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What Is Marketing Automation & How to Get Started?

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What Is Marketing Automation & How to Get Started?

Marketing automation is a must for any marketer, no matter the size of their company. It doesn’t matter whether you sell products or services. Those who ignore marketing automation are missing out on powerful resources.

According to EmailMonday, around 56% of companies use some form of marketing automation, and 40% of B2C companies plan to adopt the technology.

But marketing automation can be overwhelming, with so many different platforms, integrations, and services available. How do you know what works best for your business?

Don’t worry. You’re not alone.

In this guide, we’ll go through the following:

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Let’s start by defining marketing automation.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation uses software, tools, or processes to automate repetitive tasks. This frees up time for more important tasks or increases efficiency. Automation can be used as part of an overall marketing strategy or for standalone tactics, such as email marketing, lead generation, sales, social media management, alerts, analytics, and reporting.

What are the benefits of marketing automation?

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There are five main benefits of marketing automation. Here’s how it helps marketers and businesses.

1. Save time and money

The main benefit of marketing automation is it can save time and money because it automates repetitive tasks, such as sending emails or social media posting, which can reduce marketing expenditure.

For example, the University of Buenos Aires saved 28 employee salaries and $100,000 per annum by automating its student communication.

Except of article about University of Buenos Aires increasing efficiency by 500% using automations

2. Increased sales

Marketing automation can increase sales, as it allows companies to scale their marketing efforts across multiple touchpoints, campaigns, and channels at the right time.

This sports nutritionist generated $50,000 in eight weeks by adding exit-intent automation.

Excerpt of article about Rudy, the sports nutritionist, generating $50K in eight weeks

3. Higher lead conversion

Drift reported that 58% of B2B companies don’t respond to sales leads. To combat this issue, marketers can improve sales funnels by automating initial and follow-up touches with prospects and customers, leading to higher revenue.

Pie chart showing 58% "no response" rate of companies

4. Improved engagement or customer service

Automation helps customer service by handling many customer requests or issues in real-time. It is possible to create automated responses to common questions, such as “What is my order status?” or “How do I use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer?”

5. Better analysis and reporting

Automation can provide marketing teams access to data, information, or insights that are easier to interpret.

For example, Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker contains information that integrates with this Google Data Studio report that lets you monitor your Google rankings and competitors.

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Ahrefs' Rank Tracker overview

Now let’s take a look at examples of marketing automation.

Examples of marketing automation

Here are some examples from marketers who use automation to help them improve different aspects of their businesses.

Drip campaigns

Drip campaigns are a series of emails automatically delivered over time that tell a story or educate prospects about a solution or problem.

Here’s an example: Blair Enns, who helps marketing agencies with pricing strategies, created a drip campaign to persuade people to buy his book.

Page showing picture of Blair; in bottom-right corner, visitors can enter contact details to get the first chapter of his book

After you opt in to get a free sample of his book, he sends you a series of emails based on his core message: “Charge more, buy my book.”

Email inbox; on right, Win Without Pitching's email

Outreach campaigns

Link building agencies use automation to follow up on prospects and earn more links from their outreach campaigns.

Here are the typical steps in an outreach campaign:

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  1. Find prospects’ contact details
  2. Craft your pitch
  3. Outreach to prospects
  4. Secure links

According to Postaga, the average response rate for an initial email is 16%, and sending at least one follow-up will get a response rate of 27% on average.

So if you send 1,000 outreach emails and include one automated follow-up, that’s 110 more replies and link possibilities.

Sales conversion campaigns

I spoke to Adam Watson, the co-founder of Hollywood Mirrors, about automation.

Page showing ladies using mirrors; below, text field to subscribe and become a VIP

Here’s his reply:

We automate emails depending on the customer behavior on the site.

The customer gets the right email at the right time with the right offer.

We sent over one million automated emails last year from a small list, and they produce 25% of our total revenue.

