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Content Marketing for Startups: A Beginner’s Guide

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Content Marketing for Startups: A Beginner’s Guide

Content marketing has been gaining popularity steadily.

Google Trends for "content marketing"

More and more companies, e.g., Shopify, Beardbrand, and us too, have succeeded using this type of marketing. 

If you’re a startup, you’re probably wondering, “Should I use content marketing? And if I decide to, how do I go about it?” 

That’s what we’re answering in this guide. 

Why is content marketing important for startups?

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Content marketing is important for startups because it helps them get more customers. It does this by creating brand awareness and teaching potential customers how a business can help solve their problems. 

For example, we have a blog post about finding out who links to your website. It currently holds the featured snippet for the query:

Featured snippet for the query "who links to my site"

Within the article, we show readers how to find out who links to their websites using a couple of tools, one of which is our own Site Explorer:

Mention of our tool, Site Explorer, in our blog post

So anyone who’s searching for this query will discover our brand and product. They may eventually become customers. 

And that’s only one blog post. Compound the effect by the hundreds of pieces of content we’ve produced—articles, videos, social posts, etc.—and you can see how powerful content marketing can be. 

Just see how much organic traffic our blog gets from Google alone:

Organic traffic for the Ahrefs blog, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

Getting buy-in for content marketing

Content marketing takes time. It takes time in terms of resources (research, creation, promotion), and it takes time in terms of results. 

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Because it requires patience, content marketing works well only if the management team believes in it. That has been my experience so far, and it has been the experience for others too:

Unfortunately, not every management team is on board with content marketing right away. For example, some startups have limited resources or C-level executives may be biased toward marketing channels, e.g., paid advertising, that produce “faster” results. 

So if your boss or manager doesn’t give you sufficient time or resources to invest in content marketing, then it cannot work. If you’re in that situation, you’ll need to first spend some time getting buy-in from your managers.

Your game plan should involve:

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  • Statistics proving that content marketing works – Use this list of content marketing statistics to convince your management team. 
  • Examples of other companies (ideally in your niche) that have found content marketing to work well – If you’re starting a new beard product company, for example, you’ll want to show your managers how Beardbrand has succeeded with its blog. 

You’ll also want to show them your content marketing plan, so they know how you’ll be executing the strategy and tactics. 

You can also use the resources below to learn how to build up your case. While they’re about SEO, the principles can still apply to your situation. (After all, SEO and content marketing suffer from similar management team setbacks.)

Getting started with content marketing for your startup

Before you create any content, make sure you have two things down pat. 

1. Your target audience

The goal of content marketing is to attract more customers to your business. So if you don’t know exactly who you’re targeting, you can’t create the right content to get more of them.

The first step before you do anything is to be clear on who your target audience is

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We recommend that you create a buyer persona. Read the guide below to learn how to create one for your business.

Recommended reading: How to Create a Buyer Persona for Your Business 

2. Get your technical SEO in order

A big part of your content marketing strategy will be to rank your content high on Google. But if Google cannot access, crawl, or index your content, then you simply cannot rank. 

So it’s important to get the technical aspects of your website right. The easiest way to do this is to sign up for our free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) and run an audit of your website

If there are any technical SEO issues with your website, the tool will flag them out for you. It’ll also explain why something is an issue and how you can fix it:

Issue details and how to fix it, via Ahrefs' Site Audit

Recommended reading: The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO 

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The two types of content you’ll create

Your approach to content creation will be two-pronged. Both types of content should be created simultaneously. 

Prong 1. “Viral” content

The first part of your content strategy will be to create content that has the potential to attract a lot of attention. You know this as “going viral.” 

Why do we want to do this? There are a few reasons:

  1. Gaining a lot of attention in the short term for your content can prove to the management that content marketing works Metrics like shares may be vanity, but they provide short-term results that can help nudge management toward investing more in content marketing. 
  2. Get your brand name out – One of the biggest challenges for startups is that no one knows who you are. If your content attracts attention, then people will start to notice your brand. 
  3. Earn links – Links are an important Google ranking factor. Since the second part of our strategy will involve ranking high on Google, you should start acquiring links now. 
  4. Drive traffic to your website – Gaining attention means people are checking out your website and its contents. 

