the search (guest blogging, directories, forums, reviews, etc.);
- Custom Search Parameters – a complementary field to research type, which enables you to add your own queries if they are not listed as predefined;
- Select Client/Campaign – these are related options designed to separate different teams working on the same project;
- Language – for localisation purposes;
- TLD – for filtering country code Top-Level Domains;
- Date Range – for filtering the results by date;
- Depth – displays the desired number of results per single combination of a keyword and a query.
Our predefined search has been devised from the experience of our link builders. Each one of them has been using Google advanced operators as a part of their daily tasks; they’ve been thinking of new ways of combining them with keywords in order to come up with a higher number of quality results. By implementing findings of our link builders into Dibz tool, we have shortened the time needed for obtaining valuable prospects by tenfold!
## 2. Search results
###**Spam Factor**Through history, Google kept redefining the concept of ‘quality’. For this reason link builders are always one step behind, forced to double up their pace in order to keep up with the changes while maintaining a high level of performance.
Dibz identifies websites that contain spammy content, keywords or external links that are not in compliance with Google’s quality criteria. Furthermore, it shows the domain authority (D.A.) of the website, as well as referring domains (R.D.), referring pages (R.P.) and social media shares, providing you with an insight into the reputation of the websites listed.
By combining both Google API and Ahrefs API with a few other tools, we have created a powerful spam detection system that has worked in our favour during the testing period.
###**Tailored just for you**Not all industry experts look for the same qualities in their prospects. With that in mind, we have enabled each subscriber to adjust the SPAM metrics according to their own needs. As a result you will be able to choose the number of ads a prospect can have on a page, the number of referring pages allowed per domain, if the website has an about us or a contact page, and much more.
###**CSV manipulation**What makes Dibz unique on the market is its compatibility with other link building tools. Once you create your own custom list of prospect websites, you are able to download it in CSV and upload to an outreach tool you use. It works the other way around as well. After performing competitor analysis and extracting a list of websites containing your rival’s links, you can upload them into Dibz and pick out those worthy of your attention.
Every respectable internet marketer understands the importance of off-page SEO for rankings. Certain online communities keep putting [this fact into question](https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2396815/is-link-building-dead) and claim that Google algorithm updates have changed the game for good. The reality is that a well-designed link building strategy still remains the number one priority of a high quality performed inbound marketing campaign.
With the help from Dibz, your link building effort will see a turn for the best, giving you the freedom to invest more time into communication with bloggers and creation of higher quality content. So, don’t hesitate and [try out our tool for free](https://dibz.me) and see for yourself the future of link prospecting!
---
## Posts: Take Part in #BrandME Reputation Management Chat
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/join-us-brandme-reputation-management-chat-thursday-march-31-2357](https://fourdots.com/blog/join-us-brandme-reputation-management-chat-thursday-march-31-2357)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/join-us-brandme-reputation-management-chat-thursday-march-31-2357.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/join-us-brandme-reputation-management-chat-thursday-march-31-2357.md)
**Published:** 2016-03-29
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** MIlica Dobrenov
**Categories:** Company News, News
### Content
On**Thursday, March 31st at 12PM ET**, a group of online marketers, SEO pros and branding experts will be sharing their insights on reputation management under a #BrandME hashtag on Twitter. If you’re interested in the associated trends or want to get some practical tips for your personal or company brand, do save the date and join us!
The chat will be hosted by a distinguished social media marketing agency [Everywhere](https://everywhereagency.com/), which will encourage participants to share their ideas and tips on the best online reputation management practices. Sponsored by Domain .ME and largely inspired by [their recent research](http://domain.me/is-your-good-name-at-risk-survey-of-americans-reveals-importance-of-managing-online-reputation/) on online reputation management trends, the chat will explore the topic in more depth to give more practical tips for those who are looking to build a stable personal or company brand online.
> The team at Four Dots is happy to be invited as a brand guest and join the hot discussion with influential panelists such as Leticia Barr, education and tech columnist at [TechSavvyMama](http://techsavvymama.com/), social media team at [VivaFifty](http://www.vivafifty.com/), Beca Ludlum of [MyCrazyGoodLife](http://mycrazygoodlife.com/about/) and Colby Shipwash of [Days of Domestic Dad](http://daysofadomesticdad.com).
Together with them, we’ll cover lots of interesting topics on online reputation management and we promise a number of practical tips to help you build you online image more successfully. You’ll learn what some of the key trends in the field are and how experienced marketers approach this aspect of digital marketing. Can you think of a better way to learn about this topic than hearing from these popular authors directly?
If any of this sounds like something you could apply to your future digital strategies, join us on Thursday March 31 at 12PM ET and add the #BrandME hashtag to your tweets! We’d love to learn more about your own experiences with online branding and reputation management, so feel free to share your ideas or shoot any questions!
> Plus, you get a chance to win one of five $50 gift cards that will be given to randomly picked participants! [Register here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brandme-reputation-management-twitter-chat-sponsored-by-domainme-tickets-22511680041) to let us know that you’re attending.
Looking forward to tweeting with you!
---
## Posts: US Elections Inspire New Google Search Features
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-adds-new-search-features-follow-us-elections-hype-2344](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-adds-new-search-features-follow-us-elections-hype-2344)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-adds-new-search-features-follow-us-elections-hype-2344.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-adds-new-search-features-follow-us-elections-hype-2344.md)
**Published:** 2016-03-21
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** MIlica Dobrenov
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Google, US Elections Hype
### Content
The US presidential elections of 2016 continue to create a massive buzz online, enabling citizens to be more directly included in the hottest discussions. Online search, social networks and YouTube videos are booming with engagements and have become primary sources of real-time information on candidates and campaigns.
To meet this increased demand for instant information and stay a go-to data platform, Google tweaked its search engine several times in the past few months. Aiming to beat Twitter and other social networks in terms of the ability to deliver real-time information to online users, the company introduced a range of new features designed to offer the freshest possible data on this year’s elections.
Back in January, Google [announced](https://googleblog.blogspot.rs/2016/01/republican-debate-presidential-politics.html) they were teaming up with Fox News Channel to provide real-time responses for searchers through a feature that enables candidates to publish additional information during televised debates. The other two innovative additions included highlighting the related insights from Google Trends and bringing popular YouTube voices to ask questions during the debates.
As suggested in the announcement, this is primarily because search queries related to the elections jump by 440% on average during the very broadcast. Obviously, Google had plenty of reasons to introduce new features and further improve the ways citizens interact with elections-related information. However, the latest feature is planned to be expanded to individuals and organizations outside the elections and might have some more serious implications after the campaigns are over.**Google introduces Posts**The search feature Google launched earlier in March is simply called [Posts](https://www.google.com/posts/) and is intended to allow Google-verified individuals and organizations to post directly into search results. This way searchers have an opportunity to participate in this “one-way social network” and hear directly from the candidates. The feature is currently in its experimental phases, but already offers a useful new way to keep in touch with the latest information.
Namely, for queries that only contain names of the candidates the engine adds a set of new “cards” where Google Knowledge Graph traditionally was. The cards include the basic information on the candidate drawn from Wikipedia, the Post article on a specific issue and details about campaign finance. Yet if you’re searching for a specific issue the candidates debated on, Google displays a set of cards showing information from various sources, including the posts created by the candidates themselves.
The slot with answers currently encompasses a great portion of the traditional screen and if you’re interested in what other candidates have said about the issue, you can simply click below to compare the results.
This indeed offers a new way to stay in touch with the latest updates on the issues, but also may rise questions regarding the extent to which Google will influence online citizens’ voting decisions.
An [earlier study](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548) carried out by Robert Epstein and Ronald E. Robertson already suggested that Google’s search algorithm has the ability to shift voting preferences of undecided citizens, thus having an enormous impact on the outcome of the elections. Epstein suggests that the engine “has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had.”
With the Posts feature and implied dominance over social networks, Google only becomes more influential when it comes to shaping people’s mind on current issues. More importantly, the Posts feature is planned to be opened for a number of prominent individuals and organizations once its experimental phase with the presidential candidates ends. Depending on who gets entitled to become a verified user to post to the Engine, this may greatly change the way we communicate with specific people and, quite possibly, major brands.
Who do you think will have the ability to use Posts next?*Header image with courtesy of [thedailybeast.com](http://thedailybeast.com)*
---
## Posts: Changes in Negative Local Search Ranking Factors in Last 3 Years
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/negative-local-search-ranking-factors-2271](https://fourdots.com/blog/negative-local-search-ranking-factors-2271)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/negative-local-search-ranking-factors-2271.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/negative-local-search-ranking-factors-2271.md)
**Published:** 2016-03-14
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Local Search, Ranking Factors, SEO
### Content
One of the very few things that remained constant about SEO since the earliest days of its development is the frequency with which we are talking about the fact that it never stops changing. We have become so used to this that any kind of consistency is almost surprising, especially when we look at specific areas of Search Engine Optimization. Wanting to take a closer look at the breakdown of**negative local search ranking factors**that [Moz has been publishing](https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors/2015) as a part of their yearly surveys of experts on the subject, we decided to compare last year’s results with those in the years before. It came as a bit of a surprise to learn that, despite the significant changes in the local search landscape, things that you need to be weary of remained pretty much the same.
Despite the stack changes, Venice and [Pigeon updates](http://searchengineland.com/pigeon-search-engine-lands-name-new-google-local-search-update-197932), the metamorphosis of Google Places to Google My Business and everything else that has happened in the period that we chose to focus on (2013 – late 2015) local search best practices remain largely the same. We won’t mention each of the negative factors that experts deemed most detrimental to success in local SEO, but instead we will give you an overview of the most important ones and point out some general trends. When we do talk about a particular factor we will also mention what position it occupied which year, starting from 2013 and going forward to 2015, with higher positions being reserved for the most harmful ones.
There are several different ways to classify the factors, so we’ll try to provide you with a short summary of some of them.
## Platform Based
The first classification of potential problems that we’ll address is based on the area of the data ecosystem they relate to. In other words, those pertaining to the businesses website itself; its [Google My Business](http://www.localseoguide.com/seriously-track-your-google-my-business-pages/) page (or Google Places for Business in 2013 and up to mid 2014); and third party websites, like reviews, listings in business directories and similar. Moz’s survey analyzed 30 factors in [2013](https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors/2013) and [2014](https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors/2014) each and 27 in 2015. While the numbers are somewhat rough, as some factors could be classified under two different categories, each year, the most populous group by far was the one dealing with GMB i.e. Google Places. Every year, there were 4 items in the list of potential on-site issues and 18 in the GMB/GP section. In 2013 and 2014 there were 8 potential external problems, while this was reduced to 5 in 2015.
It is hardly surprising that [Google managed to make their service](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) quintessential for success in local search, but for those who can’t wait to call them out on it, it must be said that most of the factors that experts believe to have recognized make absolute sense. For the most part, they deal with data accuracy and consistency. For instance, presence of multiple Place or GMB pages with same or similar business title and address has occupied 5th position in the overall list in 2013, and 13th in the years 2014 and 2015. Along the similar lines, experts also listed mis-matched NAP or inclusion of tracking phone numbers in Places or GMB landing page (6, 4, 6); presence of multiple Place or GMB pages with same phone number (11, 9, 8); and choosing to hide Place or GMB page address (23, 19, 20). For the most part, as long as you’re not out to game the system by giving out false information, trying to manipulate the search engines by creating fake listings with incorrect data, or rushing through the setup process, you should ace your GMB page just by following simple common sense.
While most are hardly surprising, there are several items that someone with only a cursory knowledge of optimization for local search might fail to consider were it not for the survey. For instance, even though it is consistently at the bottom of the list, which is to say that it’s not considered a major threat to your**local search rankings**, having [multilingual listings](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614) for the same Places/GMB business (30, 30, 26) is apparently still frowned upon by Google, even though it might make perfect sense in some instances. Similarly, it might not be obvious to everyone that listing an 800 number on Places/GMB page (20, 16, 16) or choosing a service area instead of in-location visits in your Places/GMB (27, 22, 24) will get you in Google’s disfavor, but even though these items are relatively low on the list, they still found their way in there.
## Outside Vs Inside Influence
One of the more heartening conclusions that we have reached through the analysis of negative factors is that the majority of the problems addressed in the survey is under your direct control. In 2013 and 2014 there were only 4 outside negative influences, while the 2015 survey lists 5 of them, all of them boiling down to user reviews on various platforms:
- Reports of violations on your Places/GMB page (8, 8, 5)
- Low numerical ratings in Places/GMB by Google users (24, 25, 18)
- Negative sentiment in Place/GMB reviews (25, 28, 23)
- Low numerical ratings of your Places/GMB page by third-party users (26, 26, 22)
- Negative sentiment in third-party reviews (/, /, 25)
While the numbers indicate that these factors are gaining in importance as time goes by, which is hardly a surprise considering the rising influence of social signals and reliance on actual user input, this still means that a lot of your success in local search will depend on how careful and conscientious you are when creating your GMB page, getting listings on third party websites, and generally, tending to your backyard.
## On-site Negative Local Search Ranking Factors
One of the things that has stayed almost perfectly consistent during the three year period that we decided to analyze is the way you set up your business website. Each of the three surveys lists the same four items, with the only difference being their perceived severity:
- Keyword stuffing in your business name (2, 7, 14)
- Presence of malware on site (9, 6, 4)
- Absence of crawlable NAP on your website (10, 11, 9)
- Address that includes suite number similar to UPS Mail Store addresses (17, 15, 10)
While there are only a handful of factors mentioned in this category, most of them are quite high up on the list, and while the first three might be more than obvious, not everyone would think twice before disregarding the fourth, oblivious to the potential consequences. What might seem surprising is that keyword stuffing seems to be taken less seriously as each year goes by, but that might just stem from the fact that even the most ardent black hatters have had to realize by now the futility of trying to manipulate the results by the age old copy/paste technique. A general decrease in the number of people resorting to this ‘tactic’ could have resulted in its drop in notoriety.
### Conclusion
While some of the mentioned factors might not be the first thing you think about when considering potential dangers to your local ranking, most of them are spectacularly unspectacular. The story of optimizing for local search is daily getting new chapters, but its tone remains largely the same. By far the most prominent issue in each survey was NAP inconsistencies, regardless of their origin – GMB, your website, or third party websites. In fact, one of the only items that hasn’t shifted in the period we were tracking is mis-matched NAP or use of tracking phone numbers across the data ecosystem, listed as the third most detrimental factor to your local SEO in all three surveys, in close proximity to other two major offenders – your listing being detected at a false business address (1, 1, 2), and incorrect business category (4, 2, 1).
Naturally, simply focusing on negative factors and their changes over the years is far from providing you with the entire picture, but it should at least help you dodge some of the more glaring and easily avoidable issues. As long as you ensure that your site is malware-free, that your NAP is consistent and that you don’t indulge in some scampishly devious attempts at manipulation, such as keyword stuffing, creating multiple GMB listings with different data or providing false information, you should have a solid base for upon which to elaborate on your optimization efforts.
---
## Posts: Engage your Audience with Remarketing Techniques
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-engage-your-online-audience-using-effective-remarketing-techniques-2233](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-engage-your-online-audience-using-effective-remarketing-techniques-2233)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-engage-your-online-audience-using-effective-remarketing-techniques-2233.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-engage-your-online-audience-using-effective-remarketing-techniques-2233.md)
**Published:** 2016-02-24
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
**Categories:** PPC
**Tags:** PPC, Remarketing
### Content
Did you know that the majority of your potential customers leave your website without making any purchase? An [astounding figure of 96% of cases](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/what-converting-websites-do/) proves this to be one of the largest problems for ecommerce businesses.
In order to address this problem, online companies have put their trust in numerous remarketing techniques and tools aiming to reclaim all those lost, potential customers. They invest in remarketing to the people who’ve already visited their website or interacted with their niche or community and then gone off somewhere else.
Put simply, regardless of the way they reached out to you, either by clicking on an ad or signing up for a newsletter, there is a way for you to connect with them again.
Obviously, the whole idea behind remarketing is to get in front of the audience that was at one point interested in your product or service and find the way to make them stay. However, in order to achieve this, you need to have a solid remarketing strategy that will be executed in the right way.
## Create Remarketing Lists for Search Ads
When it comes to the Google AdWords search landscape, one thing is certain- it is constantly changing and evolving. Gone are the days when keywords were the one and only targeting principle. The perfect example of this is Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA).
The way they work is pretty simple. Namely, when visitors leave your site without buying anything, RLSA helps you reconnect with them once they embark on their search on Google. This amazing feature helps you customize your bids, tailor your search campaigns to be more suiting to your users or even select keywords used when they previously visited your site.
Furthermore, there are two basic strategies for using remarketing lists for search ads. First, you can simply propose some keywords you don’t usually bid on, just for those people that have recently visited your site or converted on it in the past. On the other hand, you can upgrade the keywords you are already using for people on your remarketing list.
## Segment your Remarketing Campaigns Effectively
Identifying and splitting up target demographic has always been the holy grail of any digital marketing campaign. However, even though dividing your audience in terms of demographics or location might be great for your SEO, it’s not a priority when it comes to remarketing.
The key to successful remarketing campaign is not treating all your website visitors in the same way. Namely, in order to meet their needs, you need to segment your remarketing campaigns based on numerous factors, such as how much time a user spends on your site, how many pages they view, what pages they visit and so on. Most importantly, you need to always take your [sales funnel into consideration](https://mailshake.com/blog/sales-funnel/) during the segmentation of target audience.
One of the most common remarketing mistakes businesses make is targeting an audience of all site visitors for the last 30 days. Although it sometimes might be a pretty decent starting point for a remarketing campaign, you will still waste your efforts, time and resources on numerous users that are not interested in your product at all.
For each group you are planning to segment, you can create different Call to Actions, monitor your conversion rates and create workflow segments to further enhance your prospects to the sale.
## Check your content in order to determine what attracts your visitors the most
One of the first things you need to do is to filter the landing pages that have high session numbers, but no conversion. Only by doing so will you be able to detect content that drives the visitors to your site for reasons other than purchase intent.
Let’s illustrate this through the following example. Maybe one of your blog posts or videos went viral and now it drives an immense traffic to your site. Although it’s great for your SEO strategy, those visitors are not of [crucial](https://fourdots.com/case-studies/crucial) importance for your remarketing campaign.
Therefore, once you notice some non-converting content on your website, you need to create a target group consisting of people who visited those pages and exclude them from your remarketing campaign.
## Exclude Sessions Lasting less than 10 Seconds
On the majority of sites, about [50% of sessions last less than 10 seconds](http://searchengineland.com/use-google-analytics-stop-wasting-remarketing-dollars-people-just-arent-223759), which has practically no influence on your remarketing efforts. Of course, these visitors are simply not into your product or have clicked on it by the accident, therefore they aren’t such good prospects for driving some future conversions.
So, your goal here is to stop wasting money on reengaging users that aren’t your target demographic at all. In order to eliminate these audiences from your remarketing campaign, you could simply create a remarketing list in Google [Analytics](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) for sessions that last less than 10 seconds and voila, the problem is solved.
## Leverage Affinity and In-Market Audiences
People visit your website for a myriad of reasons, from simply being interested in your products to being in the market for a similar product. For example, you’re selling health insurance online. In order to analyze your competitors, you would spend hours navigating through your client and competitor websites, obviously without any intention of making a purchase of the product they offer. Well, the same thing happens to you every day.
Therefore, you need to separate people who are really interested in your product from those visiting your site for some other intentions. And, the best option for doing so is choosing the “All Campaigns” option at AdWords and then setting your Secondary dimension Affinity Category.
These affinity categories are supposed automatically detect your target audience within AdWords. Of course, you cannot expect them to show exactly why those people came to your website, but they will certainly allow you to eliminate the majority users that have no intent on making a purchase.
## Use all resources you have to reconnect
If you have your users’ email address, social ID, app ID or even a phone number, you are given an amazing opportunity to reconnect with them via the multitude of online channels, especially Facebook and Twitter. Just take the example of all those visitors who signed up for your newsletter or intended to buy a product but never finished the purchase. By contacting them this way, you will manage to target specifically those audiences on Facebook and Twitter, whose email address you’ve previously uploaded.
## Be Careful when Creating Remarketing Ads
The most beautiful thing about remarketing is that you can reach users with the plethora of ads. Using the display network helps you choose between run text, image or video ads. Here are some most important things you need to keep in mind:
-*– Your ad needs to be consistent with your branding practices.*Always keep in mind that remarketing is all about the users recognizing your brand and getting back to it over and over again. Therefore, you need to stick to your traditional [logo](https://fourdots.com/blog/digital-content-design-project-called-infostarters-6091), colors and voice in order to attract the potential customers to your site once again. Anything outside your traditional branding practices could significantly decrease your visitors’ likelihood of clicking.
-*– Use an ad format that can work at every site.*Remember, not all websites support every add format. Precisely because of this, you should create images in numerous sizes in order to increase the amount of times that your ads can be shown at sizes that fit each and every site. Additionally, if your ad is animated, always make sure it’s in regular PNG or JPEG format. This way, you can manage a steady message, enable the optimal visibility and give your placement a boost.
-*– Make it clear what people can expect from your site.*Always make your ads concise and clear enough in order to point out the main advantages of your site to the potential customer.
### Conclusions
All in all, once you start measuring your performance gains and dividing your audiences as prospects and non-prospects, you will master the basic techniques for detecting the unqualified audiences to eliminate from your remarketing campaigns.
---
## Posts: Wikipedia's Search Engine Will Not Rival Google
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/wikipedias-transparent-search-engine-will-not-rival-google-2245](https://fourdots.com/blog/wikipedias-transparent-search-engine-will-not-rival-google-2245)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/wikipedias-transparent-search-engine-will-not-rival-google-2245.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/wikipedias-transparent-search-engine-will-not-rival-google-2245.md)
**Published:** 2016-02-17
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Web search engine, wikipedia
### Content
Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia and several other open knowledge projects, recently announced a plan to build a new search engine with an aim to democratize online content. In September 2015, the project received [a $2.5M grant](https://m.wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:Knowledge_engine_grant_agreement.pdf&page=2) from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build “the Internet’s first transparent engine,” whose purpose will be:
>*“To advance new models for finding information by supporting stage one development of the Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia, a system for discovering reliable and trustworthy public information on the Internet.”*Despite the fact that the [project’s wiki clearly states](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/FAQ) Wikimedia is not building a general-purpose search engine to compete with Google, such doubts have been raised by both media and Wikipedia board members. Namely, in his recent [Signpost article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/Op-ed), Wikipedia editorial board member notes that the conceptual directions for discovery of Wikipedia’s new engine, which are presented on [these slides](https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=File:Discovery_Year_0-1-2.pdf&page=18), unmistakably look like Google-style search.
Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-10/Special_report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-10/Special_report)
In addition to the design, the questions have been raised in relation to the sources of information that will be included in search. Referring to this issue, [the project’s wiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/FAQ) suggests that the engine will also use information sources from other channels such as [OpenStreetMap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap) and other data sets that Wikipedia communities decide to use.
>*“The goal is to expand the amount of knowledge and expand the context beyond just textual search. We want to begin by showcasing content from other wiki projects including appropriate languages based on query input.”*Evidently, such data sources are entirely different from the ones Google uses in its own engine to offer general-purpose search results. In fact, a large portion of concerns as to whether or not Wikipedia’s Knowledge Engine will become the next Google is based on Jimmy Wales’s previous statements that he’ll try to revive his search project that failed in 2009. Eight years ago, Wikipedia’s co-founder launched a for-profit search engine, but was forced to shut it down only after a year.
After this failure, Wales suggested: “I will return again and again in my career to search, either as an investor, a contributor, a donor, or a cheerleader,” which partly encouraged the global media to associate the Knowledge Engine with this previous decision of his. However, as a Wikipedia spokesperson later [confirmed for The Next Web](http://thenextweb.com/google/2016/02/15/wikipedia-is-building-an-open-source-search-engine-but-its-pretty-controversial/#gref):
>*“We do not have plans to build a new search engine: our objective is to improve people’s ability to find content across Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects.”*Even after this explanation, the discussions about the project and its potential impact on the future of search continue to be a burning topic on the web. Guardian’s Seth Finkelstein, for example, [commented](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-10/Special_report) on the strange relationship Google and Wikimedia Foundation Board have had:
> “Now, the following remarks are purely speculative and the product of a very jaded and cynical person. Given Wales’s previous Wikia Search project, and the extensive Google connections with the current Wikimedia Foundation Board, I would be extremely wary that this project exists to help Google in further improving its search results (that’s indeed not competing with Google!). The spam and junk battle is ongoing.”
While the initiative for a non-commercial search engine is definitely a needed one in the world where Google dictates how we see the web content, the exact way the Knowledge Engine will change this issue is not really clear. With limited data sets and lots of speculations about its real purpose, it may only be more difficult for Wikimedia Foundation to properly present the project to the highly active online audience. After all, it will probably take years until its completed and by then the world of search is likely to change in many different ways.
---
## Posts: Increasing Mobile Search Visibility through Guest Blogging
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/increasing-mobile-search-visibility-through-guest-blogging-2223](https://fourdots.com/blog/increasing-mobile-search-visibility-through-guest-blogging-2223)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/increasing-mobile-search-visibility-through-guest-blogging-2223.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/increasing-mobile-search-visibility-through-guest-blogging-2223.md)
**Published:** 2016-01-28
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** content marketing, mobile SEO
### Content
While the anticipation of Mobilegeddon was accompanied with roughly as much ruckus and chaos as the name promised, its actual unfolding wasn’t quite as sky rending as expected. Optimizing for mobile search results has already been a popular subject, and the update really pushed it into the spotlight for a while. However, even with all the talk, little has been said about how you can use guest blogging to boost your website’s ranking in mobile results.
This may not be all that surprising when you consider that, perhaps inspired by a [study](http://www.searchmetrics.com/knowledge-base/mobile-ranking-factors/) (which requires a free registration to view or download), that Searchmetrics conducted after the update people have mostly been focusing on [changes on their own websites](https://fourdots.com/blog/optimizing-for-small-screens-6-things-that-will-make-a-difference-in-2016-2108) – increasing page speed, allowing robots the access to CSS and Java, cleaning up redirects and 404s, purging everything that might be considered clutter from the content, and so on.
Another reason for the fact that the subject of this particular article doesn’t seem to have been widely discussed is that a lot of people might still be somewhat hesitant of saying the words “guest blogging” less they stir up some dormant Cutts curse.
Neither of these reasons was enough to deter us form exploring the subject further. While guest blogging is often stigmatized, when it’s done properly, with attention to content you distribute and people you collaborate with, it is still a great way to promote your site, regardless of the occasional panic surrounding it. With that in mind, let’s dive in and see if your approach to guest blogging should change depending on the platform you want to [optimize](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide) for.
## Potential Partners
If you want your site to rank highly in mobile search, it seems safe to assume that if any kind of links were able to help with its visibility, it’s links coming from sites that are favorably viewed by the algorithm. There is currently no evidence for this, but it seems reasonable that if Google considers links a recommendation, it would value those coming from mobile optimized sites more than those coming from sources that are themselves not considered that mobile friendly or relevant.
If you want your site to rank well in mobile, it is only in your interest to increase the amount of traffic that you are getting from this platform. Publishing on sites that have proven to rank highly in mobile search is one of the better ways to do this. Which is also why you’ll want to ensure that the content you send, and consequently that page that it will be published on, conforms to what has crystallized as mobile optimization best practices. So let’s have a look at how you can do this.
## Your Contribution
First of all, you need to be aware of the fact that there is a quite a bit of difference between [content that would rank well on mobile](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-1705) and content that is perfectly optimized for desktop viewing. This is to say that if you offer an article that will be tailored to satisfy mobile search criteria, you might be sacrificing some of the visibility that the page where it’s published might otherwise have achieved in desktop environments. With the fact that most blogs are meant to be viewed on larger screens, and are only accessed via mobile when the situation demands it, make sure that you want to take this approach before submitting your contribution or pitching a topic. If you do decide that you would like a mobile optimized guest post more than one likely to rank well for desktop, we’ll give you a couple of pointers.
First of all, the study that we’ve linked to at the beginning of this post has analyzed the top results for a huge set of keywords in both mobile and desktop environments and compared the results of the sites that ranked best in either category. One of the conclusions they have reached is that pages that ranked well in mobile search on average have significantly lower word count than those ranking in desktop results. While the average for the latter was around 1200 word on the page, mobile friendly pages averaged 868.
This is hardly surprising, as is the fact that you shouldn’t provide as many images to go along with your post as you would if you were targeting a different platform. They would not only cause too much clutter on a smaller screen, but could also increase the page loading time. Searchmetric’s study found that while desktop optimized pages on average have 9 images, mobile optimized ones only have 4 or less.
What might come as a bit of a surprise but actually makes sense once you think about it, is that mobile optimized content seems to be more demanding to read than the one published on sites that did well in desktop rankings. The reason for this might be the imposed brevity of the format, which is easier to achieve if you use more complex words to explain difficult concepts as succinctly as possible.
Content likely to rank in mobile has also been found to usually contain less internal links and keywords in the body of the text than its counterpart, but more proof terms (words semantically related to the main keyword). While this is interesting to note, you shouldn’t try to stuff your content with them. If you are offering a well researched and written article, and we hope that you know that this is the first prerequisite for any kind of guest blogging strategy, chances are that you are going to mention this terms organically anyway.
Unordered lists seem to be quite popular in mobile, as they allow you to stay concise but informative within the confines of smaller screens. The only thing left to add is that the ones that seemed to do best in mobile searches were usually somewhat shorter than the ones that you would see in pages populating the upper reaches of desktop results.
When it comes to your choice of topic, there are at least two things that you have to keep in mind. First, you have to consider the circumstances in which people are most likely to be reading a blog on a mobile device and the type of information they might be after in that kind of situation; and secondly, that the value of social shares is higher than you may have gotten used with desktop search. This is to say that, while making sure that your content is sharable has always been recommended, it becomes even more important when we talk about mobile search.
## Testing the Waters
Again, while it hasn’t been confirmed, it stands to reason that having a link on a page that ranks well in mobile search is likely to contribute more to your rankings for the same platform than a link from a corresponding, non mobile friendly page would. We have given you a short overview of how you can go about this, and would love it if you shared your results with us in order to conclusively confirm or debunk the theory.
---
## Posts: Four Dots Wishes you a Happy New Year!
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-wishes-you-a-happy-new-year-2204](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-wishes-you-a-happy-new-year-2204)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-wishes-you-a-happy-new-year-2204.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-wishes-you-a-happy-new-year-2204.md)
**Published:** 2015-12-30
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News
**Tags:** Four Dots Team
### Content
The holiday season is at its peak and we hope you’re using these moments to enjoy them with your family and friends as much as you can. We would like to steal only a moment of your time to wish you happy holidays and a successful year ahead!
>*Lots of honest smiles, joyful moments, challenging work projects and, of course, excellent results for any goal you set out to reach! *Of course, this goes for both personal and business goals. When it comes to the latter, we hope you’ll be able to see considerable improvements using advanced digital strategies, starting with SEO. As you probably know, the industry has seen some interesting, if not tectonic, changes in the waning year and we have been busily tracking the developments, hoping that you’ll benefit from our fastidiousness.
Like a true Grinch, Google went back on their promise of a [real time Penguin before the end of the year](https://fourdots.com/blog/panda-4-2-where-is-it-now-1643). Yet, mollified with their promise of a brighter tomorrow and inspired by the season of giving and forgiving, we hope this will only positively mark your next year.
To help you with this, the team at [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/contact) will continue to be at your disposal through relevant blog posts, quick feedback and cheerful team. We have left another successful year behind, which made us confident about our future work! To celebrate all the positive feelings for 2016, we spent some quality time together at a team party, combining our passion for social with our devotion to networking!
Once again, enjoy the holidays, have fun and be successful!*[The Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/case-studies) team*
---
## Posts: 12 Ideas to Help you Generate Quality Natural Backlinks
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/12-ideas-to-help-you-generate-quality-natural-backlinks-2136](https://fourdots.com/blog/12-ideas-to-help-you-generate-quality-natural-backlinks-2136)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/12-ideas-to-help-you-generate-quality-natural-backlinks-2136.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/12-ideas-to-help-you-generate-quality-natural-backlinks-2136.md)
**Published:** 2015-12-22
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** MIlica Dobrenov
**Categories:** Content Strategy, SEO
**Tags:** link building
### Content
A discerning reader has probably spotted the potential oxymoron in the very title of this post. Namely, if you’re a devotee of the theory that a*natural link*by definition is completely organic, the logical question to ask is:*Is there a way to actually influence the generation of natural links other than by creating awesome content?*To answer this, we’ll need to delve deeper into the very definition of natural backlinks.
## Defining natural backlinks
The largest portion of the SEO world is well aware of the fact that**link diversity is one of the key features of a Google-friendly backlink portfolio**. Yet, the very definition of a “natural” backlink still seems to be quite vague for many.
Seriously, given that the closest [Matt Cutts has ever got to defining natural links](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/affordable-link-building-service/) is saying they**“are better than non-natural,”**you can’t really blame SEO experts for interpreting the term differently. Of course, a logical assumption is that if you are able to create content that is attractive and relevant enough to inspire people to link to it, you’re done with the natural link creation.
However, even the best piece of content can remain forever hidden from the targeted eyes if it’s not strategically distributed. Now, whether such an approach should be adopted in relation to natural links is a matter of dispute in the SEO circles. To figure this out, the team at [topdraw](https://www.topdraw.com/) interviewed six important SEO figures and came up with [some interesting answers](https://www.topdraw.com/blog/2015-link-builder-survey-the-deal-with-google-link-building/).
Quite expectedly, no unanimous definition of a natural backlink is given, but a variety of conclusions could be drawn from the discussion. Whether you favor the view that “all links you pursue are unnatural,” or tolerate the opposite extreme (“any meaningful link is natural”), you’d probably agree that the most valuable backlinks are those that:**● Are in a natural context**, i.e. the content surrounding the link is relevant to that on the target page;**● Provide value for the readers**– they actually offer additional information about a certain topic;**● Have an anchor text**that integrates to the page contents in a meaningful way.
Of course, these are just some of the features according to which you can determine the relevancy of a backlink for your website. Based on the goals you set for your own business, you should be able to easily determine whether a link is [worth pursuing](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778) and whether its final creation is actually natural.
Supposing that you support the view suggesting that even a pursued link could be seen as a natural one, you should consider deploying the following tactics. (Even if you don’t, we encourage you to scroll down and consider whether any of these may work for your website).
## 1. Think offering value, not asking for links.
In the*topdraw*post mentioned above, Eric Ward gave an excellent example of a natural link building strategy that included some form of outreach. Namely, after creating a relevant post, Ward reached out to an industry professional whose interest in the topic was easy to discover. What followed was a backlink, as well as some form of word-of-mouth marketing for the content itself.
Here, Ward actually took some steps towards encouraging the creation of backlinks and there was nothing unnatural about it. Similarly, Julie Joyce suggests:
>*“Putting a link in a place where it adds value as a relevant resource. I don’t care if you pay for it, ask for it, tweet a link to it, or get it any other way. If it’s a good addition to someone’s work, it’s a natural link to me.”*Now, paid links have always been a gray area in the world of SEO and Google has advanced algorithms that keep track of this, which is why this option is generally not recommended. However, the point of the statement remains:**whenever a backlink has an actual value, it can be considered natural.**Therefore, reaching out to people who might be interested in sharing the content should not be separated from the notion of natural links. On the contrary, this can be a more effective strategy than simply creating content and waiting for the audience to notice and link to it.
## 2. Identify targets and create content purposefully.
Before you set out to creating content, you may first want to check if there is anyone at all who might be interested in republishing or linking back to it. Recycling the same old topics can be useful for maintaining the consistency of publishing, but the creation of natural backlinks requires you to offer something new, something juicy.
Therefore, you may first want to**make a list of websites that gather your target audience**and consider the types of content they might find interesting. For example, if you want to be featured on a website that publishes industry news and research, consider developing a newsworthy research on the burning topic.
This is, of course, easier said than done, but approaching content creation this way can get you much farther than sticking to the same content forms all the time. A single industry research, white paper or an ebook can bring you more natural backlinks than any of the generic 500-1000 words post that can entertain your audience only for a limited period of time.
## 3. Build upon someone else’s content.
This technique also requires you to first identify the target and develop content based on the opportunity discovered. Building upon someone else’s content is**particularly useful for controversial topics**that typically inspire the industry to talk about them. If the story is relevant enough, other people would consider taking your point of view when they decide to relate to the story.
This is [known as a Skyscraper technique](http://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique), which mainly suggests that you should find a popular post and build something even better. Namely, if everybody else in your industry is offering “10 Tips to Managing Personal Finance,” you should consider creating “50+ Tips for Managing Personal Finance.” Afterwards, however, you still have to reach out to the right people in order to get results. Brian Dean, who coined the term and was the first one to talk about this strategy, highlights three essential steps:**Step 1: **Find link-worthy content**Step 2:** Make something even better**Step 3:** Reach out to the right people
Clearly, the third step is critical here. However, it is also most frequently overlooked by creators of awesome content, who tend to believe that great content is all you need to have people linking back to you. If this was true, the skyscraper technique wouldn’t be a technique at all, but rather a lucky shot.
## 4. Identify influencers and write about them.
Once you discover (and make a list of!) influential people or companies in your industry, you can collaborate with them on creating amazing content. Many companies in your industry have a dedicated press section in which they feature news somebody else has written about them. Watch their pages for important updates and then cover the story on your blog. Of course, you still need to make sure they won’t miss it, so it pays off to consider reaching out to them to inform them. Chances are both of you will be happy, so go ahead!
## 5. Engage influencers with interviews or ego bait content.
Interviews are excellent, general-knowledge types of content that might be interesting for both you and your interlocutor. Doing an interview may require you to do extensive research and contact multiple persons, but the eventual results should translate into a highly linkable and relevant unique post.**Bonus tip:**if you include more people in a single topic interview, you increase your chances of being shared by them.
This form of content is popularly known as*ego bait*and essentially relies on providing benefits for all the parties involved. You reach out to influencers for expert opinion to get material for awesome content, while they get an opportunity to increase their own visibility. Creating such a piece of content typically requires extensive research and can take a while, but the results typically translate into several natural backlinks from the interviewees’ blogs.
If you wish to learn more about doing this, [here’s an ego bait on ego bait](http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2273959/egobait-how-to-get-links-exposure-in-a-variety-of-verticals)!
## 6. Find a suitable topic Q&A websites.
With all the techniques covered above, one thing is essential – finding the right topic. If you want to deliver something extraordinary, try finding the burning issue first. Websites such as Reddit and Quora can direct you to a number of unanswered questions that could be more than convenient topics for your next piece.
The great thing about doing research on Quora, for example, is that you actually get to find quite a few influencers along the way! Here you can even learn more about their area of expertise to find the right question to ask them. If you do your research right and let them know about it, you increase your chances of having your content linked to from other pages.
## 7. Diversify your content forms.
Natural backlinks often come in a number of different forms and from websites that operate in different ways. This is why you want to ensure you’re giving the option to all of them to link to you by creating as many content forms as possible.**From classic how-to posts to infographics and ebooks**, you should consider producing everything you can and promote accordingly.
In order to determine the content forms you should work on, examining [this chart](https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/most-and-least-shared-social-content) can be quite handy, regardless of the actual industry you operate in.
Source: [https://www.marketingsherpa.com](https://www.marketingsherpa.com)
Now, this already introduces you to six distinct types of posts that work great for most industries. How many of these are you creating for your website?
Every content creator’s dream is to achieve virality across multiple channels, but the truth is that different forms of content are treated differently on each online channel. This is why you should never simply*assume*what may go viral, but rather*explore*the topics and ways to actually achieve this.
## 8. Use the power of visuals.
Visual content is often regarded as the most effective content form a marketer can create. 52% of marketing professionals [say that](http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics)**video is the type of content that brings the highest ROI,**while the SEO world recognizes their [value for improving search rankings](https://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy).
Given that everybody seems to love them, videos should constitute an important part of your natural link building strategy. Additionally, posting visuals such as infographics on infographic submission sites can immediately bring streams of interested visitors to your site, some of which may even decide to republish your great visual. Similarly, there are many other submission websites that share particular types of posts which have the reach your content needs in order to be noticed.
## 9. Post your content where your audience can see it.
Identifying the right channels to get to your targets is essential for encouraging organic content promotion. For example, posting a research paper on Academia.edu can generate you**75% more citations in the course of five years**, according to the website.
Sometimes the best way to tell certain people about your content is to reach out to them via email, but this never guarantees your email will be opened, let alone answered to. This is why you should consider utilizing other communication channels, out of which – you’ve guessed! – social media can be the most efficient one. Explore the relevant hashtags and Twitter chats that gather your industry leaders and reserve that time to dedicating to this.
> Earlier this month, Google Portugal advised SEOs that natural links must be asked for “the right way” [http://t.co/mUVK95OoYl](http://t.co/mUVK95OoYl) [#seochat](https://twitter.com/hashtag/seochat?src=hash) [#BTW](https://twitter.com/hashtag/BTW?src=hash)
> — Bruce Clay, Inc. (@BruceClayInc) [July 16, 2015](https://twitter.com/BruceClayInc/status/621730550961680384)
What’s more, some of these chats announce their future topics in advance, which can be yet another great opportunity for you to create purposeful content and already have the promotion channel at your disposal.
## 10. Optimize for multiple channels.
Most people will offer a single piece of advice when it comes to content creation and you’ve probably heard it multiple times – “create content for people, and not for search engines.” However, these two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, meaning that you should take into account several different factors before starting content creation.**Organic search.**By giving your post a search friendly title, you’ll enable more people to find it on Google. Now, if it answers a question that has a large number of monthly searches, that’s already a great opportunity.**News sites.**As mentioned above, in order to get to the news website, you should definitely first ensure you have a story worth reading. However, this doesn’t mean that you should make a scandal in order to get to the front pages; oftentimes, simply announcing your future strategy or business results with proper commentary is a good way to catch the attention of the relevant media.
If you’re planning to do an industry research, for example, perhaps you should first find websites that might be interested in sharing this type of content. This will help you understand the topics they typically deal with and if there’s anything that has been left unsaid.
## 11. Encourage sharing to make your content visible.
Similar to posting content where people can see it, encouraging social sharing can help you get noticed and eventually linked to. This doesn’t simply mean you should share and tweet, but also directly ask other people to publicly recommend your posts. However, make sure you’re consistently reaching to the people that actually might be interested in what you offer, rather than spamming everyone on social networks.
## 12. Play the*numbers game*and not the*waiting game.*Finally, it may be worth noting that most of these techniques work only if you’re persistent enough in achieving them. Sometimes, your initial target may fail to link back to you, but this shouldn’t discourage you from doing another similar research next time. After all, you get to keep the awesome piece of content on your website, so this can never be a waste of time. Connecting all the dots such as finding the right target, the right topic, the right form and the right channels may be difficult to get right the first time, but it should definitely bring some benefits eventually.
With a strategic perspective on content creation presented above, natural link generation no longer seems like an oxymoron, does it?
Finally, I’d add another useful piece of advice to help you cut the potentially boring process of finding all the potential targets: consider [using our link prospecting tool](https://dibz.me/) to find as many targets as possible in a matter of minutes. (Oh, and make sure you let us know how it worked for you, we’d be happy to hear all about your results!)
Resources:
[https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/affordable-link-building-service/](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/affordable-link-building-service/)
[https://www.topdraw.com/blog/2015-link-builder-survey-the-deal-with-google-link-building/](https://www.topdraw.com/blog/2015-link-builder-survey-the-deal-with-google-link-building/)
[https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/most-and-least-shared-social-content](https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/most-and-least-shared-social-content)
[http://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique](http://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique)
[https://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy](https://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy)
---
## Posts: Introducing Dibz.me: A Powerful Link Prospecting Tool for SEO Pros
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082](https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082.md)
**Published:** 2015-12-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News, SEO
**Tags:** link prospecting, SEO
### Content
With high quality backlinks being the backbone of a well-ranked website, a successful SEO strategy heavily relies on finding great link building opportunities. For SEO agencies and teams that work with numbers of clients, this whole process often translates into spending unnecessarily large amounts of time on Google search.
To help you allocate your time on some more critical processes of building relevant links, Four Dots developed an intelligent link prospecting solution that does the boring part instead of you.
>***Enter [Dibz.me](https://dibz.me/), a full-featured software program that helps you find hundreds of relevant link building prospects, while at a coffee break!***## How Dibz helps you find link prospects in less time
Conceptualized by a team of people who have been in the SEO industry for a while now, Dibz is designed to facilitate the most exhaustive part of the entire link building process. Using the APIs of different SEO tools, Dibz helps you search Google in a way that actually works.
Namely, Dibz lets you choose from a set of predefined [search](https://fourdots.com/blog/search-engine-marketing-intelligence-14764) queries or enter custom ones to find the most relevant results for a particular link building strategy. From guest posts and local citations to resource pages and editorial sites, Dibz enables you to quickly find myriad of sites that could help you make your [backlink portfolio](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-a-spotless-backlink-portfolio-3778) more impressive.
Simply tick the relevant search parameters and enter your keywords to get the results directly from Google. More importantly, all the results are accompanied by the most relevant SEO metrics to enable you to easily select only those that matter most.
While you’re completely free to choose and even set the metrics according to which to categorize results, our built-in functionalities help you distinguish relevant websites from those that could be nothing but a waste of time.**Relevant website metrics help you focus on quality**Google keeps raising standards for high quality backlinks, so your team needs to define precisely what quality means. Historically, page rank has been used as the ultimate reference to a quality site, but even this has long stopped being a metric you should focus on. Instead, there are multiple other relevant indicators of a website’s quality, and Dibz lets you see them all.
-**Spam factors.**Dibz identifies websites with spammy keywords, external links or content that does not pass Google’s quality criteria.
-**Domain authority.**Taken directly from aherfs, domain authority is shown next to every search result you get.
-**Referring domains and referring pages.**As some of the metrics that can tell you a lot about a website’s popularity, referring domains and referring pages can give you a valuable insight into the reputation of specific sites.
-**Social shares.**For each opportunity, Dibz counts social shares on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ to show you where sharing opportunities
-**Website preview.**The preview of the website in the Dibz interface itself lets you instantly asses a particular opportunity.
Once you create the list of the preferred websites, you can easily download it in CSV and upload it to Pitchbox or any other outreach tool you use.
## The value of link prospecting with Dibz
Despite the constant changes in Google’s algorithm, a website’s backlink portfolio remained one of the essential factors for great search rankings. A 2015 Search Engine Ranking Survey by Moz confirmed that this is not just an assumption, revealing that domain-level and page-level link features still have the greatest influence as a search engine ranking factor.
Obviously, creating a strategy for generating high quality backlinks is essential for the entire performance of your or your client’s website in search. This means only one thing: you need to find ways to generate high quality links in multiple ways and Dibz gives you the power to do so.
## How Dibz fits your SEO strategy
With the clear advantage of building links in an ethical way, the question of the opportunities for doing so remains critical for SEO agencies. Smaller teams can still manually search Google, open each and every website and check its properties with multiple tools, but the larger ones need to shorten this process in order to get better results. Those who work on tight deadlines or with highly demanding clients are likely to instantly recognize the benefits Dibz brings.
After all, if you could choose whether to spend time on manually inspecting hundreds of websites or doing a research on trending topics for your next big article, what would you choose? Dibz offers you a way to instantly check its most relevant properties of an opportunity and assess whether it’s what you were looking for. This way, you let a machine do the machine work for you, while your brain stays focused on the more creative things.
> Still in a private beta, Dibz invites early adopters to sign up to get notified about the actual launch. We’re looking forward to releasing this game changer and if you share the enthusiasm, [join us](https://dibz.me/)!
---
## Posts: Optimizing for Small Screens in 2016
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/optimizing-for-small-screens-6-things-that-will-make-a-difference-in-2016-2108](https://fourdots.com/blog/optimizing-for-small-screens-6-things-that-will-make-a-difference-in-2016-2108)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/optimizing-for-small-screens-6-things-that-will-make-a-difference-in-2016-2108.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/optimizing-for-small-screens-6-things-that-will-make-a-difference-in-2016-2108.md)
**Published:** 2015-12-15
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** MIlica Dobrenov
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** mobile optimization
### Content
The much feared**Mobilegeddon**proved to be one of the more survivable*-geddons*out there, but it still brought about a major change in people’s approaches to mobile optimization. Even if you did end up on the wrong side of the update, it just doesn’t seem as appropriate to say you were “hit” by it like it would with cuddlier-sounding, yet far more dangerous Penguin or Panda.
Even though the update wasn’t as devastating as some feared, a number of websites did experience a significant drop in results served on mobile devices. If the mobile traffic was close to being essential for your business, you couldn’t have missed the warnings brimming with [precise and actionable info](https://fourdots.com/blog/understanding-the-implications-of-the-next-google-algorithm-update-1066) on why and how to prepare for the change.
However, even [those who tried to adapt](http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/google-mobile-friendly-algorithm/) didn’t always come out on top. Fortunately for them, the real-time nature of the update and fact it targets specific pages instead of entire domains made**getting out of disfavor far from impossible.**In the aftermath of this major SEO event, this article will summarize what we’ve learned about it so far and what optimizing for mobile is likely going to be about in 2016.
## 1. A proper balance between mobile and desktop
When discussing the mobile optimization, it is important to consider the extent to which certain sites and businesses behind them have suffered because they focused too much on optimizing for mobile at the expense of the desktop experience they offer. This is just the cost people pay for working in an industry based on speculation. If there’s a novelty, more often than not, there’s panic about it.
This doomsayer-inspired approach to reporting does manage to get more attention to particular issues, sometimes reaching ears that would be deaf to a subtler warning. However, it also often causes massive overreactions, making people blindsided to the possible downsides of the adaptation. In other words, being an early adopter can be extremely beneficial, but before you sign the papers make sure that the progeny in question is not of Rosemary’s descent.**Simply put, some focused too much on finding ways to become more appealing to mobile users and, in doing so, forgot they still need to remain presentable to their desktop audiences.
You can find a lot of resources on how to optimize for mobile, but they rarely include warnings about negative effects this might have on other aspects of your online visibility. This [article](http://searchengineland.com/mobile-search-need-perspective-222386) does a great job of explaining why some of the suggestions and numbers that are being circulated may not be as accurate or as relevant as you might think. Most notably, based on the results from [comScore’s 2015 U.S. Digital Future in Focus study](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2015/2015-US-Digital-Future-in-Focus), the article suggests:
>*“Desktop is not losing ground — and that very slight decrease of 1% is much more likely correlated to mobile proximity than to a switch from desktop to mobile.”*What this means for your business is that making sure your site is properly optimized for mobile will at some point require you to make concessions. Sometimes, there is just no ideal merger of optimizing for desktop and mobile. Occasionally, the requirements of one will clash with that of the other and you’ll have to choose which to favor.
>**This can happen at each point from choosing between responsive, adaptive and separate URL configuration to deciding on the length and readability of the content you publish.**When making the choice, don’t get mesmerized by all the projections and statistics regarding the growth of mobile. In other words, don’t just plow on taking every chance to make your site mobile friendlier without carefully considering the impact the changes might have on the site’s performance or visibility on desktops.
Luckily, a significant portion of what seem to be best practices is equally valid regardless of the platform you are optimizing for. Making your pages load faster, for instance, can only improve user experience, regardless of the device. With this in mind, let’s take a look at what we know about optimizing for mobile at the end of 2015.
## 2. Choosing the right configuration type
While [Google recommends choosing responsive design](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/#select-config) whenever possible, there are plenty of websites that could benefit more from one of the other two formats – adaptive or separate site configuration. Responsive sites certainly seem to be more likely to load properly on different devices than the other two types, but having to serve the same content to screens of different sizes often necessitates some kind of compromise. You can read more on the advantages and drawbacks of responsive design and whether it’s a ranking factor on [Search Engine Land](http://searchengineland.com/responsive-design-ranking-factor-228464).
## 3. Getting the technical factors right
Although a proper SEO strategy extends beyond technical optimization, this aspect is still critical for getting great results. Correspondingly, mobile optimization involves tweaking some technical properties, out of which the most important ones are:
>**– Page loading speed**has been a known and obvious factor for a while [now and it has only increased in prominence](https://hostingfacts.com/slow-website-infographic/) in the context of [mobile devices](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/).
>**– Flash is [done](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/09/01/adobe-flash-just-took-another-step-towards-death-thanks-to-google/)**, let it go.
>**– Blocking Google’s access to JavaScript**, CSS, and image files prevents the search engine from properly analyzing your content, and is one of the common mistakes mentioned in their [extremely useful guide](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/common-mistakes?hl=en).
> –**The same guide prompts you to**ensure that your video content is playable**on all devices that might be used to access it and that you ensure that your site doesn’t return mobile only 404s.
## 4. Intuitive information architecture
If you are sufficiently familiar with how your target audience consumes content on different devices, you should be able to provide them with a shortest path to conversion. The configuration you have chosen will determine the amount of freedom you have with your site’s layout and organization.
For instance, if you’ve built a mobile specific site, you might be able to better tailor the pages for smaller screens and only display the ones that make sense in that environment. However, this form of flexibility comes with a price. You have to keep a close eye on your redirects, making sure that they lead to appropriate pages on the alternative version of the site. On the other hand, if a user is trying to find a page on your mobile site and it doesn’t exist, redirecting them to the corresponding page on your desktop site is always better than returning a 404.
## 5. Mobile content best practices
Optimizing content for mobile devices can be tricky, especially when it comes to multimedia elements. In relation to this, an after-update [study by SearchMetrics](http://www.searchmetrics.com/knowledge-base/mobile-ranking-factors/) compared top mobile and desktop results for a set of 10,000 general keywords, revealing that:
>**“While the average number of images per page is around nine in the desktop top 30, less than four images are found in the mobile SERPs on average.”**Considering the importance of page load time for user experiences, reducing the number of images in mobile-oriented websites helps with the page loading. However, images are not the only thing that should go. Namely, for an excellent mobile user experience, any kind of screen clutter is discouraged – from ads and unnecessary internal links to bulky navigation elements.
The same study found that**the average length of articles published on the top ranking mobile websites has increased to more than 800 words per page since 2014**, still keeping it much lower than the average length of content on desktop optimized sites. Surprisingly, high ranking mobile pages seem to be somewhat more demanding than their desktop counterparts when it comes to reading ease.
This implies that content should be highly concise and task oriented, with as few links as possible. Unordered lists seem to have become one of the most common methods of satisfying both the imperative for brevity and the need to convey complex and detailed information, and as such are often found in top ranking mobile sites. [Videos seem to be popular](https://www.semrush.com/blog/mobile-video-trends-you-need-to-know-in-2016/) for the same reason, but their resource demands sometimes exclude them as a viable solution.
## 6. The true value of backlinks and social media shares
While backlinks still have some weight for increasing the visibility of a page in mobile search, they seem to be far less important when it comes to traditional, desktop-oriented optimization. Social media signals seem to have taken their place as one of the more prominent factors in optimizing for mobile, which is hardly surprising when you consider the [specificites of user behavior.](http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/mobile-desktop-social-sharing/488213) Namely, mobile is found to be twice as social as desktop, which means that social strategies only matter more for mobile optimization.
### Conclusions
Bundled together like this, the info presented above might seem slightly intimidating, but optimizing for mobile is far from being that complicated. Google even offers a convenient [test](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/) meant to help you determine how mobile-friendly your pages are. The results will show you where there is some space for improvements and which aspects of your website conform to the specific requirements of the platform.
Finally, it could be said that most of the Mobilegeddon-related discussions have had an unnecessarily apocalyptic note, but the general idea remains. Optimizing your website for mobile screens will continue to grow in importance in the years to come, especially as the screens get smaller and attentions spans shorter.
---
## Posts: Overcoming the Challenge of Creating Content that Engages
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/overcoming-challenge-creating-content-engages-1922](https://fourdots.com/blog/overcoming-challenge-creating-content-engages-1922)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/overcoming-challenge-creating-content-engages-1922.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/overcoming-challenge-creating-content-engages-1922.md)
**Published:** 2015-12-10
**Last Updated:** 2020-09-15
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content strategy
### Content
###### Cross-channel content optimization guide
White Paper by Four Dots**December, 2015
Download a full PDF version of this white paper [here](https://fourdots.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/White_Paper_Creating_Content_that_Engages_PDF.pdf).**## Introduction
The ability to produce relevant, quality content on a regular basis has always been a foundation of successful SEO and online marketing strategies. The constant flow of posts that deal with specific industry issues and, more importantly, aim to solve target consumers’ problems is a path to developing an organization’s online image that is known for authority, credibility and popularity among consumers. However, producing large amounts of content has long stopped being a path to engaging the audience; instead,**what really matters is producing the exact type of content that appeals to the target readership**.
This has become particularly important as the world of the web becomes a more competitive space and where it may be truly difficult to distinguish from all the other similar companies and offers out there. In fact, even if your offer is truly unique, it can hardly get in front of the right eyes if it is not made to be engaging. Namely, the pieces of content developed with the primary intention of offering something new and interesting to the audience stand more chances of being discussed and shared online.***Formulated in a way that transfers the target message easily, such an offer is likely to get sufficient attention, which is the ultimate goal of every content strategy.***Therefore, regardless of the channel you intend to use to distribute your content, you need to understand some basics of people’s behavior online. These should help you create posts that engage and inspire, which are the main characteristics of content that spreads. When it comes to content creation, however, there is a set of aspects that should be taken into consideration when planning a strategy that follows consumers’ demands and drives engagement. The first one is understanding peculiarities of specific channels in order to create content specifically for them.