One of five automated campaigns is triggered if the website captures an email address depending on on-site behavior.

  • Welcome series — for subscribers who recently subscribed.
  • Cart abandonment — those who add to the cart but don’t complete the purchase.
  • Browse abandonment — subscribers who browse products but don’t purchase.
  • Win back campaign — dormant customers who haven’t purchased recently.
  • VIP automation — aimed at high or frequent spenders.

Automation helps with all KPIs such as conversion, sales, repeat orders, and customer lifetime value. The more a customer sees your brand over time, the more likely they will buy.

Another sales conversion automation example

Automation can also notify customers and staff about sales promotions, orders, shipping, and deliveries.

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At the Nike.com shop, I added this product to my basket and then received this automated “Complete your purchase before we run out of your size” message.

Nike's pop-up message when item is added to cart

I most certainly do not wish to miss out on this garment.

Chatbots

A website chatbot is an automated tool that can interact with visitors in real-time via text messages, emails, or phone calls. It can also automatically answer questions from visitors.

The Ahrefs chatbot provides visitors easy access to the Ahrefs Academy, help information, and chat with support staff.

When you click “send us a message,” the chatbot interprets your message and proposes relevant help pages.

Ahrefs' chatbot showing several options (help center, talk to support, etc)

If the help articles aren’t enough to answer your question, you can talk to Ahrefs support staff.

Chatbox to talk to Ahrefs' customer support team

Alerts and notifications

An alert is a notification sent by a website owner whenever someone performs a specific action. For example, if someone joins your newsletter, you can email them to thank them for subscribing.

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Last year, we launched Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, a free tool to help you get more out of your website.

Once you’ve verified a website and the domain is added to the dashboard, you can create automated backlink, keyword, Site Audit, and ranking notifications.

Click the three dots next to the domain name, then choose which notifications you wish to receive.

List of options to tailor notifications

WordPress uses automation to notify you about comments posted on your website and enable plugin updates, saving web designers, developers, and bloggers time.

List of WordPress plugins

For invoicing purposes, I use Harvest to send out invoices. If the customer pays via Stripe or PayPal, automation sends me a payment notification and the customer receives a thank-you email.

In addition, I can set up the invoice settings so that slow payers get friendly reminders every seven days until they have paid.

Page to set up reminder and thank-you messages

Leads and appointments

If you promote services on your website, the aim is to collect information from site visitors, specifically those interested in your services.

This lead qualification automation asks website visitors a series of questions and aims to book an appointment with serious prospects. But the automation doesn’t put off those who aren’t ready to speak to a company representative yet.

Flowchart of lead qualification; on right, a question with four options

In this example, here are the four questions a visitor is asked.

Question 1. What help do you need?

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Question asking what user needs; below, four options to choose from

Question 2. What is your website built on?

Question asking what user's website is built on; below, four options to choose from

Question 3. What is your budget?

Question asking about user's budget; below, three options to choose from

Question 4. When are you looking to start?

Question asking when user wants to start; below, three options to choose from

If the prospect is a highly qualified lead, they are invited to book a call.

On left, cropped picture of two people talking; on right, form to book a call

A less-qualified lead can sign up for a newsletter.

On left, cropped picture of man smiling; on right, form to sign up for newsletter

This automation enables marketers to get immediate and future leads from their websites.

Personalization

Automated personalization allows marketers to tailor their messages to specific individuals instead of sending the same message to everyone.

I sent subscribers a personalized website audit using Ahrefs’ Batch Analysis tool and ConvertKit custom fields.