Now, take note that we don’t have to reach the level of the most viral meme. We just need people in our niche to know and share about us.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Find content ideas

I want to be clear: There are no surefire ways of knowing which content will go viral. If it was so easy, every startup would have a piece of viral content. 

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What we can do is improve our chances of success. We can do this by looking at what has been popular and seeing if we can replicate the ideas. 

Here’s how:

1. Look at what has resonated in communities

Many “viral” pieces of content get their start in niche communities: 

  1. Someone shares a piece of content on a forum (e.g., Hacker News) or subreddit. 
  2. It generates a lot of upvotes and comments.
  3. It gets picked up by users on other social networks.
  4. The media picks it up.

So if you can find these pieces of content, you can consider replicating them. 

To find them, go to a forum or community page and find the most popular posts. For example, you can see this easily in any subreddit by setting it to Top and All Time

The Top posts of All Time in the subreddit, r/supplements

For other forums, you can typically find a Sort by feature where you can see the most viewed posts:

The Most Viewed posts in a forum

For Hacker News, you can use this “search engine” to look through the archives. 

2. Look at what has been highly shared

Viral” content doesn’t always get its start on a community forum. Sometimes, it generates its initial spread through a social network itself. 

Here’s how to find content that’s widely shared:

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  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
  2. Enter a term relevant to your niche
  3. Set the Language filter to the language you create content in
  4. Set the Live/broken filter to Only live
  5. Set the filter to Exclude homepages and subdomains
  6. Sort the results by Twitter or Pinterest shares (whichever platform you’re interested in)
Most shared content, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer

You can also set the Publication date filter to a relatively recent period (e.g., one to two years) to see only content that has been highly shared recently. 

While Content Explorer is great for Twitter and Pinterest, it’s still missing a couple of important social networks. If you want to see what’s popular on Facebook and Instagram, you can use the CrowdTangle Chrome extension to see how often a link gets shared, who shared it, and what they said.

3. Look at what people are linking to

Linking is a form of sharing too. So if a piece of content has acquired a lot of links, it means it has generated a lot of attention. 

Here’s how to find this content:

  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
  2. Enter a term relevant to your niche
  3. Set the Language filter to the language you create content in
  4. Set the Live/broken filter to Only live
  5. Set the filter to Exclude homepages and subdomains
  6. Set the Publication date filter to sometime recent (e.g., the past two years)
  7. Sort the results by Referring domains
Most linked-to content, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer
4. Share a contrarian opinion

Hot takes and controversial opinions tend to get a lot of traction on social media. If you have one, you can create a piece of content around it. 

For example, since the pandemic began, remote work became championed as the “future norm.” Plenty of people seemed happy about it; no one seemed to question it. 

Well, Sean Blanda did. He wrote a piece titled, “Our remote work future is going to suck.” It must have resonated with many people because it has picked up hundreds of shares and links:

Stats for the post "Our remote work future is going to suck"

There should be plenty of widely accepted ideas, concepts, best practices, and advice in your niche. Share a contrarian opinion that refutes one of them. Even better: make sure you can back it up with actual data or personal experience. 

2. Create the content

Once you’ve selected a potential list of topics, it’s time to create the content. 

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Follow the handbook below to learn how to create a great piece of content. 

Recommended reading: Writing Handbook by Julian Shapiro 

3. Promote the content

Content doesn’t go viral on its own. You’ll need a way to “kickstart” it. You’ll have to promote your content

Here are some tactics to help promote your content:

A. Share your content with your existing audience

If you have an existing audience on email and/or social media, make sure you share your newly published content with them. 

If you don’t have an existing audience, it’s a reminder to start building them.

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B. Share content in relevant communities

You’ve got your ideas from these communities, so it’s a no-brainer to share them there. 

For example, when I was working at a startup a few years ago, I made sure to share my content on relevant subreddits. Many of the posts got hundreds and thousands of upvotes and sent a ton of traffic to the website:

Highly upvoted post on r/bodyweightfitness

Always make sure to study the communities you want to share your content in. Abide by the community rules, learn their culture and lingo, and participate actively. Don’t spam and don’t be there merely to promote—most communities hate that and will ban you in a jiffy. 

Only when you’re a trusted member of the community can you start to share some of your content. 

Recommended reading: Reddit Marketing: How to Self Promote on Reddit and Get More Traffic 

C. Outreach

There are multiple outreach opportunities in every post you publish. 