Considering the challenges of content marketing, this white paper outlines the most important rules of creating engaging content, as well as some relevant stats every online marketer needs to know. With the ability to respond to consumers’ needs with the appropriate message timely and accurately, a company can significantly improve its visibility and relevancy online.
## Challenges of content marketing
Content marketing is a field that [has been rapidly growing over the last few years](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kMyZF8_GEsEXzYMppAI6Z4cPTi_0-mNzbWMKvm299Ks/edit?usp=sharing) and that primarily focuses on engaging prospects across different online channels. Today, an increasing number of companies both large and small turn to content creation and distribution to expand their web presence and increase brand awareness.
However, while content strategy promises significant benefits, its successful implementation still faces different challenges in practice. A joint research by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found out that one of the most frequent challenges B2B marketers face is inability to produce the content that engages.***Namely, 16% of large companies (1000+ employees) and 8% of small companies (10 – 99 employees) say that this is the top challenge for their online marketing strategies.***Obviously, despite the size of budget allocated to content creation and distribution, companies still fail to see some critical benefits.**Source: [http://www.iab.net](http://www.iab.net)
The fact that creating content that engages is at the top of the list of challenges points to the importance of understanding consumers’ needs and behavioral tendencies. Therefore, it is crucial for companies to find the right ways to gain insights into their target segment and understand its characteristics. As one of the activities that greatly improves the processes of identifying target consumers, as well as their requirements, data analysis is a critical step in developing the content that engages.
## Content Strategy Planning
>*“Content quality is in the eye of the beholder. You have to understand the audience before you can “wow” it with great blog posts, whitepapers and webinars.”***Identifying target audience is a step that needs to be taken before online marketing strategy is implemented. This is particularly important in the hyper-connected age, when people are using multiple networks and platforms to find product or service information and engage with brands. Based on the existing customers’ data, marketers should develop buyer personas and determine the channels where they are most likely to search for brand information.
In terms of content strategy, this means that companies have to understand their audience before they determine which types of content will be created. A case study by MarketingSherpa revealed that content tailored for specific segments of the audience resulted in 124% increase in lead generation right after the product launch. To develop an efficient targeted persona strategy, they recommend the following steps:
-**Step 1:**Set basic audience segments (develop use-cases)
-**Step 2:**Research the segments (monitor search and behavioral data)
-**Step 3:**Dig deeper in each segment (recognize their needs)
-**Step 4:**Plan targeted content (optimize content for cross-channel distribution)
-**Step 5:**Establish a content review process (maintain quality and volume)
The Skytap example shown above is an interesting reference for all marketers, regardless of their business area. However, to create content that really engages, one needs to consider multiple other aspects of consumers’ behavior and identify the ones that would bring most benefits in terms of engagement.
## Optimizing for cross-channel engagement
To ensure engagement across all the desired content distribution channels, marketers need to understand their specificities, as well as the types of engagement they could expect. The notion of engagement may differ depending on what a company wants to achieve and this is why it first needs to set the proper goals. Content optimization will afterwards follow the established goal and its performance would be easier to measure.
###### Engagement KPIs***“Engagement is any action a consumer takes with your content. It’s a like, view, comment or share. Social success should be based on the most valuable engagement, sharing and the earned reach that it generates around a key message.”***However, this may be far too simple to represent a base of an actual strategy. This is why engagements could be defined in relation to specific key performance indicators that the company finds most valuable. When it comes to KPIs, Christopher Ratcliff from Econsultancy gives a list of both online and offline KPIs that may be used to track engagements.
- • Dwell time (time on site)
- • Pages per visit
- • Bounce rate
- • Social shares
- • Comments and likes
- • Product reviews
- • Banner click-through rate
In addition to this, engagements may be:
- • Traffic from social media pages
- • Likes, comments or mentions on social media pages
- • Mentions from industry leaders
- • Enquires on a company’s website
Even with this list, defining the nature of engagement is not an easy task. However, these are some of the typical activities marketers consider important for fulfilling their ultimate goals. Therefore, any of these can serve as an appropriate engagement indicator that accounts for the efficiency of the strategy. In a precisely defined customer journey where all the goal completion points are in place, these KPIs represent a base for measuring success.
###### Types of content users engage with
In the age when users are overwhelmed with pieces of information presented online, companies need to establish themselves as credible sources of information. To do this, they need to understand 1)**what types of information users seek from brands directly**and 2)**how they interact with the content that provides them**. Therefore, engagements can be driven via multiple sources, all of which may be require different approaches.***Blog posts***When it comes to blog content, WP Engine Survey gives some insightful data about consumers’ engagement with brands online. One of their key findings is that consumers increasingly demand content directly delivered by companies themselves, most frequently via the official blogs. According to the survey, consumers think that company blogs are the space that:
- • Provides consumers with the most up to date information – 32%
- • Gives consumers a more personal connection with the company – 16%
- • Gives brands a voice – 15%
Obviously, informative content that describes a company or a product is probably the best way to attract prospects. Furthermore, companies can more easily determine the types of posts that drive more engagement by monitoring social media or website analytics for specific posts. Nevertheless, to be able to compare the efficiency of post types, company blogs should offer a range of different articles at regular intervals and collect previously established sets of data.***Social media***Social shares are typically the primary definition of engagement and a most frequent goal of content marketing. To understand what people share on social media, companies can use Facebook Insights to monitor their own posts or do a competitor analysis to see what they may be missing out. In 2012, Facebook did an internal study to determine which types of posts generate most engagement. Based on this, they recommend the following:
In addition to this, a recent research by SocialBakers found out that images are by far the most shared content on Facebook pages:
Similar to Facebook fans, Twitter followers also prefer to engage with photos. Considering the specificity of tweets, there are different ways to craft engaging tweets and some of the common indicators of what works best are presented on the graphic below.**Source: [https://blog.twitter.com/media](https://blog.twitter.com/media)*Online ads***Personalization has long been the key driver of clicks on online ads. As reported in the Yahoo! 2014 survey of 6000 people, most consumers find personal ads more engaging (54%), educational (52%), time-saving (49%) and memorable (45%).
The study also shows that content personalization drives more engagement for entertainment and finance content, with overall**78% of consumers desiring a certain degree of content personalization.**Therefore, the idea is to use data to design ads that primarily rely on personalized content to attract users’ attention and, subsequently, clicks. Moreover, around two thirds of consumers are fine with advertisers collecting their personal data on browsing behavior, previous purchases and profile, which only purports the idea that users are ready to make information available to online advertisers if this could improve their experience.
Therefore, when creating email ads it is important to first define the characteristics of the audience the ad will be delivered to. With most ad serving platforms this is possible by setting advanced targeting options, while some market knowledge should be gather by internal research. Afterwards, both the ad copy and any graphical addition should be adjusted to the identified preferences of a target consumer in order to encourage him or her to complete the action.**Email marketing****Email marketing is yet another aspect of content strategy that needs to be personalized in order to drive clicks to a defined landing page. To achieve this, marketers should optimize several aspects of their campaigns based on data they previously collected. Experian study found out that some of the most relevant factors of increased open rates are personalized email subjects (26% higher open rate), and responsive design (63% increase in click rates and 18% increase in transaction rates). In addition to this, they outline the most frequently tested elements of email marketing campaigns to determine which ones have most impact.
Source: [http://www.experian.com/](http://www.experian.com/)
While such tests give an insight into performance of email marketing campaigns, types of data collected play the greatest role in personalization. Therefore, besides the general information such as demographics and location, email marketers should also let their users decide on the types of email they want to receive (60% of marketers do not give this option).
>*“By capitalizing on data-driven email tactics and new trends in creative optimization, email marketers can delight and enchant their customers with optimal brand experiences that inspire more meaningful and profitable long-term relationships.”*When it comes to the very content that would be included in an email campaign, it should be conspicuously connected with a target reader’s needs. This means including clear and actionable message in the very subject, while the body of the email should contain only as much data as the reader needs to understand your message – basic graphic, a list of benefits/features and a clear call-to-action button.
## Conclusions
In the age of aggressive content production and tight competition online, content creation acquires a whole new meaning. Instead of creating posts and ads that have a sole purpose of filling specific areas on a web page or simply increasing activity across social profiles, organizations need to find the ways to derive true value of their content development strategies. To be able to do so, they need to focus on a user, examine what it is that he or she expects from the company and start producing content that meets these expectations. Naturally, not all the organizations would be able to overcome this challenge so easily, but the data outlined above should help them set their focus. Afterwards, more specific and more detailed engagement strategy should come in place in order to ensure all the relevant online channels are properly handled.
References:**B2B Content Marketing 2014: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America. CMI and MarketingProfs.
[http://www.iab.net/media/file/B2BResearch2014.pdf](http://www.iab.net/media/file/B2BResearch2014.pdf)
Measure What Matters Most. Think With Google.
[https://storage.googleapis.com/think/docs/measure-what-matters-most_articles.pdf](https://storage.googleapis.com/think/docs/measure-what-matters-most_articles.pdf)
WP Engine and TNS Survey.
[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140505006297/en/WP-Engine-Study-Majority-Americans-Original-Content#.VK7vf8kYFpm](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140505006297/en/WP-Engine-Study-Majority-Americans-Original-Content#.VK7vf8kYFpm)
How Brands Define Engagement. Digiday.
[http://digiday.com/brands/how-brands-define-engagement/](http://digiday.com/brands/how-brands-define-engagement/)
What KPIs are you Using to Measure the Impact of Content Marketing. Econsultancy. [https://econsultancy.com/blog/65180-what-kpis-are-you-using-to-measure-the-impact-of-content-marketing/](https://econsultancy.com/blog/65180-what-kpis-are-you-using-to-measure-the-impact-of-content-marketing/)
Photos Cluttering your Facebook Feed? Here’s Why. eMarketer.
[http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Photos-Cluttering-Your-Facebook-Feed-Herersquos-Why/1010777/1](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Photos-Cluttering-Your-Facebook-Feed-Herersquos-Why/1010777/1)
What Fuels Twitter Engagement. Twitter Media Blog.
[https://blog.twitter.com/2014/what-fuels-a-tweets-engagement](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/what-fuels-a-tweets-engagement)
Internet Marketing Research: Opportunities and Problems. Olivier Furrer and D. Sudharshan. [http://www.unifr.ch/marketing/assets/files/2001_furrer_sudharshan_qualitative_market_research.pdf](http://www.unifr.ch/marketing/assets/files/2001_furrer_sudharshan_qualitative_market_research.pdf)
What do Marketers Want from Big Data. Econsultancy.
[http://www.emarketer.com/Article/What-Do-Marketers-Want-Big-Data/1009798](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/What-Do-Marketers-Want-Big-Data/1009798)
The Balancing Act: Getting Personalization Right. Yahoo.
[https://advertising.yahoo.com/Insights/BALANCING-ACT.html](https://advertising.yahoo.com/Insights/BALANCING-ACT.html)
2013 Email Market Study. Experian.
[http://www.experian.com/assets/marketing-services/white-papers/ccm-email-study-2013.pdf](http://www.experian.com/assets/marketing-services/white-papers/ccm-email-study-2013.pdf)
---
## Posts: Penguin Update Postponed to 2016, SEO Experts On Edge
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/penguin-update-postponed-2016-seo-experts-edge-1980](https://fourdots.com/blog/penguin-update-postponed-2016-seo-experts-edge-1980)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/penguin-update-postponed-2016-seo-experts-edge-1980.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/penguin-update-postponed-2016-seo-experts-edge-1980.md)
**Published:** 2015-12-04
**Last Updated:** 2015-12-04
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Google Algorithm Update, Penguin update
### Content
At a recent [SMX Israel](http://searchmarketingexpo.com/israel/), Google’s Webmaster trends analyst, Gary Illyes announced that the next Penguin update will come before the year’s end and that it should enable the already impressively capable algorithm to run continuously and work in real-time. The unrolling date for Penguin 4.2 has since been [pushed](http://searchengineland.com/google-new-penguin-algorithm-update-not-happening-until-next-year-237540) to an unspecified time next year, but it’s the promise of its new properties that’s really interesting.
If what’s claimed about them sounds a bit obtuse, Barry Shwartz from Search Engine Roundtable has been vigilantly [tracking the announcements](https://www.seroundtable.com/tag/penguin) and news coming from Google and calling them out on the thin, filler content they’ve, somewhat ironically, been using to stuff their announcements.
> Google: New Penguin Algorithm Update Not Happening Until Next Year [https://t.co/fphLM5gfSE](https://t.co/fphLM5gfSE) via [@sengineland](https://twitter.com/sengineland)
> — Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) [December 3, 2015](https://twitter.com/rustybrick/status/672481707812118532)
We’ll try to summarize the conclusion of the discussion that’s been going on for a while now, and quickly go over the steps you should take in the anticipation of the change.
##**Real-time for real this time?**The term real-time shouldn’t be that difficult to get your head around, but somehow, people in charge of finding, specifying and cataloguing the meaning behind every word and notion that a user might enter in a query, not only failed to provide us with a reasonably comprehensive and clear explanation of how exactly they are using this term in relation to their algorithm(s, Panda is not excused from the debate) they’ve also [gone back and forth](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sucks-panda-penguin-misinformation-20146.html) on whether they have already blessed their pets with this nigh to mythical property.
Their interest in keeping us as confused as possible is obvious, but assuming that all this double talk comes solely from a desire to deceive or manipulate might be giving them too much, or too little credit.
Webmasters and SEOs have been (rightfully) complaining about the fact that**you need to wait quite a while until the next Penguin update**to see if your efforts to redeem yourself in those cold, avian eyes have been successful. When you consider that some updates have been more than a year apart, it’s not difficult to imagine that traditionally unapologetic Google has been pressured into appeasing the public with a promise of a better tomorrow today. Rescheduling the update now is likely to cause quite a commotion among those who started hoping they might recover by holidays, but to be fair, Google spokespersons were unanimously non-committal when it came to exact dates.
##**What they seem to mean when they say ‘real-time’**At first people took the statement at face value – you make a change, or one gets imposed upon you – you disavow a link, someone adds or removes a link to your site, some anchors get altered and so on, Google registers the alterations and before you can say “I’ve been a victim of negative SEO” your rankings are reflecting the new state of affairs.
Awed by the resources this kind of approach would require and wiser for knowing what became of similar promises Google has made [before](http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-penguin-realtime-218407), most people seem to find this too optimistic to even ask for. Best case scenario seems to be that data is collected in real-time, but your site’s ranking gets modified the next time it’s crawled. Even if the delay between the changes and their effect was longer than it usually takes your site to get re-indexed, most webmasters would still greet the update with great enthusiasm. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume this is the end goal, and try to take a look at what this would mean.
##**Implications****The most obvious benefit for webmasters and business owners would be that they wouldn’t have to wait as long for their site to recover from a penalty**.
Likewise, it would allow everyone to be a bit more ‘experimental’ with their link building efforts. Black hats who have been using the churn and burn method – creating terrible sites that manage to survive and rank only until the next update won’t be able to use this tactic anymore, but chances are they will still find this change extremely beneficial. With faster processing of modifications to the website, trial and error will become a much more practical method of determining what goes with Google and what doesn’t.
Negative SEO might become more potent in the short term – results of a negative campaign should be able to hit you sooner, but damage control should also be easier, as you won’t be condemned to Google Hell until the next update, but only the next time your site is crawled.
As far as the non-black hat folk are concerned, the only obvious change should be in their vigilance. Staying in Penguin’s good graces will require that you monitor every change in your link portfolio and react accordingly as soon as possible (most people concerned with their online visibility have already been doing this anyway),but again, even if the damage gets done, rectifying the situation shouldn’t be as problematic as it used to be.
---
## Posts: Google Open-Sources TensorFlow
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-open-sources-tensorflow-1956](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-open-sources-tensorflow-1956)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-open-sources-tensorflow-1956.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-open-sources-tensorflow-1956.md)
**Published:** 2015-11-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Google, Machine Learning, TensorFlow
### Content
Google have been exploring the field of [artificial intelligence](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services) for several years now, constantly improving the ways machines work for people. Recently, the company decided to share their intelligent resources with the world and move the boundaries of the research done in the field.
Namely, on November 9th, the web magnate decided to open-source their advanced machine learning platform [TensorFlow](http://www.tensorflow.org/) and enable researchers outside Google to expand its possibilities. The platform integrates into dozens of Google’s products and is primarily built for the purposes of conducting research in machine learning and deep neural networks. However, as noted on the website, TensorFlow may have a variety of different other applications, which is why Google decided to let external researchers work with it. This way, its possibilities could be tested in multiple different domains, whereupon the company would get some more specific results. In relation to this, Google [CEO Sundar Pichai notes](https://googleblog.blogspot.rs/2015/11/tensorflow-smarter-machine-learning-for.html):
> “We hope this will let the machine learning community—everyone from academic researchers, to engineers, to hobbyists—exchange ideas much more quickly, through working code rather than just research papers.”
##**A historical overview of Google’s search intelligence**Google has been working on the revolutionary ideas in machine learning for years now and this is how enabled us to talk to the Google app, read signs in different languages and a lot more. It all started back in 2011, when the company created [a software framework DistBelief](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub40565.html), within which the researchers developed two algorithms for large-scale distributed learning. These algorithms were used to improve speech recognition for the Google App, as well as for making the initial steps in assigning meaning to non-verbally expressed concepts.
In the following years, we’ve seen Google improving virtually all the aspects of their services and increasing their focus on developing machine-learning systems. Most recently, Google representatives talked about [testing Thought Vectors](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-developing-intelligent-algorithms-called-thought-vectors-1593), a project bound to change the way we perceive machines and their ability to comprehend more than text, speech and code. With the latest announcement of open-sourcing their TensorFlow, all this knowledge will become available to communities of researchers, who might find different ways to implement it.
##**Dissecting TensorFlow**TensorFlow represents a library of files that can use data flow graphs for numerical computation. Its flexible architecture allows different deployments and researchers can use it to create systems capable of not only reading and crunching huge volumes of [data](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency), but making decisions as well. By open-sourcing this library, Google practically gives power to researchers all over the world to adjust the system to their own use and further expand its functionality.
As [suggested](http://www.popsci.com/google-ai)by one of Google’s top engineers working on TensorFlow, the company is currently interested in seeing the actual results of platform implementation and this was the primary reason for open-sourcing. By having multiple institutions working with TensorFlow, Google can get much more practical results, which would be more valuable for expanding the platform’s possibilities.
> “The machine learning community has been really good at polishing ideas, and that’s a really good thing, but it’s not the same thing as polishing working code associated with research ideas.”
---
## Posts: Google Tests Digital Ads on UK Billboards: Who will Benefit Most?
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-tests-digital-ads-on-uk-billboards-who-will-benefit-most-1941](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-tests-digital-ads-on-uk-billboards-who-will-benefit-most-1941)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-tests-digital-ads-on-uk-billboards-who-will-benefit-most-1941.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-tests-digital-ads-on-uk-billboards-who-will-benefit-most-1941.md)
**Published:** 2015-11-06
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Digital Ads, digital out-of-home (DOOH), Google
### Content
Eager to escape the apparently all too narrow confines of the screens of our smartphones, smartwatches, desktops, laptops and tablets, Google recently started dipping their toes into the waters of**digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising**.
The goal behind the project is to expand the use of Google’s DoubleClick functionality and enable people to programmatically order billboard ads. Of course, given that advertising represents the primary source of profit for the company, such a step should come as no surprise. In fact, it could be said that not even the potential for astronomic increase in revenue coming from a previously entirely untapped medium exhilarates them as much as the fact that they’ve finally**found a way to beat AdBlock**.
## Google, Google everywhere!
Google’s smart billboards began running the ads in early October, using prime advertising locations in London as their testing ground. While they are not the first to try something like this, DoubleClick and the rest of Google’s infrastructure devoted to understanding contextual clues and responding to them provides the means to make the most of this medium. This means they are only to keep creeping us out with their unnerving knowledge of our interests even in the false security of a previously offline world.
The idea is to use**real time and historical signals in deciding which ad to display**at what time in order to maximize their effectiveness. So, for instance, if it’s raining heavily, you might get an umbrella, Coke or a tropical retreat ad served; if there’s a game nearby, you might get ticket company or Coke ads; if there was a car crash in the vicinity you might be presented with a mechanic, life insurance or Coke reminder and so on. Ideally, this should reduce wastage, which is all too common with typical billboard advertising, and really, really make you want a Coke.
## What’s in it for advertisers actually?
While Google sometimes does seem to be eager to commit to a project or an idea simply because of its novelty, their ads department, the one shareholders are probably most fond of, is unlikely to make a move without doing their homework first and having a much more tangible reason than simply breaking new ground.** **According to [eMarketer](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Digital-Account-40-of-Out-of-Home-Ad-Spending-2015/1013107)**,**DOOH advertising has been gaining traction for a while now. In 2014, it accounted for 38.1% of total out-of-home ad spending in the United States, with the figure rising to 40.8% in 2015, and being projected to reach 53% in 2018.
Furthermore, as pointed out in [Forbes](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2015/10/31/google-tests-its-ad-tech-on-billboards-heres-why/), another strong incentive for moving their ads closer to the real world is found in the fact that DOOH advertising should be safe from one the major concerns associated with online and mobile advertising –**digital fraud**. This should make the advertisers more comfortable with the security of their investment, while the familiarity with the medium is likely to help the audience perceive brands populating these ads somewhat more trustworthy and credible than the ones that can more commonly be seen online.
## Potential complexities
Finally, the link between digital and mobile advertising on one side and out-of-home advertising on the other, while not as easily solidified as people might think, is one that Google can’t ignore especially with the running start that DoubleClick provides them. As mobile solutions lead for Google’s DoubleClick, Google’s Tim Collier [points out](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-brings-doubleclick-to-ooh-billboards-2015-10?op=1), one of the goals of this test is to try and examine the issues that are likely to be encountered in the marrying of these related but still different disciplines.
>*“There is a common misconception that the merging of these two industries is straightforward. This test has highlighted a number of areas that are fundamentally different and which will require further development and integration before this becomes a market reality,” notes Collier.*Among other expected complications, he mentions reporting, audience [data](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) tracking, and yield management. However, while there are expected issues, there are also areas of symbiotic compatibility. For instance, [COG Research](https://ondeviceresearch.com/blog/people-more-alert-outside), commissioned by Outdoor Media Centre in 2014 concludes that people are 28% more likely to take an action like buying something or looking it up when presented with an outdoor ad then they are when the same message comes through other media. The same research also indicates that**7 in 10 people in the street are in active purchase mode**.
Evidently, the whole concept of digital out-of-home technology is deeply rooted in consumers’ psychology and as such promises excellent results. In relation to the research findings, CEO at Outdoor Media Centre suggests that this can benefit advertisers by allowing them to target consumers at the times they’re most likely to properly experience the ad:
>*“Contextual planning is a real benefit of the outdoor medium, and now we know they our audience is one third more attentive.”*### Conclusions
While reporting and analyzing the audience data might be a bit different than Google is used to, their existing infrastructure will still enable them to get some interesting info. For instance, people are already starting to worry what kind of liberties they will be taking with our privacy in order to choose which ads to display or to track their performance. Still, the fact is that even without any kind of special permission from the audience or intrusive access to their devices, Google can learn a lot about the influence that the ads are having.
Keeping an eye on the searches made in the area where the billboard is displayed should already tell them a great deal, and they don’t need any kind of authorization to do that.
---
## Posts: Learning the Alphabet : RankBrain and AI
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/rankbrain-and-artificial-intelligence-1906](https://fourdots.com/blog/rankbrain-and-artificial-intelligence-1906)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/rankbrain-and-artificial-intelligence-1906.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/rankbrain-and-artificial-intelligence-1906.md)
**Published:** 2015-10-28
**Last Updated:** 2025-10-09
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** AIO, News
**Tags:** Google algorithm, RankBrain
### Content
Google’s Hummingbird algorithm recently got what seems to be a natural extension to its functionality, almost uncomfortably literally personified in a machine learning system dubbed**RankBrain**.
The system appears to rely on [thought vectors](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-developing-intelligent-algorithms-called-thought-vectors-1593) and ability to make its own connection between entities based on huge sets of analyzed data. Quite typically for Google, all of the first hand information on what exactly the system does is coyly whispered through an enigmatic Sphinx smile, leaving us to try to decrypt and connect the shards of actual facts we have been half-presented with.
## How RankBrain complements Hummingbird
According to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, who had an [email correspondence with Google on the topic,](http://searchengineland.com/faq-all-about-the-new-google-rankbrain-algorithm-234440) RankBrain is meant to help the algorithm better understand the intent behind people’s queries and deliver results accordingly. The confusing thing about this is how exactly RankBrain differs from what Hummingbird has already been doing.
For instance, Hummingbird heavily relies on context and implicit signals when trying to discern the user’s intent. It also uses [co-occurrence](http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/08/google-substitute-query-terms-co-occurrence/) as one of the ways to determine which of the possible meanings of a word is relevant in any given query. Combined with entity based approach and databases of triplets, this enables the algorithm to make the necessary connections and suggest the most relevant results.
However, the problem with this approach is that it greatly relies on human input. Namely, semantic markup is provided by people, as are sets of triplets, lists of synonyms and so on. The idea behind RankBrain is to [eliminate (or, more realistically, reduce) the need for human-provided input and allow the algorithm to expand its database on its own](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-the-complete-guide-to-securing-brand-11836).
Given that the search engine processes**three billion searches per day**, 15% of which have never been encountered before, [automating the SERP data gathering](https://faii.ai/serp-intelligence/) needed to “understand” these searches seems to be the only way to keep pace with the demand.
So far, RankBrain has been doing its learning offline by analyzing huge sets of historical queries, results provided and the reactions of people making those queries. Relying on [Word2vec](http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2013/08/learning-meaning-behind-words.html), it goes through vast databases of content it has been provided with, translating words into vectors, which enables it to create connections between entities and enhance its understanding of user’s intent. Of course, thanks to Google’s traditionally cryptic and laconic nature a lot of this is still pure speculation.
## The impact so far
RankBrain has been slowly rolling out since the early 2015 and has impacted a large percentage of queries made since then, according to Google. That’s as specific as they’re willing to get.
To make things even more confusing, Google not only avoids referring to RankBrain as an algorithm update, claiming it’s a ranking signal instead, but also that it has become**the third most influential search ranking signal**. This statement comes directly from Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google, who suggests this has happened in the few months that RankBrain has been active. Naturally,**without knowing exactly what the first two signals are, this statement seems gratuitously specific**. For what it’s worth, Corrado likens turning this feature off to “forgetting to serve half the pages on Wikipedia” in terms of how damaging it would be for the users.
You can read more about RankBrain [here](http://niksto.com/rankbrain/).
---
## Posts: Panda 4.2 - Where is it Now?
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/panda-4-2-where-is-it-now-1643](https://fourdots.com/blog/panda-4-2-where-is-it-now-1643)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/panda-4-2-where-is-it-now-1643.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/panda-4-2-where-is-it-now-1643.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Google algorithm, Panda algorithm
### Content
A well known phrase in the world of inbound marketing,**Content is King**, can backfire in the face of [SEO agencies worldwide](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213) yet again.
The current algorithm update, Panda 4.2, is going to put our content and strategies to the test once more. Since Panda is rolling out very slowly and through unpredictable ways – SEO Gurus remain silent, hoping for the best. So if you start searching for clarifications on this matter, you might read titles like this one:***Not a major update!***Actually, there are few valid information on what can we expect when this algorithm update rolls out completely, and we have no idea how “big” it actually could be. Yet, we are all well aware of the rules of this game and we know how important it is to be informed on the latest Google algorithm changes.
Now, here is a detailed track of the Panda update thus far. If you believe that your agency has implemented some of the questionable strategies from the list down below, we can possibly control that damage.
## 1. The Slowest Roll-out Yet
Pandas are surely not famous for their speed, but this particular mammal is really taking its time. After 10 months of announcing this update, the official release was on July 18. Google’s very own Garry Illas announced the update at the SMX Advanced conference, and he is battling with apocalyptic assumptions on a daily basis.
> Whoever came up with the idea that having 404s gives a site any sort of penalty, you’re wrong. Utterly wrong.
> — Gary Illyes (@methode) [August 6, 2015](https://twitter.com/methode/status/629316974628179969)
Until now, Google reported that only 2% – 3 % of the English language websites are affected. However, the fact that this update is taking its sweet time might just mean that you will notice the possible changes later in the following period. Why is it so slow? Because of [technical](https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176) stuff, Google claims mysteriously.
## 2. High Quality Content remains dominant factor
If you are one of the “lucky” ones in those 2% to 3% that are affected this far, one thing is for sure – your content is everything but good. Of course, the Panda updates are concentrated solely on evaluation of content, meaning that any attempt at keyword stuffing or poorly written content will be heavily penalized.
This is something that we’ve established years ago, so it comes as no surprise. You can find the legendary MOZ list of algorithm updates here to understand what you should receive content-wise from your agency.
## 3. Is Panda Changing during this Roll-out?
There are a lot of speculations that Panda is actually changing its update in the process of rolling out. SEL news editor [Barry Schwartz](https://www.rustybrick.com/barry) is constantly on the case and he feels like the update is actually under manual edit, and that that is the actual reason for constant stalling.
One thing that everyone knows for sure is that Google will remain silent on this matter, and we will have to be patient for at least a couple more months to draw the final conclusion.
Now, if you’re sure you’ve been deploying only [white hat SEO](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) and content strategies, Panda 4.2 shouldn’t worry you. Of course, there’s always some space for improvements for both Google’s algorithms and your website, so make sure you’re on the right track.
---
## Posts: HTTP/2: Future of Web
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/http2-future-of-web-1630](https://fourdots.com/blog/http2-future-of-web-1630)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/http2-future-of-web-1630.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/http2-future-of-web-1630.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-12
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** performance
### Content
As all cool kids on the block, Four Dots is jumping the new technology train too, starting today.
##**Little Bit On This Year’s Trends**Earlier this year, we researched around “[Mobilegedon](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.gr/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update.html)” Google update at the time it got announced and in order to set good example to both our clients and rest of the industry we started website redesign powered with top responsive framework (*Foundation 5*) in order to get ahead of this and possibly gain benefits of the new ranking signal by playing Google’s ball.
The fact that Mobilegedon [didn’t became what everybody thought](http://searchengineland.com/googles-mobile-friendly-algorithm-a-week-later-was-it-really-mobilegeddon-219893) it will is less important now, continuous improvement and general sense of  progress and prosperity is what counts.
Following the mobile-friendly update, we also implemented HTTPS protocol as it became one of the recent [Google’s ranking signals](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.gr/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html) making client connections encrypted and more secure and also letting Google know that company is serious about its web presence and that we support and [embrace security improvements](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169) and evolution of modern web.
During this process, we also implemented couple of related lower-level properties such as [HPKP](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Public_Key_Pinning), [HSTS](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security) and [OCSPS](https://www.maxcdn.com/one/visual-glossary/ocsp-stapling/) in order to make our HTTPSÂ traffic even more secure. Yes, it may sound like an overkill but ultimately, you either worry about security or not.
##**Pushing The Web Forward With HTTP/2**Today we implemented [HTTP/2](https://http2.github.io/faq/) protocol on our web server in attempt to make our website perform better as well as to bring our web assets to the future by adopting protocol that will soon become de facto standard as more and more software packages implement it.
This should make now standard web development sorcery like image sprites and stylesheet/script concatenation obsolete due to serious parallelization implemented in the protocol itself.
##**Why HTTP/2?**HTTP/2 makes websites perform better because:
- – its binary, instead of textual
- – its fully multiplexed, instead of ordered and blocking
- – can therefore use one connection for parallelism
- – uses header compression to reduce overhead
- – allows servers to “push” responses proactively into client caches
##**How This Helps SEO You Might Ask?**Zoompf’s [Billy Hoffman](http://twitter.com/zoompf) explains we benefit from HTTP/2 in-depth at his “[*HTTP/2: A Fast, Secure Bedrock for the Future of SEO*](https://moz.com/blog/http2-a-fast-secure-bedrock-for-the-future-of-seo)“ Moz blog post.
Additionally, [Ilya Grigorik](https://twitter.com/igrigorik)created technical “[*HTTP/2 is here, let’s optimize!*](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r7QXGYOLCh4fcUq0jDdDwKJWNqWK1o4xMtYpKZCJYjM/edit#slide=id.p19)” presentation for O’Reilly Velocity Conference dedicated to DevOps & Web Performance (*held at Santa Clara, CA earlier this year*) which offers valuable insight into this new technology and its inside-outs. Highly recommended reading for technical SEO’s and genuine geeks. Also, a video bellow.
---
## Posts: Google Gone Toddler: Fun Search Features
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-gone-toddler-1624](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-gone-toddler-1624)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-gone-toddler-1624.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-gone-toddler-1624.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-08
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Google, Rebrading
### Content
Recent changes in Google’s branding and corporate structure received mixed feedback, surprisingly never escalating to anything even close to euphoria that often accompanies similar events.
However, even those who had nothing else to say about the new corporate identity were inclined to notice that Google might be going Benjamin Button on us and ageing backwards, at least when it comes to how they choose to present themselves.
##**Fun facts in search and the incognito problem**Google has always been playful. From their colorful logotype and different [easter eggs](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2486825,00.asp) to recently introduced [fun facts feature](http://searchengineland.com/google-search-for-fun-facts-serves-up-random-qas-via-dynamic-answer-box-229604), the examples of their happy-go-lucky attitude abound.
Namely, the later offers you an instant random fact once you type “fun facts” into google.com. Below, you’ll have an*Ask Another Question*button to continue your random facts search as long as you wish, which can keep fanatical factfinders browsing for hours. You’ll also get corresponding results for queries such as “I’m feeling curious,” “I’m feeling puzzled,” “I’m feeling artistic,” etc.
Now, if you feel that the results are somewhat personalized, there may be a good reason for this. Namely, if you switch to an incognito window, you’ll notice no fun facts field pops up. The only reasonable explanation for this is that for fun facts, too, Google uses your search history to deliver results you’ll find truly fascinating.
Knowing how dedicated to providing excellent UX Google is, this isn’t at all surprising. In fact, this further points to the value of interesting content, which should only encourage webmasters to follow Google’s lead and shift to more engaging content forms.
##**New logo: new story**The replacement of the only semi-formal or traditional aspect of their logotype – serif typeface with an apparently blasphemously youthful sans serif still caused quite a commotion.
Naturally, the fact that Google recently created a “parent” company for themselves, named it”Alphabet” and adorned the homepage of the site introducing this restructuring with preschool dice might have helped people come under the impression that the search giant is not exactly acting its age.
While Google’s decision to use a sans serif typeface of their creation is more than sufficiently explained by the fact that this kind of font is easier to read in smaller sizes and generally neat, there will still be those who will either think this is infantile, or that it”s a devious attempt to lull the unsuspecting humanity into a false sense of ease before they unleash the real Panda.
There is, however, another way of looking at it. The playground they have created for themselves, where they can work on sometimes seemingly childishly naïve and optimistic moonshot projects as far or as close from the eyes and influence of the investors as they want, should come equipped with learning tools.  The name [Alphabet](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/11/google-alphabet-why-change-restructuring-what-it-means) might also be meant to signify not only their moving from numbers (Google) to letters, i.e. to a semantic appreciation of the data they handle, closer to how their users see the world; but also a promise that they are only in the infancy stage of their project, that they are still learning and that we can expect a lot of them in the time to come.
---
## Posts: Importance of Context in Inbound Marketing
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613](https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-04
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** content marketing, Inbound marketing
### Content
Creating valuable content and distributing it across targeted channels has long become one of the golden rules of SEO. Unsurprisingly, businesses both large and small have started taking content production more seriously, replacing generic link building practices with clever inbound marketing practices.
Looking at the current industry trends, the numbers definitely speak in favor of inbound marketing. The latest [CMI report](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/10/2014-b2b-content-marketing-research/) reveals that 93% of marketers employed a particular content marketing strategy in 2014, while [HubSpot’s*State of Inbound*](http://offers.hubspot.com/2014-state-of-inbound) reports that more than three-quarters of companies practice inbound marketing in some form.
Therefore, if you’re trying to take advantage of inbound marketing, you’re not alone. If you’re struggling to make it work for your business, you’re even less so.
## Companies struggle to put inbound marketing into practice
Despite their wish to provide visitors with accurate and engaging information, many companies fail to make inbound marketing work for them. This phenomenon can be regarded as a consequence of small businesses’ attempt to keep the pace with the ever-changing marketing trends. One of most common mistakes they make is trying to reach a wider audience by**producing generalized content instead of customizing their topics to win a particular audience segment**.
Considering that [8 out of 10 people identify themselves as blog readers](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/research/), engaging online users with relevant posts is low hanging fruit companies are missing out on.
In order to employ emotional appeal to the information they distribute, marketers need to be familiar with the differences between the notions of content, context and inbound marketing. Namely, although often used interchangeably, content marketing and inbound marketing are said to differ in a single most important component – context. This implies that an effective inbound marketing strategy can be achieved only with the proper contextualization of content, which should rely on a research-based approach.
##**Contextualization of marketing**One of the key factors in planning an assertive [content marketing strategy](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy) is its contextualization. However, in order to understand the importance of this method, you need to know what the difference between inbound and context marketing is.
While inbound marketing is a practice of creating meaningful content to attract visitors, context marketing can be defined as a**philosophy that drives a compelling content strategy**. It is a set of practices that help you to create presentable, relevant and readable information by using something you already know about your target audience. Even if it is pervasive, context defines your visitors and shapes the content they want to read.
For all these reasons, experienced marketers believe contextualization is paramount for a successful communication with prospects and customers. Back in 2013, [HubSpot outlined](http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/context-future-of-inbound-marketing-sales-tl) several key areas where contextualization should be applied:
-**Context across all the company departments**. What happens when a potential customer communicates with you via social media, visits your website or contacts your sales team? They get the same, generic content over and over again. This issue can be explained by the lack of marketers’ experience in appeasing the emotional appeal with their content properly. Although most businesses have resorted to targeted emails as a less intrusive way of addressing their audience, sometimes this is not enough. Obviously, in order to make your external communications fully effective, you need to infuse context throughout the entire business.
-**Contextualizing marketing**. It is widely known that people are always drawn by content that is relevant to them. A current reference that supports this statement is the [research done by Custom Content Council](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/03/new-research-custom-content-marketing-surges-with-cmos-consumers/), which states that 69% of consumers liked customer marketing that targeted their interests. This is exactly why many B2B businesses have started creating content specifically tailored to address concerns of the target demographic.
-**Contextualizing sales.**Most marketers strongly believe that sales also need to be upgraded in order to deliver the same level of relevance. The abovementioned study done by Custom Content Council shows that 61% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that offers a custom content. The personalized way of checking in has already proved to be more subtle than a regular one. It enables companies to make calls to their potential customers timely and meaningful. Apart from using various marketing tools for integrating context in your sales, you need to be intentional and systematic as well.
-**Contextualizing customer****service and support.** [According to Biz Report](http://www.bizreport.com/2013/11/study-brands-need-to-put-context-in-customer-service.html), four out of five companies say that they do not involve context in their marketing campaign. However, context in your customer service means never asking your customers to repeat something they have already said. At the same time, it is based on providing them with relevant information only. Remember, the future of inbound marketing lies in extending consistent content and appealing to your customers’ attitudes.
Considering the perspectives of online users, it is clear why generic, one-post-to-fit-them-all content can hardly bring results. Instead, businesses should get to know their audience and organize content production in accordance with the interests of people they aim to cater to.
##**Audience segmentation**In relation to online marketing, audience segmentation is defined as a process of separating target demographic into smaller, more homogenous groups with similar traits and requirements. Based on this, some specific characteristics will affect the way in which people perceive and understand different messages. During the very process of audience segmentation, therefore, numerous aspects need to be taken into consideration. Some of the most important ones include background culture, attitudes, behavior, the use of media, as well as common needs and priorities.
This statement is proved by the recent [research of Chief Marketing Officers](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/03/new-research-custom-content-marketing-surges-with-cmos-consumers/), which shows that 35% of CMOs interviewed believe**custom content marketing is the basis of any future marketing strategy**, as opposed to 19% of them surveyed in 2006. Additionally, even customers are familiar with its importance. Namely, 77% of consumers are aware that the company’s goal for content creation is to sell something to them.
Therefore, it is more than obvious that companies need to know who they are reaching out to so that they can build relevant and informative content that resonates with their customers’ needs. In order to achieve such a goal, marketers tend to rely on [13 basic marketing strategies](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2015_B2B_Research.pdf), including social media content, whitepapers, blogs, case studies and many more.
##**Increased content personalization**Quite expectedly, numerous studies have explained that content built for the general public was proven to be ineffective for any of the surveyed groups. On the other hand, contextualized marketing that addresses the needs of a particular social group is believed to automatically raise the success rate of the entire campaign.
This is the main reason why content personalization is gradually gaining ground as one of most fruitful [inbound](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862) marketing strategies. [According to the CMI’s 2014 B2B content marketing research](http://www.iab.net/media/file/B2BResearch2014.pdf), 95% of all B2B marketers resort to segmenting content based on their target demographic. When it comes to tailoring content to your customers, there are numerous aspects that need to be taken into consideration:
- – Who are they?
- – Where are they located?
- – When, why and how do they access the content?
- – What device do they use to access the online content?
Although content personalization is believed to be the future of inbound marketing, numerous marketers consider it time-consuming and unpredictable endeavor. It is even questioned whether the associated returns are really worth such an effort. For instance, Rebecca Lieb of Altimeter Group states that “*content marketing tends to be both longer-form and much less automated than other types of personalized digital marketing, such as email and banner ads*.”
Even though its efficiency might be seen as deceptive, the future will bring more personalized inbound marketing campaigns in both enterprise and small-scale businesses. Moreover, experts suggest they will become an inevitable part of any fully-established content marketing campaign.
Yet, in order to be more than just a needlessly redundant exercise, this issue needs to be properly approached. [According to CMI’s Ann Gynn](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/08/content-marketing-personalization-when-how/), there are several vital things you should always keep in mind:
-**Focus on individuals**, not persona groups. However, this process cannot be reliable without a systematic approach, content and adequate technology.
-**Keep innovating**in order to provide your customers with the data they are interested in.
-**Don’t go overboard**, which requires investing in quality content that includes the information about the product, answers to visitors’ question, tips on how to use your product, styling insights and customer ratings.
-**Make baby steps at first**because small-scale business personalization takes time. Namely, employing dynamic personalization is a lot to take on in the very beginning. Of course, over time, you can expand content personalization and move it to a higher level.
-**Curate content,**which means merging the information you already have from email digest and build content on a personal basis.
-**Understand your audience.**Only when you get to know your customers will you be able to contextualize your content successfully.
With the inevitable development in the field of digital marketing, we can safely claim that we are crossing the technological milestone. In order to make your inbound marketing strategy more effective, your goal should be to deliver highly relevant, original and readable content that will attract and engage your customers. However, this can be achieved only with its contextualization that heavily influences the way in which your audience thinks, acts and, most importantly, makes a purchase. This way, you’ll be able to deliver the right content to the right people exactly where and when they need it.
---
## Posts: SEO Implications of Google’s Thought Vectors
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-developing-intelligent-algorithms-called-thought-vectors-1593](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-developing-intelligent-algorithms-called-thought-vectors-1593)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/google-developing-intelligent-algorithms-called-thought-vectors-1593.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-developing-intelligent-algorithms-called-thought-vectors-1593.md)
**Published:** 2015-08-23
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** News
**Tags:** Google, Intelligent Algorithms
### Content
Google is currently developing intelligent algorithms that will be able to encode human thoughts as sequences of numbers and offer more intelligent operating systems.
According to Professor Geoff Hinton, who has been working on Google’s intelligent OS for two years, the company will be able to give “common sense” to computers within only a decade. In [an interview for Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/21/google-a-step-closer-to-developing-machines-with-human-like-intelligence), the professor confirmed that Google is “on the brink of developing algorithms with the capacity for logic, natural conversation and even flirtation.”
Namely, the new algorithms Hinton describes as “thought vectors” will be able to master conversational language and use human-like logic, which are seen as two essential challenges in artificial intelligence. The ability to deconstruct language with a certain level of mathematical precision will enable the algorithms to extract new levels of knowledge and provide more sophisticated human-computer interaction.
The work is currently in its initial stages, but the development process seems to be moving steadily towards the intended results. Given the research done so far and Professor Hinton’s long experience in the field of machine learning, the idea of adding commons sense to computers in the next few years seems quite feasible.
In relation to this, many have recalled the movie Her to paint a more tangible picture of Google’s intentions. As pointed in the article on Guardian, even professor Hinton himself suggested that people should be able to interact with their computers in a more friendly way.
“It’s not that far-fetched. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be like a friend. I don’t see why you shouldn’t grow quite attached to them.”
When it comes to the search ecosystem, [Professor Hinton earlier explained](http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2409871/document-search-engines-will-be-able-to-think-and-reason-like-people-argues-ai-expert) how his research could improve the search logic. Talking about the possibility to render meaning from digital documents, Hinton suggested that:
“If we convert a sentence into a vector that captures the meaning of the sentence, then Google can do much better searches; they can search based on what’s being said in a document.”
At the moment, Hinton’s ideas may seem like a distant reality, but the work already done in the field suggests we may welcome intelligent machines in several years. Although some people expressed concerns about the possible effects such systems may have on human existence, majority of scientist welcomed Hinton’s revolutionary ideas.
For those who find it difficult to grasp the potential of thought vectors, the following scene from Her may adequately illustrate their possible real-world application. Directed by Spike Jonze and featuring Joaquin Phoenix, the movie examines the extent to which [AI could change](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services) our perceptions of human relationships and human-machine communication.
---
## Posts: Analyzing Google Mobile-Friendly Algo Update
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/understanding-the-implications-of-the-next-google-algorithm-update-1066](https://fourdots.com/blog/understanding-the-implications-of-the-next-google-algorithm-update-1066)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/understanding-the-implications-of-the-next-google-algorithm-update-1066.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/understanding-the-implications-of-the-next-google-algorithm-update-1066.md)
**Published:** 2015-04-14
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Google Algorithm Update
### Content
Google’s upcoming mobile-friendly update that will start reshaping mobile search ecosystem as of April 21st has been a hot topic in the SEO circles for several weeks now. Although building a mobile website has been an imperative for webmasters over the last few years, a great number of websites still performs quite poorly on smartphones and tablets, which is why Google decided to take some harsher measures to ensure the best possible mobile experience.
Indeed, considering the fact that now majority of digital media consumption takes place on mobile devices (as revealed in comScore Mobile App Report last year), it’s unsurprising that the Google search team encourages the development of properly-built mobile websites. Namely, [the company recently announced](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html) that they will be expanding the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, which would have a significant impact on search results.
Much like all the other Google’s updates, the anticipated algorithm is intended to enhance users’ digital experience by showing only the most relevant results for specific types of queries, this time in mobile search. However, this also implies changes and potential challenges for webmasters that may not currently have resources to adjust their websites to Google’s new demands. Therefore, the update is likely to bring a large-scale impact, which is exactly what triggers the curiosity of SEO professionals and webmasters alike.
##**Bigger than Panda and Penguin**After the years of accelerated mobile device adoption and mass changes in people’s browsing habits, online search can hardly resemble what it used to be few years ago. Correspondingly, Googlebots can no longer crawl the web the same way and, although the new algorithm is not expected to affect desktop searches whatsoever, its impact will definitely be huge. In fact, according to some estimates, it will be huger than that of either Panda or Penguin.
Namely, as suggested by Zineb Ait Bahjji at SMX Munich,**the new update will affect almost five times more searches than Panda and as much as 12 times more than Penguin at its peak**. [Translated into digits by SEO Roundtable](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-algorithm-big-20010.html), this will account for 50% of searches changed, as opposed to Panda, which at its top affected 12% searches and Penguin that changed 4% of results.
> Zineb from Google at [#smx](https://twitter.com/hashtag/smx?src=hash) Munich about the mobile ranking update: is going to have a bigger effect than penguin and panda!
> — Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) [March 17, 2015](https://twitter.com/aleyda/status/577785789217685505)
Clearly, 50% is indeed a huge number that is only to further establish mobile optimization as a priority for all webmasters. This is especially important since having a mobile friendly website means much more than simply obtaining a “mobile-friendly” tag’ it means redesigning all the pages so as to meet the expectations of mobile users and provide seamless experience regardless of the device or screen size they are coming from.
Therefore, while some webmasters may decide only to adjust specific pages to mobile screen sizes in order to satisfy minimum demands by Google, others will need to rethink their whole content
and design strategies. This means deciding on the way to build a mobile site, rearranging the most important elements and rethinking not only the contents, but also the overall context of digital strategies.
##**Getting started with a mobile website**Anyone with even a remote interest in web trends knows that Google has been encouraging creation of mobile sites for years now, which greatly influenced the overall web design and web marketing industries. Of course, mobile expansion has never been just a buzzword, but a mass trend whose importance influenced different aspects of digital marketing. We saw this when we talked about [content marketing in the mobile era](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-355/), for example, where we discussed why a greater focus should be put on understanding the way mobile users interact with website contents.
Building a mobile website is yet another activity that requires both time and strategic planning in order to deliver satisfying results. This is why Google created a guide to facilitate this undertaking, pointing to the advantages of responsive design over dynamic serving and mobile-only sites, which are two other methods webmasters have at their disposal. From Google developers guide, the differences between these are explained from the perspective of both the search engine and end user.
1. ## Responsive design
Responsive design has been a favorite method of building a mobile website among webmasters for two major reasons: it greatly improves user experience since it neatly displays website contents across multiple screen sizes and is probably the best option for SEO. Namely, Google themselves recommended responsive design as the best possible way to retain the intuitive website structure and ensure its most important elements are shown properly regardless of the device a user is coming from.
However, one thing that could be considered a disadvantage of responsive design is the fact it requires extensive collaboration with web developers, which is usually something small organizations and one-man businesses find difficult to afford. Therefore, many website owners whose primary areas of interest are unrelated to IT may find this an investment they’d rather skip. Of course, for such website owners, there are other options to create a mobile-friendly website, which may not perform as well as responsive design in all the critical aspects, but which are useful for obtaining the mobile-friendly tag.
1. ## Dynamic serving
As opposed to the Separate URLs method that we’ll describe later, dynamic serving shows the same URL to both mobile and desktop users. This is a great option because it doesn’t mess up the URLs to show duplicated content to different devices, but it still requires changes in the HTML code, which is again something that may confuse the engine and result in an inappropriate display.
[Google’s guide](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169) on setting up Dynamic serving notes that with this option, it is not immediately apparent that HTML of the website is altered for mobile users, which is why a Vary HTTP header needs to be implemented to help both caching servers and Googlebot find the mobile contents easily. Essentially, this tells the browser that the contents displayed should depend upon a user agent whose detection may be tricky if some parts are improperly set. To help you cope with these, Google lists three most common errors you should avoid in order to eliminate all the possible disruptions.
1. ## Separate URLs
The third method essentially refers to creating two distinct sites out of which one is shown to users coming from desktop platforms, while the other is intended for mobile users only. One of the reasons webmasters may choose this option is that it virtually requires no changes to the existing site and creates another one to fully support mobile devices.
The downside is obvious: you have two sites Google may find difficult to connect, which may also cause different issues concerning user experience. For example, a person browsing a site from a mobile platform decides to send its URL to a person who is currently on the desktop. The other user won’t be able to see it at all, which is already enough for the negative user experience.
Therefore, responsive design has a variety of advantages over all the other methods and should be used whenever possible. Coupled with a carefully planned mobile content strategy, such a site should guarantee excellent performance on mobile platforms and better search visibility. SEO-wise, this is also a recommended method as it minimizes the risk of losing some SEO benefits as it may be the case with the other two techniques. This is also briefly commented on by Matt Cutts in the following video:
##**Avoiding mobile SEO mistakes**Outlined this way, the techniques for building a mobile website may appear quite simple, but there are, of course, multiple other aspects one needs to consider in order to do this successfully. Namely, after you’re sure your website meets all the technical requirements for being included in mobile search, you need to think about the ways you can better optimize it. Again, much like with traditional on-site optimization, you’ll need to avoid these seven most important problems:
-**Blocked JavaScirpt, CSS and image files.**We all know that Googlebots are generally not very fond of blocked content, which is why you need to let it can crawl all your JavaScript, CSS and image files properly. You can check this by using the [Fetch as Google option](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/googlebot-fetch) in Webmaster Tools that would give you a preview of all possible errors on the website, thus enabling you to make the necessary improvements.
-**Unplayable content.**Since some types of videos or animated content are not playable on mobile devices, Google recommends using HTML5 standards to enable such elements to work seamlessly on mobile platforms.
-**Faulty redirects.**Proper redirection of URLs is particularly important for websites that use separate URLs to serve specific versions of content on mobile and desktop devices. If this is the case with yours, you need to ensure that each mobile URL displays an appropriate mobile page instead of sending users to a homepage URL, which is one of the most common mistakes with this type of mobile websites.
-**Mobile-only 404s.**404 errors are terrible for overall user experience for various reasons and, in case a website serves distinct URLs to different platforms, 404s can appear even if a certain page exists for desktop version and is inaccessible on mobile devices. This is why these issues need to be double-checked in Google Webmaster Tools.
-**App download interstitials.**Websites that promote native apps for mobile visitors need to pay attention to the way their banners are designed and displayed in order to avoid blocking users from completing specific tasks. Again, Google recommends a set of actions that need to be considered in order to come up with a proper form of app download interstitials.
-**Irrelevant cross-links.**Similar to faulty redirects and mobile-only 404s, irrelevant cross-links can send a visitor to an irrelevant page and this is why it is crucial that webmasters check whether all the links point to correct pages. This may be confusing for both users and the engine, which can cause your website to lose some SEO value.
-**Slow mobile pages.**Finally, mobile page load time is probably the most important aspect that you need to optimize in order to keep the visitors on your mobile website and encourage them to complete desired actions. In order to improve page load time, you need to eliminate any possible issues regarding page caching, HTML structure of the page, server configuration and JavaScript and image files. Here using [Google PageSpeed Insights](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights) is an excellent starting point for detecting and solving the most important issues.
These are probably the most frequent issues webmasters may face when trying to optimize their websites for mobile use and this is why this list is a handy resource for anyone preparing for the next update. Suffice to say, making any of these can negatively affect users’ perception not only of your website, but of your company as well, which is a topic we discussed earlier in our [guide on SEO mistakes that can hurt your business](https://fourdots.com/blog/7-seo-mistakes-can-hurt-business-427/). Furthermore, since the final goal of every website is to provide the greatest possible experience for end users, webmasters may consider developing a more detailed SEO strategy focused on this group of users specifically.
### Conclusions
With over 60% of people now browsing the Internet from their palms, new strategies need to be defined for almost every aspect of online marketing, including search performance. Building an SEO-friendly mobile website, therefore, could be seen as a critical point for online expansion because it greatly determines how users will interact with a business or organization in general. Obtaining a mobile-friendly tag before April 21st should certainly be your priority in the next few weeks, but constantly providing excellent user experience on mobile devices is a long-term goal every webmaster needs to start thinking about now.
Hope this guide has helped you better understand the possible implications of the upcoming update. If you have any other thoughts regarding mobile optimization, feel free to share your views in comments!
### Resources:
[http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2014/The-US-Mobile-App-Report](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2014/The-US-Mobile-App-Report)[https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-algorithm-big-20010.html](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-algorithm-big-20010.html)[https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/overview/select-config](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/overview/select-config)[https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/)
---
## Posts: Four Dots Team Members at Google Academy
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-team-members-at-google-academy-1711](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-team-members-at-google-academy-1711)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-team-members-at-google-academy-1711.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-team-members-at-google-academy-1711.md)
**Published:** 2015-03-31
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Company News
**Tags:** Four Dots News, Google Academy
### Content
Last week, three Four Dots team members had an opportunity to participate in a two-day training for Google*Fundamentals*and*Search*exams at IT Academy in Belgrade. The training was designed to help search engine marketers learn more about online advertising best practices and prepare for Google certification exams.
Naturally, we also tried to engage in some networking, however, our efforts to optimize our in-room visibility somehow fell on deaf ears. Seeing how we’ve covered all the crucial aspects of a decent exposure increasing strategy, from meta elements (name tags) to improving response times (cups upon cups of coffee) we can only attribute the low stranger to acquaintance conversion rate to everybody being too focused on their own promotional campaigns and/or the snack bar.
More importantly, however, participation in this mini Google Academy provided an insight into contemporary online advertising techniques and different real-life examples of successful AdWords campaigns. By exchanging knowledge and opinions with other participants, our team members gained a valuable experience that will help them run some great campaigns in future. This is why we’re so proud to have been invited to IT Academy and why we felt we should share this story with you!
##**About the training**Google Academy courses took place at IT Academy, Belgrade on March 23rd and 24th. The short course was taught by Google-certified lecturer [Ivan ReÄević](https://rs.linkedin.com/in/irecevic) whose experience with AdWords campaigns represents a great source of inspiration for professionals and beginners alike. Apart from introducing the participants to the theory behind advertising on Google, ReÄević also talked about different examples from his professional career, which is certainly a great inspiration for our further work. The ability to share knowledge with him and over 20 other digital marketing professionals makes us confident about our future excellence.
##**The science of AdWords campaigns**As a highly dynamic field, [search engine marketing](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing) requires great understanding of a specific company’s target market, but the experience in running search engine campaigns is what enables marketers to identify key opportunities and develop strategies that bring results. Even though there are rules for campaign setting and monitoring, every new campaign is a unique challenge that requires research, testing and creativity in order to be made efficient.