I sent 262 subscribers a personalized email containing:

  • Their Domain Rating (DR).
  • The number of referring domains.
  • The number of keywords they ranked for.
  • Organic traffic.
Fraser's personalized email to a recipient

Here’s the step-by-step process:

  1. Export subscribers from ConvertKit into Google Sheets
  2. Select Data > Split text to columns to get their domain name from their email address
  3. Copy and paste domain names into the Batch Analysis tool to extract the website metrics
  4. Create new columns in Google Sheets for the DR, referring domains, keywords, organic traffic data
  5. Match this data with subscribers
  6. Create custom fields in ConvertKit for the domain name, referring domains, keywords, organic traffic information
  7. Import Google Sheet information back into ConvertKit
  8. Create an email broadcast
  9. Insert the custom fields into the email body copy to personalize each subscriber’s domain name, referring domains, keywords, and organic traffic information

Segment customers

Customer segmentation is the process of grouping together customers based on similar behaviors, interests, or needs.

For example, you can create rules aimed at people who open emails and then tag them by a product they’ve bought or a page they’ve visited.

Here, we can see that people who visit and start to exit this spreadsheet website receive a pop-up message with segmentation options.

Pop-up message with segmentation options

Upon selecting the “I’m new to Excel” option, I see that the website shows the “get 3 video lessons for beginners” offer.

Pop-up message about free course; below, text field to enter email address to get said course

Now the site owner can tailor follow-up content and offers aimed at their “beginner” customer segment.

Email triggers

An email trigger sends designated content to prospects or customers who take action on your site (e.g., sign up for a free trial, make a purchase, or raise a support request).

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These emails confirm that your business noticed the customer’s request or action.

While most email marketing tools and automation platforms can trigger automatic emails, 49% of marketers don’t use these tools. So using these features gives you a competitive advantage.

Let’s say you sell training courses on a platform, such as Teachable or Podia.

After a customer buys your training course, you can send the order details to a marketing platform, such as Drip, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, etc., through an integration.

"Intergrations" page on Podia

When the order details come through the marketing platform, you can trigger an automation that emails the customer a welcome email and then another email 14 days later to check on their progress in the training course they signed up for.

Draft of welcome email

PPC and retargeting

Automated PPC bidding is when an advertis­er bids automatically based on their budget and other criteria to make managing advertising campaigns easier.

Automated retargeting is when you display ads to people who have just visited your website to encourage them to return.

1250ships.com, an e‑commerce website, created a Google remarketing ad in Mailchimp that generated over $8,200 in revenue and gained 19 new customers—leading to a 3,879% ROI in the first three months.

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And here’s how you can create a Google remarketing advert with Mailchimp.

Reports

Automation can generate specific reports for specified people, dates, and times.

You can create automated reports for customers, clients, or staff within Google Analytics.

For example, here’s how to create a report showing all channel traffic:

  • Go to Google Analytics > Acquisition
  • All Traffic > Channels
  • Click the arrow next to the date range > Tick “Compare to the previous period” > Apply
"Channels" page on Google Analytics
  • Click the share button > Customize the email report options

Drop-down options to choose frequency of email reports

Additionally, Google Search Console sends regular performance reports each month.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the process of bringing users up to speed with your product/service as quickly as possible.

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It’s about making sure they feel welcome and confident enough to use, purchase, and keep using your product/service.

Over the festive break, I considered migrating my website from WordPress to the Ghost CMS.

Here’s the Ghost onboarding process for trial customers.

Email inbox; on right, Ghost's welcome email

I purchased a custom theme but changed my mind and canceled the trial period.

The ConvertFlow onboarding process is more comprehensive than Ghost’s, including a video course, case studies, results, and techniques.

Email inbox; on right, email about lead capture rates from ConvertFlow

While I have abandoned interest in these services, I still receive valuable emails from both brands.

Social media

Automated social media uses software to post updates about a business on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Marketers can do this manually, but it’s much more efficient if done automatically.

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We use MeetEdgar to automate posting and content distribution on our main social channels; you can learn more about Ahrefs’ marketing stack in our very own Mateusz Makosiewicz’s guide.

It’s now time to put what you’ve learned about automation into practice.

How to get started with marketing automation

If you’re new or want to automate more, here’s our seven-step guide to get started.