First, if you’ve mentioned anyone or any resources in your content, you should reach out and let them know. Nothing too complicated; just send a simple email like:

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Hey [First Name],

I recently published an article on [topic] and linked to [your resource]. 

Here it is: [Link]

Thought you might enjoy the mention. 🙂

Cheers, [Your Name]

Second, if you’ve based your content on highly shared or highly linked-to content, you can see who has shared or linked to the content and reach out. After all, if they’ve shared or linked to a similar piece of content in the past, chances are they’re interested in the topic and will love to see new stuff. 

To find these people, click on the Referring domains column in Content Explorer:

The websites linking to a popular post on Bitcoin, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer

If you’re looking for social shares, click on the Who tweeted tab:

The people who tweeted a popular post on Bitcoin, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer

Once you have a list of people, find their emails and reach out to them. 

Recommended reading: Blogger Outreach: How to Do It at Scale (Without Feeling Like a Jerk) 

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D. Repurpose your content

Extend the shelf life of each piece of content you create by turning it into different formats. For example, we turned our video on affiliate marketing into a blog post

We also regularly turn our content into Twitter threads:

Recommended reading: The Complete Guide to Content Repurposing 

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E. Run ads

If you have the budget, you can always run ads to your content to give it a boost. 

Recommended reading: PPC Marketing: Beginner’s Guide to Pay-Per-Click Ads 

Prong 2. SEO content

The second part of your content strategy will be to focus on evergreen content that will rank high on Google and generate search traffic. 

Here’s how to do it:

1. Find topics with search traffic potential

If you want to get search traffic, you have to target topics that people are searching for on Google. Finding these topics is a process known as keyword research, and the easiest way to begin is to use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

Here’s how:

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  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
  2. Enter one or a few keywords related to your niche
  3. Go to the Matching terms report
The Matching terms report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

Since startups generally have lesser “website authority,” we recommend targeting low-competition keywords in the beginning. 

For example, if you’re a social media marketing tool, it will be almost impossible to rank high for “social media marketing.” Not only does it have a Keyword Difficulty (KD) score of 91, but most of the top-ranking pages are also well-established sites with thousands of backlinks:

The SERP overview for "social media marketing," via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

To narrow down the list to only low-competition keywords, you can set the KD filter to a max of something like 20. 

Keyword Difficulty filter in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

From here, you can look through the list and pick out the keywords that are relevant and can promote your business. You can do this by looking at each topic’s business potential:

The Ahrefs Business Potential table

Ideally, you should focus on creating content for topics that score at least a “2” and above. That way, you can educate searchers who discover your content via search engines about how your product works and why it helps to solve their problems. 

This is known as product-led content, and it’s the basis of our entire content strategy. 

Recommended reading: Product-Led Content: What It Is, Why Use It, and How to Get Started 

2. Create content

When you have a list of topics you want to target, it’s time to create content to rank for them. 

To rank high on Google, you’ll need to show that your page deserves to be there. One of the most fundamental aspects of this is relevance. 

In SEO, relevance means aligning your content with search intent—the why behind a search query. We can understand this by looking at what’s ranking on the first page of Google. 

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But more specifically, what we want is to analyze the three Cs of search intent. 

  1. Content type – Is there a dominant type of content on the SERP, such as blog posts, product pages, videos, or landing pages?
  2. Content format – Is there a dominant content format on the SERP, such as guides, listicles, news articles, opinion pieces, or reviews?
  3. Content angle – Is there a dominant angle on the SERP, such as freshly updated content or content aimed at beginners?

For example, let’s analyze the three Cs for the keyword, “best vpn”:

SERP overview for "best vpn," via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer
  1. Content type – The results are mostly blog posts.
  2. Content format – The results are mostly listicles.
  3. Content angle – The results are mostly fresh, i.e., updated to the current year.

When you’ve analyzed the search intent for all your target topics, it’s time to create them. I recommend following the process in this video to learn how to create content that’ll rank on Google:

3. Build links

Links are an important Google ranking factor. It’s been confirmed by Google reps, and studies like our own have found a strong, positive correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and how much search traffic it gets from Google:

Chart showing the correlation between search traffic and referring domains

Put simply: If you want to rank high on Google, you need links. 