This is why we believe that only the proper combination of market intelligence, professional experience and innovative ideas can contribute to creating a campaign that works. AdWords certificates are intended to test one’s knowledge on these and improve their understanding of all the factors that may play an important role in how results can be improved. This is particularly important given the fact that Google keep introducing new forms of advertising and new options for marketers to improve the efficiency of their campaigns.
Therefore, this fresh insight into the world of AdWords is beneficial for the whole [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/sr-academy) team and a great recommendation for all our existing and future clients.
##**Why we are so happy about this**As a company that already counts a number of certified search advertising professionals,**[Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/blog)**are proud to have created an opportunity for more people to expand their knowledge on the current trends in online advertising and search marketing. Coupled with practical experience our team gains in the offices, this training is a great source of innovative solutions for improving search performance and satisfaction of our clients.
Suffice to say, we are looking forward to the next Google Academy that will certainly see some new Four Dots faces!
---
## Posts: 7 SEO Mistakes That can Hurt your Business
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/7-seo-mistakes-can-hurt-business-1710](https://fourdots.com/blog/7-seo-mistakes-can-hurt-business-1710)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/7-seo-mistakes-can-hurt-business-1710.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/7-seo-mistakes-can-hurt-business-1710.md)
**Published:** 2015-01-19
**Last Updated:** 2025-03-14
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** SEO, SEO mistakes
### Content
“SEO is a field that changes over time, and the most successful SEOs embrace change and turn it into an opportunity.”
The 2010 quote by Matt Cutts was an early implication of the extent to which the search ecosystem was bound to change over the next few years. Indeed, the field kept developing, always raising the bar for content quality and online marketing innovation. Correspondingly, as search algorithms advanced, webmasters and their client companies needed to rethink most of their strategies in order to climb the SERP ladder.
Considering such a rapid pace of change, it is easy to see why there is still so much space for making mistakes even in companies that have been focusing on SEO for years. For it is not only black-hat and otherwise manipulative techniques that can take a website down in search; some unintentional mistakes that keep reappearing on the web are frequently a reason websites aren’t seeing any advancements.
##**When SEO strategy goes wrong**The long history of Google’s updates has brought multiple unfortunate search scenarios even to some of the world’s top websites and these are perhaps the best examples of a damage inappropriate SEO strategies can lead to.
Namely, few years ago, when Google search was mostly a field of exploration, many companies believed they could improve their rankings by trying to outsmart the engine. However, not even the giants such as BBC, Washington Post and Engadget could go away without a punishment for using forbidden techniques. When [BMW was given a death penalty by Google](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4685750.stm) and was removed from the face of web for three days, it became clear that even the largest SEO budgets would take you nowhere if they are not directed to the right channels.
Even though this was in the early stages of SEO growth, some companies still believe that using outdated techniques is the right way to achieve better rankings. However, with Google closely watching your efforts, it is virtually impossible to build a reputation in an unnatural way. Therefore, you need to carefully plan your strategy and make sure you never make any of potentially devastating mistakes that can kill your rankings and thus hurt your business. Below, we’ll list some of the most serious issues that require your attention even before you start planning a content strategy.
1. ##**Generating thin content**Thin content is a term search marketers use to refer to the lack of posts and pages that offer value for the readers. Even though nowadays Google can detect such content much faster than few years ago, is still an important issue in the SEO world. In terms of quality, [Google defines thin content](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604719?hl=en) as the one that provides little or no added value for a reader:
- – Automatically generated content
- – Thin affiliate pages
- – Content from other sources (i.e. scraped content or low-quality guest posts)
- – Doorway pages
Clearly, any attempt of adding thin content to a website would lead to a penalty and even a single page that contains such resources can become a subject to Google’s Manual Action notice, which will push you down the search display. Instead, what you should focus on is providing relevant information shaped in a way that can be easily recognized by Google as a credible source of information. This goes for both internal content generation and any link building activities, as the effort to provide constant flow of valuable content is the major factor of achieving search success. As Adam Audette, Chief Knowledge Officer at RKG notes:
>*“The days of SEO being a game outsmarting algorithms are over. Today content strategy and valuable, sustainable strategies are essential, not just tricks and links.”*1. ##**Not integrating content and SEO strategies**The [emergence of content marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy/) can be seen as a natural evolution of SEO techniques that followed the rules Google kept imposing on web masters. Even though content marketing has existed for decades, it only recently started to be associated with SEO as one of the key factors of successful online expansion.
Today, it could be said that content generation is the driving force in the world of web marketing, and is also a strategy that needs to be integrated with SEO efforts. In a [2013 video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=421aTJI2Nxc), Matt Cutts explained why the balance between these two is the greatest possible way to improve search rankings, suggesting that a**focus should be on creating compelling content rather than just link building**. Indeed, over the last few years, we have seen a rapid growth of inbound marketing whose main idea is first to come up with value proposition and then worry about building links.
This view is supported by a [recent research by linkbird](https://www.linkbird.com/en/media/state-of-seo-agencies-report/), which revealed that a growing number of businesses are turning to a holistic approach to SEO and internet marketing. According to the study, 10% of companies state that combining SEO and content strategy is one of the greatest challenges they are seeing in their online marketing efforts. Certainly, content strategy does involve making different decisions regarding budget planning and implementation and this is what makes it a complex business area. On the other hand, given that most respondents report significant benefits from such an approach, SEO and content integration is definitely an efficient way to do online marketing in the modern age.
1. ##**Building unnatural links**Producing relevant content is not only a way to engage audience and establish authority, but also a path to building natural links. Namely, with an established editorial schedule and occasional industry publications, your website is more likely to generate leads and eventually links from relevant websites.
Therefore, content strategy may be also seen as a key to [generating quality backlinks](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059) and avoiding potentially spammy techniques. As one of the signals that tells Google what your business is about, your website’s**backlink profile should not only*look*natural, but actually*be*natural**, which you can only achieve by strategic content placement.
Unfortunately, aggressive and unnatural link building is still one of the most frequent mistakes businesses make when trying to improve their online reputation. Here, two specific issues that can harm the website’s reputation are anchor texts stuffed with exact match keywords and aggressive guest posting whose aim is to get links rather than build authority. Both, however, have become techniques search engines are not particularly fond of and should therefore be avoided.
Instead, a recommendation is to combine multiple link building strategies and create content that can be distributed through a variety of different channels. [Last year’s survey by Moz](http://moz.com/blog/link-building-survey-2014-results) gives an overview of strategies that are found to be most effective by 315 people who participated in the survey and these are obviously the ones you should focus on to ensure the best quality of your backlinks.
1. ##**Serving duplicate content**Most website owners are familiar with the fact that duplicate content can not only hurt search rankings but also lead to a penalty. However, even today people are not quite sure what duplicate content really means and how to solve possible issues with it.
Google’s [guidelines on duplicate content](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en) give an overview of best practices to handle pages with similar or identical content, yet most SEO experts say that the lack of canonicalization for duplicate pages is one of the most frequent mistakes they are seeing. This is because webmasters often tend to forget to include the right tags to pages that point to similar content, especially in cases when a website is transferred to a new domain.*Image by 30acres.com.au*It is important to note here that certain instances of duplicate content on your pages are not likely to get you penalized by Google, but fixing such mistakes is probably the easiest thing you can do. First, you can check the state of your content with tools such as [Siteliner](http://www.siteliner.com/) or [Plagiarism Checker](http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/) and then consider how you can proceed with handling the issue. Some of the basic guidelines say that you should be careful about:
-**–**301 redirects
-**–**Using top-level domains for handling country-specific content
-**–**Content syndication, whereupon you should always include a link to the original resource
-**–**Boilerplate repetitions and “empty” pages
1. ##**Slow page loading speed**Page load speed largely determines how people see your website and is an important factor in website optimization. Although the web has been buzzing about the importance of website’s speed performance for general user experience, recent studies point to the fact that there a worryingly large number of pages still doesn’t perform well in this aspect. As revealed in [Portent study](http://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/research-site-speed-hurting-everyones-revenue.htm) that looked at 94 million page views across 16 ecommerce websites,**50% of websites take five or more seconds to load**. With an average user leaving a page if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds, it is clear why this is bad not only for ecommerce, but for all the other websites too.
As an aspect that plays a great role in user experience, page load speed does have some effect on search rankings. Even though it is one of 200 of signals Google takes into account when considering your website and not the one you’d be penalized for, optimizing page load time is certainly a way to make your visitors love your website. In relation to introducing page speed as a ranking factor, [Matt Cutts points out](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/) that this is intended to raise awareness among webmasters about the importance of optimizing for excellent user experience. Besides, this is one of the things that can be improved relatively easily, which is what makes it even more important.
>*“Speeding up your website is a great thing to do in general. Visitors to your site will be happier (and might convert more or use your site more), and a faster web will be better for all.”*1. ##**Choosing fast results over quality long-term reputation**One of the issues that is still dominant today is the tendency to choose fast results over those that can bring long-term benefits. Most businesses already know that AdWords campaigns can deliver fast and easily measurable results, which is what makes them a dominant priority in online marketing. In [a BIA/Kelsey study](http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2381970/search-top-priority-among-smbs-study), 60.6% of SMBs stated they were investing in this type of advertising because it brings instant results.
However, such results cannot always be seen with other forms of SEO that fast. Link building, content creation and developing authority online are all activities that take time and effort. Yet, these are the ones that are more likely to establish a brand as an authoritative information resource across different industries. This is confirmed in a [HubSpot report](http://offers.hubspot.com/marketing-benchmarks-from-7000-businesses) that, among other things, revealed that**business websites with 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages**. Furthermore, companies that heavily invest in inbound marketing are seeing increased benefits from combining multiple growth strategies, which is another implication that long-term work pays off more.
Of course, to build a website that is a true lead generation and conversion machine, small businesses sometimes need months or even years. This is why often it is a good idea to outsource certain [services from a reputable SEO](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) agency and thus define the right pace of development for your business.
1. ##**Not tracking your website’s performance**Analyzing website’s performance is a critical activity, regardless of whether you outsource SEO services or have in-house marketing teams. However, this doesn’t only involve checking Google Analytics once in a while to see how many visitors you have attracted, but also referring to Webmaster Tools to early identify potential errors. Chuck Price from Search Engine Watch [made an excellent point](http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2237534/unnatural-links-recovery-emerging-from-a-manual-penalty) about why mot tracking website’s performance can be a deathly mistake for your website:
>*“In my experience, which includes conducting 200 link audits in 2013, most reconsideration requests are turned around in 30 days or less. That said, it’s reasonable to conclude that 95 percent of all websites receiving a penalty don’t even bother to attempt a recovery.”*Obviously, the fact that only**5% of businesses ever try to eliminate the devastating effects of a penalty**is quite alarming and can perhaps be attributed to inconsistent performance tracking. Therefore, regular checks or onsite audits can help you avoid a penalty in the first place because they give you an opportunity to react immediately if you detect any deviations.
###**Conclusions**To rule the world of Google search, one needs to work constantly and be ready to introduce new techniques on a regular basis. This is essentially important in the era of tough search competition, when only a perfect balance between content marketing and SEO efforts can bring loyal readership and, therefore, loyal customers. Clearly, making any of these seven mistakes can hurt more than your rankings; it can hide you from the eyes you’re trying to reach and thus impede the progress of your business.
### Additional resources:
- [https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/)
- [https://www.linkbird.com/en/media/state-of-seo-agencies-report/](https://www.linkbird.com/en/media/state-of-seo-agencies-report/)
- [http://moz.com/blog/link-building-survey-2014-results](http://moz.com/blog/link-building-survey-2014-results)
- [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en)
- [http://offers.hubspot.com/marketing-benchmarks-from-7000-businesses](http://offers.hubspot.com/marketing-benchmarks-from-7000-businesses)
---
## Posts: Step-by-step SEO Guide for Small Businesses
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-guide-for-small-businesses-1709](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-guide-for-small-businesses-1709)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-guide-for-small-businesses-1709.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-guide-for-small-businesses-1709.md)
**Published:** 2015-01-12
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** SEO, small business SEO
### Content
Much like most other website marketing strategies, SEO is a process rather than a set of rules. This is especially true in recent years when most marketers have started focusing on content value rather than the number of backlinks. With SEO past its infancy phase, creativity and research are the main determinants of successful online exposure development.
When combined with other website marketing strategies, SEO brings not only traffic, but also increased conversion rates and this is probably the main reason why businesses keep exploring this field. In the realm of small businesses, advanced SEO and content marketing techniques are particularly convenient because of their relative cost-efficiency. Namely, such services do not necessarily require large investments and do not burden the budget even when outsourced, while the effects are obvious.
##**Value proposition: SEO as a conversion booster**In relation to marketing, the often misinterpreted title allusion points to the fact that any idea innovative enough will easily find its target audience. “Build it and they will come” is a rule of thumb that may sound great, but that doesn’t necessarily work, at least not in some highly competitive market segments. Considering the fact that even the greatest web companies keep using strategic marketing to maintain their positions, it is easy to see why every idea needs a little push.
In terms of search engine rankings, the “push” translates into a potentially exhaustive process of research, monitoring and analyzing the target market. Only when all these activities are in place it is possible to offer a unique value proposition to the audience and create content that not only drives traffic, but converts as well. This is precisely where the value of SEO is most evident – organic traffic brings higher conversions because it naturally follows users’ online behavior.
Namely, regardless of a business’s target market, organic search seems to be the leading source of conversions. This is confirmed in [a study by MarketingSherpa](http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/conversion-rates-organic-traffic), which analyzed correlations between organic search and conversion rates to discover the value of SEO across different industries.
Similar findings are revealed in Hubspot’s*2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report*, which summarizes the potential of the strategy. The report suggests that organic search brings more conversions than any other online channel such as social media, which is the second major source of website conversions. Clearly, organic search plays an important role in the wide field of website marketing, which is why it is still among the favorite business development techniques. Of course, complex as it is, SEO strategy does involve extensive research and planning in order to deliver benefits. Below are some of the most critical steps a business needs to integrate into its online development plans.
##**Step 1: Goal setting**SEO used to be a synonym for building links all over the web without paying much attention to either their quality or their value for business. After several [Google algorithm updates](https://fourdots.com/blog/redefining-google-search-2015-394/), such an approach has not only become futile, but dangerous as well. This means that without a goal and a corresponding strategy, the time invested won’t bring any notable improvements.
To be able to expand their online image in a natural way, businesses first need to set their goals and identify relevant industry channels. Of course, goal setting is a process that should rely on market research and not some abstract expectations. This means that a random choice of keywords to rank for is not normally a way to succeed. Instead, proper assessment of market opportunities and carefully planned content strategy are the factors that will dictate the pace of growth.
Some of the critical steps in the process involve keyword research, competitor analysis, budget planning and progress tracking. With all these planned ahead, any SEO strategy is likely to work much better than a random link distribution.
##**Step 2: Keyword research**Keyword research is an excellent way to gain insight into your consumers’ behavior and the overall marketing potential. This is probably the most important step as it gives you a clear picture of what it is that people search online and how you can give them exactly what they need. Andrew Lolk from Search Engine Journal [gives an excellent example](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/6-reasons-why-small-businesses-often-fail-with-adwords/64012/) of a common mistake small businesses make when choosing their keywords. Namely, he mentions possible ads for*key replacement services*query in order to illustrate the difference between 100% relevancy and 90% relevancy:**Fast Key Replacement Services**Get Your New Keys Within 15 Minutes.
Call Today to Schedule.**All Locksmith Services**We Offer Everything In Locksmith Services.
Call Today to Schedule.
Out of the two ads, however similar they may be, people are more likely to recognize the first one as a 100% relevant website. Therefore, even if you understand the similarity, your consumers sometimes don’t, which is why keyword research is the first strategic step in both onsite optimization or AdWords campaign. This is also pointed out by Matt Cutts, who gave a similar example to emphasize the importance of the proper keyword choice.
An interesting thing he mentions in the video is that inappropriate choice of keywords is one of the most frequent mistake webmasters make. Therefore, before you start with either link building or AdWords campaign, it is essential that you spend enough time researching keywords via Google’s intuitive Keyword Planner (AdWords) or a tool such as WordStream. These two are probably the most widely used keyword research resources and some of the most valuable tools for developing an SEO strategy.
##**Step 3: Competitor analysis**Even in some less competitive markets, there are always companies or organizations related to your niche that have already established themselves as leaders in the industry. Their websites can be valuable sources of data relevant to your business, which is why you should take some time to analyze their strategies. It is important to note here that this form of analysis can be done for any company related to your field and not just for your direct competitors. To see how they perform in Google search, you can use a tool such as WooRank that lets you understand the following:
- – Website usability (page load time, cross browser compatibility, URL structure, CTA characteristics, etc.)
- – Page layout and structure
- – Keyword consistency
- – Website meta data, sitemaps and robots.txt
- – Content analysis (keyword distribution and top ranking keywords)
These capabilities are more thoroughly examined in [this post on the WooRank blog](http://blog.woorank.com/2014/01/important-criteria-for-effective-seo-competitive-analysis/), where you can find all the necessary pieces of information about the tool itself. Although WooRank lets you analyze one website per week in its free version, it is a tool you should definitely consider using. Besides this, a part of competitor analysis can be done via Google search and competitors’ social media pages, where you’re likely to find some critical information about the industry, as well as your prospects’ behavior.
##**Step 4: Onsite optimization**Onsite optimization is the probably the most complex yet the most important factor of your website’s future growth. Apart from finding the right keywords and distributing them evenly across your pages, you also need to make sure the website performs well in every key aspect. This means optimizing it for faster page load, proper display on multiple screen sizes, accurate display in search snippets, etc. To give you a picture, this graphic by Rand Fishkin illustrates all the key elements that need to be adjusted to Google’s preferences.
What follows is that both textual and HTML elements on a page need to be readable by Google in order to be shown for relevant queries. The first step to being recognized by Google’s crawlers is [creating and submitting a sitemap](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183668?hl=en) to notify the engine that your website is up and running. As for the content optimization, some of the tools you should consider using are popular plugins such as*Yoast*and*All in One SEO Pack*(WordPress) or*SmartSEO*and*SEOSimple*(Joomla!). These will let you add specific keywords and meta descriptions, as well as optimize URLs for all the posts and pages to let both Google and your visitors understand what they are about.
Of course, as illustrated on the graphic above, these are just some of the basic steps in the complex process of building a stable website whose overall performance is still the most important factor for great search rankings. With a professionally built website, content optimization and further online development strategies should go seamlessly. In fact, only when the technical parts are properly set up, you can start developing content that will make your website visible across all the relevant channels.
##**Step 5: Developing content strategy**Content rules the web more than ever and it is the only way you can actually send the right signals to Google. This is especially important for new or small sites that will certainly take some time to outperform the major ones. Even though it may appear that certain positions are reserved only for the already established websites, small sites still stand the chance of becoming big. After all, this was Google’s idea right from the start.*“Whatever area you’re in, if you’re doing it better than the other incumbents, then over time you can expect to perform better and better.”*Therefore, constant flow of relevant content is the most potent way to build online reputation. This should start with delivering fresh industry insights on the company’s blog, which is supposed to be the area for you to demonstrate your expertise. In addition to this, publishing reports, ebooks or industry white papers is another way to show both users and engines that your company has something valuable to offer.
Furthermore, regular creation of targeted content is the step towards generating leads via channels other than organic search. By promoting your blog on social media, you gain exposure among the widest possible audiences that may be seeking out the pieces of information you have to offer. What’s more, regular blogging should be a part of your inbound marketing strategy and not just an SEO effort, meaning that you should always create content for users, rather than for search engines.
##**Step 6: Monitoring and analysis**Finally, as you complete the basic steps, the key to further development is constant monitoring of how your pages perform. Again, this is supposed to give you an insight into what works best in terms of both content and conversions, so you can plan the further steps. In case you notice deviations, this should be a signal that some additional tweaks need to be done in terms of either design or content.
To track your progress, you can use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, which are probably the two most widely used free tools for website analysis. Webmaster Tools lets you monitor keyword rankings, search queries that send most traffic to your pages, as well as potential website errors. With Analytics, you can examine overall users’ behavior on your website and see traffic sources, time on site or bounce rates. Again, monitoring their activities will help you react on time in case you notice unusually high bounce rate or worryingly low time on site, which are some of the metrics that point to negative user experience.
In addition to these two, one of the useful SEO tools is [Fresh Web Explorer](http://moz.com/tools/fresh-web-explorer) by Moz that enables you to track and analyze mentions of your brand and your competitors to identify the best market opportunities. This one can also help you in competitor analysis at any stage of growth. Of course, there are a number of other resources that can provide you with the data you need to better organize your activities and direct your efforts towards all the right channels. The ones we mentioned here are intended to give you an idea on how you can utilize online resources for the sake of developing the most efficient strategy.
###**Conclusions**Listed this way, the steps outlined above make SEO appear as what it really is – an activity that involves multiple strategic decisions, rather than a manipulative scheme for achieving better rankings. Hopefully, this guide should serve as a reference to businesses that either invest too much thought into all the wrong metrics or invest no thought in SEO strategy at all.
### Additional resources:
- [http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/conversion-rates-organic-traffic](http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/conversion-rates-organic-traffic)
- [http://offers.hubspot.com/2014-state-of-inbound](http://offers.hubspot.com/2014-state-of-inbound)
- [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/6-reasons-why-small-businesses-often-fail-with-adwords/64012/](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/6-reasons-why-small-businesses-often-fail-with-adwords/64012/)
- [http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization](http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization)
---
## Posts: Inbound Marketing Strategies for a Holiday Campaign
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-marketing-strategies-holiday-campaign-1708](https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-marketing-strategies-holiday-campaign-1708)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-marketing-strategies-holiday-campaign-1708.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-marketing-strategies-holiday-campaign-1708.md)
**Published:** 2014-12-31
**Last Updated:** 2025-02-19
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Holiday Ideas, Inbound marketing
### Content
We know that Christmas is the busiest time of the year, for SEOs and business owners alike. That’s why, in order to make your lives just a bit easier, and perhaps to allow you to not only buy the presents for your family but actually spend some time with them as well, we decided to share our insights in the most appropriate form possible. Naturally, there is no faster or Christmasier way to do this than with a nice, colorful infographic.
Apart from being practically guaranteed to infect with good cheer and Yuletide tingles, a quick scan of our infographic will not only make it clear to you WHY you need SEO, it should also serve as a quick guide on HOW to take care of some of the most basic and essential segments of site optimization.
It’s no secret that this is the season of shopping frenzy, when people don’t discriminate too much and are not as hesitant about parting with their money as they usually are, but just like with everything that has to do with SEO, we are not focusing on short-term gain as much as we are on the long-term benefits. While having a lucrative holiday season is a beautiful thing, using that time to not only sell as much as you can but to actually create lasting relationships with your customers is not only wise but also very much in the spirit of the holiday.
Naturally, if you want to be an oasis of peace and reliability through all the hectic Christmas shopping, you can’t start working on your strategy in November. However, if you have been preparing year-round, our infographic will serve as a great a summary of the reasons for working on your SEO, and of ways to do so.
Our way to help you with organizing holiday campaigns trough easily to scan infographic with some basic strategies and ideas for a proper holiday inbound marketing campaign. We colored it in Christmas colors as well.
## Happy holidays guys
---
## Posts: Redefining Google Search for 2015 | Four Dots
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/redefining-google-search-2015-1707](https://fourdots.com/blog/redefining-google-search-2015-1707)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/redefining-google-search-2015-1707.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/redefining-google-search-2015-1707.md)
**Published:** 2014-12-30
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** 2015, Google Search
### Content
With another year of accelerated digital development behind, the search ecosystem hardly resembles what it used to be only a couple of years ago. Looking back at its initial stages, one can easily identify the major updates that defined how webmasters should approach the practice in the years to come.
Clearly, the greater the number of companies that explore SEO opportunities, the more sophisticated Google’s algorithm becomes. In 2014, the search giant kept improving its service to adjust it to current browsing behavior and this naturally forced webmasters to reinvent their strategies.
Probably the most striking change we are seeing nowadays is a shift to multimedia and multiform content creation that now dominates digital strategies. Suffice to say, SEO as we knew it back in 2012 or earlier no longer exists. Of course, this is not only a result of Google’s constant redefinitions of quality content and backlink structure, but also of people’s increased demand for information availability any time, on any device.
Therefore, most of the changes we saw in the industry were related to content creation and marketing, which quite naturally affected search as well. Although certain traditional rules and techniques for achieving better search rankings are still valid, new ones keep emerging. Below we’ll discuss the major ones.
##**Death of the PageRank bar changes the way we see quality backlinks**The implications that Google’s Page Rank is dead have existed for a while now and most webmasters no longer hope it would ever be updated again. After the last update in 2013, we haven’t seen one in the closing year, which doesn’t leave much space for doubts. However, since the company never issued an official statement that buries Page Rank for good, the discussions about its destiny remained alive.
In a recent Google Webmaster Central hangout, John Mueller yet again stated that Page Rank would probably never be updated again. Some took this statement as the final answer to the burning question, while others kept wondering why the company never officially close it.
From what is presented in the video, it may appear that a vague possibility of a future update still exists. However, this certainly doesn’t justify further reliance on PageRank only. Although this has always been a handy metric for SEO companies to define backlink quality in a meaningful way, PageRank should never have been a sole factor of quality off-site optimization.
Without it, some strategies may no longer seem as efficient, but this doesn’t mean all backlinks will be equal from now on. After all, the focus of any content strategy should be on relevant content and relevant sites, where clients can get enough exposure in the industry and in front of their target consumers.
##**Responsive design becomes an important ranking signal**In one of our earlier posts, we discussed**[how mobile boom affects content marketing](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-355/)**and briefly pointed to the fact this is becoming an important factor in SEO. Namely, few weeks ago, Google announced that their team was experimenting with mobile-friendly pages in an attempt to provide better search experience to visitors coming from smartphones and tablets. As outlined in the**[associated blog post](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/helping-users-find-mobile-friendly-pages.html)**, mobile-friendly pages must enable Googlebots to crawl them easily, which is only possible if the following principles are applied:
-**–**No software uncommon on mobile devices (Flash) is used
-**–**Text is readable without zooming
-**–**Content resizes according to the screen so that users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
-**–**Links are adjusted to tapping rather than clicking, meaning that they are placed far enough apart
In addition to these basic guidelines, Google provides different resources where webmasters can check how a website performs on mobile platforms. Obviously, efficient mobile optimization is becoming the critical factor of success, so it’s unsurprising that Google too is paying more attention to this aspect. For web developers, this means additional tweaking and testing, while the websites are likely to see more traffic and potentially increased conversions.
##**Focus on security: sites using https will be displayed higher in search**Back in August, Google decided to push the issue of cyber security up the priority list in the search world, announcing that websites that use secure, encrypted connections would be favored by the search engine. Given the general sensitivity of the issue, it is reasonable to see Google investing efforts into making the Internet a safer place.
The introduction of https as a ranking signal stems from the company’s dedication to “https everywhere,” which was announced on the 2014 I/O conference. Apparently, Google decided to encourage more webmasters to use standard internet protocols over SSL. Even though this is already a lightweight signal for the engine, Google intends to make it a more relevant one in future. Below is a more detailed explanation of how and why they plan to do this.
In the real world, this means that webmasters who still do not use SSL should start thinking of getting one as soon as possible. To make sure a website applies to Google’s expectations in this respect, webmasters should consider the following:
-**–**Choose the type of certificate you need (single, multi-domain, or wildcard)
-**–**Use relative URLs for resources on the same secure domain as well as protocol relative URLs for all the other domains
-**–**Prepare and move the site to a new domain (guidelines available**[here](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049)**)
-**–**Avoid the [noindex robots meta tag](https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749)
Again, for most webmasters this noble step will bring a set of new website tweaks and tests. This may become an exhaustive task in the organizations that do not assemble large in-house IT teams, but is still an undertaking worth the investment.
##**Social networks may start appearing in Knowledge Graph next to relevant queries**As**[discussed by Search Engine Land](http://searchengineland.com/googles-knowledge-graph-finally-shows-social-networks-named-google-209171)**only a few weeks ago, Google recently started showing links to social networks other than Google+ in schema results. This update seems to have been**tested back in January**when such results could be seen only for certain people. Today, Knowledge Graph displays most active social networks related to a query, but only for some major names.
It is interesting to note that this is still displayed only for some influential people or bands, but not for companies or brands. For example, no official social pages are shown for Coca-Cola, but this still doesn’t mean some day they won’t be shown in a similar fashion.
Of course, this might be a huge step for businesses that aim to expand their social presence and increase brand awareness through social networking. Even though social networking is seen as a critical activity in digital marketing, it has never directly affected search results. For what we know, only Google+ pages may have something to do with better search positions in one way or another. Now that Google seems to have decided to stop favoring its own social network over the others, a new era of social networking may well be at our doorsteps.
##**Removal of authorship markup means influential bloggers will lose traffic?**Over the last three years, Google authorship was a valuable search cue for many users and bloggers. Undoubtedly, the display of author data helped the most dedicated bloggers drive traffic to their websites and establish themselves in their respective niches. However, in August, Google announced they are cancelling Authorship for two essential reasons. As John Mueller explained in an**[interview for Search Engine Land](http://searchengineland.com/goodbye-google-authorship-201975)**, these are**1)**the fact it didn’t provide too much value for end-users and**2)**low-adoption rates by bloggers.
As the Search Engine Land study further suggests, the latter is certainly justified. Namely, it seems that only 30% of active bloggers did implement the markup properly, while 70% either did it wrong or didn’t do it at all. Interestingly enough, once the authorship tag was removed Google+ posts from users’ connections started looking the way Authorship used to look like. Yet again, it seems that Google is pushing their own social network in order to force more people use it actively.
Whatever the actual motivation behind the step, it will certainly make quite a few changes for bloggers that have been seeing some CTRs as Google established writers. All the others may just need to keep using Google+ to get in front of more faces. Those who still haven’t adopted the network should plan to do so in near future, as we may expect from Google to keep pushing this idea.
##**Introduction of Pigeon for smarter local search may redefine small business strategies**Following the**[introduction of Hummingbird algorithm in 2013](https://fourdots.com/blog/humming-in-google-minor-231/)**, Google introduced*Pigeon*earlier in 2014 to provide smarter local searches. Namely, the latest algorithm displays local information through either Google maps or regular search, which is certainly something that is likely to affect small businesses. Even though there wasn’t an official announcement on any of the company’s blog, Google explained the idea to Search Engine Land:*“The new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more.”*As opposed to most other changes, this one was obviously not intended to fight spam, but rather deliver smarter results based on users’ location. In the realm of small businesses, this means that they can now achieve greater visibility via listings in Google Maps or portals such as Yelp. Furthermore, considering the growth of local searches on mobile platforms in particular, Pigeon is quite likely to change strategies for small businesses that work on expanding their online presence via search.
###**Conclusions: Content as a product beyond SEO value**Whereas Panda, Payday Loan, Pirate and Penguin algorithm updates used to be seen as the most relevant search updates, today we are seeing some large-scale transformations that affect overall search experience. By adding SSL and social networks to search listings, it is clear that the signals Googlebots want to see from websites extend beyond link and content structure.
Given the rise of [content marketing](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862) among businesses large and small, such a focus from Google may be a welcoming one. After all, as pointed out by Rand Fishkin in a recent**[Whiteboard Friday](http://moz.com/blog/be-intentional-about-content-seo-goals-whiteboard-friday)**, content marketing does have a lot to do with SEO and link building, but is far more than an SEO strategy only.
“Well, let’s turn off the SEO on this one and just at least make it nicely indexable and make the links point to all the right places back throughout here so that I’m bumping up their potential visibility,” states Fishkin. Therefore, it may be said that the balance between traditional SEO techniques and innovative inbound marketing strategies may be the key to both achieving great SERPs and driving targeted users to a page.
---
## Posts: 6 Holiday Ideas to Help Businesses Boost Website Traffic and Increase Conversions
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/6-holiday-ideas-help-businesses-boost-website-traffic-increase-conversions-1706](https://fourdots.com/blog/6-holiday-ideas-help-businesses-boost-website-traffic-increase-conversions-1706)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/6-holiday-ideas-help-businesses-boost-website-traffic-increase-conversions-1706.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/6-holiday-ideas-help-businesses-boost-website-traffic-increase-conversions-1706.md)
**Published:** 2014-12-23
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-09
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** Boost Website Traffic, Holiday Ideas
### Content
As the end of the year approaches, many online businesses are getting in a holiday mood and with a good reason. Christmas may be the time of the year when people are spending more time with their friends and families, but is also a period when online searches and sales are booming.
Namely, as various business bulletins reported last year, online retailers in different regions saw significant increase in sales during Christmas holidays. Coupled with the growth of mobile shopping, this trend is likely to continue over the following weeks as well. In fact, a [research by Searchmetrics](http://www.realwire.com/releases/Amazon-and-Google-are-Top-Online-Sources-of-Christmas-Gift-Ideas-for-UK) reveals that 61% of UK shoppers will use the Internet to search for gift ideas through either an online retail site such as Amazon and eBay, or a search engine.
Clearly, holiday promotions are probably the greatest way to drive both traffic and sales, but even non-retail websites can benefit from the trend. Just by closely looking at most popular searches via Google Trends or trending stories on social networks, online [businesses](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks) can better understand how to grab their customers’ attention. For example, Yahoo! offers a list of trending holiday searches, which should be one of the primary cues for businesses that want to ensure [high quality targeted SEO traffic](https://fantom.click/fantom-traffic/) flow during holidays.
Considering the most searched Yahoo! queries, it is obvious that people are still in the phase of looking for the right present for themselves or their beloved ones. This certainly means many promotion opportunities for online retailers, but it may also bring traffic to the websites that do not offer any of the products listed above. Below are some ideas your company can use to leverage the potential of the holiday season.
##**1. Optimize your deals/coupons page for search engines**Most online and offline retailers are probably already familiar with the benefits of promoting special offers. In the online world, such offers typically mean higher traffic and increased conversion rates, which may be particularly striking during holidays. As pointed out in [a recent NRF survey](https://nrf.com/media/press-releases/early-promotions-online-shopping-and-improving-economy-changing-the-face-of), we are witnessing an “evolutionary change in holiday shopping by both consumers and retailers,” as more and more people rely on instant purchase opportunities online. The case in point is Thanksgiving Weekend when more than three quarters of survey respondents said they were using online and in-store promotions to buy items.
“*A strengthening economy that changes consumers’ reliance on deep discounts, a highly competitive environment, early promotions and the ability to shop 24/7 online all contributed to the shift witnessed this weekend*” says Matthew Shay, President and CEO at NRF.
Therefore, a special offer during the upcoming holidays can well benefit retailers, whereupon such offer must be heavily promoted through all online channels. This doesn’t only mean using social networks and buying ads, but also driving some organic traffic.
As is the case with all the other relevant website contents, promo pages should be optimized for search engines to drive organic visits. To make sure that both a page’s slug and a title matches a popular search, Google Trends or Google Keyword Planner may be useful tools that give insight into exact number of queries. With some media promotion and, hopefully, enough shares among users themselves, such a page is quite likely to both boost traffic and increase sales.
##**2. Create blog entries with search-friendly titles**Even though search traffic generally decreases during holidays as people spend less time working on a computer, some searches do remain high. These are typically the ones that revolve around trending topics, as is currently the case with Christmas and New Year’s. Much like most other global events, Christmas season may be the right time for online businesses to maximize the efficiency of their marketing campaigns or promote specific types of content.
Therefore, a great idea for businesses is to come up with at least one holiday-related article that would offer industry tips or advice for the season. To get an insight into what the online audience may want to read, one can use Google Trends to identify the most popular search queries for a particular period of time (December in this case). Below is an example of search queries related to the “Christmas gifts” entry:
The idea behind this is to help you create a blog post that offers some relevant insights, and thus drives more traffic. Based on people’s behavior and your business’s specific area of interest, you can explore different keywords to determine the ones that would make an attractive blog post title.
Considering the example above, a post titled “Top X Christmas Gift Ideas” or “How to Find a Perfect Christmas Gift” is likely to see more traffic these days than most generic articles you can publish any other time of the year. Of course, coming up with a search-friendly post title should not be the end of your efforts. You still need to come up with a useful article, which you can achieve only if you have your audience’s needs in mind. The key here is personalization, meaning that you need to have the exact visitor profile in mind when assembling your list.
Another advantage of having a post or a page that matches a popular search is that it can be recycled from year to year. This way, creating a trending post may benefit your future strategies as well, especially if they achieve high rankings, which would translate into higher traffic.
##**3. Join trending topics on social networks**Social networks are still powerful tools for promoting specific types of content and driving targeted website traffic. During a holiday season, most people are likely to discuss some shared ideas, which gives businesses an excellent opportunity to join or start a discussion.
With a blog entry that discusses a trending story or a holiday offer, a company page can directly answer some of their fans’ and prospects’ questions. This is particularly important for businesses that offer holiday deals for either products or subscriptions because, as revealed in a research by Searchmetrics, 23% of survey respondents are turning to Facebook friends, company pages and ads to find a perfect holiday gift.
“One of the benefits of looking for product ideas on social networks is that you get to see feedback and preferences from other consumers, as well as participate in online discussions about products with a range of people, including your own friends and followers,” says Marcus Tober, CTO at Searchmetrics.
Additionally, in the realm of social media, another useful resource for businesses to find out what attracts consumers’ attention is looking at the trending topics. With Twitter’s regular display of the most popular hashtags, and Facebook’s*Trending Topics*introduced earlier this year, companies can more easily follow the most talked-about news, posts and ides. Again, a blog post that reflects such interests can bring higher engagements on a page, as well as some traffic boost.
##**4. Use email marketing to promote your holiday content**Email marketing is yet another online marketing field that seems to be flourishing during the holiday season. From simple “season’s greetings” cards to promotional coupons, email users are likely to encounter plenty of targeted emails in their inboxes these days. A key benefit for businesses here is that it can encourage existing users to return to a company website and potentially complete further actions. Consumers, on the other hand, receive relevant offers or content that may best respond to their current needs.
Therefore, any type of content created specifically for those who already know about your business may be quite efficient in terms of driving clicks to your website. Whether you are notifying users about a current promotion/deal or a new post on your blog, the subject line of the email still plays a major role in encouraging clicks. Earlier this year, Vertical Response published a summary [infographic](http://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/top-20-effective-holiday-subject-line-words-infographic/) of the findings from their research that examined 10,000 email campaigns and identified the subject lines that generate highest open rates.
All the top performing lines contained obvious keywords such as “gift,” “special,” and specific holiday names such as “Christmas” and “Black Friday.” Therefore, to get an inspiration for a Christmas or New Year’s email campaign, businesses should come up with something transparent and inviting such as:
X**New**Products to Celebrate Christmas
The Holiday**Sale**you Can’t Afford to Miss
Unwrap your**Christmas**savings
Of course, all the accompanying textual and graphic elements should reflect the idea behind the subject line. Therefore, if you’re offering a special Christmas deal, it might be useful to design the email so as to inspire the holiday mood. Also, another crucial strategy is to optimize it for mobile users in terms of both template and sending time.
##**5. Add holiday-themed graphics and videos to your website and social media profiles**To increase the efficiency of a Christmas campaign, a business should show it shares the holiday enthusiasm with their consumers. After all, we are all people and most of us cherish this child-like happiness during a holiday season. Creating atmosphere that enables visitors to identify themselves with the people in your company can be achieved through multiple Christmas-inspired graphics or elements specifically designed to reflect the holiday spirit.
Amazon’s [*10 Christmas Merchandizing Tips*](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/B2vMt8T2eqS.pdf) also emphasizes the importance of adding some festive cheer to retail websites, suggesting that “Using text and graphics to convey the seasonal mood can help online retailers tap into the festive cheer. Online retailers can also highlight Christmas promotions, build gift guides and update site navigation with Christmas-specific categories to thread the festive theme throughout the site.”
On a Special Offer page, such elements also create a sense of urgency to encourage people to act immediately. Furthermore, by using and sharing some inspiring graphics on social media profiles a company demonstrates that it is ready to participate in the story, which can only increase engagements. Along with the posts revolving around the trending topics, business pages can indeed have multiple benefits from their holiday strategy.
When it comes to visual content, another interesting idea is to create special videos that capture the holiday atmosphere in your company. As already proven, videos can substantially increase conversions, especially on product pages as long as they tell a meaningful and interesting story.
##**6. Optimize all the strategies for mobile visitors**With as much as 3.5 times more shopping searches coming from smartphones than from any other device, it is obvious why all online marketing strategies need to be optimized for mobile users. In one of our [previous posts](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-355/), we examined shoppers’ mobile behavior in detail and most of what we previously said should apply for the holiday-themed content as well.
In the context of the holiday season, this is of crucial importance as most of your visitors are likely to find your special offer on the go. In fact, according to the IBM’s Christmas Readiness Report, mobile shoppers seem to be particularly active during holidays. For example, mobile sales on Black Friday reached 34.9%, while on a Christmas day last year this digit was astonishing 46.7%. The overall traffic coming from mobile devices was 58.9 percent, which is certainly a digit that further justifies the importance of mobile optimization.
Based on these reports, it is clear that mobile-oriented strategy cannot only bring higher traffic, but also increased conversions. One of the great ideas for attracting this segment of your visitors is to tailor localized and highly targeted content that helps people on the go find the best offer or deal. Suffice to say, all the textual and graphic content you create for the season should be designed for a proper display in mobile browsers.
###**Conclusions**Looking at the data from previous years, it is easy to see why this holiday season may well be the time for your company’s next online campaign. With some perfectly optimized content elements and holiday-themed images, a company can tell a compelling story online users would want to participate in. More importantly, such a story may stimulate more traffic and conversions that should be the first step to acquiring lots of new users and loyal visitors.
---
## Posts: Content Marketing in the Mobile Era
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-1705](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-1705)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-1705.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-marketing-mobile-era-1705.md)
**Published:** 2014-12-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, Mobile Marketing
### Content
Over the last few years, we’ve been witnessing a mass shift to smart, mobile devices that seem to have taken the world by storm and significantly changed the ways we access online information. With the world forever available from our palms, our perceptions of information search, collaboration and communication will never be the same.
Much like most other industries, the world of digital marketing too has faced some new challenges and opportunities associated with the increased use of mobile devices. Certainly, the idea of millions of people accessing the Internet via mini browsers poses some new rules in terms of both content creation and content distribution. The multiplicity of screen sizes, sharing platforms and social networks might be said to have created an ecosystem where constant innovation is required in order to have your content noticed.
To illustrate the extent to which users’ behavior changes, let’s have a look at some amazing estimates that imply the subtle downfall of desktop browsing. Namely, according to a recent**[Radicati report](http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Mobile-Statistics-Report-2014-2018-Executive-Summary.pdf)**, the use of mobile networking keeps growing even as the adoption rates plummet. This implies that mobile has become a default device for virtually any online activity marketers depend on.
The table below outlines the stats related to worldwide mobile device use and gives estimates on the future growth.
Probably the most striking finding is that people growingly use more than a single mobile device, which could by 2018 lead to having 1.95 mobile devices per user. Obviously, such a major change in users’ behavior triggers development of new [content marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy/) strategies. This mostly relates to the form of content generated, but also to the way it is presented to a mobile user.
## How mobile device boom changes content marketing
Every tech trend that demonstrates such a great impact on people’s online behavior is bound to [change the content marketing industry](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/). While users increasingly rely on mobile search to find relevant info, content distribution channels need to be adjusted to these platforms.
In terms of ecommerce and mobile marketing, probably the most relevant stats are those that outline the extent to which contemporary purchase habits take place in mobile browsers. According to different estimates, mobile commerce alone is projected to reach more than 41 billion this year, which clearly indicates how frequent these activities are. Other surveys also suggest that even though desktop and offline purchases are still most frequent forms of conversions, almost 50% of respondents actively shop from mobile browsers.
One of the most comprehensive surveys done recently shows how mobile searches and purchases define contemporary marketing. Namely, the survey by Custora that draws data from over 100 online retailers and 70 million consumers reveals the following stats:
-**–**Every third visit to an ecommerce website comes from a mobile device
-**–**Email marketing drives mobile purchases
-**–**Social media doesn’t bring too many conversions
-**–**This November, Organic search, CPC and email continue to dominate e-commerce.
Therefore, to make use of the potential in the global mobile market, content marketers need to explore channels that actually bring a user to the very end of a sales funnel. Clearly, this implies necessary changes in search engine marketing, email marketing and social media, which are still the most favorite portals among mobile users.
## Responsive web design is mandatory for great search results
With organic search being the second most frequent activity on mobile devices, new rules for achieving great rankings may apply in the realm of SEO and web design. Suffice to say, websites that are not optimized for multiple screen sizes stand less chances of performing well in mobile search. Therefore, the lack of a mobile-focused strategy in this form is likely to frustrate users, who in turn see a company as an unreliable source of information.
Although there are several ways to build a mobile-friendly website,**Google recommends responsive design**as the most effective solution. As opposed to dynamic serving and creating multiple URLs to display pages neatly in mobile browsers, responsive design is a technique that seems to be preferred by Google’s search engine.
Image by aismedia.com
The very notion or responsive design quite justifiably brought about a whole new era in web design and changed the ways website contents should be presented to the audience. To create excellent user experience and, perhaps more importantly, lead them to the end of a sales funnel, responsive websites need to keep cutting the amount of text and code. Small screens limit the amount of design elements you can present to your visitors, which demands some new strategies. To bridge the gap of dynamic content offering,**[Boaz Grinvald, CEO at BrightInfo suggests](http://www.demandgenreport.com/industry-topics/demanding-views/2572-is-responsive-design-killing-content-marketing.html)**:
-**–**Promote personalized and targeted content selectively to make sure only the most relevant elements would be shown to a user
-**–**Adjust the amount of content offers to different screen resolutions, i.e. create separate offers for smartphone and tablet users
-**–**Consider presenting contextual offers in the form of popup where applicable
In relation to this approach, Mr Grinvald also notes that the focus should be on dynamic content placement because this is most likely to bring conversions:
>*“Responsive design can take a toll on static content conversions. But with a dynamic approach, your content strategy can be just as responsive as your site – adapting not only to the device, but also to the individual visitor.”*
## Email marketing requires sleeker templates
As noted above, email marketing is currently the most efficient form of content distribution among mobile users. Reports show that 65% of all emails are first opened on mobile devices, which further implies changes in the way email marketing campaigns should be carried out. This means that the previously established timing, design and content strategies may not necessarily work the same way on mobile devices.
For one, the very format of emails should change because long pieces of text could be very difficult to read in a mobile format. This translates into shorter yet impactful sentences, with CTAs designed to be tappable rather than clickable. Furthermore, the way emails are displayed in mobile browsers make it less practical fro anchor text links to be found and tapped. This is why most marketers now suggest that a single button-like call to action could lead to higher click-through rates.
The great news for [content marketers](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862), however, is that mobile conversions still top those from desktop platforms, as more mobile users seem to be more likely to purchases or subscribe to different contents. Of course, most of this still depends on the effectiveness of the subject line that again needs to be shorter and more captivating than ever. Mobile browsers thus practically burry the idea that longer subjects result in higher click-through rate, and this may be another rule marketers should apply to.
## Local search rules the mobile world
Another important trend in mobile content marketing is local targeting and creating offers to suit the need of searches on the go. According to some surveys, almost half of mobile searches are local, meaning that people increasingly require instant and immediate information. When it comes to adjusting content marketing to local searches, there are several things a business can do.
##**Do local SEO**Probably the most efficient way to be displayed in a local search is to optimize keywords and on-site content to include location and drive organic traffic this way. To make your website perform well, you should consider your visitors’ intent and tailor the [SEO strategy](https://fourdots.com) according to this.
##**Create localized offers**Localized offers can be a great way to convert mobile users who are looking for a specific piece of information in their immediate surroundings. Some of the tools that can help you understand what your prospects are trying to find are Google Trends or Google Alerts, which enable you to get an instant insight into what is currently trending in a particular region.
##**Promote local events**The best channels for event promotion are still social networks that allow targeting by interest and by location. Therefore, a local event is likely to bring you more clicks than anything else you may want to promote on social media.
##**Consider localized mobile advertising**Mobile advertising had its ups and downs in the digital world, but recent reports suggest it can be just the perfect strategy for attracting mobile users. For global brands, this frequently means translating content into multiple languages and is still a way to convert more prospects.
Obviously, there is a great potential in distributing content among locally targeted audiences and this makes sense given mobile users’ intents. Therefore, to do local marketing wisely, a company or a brand should come up with an offering that is creative enough to capture users’ attention and place it in front of the faces that need it most.
## A look into the future: Wearables to take over?
Although wearable technology is still in its infancy, there are multiple indications of their future potential for both advertising and content creation industry.**[In a last year’s insightful thread about the marketing implications for 2014](http://www.millwardbrown.com/digitalpredictions/2013/index.html)**, the director of Digital and Media for Latin America at Millward Brown, Adriana Sousa warned about the growing use of wearable devices. She notes that this field is gradually creating media and advertising opportunities that would be a space of exploration for digital marketers over the next several years.
>*“The challenge will be developing a deep understanding of what consumers want from these new wearable screens so that brands can deliver something useful and relevant to their existing proposition,”*says Sousa.
As opposed to smartphones and tablets that seemingly offer more content marketing opportunities, wearable technology is a trend that is yet to pose new challenges for professionals in the field. The year 2014 definitely saw notable advancement in the area and it may be expected that the development of wearable gadgets will continue at a similar pace. Therefore, even though wearables still haven’t made a significant impact onto the content marketing industry, chances are they would do so in the next several years.
To keep up with the trends, brands should start thinking about the ways they can tailor their messages to fit the amazingly small screens of wearable gadgets. Certainly, this will be a next frontier for content marketers, who should rethink their approaches and possibly develop some abbreviated content forms. In relation to this,**[INC’s Steve Sachs proposes three critical activities](http://www.inc.com/steve-sachs/3-ways-content-marketers-can-integrate-with-wearables.html)**content marketers would be expect to carry out in future:
-**–**Deliver the kind of content that is both contextual and convenient, meaning that it is displayed where a user needs it most.
-**–**Focus on visuals to make use of the available (highly limited space) and rethink the content delivery strategy.
-**–**Use the data to anticipate users’ next move before it happens.
### Conclusions
Looking at the trends discussed above, we may easily see the proportions of the change that is going on in the world of content marketing. However, given the rise of the new technologies, some notable developments are yet to take place. The frightening thing about this is that the mobile world only partly resembles that of desktop browsing, which is why most of the established techniques may soon become outdated.
This is what makes content marketing in the mobile era a challenging task; a task that requires constant redesign, readjustment and innovative data-driven decisions.
---
## Posts: 5 Key Content Marketing Trends for 2015
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/5-key-content-marketing-trends-2015-1704](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-key-content-marketing-trends-2015-1704)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/5-key-content-marketing-trends-2015-1704.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-key-content-marketing-trends-2015-1704.md)
**Published:** 2014-12-08
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, Content Marketing Trends
### Content
The digital marketing ecosystem has gone through quite a few notable transformations since its early boom several years ago. One of the key trends we’re seeing nowadays is a rapid rush towards meaningful, readable content that appeals to the largest portion of digital media users and that is gradually added to some other [SEO](https://fourdots.com/)-oriented activities.
The birth of what is popularly known as content marketing naturally followed the increased social media use among the broadest populations. Considering the fact that most average internet users actively seek relevant information across a great diversity of channels, the content strategies deployed by both small businesses and large enterprises started changing to fit such behavior.
Although the very notion of [content marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy/) may be traced back to the late 19th century when John Deere launched the first readers magazine, it’s application to the digital world may be said to have begun only few years ago. This mostly refers to a variety of e-magazines and blogs the world’s largest corporations started running to engage their users. The strategy afterwards became available to almost any company via blogging platforms and social media networks that are most commonly used digital content marketing channels.
## Content marketing now and then
Of course, after the first successful implementations of digital content marketing strategies, things have started changing rapidly. Looking back over the previous twelve months, one may certainly notice an increased focus on this strategy among organizations both large and small. Some surveys suggest that the greatest portion of digital marketers today rely on some form of content marketing, with social media being one of the preferred methods among 93% of them according to a [recent research by Content Marketing Institute](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/10/2015-b2c-consumer-content-marketing/).
Obviously, content marketing is gaining ground in both B2B and B2C businesses that are readily exploring the opportunities in the space. However, despite the great desire to deliver timely, accurate and engaging information to online media users, many companies still fail at implementing it successfully. This is why they keep changing their strategies, adjusting them to the turbulent digital landscape, and this in turn brings some new trends in the field.
The close of the year 2014, therefore, may be a convenient time to examine what worked best over the previous several months in an attempt to identify where the focus in 2015 will be.
## 1. More companies will use content marketing to increase brand awareness
Over the last few years, the greatest difficulty companies seem to have had in relation to content marketing was to define it and measure its benefits. Now, after a year of accelerated experimentations with these strategies some actual results appeared to hint where the future focus may be.
A convenient reference for making such predictions is certainly a recent [study by Curata](http://www.curata.com/resources/ebooks/content-marketing-tactics-2014/?LDT=Ebook&LD=Tactics&LST=Byline&LS=Marketo_Tactics_2014) that revealed the actual benefits companies most frequently see from content marketing strategies. The stats below are obviously quite convincing and they point to the efficiency of innovative content strategies in the following aspects:
- – in 85% of cases a direct correlation between content marketing and increased brand awareness was found
- – around 75% or respondents saw an increase in customer engagement
- – 70% percent reported increased thought leadership and authority
- – 72% percent stated it enhanced site traffic
Considering these stats, it’s no longer difficult to see why content marketing is gaining on popularity in the related circles. Apart from this, the four key performance benefits also demonstrate the great potential the user-oriented focus can bring. Engaging audience via multiple digital channels and content forms certainly translates into benefits, even if the accurate ROI can hardly be calculated.
Content diversity infographic by Content Crossroads
Of course, the issue of calculating ROI has always been connected to the content marketing efforts. In fact, the problem of measuring a campaign’s impact even when it is done properly may still be seen as one of the major hurdles that prevent more companies to join the arena. However, even though it may appear difficult to map increased users’ engagement to better sales, such calculations seem to be decreasing in importance.
## 2. Re-evaluating key performance indicators and calculating ROI
Compared to defining the goal of content marketing, determining the set of metrics that should be used to measure the efficiency of the strategy is certainly a way more challenging task. With such a great number of content distribution channels and social media networks, one cannot apply the same strategy for all and the same goes for KPI.
Defining the KPI, however, is perhaps even more important for a general strategy because otherwise you might miss out on some critical data. Therefore, in the year 2015 one of the key tasks for content marketers would be to reevaluate the ways they monitor and measure their digital efforts’ performance.
Whereas Google Analytics still represents an excellent source for campaign monitoring and performance measurement, one needs to know exactly where to look at in order to find the accurate and the most relevant data. Skimming through digits won’t substantially improve your strategy and could only prevent you from seeing what your users actually want from your company/brand. This is why it is getting more and more important to gather real-time, personalized data from all the networks your customers and prospects might be using.
Content marketing model by getverde.com
This increased complexity of tracking and interpreting users’ behavior from so many resources may well result in bringing a growing number of SaaS and automated tool providers to the game. Once they start creating astonishing amounts of content, companies are likely to try to seek out more software packages that could potentially help them do better calculations about their efforts. Of course, this may not be the best practice, but more on that later.
## 3. The focus will be on impact and not on reach
Although one of the primary ideas behind content marketing is to use multiple channels to deliver a message and thus increase the potential reach, this may not necessarily be the proof of its performance. Instead, what we’re seeing at the end of 2014 is a growing shift towards making an impact and engaging the audience via all means available.
In the ideal world of digital marketing, the sales funnel would begin with a customer’s discovery of a brand, continue with their engagement and evaluation of your product or service, and finally end in a purchase. Better yet, after the basic path is [completed the consumers would engage in brand](https://fourdots.com/blog/ai-visibility-optimization-the-complete-guide-to-securing-brand-11836) evangelism that would direct their contacts to it.
In reality, this is not usually the case and marketers often see some notable discrepancies between the reach and the final action taking. Therefore it becomes more and more important whom you target and how you do this, instead of simply following the rules of continuous blogging. You cannot expect your audience would simply find your content; rather, you should work on getting it in front of them, which is again an important strategy.
## 4. Real-time data evaluation over automation
The advent of technology has brought about a large set of tools marketers can use to redefine their outreach strategies. One of the most valuable ones, however, is real-time data monitoring and evaluation, which can hardly be done via automated software.
As noted by [HubSpot’s Matt Burke](http://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/marketing-automation-facts), the emergence of marketing automation gives people an impression that most activities could be simply done via a particular scheme. However, this is yet another myth about the trend and those who heavily rely on automation are likely to fail.
> “Too many companies skimp on these details and think they can let their automation do all the work””not exactly the best way of accomplishing your goals. Marketing automation works as a supplement to your sales strategy, allowing you to strategize the path ahead. It’s not meant as something you can set and forget.”
>*Matt Burke*Therefore, instead of expecting a piece of software to tell them all the most relevant facts, marketers should rely on real-time data analytics that is by far the best way of getting insight into what may work best. The marketers’ task is then to identify the patterns in consumers’ behavior and make themselves available at any point. This is when people would start relying on a brand and seeing it as a credible source of information.
## 5. Distribution channels expansion and mobile marketing
One of the critical issues in content marketing is not actually creating enough content, but rather knowing when and where to post it to achieve the right impact. Posting a story on your blog, for example, may not be as efficient for gathering leads as real-time tweeting could be. This is especially important since the number of digital channels people actively use increases, which is what also represents a critical factor of the efficiency of content marketing strategies.