Flowchart to help you get started on marketing automation

Step 1. Goal

Define a specific goal. Note that certain goals—such as saving time or money and increasing sales, leads, conversions, or engagement—are too broad. You need to examine things more closely.

For example, let’s say you looked at Google Analytics and discovered that 1.7% of traffic becomes a lead.

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But after delving deeper, you discover you don’t convert many of these leads into paying clients.

Thus, one of your main goals can be to increase qualified leads or increase your conversion rates between the lead and customer stages.

Step 2. Identify technology

Take a look at the technology you are currently using.

Are there options available to reuse the existing technology to reach your goals?

Are there resources you’re not using or could be using?

For example, if you generate leads but do not convert them, is your team following up on those leads?

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Could you speak to the sales team that interacts with prospects and build an automated sequence that answers the key questions sales leads have?

Step 3. Look externally

Look how others in your industry are automating parts of their businesses.

I used Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to find automation case studies rather than Google when researching this article.

Type “automation” AND “industry” (replace “industry” with your industry name) into the tool and sort by date.

Content Explorer search for this term: "automation" AND "marketing"

You’ll discover many examples and case studies specific to your industry that you can learn from.

Content Explorer results for this search: "automation" AND "marketing"

If you don’t believe your existing solutions or tools can help solve your issues or achieve your goal, look elsewhere.

For example, I’m comparing the templates offered by ConvertFlow and RightMessage because I believe their technology can help increase and convert more qualified leads than my current solution.

Various ConvertFlow templates in grid format
Various RightMessage templates in grid format

Most marketing automation tools will offer demonstrations, free trials, or “recipes” to help you decide if they are right for you.

Step 4. Map out the process

If you need to map out a process from scratch, use a mind-mapping tool like Xmind or MindMeister to visualize each user’s step.

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This process for qualifying leads has already been mapped out.

However, there’s no educational and conversion process in place after the visitor subscribes to the newsletter.

Here’s an example of the process to generate qualified website leads.

  1. Define pages that prospects visit
  2. Create form, fields, and CTA
  3. Create a page, web form, and email reply
  4. Connect form submission with CRM by creating Zapier integration
  5. Set up a trigger to send follow-up emails
  6. Create relevant content for the email sequence

Step 5. Build, test, launch

After mapping out your process, it’s time to build the automation.

Most SaaS automation software lets you visually design the automation; if that fails, get your development team involved instead.

Then test out your process; for example, if you’re automating cart abandonment, go to Chrome Incognito and add a product to the basket:

PWRBioheat's page to choose delivery options; on right, an item added to cart

Then abandon the order and ensure the automation works the way it’s supposed to:

PWRBioheat's "Complete your Purchase" email

Step 6. Measure

Measuring performance against the last 30 days is usually the most accurate way, and most automation solutions have methods for measuring.

Step 7. Repeat

After tackling one problem or goal, repeat the process by identifying another problem or goal.

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Final thoughts

This article covered everything about marketing automation.

Automating repetitive marketing activities can help you save time and money; improve sales, leads, customer services, and engagement; and allow marketers to focus on higher-priority tasks.

The best approach is to start by automating small marketing tasks first, then move on to more significant tasks. You should also check out how to build a martech stack and what online marketing tools Ahrefs uses.

Got questions? Ping me on Twitter.



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Understanding the Impact of Google’s November 2024 Core Update on Global Search Rankings

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Understanding the Impact of Google's November 2024 Core Update on Global Search Rankings

Introduction

In November 2024, Google launched its latest core algorithm update, a broad refinement designed to enhance the quality of its search engine results. Rolling out over approximately two weeks, the update continues Google’s ongoing commitment to delivering more relevant, useful, and high-quality search experiences for users worldwide. This article explores the nature of the November 2024 Core Update, its potential impact on websites, and strategies for site owners to adapt and thrive in its aftermath​.