The issue, though, is that as a startup, you probably don’t have many links now. But don’t worry, all’s not lost. There are always “easy” links you can quickly acquire:

  • Social profiles – These days, you should at least have profiles and pages on the common social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn). You can add links to your website on your pages. 
  • Startup directories – These are websites or pages that collate a list of startups. You can search for these sites on Google and apply to be on them. 
  • Local directories – These are websites or pages in your local area that collate a list of startups or products. Search for them and request to be on them.
  • Product Hunt – Product Hunt is a community for new product discovery. The “trick” is that you can’t submit your own product, so you’ll have to find someone (known as a “hunter”) to get them to add your product. 
  • Help a Reporter Out (HARO) – HARO is a site that connects journalists and experts. Sign up and you’ll receive emails from journalists looking for experts to quote. If you’re knowledgeable about a particular niche or industry, you can reply to a journalist and often get a link back. 
  • Product reviews – Reach out to websites or pages that review products in your niche. You can send them one of your products and get them to write a review about it. 

And more. 

Follow this video to acquire your first 100 backlinks: 

If you’re doing them right, your “viral” content pieces should have earned you a number of links too (hopefully). Make sure that, where relevant, you add internal links from these attention-grabbing pages to your other important pages. 

Middleman Strategy

Beyond that, you should be building links to your important pages consistently. Watch this video to learn how link building works:

Final thoughts

Here’s what our content creation process looks like:

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Ahrefs blog content creation process

Does it look scary and complicated? Maybe. 

But we didn’t arrive at this spot right from the get-go. Like you, we were once a small startup. We started with one person creating content, then two, then three, then more. 

Even when we were a one-person team, our content was already making an impact on the industry. So don’t be disheartened by the competition you see ahead of you—great content stands out anywhere. 

Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t expect to create hundreds of content in the first month. You’ll need time to execute your strategy, hire people, and get your process right. 

Commit to it, follow the strategy I’ve laid out, and refine your process. You can do it! 

Any questions or comments about this post? Let me know on Twitter

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How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results

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How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results

ChatGPT is a game changer in the field of SEO. This powerful language model can generate human-like content, making it an invaluable tool for SEO professionals.

However, the prompts you provide largely determine the quality of the output.

To unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and create content that resonates with your audience and search engines, writing effective prompts is crucial.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the art of writing prompts for ChatGPT, covering everything from basic techniques to advanced strategies for layering prompts and generating high-quality, SEO-friendly content.

Writing Prompts For ChatGPT

What Is A ChatGPT Prompt?

A ChatGPT prompt is an instruction or discussion topic a user provides for the ChatGPT AI model to respond to.

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The prompt can be a question, statement, or any other stimulus to spark creativity, reflection, or engagement.

Users can use the prompt to generate ideas, share their thoughts, or start a conversation.

ChatGPT prompts are designed to be open-ended and can be customized based on the user’s preferences and interests.

How To Write Prompts For ChatGPT

Start by giving ChatGPT a writing prompt, such as, “Write a short story about a person who discovers they have a superpower.”

ChatGPT will then generate a response based on your prompt. Depending on the prompt’s complexity and the level of detail you requested, the answer may be a few sentences or several paragraphs long.

Use the ChatGPT-generated response as a starting point for your writing. You can take the ideas and concepts presented in the answer and expand upon them, adding your own unique spin to the story.

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If you want to generate additional ideas, try asking ChatGPT follow-up questions related to your original prompt.

For example, you could ask, “What challenges might the person face in exploring their newfound superpower?” Or, “How might the person’s relationships with others be affected by their superpower?”

Remember that ChatGPT’s answers are generated by artificial intelligence and may not always be perfect or exactly what you want.

However, they can still be a great source of inspiration and help you start writing.

Must-Have GPTs Assistant

I recommend installing the WebBrowser Assistant created by the OpenAI Team. This tool allows you to add relevant Bing results to your ChatGPT prompts.

This assistant adds the first web results to your ChatGPT prompts for more accurate and up-to-date conversations.

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It is very easy to install in only two clicks. (Click on Start Chat.)

Screenshot from ChatGPT, April 2024

For example, if I ask, “Who is Vincent Terrasi?,” ChatGPT has no answer.

With WebBrower Assistant, the assistant creates a new prompt with the first Bing results, and now ChatGPT knows who Vincent Terrasi is.