In relation to the increased need to redefine content distribution channels, VP content at Hubspot, Joe Chernov notes:
“The ‘distribution’ slice of the content marketing pie will grow in 2014. As brands begin to create a surfeit of content, the meritocracy (if one even exists) will shift from the ‘best’ content to the smartest distribution. Solutions designed to increase content reach will rise in popularity.”
Image by foxtailmarketing.com
Obviously, the smartest way to engage the audience depends on both content itself and the form of distribution it takes, which is partly in line with the idea of increasing engagement rather than just reach. Furthermore, another important factor that is certainly relevant for finding the right distribution channels is also the increase in mobile search that would in many ways define efficiency of [content](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing) marketing in 2015.
In the realm of mobile web, it is strikingly important to pack the information in short, viewable, and shareable content, instead of distributing lengthy articles and white papers only. This may translate into a greater focus on visuals and creating content that may communicate a message in a far more impactful form than text. Also, this changes the strategy for designing website and planning email marketing campaigns, as most surveys now report mobile users’ increased engagement with online content.
### Conclusions
[Content marketing](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862) is probably one of the most efficient techniques of reaching your target audience, and justifiably so. If there is a single thing that defines this strategy as a method better than anything else in the digital world, it is the fact it heavily focuses on users’ behavior. Therefore, even though many companies are still struggling to put these techniques to work, content marketing will quite certainly remain a focus in 2015, at least for those that realize the importance of their target audience’s feedback.
---
## Posts: New Big Data Tool by Splunk: User-friendliness to Attract Non-IT Users
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/new-big-data-tool-by-splunk-1703](https://fourdots.com/blog/new-big-data-tool-by-splunk-1703)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/new-big-data-tool-by-splunk-1703.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/new-big-data-tool-by-splunk-1703.md)
**Published:** 2014-11-25
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** big data, data analysis, Splunk
### Content
[Splunk](http://www.splunk.com/) is currently the leading software platform which deals with real-time Operational Intelligence and the company has just launched a new version of its operational intelligence platform which goes by the name “[Splunk Enterprise 6.2](http://www.splunk.com/view/splunk-introduces-splunk-enterprise-6-2/SP-CAAANJR).” The new version will now allow companies to explore, gather, analyze and visualize massive streams of information generated by the computer systems of companies, whether physical, virtual or in the cloud.
The new and improved version is all about simplicity when it comes to offering data analysis. Splunk Enterprise 6.2 also reduces the cost of ownership by upgrading and improving simultaneous searches, while eliminating requirements for shared storage. The company claims the new version provides its users with easier and more intuitive analysis which is more appealing to casual and less technical users, which is done through enhanced automated discovery of valuable patterns in the machine data.
With this new approach, improved scalability, elimination of shared storage requirements, and a new Distributed Management Console, Splunk Enterprise 6.2 aims to introduce better efficiency for all the organizations which rely on Splunk to glean operational intelligence.
## Splunk for the Everyman
Through this new version the company hopes to lure more users the non-IT world, and it seems the plan is already working. The analysis just became much more intuitive [and less technical](https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176) for the casual user, and they did it via improved automatic detection of patterns in the data value of the machine.
Splunk Enterprise 6.2 facilitates [Machine Learning techniques](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_machine_learning_concepts) as a tool for discovering events automatically. The software has the ability to perform shows and crossovers, to identify trends, as well as to find discrepancies within emerging patterns and detected trends. These new detection mechanisms and patterns also introduce new wizards which make the software much more user-friendly. Implementing analytical tools is now much easier for the non-IT user, mainly because they managed to override the prior creation of data models. Splunk 6.2 brings in Instant Pivot function which is quite handy for non technical users without prior knowledge of Splunk and its language search and SPL (Search Processing Language).
Other than processing all sorts of machine data, we discovered that Splunk is also powerful**server log analysis**tool. From standard server logging daemons to fully fledged Apache access log detective. It has it all.
##**Security**The Splunk App for Enterprise is definitely pushing the envelope in the analysis of data safety by applying statistical techniques to the data beyond the already existing tools. [Symantec](http://www.symantec.com/) is using it in order to react quickly when it comes to identifying and responding to all advanced threats that increase in complexity on a daily basis. Splunk also offers powerful search functions that can be turned into alerts and multiple analytical tools in order to decipher information embedded within the massive data flows from the newspapers produced by servers, routers, storage, firewalls, software, debugs programs, etc.
Splunk has certainly become one of the most important data analysis platforms which is no longer used only to retrieve log data, but to pinch the user data across networks flow. This way the company secured its future among the platforms which companies use to build their own dashboards, and developers to create apps for meeting the [specific needs of their clientele](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services).
---
## Posts: Semantic Web - Basic Terms and Principles
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/semantic-web-1702](https://fourdots.com/blog/semantic-web-1702)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/semantic-web-1702.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/semantic-web-1702.md)
**Published:** 2014-03-28
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** Semantic Markup, Semantic Web
### Content
The flutter of the tiny wings of the [unleashed Hummingbird](https://fourdots.com/blog/humming-in-google-minor-231/) seems to be acting as a harbinger of dawning of a new era in the way we communicate with search engines. Even though the idea of**semantic web**has been around for longer than most people would think, each year giving birth to another patent or approach that edged us closer to endowing search engines with at least some kind of understanding of the concepts they have to deal with, it was Hummingbird that created an environment in which those patents and approaches can show their full potential. Semantic web and the principles behind it are no longer just esoteric notions that you can choose to ignore, at least not if you want to still be able to claim that you understand how search engines work.
However, some of the ideas behind semantic web have been lurking in the shadows of keywords, mass produced content, guest blogging and other idols of the past, for so long that their obscurity become more of a character trait than a temporary state. They have been growing steadily, nurtured by enthusiasm and efforts of people with enough foresight and drive to seek out ways to improve the existing approach to search, so if you have been ignoring their development for some time, you might be a bit overwhelmed with how much they’ve progressed in the meantime.
## Semantic Web
The basic drive behind the semantic web that we hope to achieve some day is the shift from simply indexing data to allowing search engines to understand it as completely as possible. The approach is described in the battle cry of semantic web apostles –**things not strings**, where ‘things’ denominate search entities (more on them later), while the term ‘strings’ refers to the traditional way of connecting data, through strings of links.
While the urgency of enabling search engines to better understand the notions they are returning as results may have been intensified by the increase in the use of voice search on mobile devices and the type of queries used in such circumstances (resembling traditional questions that you would pose to a human being more than old school queries with a couple of keywords modified for location or other factors), this issue is only a drop in the ocean of splendor that is semantic web. This approach to structuring and retrieving data provides for a better, more comprehensive search, that includes much more than simply looking for the right keyword in the index.
In order to better understand how this works, you have to understand the difference between explicit and implicit signals. These are the signals that search engine analyzes when trying to answer your query. Keywords and other direct input from the searcher are explicit signals, while the term implicit signals refers to the context of the search. This includes everything from the time when the search was made, your current location and your previous searches, to everything else that the search engine is able to learn about your search habits and current situation.
Over time, search engines were given access to an increasing number of these implicit signals, which resulted in them being able to offer more relevant suggestions for your queries. The desire to provide them with even more of these signals led to the development of structured data and semantic markup, however, before we delve into that, we should first take a look at the basic unit of semantic web, search entity.
## Search Entity
Once upon a time you had keywords and the domains they could be found on. The more authoritative and respected the domain, the better the chances it will come up as a result for your query. While this system was the best that we could do at the time, anyone with at least a casual interest in [SEO](https://fourdots.com) was more than aware of its numerous flaws. Semantic web tries to do away with keywords as basic units of a search, and replace them with search entities.
A search entity can be just about anything, from a location or person, to a school of thought. Hummingbird, the [knowledge graph](http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html) before it, and numerous other factors in the current landscape of the world wide web, rely on gathering and structuring knowledge on those entities, viewing them as a whole, and not only as something that might have something to do with the keywords you entered into the search bar. The base of search entities is constantly expanding, with individual entities each holding a unique identifier, and being a unique semantic object.
This enables search engines to get a better idea of the context of your search, and to return better, more relevant and comprehensive results. This is why, if you want to increase your visibility in the new system, you need to be recognized as an entity. Forget about mentioning keywords or synonyms and hoping that this alone will make you more relevant, you’ll need to think a bit bigger than that.
There are numerous ways to establish yourself as an entity, the best of them being excelling at what you do, i.e. being recognized by people before you are acknowledged by the search engines. With all the signals that their algorithms consider, they can get a rather clear picture of what is it that you are all about, with your social activities, for instance, being at least as indicative as the keywords on your homepage. However, instead of trying to manipulate the search engines to see you in a certain angle and in certain light, you can simply tell them what it is that you are doing, by structuring your data through semantic markup.
## Structured Data
In the dark ages of internet, pieces of unstructured data swirled around in the void of indifference, only occasionally being pulled from the chaos and oblivion by someone typing in their simulacrum in the search bar. Once examined they were returned to non existence to wander until their next summoning. But the light of the order came, what was a keyword became an entity, and instead of being simply a sum of their letters, they became notions and ideas, each developing character, personal traits, and a host of modifications that made them special. Data was classified, elaborated upon, and given essence.
Structuring of the data allowed search engines to understand that they shouldn’t return the same result for the word ‘cats’ to someone whose search history shows an interest in theater as they would to someone who is frequently looking up ‘cheapest cat food’. Data structuring allows us to elaborate on the role and the type of data, so it is easily recognized by a search engine, and returned when it’s relevant. This is achieved through semantic markup.
## Semantic Markup
In the simplest of terms, semantic markup allows you to modify your data with metadata (information about information) so that its properties and meaning behind them is made apparent to search engines. The language used is easily understood by machines, and easily implemented by web developers who want to structure their data.
This kind of structuring relies on a number of things, vocabulary, markup format or syntax, and triples, so let’s try explaining each of them.
## Triples
Triples are sets of data organized in accordance with their role in a particular instance. They are based on the semantic notions of subject, verb and object. Subject and object are different search entities, while verb is the link between them, their interaction, and basically, an explanation of their relation to each other. Enormous sets of triples are stored in Triplestores, and can be easily retrieved when a query comes along.
Image by [seoskeptic.com](http://www.seoskeptic.com/)
The importance of triples is found in the fact that they allow search engines to glean context from our search, to connect already formed search entities in a sensible way, to understand their interaction and return the relevant result.
## Vocabulary
Just like in language, vocabulary in semantic search denominates a set of arbitrary symbols meant to represent certain notions. [Schema.org](http://schema.org/) provides us with a huge vocabulary for structuring the data, and since it has been adopted by major search engines, it became the default go to for structuring your data.
While this adoption of a single syntax did impose some limits, it also allowed for standardization of data structuring, which is a must if the work on semantic web is to be continued. Naturally, there are still other, more specific vocabularies, used for structuring of different kinds of data, but your best bet is going with Schema, if you have that option.
## Syntax
Syntax refers to the language used to markup our data. This includes [microdata, microformats and RDF](http://blog.foolip.org/2009/08/23/microformats-vs-rdfa-vs-microdata/) (resource definition framework). Each of these approaches has its upsides and its faults, with RDF being the most extensible, and relying on attributes to elaborate on an entity; microformats being used for the topical attribution of HTML/XHTML and microdata being a set of specifications that allow for the addition of semantic modifiers to the code of a page.
Schema decided to focus on microdata, due to the fact that it allows for a decent breadth and extensiveness, and unlike microformats, it doesn’t have the tendency to interfere with the CSS attributes of a page. Naturally, this standardization and focusing on a [single language](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614) didn’t really go well with those who used a different syntax to mark their data, but luckily, other languages are still supported, although it is highly recommended that you only use microdata in the future. Even if a number of your pages already contain some of the other languages, as long as you don’t use two or more types of syntax on a single page, you should be able to avoid any conflicts.
## The Process
Now that you are (hopefully) a bit more familiar with some of the basic terminology, let’s try to take a look at how all of this works.
When creating a web page, you do your best to give as many clues about your data as you can through the use of microdata or an alternative syntax. If you are publishing a recipe, you’ll designate it such, allowing for its appearance in rich snippets; if you are writing about music, you’ll look up the vocabulary provided by Schema.org for the appropriate denominators and apply them as appropriate, and so on. By doing this you are supplying the search engines with additional context that they can use to better understand what your data is about, and what entities they are dealing with.
Once someone enters a query, apart from looking for other contextual clues, search engines consider the triplets and the metadata you have provided, and based on that input they are able to narrow down the scope of the entities they should be interested in and return a relevant result. This is not only a matter of convenience, but an approach that allows for a much more comprehensive, searchable, and effective data gathering, storing and retrieval.
## The Future
Naturally, as far as we came so far with the development of semantic web, there are still a lot of challenges that await us.
For instance, while defining the entities as such does make them more universal than simple keywords ever were, trying to expand a particular vocabulary to other languages (spoken languages, not web syntax) is one of the issues that we are facing. This is to say, that while an entity in one language is the same thing in another language, helping the search engines recognize it as such is not really that simple. This issue is pronounced enough on the most basic, lexical level, when you consider the fact that one word of a language could be translated by several different words of another language, based on the context, style, format and a number of other influences, but when you bring in idioms and set phrases into the equation, things turn to chaos once again.
However, even if we are faced with some obstacles that seem insurmountable (explaining the intricacies of style to machines, for instance), we should be encouraged by the fact that we already came further than anyone would think possible just a couple of years ago, and that the research in semantic web is only gaining momentum with each passing day. As more data is collected, new ways of structuring it explored, and our habits and knowledge improved, this field of research seems to be promising an entirely different experience when it comes to the way we search and the results we are given.
## Resources
#### Semantic Web
- [http://www.seoskeptic.com/seo-semantic-web/](http://www.seoskeptic.com/seo-semantic-web/)
- [http://searchengineland.com/10-reasons-why-search-is-in-vogue-hot-trends-in-semantic-search-171284](http://searchengineland.com/10-reasons-why-search-is-in-vogue-hot-trends-in-semantic-search-171284)
- [http://www.seoskeptic.com/web-3-0-101-semantic-web-resources-beginner/](http://www.seoskeptic.com/web-3-0-101-semantic-web-resources-beginner/)
#### Semantic Markup
- [http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-a-30-increase-in-ctr-with-structured-markup-105830](http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-a-30-increase-in-ctr-with-structured-markup-105830)
- [http://searchengineland.com/2014-seo-roadmap-semantic-markup-177798](http://searchengineland.com/2014-seo-roadmap-semantic-markup-177798)
- [http://searchengineland.com/13-semantic-markup-tips-for-2013-a-local-seo-checklist-143708](http://searchengineland.com/13-semantic-markup-tips-for-2013-a-local-seo-checklist-143708)
- [http://moz.com/blog/schemaorg-a-new-approach-to-structured-data-for-seo](http://moz.com/blog/schemaorg-a-new-approach-to-structured-data-for-seo)
#### Schema, Markup Formats
- [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-schemaorg-search-engines.html](http://moz.com/blog/schemaorg-a-new-approach-to-structured-data-for-seo)
- [http://www.seoskeptic.com/what-schema-org-means-for-seo-and-beyond/](http://www.seoskeptic.com/what-schema-org-means-for-seo-and-beyond/)
- [http://moz.com/blog/schema-examples](http://moz.com/blog/schema-examples)
- [http://blog.raventools.com/an-seos-guide-to-schema-org/](http://blog.raventools.com/an-seos-guide-to-schema-org/)
#### Search Entity
- [http://searchengineland.com/future-seo-understanding-entity-search-172997](http://searchengineland.com/future-seo-understanding-entity-search-172997)
- [http://searchengineland.com/killer-seo-string-entity-optimization-171094](http://searchengineland.com/killer-seo-string-entity-optimization-171094)
- [http://moz.com/blog/from-keywords-to-contexts-the-new-query-model](http://moz.com/blog/from-keywords-to-contexts-the-new-query-model)
---
## Posts: Matt Cutts on Guest Blogging and its Risks
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/matt-cutts-spills-guts-will-make-guest-blogging-cuts-1701](https://fourdots.com/blog/matt-cutts-spills-guts-will-make-guest-blogging-cuts-1701)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/matt-cutts-spills-guts-will-make-guest-blogging-cuts-1701.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/matt-cutts-spills-guts-will-make-guest-blogging-cuts-1701.md)
**Published:** 2014-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-09
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** google penalties, guest blogging, matt cutts
### Content
## Panic in the SEO ranks, is guest blogging dead?
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, has been quite vocal in the past about his and Google’s displeasure with spammy guest posts before, but in his**[latest post](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/)**on the subject he created something of a panic in [SEO](https://fourdots.com/seo/) ranks by suggesting that the search engine is coming after those who are using scaled guest blogging to boost their rankings. Â The post initially made a number of people believe that all guest blogging was to be put to the trial, but he edited it later to make sure that it’s clear that only those who treat blog posting as glorified article directory submission should be concerned about their future.
So, does this mean that you should completely avoid guest blogging in fear of a possible algorithm update, and what would potential problems with making that kind of algorithm be?
While it is true that a lot of SEOs abused guest blogging opportunities to build link portfolios for their clients, this is by no means to say that there haven’t been those who have taken an ethical approach to this strategy.
That is to say people who didn’t just focus on getting a link for as little work involved as possible, but those who cared about their client’s (and their own) reputation and standing enough to actually provide valuable, insightful and interesting content, that will in, the long run, benefit them much more than a simple link could. We’ll try to analyze the worst offenses as well as some ways to keep guest blogging without fearing a penalty from the algorithm update that is (perhaps) to come (btw, we want to be one of the first to propose the name for the new algo, and Cuckoo somehow seems to be fitting – eggs in other birds’ nests, and all).
## Valueless Content
One of the main objections to automated or scaled guest blogging is that it produces a ton of useless content. Posts that are offered are usually rewritten pieces of… other people’s useless content, that was made by rewriting other people’s… well, you get it. So if you a see an author/company that has 20 articles on the same topic on 20 different blogs, chances are they haven’t really been trying too hard to make something useful. But things don’t have to be so simple. For instance, if a company has some news that it wants to share with the public, they might want to advertise it on as many platforms as they can, and no one can say that placing a link to their website in there wouldn’t be completely natural and ethical.
The matter gets even more complex when you consider the fact that the blog in question may already hold 20 posts on the same topic, written by other parties. This is not only failing to add value to the internet, but to the blog as well, and could easily be used as one of the metrics to determine how serious the blog webmaster’s editing policies are. This could be used to find blogs that basically work like content farms, but such issues should already be addressed by Panda and Penguin, and getting a link on a disreputable blog was never a giant boost for anyone’s rankings anyway.
## Solutions?
Matt himself stated that, of course, there are reputable blogs out there that accept valuable guest posts, and that they will, naturally, not be penalized, so if there were people who thought that all guest posts in the future will be written in scarlet letters and condemned to disrepute, they can rest assured that there is still room for guest blogging in SEO, you just have to be careful how you do it.
## Create Great Content
This seems to be reminiscent of the whole ‘infographics’ situation. They were cool for a while, people started overusing them and calling everything with a couple of facts and silly imagery an infographic, and ruined it for those who really made an effort to excel. However, a well-made infographic can still get you a lot attention and SEO value. Likewise, if you write a great post that really offers something of value, gets shared by a lot of people, and generally stands on its own, you are not only not a spammer, but deserve to get the credit for it.
SEOs the world over have been clamoring about the value of good content, especially since the introduction of Hummingbird, but clients rarely took notice, claiming that it was SEO’s job to provide the content. This might be the final straw needed to convince clients to take a larger part in content creation. After all, they know their industry much better than SEO’s do (hopefully) and they know what is that people would like to hear. Even if they don’t write the content themselves, they should at least make an effort to pitch in with some interesting topics or relevant news.
So, what this seems to be leading to is less content, which is made with more attention, and which tries to provide real value. One decent link was always worth a 100 of place-holder ones, and perhaps it is time to try and explain that to your clients.
## No-Follow
One of the proposed methods of avoiding looking like a spammer (or someone who accepts spammy posts) is to make the links in the guest posts no-follow. Sure, you don’t get the sweet link juice, but you get traffic, attention from the other people in your niche, and you build authority. The problem with these, more than tangible, benefits is that it’s not really easy to calculate their ROI, so even though SEOs know their value, they are hesitant to mention them to their clients, as they can’t put ‘increased authority by a bit’ in their report. You could consider making some of the links in the posts you send out no-follow (and if the panic continues, you may not even have a choice), and still get some authorship value and the implicit benefits.
## Anchors Away [sic]
Penguin already made us concerned about the overuse of exact anchor text, but this issue is once again brought into focus with Cutts’ warning. Try to limit the use of anchors in your guest posts, and naturally, refrain from overuse of keywords in the body of your text.
### Conclusion
There are still a number of valid reasons for accepting guest posts or guest blogging – offering your reader a fresh perspective from an eminent expert, reducing your workload while still providing varied content, exposing your work to new audiences and building authorship, especially if you are new to the [business](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks), raising brand awareness, and other. So even if Google decides to crack down on guest blogging, they can’t do so indiscriminately, and can basically only continue punishing what they have been discouraging with Penguin or Panda, bad content, spamming and system exploits. If you offer a decent piece of content to a decent blog, you shouldn’t have to worry about your rankings.
---
## Posts: Review your fake reviews strategy
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/review-fake-reviews-strategy-1700](https://fourdots.com/blog/review-fake-reviews-strategy-1700)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/review-fake-reviews-strategy-1700.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/review-fake-reviews-strategy-1700.md)
**Published:** 2013-11-11
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-09
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** ORM
**Tags:** Astroturfing, fake reviews, ORM
### Content
One of the main advantages of internet is supposed to be its ability to provide you with easy and quick access to loads of useful information on just about anything that you might be interested in. However, as soon as people learned to talk they also learned to lie, and as soon as they came up with internet they began making it less trustworthy. Finding information that you can absolutely trust is becoming something of a challenge, and by perpetuating the idea that you can usually get away with lying online, even when you’re caught, we’re just robbing ourselves of most of the benefits that the World Wide Web could provide.
Luckily, not everyone is willing to just roll over and take it in stride, as evidenced by the New York state regulators who came down hard on several companies that either ordered or supplied fake reviews on certain websites.
Image with courtesy of [www.theguardian.com](http://www.theguardian.com/)
## Astroturfing explained
Sites like [Yelp](http://www.yelp.com/), [City Search](http://www.citysearch.com/), [Rip Off Report](http://www.ripoffreport.com/) and numerous other provide a valuable service by giving you a compendium of customer opinions on certain businesses. Ideally, this should provide you with valuable information on different institutions, which should help you make up your mind on whether you want to do [business](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks) with them. However, since such reviews could significantly influence the profits of a business, it wasn’t long before people started writing or ordering either positive reviews for their business, or negative ones for their competitors. This process has become known as astroturfing and it can range from a single person trying to boost their own product by writing a couple of reviews, to hiring companies to shell out hundreds or thousands of positive or negative reviews.
The worst thing about this kind of approach to boosting your business is that you are not even engaging in false advertising, as that would only include lying about the quality of the product, you are actually lying about the source from which that assessment comes. People used to trust such reviews, believing that they came from other customers. Basically, if they saw a paid ad, they would know that it came from the company being advertised and would take the promises made in it with a grain of salt. However, when they see an online review, they expect the reviewer to be relatively impartial, which affords some credibility to the statements made.
When companies exploit the reviews system in order to boost their online reputation they are not just tricking us into making use of their services, they are actually destroying our faith in the humanity and the information that we can find online. And if that wasn’t scary enough, some of the people engaging in these activities are medical professionals and people who you really don’t want to do business with based on false information.
Image with courtesy of kimberlynichols.ca
Another thing that is extremely unsettling about this approach is that businesses that receive (genuine) negative reviews usually don’t focus on correcting the faults mentioned in the reviews, but instead waste their energy and resources trying to counterbalance the negative reviews with false positive ones.
While it may be easy to spot a fake review, as most of them are usually written in the same manner, by people who usually have to write hundreds of those in a week, sites hosting those reviews cannot really afford going through each review and manually removing or labeling the ones that seem fake. What they can do, though, and what Yelp and other websites have been doing for a while, is setting traps for people who want to take advantage of the system. This usually consisted of posting ads as either a company offering services of astroturfing, or one searching for a provider of those services. They have had limited success with that kind of strategy, but simply labeling a company as someone who makes use of such services was not really effective at preventing others from doing so.
## Wrist slap the fake reviewers
However, [**in September, 19 companies were caught in either ordering reviews or providing them**](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/23/new-york-fake-online-reviews-yoghurt), and they have, in total, been fined $350,000 for their transgression. While this is not really an astronomical figure, and chances are that they may have earned more from engaging in these activities, this slap on the wrist by the New York regulators is probably just the beginning of the war on fake reviews. While the fines that the companies have had to pay probably wouldn’t make too many people think about changing their sinful ways, the blow that the reputation of the companies in question has suffered is not something that others should be willing to ignore. While companies that were writing the reviews probably won’t be as stigmatized, the ones ordering them will have to put in quite a lot of effort in their online reputation management and improvements to their business model if they want to be redeemed in the eyes of the public.
So if your way of dealing with [**online reputation management**](/online-reputation-management/) included astroturfing, you might want to find another, more legitimate strategy for boosting your client’s image in the eyes of the public. While New York is currently the only state with legal provisions for this kind of action, chances are other states will follow suite, and sooner or later, law suits against companies engaging in such practices will be quite common. Naturally, a lot of people are still getting away with this, and probably will for some time to come, but at one point the risks will outweigh the potential benefits and we just may witness the birth of a more trustworthy internet.
---
## Posts: Humming in G(oogle)-minor
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/humming-in-google-minor-1699](https://fourdots.com/blog/humming-in-google-minor-1699)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/humming-in-google-minor-1699.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/humming-in-google-minor-1699.md)
**Published:** 2013-11-04
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** Content Strategy
**Tags:** content marketing, content strategy, Hummingbird algorithm
### Content
With the introduction of Hummingbird Google is making an attempt at enabling its algorithm to better understand language. At the same time, SEOs are trying to understand how to speak more clearly to the new algorithm and help it recognize the wisdom of their recommendations.
Even though changes to the algorithm are quite substantial, the fact remains that if you want to attract its attention you have to make informative, well written content. However, it doesn’t hurt to take a closer look at the semantic analysis processes that are going on in the background every time you enter a query and the factors that lead to recommending one piece of content over another.
## Rules of Substitution
Ever since their earliest days, Google recognized the need for flexibility in the interpretation of the entered queries. If a user entered a less popular synonym for the term that they are interested in, they would be presented with inferior results. That’s why it was important for the algorithm to understand which words could be substituted with others and still provide relevant results.
However, finding appropriate synonyms is not nearly as easy as simply checking a thesaurus and picking one. One word could be an adequate synonym for another in certain contexts, but not in others, especially with set phrases or idioms. That’s why the algorithm has to be able to decide when it is permissible to consider one word interchangeable with the other and to offer relevant results for both words.
There are several ways to do this, and most of them depend on co-occurrence. This is to say that Google tracks the queries made, and if a user enters one term in a query and then the other one in the following, or one of the several following queries, the algorithm will recognize the connection and the probability of it treating the second term as a valid substitute for the first one will increase.
Likewise, if one term often appears in the search results when another term is entered in query, or if queries for both terms often come up with similar results, chances are that they can be considered good substitutes one for another.
Another interesting way of finding synonyms for a word or phrase included translating it to another language and then translating it back into the source language. While this is not a foolproof way of establishing interchangeability, it does provide a good starting point for the algorithm.
## Enter Hummingbird
While Google’s algorithm was quite successful in finding general synonyms, it lacked the ability to observe them within a context. With the introduction of Hummingbird, the co-occurrence analysis has been taken one step further. The algorithm first determines a list of potential substitutes for a term and then checks how often they appear together with other words in the query.
For instance, while venue, place and joint may otherwise be considered synonyms, if you enter ‘best burger place’, you’ll also get results for ‘best burger joint’, but there will be none recommending the ‘best burger venue’ (unless we’re talking about some strange kind of performance art involving minced meat).
While algorithm already had some contextual awareness before Hummingbird, this revamping made it capable of applying the same basic principles to longer queries. This enables it to provide all the results that may be relevant, regardless of your exact wording, which is to say that you don’t have to back-engineer the process it uses for suggesting results and try to guess which words will give you the best recommendations.
In other words, it not only provides you with relevant results, it provides you with (almost) ALL the relevant results.
## What Does This Mean for Content Providers
There are a couple of things that you can do if you want your chirping to be more audible and coherent to Hummingbird. When you think about it, this does diminish the impact that keywords used to have, but it gives you a nice opportunity to engage in some legal keyword stuffing, or, to be more precise, synonym stuffing(TM).
While writing ‘burger joint’ twenty times on a single page would be quite suspicious, shifting between burger place, burger joint, burger stand and other possible synonyms, you are increasing the possibility that you’ll find yourself in the results, without attracting the wrath of some of the less friendly members of the Google’s Animal Kingdom.
If you are not sure what words are synonymous to Google, simply search for the term you are interested in and check what other substitutes are offered in bold. This should give you a nice idea of what other words you can use and give you some research material for the other thing that you can do to**[optimize your content](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy/)**. Namely, you could also try using some terms that frequently occur on the pages that you reach through searching for either of the synonyms.
In our example that would probably be things like ‘meat’, ‘flavor’, ‘salmonella’, ‘heart attack’ and similar (Our burger place is known as a burger joint which serves meat of such exquisite flavor that you’ll happily disregard all the unfounded charges claiming that our burger stand is responsible for numerous heart attacks and salmonella cases).
The problem with this advice is that, if you have been writing good content, you’ve already been using synonyms and (often) mentioning things that are often mentioned when talking about the topic in question. So here’s a surprising conclusion for all of you – write good content. You’re welcome.
---
## Posts: How ORM can help you with brand problems
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/online-reputation-management-can-help-with-brand-problems-1698](https://fourdots.com/blog/online-reputation-management-can-help-with-brand-problems-1698)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/online-reputation-management-can-help-with-brand-problems-1698.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/online-reputation-management-can-help-with-brand-problems-1698.md)
**Published:** 2013-10-23
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-09
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** ORM
**Tags:** online reputation management, ORM
### Content
Most people won’t make use of services of a particular company or individual without first checking them online, which is why having a negative result on the first page of search results can be terribly detrimental for business. Unfortunately, even if you have an almost impeccable record, with the freedom that internet provides,**[someone might easily tarnish your name](http://www.massive.pr/online-reputation-management/how-to-prevent-bad-online-reputation)**, whether that was their intention or not. This could lead to loss of clients and a huge number of missed opportunities, and is not something that you can leave to chance if you want to run a successful business. Luckily, there are a number of ways to repair, or at least limit the damage negative search results can bring to your company or you personally.
##**How are negative results created?**There are a number of ways in which your reputation might be damaged without your fault. For one, there are a lot of websites out there that concentrate on user reviews. Some of the more prominent ones can have a great impact on search engines and are often found near the top of the SERPs. It doesn’t matter if you have had hundreds of satisfied customers, if just one negative review on a website of that type shows up on the first page, your web reputation will suffer.
Bad press is another common cause of headaches. You or your company might have been connected to an incident indirectly and with no fault of your own, but as long as you are mentioned in a high profile article that deals with the incident, you will automatically be associated with it.
When your online reputation starts crumbling you better have a contingency plan
Naturally, you can always become a victim of intentional slander or negative campaign, run by your competitors, angry bloggers, or just about anyone else, which, if done with enough persistence, could also seriously damage the way you are perceived by the community.
##**What can online reputation management do for you?**There are a number of things that can be done about this, by you, or by professional**[online reputation management](/online-reputation-management/)**services provider. Basically, there are two approaches, the first one focusing on removing the negative content, and the second one on creating or promoting enough positive or neutral content to push the negative one down in search results.
The removal of negative content is quite tricky, and almost only possible if you are actually a victim of slander. It usually involves threatening with legal action, and can be quite nasty. Naturally you could appeal to honesty of the people who posted the content, present your side of the story and hope that they’ll realize that they have wronged you. Less reputable companies sometimes even try and engage in a negative [SEO campaign](/seo), but this is never recommended, and rarely manages to produce long term results. The only thing that this kind of approach could bring you is more negative press, only this time it would actually be well deserved.
The more common and successful approach to handling negative search results is populating the first, or a couple of first search results pages with neutral or positive content about you or your company. There are a number of things that you can do in order to achieve this. The following advice applies to individuals and companies alike. First of all, make sure that you have domain names containing your or your company’s name, which you will use to publish relevant and truthful facts about you or your [business](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks). While this used to be much more important for rankings before Google’s Exact Domain Name algorithm update, it still holds some value.
The next thing that you should do is start running**[SEO](/seo/)**campaigns for favorable content that you own, or that is third party owned. You can create a number of websites that shouldn’t have a problem ranking for your name or the name of your company, but that is not where you should stop. Try and get as many mentions as you can on influential websites that are likely to rank well. This includes blogs, press release sites, reviews websites, sites that are giving you a chance to make a personal or company profile, as well as YouTube and everything along those lines.
Finally, you should make sure that you have a profile on all major social networks, especially Linkedin, as they are also quite likely to show near the top of search results and replace whatever it was that got you worried in the first place.
Even though, depending on the amount and type of reputation management that you require, this can be a lengthy and expensive process, the benefits will always outweigh the costs, allowing you to breathe freely once again without having to worry about negative results driving away your potential customers and tarnishing your name.
---
## Posts: White and black hat SEO in 2013
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/white-black-hat-seo-2013-1065](https://fourdots.com/blog/white-black-hat-seo-2013-1065)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/white-black-hat-seo-2013-1065.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/white-black-hat-seo-2013-1065.md)
**Published:** 2013-10-15
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** 2013, Black hat SEO, White hat SEO
### Content
You’ve probably heard about terms “white hat” and “black hat” in [SEO](/seo). This article is meant to give you a clearer picture of what they mean and what exactly they can provide you with. Basically, black hat refers to practices which are not acceptable by search engines, and are sometimes unethical, or even illegal, while white hat stands for any action that you can take to increase your rankings and raise the visibility of your website in search engines, without deviating from the webmaster guidelines prescribed by some search engines, most notably Google. We have decided to give you an overview of the most common practices employed in both of these approaches, along with their possible benefits and risks.
## Black hat SEO
Regardless of what they might say about it, a lot of SEOs have at one point dealt with black hat. For a lot of them this marked their entry into this discipline, as it is (or at least, it used to be) a faster and easier way to boost website’s rankings, and despite its faults, it can teach you a lot about SEO.
### Most common black hat practices are:*Cloaking*– This term describes any type of displaying different content to crawlers than the one that users are able to see. For instance having white text on a white background, or displaying one page to visitors and another one to crawlers.*Keyword stuffing*– This refers to any kind of stuffing the content or metadata of a page with keywords you want to rank for. It is one of the main reasons people resorted to cloaking, as it allowed you to have as many keywords on a page as you want to, without the users having to see them.*Site scraping*– An automated process in which a website automatically “scrapes” other websites for the content to publish as their own. This allowed for frequent content updates with absolutely no effort.*Link buying*– People used to make sites known as “link farms” the only purpose of which was to sell link space. More often than not, those farms were united into networks, which was supposed to increase the value of links they hold by passing on more link juice.*Article spinning*– A common practice on sites known as “content farms”, article spinning involved making minimal changes to a piece of content, just enough to make it different enough when a crawler is concerned. This usually resulted in a very poorly written piece of content that offered no real value and was quite difficult to read, as most people used automated means of changing the text where some words were replaced with their synonyms, even within set phrases, which, naturally, resulted in complete gibberish.
These are just some of the more common black hat techniques, but people also resorted to hacking other people’s websites, different redirections and even negative SEO in order to boost their rankings. However, even though black hat approach used to be quite effective for quick boosts, the constant improvement of search algorithms made most of these techniques completely worthless, and those that still do have some effect are becoming more risky by the day. Even though, some SEOs were willing to have a well ranked website for a while, completely aware of the fact that it won’t last too long, as it usually helped them earn enough money to justify the effort. Despite the fact that Panda, Penguin, and numerous other minor or major updates to search algorithm have made most of these techniques worthless, there are still cracks that skillful black hat SEOs can exploit, but the results never last for too long, and sooner or later they find themselves in Google Hell.
Image by www.iovacommunications.com
## White hat SEO
White hat basically stands for doing things the right way, and actually earning better rankings. Most people dealing in this kind of [optimization](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide) are frustrated by the fact that some people have prejudices against SEO, only because they mostly came into contact with spammy, unethical black hat techniques. [White hat SEO](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) efforts are actually supported by search engines, with their representatives often giving advice on how you can ethically help your site rank better.
### Among other things, white hat refers to:*Extensive keyword research*– SEOs try and determine the keywords you should target for the best conversion, find out what the competition is like and try to differentiate between realistic, achievable goals and wishful thinking.
Onsite optimization – This includes everything from getting your metadata in order and creating a good inner linking structure to providing a good XML sitemap that will make it easier for crawlers to index your content.*Link building*– this term is sometimes associated with black hat, but in this instance it refers to the promotion of your websites on other, relevant sites the visitors of which can actually benefit from having a link to your site. This means that you have [useful content](/content-strategy) or resources that can actually help people, and all that you are doing is promoting it in as many places as you can.
[White hat SEO is much more demanding](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whitehat-seo-tips-for-bloggers/) than black hat when it comes to both time and resources, but the effect it produces will stay with you forever. Naturally, your rankings might drop to some extent in time, but you will never lose good site architecture, valuable, relevant links and a solid base for all future SEO endeavors.
Google is doing its best to encourage white hat and eradicate black hat, and even though there are still a lot of possible exploits, dealing in black hat is getting riskier by the day. An astounding number of websites that had numerous suspicious links have been penalized and deindexed, as were those that resorted to cloaking, keyword stuffing, content scraping and other, now completely useless black hat techniques. Even though you might stumble upon a new way to trick Google, you can be sure that sooner or later, this too will be addressed by the algorithm update and that you will find yourself left out of SERPs.
---
## Posts: To Appease a Hummingbird
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/hummingbird-algorithm-1697](https://fourdots.com/blog/hummingbird-algorithm-1697)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog/hummingbird-algorithm-1697.md](https://fourdots.com/blog/hummingbird-algorithm-1697.md)
**Published:** 2013-10-12
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Categories:** SEO
**Tags:** Google algorithm, Hummingbird algorithm
### Content
At a celebration of their 15th birthday,**[on September 26, Google announced their new algorithm, Hummingbird](http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2013/09/fifteen-years-onand-were-just-getting.html)**. Notice how we didn’t say “algorithm update”. This is because this new fowl in the Google’s menagerie isn’t just a more or less substantial change to their existing algorithm, like Panda or Penguin were, but instead a drastic revamping of the old method that Google used to suggest websites. It wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that it’s a new algorithm, as a lot of the parts of the old one are still quite present, but it’s making much more of a difference than Caffeine did, and while Caffeine was mostly about how sites are indexed, Hummingbird brings much more groundbreaking changes.
However, those changes, at least when it comes to rankings, are still to be made obvious.**[New algorithm (that still incorporates Panda, Penguin, and a host of other, previously made updates)](http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816)**has been rolling out since sometime in August, even though it was only recently announced, and most people are still to notice a significant difference in their rankings. Reasons for this may become clearer when you consider the purpose of this new resident of Google’s Zoo.
Namely, the main intention behind the Hummingbird and the thing that it is meant to focus on is better translation of our queries into something that the algorithm can understand. Because of the increase in mobile users and the fact that a lot of people are using voice commands to search for whatever it is that they need, entering queries that are not simply formulated as a set of keywords, but instead as questions that you would normally pose to another human being, Google recognized the need to make its algorithm better responsive to such queries. So for instance, if you are looking for a shoe shop in New Hampshire, you used to type something like ‘shoe shop, New Hampshire’ however, these days most people will simply ask ‘Where can I find a shoe shop in New Hampshire’. So, basically, the intention behind the algorithm is to be able to penetrate into the meaning of the queries, instead to only look at the keywords.
Google search algorithm timeline
Basically, this requires an astounding level of semantic comprehension on the part of the algorithm, but luckily, Google has been dabbling with semantic research for quite a while now. It has been offering results with synonyms for your keywords for quite a while now, and its understanding of language has only been increasing. While this may worry those that are afraid of Google becoming sentient, a causal, non-paranoid searcher only stands to gain from this update, but what about SEOs?
Well, so far, it seems that this is nothing to fret over. Even though the importance of keywords as such seems to be decreasing, relevance is, well, as relevant, as it always was. That is to say if you have been doing**[SEO](/seo/)**based on good and informative content, you don’t have anything to worry about. It stands to reason that any piece of content that was made in order to increase your relevance for certain keywords will also contain their synonyms, and as such attract more attention from Google for those notions (I cal dibs on the term ‘keynotions’ so if you use it somewhere, you owe me money).
There has been some discussion on whether the fact that Google is now paying more attention to the standard question format will change anything. That is to say, if pages with ‘how to…’, ‘what are…’ and the like will be getting better rankings, and if this means that FAQ pages will begin to dominate the searches. This may come about to a certain extent, but it could only happen as a consequence of the algorithm’s reliance on the exact keywords, which is what this change is supposed to be putting an end to. This is also why it may have been better to title this article something like “How to Appease a Hummingbird”, but choosing to stick to a literary reference instead of trying to manipulate the algorithm is probably something that Hummingbird will soon learn to appreciate and reward with great rankings.
However, apart from rewarding good content, this may have another beneficial impact on SEO endeavors. Namely, it allows for greater anchor diversity in your link portfolio. That is to say that you can now try to get anchors with different synonyms for your keynotion (what, it’s not a word yet?) and still be confident that this will benefit your rankings. So in other words, a Hummingbird obey and keep Penguin away.
Eyes and ears of the SEO community will definitely be directed towards the fluttering of tiny wings for some time to come, and it will be interesting to see some real [data](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) on this change instead of only dealing in speculation. Even though not a lot of difference has been noticed so far, chances are that we will be seeing some major shifts in rankings as we learn to live and work with the Google’s new algorithm.
---
## Pages: Belgrade SEO Agency
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency.md](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency.md)
**Published:** 2026-04-06
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: European Enterprise SEO Company
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company](https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company.md](https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company.md)
**Published:** 2026-04-05
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-05
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: AI Visibility Guide
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide.md](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide.md)
**Published:** 2026-04-03
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Business Impact of AI Hallucinations - Rates & Ranks
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks.md](https://fourdots.com/business-impact-of-ai-hallucinations-rates-and-ranks.md)
**Published:** 2026-03-09
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-09
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: White Label SEO Services Reseller for Australia
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services.md](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services.md)
**Published:** 2026-03-01
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-13
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Cookie Policy New
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/cookie-policy-new](https://fourdots.com/cookie-policy-new)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/cookie-policy-new.md](https://fourdots.com/cookie-policy-new.md)
**Published:** 2026-02-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Effective Date: February 21, 2026
We use cookies to help improve your experience of our website at [https://fourdots.com](https://fourdots.com/) and its subdomains. This cookie policy is part of Four Dots’s privacy policy. It covers the use of cookies between your device and our site.
We also provide basic information on third-party services we may use, who may also use cookies as part of their service. This policy does not cover their cookies.
If you don’t wish to accept cookies from us, you should instruct your browser to refuse cookies from [https://fourdots.com](https://fourdots.com/). In such a case, we may be unable to provide you with some of your desired content and services.
## What is a Cookie?
A cookie is a small piece of data that a website stores on your device when you visit. It typically contains information about the website itself, a unique identifier that allows the site to recognise your web browser when you return, additional data that serves the cookie’s purpose, and the lifespan of the cookie itself.
Cookies are used to enable certain features (e.g. logging in), track site usage (e.g. analytics), store your user settings (e.g. time zone, notification preferences), and to personalize your content (e.g. advertising, language).
Cookies set by the website you are visiting are usually referred to as first-party cookies. They typically only track your activity on that particular site.
Cookies set by other sites and companies (i.e. third parties) are called third-party cookies. They can be used to track you on other websites that use the same third-party service.
## Types of Cookies and How We Use Them
### Essential Cookies
Essential cookies are [crucial](https://fourdots.com/case-studies/crucial) to your experience of a website, enabling core features like user logins, account management, shopping carts, and payment processing.
We use essential cookies to enable certain functions on our website.
### Performance Cookies
Performance cookies track how you use a website during your visit. Typically, this information is anonymous and aggregated, with information tracked across all site users. They help companies understand visitor usage patterns, identify and diagnose problems or errors their users may encounter, and make better strategic decisions in improving their audience’s overall website experience. These cookies may be set by the website you’re visiting (first-party) or by third-party services. They do not collect personal information about you.
We use performance cookies on our site.
### Functionality Cookies
Functionality cookies are used to collect information about your device and any settings you may configure on the website you’re visiting (like language and time zone settings). With this information, websites can provide you with customized, enhanced, or optimized content and services. These cookies may be set by the website you’re visiting (first-party) or by third-party services.
We use functionality cookies on our site.
### Targeting/Advertising Cookies
Targeting/advertising cookies help determine what promotional content is most relevant and appropriate to you and your interests. Websites may use them to deliver targeted advertising or limit the number of times you see an advertisement. This helps companies improve the effectiveness of their campaigns and the quality of content presented to you. These cookies may be set by the website you’re visiting (first-party) or by third-party services. Targeting/advertising cookies set by third-parties may be used to track you on other websites that use the same third-party service.
We use targeting/advertising cookies on our site.
## How Can You Control Our Website’s Use of Cookies?
You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies on our Website. You can manage your cookie preferences in our Cookie Consent Manager. The Cookie Consent Manager allows you to select which categories of cookies you accept or reject. Essential cookies cannot be rejected as they are strictly necessary to provide you with the services on our Website.
You may also be able to set or amend your cookie preferences by managing your web browser settings. As each web browser is different, please consult the instructions provided by your web browser (typically in the “help” section). If you choose to refuse or disable cookies you may still use the Website, though some of the functionality of the Website may not be available to you.
## How Often Will We Update This Cookie Policy?
We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect any changes to the cookies and related technologies we use, or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.
Each time you use our Website, the current version of the Cookie Policy will apply. When you use our Website, you should check the date of this Cookie Policy (which appears at the top of this document) and review any changes since the last version.
## Where Can You Obtain Further Information?
For any questions or concerns regarding our Cookie Policy, you may contact us using the following details:
Milica Dobrenov
https://fourdots.com/contact
---
## Pages: GA4 Agency
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency.md](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency.md)
**Published:** 2026-02-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Search Engine Marketing
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing.md](https://fourdots.com/search-engine-marketing.md)
**Published:** 2026-02-12
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-12
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Results
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit/results](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit/results)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit/results.md](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit/results.md)
**Published:** 2026-02-03
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-03
**Author:**
### Content
---
## Pages: AI Visibility Audit
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit.md](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-audit.md)
**Published:** 2026-02-03
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-05
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Data Tracking and Analytics Agency
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/data-tracking-and-analytics-agency](https://fourdots.com/data-tracking-and-analytics-agency)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/data-tracking-and-analytics-agency.md](https://fourdots.com/data-tracking-and-analytics-agency.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-26
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-13
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Agency-as-a-Lab
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/agency-as-a-lab](https://fourdots.com/agency-as-a-lab)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/agency-as-a-lab.md](https://fourdots.com/agency-as-a-lab.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-23
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-23
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
## “Agency-as-a-Lab” Definition
An “Agency-as-a-Lab” approach redefines the traditional agency model by acting as an innovation hub, utilizing data, behavioral science, and bespoke technology to solve unique client problems. Instead of solely offering off-the-shelf services, these agencies function as labs – testing, experimenting, and developing custom, high-ROI, performance-driven solutions.
“Agency-as-a-Lab” is an operational model where a professional services firm (typically in digital marketing or technology) functions as an incubator or research facility to develop its own proprietary solutions while simultaneously serving clients.
### Core Characteristics**Problem-First Innovation:**When standard, off-the-shelf tools cannot solve a client’s specific challenge, the agency builds custom software or systems in-house.**Commercialization of Tools:**These internal solutions are often refined and spun off into independent, commercial platforms that other agencies or companies can license.**Experimental Mindset:**The model emphasizes a “laboratory” approach, blending data analytics, behavioral science, and creativity to test and validate new strategies before broad implementation.
## Why We Operate Like This
Digital marketing is a game of expertise and tools. Most agencies license the same platforms, follow the same playbooks, and deliver interchangeable results. The difference between good and exceptional lies in capabilities nobody else can access.
We started building tools because commercial software kept failing us. We needed a link prospecting system that found opportunities others missed – so we built Dibz. We wasted five hours per client on manual reporting – so we built Reportz. Managing link building campaigns in spreadsheets was chaos – so we built Base.
The pattern continued. Every operational problem that slowed client delivery became a development project. Every solution that worked internally became a platform other agencies now license.
This approach creates a compounding advantage. The tools make our client work faster and more effective. Revenue from licensing funds continued development. Each improvement benefits both our clients and our tool users. The cycle reinforces itself.
Our relationship with our technology mirrors a world-class chef who invents a specialized, highly efficient oven – we use it daily to deliver exceptional results while proving our mastery by selling that same technology to the rest of the industry.
## Why “Agency-as-a-Lab” Approach Matters for Our Clients
The Agency-as-a-Lab model creates three distinct advantages for clients:**1. Access to Proprietary Technology**The tools Four Dots uses for your campaigns are the same platforms other agencies pay to license. You get capabilities competitors can’t access because they don’t exist in the market.**2. Continuous Innovation**Every campaign teaches us something. Every operational challenge drives development. The tools improve constantly based on real campaign data across 200+ clients.**3. Proof of Expertise**Building successful commercial software requires deep operational knowledge easily replicable to client current challenges. The existence of these platforms demonstrates capabilities that credentials alone cannot prove.
## The Four Dots Agency-as-a-Lab Technology Ecosystem
These tools were born from real client problems. They’re licensed by agencies worldwide. Combined, they represent a unique proprietary stack that Four Dots clients access through our engagements.
### Dibz.me**Link Prospecting at Scale**[dibz.me](https://dibz.me)
Dibz analyzes millions of web pages to identify relevant, achievable link opportunities tailored to each campaign. Unlike generic tools that return thousands of irrelevant prospects, Dibz filters for quality, relevance, and acquisition probability.**The Problem It Solved:**High-quality backlinks are essential for SEO, but manual prospecting through search engines is time-consuming and limited. Our team was spending hours finding opportunities that disappeared into noise.**What It Does:**- Automated prospect discovery across 17+ search presets (guest blogging, resource pages, citations, forums, reviews)
- Spam score filtering using proprietary algorithms
- Contact finder integration for streamlined outreach
- Opportunity scoring based on acquisition probability
- Multi-language support for international campaigns
- Bulk export for integration with outreach tools**Results:**Agencies using Dibz report 3x higher outreach success rates compared to manual prospecting. It finds opportunities other tools miss.
### Base.me**Link Building Campaign Management**[base.me](https://base.me)
Base centralizes every aspect of link building campaigns – from prospect management to outreach tracking, placement monitoring to reporting. It replaced the chaos of spreadsheets with a system designed by people who actually run link building operations.**The Problem It Solved:**Managing complex link-building efforts for multiple clients in Google Sheets created errors, lost prospects, and inconsistent quality. We needed a platform built for how agencies actually work.**What It Does:**- Complete CRM functionality for prospect relationships
- Automated follow-up sequences
- Team collaboration tools with role-based access
- Quality control workflows to maintain standards
- White-label client reporting
- Campaign progress tracking with real-time metrics
- Integration with Dibz for seamless prospecting-to-outreach flow**Results:**Base changed how the industry manages link building. It’s now used by agencies across three continents to manage campaigns at scale while maintaining quality standards that spreadsheets could never enforce.
### Reportz.io**Automated KPI Dashboards**[reportz.io](https://reportz.io)
Reportz consolidates data from 30+ marketing channels into real-time, white-labeled dashboards that communicate results without manual effort. It turns raw data into compelling client narratives.**The Problem It Solved:**We were spending approximately five hours per client each month on manual reporting. Existing tools lacked features like custom date ranges, unlimited widgets, and proper white-labeling. The time spent on reports was time stolen from actual campaign work.**What It Does:**- Data integration from Google Analytics, Search Console, social platforms, and proprietary tools
- Fully white-labeled reports with custom branding
- Automated delivery on configurable schedules
- Flexible metric selection and custom widgets
- Predefined templates for common campaign types
- Real-time updates with responsive design
- Multi-format delivery (PDF, online dashboards, email summaries)**Results:**The AppSumo launch generated $285,000 in twenty days. Reportz became the highest-rated SEO reporting tool on Capterra. It’s now used by thousands of agencies worldwide.
### TheTrustmaker (Cue)**Social Proof and Conversion Optimization**[thetrustmaker.com](https://thetrustmaker.com)
TheTrustmaker provides the “final nudge” that converts hesitant visitors into customers. It displays real-time social proof notifications that build trust and create urgency without manipulation.**The Problem It Solved:**New SaaS and e-commerce businesses face a cold-start credibility problem. They need social proof, but they don’t have enough customers to generate it naturally. We needed a tool that could accelerate trust-building for early-stage clients.**What It Does:**-**Cue Notifications:**Shows individual user actions (e.g., “David from Paris created an account 2 hours ago”)
-**Hot Cue:**Displays aggregate activity over time periods (e.g., “47 users created an account in the last 7 days”)
-**Urgent Cue:**Customizable FOMO notifications (e.g., “24 people are currently viewing this page”)
- Data pulling from Intercom, Shopify, or custom sources
- Full design customization and display frequency controls
- Easy installation with minimal code**Results:**Early users report increased lead generation and improved conversion rates. It solves the credibility problem for startups that can’t wait years to build social proof organically.
### FAII.ai**AI visibility Optimization Platform**[faii.ai](https://faii.ai)
FAII is the first complete system for AI visibility monitoring across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. When clients started asking “What does ChatGPT say about us?” – we built the answer.**The Problem It Solved:**Millions of people now ask AI platforms for recommendations instead of typing into Google. Traditional SEO tools track search rankings, but they can’t tell you whether Claude recommends your competitors or whether Perplexity mentions your brand. We needed visibility into how AI systems perceive our clients.**What It Does:**-**Multi-Platform Monitoring:**Track AI responses across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini
-**Gap Analysis:**Automatically surface opportunities where competitors appear but your client doesn’t
-**Content Creation:**Generate AI-optimized articles targeting specific visibility gaps
-**One-Click Publishing:**Push content directly to WordPress with scheduling and draft management
-**Global Coverage:**195+ countries, any language, city-level precision
-**Complete Loop:**Monitor → Analyze → Create → Publish → Measure → Optimize → Repeat**Results:**FAII provides insights unavailable through any other tool. It defines a new service category that agencies can offer clients who dominate Google but lose recommendations to competitors on AI platforms.
### Suprmind.ai**AI Orchestration Platform**[suprmind.ai](https://suprmind.ai)
Suprmind coordinates multiple AI models for complex tasks that exceed any single model’s capabilities. It’s the infrastructure for AI-powered workflows at scale.**The Problem It Solved:**AI capabilities are fragmenting across models with different strengths. Claude excels at reasoning, GPT at certain creative tasks, Gemini at multimodal analysis. Coordinating them manually for client deliverables was inefficient and inconsistent.**What It Does:**- Ultimate model coordination across multiple AI systems
- Task routing based on model strengths
- Workflow automation for complex AI-driven processes
- Quality control across AI outputs
- Scalable infrastructure for agency operations**Results:**Suprmind enables AI-powered service delivery that would be impossible with single-model approaches. It’s the orchestration layer for the next generation of agency operations.
### UberPress.ai**AI-Powered Content Generation**UberPress accelerates content creation through AI while maintaining the quality standards required for publication on authoritative sites.**The Problem It Solved:**Content production is often the bottleneck in digital marketing campaigns. Writing quality articles at scale requires either large teams or compromised standards. We needed a way to produce more content without sacrificing the quality that earns links and rankings.**What It Does:**- AI-assisted content creation with editorial control
- Quality filters to meet publication standards
- Integration with publishing workflows
- Scalable content production for campaigns**Results:**UberPress allows Four Dots to produce content at volumes that would otherwise require significantly larger teams, while maintaining standards that satisfy editorial requirements of target publications.**Tools born from real client problems. Licensed by agencies worldwide. This is what separates operators from consultants.***Four Dots has operated as an Agency-as-a-Lab since 2013. The proprietary technology stack now serves all of our clients and is licensed by agencies across all continents.*[Explore Our Tools](https://fourdots.com/seo-tools-for-agencies) | [See How We Work](https://fourdots.com/about-us) | [Contact Us](https://fourdots.com/contact)
---
## Pages: Client Case Studies
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/case-studies](https://fourdots.com/case-studies)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/case-studies.md](https://fourdots.com/case-studies.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Discover how Four Dots digital marketing agency leveraged client Case Studies for SEO success. Discover how Four Dots helped 18 clients to reach their business goals. 18 case studies, 18 real clients.
---
## Pages: New York SEO Agency
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc.md](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: SEO Outreach Agency
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency.md](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency.md)
**Published:** 2025-12-28
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
# SEO Outreach Agency Services
- ✓**80.23%**Year-to-Year Link Survival Rate
- ✓**110,000+**Tracked Backlinks
- ✓**14 Years**of Manual Outreach Expertise
- ✓**Provided**Proprietary Tech Stack
- ✓
Trusted by**Coca-Cola, Orange & PMI**#### Stop Paying for Links That Disappear. Build Authority That Lasts.
### Manual Outreach. Real Relationships. Measurable Results.**[Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/about-us)**is an independent SEO outreach agency with 14 years of hands-on link building experience. We combine proprietary prospecting tools with manual outreach to secure editorial placements on real websites with real traffic. No mass emails. No PBNs. No shortcuts that collapse when Google updates.