1. What Is a Google Core Update?

Core updates are large-scale changes to Google’s search algorithms. Unlike targeted updates aimed at specific sectors or issues, core updates broadly impact all regions and languages. They reflect Google’s effort to re-evaluate how content is assessed and ranked based on relevance, usefulness, and reliability. Previous updates include significant releases like the March and August 2024 updates, illustrating the frequency and scope of these changes​.

2. Goals of the November 2024 Core Update

The November update focuses on refining the quality of search results. According to Google’s official statements, it seeks to amplify genuinely useful content while reducing the visibility of content primarily designed to manipulate rankings without meeting user needs. This effort emphasizes Google’s consistent push for “people-first” content—engaging and useful information that serves users, not search engines​.

3. Key Features and Characteristics of the Update

  • Global Impact: The update affects search rankings on a global scale and is not confined to any particular industry or niche​.
  • Rollout Duration: Spanning about two weeks, the rollout’s timing allows Google to fully implement algorithmic changes and assess their effects.
  • Broad Adjustments: The update doesn’t target specific sites but involves systemic reassessment across Google’s ranking systems.
  • Dynamic Search Environment: This core update follows in the footsteps of the August and March 2024 updates, representing a year of significant search result refinement​.

4. What This Means for Site Owners

  • Traffic Fluctuations: Websites may observe shifts in rankings and traffic during the update’s rollout and subsequent completion. These changes highlight the dynamic nature of Google search and require continuous monitoring and adaptation​.
  • Recommended Actions:
    • Wait and Analyze: Site owners experiencing changes should wait until the rollout’s completion before making significant adjustments.
    • Utilize Google Search Console: Compare traffic and ranking data from before and after the update to identify potential areas of improvement.
    • Focus on High-Impact Pages: Pages with notable drops in ranking should undergo thorough content evaluation using Google’s guidelines

5. Recovery and Adaptation Strategies

Recovering from a negative impact due to a core update may take weeks or months as Google’s systems adjust and validate content changes. Site owners should prioritize delivering high-quality, reliable, and user-focused content. Specific steps include:

  1. Content Evaluation: Assess content against Google’s guidelines, focusing on readability, user satisfaction, and factual accuracy.
  2. No Quick Fixes: Avoid superficial changes aimed solely at improving rankings. Sustainable improvements are more valuable and impactful​(November 2024 core upda…).
  3. People-First Content: Ensure content serves real user needs, as opposed to purely SEO-driven objectives. This aligns with Google’s long-term priorities for search quality​

6. Comparative Analysis with Previous Updates

The November 2024 Core Update continues trends observed in previous updates like March and August 2024. While each update has its nuances, their collective goal remains consistent: bettering search quality and delivering relevant results. Comparing data from these updates can reveal patterns and offer insights into Google’s evolving criteria​

7. Broader Implications for the SEO Industry

Google’s ongoing core updates underscore the critical importance of a user-centric approach to SEO. For digital marketers and SEO specialists, adapting strategies to these updates involves staying informed, using reliable analytics tools, and keeping content fresh and engaging. The need for adaptability is paramount, as Google continually shifts the parameters of what defines quality content

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Conclusion

The November 2024 Core Update serves as a reminder that Google’s algorithmic changes are not designed to punish but to reward helpful, authentic, and user-focused content. Site owners and marketers who embrace this philosophy are better positioned to weather core updates and even benefit from improved rankings and traffic over time. By maintaining a focus on user experience, transparency, and relevance, creators can align with Google’s evolving standards and thrive in the ever-changing digital landscape

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SEO

How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO

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Step-by-Step: How to Optimize Old Blog Posts for SEO

Quick question: What do you typically do with your old blog posts? Most likely, the answer is: Not much.

If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Many of us in SEO and content marketing tend to focus on continuously creating new content, rather than leveraging our existing blog posts.