#### Strategic Prospecting
Generic outreach lists produce generic results. Our proprietary tool [Dibz.me](https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082) surfaces relevant opportunities your competitors cannot find, filtered through a 17-parameter spam algorithm that eliminates low-quality targets before outreach begins.
#### Manual Relationship Building
Mass email campaigns burn domains and produce junk placements. Every pitch we send comes from a real person who has manually reviewed the target site. Slower outreach. Better acceptance rates. Placements that survive.
#### Full-Process Transparency
Most agencies hand you a spreadsheet at month end. You get live access to Base.me showing exactly which opportunities are found, which are outreached, which are confirmed, and which are pending. Watch the work happen.*No template blasts. No mystery metrics.*## Is Your Link Profile Full of Wasted Budget and Dead Links?
You invested thousands in link building last year. Half those links already vanished. Competitors are smiling. The agency blames Google. Then they disappeared too.
Standard SEO outreach services recycle tired prospect lists, blast thousands of emails from your domain, and count links without measuring whether they survive. They call it scale. You call it waste.**The problem is not link building. It is how most agencies do it.**If your links keep dying, you are not building authority. You are renting it.
## You’re in the Right Place
After 14 years of high-end link building for clients and white-label partners, backed by proprietary link building and [SEO tools other agencies](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) license, and a veteran outreach team, we are confident we can solve your link building problems.
Send us an email → jump on a quick call with our Head of SEO → and half the problem is already solved.
---
## Pages:
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-platform-for-agencies](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-platform-for-agencies)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-platform-for-agencies.md](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-platform-for-agencies.md)
**Published:** 2025-12-17
**Last Updated:** 2025-12-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
# The AI Visibility PlatformBuilt for Agencies
# FAII.ai
- ✓**Complete Loop**— Monitor, Analyze, Create, Publish, Measure
- ✓**5 AI Platforms**— ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Gemini
- ✓**Multi-Brand**— Manage All Clients From One Dashboard
- ✓**White-Label**— Client-Ready Reports With Your Branding
- ✓Built by**Four Dots**— 13 Years of Enterprise SEO
### From Agency-as-a-Lab to Your Competitive Advantage
#### The Only AI Visibility Tool That Doesn’t Just Show the Problem.It Fixes It.**Four Dots**spent over a decade helping brands dominate search. When our clients started asking “What does ChatGPT say about us?” — we built the answer. [FAII](https://faii.ai/) started as an internal tool. It grew into the first complete AI visibility solution for agencies: the full intelligence-to-action loop from monitoring to publishing, available to agencies everywhere.
#### Multi-Platform Monitoring
Track AI responses across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini. See exactly what these platforms say about your clients and their competitors. Know which platforms favor your client’s brand — and which need work.
#### Gap Analysis & Content Creation
Automatically surface opportunities where competitors appear but your client doesn’t. Generate AI-optimized articles targeting those specific gaps. Content structured to earn AI citations, not just human clicks.
#### One-Click WordPress Publishing
Push content directly to client WordPress sites. Schedule publications, manage drafts, handle multiple sites from a single dashboard. No manual copying, no formatting headaches. Draft, schedule, or publish instantly.
#### Monitor → Analyze → Identify Gaps → → Create Content → Publish → Measure →→ Optimize → Repeat.
[Explore FAII — Start Your Free Trial](https://faii.ai/)*Test the full platform with real client data before committing.*## The Challenge Every Agency Now Faces
Your clients are asking a question you couldn’t answer six months ago: “What does ChatGPT say about us?”
Millions of people now ask AI chatbots for recommendations instead of typing into Google. When a potential customer asks Claude “What’s the best accounting software for small businesses?” or prompts Perplexity with “Which digital marketing agencies specialize in e-commerce?” — your client’s brand is either in that response, or it isn’t.
Traditional SEO tools weren’t built for this reality. They track Google rankings, backlinks, and keyword positions. Valuable data, but incomplete.**The search landscape has fractured across five major AI platforms, Google’s AI Overviews, and an emerging ecosystem of AI-powered discovery tools.**### What Makes FAII Different from Other AI Visibility Tools
Most**AI visibility tracking tools for agencies**stop at data. They’ll tell you whether ChatGPT mentions your client’s brand. They’ll show you sentiment scores and mention rates. Useful information, but it creates a new problem: now what?**FAII closes the loop.**No other AI search visibility platform offers this complete workflow. Most give you data and leave you to figure out the rest. FAII turns intelligence into action.
#### Monitor → Analyze → Identify Gaps → → Create Content → Publish → Measure →→ Optimize → Repeat.
## The New Revenue Stream: AI Visibility Optimization Services
This isn’t just a tool. It’s the foundation for an entirely new service line that generates reliable recurring revenue.
#### Think About How SEO Retainers Work
Clients pay monthly for ongoing optimization, reporting, and strategy. The work never “finishes” — search algorithms change, competitors move, content needs refreshing. That’s why SEO generates reliable recurring revenue.**AI visibility works the same way.**AI platforms constantly update their training data. Competitors optimize their presence. New questions emerge that trigger different recommendations. Your clients need ongoing monitoring, optimization, and content creation — exactly the kind of work that justifies monthly retainers.
#### What an AI Visibility Retainer Includes
- Weekly or monthly monitoring across five AI platforms
- Competitive tracking and share-of-voice reporting
- Gap analysis identifying new optimization opportunities
- AI-optimized content creation (2-4 pieces monthly)
- WordPress publishing and content calendar management
- Monthly reporting with AI Authority Rank tracking
- Quarterly strategy sessions based on performance data
[See How FAII Works — Request a Demo](https://faii.ai/)*15-minute walkthrough. See real agency workflows in action.*## Why This Matters for Your Agency’s Growth
#### Expand Existing Client Relationships
Your current SEO clients are the warmest leads for AI visibility services. They already trust you with their search presence. They’re already asking about AI. Offering AI search visibility tracking as an add-on increases average client value without acquisition costs.
#### Differentiate in a Crowded Market
Every agency offers SEO. Every agency offers paid media. Fewer agencies — far fewer — offer structured AI visibility optimization with real AI visibility benchmarking platforms powering the work. Being early to this service category positions you as forward-thinking and technically sophisticated.
#### Create Stickier Client Relationships
Clients who buy multiple services churn less. Adding AI visibility to an SEO retainer means clients have more reasons to stay. The reporting connects — improvements in AI visibility often correlate with traditional SEO gains, creating a unified narrative about search presence.
#### Future-Proof Your Service Mix
AI-driven discovery isn’t going away. Google’s AI Overviews are expanding. ChatGPT’s user base keeps growing. The percentage of brand discovery happening through AI will only increase. Agencies building AI visibility expertise now will own this category as it matures.
## The Five Platforms That Matter
AI visibility isn’t monolithic. Each platform has different training data, different biases, different recommendation patterns. A brand might dominate on ChatGPT while being invisible on Claude. The best AI search visibility tools for SEO agencies cover all five.
#### ChatGPT (OpenAI)
The market leader with hundreds of millions of users. When people think “AI assistant,” they think ChatGPT. Visibility here matters most for consumer-facing brands.
#### Claude (Anthropic)
Trusted for business and professional recommendations. B2B brands and service providers often see stronger performance on Claude than other platforms.
#### Sonar Pro (Perplexity)
Growing rapidly as a Google alternative. Users come here specifically to search, making it critical for discovery-stage visibility.
#### Grok (xAI)
Integrated with X/Twitter, reaching audiences through social context. Important for brands with strong social presence.
#### Gemini (Google)
Deeply integrated with Google’s ecosystem. As Google pushes AI features into search, Gemini visibility increasingly affects traditional SEO performance.
[See FAII In Action — Book a Quick Demo](https://faii.ai/)*Live walkthrough with your actual client data.*## Beyond Chat: SERP Intelligence and AI Overviews
AI visibility extends beyond chatbots. Google’s AI Overviews now appear above organic results for millions of queries, providing AI-generated summaries that may or may not include your client.
#### Traditional SERP Tracking
Rankings up to position 30, position changes over time, and performance across 250+ countries and territories.
#### AI Overview Intelligence
Whether your keywords trigger AI Overviews, whether your client’s brand appears in that AI-generated content, and whether their site gets cited as a source.
This dual-layer tracking reveals opportunities invisible to traditional tools. A client might rank #3 organically but be completely absent from the AI Overview — losing visibility to competitors who optimized for AI citation.
## Built for Agency Workflows
| Feature | Standard AI Tools | FAII for Agencies |
| --- | --- | --- |
|**Client Management**| Single brand per account |**Multi-brand dashboard, switch instantly**|
|**Competitor Tracking**| Limited or manual |**Full parity with client tracking depth**|
|**Reporting**| Generic exports |**White-label with your agency branding**|
|**Content Workflow**| Data only — DIY content |**Gap → Content → Publish in one platform**|
|**Publishing**| None |**Direct WordPress integration, multi-site**|
|**AI Crawler Analytics**| None |**Track 27 AI systems visiting client sites**|
|**Intelligence Loop**| Monitor only |**Complete: Monitor → Fix → Measure → Repeat**|
← Scroll to compare →
### The Metric That Matters: AI Authority Rank
Data overwhelm kills action. You could track mention rates, sentiment scores, ranking positions, AI Overview presence, and competitor performance — but what does it all mean?**FAII’s AI Authority Rank**combines everything into a single 0-100 score. Think of it as a credit score for AI visibility.
#### Chat Intelligence (50%)
Mention rates across platforms, sentiment quality, position in recommendations, platform coverage.
#### SERP Intelligence (50%)
Organic rankings, AI Overview presence, brand citations in AI-generated content, SERP feature performance.
Track this number over time. Set targets. Show clients a clear metric they can understand without drowning in data. When the score improves, visibility is improving. Simple.
[Check Out Our Pricing Plans](https://faii.ai/pricing)*Starter from $87/mo. No long-term contracts.*## How SEO and AI Visibility Work Together
#### Shared Research Benefits
Keyword research for SEO informs AI visibility targeting. Competitor analysis reveals gaps in both channels. Content created for AI visibility also ranks in traditional search. The work compounds.
#### Unified Reporting Narrative
Clients don’t think in channel silos. They want to know: “Are we winning in search?” Combining SEO metrics with AI visibility data tells a complete story. Traditional rankings plus AI mention rates plus AI Overview citations equals a comprehensive view.
#### Cross-Channel Optimization
Content that earns AI citations often performs well in organic search. Technical improvements for AI crawler access benefit Googlebot too. Schema markup helps both AI systems and traditional search engines understand your client’s content.
#### Efficient Team Utilization
The same team handling SEO can handle AI visibility. The skills overlap — content strategy, technical optimization, competitive analysis, reporting. You’re not building a separate practice from scratch.
## Packaging AI Visibility Services: Three Models
FAII scales from single-client usage to multi-brand enterprise deployment. Choose the model that fits your agency.
#### Starter
The Add-On Model — Bundle into existing SEO retainers.
$87
/month
[Start Free Trial](https://faii.ai/pricing)
What’s included:
- ✓ SERP Intelligence (Google + AIO)
- ✓ Core Chat Intelligence
- ✓ 50 keywords tracked
- ✓ 200 chat questions/week
- ✓ 3 competitors tracked
- ✓ Basic dashboards & reports
Most Popular
#### Professional
The Standalone Model — Independent AI visibility retainer.
$247
/month
[Start Free Trial](https://faii.ai/pricing)
Everything in Starter, plus:
- ✓ Gemini & Perplexity included
- ✓ 150 keywords tracked
- ✓ 750 chat questions/week
- ✓ 10 competitors tracked
- ✓ Content gap analysis
- ✓ Scheduled PDF reports
#### Enterprise
The same team handling SEO can handle AI visibility. The skills overlap — content strategy, technical optimization, competitive analysis, reporting. You’re not building a separate practice from scratch.
14px; color: #6b7280; margin-bottom: 20px; line-height: 1.5;”>The Integrated Model — Full SEO + AI visibility package.
$749
/month
[Contact for Agency Pricing](mailto:partners@faii.ai?subject=Agency%20Enterprise)
Everything in Pro, plus:
- ✓ Content & Action Engine
- ✓ 500+ keywords tracked
- ✓ 2,000+ chat questions/week
- ✓ Unlimited competitors
- ✓ Auto-generated articles
- ✓ White-label reports
White-Label
#### Agency Partnership Program
Full white-label platform, multi-client dashboard, unlimited usage, branded reports, and revenue sharing opportunities.
[Book Partnership Call](mailto:partners@faii.ai?subject=Agency%20Partnership)
[Start Your Free FAII Trial](https://faii.ai/)*Full platform access. Real client data. No commitment required.*##### Why We Built This for Agencies
### We’re Agency People. We Built What We Needed.
We could have built FAII for brands directly. There’s a market for it. But**Four Dots**is an agency. We understand the workflows, the client pressures, the need for scalable solutions that work across dozens of accounts.
Every feature exists because we needed it ourselves. Every workflow mirrors how agencies actually operate. Every report is designed to communicate with clients, not just internal teams. This is the**AI visibility platform for agencies**we wanted when our clients started asking questions we couldn’t answer.**13 Years**Enterprise SEO Experience**Creator**Reportz, Dibz, Base, FAII**Clients Include**Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, Orange
## The Agencies Moving First Will Define the Category
AI visibility is becoming a core service category, not an add-on.
- →**Early movers develop the case studies**that become industry references. They build expertise while competitors are still evaluating.
- →**The question isn’t whether AI visibility services will matter.**It’s whether your agency will lead or follow.
- →**FAII gives you the platform**to deliver these services at scale. Monitor what AI says about your clients. Fix the gaps. Measure the results. Build recurring revenue.
[Ready to Add AI Visibility Services to Your Agency? Start Free →](https://faii.ai/)*FAII is developed by Four Dots, a digital marketing agency with 13 years of experience helping brands dominate search.
Learn more at [faii.ai](https://faii.ai/)*
---
## Pages: AI Visibility Optimization
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization.md](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization.md)
**Published:** 2025-12-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
# AI Visibility Optimization Services
- ✓**5**AI Platforms Monitored (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity & Grok)
- ✓**Proprietary**FAII.AI Platform Access Included
- ✓
[**13 Years**of Enterprise SEO Experience](https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company)
- ✓**Hands-On**Implementation, Not Just PDF Reports
- ✓
Trusted by**Coca-Cola, Philip Morris & Orange**#### AI Strategic Visibility. Stop Missing From AI Recommendations. Get Cited.
### [Agency-as-a-Lab](/agency-as-a-lab), where agency meets software company**[Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/)**is an independent premier AI SEO agency with over a decade of expertise. We built FAII.AI to solve a problem our enterprise clients kept bringing us: they dominate Google, but AI recommends their competitors. We combined 13 years of search expertise with our proprietary [AI visibility optimization platform](https://faii.ai) to fix that.
#### AI Presence Audit
ChatGPT and Perplexity recommend your competitors. We find out why. Audit how AI systems see, describe, and cite your brand across engines – then trace gaps back to crawlability, entity recognition, and content signals your developers can fix.
#### Content & Entity Optimization
Content built for blue links doesn’t win AI citations. We restructure your highest-value pages so AI systems recognize your brand as the source worth pulling and recommending when users ask about your category.
#### AI Visibility Monitoring
FAII.AI tracks your presence across major AI engines, benchmarks you against competitors on the prompts that matter, monitors AI crawler behavior on your site, and alerts you to shifts – before they hit your traffic.*No dashboards without action. Real implementation.*## Is Your Brand Missing From AI Answers?
You rank. You convert. But when prospects ask AI “best [your category]” or “who should I hire for [your service],” you’re not in the answer.
Standard SEO doesn’t catch this. GEO, AIO, AEO, AIEO, AI SEO, AIVO, or LLMO, call it what you want, but its different from standard SEO. AI systems have different crawlers, different logic, different knowledge sources. What Google indexes, ChatGPT might never see. What ranks #1 in search might not exist in AI’s training data.**The problem isn’t your content. It’s your AI visibility.**If your structure blocks AI crawlers, if your brand entities aren’t clearly defined, if your content doesn’t match how AI interprets user questions – you’re invisible in the channel that’s rapidly replacing the first click.**And if you’re excluded from today’s training data, you’re excluded from tomorrow’s recommendations.**## Let’s talk about AI strategic visibility.
---
## Pages: Enterprise Technical SEO Audit Services
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services.md](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services.md)
**Published:** 2025-11-25
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-22
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
# Enterprise Technical SEO Audit Services
.**If your structure is obsolete, you aren’t just losing today’s search traffic – you are being excluded from the training data of tomorrow’s AI models.**If the bots can’t crawl you, the AI can’t recommend you.**
---
## Pages: AI SEO Services
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services.md](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services.md)
**Published:** 2025-11-04
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-13
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
# Four Dots
The AI SEO Company
## ON GOOGLE, PEOPLE SEARCH.
IN AI CHATS, THEY ASK FOR
RECOMMENDATIONS.
##### AI is rewriting search.
Are you in the answers?
ChatGPT. Claude. Perplexity. Google AI Overviews. A fresh playing field where early movers capture visibility while others wait.
This isn’t replacing your SEO. It’s opening territory you didn’t know existed. AI platforms are handling more search queries every month. The brands they recommend aren’t always the ones ranking on Google. You need visibility in this new channel.
Fresh territory. Zero legacy rankings. Everyone starts from the same position.
## THE OPPORTUNITY
Your decade of SEO work doesn’t transfer directly to AI search. Neither does your competitor’s.
The brands AI platforms cite aren’t the ones that ranked on Google. Different signals matter now. Different optimization approaches work. The entire landscape reset when language models started answering questions directly – creating real opportunity for early movers.
- AI Brand Monitoring across 195+ countries
- AI Friendly Technical Optimization
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- Content Gap Analysis & Identification
- Multi-Platform Visibility Tracking
## WE BUILT THE INFRASTRUCTURE
THAT DEFINES AI SEO
When traditional tools couldn’t track AI visibility or measure improvements in AI-generated responses, we built FAII.ai. Same pattern as when we created Base, Reportz, and Dibz because proper commercial solutions didn’t exist. Tools weren’t there. So we made them. That’s been our approach since 2012.
Agency meets software company.
In our Agency-as-a-Lab approach, marketing strategy meets technical execution.
### WHAT
WE
DO
FOR
CLIENTS**– Visibility Mapping & Tracking:**Track how AI platforms perceive your brand across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. City-level precision. Any language.**– Opportunity Identification:**Find exact questions and keywords your prospects ask that generate competitor mentions – but not yours.**– [Technical AI SEO](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services) Optimization:**Technically optimize your website for better AI crawling and content indexation.**– Strategic Content Engineering:**Develop content structured for how AI systems evaluate and recommend sources.**– Systematic Deployment:**Publish and amplify to build authority signals AI platforms recognize.
.
#### Agency-as-Lab Model
[Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/about-us) started as a premium SEO agency in 2012. We built proprietary platforms – Base.me, Reportz.io, [Dibz.me](https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082), TheTrustmaker.com – to solve workflow problems we encountered with clients. When AI changed search in 2023, we built FAII: the first complete system for [AI visibility monitoring](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization) across 195+ countries.
#### Proven Track Record
13+ years delivering campaigns for Philip Morris International, Coca-Cola, Orange Telecom, and 200+ clients across three continents. Base.me changed how the industry manages link building. Reportz.io automated reporting for thousands. This same innovation pattern created FAII.
#### FAII Platform Intelligence
Our proprietary FAII platform monitors how AI systems perceive brands across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Global coverage in 195+ countries. Any language. City-level precision. Complete workflow: Monitor – Analyze – Create – Publish – Amplify – Measure.
#### Marketing Strategy + Technical Execution
Our 30-person team combines seasoned digital strategists with engineers who build enterprise-scale systems. We don’t just run the SaaS platform. We built it. And we [offer](https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613) the underlying technology to agencies worldwide. When platforms change behavior, we adapt infrastructure the same day.
#### Why Timing Matters
AI platforms learn from interaction patterns. Early citations compound into authority signals. The brands AI systems recommend today influence training data tomorrow. Waiting means watching competitors establish presence while the window closes. This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now.
#### Thought Leadership
CEO [Radomir Basta](https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta) authored “The Good Book of SEO,” lectures at Belgrade’s Digital Communications Institute, speaks at regional conferences. Operational knowledge from running hundreds of campaigns – not marketing theory.
We don’t promise overnight results or guarantee specific rankings – AI recommendation systems don’t work that way.
What we offer: systematic visibility improvement through proven agency execution backed by proprietary technology. Our tools exist because we needed them for clients. Our approach works because we’ve tested it across hundreds of campaigns. We’re defining this category. Not following it.*FUTURE-PROOF YOUR VISIBILITY*## Frequently Asked Questions
AI SEO Services & Generative Engine Optimization
### What is AI SEO and how is it different from traditional SEO?
AI SEO (also called Generative Engine Optimization or GEO) focuses on making your brand discoverable to AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Gemini. Traditional SEO optimizes for search rankings. AI SEO works differently – it helps AI platforms understand your brand, trust your authority, and mention you when users ask questions. This requires specialized monitoring, content structured for language models, and systematic measurement of recommendation frequency.
### How does the FAII platform work?
FAII monitors how AI platforms perceive your brand across 195+ countries in any language with city-level precision. It identifies gaps where competitors appear in AI recommendations and you don’t. Then it creates content to close those gaps, publishes and amplifies it across channels, and measures improvement in 4-week cycles. Complete workflow: Monitor – Analyze – Create – Publish – Amplify – Measure.
### Which AI platforms do you optimize for?
We optimize for all major AI platforms: Google AI Overviews (formerly SGE), ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Our FAII platform tracks brand mentions across these systems globally – identifying where your brand appears, where competitors dominate, and systematically improving your visibility across all platforms at once.
### What makes Four Dots different from other AI SEO agencies?
We built the infrastructure that defines AI SEO. We created FAII when existing tools couldn’t track AI visibility – same approach as when we created Base.me, Reportz.io, and Dibz.me for other challenges. We combine 13+ years of agency experience with technical development capability. We’re operators who use these systems daily for client campaigns – not consultants theorizing about AI.
---
## Pages: The Complete White Label SEO Guide for Australian Agencies
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/the-complete-white-label-seo-guide-for-australian-agencies-2025](https://fourdots.com/the-complete-white-label-seo-guide-for-australian-agencies-2025)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/the-complete-white-label-seo-guide-for-australian-agencies-2025.md](https://fourdots.com/the-complete-white-label-seo-guide-for-australian-agencies-2025.md)
**Published:** 2025-01-01
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
**Summary:** Scale your Australian digital agency with white label SEO. This comprehensive guide provides implementation strategies, pricing models, and best practices for agencies.
### Content
###### 4 in 5 Australian agenciesstruggle with scaling SEO services without hiring specialists.*##### This is why your agency simply needs white label SEO.
White label SEO is a popular outsourcing strategy among Australian digital agencies whose clients demand comprehensive SEO services. This is especially true in recent years when the demand for specialized SEO expertise grows rapidly with increased competition. If your agency operates in Australia and wants to scale without the overhead of in-house specialists, White Label SEO is probably the best strategy you can use to boost your business.
##### White label partnerships drive bothrevenue and client retention**Agencies using white label SEO partnerships not only expand their service offerings without hiring specialists, they also increase client retention by 83% and boost average client value by 59%.**This operational efficiency translates directly to higher margins and more sustainable growth.
Strategic white label partnerships are especially important for Australian agencies facing local market challenges, including talent shortages and increasing service complexity. Despite the fact that your agency might currently focus on design or development, a chance to provide comprehensive digital marketing solutions shouldn’t be passed up.
Another reason every [agency should consider white label SEO](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) is the increasingly complex nature of search optimization.**The shift toward AI-driven search and entity-based models means that to deliver results consistently, you need access to [specialized technical SEO expertise](/technical-seo-audit-services) and enterprise-level tools.**One of the ways to do this without massive overhead is by partnering with established white label specialists.
## Australian Agency Growth Opportunity
The primary goal of white label [SEO partnerships](https://fourdots.com/blog/5-signs-your-agency-needs-a-white-label-seo-partner-in-2025-11213) is to enhance your agency’s service offerings without the overhead and management complexity of building specialized in-house teams. This results in**showing your clients higher ROI while maintaining healthier profit margins than most traditional agency models**. Of course, there’s much more to successful white label partnerships than simply finding a provider to handle your SEO tasks. Some of the critical components of successful white label relationships include:
- Strategic partner selection based on expertise alignment
- Seamless client communication protocols
- Transparent reporting and performance tracking
- Pricing and packaging structures that maintain healthy margins
After determining the ideal partnership structure, we work closely with your agency to ensure consistency in delivery, reporting, and client communication. This was an essential part of the process even before the proliferation of AI tools in SEO, and is even more significant with today’s technology landscape. Basically, effective white label SEO consists of ensuring that every service you offer through your partnerships delivers uniform, accurate results that strengthen your agency’s reputation.
### Our approach
In addition to the foundational [white label SEO services](https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools), as your reliable partner, we make sure that you don’t run into problems with integration challenges or misaligned expectations. Our proven onboarding system ensures both your team and your clients receive consistent, high-quality service delivery.**Customized reporting and dashboards**are integral when it comes to white label SEO partnerships, making it one of our areas of focus in any agency relationship. Our Reportz platform provides fully white-labeled reporting that seamlessly integrates with your existing client communications.
Finally, aside from making sure that your clients see measurable results from their [SEO investments](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-invest-in-seo-3418),**we’ll go the extra mile to provide your team with knowledge transfer and strategic support**, helping your agency develop long-term expertise while immediately expanding your service offerings.
## YOURBENEFITS
###### The results of an efficient white label SEO partnership should be noticeable in a relatively short period due to market specificities. Typically, Australian agencies with white label partnerships see 40-60% increased client capacity in the first year, with minimal overhead increases.**With a strategic white label relationship, agencies can become leaders in their market segment while maintaining healthy margins.**Furthermore, this can be an excellent growth strategy for agencies looking to develop valuation before a potential exit or acquisition.
#####*Ready to Scale Your Agency Without the Overhead?**Consult Our White Label SEO Experts Now!*[CONTACT US](/contact)
## TESTIMONIALS
I am very pleased with the white label SEO program that Four Dots formulated for our agency. Apart from a significant increase in our service capacity and client retention, it was their level of involvement and seamless integration that really made an impression.**Daniel Robertson,**Founder*DigitalGrowth.com.au*When we’re talking about white label SEO partnerships, Four Dots is definitely taking the top spot. Fantastic team, great organization and impressive results for our clients. We are always happy when our clients renew their contracts – simply astonishing ROI.**Sarah Williams,**Managing Director*SydneyDigital.com.au***Watch this video about white label seo for australian agencies implementation guide:**Four Dots has delivered outstanding results month after month for our client base. Without the white label services that Four Dots provides, we would not have been able to scale so efficiently. Radomir and the team are always there to help and provide prompt responses.**Michael Chen,**Operations Director*MelbourneAgency.com.au*## SOME OF OUR CLIENTS**Note:**Client logos would appear here.
## Theinsight
### latestfrom the blog
#### How to Triple Agency Revenue with White Label SEO
What kind of promises are you getting from potential [white label partners](/white-label-seo-services)? Are they claiming to be able to bring relevant targeted organic traffic to your clients’ sites and improve their conversion rates and revenue, or are they just limiting themselves to improving rankings?
(read more)
March 15th, 2025
posted by [Radomir Basta](https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta)
#### White Label SEO vs. In-House Teams: The Australian Agency Dilemma
Deciding whether to build an in-house SEO team or partner with a white label provider has become a critical strategic decision. Back in 2023, when the talent market was less competitive, building in-house capabilities made sense for some agencies. Today, the economics have shifted dramatically.
(read more)
February 10th, 2025
posted by [Goran Tepsic](https://fourdots.com/blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement)
#### GET IN TOUCH
---
## Pages: Free PRO AI SEO Tools
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/free-pro-ai-seo-tools](https://fourdots.com/free-pro-ai-seo-tools)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/free-pro-ai-seo-tools.md](https://fourdots.com/free-pro-ai-seo-tools.md)
**Published:** 2024-12-30
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-25
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
## The SEO Auditor
The SEO Auditor is a pioneering AI-driven tool meticulously crafted by seasoned [veterans of the SEO industry](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc), with a special focus on technical SEO and [AI SEO visibility](/ai-visibility-optimization). This advanced platform is engineered to perform comprehensive, data-driven audits of both [technical and on-page SEO](/technical-seo-audit-services) elements of websites.
## Dr. KWR – Full SEO KW Research & Content + Ahrefs
ULTIMATE #SEO KEYWORD RESEARCH: From the seed keyword, you’ll get full “Keyword Research” with [Ahrefs SEO data](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059). THEN> “Keyword Mapping Data Table” with 3 pages. THEN> “Content Creation Brief” for three landing pages. THEN> Content written for those pages.Try now.
## The ReWright – Expert Content Analyst and Rewriter
Expert Content Researcher, Copywriter, Editor and Rewriter specializing in Content Enhancements, Optimizations and Text SEO & UX Improvements. My expertise is enhancing articles while keeping the essence of the original content, making the text engaging, informative, and SEO-friendly.Try now
---
## Pages: Radomir Basta
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta](https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta.md](https://fourdots.com/about-radomir-basta.md)
**Published:** 2024-04-13
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-16
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
## Digital Marketing Agency Leadership
At [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com), the digital marketing agency he co-founded, Radomir Basta helped develop creative SEO techniques that set the company apart in a competitive industry. The effectiveness of these techniques is evidenced by the company’s expansion into international markets, including [Four Dots Australia](https://fourdots.com.au) and [Elevate Digital Hong Kong](https://elevatedigital.hk).
## Specialized SaaS Tools for SEO and Digital Marketing
Basta’s most significant impact on the SEO industry came through his development of [specialized SaaS SEO strategies](https://seō.com) and tools:
1. [**Base.me**](https://base.me/): This advanced white label link building management platform revolutionized how SEO professionals handle link building campaigns. Before Base.me, the industry standard was to use Google Sheets for managing link building efforts, a method that was often cumbersome and inefficient. By creating a dedicated platform for this purpose, Basta addressed a significant pain point in the SEO workflow.
2.**[Reportz.io](https://reportz.io)**: This platform streamlines the often complex task of marketing data management and reporting, saving marketers time and improving data accuracy in SEO and other digital marketing efforts.
3. [**Dibz.me**](https://Dibz.me): Recognizing the growing importance of influencer marketing in SEO and digital strategies, this tool facilitates connections with influential individuals for business growth.
4.**[TheTrustmaker.com](https://TheTrustmaker.com)**: This tool focuses on building consumer trust and optimizing conversion rates by using FOMO and critical aspects of e-commerce success that often intersect with SEO efforts.
## Exploration of AI in Digital Marketing
In the realm of AI and digital marketing, Basta has initiated projects like [Suprmind](https://suprmind.ai/), [FAII.ai](https://faii.ai/), [UberPress.ai](https://uberpress.ai/), [1×2.pro](https://1x2.pro), [theAstro.chat](https://theAstro.chat), and [FengShui.bot](https://FengShui.bot), exploring how AI can be applied to various aspects of digital marketing and consumer engagement.
- [**Suprmind**](https://suprmind.ai/): Suprmind is a decision validation platform that orchestrates five frontier AI models – GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity – in structured conversations where each model sees and builds on what the others said before it.
The result is compounding intelligence. Instead of getting one AI’s perspective and hoping it’s right, professionals get five perspectives that challenge, verify, and strengthen each other. When the models agree, you’ve earned conviction. When they disagree, you’ve found the thing worth investigating before it becomes an expensive mistake.
- [**FAII**](https://faii.ai/): FAII is the top-rated AI visibility optimization platform that shows how AI sees your brand – and then fixes it. Monitor gaps, track AI bots, and automate content improvements in a single app.
## Educational Contributions
Basta’s book, “[The Good Book of SEO](https://thegoodbookofseo.com/),” published in 2020, represents a practical contribution to SEO education. Aimed at business owners and marketing managers working with SEO specialists, it distills his years of experience into actionable insights.
As a lecturer at [Belgrade’s Digital Communications Institute](https://www.digitalcommunicationsinstitute.com/speaker/radomir-basta/), Rad contributes to the education of future digital marketers, sharing practical knowledge gained from his years in the industry. This role, along with his participation in various conferences and events, allows him to disseminate insights and potentially influence industry practices.
The “CEO of SEO” moniker was coined by a disgruntled Institute student who kept calling SEO “CEO,” even after a few corrections. The joking title was quickly adopted by Radomir’s colleagues at the Institute and at Four Dots, and it’s now used as a friendly sting whenever he goes deep on an SEO topic or, famously, runs past the allocated 3.5 hour lecture slot. He’s not exactly thrilled about it.
## Basta’s Industry Impact and Community Engagement
Radomir Basta, as CEO of SEO agencies, with extensive experience, has made significant contributions to the SEO and digital marketing industry through innovative tools and active community engagement. His development of specialized SaaS solutions, such as Base.me, has addressed common industry challenges and improved workflows.
Basta actively shares his expertise through various channels:
1. Social Media: He maintains a strong presence on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/radomirbasta/), [Medium](https://medium.com/@gashomor), and [Quora](https://www.quora.com/profile/Radomir-Basta), sharing insights and case studies with a unique blend of actionable data and humor.
2. Speaking Engagements: With over 13 years of experience, Basta is a regular fixture at local and regional digital marketing conferences. He participates as a panelist, moderator, lecturer, and speaker, covering a wide range of topics in SEO, data analysis and digital marketing.
3. Workshops: Basta contributes to mastermind workshops, facilitating collaborative learning experiences for industry professionals.
4. Educational Role: As a lecturer at [Belgrade’s Digital Marketing Institute](https://www.digitalcommunicationsinstitute.com/speaker/radomir-basta/), he helps shape the next generation of digital marketers.
Through these diverse engagement methods, Basta extends his influence beyond his business ventures, contributing to industry discussions and demystifying complex SEO concepts for a broad audience. His consistent presence in these forums over more than a decade underscores his commitment to ongoing learning and his status as a respected figure in the digital marketing community.
### Radomir Basta, SEO strategija – Pojačalo podcast EP 059
### Radomir Basta, CEO of SEO Agency Four Dots
### Radomir Basta – Keyword research (Blog radionica)
### Radomir Basta Pojačalo Short
## Radomir Basta Author and Social Media Profiles
- [Radomir’s Instagram Profile](https://www.instagram.com/bastardo_violente/)
- [LinkedIn Profile of Radomir Basta](https://rs.linkedin.com/in/radomirbasta)
- [Amazon Author Profile for Radomir Basta](https://www.amazon.de/stores/author/B0847NTDHX)
- [Basta’s Lecturer Profile at Digital Communications Institute](https://www.digitalcommunicationsinstitute.com/speaker/radomir-basta/)
- [Radomir’s Facebook Profile](https://www.facebook.com/radomir.basta/)
- [Twitter Profile of Radomir Basta](https://twitter.com/RadomirBasta)
- [Radomir Basta on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/c/RadomirBasta/videos)
- [Articles by Radomir Basta on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/radomirbasta?trk=author-info__article-link)
- [Speaker Profile at eCommerce Conference](https://ecommerceconference.mk/2023/blog/speaker/radomir-basta/)
- [Radomir Basta’s Traffic Think Tank Profile](https://trafficthinktank.com/community/radomir-basta/)
- [The Good Book of SEO by Radomir on Amazon](https://www.amazon.de/Good-Book-SEO-English-ebook/dp/B08479P6M4)
- [About Radomir Basta on Medium](https://medium.com/@gashomor/about)
- [Goodreads Author Page for Radomir Basta](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19330719.Radomir_Basta)
- [Radomir Basta on Poe](https://poe.com/tabascopit)
- [Basta’s Contributor Profile on Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/people/radomirbasta/)
- [Author Page on BrandingMag](https://www.brandingmag.com/author/radomir-basta/)
- [Quora Profile of Radomir Basta](https://www.quora.com/profile/Radomir-Basta)
- [Facebook Public Profile for Radomir Basta](https://m.facebook.com/public/Radomir-Basta)
- [Hugendubel Profile for Radomir Basta](https://www.hugendubel.info/detail/ISBN-9781945147166/Ristic-Radomir/Vesticja-Basta-A-Witchs-Garden)
- [Goodreads Book Page for Radomir Basta](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51083787)
- [SEMrush Profile of Radomir Basta](https://www.semrush.com/user/145902001/)
- [Waterstones Book Page for Radomir Basta](https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-good-book-of-seo/radomir-basta//9788690077502)
- [Radomir Basta on Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/people/urban-extreme/)
- [Articles by Radomir Basta on Medium](https://medium.com/@gashomor)
- [Radomir Basta’s Crunchbase Profile](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/radomir-basta)
- [About the Author – The Good Book of SEO](https://thegoodbookofseo.com/about-the-author/)
- [Radomir Basta on Pinterest](https://www.pinterest.com/gashomor/)
- [eCommerce Conference Speaker Profile](https://ecommerceconference.mk/mk/blog/speaker/radomir-basta/)
- [YouTube Video by Radomir Basta](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yFi89GlfOQ)
- [Profile on Domen](https://www.domen.rs/sr-latn/radomir-basta)
- [Radomir Basta on Razvoj Karijere](https://www.razvoj-karijere.com/radomir-basta)
- [Radomir Basta’s SlideShare](https://www.slideshare.net/radomirbasta)
- [Speaker Profile at Digitalk Zrenjanin 2022](https://www.digitalk.rs/predavaci/digitalk-zrenjanin-2022/subota-9-april/radomir-basta/)
- [Radomir Basta’s Author Profile on Netokracija](https://www.netokracija.rs/author/radomirbasta)
- [Radomir Basta on Digitalizuj.me](https://digitalizuj.me/2015/01/blogeri-iz-regiona-na-digitalizuj-me-blog-radionici/radomir-basta/)
- [iMusic Page for Radomir Basta](https://imusic.dk/page/label/Radomir%20Basta)
- [Radomir Basta’s Startit Profile](https://startit.rs/korisnici/radomir-basta-ie3/)
- [Radomir Basta – SEO Auditor on OpenAI](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-HKPuhCa8c-the-seo-auditor-full-technical-on-page-audits)
- [The Good Book of SEO on eBay](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/354969573938)
- [The Good Book of SEO on MercadoLibre](https://articulo.mercadolibre.cl/MLC-1731708044-libro-the-good-book-of-seo-radomir-basta-_JM)
- [Radomir Basta on DIDS](https://dids.rs/ucesnici/radomir-basta/?ln=lat)
- [Radomir Basta’s RocketReach Profile](https://rocketreach.co/radomir-basta-email_3120243)
- [Finmag Profile for Radomir Basta](https://www.finmag.cz/obchodni-rejstrik/ares/40811441-radomir-basta)
## Photo materials
---
## Pages: SEO Outreach & Link-building Specialists
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-link-building-specialist](https://fourdots.com/seo-link-building-specialist)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-link-building-specialist.md](https://fourdots.com/seo-link-building-specialist.md)
**Published:** 2021-11-05
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-13
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
#### FOUR DOTS SOLUTION
We design bespoke outreach campaigns that merge our expertise in guest blogging with a data-driven strategy. Our dedicated team of**SEO outreach specialists**works relentlessly to connect you with premium opportunities that drive sustainable growth.
## OUR GUEST BLOGGING LINK BUILDING PROCESS
-**Client & Niche Analysis:**A comprehensive review of your website, industry, and target audience to pinpoint the most valuable link opportunities.
-**Link Opportunities Prospecting:**Manual research and advanced tools like Dibz.me to discover premium backlink prospects.
-**Manual Outreach:**Personalized outreach (no mass email campaigns) to secure guest blogging placements on authoritative sites.
-**Content Creation:**Crafting high-quality, engaging content that naturally attracts backlinks.
-**Proofreading & Formatting:**Ensuring every piece of content meets our rigorous editorial standards.
-**Article Scheduling/Publishing:**Coordinating with target sites for optimal publishing times.
-**Reporting:**Detailed performance reports to track progress and measure success.
#### TYPES OF LINKS WE BUILD
Our [services](https://fourdots.com/european-seo-company) cover a spectrum of link types to create a natural and authoritative backlink profile:
| Link Type | Quality Metrics | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Standard Links | DR: 10-35Organic Traffic: 50+Content: 600-700 words | Niche relevant, indexed domains with minimal ad blocks – ideal for building a diverse, natural link profile. |
| High-Quality Links | DR: 35+Organic Traffic: 500+Content: 700-800 words | Premium backlinks from authoritative sites that deliver significant SEO impact. |
| Editorial Links | DR: 50+Organic Traffic: 5000+Content: 800-1000 words | Top-tier links from well-established sites with active communities, ensuring maximum visibility and trust. |
#### WHITE LABEL TOOLS & TRANSPARENCY
Transparency and accountability are at the heart of our service. We set up accounts for [our white-label partners](/white-label-seo-services) on our platforms to keep them in the loop:
-**Reportz.io:**Gain access to two sets of reports – one for internal strategy adjustments and a client-facing version highlighting key performance indicators.
-**Base.me:**Monitor the entire link building process, from prospecting and outreach to confirmed placements and pending opportunities.
### Why Choose Our SEO Outreach Specialists?
As a leading**SEO outreach agency**and**[link building specialist](https://fourdots.com/blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement)**, we combine meticulous research with personalized outreach to secure high-quality backlinks that deliver real results. Our proven process elevates your site’s authority and organic performance while building lasting relationships with authoritative platforms.*Ready to elevate your [agency’s SEO](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) with our expert link building services?*###### Share your details, and let’s start crafting a customized strategy that drives success!
---
## Pages: Medior Web Analyst
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/medior-web-analyst](https://fourdots.com/careers/medior-web-analyst)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/medior-web-analyst.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/medior-web-analyst.md)
**Published:** 2021-08-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
##**We are looking for Medior Web Analyst who will join our team in our Belgrade office**The Medior Web Analyst will be responsible for the implementation & enhancement of web and app analytics; tag management tools and scripts to help clients understand their audiences; enhance their digital user experience, and increase their online conversions.
The Analytics Junior/Intern will be responsible for learning from and supporting our consultants as they implement and eThe Medior Web Analyst will be responsible for the implementation & enhancement of web and app analytics; tag management tools and scripts to help clients understand their audiences; enhance their digital user experience, and increase their online conversions.
## What You’ll Be Doing
- Solving complex online marketing tagging & tracking needs, either implementing solutions yourself or guiding client teams as necessary.
- Auditing existing analytics implementations and developing measurement strategies around clients’ business goals.
- Analyzing tracking & attribution discrepancies between ad & [analytics](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) platforms.
- Creating web analytics reports, visualizations and reporting dashboards for various clients on a daily, weekly, monthly and/or ad hoc basis.
- Planning and executing implementations of web and app analytics and tag management tools.
## What You’ll Learn
- The latest best practices & trends with top-notch tools.
- Useful industry tricks of the trade from our SEO & [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) Experts, which will improve your overall Digital Marketing knowledge.
- How to create automated & interactive reporting dashboards for our Clients.
## Required Skills
- Analytical and problem-solving skills
- Strong understanding of Google Tag Manager & Google Analytics platforms (setup & troubleshooting) is a must.
- Understanding of intermediate marketing principles, business objectives & KPIs.
- 2+ years of experience with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, or other Web Analytics tools.
- An eye for details while analyzing and troubleshooting data to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies.
- Proficiency in MS Excel and Google Drive equivalents – Data Manipulation, Analysis, and Presentation
- General understanding of website design & development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript & common CMS Platforms (i.e. WordPress) is a plus.
- Web analytics certification or other digital marketing training is a plus.
- Experience with A/B testing is a plus.
- Excellent organizational skills – able to prioritize demands and coordinate a range of tasks and activities.
- The ability to thrive in a collaborative and fast-paced environment.
- Proven written and verbal communication and presentation skills.
- Positive and willing-to-learn attitude.
## Besides getting to do the work we’re passionate about, here are some of our favorite parts about working at Four Dots:
- Growing company with a family feel
- Flexible work environment
- Fun office events and laid-back culture
- Open workspace promoting collaboration and team learning
- Pet-Friendly Office
## About Four Dots:
- We started as an SEO agency 9 years ago, and today we are a Full Digital Marketing Agency & SaaS product developer and publisher.
- We have offices in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Hong Kong & Sydney.
- Our clients are based all over the world and come in all shapes and sizes.
- We have also developed four commercial SaaS tools in-house – [Dibz](https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082), Reportz, Cue and Base.*Please send us your CV and cover letter to**[work@fourdots.com](mailto:work@fourdots.com)**Deadline for applications **31.03.2022.***
---
## Pages: Junior Customer Support Specialist
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/junior-customer-support-success-specialist](https://fourdots.com/careers/junior-customer-support-success-specialist)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/junior-customer-support-success-specialist.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/junior-customer-support-success-specialist.md)
**Published:** 2021-01-19
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
As we launched a couple of our own digital marketing tools (SaaS model), we are looking for new members of our team in our Belgrade and Novi Sad offices, for the position of:
## Junior Customer Support and Success Specialist
### Who is this Job For?
We are looking for**Junior customer support representatives**who are willing to learn about startups and the digital marketing industry by getting familiar with how our marketing tools work (don’t worry, they’re user-friendly and we provide thorough training) and through the process of providing customer service to the users of our software solutions.
If you seek a career in IT/Digital Marketing, your English is great, and you have awesome communication skills (no phone calls, just chat & email support), then this position is perfect for you.
### Job Description & Responsibilities:
You will receive thorough and detailed training in how our tools operate, which means you’ll be working closely with our development, sales, and marketing specialists who will teach you all the tricks of the trade necessary for this job.
The training sessions and subsequent work will help you become an avid user of our marketing tools and will provide you with valuable experience in customer service and certain components of the digital marketing industry, which is a great advantage for your later career endeavors.
### Typical workflow segments and activities:
- Customer onboarding – helping new clients create accounts and start using our tools.
- Helping existing customers solve the problems they encounter while using our tools – done via email and chat platforms like Intercom.
- Building sustainable trustworthy relationships through open and interactive communication regarding our in-house tools on online platforms (social media communities, group discussions, Intercom, AppSumo, Product Hunt…)
- Handling complaints, providing appropriate solutions and alternatives within the time limits, and following up to ensure resolution.
- Identifying and assessing customer needs in order to meet their requirements and achieve client satisfaction.
- Helping clients deliver results by using our tools through customer training regarding existing and new software features, as well as our new products and services.
- Weekly/monthly reporting on targets, community stats, and user performance to the team leader.
- Segmenting lists and creating a highly organized user base for future activations and retention.
- Research, analysis, and improvement of target user personas and community audiences.
### Requirements:
- Excellent knowledge of the English language
- Basic computer skills
- Positive attitude, customer orientation, and ability to adapt/respond to different types of characters
- Sufficient understanding of digital trends and a strong will to stay up to date with the digital marketing industry and SaaS trends
- Excellent communication, negotiation, and presentation skills
- Ability to multitask, prioritize, and manage time effectively
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment
- Top-level motivation, ability to take initiative, a hands-on mentality
- Ability to stay organized enough to work on parallel projects and can meet strict deadlines
### We Offer:
- Great learning opportunities for advancing your career and gain experience, develop, and grow
- Competitive salary
- Full onboarding training
- A friendly, creative, and encouraging work environment
- A team full of some of the best specialists in digital marketing in the region
Got what it takes to work with a great team? Please submit your CV and cover letter to the form below:**Deadline**: February 5th, 2025
### 😎 Job Application
---
## Pages: Four Dots Academy - Module 6
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-6](https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-6)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-6.md](https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-6.md)
**Published:** 2020-11-09
**Last Updated:** 2020-11-09
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
## Module VI – November 2020 Recordings
[https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-nov-2020-modul-6/zoom_0.mp4](https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-nov-2020-modul-6/zoom_0.mp4)
---
## Pages: Digital Account Manager
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/digital-account-manager](https://fourdots.com/careers/digital-account-manager)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/digital-account-manager.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/digital-account-manager.md)
**Published:** 2020-11-02
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-27
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
## We are looking for a new member of our team in our Belgrade office for the position of
##**Digital Account Manager**to join our growing Client Management / Advertising team. The right person for this position loves learning new things, is curious and a problem solver with a passion for all things digital.
The Digital Account Manager role at Four Dots is a hands-on position. The candidate selected for the job will work with our team to facilitate clear communication between key clients and the agency teams depending on the exact project scope.
Accuracy and attention to detail are critical to success. The Digital Account Manager will learn about and help to execute components of each campaign and project.
Some key areas of focus include Performance Advertising, PPC, SEO and Analytics.
### Responsibilities:
- Provide white-glove client service, as the primary contact for all client’s inquiries
- Manage communications between agency teams and clients
- Clearly and concisely transition project requirements and feedback between client and agency
- Understand agency services and process for delivery
- Create and manage project schedules and timelines – keeping it real
- Manage client’s expectations – underpromise and overdeliver – not the other way around
- Act as a client advocate within the agency
- Develop a deep understanding of the client’s business and goals and work to help see those goals achieved
- Provide proactive consultation to guide clients towards the right solution
- Work with a number of different people/roles to complete projects to specs and on time
### Job Qualifications:
- Knowledge of [Google Ads](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages), Facebook Ads, Digital Advertising principles, and campaign management (Google & Facebook Certifications are a plus)
- Capability to recognize key Google Analytics parameters and understand the importance of audiences and goals management; simply to tell a difference of what works well and what can and should be improved
- Understanding of other digital marketing channels such as SEO, SEM
- Familiarity with web technologies (HTML/JS/CSS…) we don’t expect from you to write any code, just to know what we are talking about, and translate that into human form for the client’s stakeholders
- Excellent (English) written and oral communication skills
- Ability to understand and accurately communicate granular details and high-level goals
- Experience with Excel and PowerPoint (Google Sheets / Slides)
- Must have a genuine passion for achieving client goals and exceeding client expectations
### About us:
- We started as an SEO agency 10 years ago, and today we are a Full Digital Marketing Agency & SaaS product developer and publisher
- We have offices in Novi Sad (Center), Belgrade (Center), and Sydney
- Our clients are based all over the world and are coming in all shapes and sizes. Primarily we do:
B2B lead generation (in multiple verticals and industries like Finance, Real estate…)
- Performance Advertising for E-commerce projects
- B2C lead generation
- Mobile User Acquisition
### People you will work with on your projects, who are already preparing a warm welcome:
- The responsible Account Management / Performance Advertising team – that you will fit into
- Technical SEO team – that will help you to have a clear picture of all SEO segments/operations
- Data Analytics Experts – who can track everything (even the Mars rover when NASA cannot)
- Team of Content Writers – to provide quality content for the landing pages and sometimes ad copies
### Here’s what we’re bringing to the table:
- Cool office space in the Belgrade centre
- Inhabited with friendly experts in their own field, ready to transfer knowledge and help you expand your horizons in digital marketing – Development opportunities
- Working hours are flexible – and don’t worry, we are working in a regular Belgrade timezone*Please send us your CV and cover letter to [**work@fourdots.com **](mailto:work@fourdots.com)or fill out the form below.**Deadline for applications 25.10.2021.*### Job Application
---
## Pages: Four Dots Academy - Module 3
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-3](https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-3)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-3.md](https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy-module-3.md)
**Published:** 2020-10-26
**Last Updated:** 2020-11-09
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
## Module III – October 2020 Recordings
[https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-3/zoom1-m-iii.mp4](https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-3/zoom1-m-iii.mp4)
[https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-3/zoom2-m-iii.mp4](https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-3/zoom2-m-iii.mp4)
[https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-3/zoom3-m-iii.mp4](https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-3/zoom3-m-iii.mp4)
---
## Pages: Four Dots Academy - Module 4
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy](https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy.md](https://fourdots.com/four-dots-academy.md)
**Published:** 2020-10-19
**Last Updated:** 2020-11-09
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
## Module IV – October 2020 Recordings
[https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-4/zoom_0-m-iv.mp4](https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-4/zoom_0-m-iv.mp4)
[https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-4/zoom_1-m-iv.mp4](https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-4/zoom_1-m-iv.mp4)
[https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-4/zoom_2-m-iv.mp4](https://fourdots.com/academy-recordings/academy-oct-2020-modul-4/zoom_2-m-iv.mp4)
---
## Pages: Academy
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/academia-dev](https://fourdots.com/academia-dev)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/academia-dev.md](https://fourdots.com/academia-dev.md)
**Published:** 2020-07-31
**Last Updated:** 2021-03-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Content Marketing
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/content-marketing-2](https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/content-marketing-2)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/content-marketing-2.md](https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/content-marketing-2.md)
**Published:** 2020-03-05
**Last Updated:** 2020-08-27
**Author:** Kristijan Novaković
### Content
---
## Pages: Academy LP SR
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/sr-academy](https://fourdots.com/sr-academy)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/sr-academy.md](https://fourdots.com/sr-academy.md)
**Published:** 2019-11-01
**Last Updated:** 2019-11-15
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Academy - SEO
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/academy](https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/academy)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/academy.md](https://fourdots.com/academia-dev/academy.md)
**Published:** 2019-10-24
**Last Updated:** 2021-03-10
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Free SEM Tools
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools](https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools.md](https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools.md)
**Published:** 2019-10-11
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
# Free SEO Tools
[Four Dots](https://fourdots.com) has been building search marketing tools since 2013. The Keyword Merger below does in five minutes what takes most marketers an hour – paste your keyword groups, pick your match types, and walk away with 1,500+ ready-to-use combinations. The SKAG Generator handles single keyword ad group structures for paid campaigns that need granular control.
Both tools are free. No login. No email gate. Built by the same team behind our commercial platforms.
### From the Four Dots [Agency-as-a-Lab](https://fourdots.com/agency-as-a-lab)
These free tools are the tip of the stack. Our agency builds proprietary platforms when off-the-shelf solutions fall short – then licenses them to other agencies worldwide.
[FAII.ai](https://faii.ai/) – AI visibility monitoring across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity in 195+ countries. Track where your brand appears when buyers ask AI for recommendations.
[Reportz.io](https://reportz.io/) – Real-time marketing KPI dashboards. Rated 5/5 on Capterra. Connects 50+ data sources into white-label reports.
[Dibz.me](https://dibz.me/) – Link prospecting that surfaces opportunities invisible to Ahrefs and SEMrush.
[Base.me](https://base.me/) – Link building campaign management from prospecting to placement. 110,000+ links tracked.
[Suprmind.ai](https://suprmind.ai/) – Multi-AI research platform. Orchestrate Grok, Perplexity, Gemini, GPT, and Claude as parallel researchers with automated synthesis.
---
## Pages: Analytics Junior/Intern
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/analytics-junior-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/analytics-junior-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/analytics-junior-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/analytics-junior-job.md)
**Published:** 2019-08-08
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
*## We are looking for Analytics Junior/Intern who will join our team in our**Belgrade**office
Deadline for applications**15.05.2022**.*The Analytics Junior/Intern will be responsible for learning from and supporting our consultants as they implement and enhance web and app analytics; tag management tools and scripts to help clients understand their audiences; enhance their digital user experience, and increase their online conversions.
## You will have the opportunity to learn the following:
- Google Analytics
- Google Tag Manager
- Basic JavaScript, CSS, HTML
## Responsibilities
- Daily, weekly, and monthly monitoring and reporting for various clients.
- Creating web [analytics](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) reports, visualizations and reporting dashboards.
- Planning and executing implementations of web and app analytics and tag management tools.
- [Auditing web and app analytics and tag management](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services) tool implementations and recommending improvements.
## Required Skills
- Analytical and problem-solving skills
- A passionate, positive, and willing-to-learn attitude
- Excellent organizational skills – able to prioritize demands and coordinate a range of tasks and activities
- An eye for detail and a high level of accuracy
- Proficient in MS Excel and Google Drive equivalents – Data Manipulation, Analysis, and Presentation
- Mining, analyzing, and troubleshooting data to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies.
## Having Some of These Skills is Considered a Plus
- General understanding of online marketing fundamentals, business objectives, KPIs & channels including [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages), SEO, social media, email, etc. is a plus.
- General understanding of website design & development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript & common CMS Platforms (i.e. WordPress) is a plus.
- Proven written and verbal communication and presentation skills.
- Experience with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager is a plus.
- Web analytics certification or other digital marketing training is a plus.
## Besides getting to do the work we’re passionate about, here are some of our favorite parts about working at Four Dots:
- Having an opportunity to learn from some of the best regional marketing experts
- Flexible work environment
- Fun office events and laid-back culture
- Open workspace promoting collaboration and team learning
- Pet-Friendly Office
## About Four Dots:
- We started as an SEO agency 10 years ago, and today we are a Full Digital Marketing Agency & SaaS product developer and publisher
- We have offices in Novi Sad (Center), Belgrade (Center) and Hong Kong
- Our clients are based all over the world and come in all shapes and sizes.
- We have also developed three SaaS tools in-house – [Dibz](https://fourdots.com/blog/introducing-dibz-me-a-powerful-link-prospecting-tool-for-seo-pros-2082).me, Reportz.io and Base.me, with the first two already being commercially available*Please send us your CV and cover letter to**[work@fourdots.com](mailto:work@fourdots.com)**Deadline for applications**15.05.2022**.*### Job Application
---
## Pages: PPC Specialist
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/ppc-specialist-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/ppc-specialist-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/ppc-specialist-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/ppc-specialist-job.md)
**Published:** 2019-07-08
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
## We are looking for a PPC Manager/Specialist who will join our team in our**Belgrade**office
Job brief:
In this role, you should be well-versed in the principles of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Paid Performance Marketing, basics of SEO (mostly the part about landing page optimization) and conversions tracking processes.