However, here’s the reality—Google is becoming increasingly sophisticated in evaluating content quality, and we need to adapt accordingly. Just as it’s easier to encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases, updating old content on your website is a more efficient and sustainable strategy in the long run.

Ways to Optimize Older Content 

Some of your old content might not be optimized for SEO very well, rank for irrelevant keywords, or drive no traffic at all. If the quality is still decent, however, you should be able to optimize it properly with little effort. 

Refresh Content 

If your blog post contains a specific year or mentions current events, it may become outdated over time. If the rest of the content is still relevant (like if it’s targeting an evergreen topic), simply updating the date might be all you need to do.

Rewrite Old Blog Posts 

When the content quality is low (you might have greatly improved your writing skills since you’ve written the post) but the potential is still there, there’s not much you can do apart from rewriting an old blog post completely. 

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This is not a waste—you’re saving time on brainstorming since the basic structure is already in place. Now, focus on improving the quality.

Delete Old Blog Posts 

You might find a blog post that just seems unusable. Should you delete your old content? It depends. If it’s completely outdated, of low quality, and irrelevant to any valuable keywords for your website, it’s better to remove it. 

Once you decide to delete the post, don’t forget to set up a 301 redirect to a related post or page, or to your homepage.

Promote Old Blog Posts 

Sometimes all your content needs is a bit of promotion to start ranking and getting traffic again. Share it on your social media, link to it from a new post – do something to get it discoverable again to your audience. This can give it the boost it needs to attract organic links too.

Which Blog Posts Should You Update?

Deciding when to update or rewrite blog posts is a decision that relies on one important thing: a content audit. 

Use your Google Analytics to find out which blog posts used to drive tons of traffic, but no longer have the same reach. You can also use Google Search Console to find out which of your blog posts have lost visibility in comparison to previous months. I have a guide on website analysis using Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can follow.

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If you use keyword tracking tools like SE Ranking, you can also use the data it provides to come up with a list of blog posts that have dropped in the rankings. 

Make data-driven decisions to identify which blog posts would benefit from these updates – i.e., which ones still have the chance to recover their keyword rankings and organic traffic. 

With Google’s helpful content update, which emphasizes better user experiences, it’s crucial to ensure your content remains relevant, valuable, and up-to-date.

How To Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

Updating articles can be an involved process. Here are some tips and tactics to help you get it right.

Author’s Note: I have a Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist you might also be interested in following while you’re doing your content audit.

Conduct New Keyword Research

Updating your post without any guide won’t get you far. Always do your keyword research to understand how users are searching for your given topic. 

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Proper research can also show you relevant questions and sections that can be added to the blog post you’re updating or rewriting. Make sure to take a look at the People Also Ask (PAA) section that shows up when you search for your target keyword. Check out other websites like Answer The Public, Reddit, and Quora to see what users are looking for too. 

Look for New Ranking Opportunities

When trying to revive an old blog post for SEO, keep an eye out for new SEO opportunities (e.g., AI Overview, featured snippets, and related search terms) that didn’t exist when you first wrote your blog post. Some of these features can be targeted by the new content you will add to your post, if you write with the aim to be eligible for it. 

Rewrite Headlines and Meta Tags

If you want to attract new readers, consider updating your headlines and meta tags. 

Your headlines and meta tags should fulfill these three things:

  1. Reflect the rewritten and new content you’ve added to the blog post.
  2. Be optimized for the new keywords it’s targeting (if any).
  3. Appeal to your target audience – who may have changed tastes from when the blog post was originally made. 

Remember that your meta tags in particular act like a brief advertisement for your blog post, since this is what the user first sees when your blog post is shown in the search results page. 

Take a look at your blog post’s click-through rate on Google Search Console – if it falls below 2%, it’s definitely time for new meta tags. 

Replace Outdated Information and Statistics

Updating blog content with current studies and statistics enhances the relevance and credibility of your post. By providing up-to-date information, you help your audience make better, well-informed decisions, while also showing that your content is trustworthy.

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Tighten or Expand Ideas

Your old content might be too short to provide real value to users – or you might have rambled on and on in your post. It’s important to evaluate whether you need to make your content more concise, or if you need to elaborate more. 

Keep the following tips in mind as you refine your blog post’s ideas:

  • Evaluate Helpfulness: Measure how well your content addresses your readers’ pain points. Aim to follow the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
  • Identify Missing Context: Consider whether your content needs more detail or clarification. View it from your audience’s perspective and ask if the information is complete, or if more information is needed.
  • Interview Experts: Speak with industry experts or thought leaders to get fresh insights. This will help support your writing, and provide unique points that enhance the value of your content.
  • Use Better Examples: Examples help simplify complex concepts. Add new examples or improve existing ones to strengthen your points.
  • Add New Sections if Needed: If your content lacks depth or misses a key point, add new sections to cover these areas more thoroughly.
  • Remove Fluff: Every sentence should contribute to the overall narrative. Eliminate unnecessary content to make your post more concise.
  • Revise Listicles: Update listicle items based on SEO recommendations and content quality. Add or remove headings to stay competitive with higher-ranking posts.

Improve Visuals and Other Media

No doubt that there are tons of old graphics and photos in your blog posts that can be improved with the tools we have today. Make sure all of the visuals used in your content are appealing and high quality. 

Update Internal and External Links

Are your internal and external links up to date? They need to be for your SEO and user experience. Outdated links can lead to broken pages or irrelevant content, frustrating readers and hurting your site’s performance.

You need to check for any broken links on your old blog posts, and update them ASAP. Updating your old blog posts can also lead to new opportunities to link internally to other blog posts and pages, which may not have been available when the post was originally published.

Optimize for Conversions

When updating content, the ultimate goal is often to increase conversions. However, your conversion goals may have changed over the years. 

So here’s what you need to check in your updated blog post. First, does the call-to-action (CTA) still link to the products or services you want to promote? If not, update it to direct readers to the current solution or offer.

Second, consider where you can use different conversion strategies. Don’t just add a CTA at the end of the post. 

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Last, make sure that the blog post leverages product-led content. It’s going to help you mention your products and services in a way that feels natural, without being too pushy. Being subtle can be a high ROI tactic for updated posts.

Key Takeaway

Reviving old blog articles for SEO is a powerful strategy that can breathe new life into your content and boost your website’s visibility. Instead of solely focusing on creating new posts, taking the time to refresh existing content can yield impressive results, both in terms of traffic and conversions. 

By implementing these strategies, you can transform old blog posts into valuable resources that attract new readers and retain existing ones. So, roll up your sleeves, dive into your archives, and start updating your content today—your audience and search rankings will thank you!

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How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages

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Compression can be used by search engines to detect low-quality pages. Although not widely known, it's useful foundational knowledge for SEO.

The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.

Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.

What Is Compressibility?

In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.

TL/DR Of Compression

Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.

This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:

  • Identify Patterns:
    A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases
  • Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
    The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size.
  • Shorter References Use Less Bits:
    The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.

A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.

Research Paper About Detecting Spam

This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.

Marc Najork

One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.

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Dennis Fetterly

Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.

Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.

Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis

Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.

Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.

Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:

“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”

The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.

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They write:

“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.

…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”

High Compressibility Correlates To Spam

The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.

Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.

The researchers concluded:

“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”

But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:

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“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.

Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:

95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.

More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”

The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.

Insight Into Quality Rankings

The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.

The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.

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The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.

This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:

“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.

For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”

So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.

Combining Multiple Signals

The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.

The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:

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“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”

These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:

“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”

Key Insight:

Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.

What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.

Takeaways

We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.

Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:

  • Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
  • Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
  • Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
  • In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
  • When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
  • Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
  • Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.

Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:

Detecting spam web pages through content analysis

Featured Image by Shutterstock/pathdoc

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