Most campaigns that we run, are strictly performance delivery based on the client’s business goals.
Your goal will be to ensure that the client’s online marketing investment has the highest possible return on investment (ROI).
Responsibilities Include:
- Setting up and managing Performance Advertising campaigns, primarily on Google Ads, [Facebook Ads and LinkedIn](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages)
- Participate in forming effective multi-channel paid advertising strategies
- Campaigns planning, promotion plan creation and budgets determination
- Active campaigns management, implementing tests and [optimizations](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide)
- Finding opportunities to improve campaigns’ results
- Tracking KPIs and producing useful reports for clients and management
- Write attractive and concise adverts copy
Requirements:
- At least 2 years of proven experience as a [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management) Manager/Specialist (both Google and Facebook Ads)
- Agency experience is highly preferable
- Excellent English communication skills
- Experience in [data analysis and knowledge of conversions tracking](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) setup process
- Familiarity with multiple platforms (e.g. [Google Ads](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059), Facebook Business Manager, LinkedIn Ads…) is preferred
- Knowledge of analytics tools (Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics etc.)
- Proficient in Office, particularly Excel / Google Sheets
About us:
- We started as an SEO agency 9 years ago, and today we are a Full Digital Marketing Agency & SaaS product developer and publisher
- We have offices in Novi Sad (Center), Belgrade (Center) and Hong Kong
- Our clients are based all over the world and are coming in all shapes and sizes. Primarily we do:
B2B lead generation (in multiple verticals and industries like Finance, Real estate…)
- B2C lead generation
- Mobile User Acquisition
- Performance Advertising for E-commerce projects
Here’s what we’re bringing to the table:
- Cool office space in the [Belgrade](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) center
- Inhabited with friendly experts in their own field, ready to transfer knowledge and help you expand your horizons in digital marketing – Development opportunities
- Working hours are flexible – and don’t worry, we are working in a regular Belgrade timezone*Please send us your CV and cover letter to [**work@fourdots.com **](mailto:work@fourdots.com)or fill out the form below.**Deadline for applications 10.08.2022.*### Job Application
---
## Pages: WordPress Developer
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/wordpress-developer-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/wordpress-developer-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/wordpress-developer-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/wordpress-developer-job.md)
**Published:** 2019-06-05
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
We are looking for a full-time WordPress Developer to join our team in our Belgrade or Novi Sad office and work with us on both our in-house and client projects (making changes on their sites, implementing SEO audit recommendations and developing custom solutions as needed).
Ideal candidates are those who:
- Have a minimum of 2 years in a similar role (at least medior level)
- Have extensive experience with WordPress and are as intimately acquainted with PHP as possible (at least custom WordPress theme/plugin level or higher)
- Write great and latest spec HTML/CSS (experience with Bootstrap is a must)
- Are experienced with JS (WP level)
- Produce standardized, meticulously clean code
- Know what an API is
- Use Git
- Have worked with PS & [AI](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide) (extracting assets from design files)
- Are pixel-precise
- Have project management culture and are aware of deadlines
- Have the passion for all things digital
- Have great English communication skills
- Can think creatively, identify and resolve problems
Considered a bonus but not a requirement are:
- Experience in working with any of Drupal, Shopify, Magento and other CMSs
- Knowledge of OOP programming
- Experience with Laravel
- Experience with Bulma.io and other CSS frameworks
- Experience with preprocessors like SASS
- Experience with Vue.js
- A great bonus would be having experience in working on WordPress SEO tasks and implementing required changes provided by others. Changes would be provided in the form of an easy to follow document and you would have co-workers available for discussion and questions.
We hope to find someone who is:
- Trustworthy
- Not afraid to express their opinion
- Team player able to work without supervision (willing to help others as well as to learn from them)
- Well-organized
We at [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com) are offering:
- Competitive pay
- An opportunity to work in a laid-back atmosphere alongside young people who live and breathe the web, just like you.
- A chance to work on our in-house tools, all along learning from our highly experienced, expert back-end developers
- Involvement in interesting projects extending far beyond mere tinkering with WordPress themes or other menial tasks
If you recognize yourself in the description above, please send your resume and portfolio to [work@fourdots.com](mailto:work@fourdots.com) or submit it via the form below.
### ???? Job Application
---
## Pages: TERMS
AND
CONDITIONS
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/terms-and-conditions](https://fourdots.com/legal/terms-and-conditions)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/terms-and-conditions.md](https://fourdots.com/legal/terms-and-conditions.md)
**Published:** 2018-06-04
**Last Updated:** 2025-01-28
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
This page was last updated on May 31st, 2018
By using the Fourdots.com website (“Service”, “Company”), you are agreeing to be legally bound by the terms and conditions that follow (“Terms and Conditions”, “Terms of Service”). Four Dots Doo reserves the right to update and modify the Terms of Service infrequently without notice, except when we are required to notify you in order to ask for your consent, or to comply with your right to be informed. Continued use of the Service subsequent to any alterations you don’t need to be informed of, will establish your consent to such alterations. Violation of any of the terms below will lead to the termination of your Account. You agree to utilize the Service at your own risk. The Service is provided on an “as-is” and “as-available” basis. We reserve the right to update or modify our Website and its features. Our employees are contractually obliged to respect your privacy and have received basic training in data protection best practices. You comprehend that Four Dots Doo uses third party vendors and hosting partners to provide fundamental software, hardware, storage, networking, and other related technology that is required to run the Service. Third party service providers that we work with are required to offer the same degree of security and privacy as we do and to adhere to the same rules. When required, Privacy Policy pages of those providers will be made available to you.
Our Websites and Services are not intended for children under 16 years of age. No one under age of 16 years old may provide any personal information to or on the Websites and Services. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16 years old. By continuing to use our Website or Services, you are acknowledging that you are at least 16 years old.
## Support
## Newsletter and Email Policy
If you have previously chosen to receive our newsletter, you can always opt out by following the ‘unsubscribe’ link in the emails we send, in which case you will not receive regular information and words of advice regarding Four Dots. However, Four Dots Doo reserves the right to inform you of any major updates or other significant information regarding your account, as well as send courtesy follow-up emails regarding your trial period version for as long as your account is active. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please do not sign up for the newsletter, or delete your account.
## Supported Browsers
Four Dots supports present and previous major releases of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Every time a new version is released, we begin supporting that version and stop supporting the third most recent version. We are devoted to providing our clients with regularly updated advanced features and better user experience. We support the latest browser versions so that you can make the most out of our site. Please contact our support team for any inquiries you might have.
## Copyright and Content Ownership
You are not allowed to duplicate, copy, or reuse any quantity of the HTML/CSS/JS or visual design elements without express written permission from Four Dots Doo. The look and feel of the Service is a copyrighted property of Four Dots Doo. The entirety of the content posted on the Service must comply with Serbian copyright laws.
## Controlling Law and Jurisdiction
These Terms will be interpreted in accordance with the laws applicable in Serbia, without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions. You and we hereby agree, for any claim or lawsuit resulting from any reason whatsoever in relation to these Terms, the Software, or the Website, to attorn to the judicial district of Belgrade, Serbia, as the relevant location for the hearing of said claim or lawsuit and excluding any other judicial district or any other district which might have jurisdiction concerning any such matter.
## Privacy
Protecting our customers’ information and privacy is our main priority. The Four Dots privacy policy incorporates its employees, partners, agents, affiliates, and contractors.
We consider information about our customers, including personal information, strictly confidential and consistent with all legal and regulatory requirements. We use a synthesis of technology and standard practices to ensure that your information is secured from unauthorized access or exposure. The information we collect about you in the course of conducting normal business will only be shared with third parties upon your consent or as required by law. We gather customer information based on our mutual business relationship and your use of the services and solutions we provide.
An example of this is contact information that allows us to communicate with you, including your name, telephone number, address and email address.
For additional information or to address any concerns, please contact [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com) or refer to our Privacy Policy page.
## How Safe is Four Dots?
Internet communications between Four Dots and all 3rd party APIs use [SSL encrypted](https://fourdots.com/blog/blog-why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169-2169) HTTPS connections. We know that data confidentiality is of utmost importance to our clients and their trust in our product is dependent on our capacity to protect their data. Therefore, we are dedicated to implementing best security practices in the industry.
## What Analytics Data do we Store?
We store usage data to help us improve our service. We schedule automated, periodical deletion of data that is no longer needed for us to perform the actions defined by our lawful basis for its use.
In order to keep your data safe, we protect it through pseudonymization. This data masking method strips data of personal identifiers, making it impossible to connect sets of data to particular data subjects without additional information (often an encryption key). This additional information is stored separately, which significantly reduces the risk of personal data being compromised during potential breaches.
Most of the time, data from data source providers is read-only; therefore, under no circumstances can we add, update or delete it. If you want data that we are not controlling but only processing to be deleted or modified, we can convey your wishes to the data controller, but we are not responsible for when or whether they will comply.
## Data Property
You are the owner of your data. Any stored data will be deleted upon a client’s request, apart from the data we are not in control of, but are only processing.
## Four Dots as a processor of User/Client Data
Depending on the context of personal information you provide, Four Dots may be the data controller (“controller”) or the data processor (“processor”) of your personal information under this policy. Four Dots is a processor of Client Data, personal information submitted to the Service or collected through the Service on behalf of or at the direction of subscribers.
Article 28 of the GDPR specifies that the relationship between the controller and the processor should be made in writing (electronic form is acceptable under subsection (9) of the same Article). Four Dots’ Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy serve as your data processing agreement, setting out the instructions that you are giving to Four Dots with regard to processing the personal data you control and establishing the rights and responsibilities of both parties. Four Dots will only process your Client Data based on your written instructions as the data controller unless required by law to act without such instructions.
## Indemnification
You hereby agree to indemnify and hold harmless Company, its assignees, and/or successors in interest from and against any and all claims, damages, liabilities, costs, and expenses, including legal expenses and reasonable counsel fees, arising out of any breach or alleged breach of your warranty, representation or agreement, express or implied, made by you herein, which results in a judgment by a court of competent jurisdiction.
## User Content
### Content Uploaded to Four Dots
You are legally responsible for all information, data, text, software or other materials uploaded, posted, stored and/or shared online in connection with your use of the Services (“Content”). The company is not responsible for your Content; you are solely responsible for any Content that may be lost or unrecoverable through your use of the Services. You are encouraged to backup your Content regularly and frequently.
You hereby grant Company a limited license to use the Content you upload or otherwise make available to the Service for the purpose of enabling your use of the Service, and for the purpose of enabling the Service to provide you with its Product. By posting, uploading, displaying, transmitting, or otherwise distributing Content to the Site or Service, you are granting Company, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents and representatives a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to host and use the Content in connection with the Service, including without limitation the right to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, and reformat your Content. You will not be compensated for the Company’s use of your Content. By uploading Content to the Site or Service you warrant and represent that, in accordance with Section 13.4., you own the rights to the Content or are otherwise authorized to post, display, perform, transmit, or otherwise distribute your Content.
By accepting these Terms & Conditions, you also accept that we can use your company’s logo for informational and referral purposes in our website (fourdots.com ) or in other publications mentioning Four Dots.
## No Warranties
Company hereby disclaims all warranties. The company is making the site available “as is” without warranty of any kind. You assume the risk of any and all damage or loss from use of or inability to use, the site or the service. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the company expressly disclaims any and all warranties, express or implied, regarding the site, including, but not limited to, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non infringement. The company does not warrant that the site or the service will meet your requirements or that the operation of the site or the service will be uninterrupted, timely, virus or error-free, or that data displayed by the services will be accurate or reliable.
## Limited Liability
Company’s liability to you is limited. To the maximum extent permitted by law, in no event shall company, its affiliates or suppliers be liable for damages of any kind (including, but not limited to, special, incidental, or consequential damages, lost or compromised data, lost profits or revenue due to service interruption or computer failure, regardless of the foreseeability of those damages) arising out of or in connection with your use of the site or services of company. You hereby agree that company’s liability to you will not exceed any fees paid by you to the company for the service. This limitation shall apply regardless of whether the damages arise out of breach of contract, tort, or any other legal theory or form of action.
## Links and Affiliated Sites
The company has no control over, and no liability for any third party websites or materials. The company works with a number of partners and affiliates whose Internet sites may be linked with or from the Site. Because neither Company nor the Site has control over the content and performance of these partner and affiliate sites, Company makes no guarantees about the accuracy, currency, content, or quality of the information provided by such sites, and Company assumes no responsibility for unintended, objectionable, inaccurate, misleading, or unlawful content that may reside on those sites. Similarly, from time to time in connection with your use of the Site, you may have access to content items (including, but not limited to, websites) that are owned by third parties. You acknowledge and agree that Company makes no guarantees about, and assumes no responsibility for, the accuracy, currency, content, or quality of this third party content, and that, unless expressly provided otherwise, these Terms of Use shall govern your use of any and all third party content.
## Severability; Waiver; Assignment
If, for whatever reason, a court of competent jurisdiction finds any term or condition in these Terms of Use to be unenforceable, all other terms and conditions will remain unaffected and in full force and effect. No waiver of any breach of any provision of these Terms of Use shall constitute a waiver of any prior, concurrent, or subsequent breach of the same or any other provisions hereof, and no waiver shall be effective unless made in writing and signed by an authorized representative of the waiving party. Four Dots may assign or delegate some or all of its rights and obligations under this Agreement.
## Modifications and Amendments
The company may, in its sole discretion and without prior notice, (a) revise these Terms of Use; (b) modify the Site and/or the Service, and (c) discontinue the Site and/or Service at any time. Company shall post any revision to these Terms of Use to the Site, and the revision shall be effective immediately on such posting. You agree to review these Terms of Use and other online policies posted on the Site periodically to be aware of any revisions. You agree that, by continuing to use or access the Site following notice of any revision, you shall abide by any such revision.
## Publicity
The Client hereby gives Four Dots permission to refer to the Client and the Services provided to the Client under this agreement, and use the Client’s corporate logo in connection with the promotion of the Services in any media during the Term, including but not limited to the website www.fourdots.com. If you want to revoke this permission, you can contact us on [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com).
## Do You Have any Additional Questions or Concerns?
Do not hesitate to contact us at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com)
---
## Pages: GDPR
COMPLIANCE
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/gdpr-compliance](https://fourdots.com/legal/gdpr-compliance)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/gdpr-compliance.md](https://fourdots.com/legal/gdpr-compliance.md)
**Published:** 2018-06-04
**Last Updated:** 2018-06-05
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
In order to ensure that our service is compliant with the legal requirements set by the EU [General Data Protection Regulation](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/) (GDPR), we have implemented certain changes in the way we handle personal data.
Since Four Dots acts as both data**controller**, (for instance, when handling our clients’ personal data – like email addresses, needed for registration to the service) and data**processor,**some of our obligations will extend only to data subjects whose personal data we are in direct control of.
Four Dots processes customer personal data to provide the products and services and for other limited purposes which will be enumerated in our updated [Privacy Policy](https://fourdots.com/legal/privacy-policy).
While we always took the privacy and security of our clients’ data extremely seriously, some of our procedures will need to be modified if we are to meet all the conditions listed in the GDPR. This includes examining and when necessary, modifying our:
## Data storage and access authorizations
We have performed an audit and mapped of all the personal data we collect, assessed the way it is stored and updated, restricted its processing and prevented it from being accessed, copied, or manipulated by members of our staff without there being a record of the actions taken, ensuring full accountability.
Data access authorization levels are to be refined, amount of data collected and a retention period to be brought down to an operational minimum (“privacy by default”), and employees that do have access to data are to be educated on what they can and cannot do with it.
We intend to retain documented data that explains how, when and why the data has been collected and to monitor that data in order to identify odd patterns or breaches.
## Cookies policy
If we are already handling your personal data, we will inform you once we are done implementing all the changes included in our GDPR compliance roadmap, at which point, you’ll be able to expect complete transparency regarding the data we collect and the way we are using it.
Before we send any data collecting cookies, users will be informed on the type of cookies we intend to use, the purposes we need them for and the effects of declining or accepting them. Some cookies are used to inform us on how our site is being used, which ultimately translates into a smoother experience for our users, but still requires us to get your permission before sending them. However, there are those which are absolutely necessary for you to be able to use our service or view our website (for instance, CSRF protections cookies), and these cookies can be sent without us asking for explicit consent.
Before we send any other kind of cookies your way, we will clearly inform you which cookies we are using, what we need them for, and which of them you need to accept in order to use our site or services, as well as which cookies are optional.
We may update this policy from time to time owing to changes in legislation or other reasons. You will be informed about the activities we undertake where it affects your privacy rights.
## Consent and privacy by design
Before we collect any kind of personal data, send data collecting cookies your way, or make major changes in the way we handle your data, we will ask for your permission. This will be reflected in the design of our website, including different forms and text input fields, as well as sections triggering automatic data retrieval and storage (“privacy by design”).
You will, in plain terms, be informed about what we exactly need from you, why we need it, and what the risks and benefits of allowing us to collect your data are. Site’s architecture will ensure that you can never give out your data inadvertently, without being fully aware of what you are consenting to and without being able to review and remove your consent.
## Policies regarding the subject’s right to be informed and to access the data
While we never kept our visitors or clients in the dark when it comes to the data we are collecting, or the way we are using it, these changes are meant to set up an infrastructure allowing data subjects to easily get any kind of information they need.
Data subjects can, at any time, get information regarding:
- The exact amount and kind of data we have
- The way that data is stored
- Who has access to their data
- How long their data is to be kept
We are obliged to inform the data subjects:
- Before we collect any of their data
- If we change the way data is handled
- If there are any personal data breaches potentially compromising the privacy of their data (we need to inform without delay the subject directly in the cases where we are considered data controllers; or we need to inform the data controller in the cases where we are data processors)
- If we perform any kind of automated decision-making with your data, including but not limited to profiling
- If there are any changes in our overall Privacy Policy
Data subjects have complete control over their data, including the right to:
- access their data in its entirety
- Ask for the data to be supplemented, corrected or abridged
- Ask for their data to be transferred, either to them or to a third party provider of their choice, if the transfer is technically feasible
- Request we restrict or stop processing of their data (“Right to restrict processing”,“Right to object”)
- Ask for their data to be deleted (“Right to be forgotten”)
## Associated third parties GDPR compliance
In order to provide you with our services, Four Dots relies on different third-party apps helping us communicate with our users, or perform other essential tasks (example: Intercom). While some of those third party services won’t have any kind of access to your data, others will, either as controllers or as processors. While we can’t assume full responsibility in the cases where they are treated as controllers, what we can do is to ensure that each of these services that need access to your data in order to perform their function is compliant with the GDPR, and that we have your consent to grant them access.
Our relationships with relevant third party service providers (i.e. the ones that might have any kind of access to your data) will be regulated by written contracts, EU Standard contractual clauses (“SCCs”) and we will do everything within our power to ascertain, and keep periodically reassessing their compliance with the GDPR. Their Privacy Policy pages will be clearly listed on our website, along with anything else you might need to know about the particularities of our collaboration with those data providers.
## Security
Aware of the sensitivity of data we handle, we have always invested heavily in our security procedures, however, the specific requirements of the GDPR pertaining to data segmentation, and the imperative to keep close and detailed records regarding any interaction of our staff with the data; necessitate the revision of our security procedures.
In order for us to be able to inform you of data breaches, to establish culpability, or to prove that we have acted in accordance to the rules prescribed by the GDPR, we need to ensure that everything important that happens to your data is logged and available for later review, by us, you, or the regulating body.
In order to limit the damage potential of security breaches, data received from third party data sources go through pseudonymization. This process allows us to work with a depersonalized version of the data set in question, while the encryption key, or different additional information needed to attribute data to specific data subjects, is kept separately.
Security of processing is our top priority and we have adopted a risk-based approach which involves regular testing, assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of technical and organizational measures to ensure safety and privacy of your personal information.
## Data received from a third party
Before acquiring a contact list or a database with contact details of individuals from another organisation or transferring one such list to third-party organisation, Four Dots will make sure that we as well as the organisation must be able to demonstrate that the data was obtained in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation and that it may be used for advertising purposes.
---
## Pages: COOKIE
POLICY
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/cookie-policy](https://fourdots.com/legal/cookie-policy)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/cookie-policy.md](https://fourdots.com/legal/cookie-policy.md)
**Published:** 2018-06-04
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-21
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
Effective Date: February 21, 2026
We use cookies to help improve your experience of our website at [https://fourdots.com](https://fourdots.com/) and its subdomains. This cookie policy is part of Four Dots’s privacy policy. It covers the use of cookies between your device and our site.
We also provide basic information on third-party services we may use, who may also use cookies as part of their service. This policy does not cover their cookies.
If you don’t wish to accept cookies from us, you should instruct your browser to refuse cookies from [https://fourdots.com](https://fourdots.com/). In such a case, we may be unable to provide you with some of your desired content and services.
## What is a Cookie?
A cookie is a small piece of data that a website stores on your device when you visit. It typically contains information about the website itself, a unique identifier that allows the site to recognise your web browser when you return, additional data that serves the cookie’s purpose, and the lifespan of the cookie itself.
Cookies are used to enable certain features (e.g. logging in), track site usage (e.g. analytics), store your user settings (e.g. time zone, notification preferences), and to personalize your content (e.g. advertising, language).
Cookies set by the website you are visiting are usually referred to as first-party cookies. They typically only track your activity on that particular site.
Cookies set by other sites and companies (i.e. third parties) are called third-party cookies. They can be used to track you on other websites that use the same third-party service.
## Types of Cookies and How We Use Them
### Essential Cookies
Essential cookies are crucial to your experience of a website, enabling core features like user logins, account management, shopping carts, and payment processing.
We use essential cookies to enable certain functions on our website.
### Performance Cookies
Performance cookies track how you use a website during your visit. Typically, this information is anonymous and aggregated, with information tracked across all site users. They help companies understand visitor usage patterns, identify and diagnose problems or errors their users may encounter, and make better strategic decisions in improving their audience’s overall website experience. These cookies may be set by the website you’re visiting (first-party) or by third-party services. They do not collect personal information about you.
We use performance cookies on our site.
### Functionality Cookies
Functionality cookies are used to collect information about your device and any settings you may configure on the website you’re visiting (like language and time zone settings). With this information, websites can provide you with customized, enhanced, or optimized content and services. These cookies may be set by the website you’re visiting (first-party) or by third-party services.
We use functionality cookies on our site.
### Targeting/Advertising Cookies
Targeting/advertising cookies help determine what promotional content is most relevant and appropriate to you and your interests. Websites may use them to deliver targeted advertising or limit the number of times you see an advertisement. This helps companies improve the effectiveness of their campaigns and the quality of content presented to you. These cookies may be set by the website you’re visiting (first-party) or by third-party services. Targeting/advertising cookies set by third-parties may be used to track you on other websites that use the same third-party service.
We use targeting/advertising cookies on our site.
## How Can You Control Our Website’s Use of Cookies?
You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies on our Website. You can manage your cookie preferences in our Cookie Consent Manager. The Cookie Consent Manager allows you to select which categories of cookies you accept or reject. Essential cookies cannot be rejected as they are strictly necessary to provide you with the services on our Website.
You may also be able to set or amend your cookie preferences by managing your web browser settings. As each web browser is different, please consult the instructions provided by your web browser (typically in the “help” section). If you choose to refuse or disable cookies you may still use the Website, though some of the functionality of the Website may not be available to you.
## How Often Will We Update This Cookie Policy?
We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect any changes to the cookies and related technologies we use, or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.
Each time you use our Website, the current version of the Cookie Policy will apply. When you use our Website, you should check the date of this Cookie Policy (which appears at the top of this document) and review any changes since the last version.
## Where Can You Obtain Further Information?
For any questions or concerns regarding our Cookie Policy, you may contact us using the following details:
Milica Dobrenov
https://fourdots.com/contact
---
## Pages: Legal
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal](https://fourdots.com/legal)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal.md](https://fourdots.com/legal.md)
**Published:** 2018-05-30
**Last Updated:** 2018-06-05
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
Being a digital marketing agency working directly with clients, depending on the situation, Four Dots can assume the responsibilities of a data controller, or those of a data processor. Depending on whether we are the ones actively collecting and using your personal data, or we are simply processing data coming from elsewhere, we might have a varying degree of responsibility when it comes to how your data is handled.
It is up to us to distinguish between these labels and fulfil the obligations that come with them. If, however, you want to know how we are treated in regards to your data, you should know that we are considered data controllers only in instances where we directly gather personal data and we decide how to use it. Most of the time, this refers to personal data provided by our direct clients. On the other hand, when it comes to data that we are receiving through third party data integrations, we can only assume the responsibilities of a data processor. This relationship will define the extent of our obligations to you and determine if we are the ones you need to contact with your inquiries.
Since the scope of responsibilities held by a data controller is much wider, we will list the rules regulating this kind of relationship, and where needed point out the ones which do not apply if we are in the position of a data processor.
## Owner and Data Controller
Digital marketing agency:**Four Dots DOO, Mileticeva 28, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia**Owner contact email: [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com)
## Personal data we collect
As a processor, most of the personal data Four Dots deals with is incidental and comes through third parties. However, as a data controller, which usually means that you are our client or site visitor, we may collect some of the following: cookies, usage data, first and last name, phone number, email address, and finally, your company name.
## A lawful basis for processing
In order for us to work with your data, we need to have a lawful basis to do so. There are six ways for us to qualify as someone authorized to process your data, and only one needs to be valid for us to be within our rights. Depending on the basis for processing, [certain data subject rights do not apply](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/), and we have different types and levels of authorization.
However, we must state on which grounds will we be using your data; i.e. explain the purpose behind our processing and the reasons why the processing is necessary for us to provide you with the promised service. There are six ways to establish a legal basis for handling personal data, and they are:
1. Consent – most common, and usually sufficient basis for data processing. It can never be implied, meaning, we have to explicitly state what data we intend to collect, why we need it, how collecting it impacts you, etc; and you have to give us your unambiguous permission to do so. Consent needs to be granular – meaning that we cannot ask for sweeping permissions, like: “Can we process all your personal data,” but that we need to ask for each specific type of information and list all the implications of you giving us the permission to use it. We are also obliged to inform you (here, and whenever we are actually asking for specific consent) that you can always withdraw the consent you’ve previously given, should you choose to do so. If the consent you give to us extends to anyone else (third party service providers, for instance) we have to inform you of this fact; and we need to keep your consent documented for later revision, should it be needed. When data subjects give consent for us to use the data, the right to object no longer applies to them, but they do keep the right to withdraw consent.
2. Contract – If we need to process your personal data in order to fulfill our contractual obligation to you, and the processing is necessary for us to meet that obligation, we are considered to have a lawful basis for data processing. This even applies if you request something from us before the official contract is signed, like to provide you with a quote for our services. Right to object doesn’t apply in cases where a contract is the lawful basis for processing.
3. Legal obligation – if it is necessary for us to process your personal data in order to comply with a UK or EU law, either on behest of the relevant regulatory body or without it. If there is a way for us to fulfill our obligation to the law, without processing your data, we cannot use Legal obligation as a justification to process your data. When it is determined by the appropriate bodies that this is necessary, data subjects cannot invoke the rights to erasure, portability or the right to object.
4. Vital interests – We are allowed to process your data if it is determined that doing so is necessary to protect someone’s life. If there is an easier and less intrusive way to achieve the same result, we are not allowed to use your data. Where applicable, consent will be asked for, but in cases where the data subject is not considered capable of giving consent, and processing data might be a matter of life and death, consent is not obligatory under this provision. Right to portability and right to object do not apply in these instances.
5. Public task – Refers to tasks of public interest and exercising public authority, as set out in law. As such, it is not relevant for us, and unlikely to be used as a lawful basis. In instances when it is used legitimately, data subjects have the right to erasure and the right to portability withheld.
6. Legitimate interest – includes everything from commercial to individual interests of third parties or data controller or processor and needs to be mentioned in their privacy policy. It only applies to practices which data subjects are likely to expect or have been informed about; which have a minimal impact on their privacy; have been deemed necessary and have been carefully documented, so they can be made available for revision. All data subject rights apply, except for the right to portability.
## Data mapping and monitoring
Personal data we handle in the roles of controller and processor is protected and monitored. Actions taken with the data are logged, as are the user accounts taking those actions. In case of data breaches, objections, data erasure requests, lawful basis disputes, etc. we need to be able to provide an accurate and consistent record of data interactions.
## Third parties
Four Dots works with a number of third parties, in the majority of cases, as a data processor. This includes customer support software, user behavior tracking tools, and others. While we don’t assume the same scope of responsibilities for data they control, we are required to have written contracts regulating our collaboration, and to ensure they are GDPR compliant. What follows is a list of third parties we work with which might act as controller or processor of your data, along with their GDPR compliance or Personal Privacy pages:
[Google Analytics](https://policies.google.com/privacy)
[Google AdWords](https://policies.google.com/privacy)
[Facebook Social](https://www.facebook.com/business/gdpr)
[Mailchimp](https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/?_ga=2.261666820.887405232.1527849997-592631437.1526969464)
[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy)
[Lead Forensics](https://www.leadforensics.com/privacy-policy/)
[Hotjar](https://www.hotjar.com/legal/policies/privacy)
## Eligibility
Our services are only available to persons over 16 years of age, so we are never in the position of the controller of personal data of a child.
If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 16 years old, please contact us at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com)
---
## Pages: Technical SEO Specialist
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/technical-seo-specialist-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/technical-seo-specialist-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/technical-seo-specialist-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/technical-seo-specialist-job.md)
**Published:** 2018-02-05
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
Due to the increased influx of new projects, we are looking for a new member of our team**in Belgrade office**, for the full-time position of**Technical SEO specialist**.
Candidates should be well-versed in [performing technical SEO audits](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services), familiar with the digital marketing industry in general, and should have at least 2 years of experience (*preferably agency*).
We’re crafting custom manual reports for each client so basic reports in the form of screenshots from popular free online tools just won’t be enough.**Needless to say, the desire for continuous education and staying current with this fast-changing industry is a must.
The primary role of this position is a technical analysis of clients’ websites and occasionally implementation of given recommendations, all based on the defined deadlines.
A Candidate should have a strong understanding of what each of the issues and recommendations sent to the client means and should be able to answer questions regarding proposed changes to a client and/or their developers in meetings.
##**The scope of work covers:**- [Technical SEO audits](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services) of both foreign and local clients projects
- Keyword research & mapping for SEO campaigns
- Client competitor analysis
## Requirements:
- Analytical thinking
- Strong knowledge of the English language (*a vast majority of clients are foreign*)
- Strong knowledge of [technical and on-page SEO](https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176)
- Practical knowledge of advanced technical SEO topics (*canonicalization, hreflangs, Schema, etc*)
- Practical knowledge of popular SEO tools (*Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Google SearchConsole & Analytics*)
- Understanding of web performance tools and best practices (PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse)
- Understanding of HTML/CSS (*great if your background is in web design/development*)
- Operating knowledge of WordPress (*publishing, management, editing, plugins*)
- Working knowledge of Google Docs / Sheets
We will ask for examples of your previous work. Of course,*****you can/should remove sensitive information if you have any privacy concerns*****).**##**Considered as a strong bonus (any point counts):**- Agency experience
- Operating knowledge of Shopify
- Sense for UI/UX improvement
- Ability to audit client backlink portfolios (*requires experience in link building*)
- Being comfortable with CLI tools and SSH
- Experience with web hosting industry and familiarity with the terminology
- Experience with*Nginx*and*Apache*configuration
- Involvement in content production
- Experience or working knowledge of [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages) (*search, social*)
## A bit about us:
- We started as an SEO agency 8 years ago, and today we are a Full Digital Marketing Agency & SaaS product developer and publisher
- We have [offices in NYC](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc), Novi Sad, Belgrade and Hong Kong
- Our clients are based all over the world and are coming in all shapes and sizes.
## People you’ll work with on your projects:
- Prominent Performance Advertising Team with huge agency experience – who flip ads as burgers
- Extremely Creative Design Team – ready to produce ads and bring attention and sales (in Novi Sad)
- Technical / Development team – that you will fit into and learn heaps from
- [Data Analytics Experts – who can track](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) everything (can track Mars rover when NASA cannot)
- Team of Content Writers – to provide quality content for any purpose
- Responsible Account Management team – that will not set unrealistic expectations with clients and will handle the heat
## Here’s what we’re bringing to the table:
- Cool pet-friendly office space in the [Belgrade](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) city center, inhabited with friendly experts in their own field, ready to transfer knowledge and help you expand your horizons in digital marketing
- Regular Central European time zone working hours with flexible start (colleagues usually come in the office in between 8 and 11am)
- Highly competitive salary
- A dog. A real dog with fur and stuff.
Suitable candidates will be given a test audit/project for skills evaluation after the interview.**IMPORTANT:**If you do not fulfill**all**the requirements, submitting the application is greatly discouraged and will not be considered.
Got what it takes to work with a great team of 70 professionals?
Please submit your CV and cover letter to the form below:**Deadline**: March 30th, 2021
### 😎 Job Application
---
## Pages: Community & Customer Support Manager
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/community-customer-support-manager](https://fourdots.com/careers/community-customer-support-manager)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/community-customer-support-manager.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/community-customer-support-manager.md)
**Published:** 2017-11-15
**Last Updated:** 2018-05-07
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
###
### We are looking for a new member of our team in our Belgrade office, for the position of
## Community & Customer Support Manager
###**Responsibilities:**- Defining and executing social media strategies and day-to-day tasks
- Managing social media communities and providing customer support for in-house tools
- Knowing everything there is to know about our tools (don’t worry, we will teach you everything you need to know to be top notch! )
- Weekly / monthly reporting on targets, community stats and user performance to the team leader
- Segmenting lists and creating a highly organized user base for future activations and retention
- Research, analysis, and improvement of target user personas and community audiences
- Managing tasks and content in order to reach defined goals
###**Requirements**- At least 1 year of proven experience in managing social media platforms (Facebook, Facebook Groups, Quora, LinkedIn)
- Impeccable English (both written and oral communication)
- Excellent understanding of and a strong will to stay up to date with digital trends and the SaaS industry
- Experience with community build-up and customer/user management
- Experience in engaging audiences across a range of online channels and formats, including social media, email, content
- Experience with customer happiness and support management
- You are motivated, take initiative and have a hands-on mentality
- You are organized enough to work on parallel projects and can meet strict deadlines
- You are comfortable with change and working in a fast-paced environment
###**We Offer:**- Learning, development and growth opportunities
- A friendly, creative and encouraging work environment
- A competitive salary and benefits package
- Company events
- Flexible working hours
Please send us your CV and cover letter to work@fourdots.com, deadline 30.11.2017.
---
## Pages: Content writer
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/content-writer](https://fourdots.com/careers/content-writer)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/content-writer.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/content-writer.md)
**Published:** 2017-11-15
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
### We are looking for a new member of our team in our Novi Sad office, for the position of
## Content Writer
Four Dots is hiring an experienced, responsible and analytically oriented**Content Writer/Content Marketer**to join our in-house content marketing team in Novi Sad. This person should bring a fresh perspective to our already experienced team of Content Writers, SEO experts and Content Marketers. You will have the opportunity to tackle in-house tasks and content-based strategies, as well as work for a variety of clients (B2B and B2C sectors), all that across the US, UK, Australian, domestic and European markets.
### Main tasks and responsibilities
- Write different pieces of content on a daily basis, optimized for different mediums, including blog posts, white papers, tech content, guest blogging content, content for our SaaS products, metadata for page optimization, social media profiles, etc
- Work closely with our user acquisition, design and UX teams to make sure our products are easy to use and all features are well communicated
- Help develop and write user guides and help articles for our products
- Develop engaging and exciting marketing copies that drive sales, events and other KPIs, without sounding cheesy and worn out
- Ensure all copy across all products and marketing channels is ‘on brand’ and consistent with the end-user and target audience
- Work with our data and CRM departments to help A/B testing and [optimize](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide) product and marketing copies
- Manage multiple projects simultaneously, adhering to deadlines, while maintaining high-quality output
- Develop content strategies based on analysis and research
- Document strategies and present them in a cohesive manner
- Break down content promotions to achievable milestones
- Efficient [content promotion across all inbound marketing](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862) channels
- Meeting strict deadlines
### Requirements
- Impeccable English (both written and oral communication)
- 2+ years of experience in a digital marketing agency and proven experience in copywriting, both for product descriptions and marketing purposes
- Firm grasp of up-to-date SEO and content marketing best practices
- You are motivated, take initiative and have a hands-on mentality
- You are creative, think outside the box, always looking for new ideas and ways to improve processes and end results
- You have a knack for making the complex appear simple
### We Offer
- Learning, development and growth opportunities
- A chance to expand your knowledge through practice
- A chance to learn from inbound marketing & SEO experts
- A friendly, creative and encouraging work environment
- Full-time employment
We need a superstar content writer and content marketer. A true professional who can bring value to our clients, our in-house projects and deliver quality content and tangible results.
If you’ve found yourself in the description above, please send us your CV and portfolio via the following email: work@fourdots.com
---
## Pages: Full Stack Developer
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/full-stack-developer-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/full-stack-developer-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/full-stack-developer-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/full-stack-developer-job.md)
**Published:** 2017-08-25
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
We are looking for a full stack developer who can join our team in our [Novi Sad office](https://goo.gl/maps/XJ5QSiSXjRS2) and help us build data driven web applications for web marketing purposes, as well as offer assistance in our other projects.
Your main role will be development of web applications along with the usual accompanying responsibilities**Ideal candidates are those who**:
- Are comfortable with HTML/CSS (high level, latest specs)
- Have experience with JS (medium level, Vue.js is a bonus)
- Are as intimately acquainted with PHP as possible (at least custom WordPress theme level or higher, knowledge of oop programming, Laravel is a bonus)
- Have worked with PS & [AI](https://fourdots.com/ai-visibility-optimization-guide) (extracting assets from design files)
- Know what an API is
- Use Git
- Produce standardized, meticulously clean code**We hope to find someone who is**:
- Independent but also a team player (willing to help others as well as to learn from them)
- Highly organized
- Trustworthy
- Not afraid to express their opinion
To be deemed suitable, a full stack developer candidate would have to be proficient in the creation of all types of consumer websites (in WordPress or without CMS), would have to know how to use CSS frameworks (bulma.io, bootstrap, semantic and similar) and would have to be able to convert design into a well coded website. An ideal candidate would strive to improve his knowledge and use the latest technologies, but would also be able to manipulate websites built using old and bad code.
We at [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com) are offering competitive pay and an opportunity to work in a laid back atmosphere alongside young people who live and breathe the web, just like you.
If you recognized yourself in the description above, please send your resume to [work@fourdots.com](mailto:work@fourdots.com)
or submit it via the form below.
### ???? Job Application
---
## Pages: User Acquisition Manager
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/user-acquisition-manager-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/user-acquisition-manager-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/user-acquisition-manager-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/user-acquisition-manager-job.md)
**Published:** 2017-05-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
We are looking for a new member of our team in Novi Sad for the position of**User Acquisition Manager for SaaS Projects** **Requirements**:
- 2+ years of experience in growth hacking, responsible for managing customer acquisition and revenue growth
- Experience in SaaS recurring revenue subscription services
- Experience in Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, SEMrush and general SEO, AB testing and content analytical tools
- Excellent track record of driving growth
- Proficient in English, native level or as close as possible (knowledge of other languages will be considered a plus)
**Will be considered a plus:**- 2+ years of digital marketing experience
- Experience managing paid advertising campaigns on social media
**You’ll be responsible for**:
- Increasing the user base of our web tools: [dibz.me](https://dibz.me/), [reportz.io](https://reportz.io/), [base.me](https://base.me/) and other tools which are yet to come
- Leading and managing a high performance team of experienced marketers
- Building and scaling complex marketing campaigns
- Setting and tracking KPIs to continuously analyze and optimize campaign effectiveness
- Managing and optimizing online customer acquisition channels (SEO, SEM, [PPC](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management), mobile, display, social and affiliates)
- Giving advice on marketing tools and operations, as well as product tests
**We need someone who is**:
- Capable of handling complex performance analyses
- Attentive to detail, has top-notch analytical skills and the ability to make data-driven decisions
- Up-to-date on the latest user acquisition trends and emerging platforms
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment
- Able to flourish with minimal guidance, proactive and able to handle uncertainty, ambiguity and the challenge of quickly evolving goals
**We offer**:
- Competitive salary
- A setting where you can expand your knowledge through practice and challenging projects
- A chance to learn from top notch digital marketing experts
- Full time employment with flexible working hours
- Internal company events
- Complimentary gym membership
*Please send us your CV and cover letter to work@fourdots.com*
---
## Pages: Four Dots Contributing Guidelines
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/contributing-guidelines](https://fourdots.com/contributing-guidelines)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/contributing-guidelines.md](https://fourdots.com/contributing-guidelines.md)
**Published:** 2017-05-03
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
### Interested In Submitting A Guest Post To Four Dots Blog?
### Great! Be Sure To Read This Post
We at [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/about-us) appreciate well-written, engaging, useful, good content.
As a continuously growing SEO agency that serves a great number of clients from all over the globe, it’s in our best interest to always keep our blog active and full of informative content that has the power to actually help our readers level up their skills.
Our goal is to continuously keep providing our audience with all sorts of different tips, tricks and hacks that could help them elevate their brand and business online.
We at Four Dots are interested in covering everything from**SEO**,**content marketing**,**PPC****and growth hacking**, to**entrepreneurship**.
Having said that, we’re always looking for brilliant contributors who know a lot about these subjects and are willing to write an amazing blog post for us.
If you consider yourself an expert and you feel like sharing your process, strategy, success story, research, case study, or anything in between – we would love to have a look at your content and eventually publish it on our blog,**if it meets our criteria**.
Please spare a minute or two from your busy schedule to read this page from top to bottom. It should answer any questions you might have about what kind of material we want to publish on our site:
## General Guest Blogging Requirements
- Original content is a must. We are looking for unique, detailed, professionally written and edited writing.
- Make sure you put in an extra hour to fact check your material.
- Your guest post should be at least 1,000 words long.*If you take a closer look at the content that has already been published on our blog, you’ll see that the vast majority of it is longer than 1,500 words. Our authors know that you cannot really teach anyone anything just by throwing a couple of words in your CMS. Out of respect for them, and for everyone who frequently reads our blog – we have decided to ignore all those writers who are cranking up content just for links, and to only focus on collaborating with people who have the patience and the know-how to produce compelling articles.*- Write in short, poignant sentences.
- Use H1, H2 tags.
- Contributor’s posts must be in line with the tone and style that our regular writers are using on the site. They aim to be casual, but helpful. Even though our content team uses jargon in our blog posts, we would like to ask you to stay away from it.
## Acceptable Topics
- We are looking for well-written, data-driven, and interesting content that teaches our audience something new about SEO, PPC, growth hacking, content marketing and entrepreneurship.
Example:
[Creating Content That Your Audience Will Adore – The Human Oriented Approach](https://fourdots.com/blog/creating-content-audience-will-adore-2611)
[Why You Need SSL to Rank Better in 2017 and How to Set it](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-you-need-ssl-to-rank-better-in-2016-and-how-to-set-it-2169)[Creating Content that Generates Links Like Crazy](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-generates-links-3189)
[Page Speed Observation: Is Your Website Driving in the Slow Lane?](https://fourdots.com/blog/page-speed-2451)
[Why Your Content Isn’t Attracting Links, and How to Fix it](https://fourdots.com/blog/why-your-content-isnt-attracting-links-2691)
[The Inbound Growth Hacking Bible](https://fourdots.com/blog/inbound-growth-hacking-bible-2431)
- As you can see from the examples above, we are interested in publishing:
a.) In-depth actionable, tactical takeaways, that are backed by recent relevant examples, quotes, or findings.
b.) Creative, light hearted content, built around an internet trend, but relevant to our core audience. Example: [“The Shut Up and Take My Money” Content Strategy](https://fourdots.com/blog/shut-up-take-money-content-strategy-2945).
- Regardless of that fact that our blog is full of SEO and content marketing posts – we are also interested in promoting stories that marketers and business owners genuinely care about.
If you have a cool story about on-boarding, team and task management, growth hacking, business development, writing, blogging, etc. – our editors would love to read it.
## What We Won’t Publish On Our Site
- Topics that have already been covered on our blog. Before you decide to write a particular article for us, be sure to first do a site search for your chosen topic.
- Content that’s too promotional and blindly in favor of a company, tool or services that are being mentioned in your guest post.
- Anything that’s offensive to our readers and industry. Also, we do not accept posts that are overly critical of individuals or companies you’re mentioning. Four Dots isn’t interested in running a gossip blog.
- Content that isn’t backed by facts. Even though we love to theorize, we do not publish random ramblings.
## Link Policy
- Focus on proper attribution of data, citations, and outside content references in your article. When you link out, be sure to clearly state your intent and avoid keyword links.
## How to Submit Your Guest Post
- Send us your guest post in Google Doc file at **contribute [at] fourdots.com**- We only accept custom images. Be sure to send them in a separate file. If you want us to feature some graphics in your guest post, you cannot send us random images you found online. They need to be made for this post only. Same goes for screenshots. You cannot reuse ones you’ve already published elsewhere.
- Make sure you include your short bio, with a maximum of ONE LINK to your own/company’s website. Also, we ask all of our guest blogger to ALWAYS send us a professional mugshot, so our readers can see that a living and breathing person stands behind a specific piece of content.
If your article meets our editorial standards and aligns with our content strategy, one of our editors will send you an email informing you when we intend to publish your article.
Even though we try our hardest to publish our guest bloggers ASAP on our site, the process usually takes up to 2-5 weeks.
## The Fine Print*Once you send us your content, Four Dots reserves the right to adapt and edit your material in ways that the company sees fit. By sending us your material, you’re allowing the agency to reuse, republish, and update that specific material in any number of different ways.*
---
## Pages: SEO Link Builder Trainee
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-link-builder-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-link-builder-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-link-builder-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-link-builder-job.md)
**Published:** 2017-02-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-11
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
We are looking to expand our team in our Novi Sad office, at the position of
#####**SEO Link Builder**We’re looking for someone with amazing communication skills.
We’re looking for someone with vivid imagination.
We’re looking for…. You?
**Let’s describe you:**- You are not afraid of learning new things.
- You have a curious mind.
- You are willing to try new things and techniques.
- You are a great negotiator.
- You get things done.
- You are able to work under pressure and within strict deadlines.
- You are super organized.
**Here’s what you’ll do:**- Work with big brands
- Work with team leaders and writers
- Drink lots of coffee (or tea, we don’t judge)
- Scour the internet for link building opportunities
- [Outreach bloggers and companies](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency)
- Maintain the established collaborations
- Distribute awesome content
- Collaborate with other departments included in the link building process
**If you understood every word so far, then you already know that we need people with:**- English level B1 or FCE qualification
- Excellent written and interpersonal communication skills
- Basic understanding of SEO, digital marketing, link building
**Here’s what we’re bringing to the table:**- Full onboard training in a fast-paced industry.
- Development opportunities
- Flexible working hours (You like that, don’t you?)
- Internal company events (They’re loads of fun, we promise)
- Opportunity to work in-house or remote after successfully finished training
- A possibility of full-time employment if we become BFFs
*Please send us your CV and cover letter to [**work@fourdots.com **](mailto:work@fourdots.com)or fill out the form below.**Deadline for applications 7.7.2019.*### ???? Job Application
---
## Pages: SEO Specialist
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-specialist-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-specialist-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-specialist-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-specialist-job.md)
**Published:** 2016-11-07
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-10
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
We are looking for a new member of our team in Novi Sad or Belgrade, for the position of**SEO Specialist / Ninja****Requirements**– A solid grasp of current SEO practices and a genuine interest in SEO and/or digital marketing;
– Up-to-date with the latest changes, trends and best practices in SEO and SEM;
– Solid understanding of performance marketing, conversion, and online customer acquisition;
– In-depth experience with website analytics tools Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, SEMrush and generally SEO and Content analytics tools
– Devotion to constant self-improvement [and development of technical](https://fourdots.com/blog/enterprise-technical-seo-audit-15176) skills;
– An inquisitive, future-oriented mind which drives you to understand Google’s algorithms and predict what changes might be coming;
– A good understanding of how search engines work, what they frown upon and what they support;
– Understanding social media platforms and how to leverage them to distribute content, gain more links and build successful campaigns;
– An understanding of how customers search, where they search and how they make a decision on whether to purchase something online or not;
– A good understanding of the wider [marketing context](https://fourdots.com/blog/adding-context-to-inbound-marketing-1613);
– An understanding of, or experience with HTML coding, Javascript and PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor);
– 2+ [years of experience in SEO](https://fourdots.com/belgrade-seo-agency) industry;**Will be considered a plus:**– Experience with paid content promotion platforms;
– Some experience and knowledge of web hosting;
– A good understanding of PR and how to get the right message out there;**You will be responsible for:**– Managing all SEO activities such as link building and keyword strategy to increase rankings for clients;
– Making technical SEO recommendations to developers;
– Constantly checking search terms, rankings and [analytics](https://fourdots.com/ga4-agency) to monitor performance of client websites and making recommendations for improvement;
– Meeting strict deadlines**We need someone who is:**– Proficient in English, native level or as close as possible (knowledge of other languages will be considered a plus)
– An organized, meticulous person, able to work on several projects at once
– Willing to learn and constantly work on improving your skills and knowledge base
– Highly motivated and creative individual
– Capable of working under pressure, without it affecting your performance
– Capable of thinking outside the box and coming up with new solutions
– A team player**We offer:**– A setting where you can expand your knowledge through practice
– Opportunity to work on exciting projects and handle various niche clients
– A chance to learn from inbound marketing & SEO experts
– Flexible working hours
– Dynamic environment
– Full time employment
We need a superstar marketer. A professional who can bring value to our clients, and deliver results.
If you found yourself in description above send your **CV and portfolio** via email: [work@fourdots.com](mailto:work@fourdots.com)
---
## Pages: Content Marketing Strategist
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/content-strategist-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/content-strategist-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/content-strategist-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/content-strategist-job.md)
**Published:** 2016-09-30
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-28
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
Four Dots is hiring a responsible and analytically oriented content marketer & promoter to join our in-house content marketing team in our [Novi Sad office](https://goo.gl/maps/XJ5QSiSXjRS2). This person should bring a fresh perspective to our already experienced [team of SEO experts](https://fourdots.com/seo-outreach-agency) and Content Marketers. You will have the opportunity to work for a great variety of clients (in both B2B and B2C sectors), and develop, execute and monitor strategies on the US, UK, Australian and European markets.
### Requirements
– 2+ years of experience in a digital marketing agency
– 2+ years of experience as a content developer
– Firm grasp of up-to-date SEO practices
– Experience with paid content promotion platforms will be considered as a plus
– Experience in Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, SEMrush and generally SEO and Content analytical tools will be considered as a plus
– Your Knowledge of English should be on a native level (knowledge of other languages will be considered as a plus)
– An organized, meticulous person, able to work on several projects at once
– Willingness to learn and [constantly work on improving](https://fourdots.com/blog/guide-to-using-whitelabel-seo-for-agency-growth-7931) your skills and knowledge base
– Highly motivated and creative individual
– Ability to work under pressure
– Ability to think outside the box
– Team player
### Your responsibilities
– Develop content strategies based on analysis and research
– Document strategies and present them in a cohesive manner
– Break down content promotions to achievable milestones
– Efficient [content promotion across all inbound marketing](https://fourdots.com/blog/content-account-based-marketing-2862) channels
– Writing content on a native level (English)
– Meeting strict deadlines
### We offer
– A chance to expand your knowledge through practice
– A chance to learn from inbound marketing & SEO experts
– Flexible working hours
– Dynamic environment
– Full time employment
We need a superstar marketer. A professional who can bring value to our clients, and deliver results.
If you found yourself in description above send your **CV and portfolio** via email: [work@fourdots.com](mailto:work@fourdots.com)
---
## Pages: Traffic Performance
Monetization
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/traffic-performance-monetization](https://fourdots.com/traffic-performance-monetization)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/traffic-performance-monetization.md](https://fourdots.com/traffic-performance-monetization.md)
**Published:** 2016-07-27
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
##### Through our range of traffic monetization services, as your reliable [SEO partner from New York](https://fourdots.com) Four Dots hopes to meet the needs of advertisers on one side and traffic providers on the other, benefiting both parties. Advertisers need an audience, while publishers are looking for ways to create revenue from traffic.
#### This is where we come in.**##### Advertisers
As a part of a general online visibility strategy, traffic monetization service can provide a significant boost to your own traffic, and consequently, the number of conversions. You choose the exact pages you want promoted, and, through the constant optimization of the promotion channels, we will ensure that you’ll get the audience of the highest quality and relevance. This ensures a higher degree of conversions making it highly cost effective.
##### Publishers
If you have a great platform that attracts a lot of attention, but doesn’t seem to be able to cash in on that popularity, we might be able to connect you with people who are after that highly coveted commodity – traffic. Regardless of the industry your site or network are geared towards, we can find someone who will benefit from the type of audience you attract.
---
## Pages: SEO Tools for Digital Agencies
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/about-us/seo-tools-for-digital-agencies](https://fourdots.com/about-us/seo-tools-for-digital-agencies)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/about-us/seo-tools-for-digital-agencies.md](https://fourdots.com/about-us/seo-tools-for-digital-agencies.md)
**Published:** 2016-03-08
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Next generation software solutions by Four Dots**At [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-australia-is-launched-8913), we are not only building great links, but also great tools for intelligent SEO strategies.**Working with hundreds of clients month in and month out, [SEO agencies](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services) like ours typically have to spend a lamentable amount of time on technical work revolving around browsing, creating tables, sorting results and, finally, reporting. All of these can be greatly simplified with intuitive software tools that do exactly what you want them to and when you want them to.
Minimize time wasted on boring processes. We’ve designed machines that can do the machine work for you.
##**Reportz – White-Label Reporting Solution**Reportz is an amazing [white-label reporting solution](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services), created with a single purpose in mind: to optimize and simplify the entire reporting process. This tool makes it possible for users to stay on top of their KPIs and influence long-term client and management strategies, by managing and transforming insightful data into powerful, easily understandable marketing reports in record time!
With Reportz, you can group your important data and track even the most complex projects from one, centralized location. This utility is compatible with all top marketing tools and it has a wide range of preset reporting templates, that make it easy for users to standardize their efforts and create compelling reports in under 5 minutes!
Features:
-**Real-time data and tracking**for close and precise monitoring.
-**Custom marketing dashboards**that eliminate mind-numbing copy-pasting and other unnecessary manual work.
-**A custom widget builder**for filtering, merging and displaying all the key data you need when building your reports.
-**Predefined templates**for creating standardized and popular reports in a matter of minutes.
-**A simple, intuitive design,**that helps you present complex data in ways that everyone can understand.
-**An ever-growing number of integrations**with all popular marketing data sources.
-**Report automation**for sending regular updates to ongoing clients.
Reportz puts an end to your reporting challenges, eliminates the unnecessary clutter and complexity from the equation, and allows its users to easily present their worth to their clients and managers and focus on far more important things!
#####**Get this tool at**[Reportz.io](https://reportz.io/)!
##**Dibz – Advanced Link Prospecting Tool**Dibz is a link prospecting tool developed to help you simplify the process of searching for and assessing [link building opportunities](https://fourdots.com/blog/teams/radomir-basta) for your campaigns. Predefined searches with strings of advanced operators, in combination with the terms you enter, ensure that you’ll get only the most relevant results in the desired niche. You can fine tune the queries as much as you like, or put your faith in our expertise, enter only your main keywords and cruise your way to better rankings.
Easily sort through the offered results, dismissing the ones you don’t need and organizing the ones you do. Prospects are presented with a range of useful metrics (some of which you can customize on the admin level) including our own SPAM score, Domain Authority, number of Referring Domains and Pages, as well as social shares.
Features
-**Spam score**for assessing a website’s quality
-**Predefined parameters**to search more efficiently
-**Key SEO metrics**shown for each result** **
-**CSV download**
When you find [a site](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-audit-services) with promising metrics, you can easily preview it without leaving our tool, and if you still find it interesting, use the contact email we try to provide for each prospect to move on directly to the outreach phase.
#####**Get this tool at**[Dibz.me](https://dibz.me/)!
##**Base – SEO Reporting and Link Management Tool**Base.me centralizes all your link building data to help you manage SEO campaigns more efficiently. Sort your link building prospects and add all the relevant data to keep track of your team’s work and progress. You can enter the information on prospects, live links, clients and link builders to keep track of all the most important data in a single tool! Base’s intuitive interface will also make it easier for you to present relevant campaign data to the client and let them know about the progress anytime.
Features
-**Integrated workflow**for all the linkbuilding phases
-**Link audit**metrics that help in assessing website quality
-****Categorize**prospects and links by niche, industry or any other relevant tag**-**Easy reporting**with all the relevant stats included
- [**White label link tracking software**](https://base.me/white-label-backlink-tracking-tool.html) for agencies
Base.me facilitates a linkbuilder’s life by providing a unique space to manage their campaigns, track the team’s work and always have the insight into the most relevant campaign data. Its comprehensive reporting system will help you better communicate with your clients and collaborate more efficiently in future!
#####**Get this tool at**[Base.me](https://base.me/)!
---
## Pages: PHP (Laravel) Developer
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/php-laravel-developer-job](https://fourdots.com/careers/php-laravel-developer-job)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers/php-laravel-developer-job.md](https://fourdots.com/careers/php-laravel-developer-job.md)
**Published:** 2015-11-05
**Last Updated:** 2018-05-07
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
We are looking for a PHP (*Laravel*) developer to join our team in [Novi Sad office](https://goo.gl/maps/XJ5QSiSXjRS2) and help us build data driven web application(s) for web marketing purposes and help with existing projects.
Your role will be development of web applications along with other tightly relevant responsibilities.
Ideal candidates are those who:
- Have several years of experience of working as a developer on client projects
- Have projects portfolio to show or realized, active projects which can be seen
- Are comfortable with OOP
- Have operational experience of PHP frameworks (*Laravel is a must, Symfony is a big bonus*)
- Have operational experience in working with relational databases (*MySQL*)
- Are proficient in HTML/CSS
- Have experience in working with web API’s
- Produce standardized and meticulously clean code
- Use Git
Optional but huge advantages are:
- Frontend development capabilities (*HTML5/CSS3/JS and usage of modern, responsive frontend frameworks like Foundation or Bootstrap and libraries like jQuery/Angular*)
- Understanding of SEO/web marketing concepts and goals
- Experience in WordPress development
- Operational experience in Nginx administration
- Operational experience in Linux/FreeBSD system administration
- Passion for new technologies, perpetual improvement and following of industry news and best practices
- Appreciation of occasional deep discussion on craft beers and general geekery
We’re offering competitive pay and work in laid back atmosphere filled with young people who live and breathe web, just like you. If you found yourself in description above, please [get in touch](https://fourdots.com/contact) and send your resume, we’ll be glad to discuss.
---
## Pages: About Four Dots
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/about-us](https://fourdots.com/about-us)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/about-us.md](https://fourdots.com/about-us.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
#### Who We Are
### We are an independent, premium digital marketing agency built on a simple premise: Marketing should generate revenue, not just reports.
For the last 14 years, Four Dots has crafted bespoke, multi-channel strategies for clients ranging from growth-stage startups to global enterprises like Coca-Cola and Philip Morris.
We don’t sell pre-packaged “silver bullets,” we transform website visitors into leads and sales by integrating**SEO, AI visibility Optimization, Advanced Analytics, Paid Performance, and Content Strategy**into a single engine driven by data.**We are proud of our no-nonsense approach. Each campaign is tailored to your unique business goals, and executed on budget and on time.**#### How We Work
### No Guesswork. No Black Boxes.
The agency world is full of “gurus” and “magic.” We prefer engineering and math.
-**We don’t do packages.**Your business isn’t identical to your competitor’s, so your strategy shouldn’t be either. We audit, we analyze, and we build a plan based on your actual goals.
-**We serve the data.**You get real-time dashboard access from Day 1. If a campaign isn’t working, we see it, we own it, and we fix it.
-**We keep you unlocked.**We despise long-term contract locks created to entangle clients, so their cost of exiting contract is higher than enduring and stagnating until contract expires. **We prefer agreements where**client can exit at any time if not happy**. Majority of clients stay for two+ years.
#### The Team
### Senior Expertise. Low Turnover.
We are a team of 30+ strategists, developers, and creators across New York, Serbia, and Australia.
In an industry famous for burning out junior staff in 18 months, our team is an anomaly. Our average tenure exceeds four years; our leads have been with us for eight or more. This stability matters to you because institutional knowledge compounds. The strategist managing your account has likely solved your specific problem a dozen times before.
### Leadership
-**[Radomir Basta, CEO](/about-radomir-basta):**15 years in search; author of*The Good Book of SEO*.
-**Milica Dobrenov, COO:**Oversees strategy across 180+ active projects.
-**Nataša Bajić, CIO:**Leads the R&D behind our proprietary toolset.
-**Goran Bogunović, CAO:**Architect of our content operations and client culture.
#### Agency-as-a-Lab
### Our Edge
Digital marketing is a game of expertise and tools, so we treat our agency like a [lab for marketing innovation](https://fourdots.com/agency-as-a-lab).
When we hit roadblocks in solving some unique client problem that enterprise level off-the-shelf tools can’t fix, we build our own internal solutions to streamline our work. These solutions sometimes evolve into commercial platforms like Reportz.io for live reporting, Base.me for link building management and FAII.ai for tracking and optimizing visibility on AI platforms – tools that other agencies now license from us. But this isn’t about selling software. It’s about giving you an unfair advantage in your market.
#### Our Journey
### The Timeline
We started in 2013 as a technical SEO consultancy built on execution and quality. Growth happened organically through referrals-clients loved the results and told their networks. We’ve expanded without outside funding, always following client needs.
### Key milestones:
- 2013**: Founded with a laser focus on SEO.
-**2016**: Launched our first internal tool (now Dibz.me) and expanded to Hong Kong via partners.
-**2017**: Went full-service in performance marketing and opened in Belgrade.
-**2018**: Introduced automated dashboards (Reportz.io) that took off big-time.
-**2019**: Landed in New York, published “The Good Book of SEO,” and started Four Dots Academy.
-**2021**: Added link management tools (Base.me) and opened in Sydney.
-**2026: Rolling out FAII.ai, AI Visibility Optimization platform for brands.**Today, we’re in five offices, serving 200+ clients across three continents with services like technical audits, digital PR, GA4 setups, and content strategies.
#### Let’s Get To Work
We engage with companies that have growth challenges worth solving and the patience to solve them properly.
If you are looking for a partner to tell you what you*want*to hear, we aren’t it. If you are looking for a partner to tell you what you*need*to do to win, let’s talk.*Solution to your problem starts when your email lands in our inbox.*
---
## Pages: White Label SEO Services - OLD
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services-old](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services-old)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services-old.md](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services-old.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-26
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### Techniques focused on quality
SEO has never been a simple tactic used to manipulate search engines, but rather a sort of an online branding strategy any serious business needs. At least this is how we see it. Correspondingly, we aim to provide high quality services that will make both you and your clients happy with the results. Moreover, to demonstrate the efficiency of our efforts, we use state-of-the-art tools and software which enables easy and accurate performance tracking and reporting. Our [white label SEO program](https://fourdots.com/blog/guide-to-using-whitelabel-seo-for-agency-growth-7931), therefore, gives you peace of mind when it comes to achieving great SERP results and increasing a website’s authority.
If you had previously worked with a company that fails to meet your quality standards, you know how difficult it may be to choose a reliable [New York SEO partner](https://fourdots.com). [Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/local-seo-search) focuses on developing a strategic plan rather than just outlining a set of random digits that may seem attractive to you. The essence of remarkable SEO strategy is quality in all the associated aspects and when working with clients, we focus on the following:
- Identifying the key opportunities for a specific business
- Negotiating the exact plan of services needed to achieve this
- Tailoring a flexible, custom deal that suits your needs
- Communicating regularly and reporting on a monthly basis
- Using state-of-the art technology to maximize the efficiency and accuracy of results tracking, report generation and improvement analysis
##### Advanced SEO intelligence
Although essential for any SEO strategy, the processes of reporting and analysis typically require extensive amounts of time even when done with advanced SEO software programs. This may require your in-house teams to spend too much time on handling complex tools, which may be quite difficult if they previously had no corresponding training. Through our [white label SEO](https://fourdots.com/free-sem-tools) program, we aim to help you focus on the processes you find most important, while we do the analytics and reporting part. Equipped with the necessary intelligence for this, [Four Dots is able to collaborate](https://fourdots.com/blog/four-dots-australia-is-launched-8913) with other agencies to provide them with actionable insights on SEO efforts.
### THE TEAM
YOU CAN
RELY ON
###### For us, great results delivered in an arranged deadline are imperative for successful collaboration. In the world of white label SEO, efficient communication and collaboration are essential for success, which is why we always aim to make this part of the process as smooth as possible. We see our clients as partners with whom we share mission and goals, which is what keeps driving us forward.
Discover the possibilities with [white label SEO services](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) by Four Dots. Get in touch!
---
## Pages: Content
Development
and
Production
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/content-development-and-production](https://fourdots.com/content-development-and-production)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/content-development-and-production.md](https://fourdots.com/content-development-and-production.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-25
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### Content forms
we provide
Most companies today realize the benefits of using content to expand the authority of their website and improve its visibility on all the relevant channels. This is why they are increasingly turning to**developing unique, valuable content in different forms to distinguish from their key competitors and attract wider audiences.**However, in-house teams are not always best suited for this, which is why professional content development and production services can help you make your pages stand out. At [Four Dots, reputable New York City SEO agency](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc) we help you develop:
- Website content
- Blog content creation
- White papers, case studies
- Industry-targeted infographics
These are some of the essential content forms any serious organization should host on its website in order to demonstrate its expertise, promote its values and achieve goals. Through style and tone appropriate to both the organization and medium, these forms of content help you increase your credibility and gain some loyal consumers. With content development strategies that incorporate all the necessary features, your target audience easily recognizes you as an authority in the industry.
##### Coming up with an
excellent piece
Precisely because of its enormous value, developing and producing web content that truly engages is one of the key challenges for most organizations. Deciding on what it is that a company can offer to the audience and how it can do that is certainly a strategic activity that is best done by professionals who**combine niche market knowledge and writing expertise**. To deliver pieces of [content that get noticed](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/), Four Dots relies on the following activities:
- Topic research and industry analysis
- Developing tone and style that reflect your organization’s mission and vision
- Optimization for search engines
- Choosing the appropriate forms for distribution and engagement
### CONTENT
DEVELOPMENT
SERVICES BY
FOUR DOTS
###### Thanks to our New York SEO team dedicated to creating excellent web content, Four Dots has helped various companies around the world add up to their content strategies by developing blog, white papers and website content that stands out. Precisely because we understand how important this is to you, we promise we never use generic tone or cover topics that everybody else has already discusses. Instead, we focus on relevancy, quality, and topics people want to read despite the volume your editorial calendar may require.
#####*Contact Four Dots For Guidance In The Process*###### Get some extra online attention with a unique topic no one has dealt with in your industry before.
---
## Pages: Content
Marketing for
a Greater
Online
Popularity
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/content-marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/content-marketing.md](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### The right approach
A careless approach to content research and [content marketing strategy](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) is only able to produce a bland website with placeholder content which will fail to make anyone interested in staying on the site or recommending it to anyone.
However,**a well devised content strategy will not only bring you more visitors, but also speak volumes about your professionalism and about what you are able to offer.**Some of the critical factors here are:
- Ability to create multiple content forms (blog posts, press**releases, white papers)
- Creating pieces that are engaging and optimized for search
engines
- Identifying content placement channels
- Outreach and communication with target content distributors
##### Understanding
the effects
The possible reach of the content you create extends beyond social media shares and mentions. By offering fresh industry insights you increase the possibility to be mentioned on specific sites or by industry influencers,**which does not only generate high-quality traffic for your site, but also establishes you as an authority in your niche. Therefore, a strategic approach to content marketing can generate several things that will benefit your brand: high-quality backlinks, traffic increase, and stronger brand reputation. Obviously, this can give you an important advantage over the competitors and turn your visitors into loyal readers.
### WHY RELY ON
FOUR DOTS
Contrary to what our name suggests, our company hires quite a large team of experienced content specialists, writers and search experts, who all combine their knowledge of the field to come up with engaging and interesting pieces of content on industry-specific topics. When it comes to content marketing, we understand that this requires research and creativity, which we certainly don’t lack. We can provide you with pieces of content necessary for your online recognition by doing an in-depth research and applying our knowledge on what your target audience wants.
#####*Contact Four Dots For Guidance In The Process*###### Forget about outdated placeholder-like texts.
---
## Pages: Content Strategy
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/content-strategy](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/content-strategy.md](https://fourdots.com/content-strategy.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2024-12-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### Content strategy
simplified
Just consistently providing interesting content can be difficult enough on its own, especially if you are swamped with other site management tasks. However, the matters really get complicated when you consider the fact that formulating and executing a good content strategy is so much more than just publishing a new article every week or so, plus having the best possible content on the website pages. When we take on the development of your [content marketing](https://fourdots.com/content-marketing-timeline/) strategy we strive to offer a comprehensive service which includes a number of things.
- Extensive research of relevant industry verticals
- Competitor analysis
- Examination of target demographics
- Editorial schedule planning
- Content creation
Once these steps are integrated in an all-encompassing strategy, you will be equipped with high-quality content in forms most adequate for online distribution. This is why content strategy, essentially relies on two basic aspects:
- Content marketing
- Content development and production
#### CONTENT CONSULTING BY
FOUR DOTS
Once we have a good idea about what people would find interesting and useful, we create relevant content which is supposed to be not only informative and attractive, but which will also be perfectly optimized for search engines. That is to say that you won’t have to worry about keyword density or about how often you are supposed to come up with a new piece of content.
We pride ourselves for being one of the top [New York SEO firms](https://fourdots.com). Our content marketing services are highly compatible with our [SEO](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) and link building services, as we can also create content meant to promote your website on other online locations. This means us creating content that is not only relevant to your area of operation, but also custom tailored for the site that it will be displayed on. Making use of this service also means that you won’t have to worry about quality of your website content or your next blog post, as we can make long term plans for both, and provide deeply analyzed and prepared content with the most optimal publishing frequency.
Have an idea on what your audience would love to see next?
#####*Let’s Discuss Your Next Steps Together*
---
## Pages: Conversion Rate
Optimization
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/conversion-rate-optimization](https://fourdots.com/conversion-rate-optimization)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/conversion-rate-optimization.md](https://fourdots.com/conversion-rate-optimization.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2017-04-24
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### Understanding
the nature of conversions
Conversion rate is a term that refers to a percentage of overall website visits that continue down the defined sales funnel. This typically includes clicking to a specific call to action button, filling in a form or making a call, each of which could be set as the website’s goal. By completing the desired action, regular visitors become leads or customers, thus bringing immediate benefits for your business. However, creating a funnel that is most likely to trigger such a flow of actions is a matter of approach and involves:
- Goal setting
- Page design
- Testing
- Analysis
- Implementation
Integrated together, these steps enable you to combine page elements in such a way that they naturally lead a visitor towards the goal. Of course, [you need to keep tracking](https://fourdots.com/blog/tool-is-good-as-its-user-3391) your visitors’ behavior in order to identify possible obstacles on this path and remove them as soon as possible. This way, you enable your prospects to navigate your website easily and understand the benefits of clicking specific call to action buttons immediately.
##### The simple conversion rate optimization equation.
Every website has a goal and the idea behind reaching optimum conversion rates is to make all the traffic directed to your pages more meaningful. Many website owners simply assume visitors would naturally follow the sales funnel, yet the truth is that they most frequently need clear directions to make specific actions. In practice, this works according to the following logic:
If 1000 visitors come to your website via an ad and only 1% of them purchases your product, this gives you 10 new consumers. Evidently, the higher the conversion rate, the greater the number of consumers for the same amount of money you invested in advertising (or any other online expansion channel for that matter).
### THE
RIGHT WAY
TO DO IT
###### [Four Dots, SEO agency from New York](https://fourdots.com), proudly collaborates with dozens of companies worldwide that managed to turn their websites into real conversion boosters and significantly improve their revenue stream. If you’re struggling to improve the outcomes of your traffic generation tactics, we offer you assistance that will make this process much easier.
#####*Start Converting Now!*
---
## Pages: SEO Website Design
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-website-design](https://fourdots.com/seo-website-design)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo-website-design.md](https://fourdots.com/seo-website-design.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-03-22
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### When SEO and UX combine
The combined efforts of our website design and SEO teams in New York ensure that you will not only be getting a website which is responsive, easy to navigate, works smoothly and looks great, but that it will also have flawless inner linking structure, metadata in perfect order, and that none of the onsite SEO aspects will be left unaddressed. We rely on our expertise and creativity to cover all the critical aspects of building a great website, and these include:
- Writing a clean code that is easy to crawl by search engines
- Responsive design that works well on different screen sizes
- Intuitive navigation with strategic keyword distribution
- Image and title tags optimization
- Creating content that communicates the right message and
includes optimum keyword density
- Defining URL structure
The right combination of web development and SEO knowledge can greatly improve your website performance if it’s used tactically. This method is preferable to having your [SEO and web design](https://fourdots.com/ai-seo-services) done by different companies, as it removes any potential synchronization problems, allows for effective troubleshooting and makes it easier to make any necessary subsequent changes to one aspect of the website, without disrupting the delicate balance of the elements.
Furthermore, we also pay attention to conversion rate optimization, which is one of the most important metrics that tell you how your visitors see your website.
Therefore, SEO website design is intended to optimize multiple aspects of your website and thus become a stable ground for building online presence.
## FOUR DOTS
APPROACH
Our [New York SEO](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc) and web design teams are working closely together on each project of this type, perfectly complementing each other’s abilities and knowledge. This ensures that you’ll be getting a well-made website which will be great at telling search engines just how well-made it is. While this means that your site will be easy to index as soon as it is made, giving you an early running start for the rest of your SEO campaign, it also means that your visitors will have a great experience once they do come to the website.
This is why we encourage you to make use of our [SEO web design service](https://fourdots.com/white-label-seo-services) if you want a well-rounded website which will work flawlessly and easily attract and keep new visitors.
Planning to start building a perfect website for your business?
#####*Contact Us For More Info*
---
## Pages: PPC Packages
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages.md](https://fourdots.com/ppc-packages.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-13
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
## Drive Measurable Growth with our Expertly Designed PPC Packages
- 10+ Years of PPC Excellence
- $50M+ in Managed Ad Spend
- 200+ Satisfied Global Clients
- 95% Client Retention Rate
- Google Premier Partner Status
[Four Dots](https://fourdots.com/careers) is an independent elite PPC digital marketing agency with over a decade of expertise in crafting and executing bespoke multi-channel performance-driven marketing strategies. Our team of certified Google Ads experts creates and deploys some of the most advanced [PPC packages](https://fourdots.com/contact) and campaigns tailored specifically for E-Commerce and SaaS companies.
## Google Premier Partner 2026**By recognizing Four Dots as a Premier Partner, Google ranked us in the top 3% of Partner agencies in the market**We plan and run full-funnel Google Ads across Search, Shopping, Display, remarketing, and Performance Max, with a focus on measurable growth. Revenue, margin, and efficiency, tracked end to end.
- Multi-market account management
- Revenue-first reporting (not vanity KPIs)
- Tracking and attribution checked end to end
- PPC - E-COMMERCE
Regional Fashion Retailer: +76% Conversion Value Across 4 Markets
How we increased conversion value across 4 markets while reducing costs**Client:**Regional Fashion Retailer**Industry:**E-commerce, Fashion, Retail
+76%
Conversion Value
-28%
Cost per Trans.
[Read Case Study](https://fourdots.com/?p=13031)
- PPC MANAGEMENT
Halo Oglasi Case Study: +171% Conversions While Cutting Costs by 47%
How Serbias largest classifieds platform dominated paid search efficiency**Client:**Halo Oglasi**Industry:**Classifieds, Marketplace, E-commerce
+171%
Conversions
-47%
Cost per Conv.
[Read Case Study](https://fourdots.com/?p=12934)
- B2B SEO
IVC Technologies: +315% Top 3 Keywords in Niche Industrial Market
How a niche B2B company grew keyword rankings by 315% and conversions by 210% with SEO and PPC**Client:**IVC Technologies**Industry:**B2B, Industrial, Manufacturing
+315%
Top 3 Keywords
+210%
Conversions
[Read Case Study](https://fourdots.com/?p=13032)
- EMAIL MARKETING
CuraLife: 711% ROI Through Automated Email Marketing
How we achieved exceptional ROI through automated email marketing for a health supplements brand**Client:**CuraLife**Industry:**Healthcare, Supplements, E-commerce
711%
Email ROI
793
Conversions
[Read Case Study](https://fourdots.com/?p=13030)
- PPC - TELECOM
BeotelNet Case Study: Sustained 11% Month-over-Month Growth in Competitive ISP Market
How we delivered consistent growth for Serbias pioneering internet provider**Client:**BeotelNet**Industry:**Telecom, Technology, ISP
11%
MoM Growth
6+
Months Sustained
[Read Case Study](https://fourdots.com/?p=12939)
With offices across Europe, USA, Australia and Hong Kong, we’ve helped hundreds of global brands achieve exceptional ROI through data-driven paid advertising campaigns.
---
## Pages: AdWords
Managment:
Professional Services
that Bring Results
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/adwords-management](https://fourdots.com/adwords-management)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/adwords-management.md](https://fourdots.com/adwords-management.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2017-05-12
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### What does AdWords
management mean
AdWords management includes a set of different activities related to maintaining your Google AdWords account in order to plan, create and monitor search campaigns. Depending on the competition and the budget, AdWords campaign management is a process that includes:
- Keyword research and organization
- Campaign planning and identifying effective ad groups
- Budget planning and distribution through AdWords bidding
- Text ad creation and optimization
- Campaign monitoring and analysis
This list may remind you of a step-by-step scheme that only needs to follow established guidelines in order to bring results. However, the process of creating efficient AdWords campaigns is much more complex and requires both creativity and strategic planning. Only a combination of the two can [deliver results](https://fourdots.com/conversion-rate-optimization) that may make your product or service stand out in search, regardless of how tight the competition is.
##### How to get started
As noted, AdWords management involves different activities, most of which rely on identifying and planning efficient keywords and keyword groups. Keyword research, therefore, is a critical activity that helps you identify key opportunities for your business and plan an efficient campaign. Of course, this doesn’t mean just choosing a random set of keywords you like most, but finding ones that are most likely to attract the exact target audience with minimum budget. Without a plan, no results could ever be achieved and this is why you need a team of professionals to help you find the opportunities and use them to your advantage.
## FOUR DOTS = RESULTS
###### If you’re unsure how to get started with Google AdWords, you should consult our New York PPC team of people with years of experience and thousands of successfully delivered search campaigns. Professional consulting helps you plan your budget carefully and avoid wasting time and money on keyword opportunities that simply don’t work.
---
## Pages: PPC Management
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ppc-management](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/ppc-management.md](https://fourdots.com/ppc-management.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-25
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### Paid search rules
To run a successful PPC campaign means employing clever, research-based tactics that require the professional understanding of the field, as well as the industry trends associated with a specific business. Even though setting a campaign may seem like a quick process given the intuitive interface of Google AdWords, its planning and development rely on several key processes.
-**Identifying low volume keywords.**This is a process in which we identify the most attractive sets of keywords that would**require minimum investments to be run.
- Testing and analysis.**In order to ensure maximum number of clicks, we test identified keywords in combination with**creative ad copy writing.
- Tracking.**Once the adequate PPC campaign is set, we keep tracking its performance.
-**Reporting.**At different stages, we create performance reports that include analysis of all the relevant aspects.
Each of these steps should be planned with a single goal in mind – a greater revenue stream, rather than just generating traffic. This is why choosing professional PPC management services is always a better solution than DIY tactics.
##### Calculating ROI
No campaign is efficient until it proves to be a source of profit for your business. This is why Four Dots, one of the top [New York City SEO](https://fourdots.com) agencies optimize PPC campaigns for maximum conversions and not just for clicks, which remains our focus throughout the whole process of PPC management. We constantly look beyond numbers to develop your business so that it can easily calculate the specific benefits our services bring. Of course, as long as you’re seeing significant profit from your investment, you can be sure we are doing the right thing.
## INTELLIGENT
SOLUTION
New York SEO experts possesses the right combination of relevant skills necessary for efficient management of paid search campaigns. Our major differentiator lies in the fact we see each new campaign a new challenge that we need to overcome for the benefit of both your and our business. This empowers us with creativity and willingness to keep delivering exceptional results.
##### Choose PPC Package To Fit Your Needs!
Could this be the next big thing for your business?
Let’s do it together. Contact us for expert advice.
#####*Contact Us For Expert Advice!*
---
## Pages: Services
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/services](https://fourdots.com/services)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/services.md](https://fourdots.com/services.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2017-10-11
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Online Reputation Management
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/online-reputation-management](https://fourdots.com/online-reputation-management)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/online-reputation-management.md](https://fourdots.com/online-reputation-management.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
### Why ORM is critical
Unfortunately, information on the internet doesn’t actually have to be coming from reliable sources and be completely valid in order to spread like wildfire. This is why just about anyone is in danger of having their reputation tarnished with no good reason. Whether it’s personal web reputation or reputation of a company, a lot of money can be lost just because of intentional or unintentional misinformation, not to mention other possible inconveniences. ORM services by [New York SEO company](https://fourdots.com) Four Dots offer individuals and businesses an opportunity to have their voice heard above the rumbling of the avalanche of unreliable gossip.
Unfortunately, there are many cases when just browsing the web for relevant results is not bringing any results. This is why ORM is typically divided into:
–**Proactive ORM**. This is an ongoing process of monitoring and analyzing relevant sets of data related to how you or your company’s profiles are indexed in search. Proactive ORM thus intends to prevent any possible damage to your brand.
–**Reactive ORM**. Once you identify negative results pointing to your brand, it is essential to react immediately to improve your reputation. Most companies, unfortunately, pay little attention to this until a greater damage is done and this is where reactive online reputation management jumps in.
## HOW WE
DO IT
The first thing that we as top [New York City SEO experts](https://fourdots.com) do when we take on the management of your online reputation, is to conduct an audit meant to give us a clear picture of the way you are perceived by different demographics. The extensive audit covers everything from user complaint websites, social networks, portals and blogs to newspapers and other online sources. Once the audit is completed, we identify the potential problems and what room there is for improvement.
Along with determining the specifics of their current reputation, we are actively working on creating a body of accurate information on our client, which is supposed to help in clearing up any possible misunderstandings. This includes press releases, articles and posts on different forums, and just about anything else that can help paint a clearer image of our client to the public.
#####*Worried About Your Online Reputation?
Contact Us To See How We Can Help!*
---
## Pages: Local SEO Search
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/local-seo-search](https://fourdots.com/local-seo-search)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/local-seo-search.md](https://fourdots.com/local-seo-search.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-31
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### Local search drives both traffic
and conversions
**Searches made on mobile devices not only often target local results, they also lead to conversions much more frequently**than the same searches made on desktop computers.
Local visibility is especially important for businesses with a physical location, which are catering to a specific region, but it can also benefit online oriented businesses. Despite the fact that your services are globally available, a chance to rank higher for searches relevant to your region shouldn’t be passed up.
Another reason everyone should invest in local search optimization is the fact that the way search engines qualify the results has gone through some rather dramatic changes in the recent years.**The shift from a keyword to entity based search model means that in order to rank well on any level, local or global, you need to be established as a search entity.**One of the ways to do this is by supplying search engines with easily verifiable data, which is exactly what local optimization allows you to do.
#### Small Business SEO opportunity
The primary goal of [local SEO techniques](https://fourdots.com/blog/google-webmaster-hangout-recap-august-4-7-2020-7614) is to optimize your website to be found by the audience from a particular city, region, province or any other geographically defined area. This is a result of search engines**showing your pages higher in search results than most global queries**. Of course, there’s much more to local visibility optimization than simply finding a couple of directories to list your business in. Some of the critical parts of website optimization for local search include:
- Keyword research for local search
- Onsite optimization (content, page and URL structure optimization)
- Offsite optimization (local citations and directory listings)
After determining the sets of keywords to focus on, we perform an audit of your existing assets and an NAP (Name, Address, Phone) analysis , ensuring consistency in your listings. This was an essential part of the process even before the semantic web imposed an entity-based approach, and is even more significant since the updates. Basically, NAP analysis consists of ensuring that every listing you have comes with uniform, accurate information on your business details, and is one of obligatory steps in becoming a well defined web entity.
##### Our job
In addition to the basic steps, as your reliable [New York City SEO](https://fourdots.com/seo-agency-nyc) partner, we make sure that you don’t run into problems with duplicate content or keyword cannibalization (non-synchronized and disorganized approach to distributing keyword equities and targets across your various pages – basically, competing against yourself for certain keywords).
**Optimization of social media channels**is as integral when it comes to local search as it is with just about any other aspect of online marketing efforts, making it one of our areas of focus in any local campaign.
Finally, aside from making sure that you are represented on all relevant and trusted local directories, reviews websites and other, similar sources,**we’ll go the extra mile and try and ensure as any mentions and links on other trusted local sources**, like newspapers, regional industry organizations, and everything else that might help establish you as a relevant, trustworthy entity.
### YOUR
BENEFITS
###### The results of an efficient local SEO strategy should be noticeable in a relatively short period due to market specificities. Typically, local small business with unique service or product proposition would relatively easily develop in the online world, considering the fact they are not competing in the overly crowded market.**With a little push through the right online channels, local businesses can become leaders in their respective region.**Furthermore, this can be an excellent branding strategy for local businesses whose products or services are locally oriented.
#####*Sounds Like A Strategy For Your Small Business?
Consult our Local SEO Experts Now!*
---
## Pages: Google Penalty
Removal
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/google-penalty-removal](https://fourdots.com/google-penalty-removal)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/google-penalty-removal.md](https://fourdots.com/google-penalty-removal.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
### WHAT IS GOOGLE PENALTY?
An unusually large traffic drop is probably the most striking change a penalty by Google will cause to your website. Since this can be devastating for any online business, you need to take all the necessary steps to identify and try to solve a problem.
To be able to resolve a problem, you first need to understand it. If you notice performance problems, Google recommends you take the following steps:
- Identify the type of penalty
(Panda, Penguin, Manual actions, Malware)
- Understand the symptoms
(traffic loss especially if it coincides
with a Google algorithm update)
- Assess your options based on the severity of the problem
##### Google penalty removal process
Depending on the severity of the penalty, you can recover from the damage in as quickly as dozen days or as long as several months. The most important thing, however, is to react on time. This way, you’ll stand more chances of getting to the level of popularity you previously established. Of course, the first step is to know for sure what kind of penalty you’re facing.
### WHEN YOU CANNOT DO IT ON YOUR OWN
###### Using intelligent Google penalty removal strategies, [Four Dots, European SEO company](/european-seo-company) have helped numerous companies recover from the associated issues. This is what makes us confident in our abilities to cope with even the most aggressive penalty and help a business out any time. Regardless of the type of problem you’re experiencing, Four Dots can be of assistance and set your website back on track.
#####*Worried About Your Website’s Future?*###### Ask for a [free consultation](https://fourdots.com/contact) and we’ll be happy to discuss the further steps.
---
## Pages: Blogger Outreach
and Engagement
Improvement
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement](https://fourdots.com/blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement.md](https://fourdots.com/blogger-outreach-and-engagement-improvement.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2017-04-24
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
### WE CAN HELP
YOU MAKE THIS
HAPPEN.
One way to help people find out about your company or website is to build relationships with names already well-known to your target audience. Yet to do this, you need to be unique, interesting, and, above all, you need to know how to identify the right people.This is where we jump in to do the time-consuming part for you.
##### The Idea behind Blogger Outreach
Blogger outreach is one of the critical activities in website marketing, as it represents the path to not only generating quality external links but also building relevant contacts for the future. By connecting with thought leaders in your industry, you get more credibility among both your consumers and search engines.
That’s right. Signals from relevant sites make quite a difference in search, which is another reason they are valuable for your website. However, getting to the right blogger is not as easy as it may seem. This is why, as one of the top [SEO experts from New York](https://fourdots.com), Four Dots designed a set of services we might use to get you in front of the right eyes:**Research – **identifying industry influencers and relevant contacts**Monitoring – **getting to know the industry, the bloggers and the topics they like**Engagement – **establishing a contact via the appropriate channel (mail, social networks, etc.)**Personalized communication – **straightforward and compelling ideas rather than generic talk
##### Value for your Brand
In the age of mass personal and corporate blogging, it is getting more and more difficult to get your voice heard. Regardless of the industry you’re operating in, there are always persons, blogs or companies that have more influence on the targeted readership than everybody else. In some cases, a single mention on social media networks may translate into valuable leads. A single backlink – to a higher search position.
Therefore, the benefits are various and the opportunities are there too, but you need to identify the right ones. As implied, this does involve several steps that may take too much of your time.
### HOW
FOUR
DOTS FIT
IN
###### After the years in the industry, Four Dots content specialists from New York have already learned the basic principles of engaging with influencers. The diversity of our team makes us knowledgeable on different industries and we find it easy to identify and talk to the target persons. The greatest benefit for you here is that we let you focus on what you do best, while we take care of making it seen.
#####*Ready To Make The Move? Our Team Is
Ready When You Need It!*###### Tell us a little something about what you do, and we’ll start the research right away!
---
## Pages: Advanced Link Reclamation Services
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/backlink-analysis-and-risk-assessment](https://fourdots.com/backlink-analysis-and-risk-assessment)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/backlink-analysis-and-risk-assessment.md](https://fourdots.com/backlink-analysis-and-risk-assessment.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-06
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
## WHAT IS ADVANCED LINK RECLAMATION?
Advanced Link Reclamation is a strategic process that identifies backlinks that have never been indexed or have been de-indexed by Google.
By leveraging tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and manual analysis, we analyze your entire backlink portfolio to pinpoint those hidden gems. Then, using our proprietary tools, techniques and [technical SEO](/technical-seo-audit-services), we activate these links to boost your site’s authority and crawl rate.
#### HOW WE DO IT
-**Backlink Analysis:**Gather comprehensive data from Ahrefs, SEMrush, and manual outreach to identify non-indexed or de-indexed backlinks.
-**Crawling & Assessment:**Use advanced SEO crawlers to evaluate each link’s potential for indexing.
-**Activation Strategy:**Employ our proprietary tools – the [Base.me Link Indexer](https://base.me/features-link-indexer.html) and [Fantom.click](https://fantom.click/) – to stimulate indexing.
-**Performance Monitoring:**Track success with clear, data-backed metrics to ensure 50-90% of links get indexed within 45 days.
-**Pay-Per-Indexed Model:**Only pay for the backlinks that actually get indexed – eliminating any risk and guaranteeing measurable results.
#### OUR RESULTS AT A GLANCE
| Metric | Result | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Success Rate | 50% – 90% | Percentage of non-indexed backlinks activated within 45 days |
| Time to Index | ~45 Days | Average turnaround time for backlink activation |
| Investment Model | Pay-Per-Indexed | Only pay when a backlink is successfully indexed |
| Data Sources | Ahrefs, SEMrush, Manual Outreach | Comprehensive backlink data to ensure no opportunity is missed |
| SEO Impact | Enhanced Link Equity | Improved crawl rate and authority for your website |
##### How This Improves Your Website’s Performance
Reclaiming and indexing these valuable backlinks not only bolsters your site’s authority, but also increases Google’s crawl frequency – paving the way for higher rankings and more organic traffic.
A [robust backlink profile](https://fourdots.com/blog/how-to-filter-spam-links-in-ahrefs-site-explorer-using-best-links-feature-11059) is essential for sustainable SEO success.
#### OUR APPROACH
Our dedicated [New York SEO](https://fourdots.com/) team combines cutting-edge software with strategic expertise to identify weak links and turn them into powerful SEO assets.
We believe that quality over quantity is the key to a successful backlink strategy.*Ready to reclaim your lost SEO potential? Our team is ready when you are!*###### Tell us a little about your website and we’ll start the process immediately!
---
## Pages: TECHNICAL SEO: ONSITE AUDITS
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-onsite-audits](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-onsite-audits)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-onsite-audits.md](https://fourdots.com/technical-seo-onsite-audits.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### How Onsite
Audits Work
Building a favorable reputation among search engines does not solely depend on your link building strategies. Onsite technical properties also affect your appearance in search results, which is why all the [SEO-related technical details](https://fourdots.com/blog/types-and-purpose-of-technical-seo-audits-11749) need to be in place for the maximum efficiency of your campaigns.
###### Technical analysis
- Code efficiency
- Page load time
- Indexing issues
- Crawl rank
###### Website fixes
- 404 errors
- Improper canonicalization
- 301 redirects
###### Search friendliness review
- Keyword distribution
- Page/post descriptions and**meta tags
- Title and alt tags
- Meta data optimization
- Content optimization
and many more…
##### How this correlates
to better search results
All the elements listed above may seem insignificant until they start affecting your pages’ search performance. This is simply because search engines prefer to see web pages with clean code, well-organized page elements and optimized content.**If any of these features is missing, your pages may be shown lower in search for keywords with exceptionally high competition.
## THE
EXPERTISE
YOU
NEED
###### As opposed to other, user-oriented strategies, technical SEO audit is a process that focuses on search engines to ensure your website looks great in this respect as well. Coupled with content that offers real value for visitors, technical SEO is a key to being loved by Google. If you have any doubts in relation to this or are unsure how a previous agency you collaborated with handled your website, [New York SEO firm Four Dots](https://fourdots.com) promises in-depth, objective analysis of the existing state, as well as specific suggestions for improvements.
---
## Pages: Enterprise SEO Services
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo](https://fourdots.com/seo)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/seo.md](https://fourdots.com/seo.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-13
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Careers
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers](https://fourdots.com/careers)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/careers.md](https://fourdots.com/careers.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2022-05-05
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
We have an opening for following positions:
[PPC Specialist](https://fourdots.com/careers/ppc-specialist-job)
[Content writer](https://fourdots.com/careers/content-writer)
[Analytics Junior/Intern](https://fourdots.com/careers/analytics-junior-job)
```
Following positions are currently filled...but we are on the constant lookout for high-quality reinforcements to our team, so please feel free to apply and we'll get in touch as soon as we decide to expand our team.
Send your applications to work [at] fourdots.com
```*[Junior Customer Support Specialist](https://fourdots.com/careers/junior-customer-support-success-specialist)**[Digital Account Manager](https://fourdots.com/careers/digital-account-manager)**[Analytics Junior/Intern](https://fourdots.com/careers/analytics-junior-job)**[Digital Account Manager](https://fourdots.com/careers/digital-account-manager)**[WordPress Developer](https://fourdots.com/careers/wordpress-developer-job)**[SEO Link Builder](https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-link-builder-job)**[Full Stack Developer](https://fourdots.com/careers/full-stack-developer-job)**[Customer Support and Success Agent](https://fourdots.com/careers/customer-support-and-success-agent)**[SEO Specialist](https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-specialist-job)**[SEO Link Builder](https://fourdots.com/careers/seo-link-builder-job)**[Content Marketing Strategist](https://fourdots.com/careers/content-strategist-job)**[PHP (Laravel) developer](https://fourdots.com/careers/php-laravel-developer-job)**[User Acquisition Manager](https://fourdots.com/careers/user-acquisition-manager-job)**[Community & Customer Support Manager](https://fourdots.com/careers/community-customer-support-manager)*```
```
Tell us more about your interest in SEO, link building, copywriting, inbound marketing or anything else you think relates to what we do, and we’ll consider how you may fit in our team. Alternatively, browse our current open positions and apply for the desired position in a few clicks.
We promise we’ll look into every application and get back to you as soon as possible if we find your background relevant.*Looking forward to working with you!*
---
## Pages: Contact
Us
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/contact](https://fourdots.com/contact)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/contact.md](https://fourdots.com/contact.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2023-10-03
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
##### A reliable, experienced and highly professional team, long-term positive results, campaigns worthy of your investment, a company that can adapt to your unique needs.
##### Or you can give us a call at:[+1 (347) 464-0011](tel:+13474640011)Maybe you prefer Skype?Our skype name is:[thefourdots](skype:thefourdots?call)
##### We at Four Dots just happen to be all of that! All you need to do is to send us an email at [hello@fourdots.com](mailto:)
And how about getting in touch with us via social profiles at Four Dots
- [FACEBOOK](https://www.facebook.com/theFourDots)
- [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/theFourDots)
- [GOOGLE+](https://plus.google.com/+FourDotsCo/)
- [LINKEDIN](https://www.linkedin.com/company/four-dots)
#####
---
## Pages: Site map
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/site-map](https://fourdots.com/site-map)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/site-map.md](https://fourdots.com/site-map.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2018-03-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: PRIVACY
POLICY
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/privacy-policy](https://fourdots.com/legal/privacy-policy)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/legal/privacy-policy.md](https://fourdots.com/legal/privacy-policy.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
This privacy policy was last updated on May 31st, 2018
Four Dots DOO/a Four Dots (“Four Dots”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is committed to lawful, transparent and fair handling of your personal data and your data privacy . Please read our privacy policy carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. Since our lawful bases for collecting data are covered in our [Four Dots Legal Obligations](https://fourdots.com/legal) section, and details on how we handle cookies in the [Four Dots Cookies Policy](https://fourdots.com/legal/cookie-policy) page, this privacy policy will illustrate your rights as a user, and explain what security measures we are taking in order to protect your data.
This privacy policy applies to your access to and use of the website [fourdots.com](https://fourdots.com/) (“Website”, “Service”) including all content, services, and products available at or through the website.
This privacy policy, along with our Cookie Policy, sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us will be processed by us.
By accessing and/or using the Website, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy. This Privacy Policy is only applicable to the Website and Services available thereon, and not applicable to any other sites that you may be able to access from our Website via links, each of which may have data collection, storage, and use practices and policies that differ materially from this Privacy Policy.
Contact information*Four Dots DOO, Mileticeva 28, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia*Questions, comments, and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com)
## Definitions**Personal data**– is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘**data subject**’). In a nutshell, any data that can identify or point in the direction of a living person.**Usage Data**– is data collected automatically either generated by the use of the Service or from the Service infrastructure itself (for example, the duration of a page visit).**Processing**– is any operation or set of operations which are performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means.**User/Client Data**– for any personal data you upload, transmit or connect while using Four Dots services – the natural person or persons to which this data relates are your data subjects and you are the data controller. In our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, we refer to this data as User/Client Data.**Authorised Users**– employees, agents, consultants or independent contractors of the client who are authorized by the client to use the Services and the documentation**Controller**– can be the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or another body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data. Four Dots is a controller when handling data provided by our newsletter subscribers; data needed to communicate with our clients, and usage data meant to help us optimize the Website for our users.**Processor**– can be a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or another body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller. Four Dots is a processor, for instance, when analyzing User/Client Data to provide our clients with the services they requested.
Using Four Dots to manage your data means that you have engaged Four Dots as a data processor to carry out certain processing activities on your behalf.
## About this Policy
This Policy details:
What personal information do we collect
How do we collect your information
How long will Four Dots retain your data
How do we use the collected data
Four Dots as a processor of User/Client Data
Who processes your information
Third-party service providers
How do we protect your data
What do we do in case of data breach/loss
Where and how is your data stored
What are your rights regarding your personal data we process or control
Security
Our policy regarding minors and data relating to them
Links to other websites
Do Not Track
Privacy Policy updates and changes
## What personal information do we collect, how do we collect it, and how long do we keep it.
We collect several different types of information for various purposes to provide and improve our Service to you.
### Types of Data Collected
-**Personal Data**While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Data”). Personally, identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:
- Email address – Needed for us to contact you, send newsletters, report issues with your data, and prevent abuse. We delete this data as soon as it’s no longer needed
- First name and last name – Needed for us to contact you, send newsletters, report issues with your data, and prevent abuse. We delete this data as soon as it’s no longer needed
- Cookies and Usage Data – We use cookies in order to provide a better service or identify which pages on the Website are of special interest. A cookie is a small piece of information which a website stores on your web browser and which can later be retrieved. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie Policy.
If you have previously opted in to receive these types of communiqués from us, we may use your Personal Data to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send.
-**Usage Data**We may also collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Service or when you access the Service by or through a mobile device (“Usage Data”).
This Usage Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
When you access the Service by or through a mobile device, this Usage Data may include information such as the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
This data is not shared with others and is only used to help us provide our users with a better browsing experience. The data is periodically reviewed and erased or anonymized when no longer needed.
-**Tracking & Cookies Data**We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Service and hold certain information.
Cookies are files with small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. They are used to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Service.
You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.
Examples of Cookies we use:
Session Cookies. We use Session Cookies to operate our Service.
Preference Cookies. We use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
Security Cookies. We use Security Cookies for security purposes.
Four Dots will retain your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.
## How do we use the collected data
We use this data to provide you with information and services that you request or subscribe to; to send you information about our company or our products or services, or to contact you when necessary (i.e. notices relating to the Service; service alerts; respond to your questions and concerns). We also use your personal data to bill you for our paid Services. While we reserve the right to send you an email concerning your account billing status and service alerts, you may opt out of our general marketing and promotion emails.
## Four Dots as a processor of User/Client Data
Depending on the context of personal information you provide, Four Dots may be the data controller (“controller”) or a data processor (“processor”) of your personal information under this policy. Four Dots is a processor of Client Data, personal information submitted to the Service or collected through the Service on behalf of or at the direction of subscribers.
Article 28 of the GDPR specifies that the relationship between the controller and the processor should be made in writing (electronic form is acceptable under subsection (9) of the same Article). Four Dots’ Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy serve as your data processing agreement, setting out the instructions that you are giving to Four Dots with regard to processing the personal data you control and establishing the rights and responsibilities of both parties. Four Dots will only process your Client Data based on your written instructions as the data controller unless required by law to act without such instructions.
You or other authorized users of Four Dots may upload and transmit Client Data as part of the Service that contains personal data relating to you or other individuals. We do not view or control such Client Data and simply process the Client Data on behalf or you or the owner of the Application in accordance with our Terms and Conditions. You expressly acknowledge that you or the person uploading, connecting or transmitting the Client Data (as applicable) retain sole responsibility for the Client Data and for obtaining all relevant consents, from the individual to which any personal data contained within the Client Data relates to the processing of that personal data as part of the Service, and that such personal data is not covered by this Privacy Policy. Client Data is processed in the EEA and in the US. It is the responsibility of the Client to ensure that it has a suitable privacy policy in place to cover the transmission and processing of the Client Data and any personal data that it contains.
## Who processes your information
We may disclose your personal data to the following persons:
1. Disclosure of information within Four Dots: We limit access to your personal data to employees who reasonably need to process such information as described under this policy. In this situation we:
- shall take commercially reasonable steps to ensure the reliability and appropriate training of any Authorized Employee.
- shall ensure that all Authorized Employees are made aware of the confidential nature of Personal Data and have executed confidentiality agreements that prevent them from disclosing or otherwise processing, both during and after their engagement with the processor, any Personal Data except in accordance with their obligations in connection with the Services.
- shall take commercially reasonable steps to limit access to Personal Data to only Authorized Individuals.
1. Disclosure of information to particular third parties: We may disclose your personal data to the following third parties:
- other members of our group (which means our subsidiaries, our parent company, and its subsidiaries, for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy
- to contractors, service providers such as Intercom, and other third-parties we use to support our business. These entities have to be GDPR compliant, are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and can use it only for the purposes for which we disclose the information to them.
1. Disclosure of information in certain circumstances:**We may also disclose your personal data:
- in the event we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or asset;
- if we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets; or
- if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligations, or in order to enforce or apply our terms for use of the Four Dots Website and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property or safety of Four Dots, our customers or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
Beyond this, we will not share your personal data with any other person without your consent.
## Third-party service providers
We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service (“Service Providers”), to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform Service-related services or to assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.
These third parties have access to your Personal Data only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
We may use third-party Service Providers for:**1. Monitoring and analyzing the use of our Service.
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.
For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: [http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy](http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/)
- Hotjar
Hotjar is used to track and record user behavior on our Website and is meant to help us improve our service. You can view their GDPR compliance page [here](https://www.hotjar.com/legal/compliance/gdpr-commitment).
1. Customer management and communication
- Intercom
We use Intercom to communicate with our customers and provide them with necessary support. You can review their GDPR compliance info [here](https://docs.intercom.com/pricing-privacy-and-terms/data-protection/how-were-preparing-for-gdpr).
- Mailchimp
Used to reach our customers with newsletters, Website updates and promotional emails they have consented to. You can learn more about their adherence to GDPR by visiting this [page](https://kb.mailchimp.com/accounts/management/about-mailchimp-the-eu-swiss-privacy-shield-and-the-gdpr).
## How do we protect your data
In order to ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect in association with the Service. Please be aware, however, that no data transmissions over the Internet or other networks can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot ensure or warrant the security or integrity of any information you transmit to us or that you authorize us to collect on your behalf. You transmit information to us and authorize us to collect information on your behalf, at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make reasonable efforts to protect it from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. If you have any questions about security on our Site, you can contact us at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com).
## What do we do in case of a personal data breach
If we are the data controller, when Four Dots learns of a security systems breach which is likely to result in a high risk to their rights and freedoms, we will attempt to notify the data subject electronically within 72 hours so they can take appropriate protective steps. If we are the data processor, we will attempt to inform the controller of the breach, without undue delay. Four Dots may post a notice through the Service if a security breach occurs. If this happens, you will need a web browser enabling you to access the Service. Four Dots may also notify you via email in these circumstances. Depending on where you live, you may have a legal right to receive notice of a security breach in writing.
## Where and how is your data stored
Your information collected through Four Dots Services may be stored and processed in the United States, Europe, or any other country in which Four Dots or its subsidiaries, affiliates or service providers maintain facilities. Four Dots may transfer information that we collect about you, including personal information, to affiliated entities, or to other third parties across borders and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world. If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA) or other regions with laws governing data collection and use, please note that we will generally not transfer information, including personal information, to a country and jurisdiction that does not have the same data protection laws as your jurisdiction.
If such transfers to countries without an adequacy decision by the European Commission turned out to be necessary, Four Dots puts appropriate safeguards through contractual obligations.
## What are your rights regarding your personal data we process or control
As a data subject, ie. someone whose personal data we are using, you have the following rights (some of which are relevant to us only when we are in the position of data controller):
### Right to be informed
Refers to your right to be informed if we start collecting your data, why we are collecting it and where the data is coming from, in a timely and clear fashion. As consent or contract is the most common basis for our data collection, in most cases, where required, we will ask for your consent before starting to keep any kind of track of your data. Depending on the data we need and the type of our relationship with the data subject in question, we will ask for their consent through a site pop-up, an email, or another appropriate method.
### Right of access
Should you send a request to access your data, held by us, we have one month to comply. You can make the request verbally, or in writing, and are to be granted access to your data without having to pay us a fee. You can make the request at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com), or by calling us at +381 63 1105 193.
### Right to rectification
If you feel that some of your personal data that we are storing is incorrect, you can make a verbal or written request to have us make the necessary corrections. We maintain a procedure in order to help you confirm that your Personal Information remains correct and up-to-date. We have one month to respond, but can also contest that the data is accurate and that there is no need for correction, should we determine there is grounds for such refusal to comply.
### Right to erasure – right to be forgotten
If you want your data removed from our database, you have the right to demand it be erased. If your written or verbal request is valid, we will have one month to comply with it. You can ask for data to be erased if we obtained it on the grounds of your consent and you are no longer willing to provide it; if we no longer need it for whatever it was originally needed for, and in a [number of other cases](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-erasure/).
Four Dots will retain your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.
Four Dots will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our Service, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods. You can make the request at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com), or by calling us at +381 63 1105 193.
### Right to restrict processing
Where personal information is subjected to restriction in this way we will only process it with your consent or for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims. This right includes restricting the processing of your personal information to only include storage of your personal information (e.g. during the time when Four Dots assesses whether you are entitled to have personal information erased). You can make the request at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com), or by calling us at +381 63 1105 193.
### Right to data portability
If we are using your personal data, you have the right to expect us to be prepared to safely and promptly send that data to you, or, if technically feasible, to a third party of your choice, in a machine-readable format. This right only applies to us when we are in the position of a data controller. You can make the request at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com), or by calling us at +381 63 1105 193.
### Right to object
Where we are relying on legitimate interest to process personal information, you have the right to object to that processing. If you object, we must stop that processing unless we can either demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing that override your interests, rights, and freedoms or where we need to process the personal information for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims. Where we rely upon legitimate interest as a basis for processing we believe that we can demonstrate such compelling legitimate grounds, but we will consider each case on an individual basis. You can notify us of your objection at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com), or by calling us at +381 63 1105 193.
### Right not to be subject to automated decision-making
Mostly related to profiling and automated marketing campaigns. Data subjects have the right to demand to be exempt from such practices, while we are obliged to give them means of easily communicating their desire to be excluded.
### Right to withdraw consent
Where you have provided us with your consent to process personal information, you have the right to withdraw such consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.
You can do this by:
- using a certain web browser and opt-out options discussed in this Privacy Policy to limit the personal information you provide to us or our third-party partners,
- Contact us at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com), or by calling us at +381 63 1105 193
- following the unsubscribe instructions included in emails,
- by accessing the email preferences in your account settings page in the application
## Security
Despite us doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of your personal data, intrusions are always possible. In order to maximize the privacy of your data, and to minimize the impact of possible breaches, we are required to:
1. Perform regular risk assessments, ensuring we are aware of the potential impact of security breaches.
2. Segment our data and keep a close record of who has access to which data segments, not only to compartmentalize the potential damage but also to be able to establish culpability.
3. Inform you (or your data controller, if we are only processing the data) of any security breaches.
4. Adapt our policies and their implementation to ensure maximum security.
5. Encrypt all sensitive data (tokens, keys).
6. Pseudonymize 3rd party data.
## Our policy regarding minors and data relating to them
Our Websites and Services are not intended for children under 16 years of age. No one under age of 16 years old may provide any personal information to or on the Websites and Services.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16 years old. If you are under 16 years old, do not use or provide any information on our Websites or Services including on or through any of their features, register on the Websites or Services, make any purchases through the Websites or Services, use any of the interactive or public comment features of our Websites or Services, or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or user name you may use. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 16 years old, we will delete that information without undue delay.
If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 16 years old, please contact us at [support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com), or by calling us at +381 63 1105 193
## Links to other websites
The Site contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites. We also make our blog and our social media accounts available to you. Please understand that any information that is disclosed and/or shared on these platforms becomes public information. We have no control over its use and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your Personal Information and any other information you consider private.
## Do Not Track
We do not support Do Not Track (“DNT”). Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked.
You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.
## Changes to our Privacy Policy
Four Dots reserves the right to make any and all necessary changes to this Policy at any time and for any reason. We will notify you of any changes and/or modifications to the Policy by updating the “Last Modified” date on this Policy, or when required, directly by asking for your consent. You are encouraged to periodically review this Policy to stay informed of updates. You shall be deemed to have been made aware of, will be subject to, and will be deemed to have accepted the changes in any revised Policy by your continued use of Four Dots services after the date such revised Policy is posted, except in cases where your explicit consent is required.
## Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:
- By email[support@fourdots.com](mailto:support@fourdots.com)
- By visiting this page on our website: [https://fourdots.com/contact](https://fourdots.com/contact)
- By phone: +381 63 1105 193
---
## Pages: Blog
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog](https://fourdots.com/blog)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/blog.md](https://fourdots.com/blog.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-14
**Last Updated:** 2018-02-27
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Pages: Home
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/](https://fourdots.com/)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com.md](https://fourdots.com.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-14
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-13
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial by Hendrik Kruizinga, Customer Experience Team Leader - Crucial.com.au
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=87](https://fourdots.com/?p=87)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=87.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=87.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-22
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-22
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Radomir and his team for the past 12 months. From content curation to strategy, Four Dots’ expertise have shone through in all aspects of their work. With Crucial on the way up, it’s safe to say we’re very happy with the results.**Hendrik Kruizinga,**Customer Experience Team Leader*Crucial.com.au*
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Dubravko Opasic, CEO - Younited Agency
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13140](https://fourdots.com/?p=13140)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13140.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13140.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO + PPC
# SEO & PPC for Marketing & Advertising Firm
White-label SEO partnership delivering results across four countries
| Client: | Younited Agency | Industry: | Advertising & Marketing |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | June 2020 – Ongoing | Budget: | $10,000 – $49,999 |
| Location: | Croatia | Company Size: | 11-50 Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
4.0
Overall Score
★★★★☆
4.5
Quality
5.0
Schedule
3.5
Cost
5.0
Willing to Refer
Third-Party Summary
Written by Clutch.co
Four Dots provides PPC and SEO services to a digital agency. The team’s main objective is to increase the company’s SERP ranking and effectiveness on their Google campaigns.
While the work is ongoing, the collaboration thus far has resulted in the company’s increased site traffic each month. Four Dots is reliable and has shown great promise in boosting the client’s brand awareness in four countries.
Their knowledge of SEO is really vast.
DO
Dubravko Opasic
CEO, Younited Agency
## About the Client
Younited Agency is a digital agency focused on fashion and cosmetics brands. They help their clients achieve e-commerce goals across multiple European markets, requiring scalable SEO and PPC execution capabilities.
## The Challenge
Younited needed to increase SERP rankings for their clients and improve Google campaign effectiveness across four countries simultaneously. They required a white-label partner who could deliver consistent quality at scale.
## Why They Chose Four Dots
Four Dots’ reputation in the market and their tailor-made approach to each brief made them the ideal white-label partner. Their ability to scale across multiple countries while maintaining quality was the deciding factor.
## What We Delivered
- Comprehensive SEO audit
- On-site and off-site optimization
- Keyword research and strategy
- Campaign structure for full marketing funnel
- Multi-country execution
## Team Composition
6 dedicated team members worked on this project:
Account Director
2 SEO Specialists
2 PPC Specialists
Analytics Expert
### Results Achieved
Monthly ↑
Organic Traffic Growth
Page 1
In Home Region
4 Countries
Brand Awareness Rising
## What Impressed Them Most
Their knowledge of SEO is really vast and they are able to scale and deliver at a fast pace in four countries simultaneously.
Area for Growth
To be more proactive in PPC segment.
### Agency Looking for White-Label Partner?
Let’s discuss how we can help your agency scale SEO and PPC services across multiple markets.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Igor Gasparevic, Marketing Specialist - Beko Global
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13139](https://fourdots.com/?p=13139)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13139.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13139.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO + PPC + Social
# Social Media Marketing & Google Ads for Consumer Goods Firm
Multi-market digital advertising for global home appliances brand
| Client: | Beko Global | Industry: | Consumer Goods / Appliances |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | Sep. 2019 – Ongoing | Budget: | $10,000 – $49,999 |
| Location: | Belgrade, Serbia | Company Size: | 51-200 Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
5.0
Overall Score
★★★★★
5.0
Quality
5.0
Schedule
5.0
Cost
5.0
Willing to Refer
Third-Party Summary
Written by Clutch.co
Four Dots conducts social media marketing and Google advertising for a consumer goods company.
Since Four Dots took over the company’s project, they have been responsive and creative. What stood out the most is their skills in reporting that helps ensure the company’s success.
Their organization and their knowledge were impressive.
IG
Igor Gasparevic
Marketing Specialist, Beko Global
## About the Client
Beko is a global leader in white goods and home appliances. Their regional marketing team manages campaigns across the Balkans region, including Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.
## The Challenge
Beko needed to increase sales across multiple Balkan markets through coordinated digital advertising campaigns. Each market had unique characteristics requiring localized strategies while maintaining brand consistency.
## Why They Chose Four Dots
Four Dots was selected through a competitive pitch process. Their regional expertise and ability to manage multi-market campaigns from a single point of coordination was the deciding factor.
## What We Delivered
- Social media advertising campaigns
- Google advertising across multiple markets
- Campaigns for Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Campaigns for Slovenia
- Performance reporting and optimization
### Results Achieved
Multi-Market
Campaign Success
Excellent
Reporting & Ideas
Ongoing
Partnership Since 2019
## What Impressed Them Most
Their organization and their knowledge were impressive. They are very professional.
### Consumer Goods Company?
Let’s discuss how we can help your brand drive sales across multiple markets through coordinated digital advertising.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Nenad Janjatovic, Owner - Buro Serbia
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13138](https://fourdots.com/?p=13138)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13138.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13138.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO + Web Dev
# Web Development & SEO for Online Lifestyle Magazine
Digital growth strategy for Serbian lifestyle media platform
| Client: | Buro Serbia | Industry: | Media |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | Jan. 2019 – Aug. 2021 | Budget: | $200,000 – $999,999 |
| Location: | Belgrade, Serbia | Company Size: | 1-10 Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
4.5
Overall Score
★★★★☆
4.5
Quality
4.5
Schedule
4.0
Cost
4.5
Willing to Refer
Third-Party Summary
Written by Clutch.co
An online lifestyle magazine hired Four Dots to handle their SEO initiatives and provide web maintenance services. The team’s main goal was to increase the client’s site traffic and readership.
The client saw a threefold increase in their site’s readership within a year of working with Four Dots. A collaborative partner, the team communicates regularly with the client to ensure a seamless workflow. The client commended the team’s professionalism and straightforward approach.
I appreciated their professionalism and straightforward approach.
NJ
Nenad Janjatovic
Owner, Buro Serbia
## About the Client
Buro Serbia is an online lifestyle magazine covering fashion, culture, and trends for the Serbian market. As a digital-first publication, their success depends entirely on their online presence and ability to attract and retain readers.
## The Challenge
Buro Serbia needed to significantly increase site traffic and readership to grow their advertising revenue and establish themselves as a leading lifestyle publication in the region.
## What We Delivered
- Comprehensive SEO initiatives
- Web maintenance services
- Technical optimization for media sites
- Content strategy recommendations
### Results Achieved
3x
Increase in Readership
Within
One Year
## What Impressed Them Most
I appreciated their professionalism and straightforward approach.
### Media Company?
Let’s discuss how we can help your publication grow its readership through strategic SEO and web development.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Tamara Dutina, Marketing Manager - SuperAdmins IT4Biz
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13137](https://fourdots.com/?p=13137)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13137.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13137.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO + PPC
# Digital Marketing for Cloud Tech Business
B2B lead generation for international cloud technology company
| Client: | SuperAdmins – IT4Biz | Industry: | Cloud Technology / IT Services |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | Jan. 2020 – Ongoing | Budget: | Less than $10,000 |
| Location: | Belgrade, Serbia | Company Size: | 51-200 Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
4.5
Overall Score
★★★★☆
5.0
Quality
5.0
Schedule
3.5
Cost
4.5
Willing to Refer
Third-Party Summary
Written by Clutch.co
Four Dots provided digital marketing. This included content and SEO services. They also worked with Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn PPC ads.
Four Dots has built an effective tracking system. The communication and experience are great.
We have regular communication via Slack.
TD
Tamara Dutina
Marketing Manager, SuperAdmins – IT4Biz
## About the Client
SuperAdmins – IT4Biz is an international company focused on public cloud technologies. Their expert teams provide cloud management and DevOps services to clients on 3 continents, helping businesses optimize their cloud infrastructure.
## The Challenge
As a B2B company with a very specific target audience of cloud-focused enterprises, SuperAdmins needed to improve organic ranking, generate qualified leads, and increase conversions from their digital presence.
The technical nature of their services meant they needed a marketing partner who understood cloud technology and could speak to their audience effectively.
## Why They Chose Four Dots
Four Dots was known as one of the few agencies providing high-quality SEO and content services in the region. The partnership began in 2018 based on this reputation for excellence in technical B2B marketing.
## What We Delivered
- Continuous link building campaigns
- SEO-friendly content creation
- Always-on PPC on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn
- Campaign optimization and performance tracking
## Team Composition
Dedicated multi-disciplinary team:
PPC Expert
Content Team
Link Building Team
Account Manager
### Results Achieved
Ongoing
Improvement
Customized
Progress Reports
Long-term
Partnership Since 2018
## What Impressed Them Most
The team’s versatile international experience in all the areas we’ve been cooperating on.
Area for Growth
Web development services were limited, so hard to say whether they would be a recommendation for more complex projects.
### B2B Tech Company?
Let’s discuss how we can help your cloud technology business generate qualified leads through strategic digital marketing.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Zeljko Bosnjak, Digital Marketing Manager - Philip Morris International
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13136](https://fourdots.com/?p=13136)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13136.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13136.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO
# SEO Services for International Tobacco Company
Enterprise-level SEO strategy for global consumer goods corporation
| Client: | Philip Morris International | Industry: | Tobacco / Consumer Goods |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | Jan. 2019 – Ongoing | Budget: | $10,000 – $49,999 |
| Location: | Belgrade, Serbia | Company Size: | 10,001+ Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
5.0
Overall Score
★★★★★
5.0
Quality
4.5
Schedule
5.0
Cost
5.0
Willing to Refer
Third-Party Summary
Written by Clutch.co
Four Dots is working with an international tobacco company on SEO activities. They completed website audits and link building optimization. Reportz, a tool they developed, is used for analytics and stats.
Four Dots’s work has brought great results so far with increases in traffic and site performance. Thanks to project management and communication tools, the team communicates effectively. They stand out as a company because of their expertise and pricing.
Their proactive approach and above all expertise in SEO industry were impressive.
ZB
Zeljko Bosnjak
Digital Marketing Manager, Philip Morris International
## About the Client
Philip Morris International is one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, with operations in over 180 countries. The Digital Marketing Manager is responsible for overall digital strategy for the South-East European region.
## The Challenge
The client needed to increase website visits by 30%, improve presence across all major search engines, and enhance overall UX/UI to better serve their regional audience.
Operating at enterprise scale with strict regulatory requirements meant they needed a partner with both technical expertise and understanding of corporate processes.
## Why They Chose Four Dots
Four Dots was selected through a competitive bidding process. Their combination of technical expertise, reasonable pricing, and proactive approach to SEO set them apart from other regional agencies.
## What We Delivered
- Strategic link building campaigns
- On-page optimization across all properties
- Comprehensive audit every 2 months
- UX audit every 6 months
- Reportz implementation for real-time analytics
## Team Composition
3 dedicated team members worked on this project:
Account Manager
Senior SEO Manager
Analytics Specialist
### Results Achieved
Significant ↑
Increase in Visits
Improved
Website Performance
Long-term
Partnership Established
## What Impressed Them Most
Their proactive approach and above all expertise in SEO industry were impressive. It’s very difficult to find good SEO agency in this part of Europe with reasonable prices.
Area for Growth
Should be more aggressive when client is not right.
### Enterprise SEO Needs?
Let’s discuss how we can help your enterprise achieve its digital marketing goals with proven SEO strategies.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Natasa Djukanovic, CMO - Domain.me
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13135](https://fourdots.com/?p=13135)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13135.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13135.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO + Content
# SEO Strategy & Content Writing for Site Domain Company
5-year partnership delivering consistent organic growth for .me domain registry
| Client: | Domain.me | Industry: | Technology / Domain Registry |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | May 2015 – May 2020 (5 years) | Budget: | $50,000 – $199,999 |
| Location: | Podgorica, Montenegro | Company Size: | 1-10 Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
5.0
Overall Score
★★★★★
5.0
Quality
5.0
Schedule
5.0
Cost
5.0
Willing to Refer
Third-Party Summary
Written by Clutch.co
For about five years, Four Dots supported a web domain company’s content strategy. They planned the themes for blogs, suggested technical SEO improvements, identified critical keywords, and wrote content.
Thanks to Four Dots’ site modifications, the platform was more attuned to SEO best practices, and their articles were essential for helping build links. As a result, site traffic grew by about 20% each year. The team could work independently, modifying existing content based on agreed requirements.
The amount and speed of delivered content, as well as their language and research skills, were impressive.
ND
Natasa Djukanovic
CMO, Domain.me
## About the Client
Domain.me is the registry of .me domain – Montenegro’s country code promoted globally as the perfect domain for personal branding. Their marketing strategy is heavily based on content and SEO to reach entrepreneurs, developers, and creatives worldwide.
## The Challenge
Domain.me needed to rank well for personal domain-related searches and establish themselves as a trusted knowledge base in the domain industry.
Competing in the domain registry space required consistent, high-quality content production and strategic link building to build authority over time.
## Why They Chose Four Dots
The partnership started when Domain.me’s CMO met Four Dots’ CEO at a conference. What began as a test project evolved into a 5-year strategic partnership based on consistent results and reliable delivery.
## What We Delivered
- SEO investigation for critical keywords
- Technical, design, and content recommendations
- Blog theme planning and content calendar
- 4-8 articles per month for their blog
- 4-8 pieces per month for link building
- Annual SEO analysis and strategy adjustment
## Team Composition
Dedicated team with content focus:
Content Lead
Multiple Writers
Technical SEO Specialist
Account Manager
### Results Achieved
+20%
Yearly Traffic Growth
5 Years
Successful Partnership
Redesigned
Website to Match SEO Rules
## What Impressed Them Most
The amount and speed of delivered content, as well as their language and research skills, were impressive. Ideas, technical knowledge and being informed about tech changes, especially in SEO.
Area for Growth
As with every company you work with for a long time, it needs refreshment in terms of going back to the basics occasionally.
### Need Content at Scale?
Let’s discuss how we can help your technology business build authority through strategic content.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Jovana Grubac, Digital Marketing Specialist - Salveo
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13134](https://fourdots.com/?p=13134)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13134.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13134.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO + PPC
# SEO & Google Ads Optimization for Pharmaceutical Firm
Google Analytics setup and PPC strategy for Central European pharmaceutical brand
| Client: | Salveo | Industry: | Healthcare / Pharmaceutical |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | Oct. – Dec. 2019 | Budget: | Less than $10,000 |
| Location: | Serbia | Company Size: | 51-200 Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
5.0
Overall Score
★★★★★
5.0
Quality
5.0
Schedule
5.0
Cost
5.0
Willing to Refer
Third-Party Summary
Written by Clutch.co
Four Dots provided a healthcare company with general SEO services that included; Google Ads optimization, keyword research and analysis, web content optimization, and PPC campaigning.
Four Dots delivered effective SEO initiatives that boosted the brand’s online visibility and increased the site’s traffic. Their transparency, knowledge and experience in the field have made them a valuable partner with the client looking to continue the collaboration further into the year.
Transparency, know-how and willingness to share knowledge and answer clients questions in detail.
JG
Jovana Grubac
Digital Marketing Specialist, Salveo
## About the Client
Salveo is a pharmaceutical company building trusted over-the-counter brands in Central and Eastern European markets since 2007. The company focuses on developing and marketing healthcare products across multiple regional markets.
## The Challenge
Salveo needed comprehensive Google Ads optimization, proper Google Analytics setup across all their markets, and increased brand awareness for a new brand extension they were launching.
Operating across multiple Central European markets meant they needed a partner who could handle the complexity of multi-market campaigns while maintaining consistent brand messaging.
## Why They Chose Four Dots
Salveo selected Four Dots for their transparency, openness for sharing knowledge, proven expertise in pharmaceutical digital marketing, easy communication, and dedication to results – not just invoices.
## What We Delivered
- Google Analytics account setup for all markets
- Keyword, content, and competition analysis
- PPC ad strategy and execution
- Campaign monitoring and reporting
## Team Composition
3 dedicated team members worked on this project:
Account Manager
Senior PPC Strategist
Google Analytics Specialist
### Results Achieved
Increased
Brand Visibility
Higher
Website Traffic
Successful
Brand Extension Launch
## What Impressed Them Most
Transparency, know-how and willingness to share knowledge and answer clients questions in detail. Also the willingness to share best practices and give us advice on future steps for better campaign results, remarketing…
### Healthcare Company?
Let’s discuss how we can help your pharmaceutical business achieve its digital marketing goals.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial Nemanja Puhalo, CMO - Undrdog
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13133](https://fourdots.com/?p=13133)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13133.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13133.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
SEO + PPC
# SEO & PPC Strategy for Cleaning & Coating Solutions Provider
Go-to-market strategy and digital presence for automotive surface protection brand
| Client: | Undrdog Surface Solutions | Industry: | Automotive |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Timeline: | Jan. 2020 – Ongoing | Budget: | $10,000 – $49,999 |
| Location: | Frisco, Texas, USA | Company Size: | 1-10 Employees |
Verified Review on Clutch.co
4.5
Overall Score
★★★★★
4.5
Quality
5.0
Schedule
4.5
Cost
4.5
Willing to Refer
They always communicate clearly, deliver on time, and respond promptly.
NP
Nemanja Puhalo
CMO, Undrdog Surface Solutions
## About the Client
Undrdog produces and sells surface protection products in the shape of various cleaning and coating solutions for cars, boats, and furniture. Nemanja Puhalo runs marketing and technology at Undrdog from their base in Frisco, Texas.
## The Challenge
Undrdog needed to launch a new line of products and create a comprehensive go-to-market strategy. SEO and PPC were integral parts of this strategy.
The main goal was to introduce a new kind of product to the market that’s similar but different to the industry standard. Essentially, they were introducing a competing product and needed a strategic approach to search engine results and PPC campaigns to carve out their market position.
## Why They Chose Four Dots
Four Dots was immediately at the top of their list as one of the best SEO and PPC companies in the region.
The deciding factor: they needed a partner equally skilled in technical SEO, backlink creation, AND PPC – since all three work hand in hand when introducing a new product to market. Few agencies could deliver excellence across all three disciplines.
## What We Delivered
- Market research and comprehensive search query analysis
- Search intent analysis and strategy development for content creation and PPC
- CRM integration with Facebook custom audiences to find lookalike customers
- Complete PPC campaign architecture and management
- Content strategy development and execution
- Backlink portfolio development and authority building
## Team Composition
5 dedicated team members worked on this project:
Project Manager
PPC Manager
SEO Backlink Manager
Designer
Tracking & Analytics Expert
### Results Achieved
Significant ↑
Organic Traffic Growth
Strong ROAS
Return on Ad Spend
Long-term
Partnership Established
## What Impressed Them Most
They care. That’s all I can say that will really matter to most other companies thinking about working with FourDots.
Area for Growth
We’d love it if they would be able to extend their service scope onto serious content creation.
### Launching a New Product Line?
Let’s discuss how integrated SEO and PPC can accelerate your go-to-market strategy.
[Get Your Free Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial by Aaron Weller, Owner - MissAmara.com.au
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=84](https://fourdots.com/?p=84)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=84.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=84.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-21
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-22
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Four Dots has delivered outstanding results month on month, without the work that Four Dots provides we would not be in business. Radomir and the team are always there to help, and provide prompt responses. Would recommend them!**Aaron Weller,**Owner*MissAmara.com.au*
---
## Acme_testimonial: Zeljko Bosnjak, Digital Consumer Engagement Manager - Philip Morris International
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13017](https://fourdots.com/?p=13017)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13017.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13017.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Cool, very professional and passionate team. What I like the most is proactive approach which is very important in industry like SEO.**Zeljko Bosnjak**Digital Consumer Engagement Manager*Philip Morris International*
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial by Vladan Dobrenov, Founder - ArtandCode.eu
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=82](https://fourdots.com/?p=82)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=82.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=82.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
I am very pleased with the campaign that Four Dots formulated for us. Apart from a significant increase in rankings and traffic, it was their level of involvement and versatility that really made an impression.**Vladan Dobrenov,**Founder*ArtandCode.eu*
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial by Nemanja Veselinovic, Founder - BrandingMagazine.com
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=83](https://fourdots.com/?p=83)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=83.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=83.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
When we are talking about top tier SEO services, Four Dots is definitely taking the top spot. Fantastic team, great organisation and shiny results. We are always happy when we get a monthly report – simply astonishing.**Nemanja Veselinovic,**Founder*BrandingMagazine.com*
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial by Goran Radovanovic, Project manager - Mobile Shop
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=85](https://fourdots.com/?p=85)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=85.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=85.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Onsite modifications alone would make hiring Four Dots a worthwhile investment, but I was extremely satisfied with every aspect of our cooperation, from reporting to the direction in which they took our brand.**Goran Radovanovic,**Project manager*Mobile Shop*
---
## Acme_testimonial: Testimonial by Marko Sekulovic, Manager - Eurodentiste.fr
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=86](https://fourdots.com/?p=86)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=86.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=86.md)
**Published:** 2015-09-16
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
With Four Dots, we rapidly obtained tangible results (Google first page) and we are very happy of their level of involvement in the project. Four Dots is the professional SEO Company we were looking for.**Marko Sekulovic,**Manager*Eurodentiste.fr*
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: IVC Technologies: +315% Top 3 Keywords in Niche Industrial Market
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13032](https://fourdots.com/?p=13032)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13032.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13032.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-21
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
B2B SEO + PPC
How precision-targeted SEO and PPC drove qualified leads for vibration analysis services
| Client: | IVC Technologies | Industry: | B2B, Manufacturing, Industrial Services |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Keyword Research, Content Creation, PPC Management, Link Building |
+315%
Top 3 Keywords
Search visibility
+210%
Conversions
Paid + organic
+60%
Organic Traffic
Qualified visitors
3X
Referring Domains
Authority growth
## The Challenge
IVC Technologies is a leading U.S. provider of vibration analysis and condition monitoring services – an extremely niche B2B reliability market. Their clients are industrial facilities that need predictive maintenance to prevent costly equipment failures.
The challenge? Highly specialized services with limited general search demand, competing against large OEMs, distributors, and national service providers with bigger budgets. Their existing paid traffic was underperforming, and they needed a complete strategy overhaul to reach the right decision-makers.
### Keyword Rankings Growth
315% improvement in top 3 positions
Focused on high-intent industrial service keywords
## Our Approach
We built an integrated SEO and PPC strategy for precision targeting:
- Implemented service-specific and location-specific search campaigns
- Developed long-tail, high-intent keyword framework for niche industrial terms
- Applied strict negative keyword controls to eliminate wasted spend
- Created smart remarketing for non-converting visitors
- Implemented persona-focused targeting aligned with the industrial buyer journey
- Built authority through relevant industrial and engineering publications
### Conversion Growth
210% increase in total conversions (paid + organic)
### Authority Building
Referring domains grew 3X through targeted outreach
### Campaign Results
+315%
Top 3 keyword improvement
+210%
Total conversions
+60%
Organic traffic growth
3X
Referring domains
### Integrated Performance Timeline
SEO and PPC working together over campaign period
### Niche B2B Industrial Company?
Let’s discuss how to reach the right decision-makers in your specialized market.
[Get Your Free B2B Marketing Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Regional Fashion Retailer: +76% Conversion Value Across 4 Markets
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13031](https://fourdots.com/?p=13031)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13031.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13031.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
E-commerce PPC
How we scaled multi-market PPC for a 100+ store fashion brand
| Client: | Regional Fashion Retailer (NDA) | Industry: | E-commerce, Fashion, Retail |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | PPC Management, GA4 Setup |
+76%
Conversion Value
Year over year
+31%
Transactions
Online sales
-28%
Cost per Transaction
Efficiency gain
4
Markets
Serbia, Croatia, BiH, Montenegro
## The Challenge
A leading regional high-street fashion retailer with over 100 physical stores across Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro needed to establish online dominance to match their retail leadership. They represent world-famous brands.
The complexity? Four distinct markets with different consumer behaviors, no Google Shopping availability in the region, and the need to achieve year-over-year growth within specific budget constraints. Seasonal fluctuations in fashion retail added another layer of planning required.
### Conversion Value Growth
76% increase in overall conversion value
Year-over-year comparison across all four markets
## Our Approach
We developed a sophisticated multi-market PPC strategy:
- Developed long-term Google Ads strategy analyzing seasonal fluctuations and market potential
- Implemented Search Ads for fashion brands, categories, and subcategories across all markets
- Created Dynamic Display Ads remarketing optimized for cross-selling and up-selling
- Set up advanced first-party data collection for precise audience targeting
- Built market-specific campaigns accounting for local consumer behavior differences
### Key Metrics Improvement
Year-over-year performance gains
### Efficiency Gains
Cost per transaction decreased while volume increased
### Campaign Results
+76%
Conversion value increase
+31%
Transaction growth
-28%
Cost per transaction
+16%
Conversion rate improvement
### Performance Timeline
Transactions and efficiency over campaign period
### Multi-Market E-commerce Brand?
Let’s discuss how to scale PPC across regions while improving efficiency.
[Get Your Free PPC Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: CuraLife: 711% ROI Through Automated Email Marketing
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13030](https://fourdots.com/?p=13030)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13030.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13030.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-02-25
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
PPC & Email Marketing
How we built a conversion engine for a health supplement launch
| Client: | CuraLife | Industry: | Healthcare, E-commerce, Supplements |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Email Marketing Automation, PPC Management, GA4 Setup |
711%
Email ROI
Return on investment
793
Email Conversions
Direct sales
15,380
Inbound Messages
Automated flows
6 mo
To Build Base
Regular users
## The Challenge
CuraLife was launching CuraLin, a natural food supplement for type 2 diabetes management. Entering the competitive health supplement market meant they needed more than just customer acquisition – they needed to build long-term relationships that drove repeat purchases and lifetime value.
The healthcare industry comes with specific advertising restrictions, limiting traditional marketing channels. Building trust was essential, but so was creating a scalable system that could nurture leads and customers without requiring manual intervention for every touchpoint.
### Email Marketing ROI
711% return on email marketing investment
ROI calculated from direct email-attributed conversions
## Our Approach
We built a comprehensive digital strategy combining acquisition and retention:
- Implemented Google and Facebook PPC campaigns for initial customer acquisition
- Set up fully automated email marketing platform with multiple campaign types
- Created abandoned purchase reminder flows to recover lost sales
- Developed lead generation sequences to nurture prospects to purchase
- Built loyalty program communications and reorder reminder campaigns
- Established customer support email flows for improved retention
### Email Automation Performance
Breakdown by campaign type
### Conversion Funnel
From inbound messages to conversions
### Campaign Results
711%
Email marketing ROI
793
Direct conversions
15,380
Automated messages
6 mo
Time to build user base
### Growth Timeline
Building a valuable base of regular users
### E-commerce Brand Leaving Money on the Table?
Let’s discuss how email automation can maximize your customer lifetime value.
[Get Your Free Email Marketing Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Percept: +165% Organic Clicks Through Steady Authority Building
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13029](https://fourdots.com/?p=13029)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13029.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13029.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
B2B SEO
How a branding agency achieved sustainable growth over 14 months
| Client: | Percept | Industry: | Professional Services, B2B, Creative Agency |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Link Building, SEO Consulting |
+165%
Monthly Clicks
Organic traffic
+150%
Top 3 Rankings
Key terms
+164%
Traffic Value
$5,369/month
14 mo
Campaign Duration
Sustained effort
## The Challenge
Percept is an Australian branding agency serving B2B clients with creative and strategic services. Like many professional service firms, they relied heavily on referrals but wanted organic search to supplement their pipeline with qualified inbound leads.
The challenge? Professional services markets have long sales cycles, meaning visibility needs to be consistent over time. They also faced a competitive Australian agency landscape where established players had years of content and link equity built up.
### Organic Traffic Growth
165% increase over 14 months – realistic, sustainable growth
This is what healthy SEO growth looks like on an already-functional site
## Our Approach
We built a sustainable, long-term SEO foundation:
- Implemented focused link building targeting business and creative industry publications
- Provided ongoing SEO consultation for content optimization and site improvements
- Developed strategy aligned with Percept’s brand positioning and thought leadership goals
- Created sustainable approach designed for long-term organic growth, not quick wins
- Focused on quality over quantity – building genuine authority in the branding space
### Keyword Rankings Progress
150% improvement in top 3 positions
### Traffic Value Growth
164% increase in monthly traffic value
### Campaign Results
2,600
Monthly clicks achieved
+150%
Top 3 keyword improvement
$5,369
Monthly traffic value
14 mo
Sustained campaign
### 14-Month Growth Timeline
Traffic and value progression showing steady, sustainable gains
### B2B Agency Looking for Sustainable Growth?
Let’s discuss how to build long-term organic visibility for your firm.
[Get Your Free SEO Consultation](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Network Plumbing: +1,000% Traffic Value in 6 Months
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13028](https://fourdots.com/?p=13028)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=13028.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=13028.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-20
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-20
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Local SEO
# Network Plumbing: +1,000% Traffic Value in 6 Months
How focused link building transformed a Sydney plumber’s organic visibility
| Client: | Network Plumbing | Industry: | Home Services, Local Services, Plumbing |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Keyword Research, Technical Audit, Link Building |
+300%
Monthly Clicks
65 to 260
+1,000%
Traffic Value
$440 to $4,867/mo
18
Backlinks Built
Natural outreach
6 mo
Timeline
Quick results
## The Challenge
Network Plumbing is a Sydney-based plumbing business competing in one of Australia’s most saturated local service markets. With dozens of established competitors dominating local search results, they struggled to generate organic leads despite quality service delivery.
The business had minimal previous SEO investment, starting from a low visibility baseline. They needed quick, demonstrable results to justify marketing spend and compete against players who’d been building their online presence for years.
### Traffic Value Growth
From $440 to $4,867 monthly equivalent value
Traffic value represents equivalent Google Ads spend for same visibility
## Our Approach
We prioritized speed-to-results with a focused three-phase strategy:
- Performed comprehensive keyword research mapping service-based queries with local intent
- Conducted technical audit addressing on-page issues and site structure problems
- Once technical foundation was solid, allocated 100% of resources to link building
- Focused on local citations and relevant home services publications
- Built relationships with Sydney-based directories and trade publications
### Monthly Clicks Growth
300% improvement in organic traffic
### Before vs After
Key metrics comparison over 6 months
### Campaign Results
260
Monthly clicks (from 65)
$4,867
Monthly traffic value
18
Natural backlinks built
6 mo
Time to results
### Growth Timeline
Traffic and value progression over campaign
### Local Service Business Struggling to Get Found?
Let’s discuss how focused SEO can drive real leads in your market.
[Get Your Free Local SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: DPV Transportation Case Study: +388% Organic Traffic in a Niche B2B Market
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12940](https://fourdots.com/?p=12940)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12940.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12940.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-19
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
B2B SEO
# DPV Transportation: +388% Organic Traffic in a Niche B2B Market
How we built authority for a corporate shuttle service competing against national fleets
| Client: | DPV Transportation | Industry: | B2B, Corporate Mobility, Professional Services |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Technical Audit, Link Building, Content Creation |
+388%
Organic Traffic
Monthly growth
+309%
Referring Domains
Authority built
+154%
Top 3 Rankings
Key terms
+15%
Domain Authority
Increased
## The Challenge
DPV Transportation operates in one of the most narrowly defined B2B niches: corporate shuttles, employee transportation, and mobility solutions. It’s a service-driven market where enterprise clients expect professionalism and reliability.
The competition? National fleets and transportation enterprises with massive marketing budgets. DPV had limited historical SEO investment and underperforming organic acquisition channels. They needed to improve keyword presence, E-E-A-T signals, and market authority – fast.
### Organic Traffic Growth
388% increase in monthly organic traffic
Niche B2B market: corporate shuttles and employee transportation
## Our Approach
We built a comprehensive B2B SEO foundation from the ground up:
- Fixed indexing gaps, site speed issues, broken internal links, and schema inconsistencies
- Implemented high-authority link building focused on transportation and B2B verticals
- Expanded content through editorial roadmaps targeting service-specific keywords
- Applied on-page optimization across all service lines with clear conversion paths
- Built E-E-A-T signals to establish credibility with enterprise decision-makers
### Authority Building Progress
309% growth in referring domains
### Keyword Rankings Improvement
154% increase in top 3 positions
### Campaign Results
+388%
Organic traffic growth
+309%
Referring domains increase
+154%
Top 3 keywords improvement
+15%
Domain authority increase
### Growth Timeline
Traffic and authority progression over the campaign
### B2B Company with Niche Services?
Let’s discuss how to reach enterprise decision-makers through organic search.
[Get Your Free SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: BeotelNet Case Study: Sustained 11% Month-over-Month Growth in Competitive ISP Market
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12939](https://fourdots.com/?p=12939)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12939.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12939.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-19
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
PPC – Telecom
How we delivered consistent growth for Serbia’s pioneering internet provider
| Client: | BeotelNet | Industry: | Telecom, Technology, ISP |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | PPC Management |
11%
MoM Growth
Consistent
6+
Months Sustained
No dropoff
4
Service Lines
Optimized
2
Ad Networks
Google + Meta
## The Challenge
BeotelNet has been a pioneering force in Serbian telecommunications since 1996, when they became one of the country’s first ISPs. Nearly three decades later, they face a very different challenge: aggressive competition from larger telecom players with bigger budgets.
They needed to balance new user acquisition with existing customer retention across multiple service lines – home internet, office internet, cable TV, and web hosting – all while maintaining budget efficiency against competitors spending 10x more on advertising.
### Month-over-Month Growth
Consistent 11% growth sustained over 6+ months
Competitive ISP market with aggressive pricing competition
## Our Approach
We implemented a precision-targeted multi-platform strategy:
- Utilized both Google and Meta Ad networks for comprehensive market coverage
- Implemented different targeting groups with precise, narrow audience segmentation
- Created customized messaging for each customer segment and service line
- Developed responsive strategy to counter competitor campaigns in real-time
- Balanced acquisition vs retention budgets based on lifetime value analysis
### Performance by Service Line
Growth across all four service categories
### Cumulative Growth Over Campaign
Compounding 11% monthly growth trajectory
### Campaign Results
11%
Steady month-over-month growth
6+ Months
Sustained without dropoff
4 Services
All growing simultaneously
Maintained
Position against larger competitors
### Growth Sustainability
Consistent performance without the typical PPC plateau
### Competing Against Bigger Budgets?
Let’s discuss how smart targeting beats brute-force spending.
[Get Your Free PPC Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: How to Rhino Case Study: +28% Organic Growth Through Site Redesign Recovery
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12938](https://fourdots.com/?p=12938)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12938.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12938.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-18
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Education / SaaS SEO
How we preserved rankings during a major redesign and grew traffic in a niche B2B market
| Client: | How to Rhino | Industry: | Education, Technology, Professional Services |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Keyword Research, Link Building, SEO Consulting |
+28%
Organic Traffic
Steady growth
+25%
Backlinks
Quality links
33
Top 3 Rankings
Transactional keywords
88
Top 10 Keywords
High intent
## The Challenge
How to Rhino is a premier online platform offering comprehensive Rhino software courses for architects. They serve a highly specific niche: professionals and students bridging architectural creativity with technical 3D modeling proficiency.
The challenge? They underwent a comprehensive website redesign that altered their entire topical cluster structure. Several pages had URL changes risking loss of existing rankings. Worse, key pages contained only video content without text – invisible to search engines.
### Organic Traffic Growth
28% increase despite major site restructuring
Niche B2B market with precise keyword targeting requirements
## Our Approach
We focused on protecting existing equity while building new authority:
- Collaborated on redesigning coherent topical structure for enhanced crawling and navigation
- Executed consistent monthly link-building activities to bolster domain authority
- Established robust internal linking strategy for current and future content
- Conducted comprehensive keyword research with targeted, realistic expectations
- Addressed video-only pages with supporting text content for indexability
### Keyword Rankings Progress
33 top-3 rankings, mostly transactional and course-related
### Backlink Growth
25% increase through strategic outreach
### Campaign Results
+28%
Organic traffic growth
33
Top 3 rankings (transactional)
+25%
Backlink growth
88
Top 10 rankings achieved
### Growth Timeline
Steady progress through redesign and beyond
### Planning a Site Redesign?
Let’s make sure you don’t lose your hard-earned rankings.
[Get Your Free SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Tekto Knives Case Study: Domain Migration Done Right in a Regulated Market
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12937](https://fourdots.com/?p=12937)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12937.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12937.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-18
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
E-commerce SEO – Regulated Industry
How we stabilized 20,000 monthly clicks and 5.4% CTR in the tactical knife industry
| Client: | Tekto Knives | Industry: | E-commerce, Tactical/EDC, Regulated |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Technical Audit, Keyword Research, Link Building, Content Creation |
20K
Monthly Clicks
Stable traffic
5.4%
CTR
Above industry avg
382
Top 3 Rankings
High-value keywords
3.5K+
Brand Searches
Monthly
## The Challenge
Tekto Knives operates in one of the most challenging e-commerce verticals: tactical and EDC knives. The guns and knives industry faces stringent advertising restrictions on Google, Facebook, and most paid channels – making organic search their primary growth lever.
Adding complexity: they needed to migrate from an old domain to a completely new one without losing years of accumulated SEO equity. One wrong move and their traffic would vanish.
### Stable Monthly Performance
Consistent 20,000 organic clicks with 5.4% CTR
Regulated industry where paid advertising is severely restricted
## Our Approach
We executed a careful, methodical strategy focused on preserving equity while driving new growth:
- Executed flawless manual redirections from old domain to new, preserving all traffic and search equity
- Developed comprehensive editorial calendar focused on high buying-intent content
- Implemented Conversion Rate Optimization for faster, more user-friendly purchasing
- Applied advanced on-page optimization across all key product and category pages
- Targeted link building focused on EDC, tactical, and outdoor publications
### Keyword Rankings Distribution
382 keywords in top 3 positions driving consistent revenue
### Brand vs Non-Brand Traffic
Strong brand presence with 3,500+ monthly brand searches
### Campaign Results
20,000
Stable monthly organic clicks
5.4%
CTR (above industry average)
382
Top 3 keyword rankings
1,386
New keywords ranked
### Engagement Metrics
114,922 engaged sessions indicating strong user connection
### Operating in a Regulated Industry?
Let’s discuss how organic search can become your primary growth channel.
[Get Your Free SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Gray Line Miami Case Study: +286% Clicks in the Competitive Tourism Market
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12936](https://fourdots.com/?p=12936)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12936.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12936.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-18
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Tourism / Local SEO
How we differentiated a tour operator from its parent company and captured local search traffic
| Client: | Gray Line Miami | Industry: | Travel/Hospitality, Tourism, Local Services |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Keyword Research, Content Creation, Link Building |
+286%
Monthly Clicks
7,059/month
+186%
Top 3 Keywords
Key terms
$6,635
Traffic Value
Per month
24
Months
Sustained effort
## The Challenge
Gray Line Miami operates in one of the most competitive tourism markets in the United States. Every major tour operator, OTA, and travel aggregator fights for the same “Miami tours” keywords – and most have budgets 10x larger.
Adding complexity: duplicate content risks with their parent company’s pages were affecting search rankings. They needed to establish a unique brand positioning and content identity while navigating seasonal search behavior fluctuations.
### Monthly Clicks Growth
286% improvement to 7,059 monthly clicks
Highly competitive Miami tourism market with seasonal fluctuations
## Our Approach
We executed a long-term content differentiation and authority building strategy:
- Performed on-page optimization of existing pages with unique messaging
- Created topical cluster pages for tours and attractions building topical authority
- Rewrote content to be unique and specific to the Gray Line Miami brand
- Executed targeted link building campaign focused on travel and tourism publications
- Addressed duplicate content issues with parent company through proper canonicalization
### Top 3 Keyword Rankings
186% improvement in high-value positions
### Traffic Value Growth
265% increase to $6,635/month equivalent
### Campaign Results
7,059
Monthly clicks (+286%)
+186%
Top 3 keyword improvement
$6,635
Monthly traffic value (+265%)
24 Months
Sustained campaign effort
### 24-Month Growth Timeline
Steady progress through seasonal fluctuations
### Tourism or Local Services Business?
Let’s discuss how to capture high-intent local search traffic.
[Get Your Free SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Halo Oglasi Case Study: +171% Conversions While Cutting Costs by 47%
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12934](https://fourdots.com/?p=12934)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12934.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12934.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-18
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
PPC Management
How Serbia’s largest classifieds platform dominated paid search efficiency
| Client: | Halo Oglasi | Industry: | Classifieds, Marketplace, E-commerce |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | PPC Management, Keyword Research, GA4 Setup |
+171%
Conversions
Same budget
-47%
Cost per Conv.
Efficiency gain
+114%
Impressions
Brand visibility
+63%
Clicks
Qualified traffic
## The Challenge
Halo Oglasi has been Serbia’s leading classified platform for 25 years, serving over 2.5 million unique visitors monthly. But increasing competition from new online platforms threatened their market position, and they needed to secure leadership across all classified verticals.
The complex website structure with numerous categories and subcategories required category-specific strategies while optimizing acquisition costs across the board.
### PPC Performance Improvements
Percentage changes across all key metrics
Green bars = costs we reduced (good!), Orange bars = metrics we increased
## Our Approach
We implemented a data-driven PPC optimization strategy:
- Performed comprehensive analysis of website structure and classified categories
- Conducted in-depth keyword analysis providing new advertising strategy
- Set up and optimized dynamic data feeds for automated ad creation
- Implemented advanced data-tracking for performance evaluation
- Created category-specific campaigns for different classified verticals
### Conversions vs Cost per Conversion
More conversions at lower cost – the holy grail of PPC
### Impressions & Clicks Growth
Expanding reach while maintaining quality
### Campaign Results
+171%
Conversions with same budget
-47%
Cost per conversion reduction
+114%
Impressions growth
-12%
Average CPC through optimization
### Efficiency Over Time
Conversions up, costs down – sustained improvement
### Want Better PPC Results?
Let’s discuss how we can maximize your advertising ROI.
[Get Your Free PPC Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Alpha Medical Solutions Case Study: +300% Organic Clicks in 7 Months
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12923](https://fourdots.com/?p=12923)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12923.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12923.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-18
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
Healthcare E-commerce SEO
# Alpha Medical Solutions: +300% Organic Clicks in 7 Months
How we transformed a healthcare e-commerce through technical SEO and strategic link building
| Client: | Alpha Medical Solutions | Industry: | E-commerce, Healthcare |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Technical Audit, Keyword Research, Link Building, GA4 Setup |
300%
Click Growth
3.5K → 14.3K/mo
200%
Keywords Ranked
Now 12,000+
250%
Traffic Value
$8,541/month
7
Months
To results
## The Challenge
Alpha Medical Solutions operates in the healthcare e-commerce space, providing medical equipment to professionals and consumers. Their complex product catalog required proper categorization and brand structure, while healthcare industry compliance added content requirements.
They needed proper analytics implementation to track and optimize conversions, along with strategic keyword targeting to compete in their specialized market.
### Organic Click Growth
Monthly clicks increased from 3,577 to 14,308 in 7 months
Healthcare e-commerce with complex product categorization requirements
## Our Approach
We executed a comprehensive healthcare e-commerce SEO strategy:
- Performed technical SEO audit and information architecture optimization
- Implemented comprehensive keyword research and mapping strategy
- Executed link building campaign targeting relevant healthcare publications
- Fixed Google Analytics issues and implemented GA4 for accurate tracking
- Optimized category and brand page structures for search visibility
### Before vs After: 7 Months
Key metrics transformation
### Keywords Ranked Growth
From 4,000 to 12,000+ keywords ranked
### Campaign Results
14,308
Monthly clicks (+300%)
12,000+
Keywords ranked (+200%)
$8,541
Monthly traffic value (+250%)
7 Months
Time to achieve results
### 7-Month Growth Timeline
Consistent improvement across all key metrics
### Healthcare or Specialized E-commerce?
Let’s discuss how we can grow your organic presence.
[Get Your Free SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Valvoline EU Case Study: Conquering European Markets
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12922](https://fourdots.com/?p=12922)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12922.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12922.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-18
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-18
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
International SEO
# Valvoline EU: Conquering European Markets from Zero
How we grew EU organic traffic by 1,367% in just 8 months while the US site dominated
| Client: | Valvoline | Industry: | Automotive, B2B, Manufacturing |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Link Building, Content Creation, SEO Consulting |
1,367%
Traffic Growth
2.4K → 35.2K/mo
649
Top 3 Rankings
Across EU markets
14,900
New Keywords
Multi-market reach
60K
Backlinks Gained
In 8 months
## The Challenge
Valvoline is a global leader in automotive lubricants, but their EU website was invisible in search while their US site dominated. They needed to establish European market presence without cannibalizing their existing US rankings.
The challenge was threefold: differentiate the EU site from the strong US presence, overcome poor organic performance history, and introduce products new to European markets requiring targeted awareness campaigns.
### EU Organic Traffic Growth
Monthly visits increased from 2,400 to 35,200 in 8 months
Establishing EU market presence while US site maintained strong positions
## Our Approach
We implemented a focused strategy targeting Valvoline’s three most crucial product groups:
- Targeted link-building campaigns focused on high-priority product categories
- Specialized content writing supporting landing page rankings through strategic internal linking
- Constant monitoring and analysis enabling timely strategy adjustments
- Ongoing SEO consultancy and best practice recommendations for the EU team
### Before vs After Campaign
Key metrics transformation over the 8-month campaign
### Backlink Acquisition
60,000 backlinks acquired organically over 8 months
### Campaign Results
1,367%
Organic traffic surge (2,400 → 35,200 monthly)
649
Top 3 keyword rankings secured
14,900
New keywords ranked across EU markets
60,000
Backlinks acquired in just 8 months
### Growth Timeline
Traffic and keyword progression over the campaign
### Expanding to New Markets?
Let’s discuss how we can establish your international SEO presence.
[Get Your Free SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Montessori Generation Case Study: From Startup to #1 Global Ranking
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12914](https://fourdots.com/?p=12914)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=12914.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=12914.md)
**Published:** 2026-01-17
**Last Updated:** 2026-01-18
**Author:** Radomir Basta
### Content
E-commerce SEO
# Montessori Generation: From Startup to #1 Global Ranking
How a new e-commerce store outranked Amazon and 10-year competitors in 18 months
| Client: | Montessori Generation | Industry: | E-commerce, Retail, Education |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Services: | Technical Audit, Keyword Research, Link Building, Content |
2,090%
Traffic Growth
1.1K → 23K/mo
#1
Global Ranking
“montessori toys”
419
Top 3 Rankings
High-intent keywords
3,760
New Keywords
Expanded reach
## The Challenge
Starting in 2021, Montessori Generation entered one of the most competitive e-commerce markets imaginable: children’s educational toys in the USA. They faced Amazon, Etsy, and specialty retailers with over a decade of SEO equity and established customer bases.
The odds were stacked against them: low visibility on strategic keywords, disappointing organic search performance, and inadequate website traffic to sustain growth.
### Organic Traffic Growth
Monthly visits increased from 1,100 to 23,000 over 18 months
New e-commerce competing against Amazon, Etsy, and 10+ year established players
## Our Approach
We executed a comprehensive strategy targeting both technical foundation and authority building:
- Conducted thorough technical SEO audit to identify and fix site deficiencies
- Developed editorial content plan with topical clusters to improve internal linking
- Implemented technical optimizations to enhance site performance and UX
- Pursued targeted backlink acquisition to build domain authority
- Created high-intent content targeting commercial keywords with conversion potential
### Before vs After Campaign
Key metrics transformation over the campaign period
### Keyword Rankings Achieved
Distribution of ranking positions across target keywords
### Campaign Results
2,090%
Organic traffic increase (1,100 → 23,000 monthly)
#1 Global
SERP ranking for “montessori toys”
419
Top 3 keyword rankings secured
69,390
Engaged sessions achieved
### Growth Timeline
Key metrics progression throughout the campaign
### Ready for Similar Results?
Let’s discuss how we can transform your organic presence.
[Get Your Free SEO Audit](/contact)
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: SEO Case Study: Increasing Orange Jordan Organic Traffic for 76.50%
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=3653](https://fourdots.com/?p=3653)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=3653.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=3653.md)
**Published:** 2025-02-16
**Last Updated:** 2025-02-21
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
***SEO Case Study**: How we Helped Orange Jordan Increase their Organic Traffic and User Engagement with on and offsite Optimization*Orange Jordan has been the primary telecommunications provider in the Kingdom since the year 2000. Despite always being at the forefront of innovation with their offers, Orange Jordan still wanted to make sure that their site is perfectly optimized for visitors, that it gets the exposure it deserves, and that every part of their online presentation reflects their ideals as a company. In almost two years that we have been working on their English language content, site’s technical aspects and offsite optimization, Four Dots helped them significantly increase their traffic from organic sources, decrease page loading times and improve user engagement.
- Client: Orange Jordan
- URL: https://www.orange.jo
- Industries: Telecommunications
- Period: February 2016 – December 2017
##**SEO Case Study Results****Compared to the one-month period – February 2016, when we started the campaign, in December 2017, the client’s site have seen a 76.50% increase in visits coming from organic search, which was one of the primary goals of the campaign**
- Organic traffic pageviews increased by 54.71%, while unique pageviews were up by 57.95%
- Engagement metrics from organic traffic are also on the up with a 4.31% increase in average time on page
- The number of users was increased by 103%, and the number of new users by 112%
- When it comes to purely technical site optimization, our modifications led to an 8.45% decrease in the average page loading time; 59.90% decrease in average redirection time; and a 5.62% decrease in the average domain lookup time
- Number of unique referring domains linking to our client’s site has, in the 23 months that we have been working for them increased from 800 in February 2016 to 1000 in December 2017
- Monthly organic traffic has, between February 2016 and December 2017 increased by 33%
- The number of organic keywords that Orange ranks for has increased by 60% in the observed period
##**Methodology**Seeing how our task was not only the complete overhaul of the English language portion of orange.jo, but also its promotion; methods employed involved everything from extensive keyword and competitor research to influencer outreach. Starting from the market and competition analysis we went on to detailed content audit and keyword mapping. We suggested modifications or additions to the existing content, or when the numbers justified it, its removal. Once the pages were filled with content and metadata optimized for carefully selected sets of keywords, our attention switched to technical optimization of the site, for the most part, focused on user experience and retention.
After ensuring that the site is as appealing to users and as responsive to their demands as possible, the next step was to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. This was achieved through targeted influencer outreach and publications on industry relevant websites. This diversification and expansion of their backlink portfolio seems to be one of the main causes of their substantial traffic increase.
##**Objectives**While, as a public provider, they hold a fair portion of the market, Orange Jordan still felt like they could be reaching more people. They wanted their English language pages optimized for the relevant terms, both when it comes to onsite elements like content and metadata, and when it comes to offsite aspects, like backlinks. Since this portion of the website was mostly based on translation from the original Arabic, they were fully aware of the enormous unexploited potential.
Aside from bringing more people to their pages, Orange wanted to make their experience more enjoyable and beneficial. While site’s usability was also addressed through content improvements, the client was fully aware of the necessity for technical UX improvements.
##**Services Provided**-**Keyword and market research**– helping us identify the terms to focus on, and audiences that might be interested in them
- Keyword mapping – based on their offer and their desired customers’ demands, we matched up particular pages with keywords they are most likely to rank for
-**Content audit and development**– after a detailed inspection of their content, and its comparison with that of the client’s competitors, we suggested and carried out modification, removal or replacement of the existing copy with that provided by our team.
-**Technical optimization**– being a telecommunications provider, Orange Jordan perfectly understood the imperative to make their site as fast and functional as possible. Our input helped them achieve this.
-**Offsite optimization**– once we did everything we could with the site itself, it was time to start promoting it. This included everything from target social media promotion, to link building on relevant industry sources.
##**About the client**Registered in 1999, Orange Jordan has been actively providing their services to the people of the Kingdom since the year 2000. They have been leaders in innovation and adoption of new technologies ever since, being the first in Jordan to introduce a 3G network, higher ADSL speeds, FTTH and VDSL services, etc. Offering numerous internet, mobile or landline plans and packages, Orange keeps rewarding their customers’ loyalty through impeccable service, generous discounts, and a commitment to staying ahead of the curve.
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Transforming Miss Amara's SEO Strategy for Success
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=2663](https://fourdots.com/?p=2663)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=2663.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=2663.md)
**Published:** 2016-06-24
**Last Updated:** 2023-11-20
**Author:** Nataša Bajić
### Content
## Client Goals, Objectives and Results**Miss Amara, an e-commerce platform for rugs**, faced the challenge of competing with larger brands and established online stores. Their strategic approach focused on organic search to attain sustainable results and compete effectively against more established competitors.
The client enlisted our services to:
1.**Improve rankings for relevant keywords**in both mobile and desktop organic search, with a primary focus on the**Australian market**.
2.**Increase organic website traffic**, engagement metrics, and conversion-related key performance indicators (KPIs).
3.**Enhance revenue**generation from organic visits.
## Monthly Results Improvements
-**Organic revenue** increased by**200****%**-**228****%**increase in**organic visits**- Improved**unique page views**by**63****%**-**Active users**increased by**115****%**
The improvements in ranking for these high-volume, relevant phrases exposed clients to relevant audiences led to a**228% increase in the number of organic visits.***
Increase the number of monthly****unique page views by 63%.***
Applied conversion rate optimization, combined with the increase in visibility, resulted in their**monthly organic revenue increasing by 200%**
The number of monthly**active users increased by 115%.**
##**SEO Strategy Provided**In 19 months of collaboration with Miss Amara,**Four Dots**provided the following set of audits, services and strategy segments:**1. Competitor and Keyword Research:**- Analyzed competitors’ content, backlinks, and rankings to formulate a comprehensive strategy.
- Gained insights to effectively compete in the market.**2. Content Audit and Development, Keyword Mapping, and Inner Linking Structure Optimization:**- Reorganized internal links to optimize SEO.
- Created linkable, keyword-rich content for the blog.
- Mapped keywords to relevant pages and optimized category pages.
- Ensured a clear purpose for each page on the website.**3. On-site and Technical Optimization:**- Conducted a thorough website analysis.
- Identified and prioritized issues for efficient resolution.
- Improved crawlability for search engines, resulting in increased relevant traffic and improved user experience.
- Enhanced user behavior and traffic tracking.**4. Landing Page Optimization:**- Redesigned page layouts to highlight key elements.
- Implemented effective calls to action.
- Set up proper Google Analytics for tracking micro and macro conversion goals and other essential metrics and KPIs.**5. Link Building:**- Initially focused on the homepage and critical category pages with relevant, exact-match anchor text.
- Expanded link-building efforts to other landing pages as the campaign progressed.**6. Regular Campaign Progress Tracking, Optimization, and Reporting:**- Maintained open communication channels with the client.
- Provided live and monthly backlink reports via [Reportz.io](https://reportz.io) and weekly progress summaries.
- Ensured the client remained well-informed about campaign progress.
##**Summary of Results**In just 19 months, Miss Amara’s digital strategy underwent a remarkable transformation, leading to significant achievements:
- A substantial increase in organic search traffic.
- Improved rankings for relevant keywords in both mobile and desktop searches.
- Enhanced user engagement metrics and conversion-related KPIs.
- Successful redirection of the advertising budget to maximize ROI.
- The client now boasts 15,000 active users and continues to experience impressive growth.
Miss Amara’s collaboration with our team not only established their online presence but also positioned them as a formidable competitor in the rug retail industry. This case study demonstrates how strategic planning, meticulous execution, and ongoing optimization can yield substantial and sustainable results in the digital landscape.
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Transforming MobileShop.eu into One of Leading E-commerce Mobile Phone Stores in Europe
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=2484](https://fourdots.com/?p=2484)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=2484.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=2484.md)
**Published:** 2016-05-30
**Last Updated:** 2023-11-20
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
##**SEO Objectives**MobileShop.eu goal was to transform MobileShop.eu into one of the leading E-commerce mobile phone stores in Europe. To achieve this, they went on an SEO journey with Four Dots, aiming to:
- Establish strong brand recognition in the online sphere.
- Increase organic traffic and conversions.
- Position MobileShop as a recognizable brand across Europe.
The initial challenge was building a well-optimized website that would not only attract search engines but also resonate with their target audience. This endeavor was complemented by the objective of achieving consistent organic traffic growth through ethical, white-hat link building practices.
## Results
MobileShop.eu partnership with Four Dots yielded the following results:
-**Monthly organic traffic**grew**from 0 to 2000**in a year
- Reached the**first page of Google search**for **target keywords**in the first 4 months
##**Applied SEO Strategy**To improve MobileShop.eu’s online visibility, Four Dots applied a comprehensive SEO strategy. As an online retailer, MobileShop recognized the importance of optimizing both onsite and offsite factors. The methodology employed by Four Dots was centered around the following key SEO practices:
1.**Consumer Behavior Analysis:**To inform strategic decisions, we conducted a detailed analysis of consumers’ online behavior, ensuring that our SEO efforts were aligned with their intent.
2.**Keyword Research:**Finding, analyzing and targeting the most competitive keywords within the mobile phone industry enabled MobileShop to stand out in search results.
3.**Technical SEO Analysis:**A detailed analysis of the website’s technical elements was conducted to ensure it was optimized for search engines. This included addressing issues related to site structure, crawlability, and mobile-friendliness.
4.**Onsite Optimization:**We implemented strategic changes to improve onsite factors that play a pivotal role in SEO success. This encompassed optimizing content, meta tags, and improving overall user experience.
5.**White Hat Link Building:**Ethical link-building practices were employed to enhance website authority and credibility within the digital landscape. This involved acquiring high-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative webistes.
6.**Consistent Traffic Monitoring:**Constant tracking and analysis of website traffic, engagement metrics, and conversion rates via [Reportz.io](https://reportz.io) allowed us to adapt and refine our strategy as needed.
7.**Adaptation to Industry Trends:**Active reactions in response to changing industry trends, ensuring MobileShop remained at the forefront of SEO best practices.
This SEO methodology allowed MobileShop.eu to rapidly advance its online presence, compete effectively in a competitive market, and achieve remarkable results in a relatively short span of time.
### About the client
MobileShop is a trusted online mobile store collaborating with reliable mobile phone suppliers to offer a wide range of models at competitive prices. Committed to delivering attractive offers and swift delivery services to European consumers, MobileShop has evolved into a successful retailer of mobile technology.
Discover how MobileShop.eu’s SEO journey with Four Dots propelled them to the forefront of the European online mobile market.
---
## Acme_casestudyslider: Enhancing Crucial Hosting's SEO Strategy for Improved Online Presence
**URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=2477](https://fourdots.com/?p=2477)
**Markdown URL:** [https://fourdots.com/?p=2477.md](https://fourdots.com/?p=2477.md)
**Published:** 2016-05-30
**Last Updated:** 2023-11-20
**Author:** Goran Tepsic
### Content
-**Client: Crucial Hosting**-**URL:**[crucial.com.au](https://www.crucial.com.au/)
-**Industries:**Web Hosting, Web Services, Managed Services
-**Period:**24 months
##**Objectives**Crucial Australia sought the expertise of Four Dots to strengthen their content marketing strategy, enhance their backlink profile, and increase its industry authority. Already established as a reputable web hosting service provider in Australia, Crucial Hosting aimed to solidify its position as a trusted Australian service provider actively engaged in the community.
The goal was to create a content strategy that would reinforce Crucial’s credibility and resonate with its target audience. Significant progress was achieved in the first quarter of implementation, leading to a continued partnership between Four Dots and Crucial.
##**Results**The collaboration between Four Dots and Crucial Hosting delivered the following results:
- Crucial Hosting achieved first-page rankings on Google search results for their chosen target keywords within a few months.
- The number of inbound links doubled in the first quarter, enhancing the website’s authority.
- Social media engagements increased by up to 100% for targeted posts.
- Diversification of the backlink portfolio improved domain authority by 20.
- An increase in organic impression share was observed.
- A Google Manual penalty was successfully revoked.
##**Applied SEO Methodology**Four Dots approached the Crucial Hosting case with meticulous attention to detail, following these steps:
1.**Industry Research and Competitor Analysis:**In-depth research and analysis of the web hosting industry and competitors provided valuable insights.
2.**Content Strategy Development:**Four Dots identified the types of online content and resources that Crucial’s target audience regularly engages with, ensuring a more focused and effective content strategy.
3.**Diversification of Content:**The primary aim was to diversify content offerings and create content in various forms, leading to the generation of natural and authoritative inbound links.
##**Services Provided**-**Industry Analysis:**Detailed research into the target audience’s interests and online behavior.
-**Content Development:**Production of diverse content types for the client’s blog, aligned with predefined topics.
-**Content Distribution:**Identification of industry websites interested in content syndication and outreach.
-**Influencer Outreach:**Building relationships and communication with top industry influencers.
##**About the Client**Crucial Hosting is a leading Australian provider of web hosting services. Established in 2003, the company focuses on empowering small businesses with reliable hosting solutions. Over the years, Crucial Hosting has partnered with thousands of Australian businesses and is recognized as a trusted ally for digital innovations.
---
## About This Document
This is an AI-friendly version of the site content generated by FAII AI Tracker.
For more information, visit: https://fourdots.com
*Generated by FAII AI Tracker v3.3.0*