Enabling reverse prompt engineeringScreenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

You can test other GPT assistants available in the GPTs search engine if you want to use Google results.

Master Reverse Prompt Engineering

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for reverse engineering prompts because it generates natural and engaging responses to any given input.

By analyzing the prompts generated by ChatGPT, it is possible to gain insight into the model’s underlying thought processes and decision-making strategies.

One key benefit of using ChatGPT to reverse engineer prompts is that the model is highly transparent in its decision-making.

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This means that the reasoning and logic behind each response can be traced, making it easier to understand how the model arrives at its conclusions.

Once you’ve done this a few times for different types of content, you’ll gain insight into crafting more effective prompts.

Prepare Your ChatGPT For Generating Prompts

First, activate the reverse prompt engineering.

  • Type the following prompt: “Enable Reverse Prompt Engineering? By Reverse Prompt Engineering I mean creating a prompt from a given text.”
Enabling reverse prompt engineeringScreenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

ChatGPT is now ready to generate your prompt. You can test the product description in a new chatbot session and evaluate the generated prompt.

  • Type: “Create a very technical reverse prompt engineering template for a product description about iPhone 11.”
Reverse Prompt engineering via WebChatGPTScreenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

The result is amazing. You can test with a full text that you want to reproduce. Here is an example of a prompt for selling a Kindle on Amazon.

  • Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {product), capture the writing style and the length of the text :
    product =”
Reverse prompt engineering: Amazon productScreenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

I tested it on an SEJ blog post. Enjoy the analysis – it is excellent.

  • Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {text}, capture the tone and writing style of the {text} to include in the prompt :
    text = all text coming from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bard-training-data/478941/”
Reverse prompt engineering an SEJ blog postScreenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

But be careful not to use ChatGPT to generate your texts. It is just a personal assistant.

Go Deeper

Prompts and examples for SEO:

  • Keyword research and content ideas prompt: “Provide a list of 20 long-tail keyword ideas related to ‘local SEO strategies’ along with brief content topic descriptions for each keyword.”
  • Optimizing content for featured snippets prompt: “Write a 40-50 word paragraph optimized for the query ‘what is the featured snippet in Google search’ that could potentially earn the featured snippet.”
  • Creating meta descriptions prompt: “Draft a compelling meta description for the following blog post title: ’10 Technical SEO Factors You Can’t Ignore in 2024′.”

Important Considerations:

  • Always Fact-Check: While ChatGPT can be a helpful tool, it’s crucial to remember that it may generate inaccurate or fabricated information. Always verify any facts, statistics, or quotes generated by ChatGPT before incorporating them into your content.
  • Maintain Control and Creativity: Use ChatGPT as a tool to assist your writing, not replace it. Don’t rely on it to do your thinking or create content from scratch. Your unique perspective and creativity are essential for producing high-quality, engaging content.
  • Iteration is Key: Refine and revise the outputs generated by ChatGPT to ensure they align with your voice, style, and intended message.

Additional Prompts for Rewording and SEO:
– Rewrite this sentence to be more concise and impactful.
– Suggest alternative phrasing for this section to improve clarity.
– Identify opportunities to incorporate relevant internal and external links.
– Analyze the keyword density and suggest improvements for better SEO.

Remember, while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool, it’s essential to use it responsibly and maintain control over your content creation process.

Experiment And Refine Your Prompting Techniques

Writing effective prompts for ChatGPT is an essential skill for any SEO professional who wants to harness the power of AI-generated content.

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Hopefully, the insights and examples shared in this article can inspire you and help guide you to crafting stronger prompts that yield high-quality content.

Remember to experiment with layering prompts, iterating on the output, and continually refining your prompting techniques.

This will help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of SEO.

More resources: 


Featured Image: Tapati Rinchumrus/Shutterstock

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Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

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Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.

So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?

Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.

You’ll learn:

  • Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
  • Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
  • Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.

With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy. 

Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.

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Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success. 

View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.

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How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords

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How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords

Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.

Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.

There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.

How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for

  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
  2. Enter your competitor’s domain
  3. Go to the Organic keywords report

The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”

Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword, “mailchimp”.Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword, “mailchimp”.

Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:

Filtering out branded keywords in Organic keywords reportFiltering out branded keywords in Organic keywords report

If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.

Finding popular, low-difficulty keywords in Organic keywordsFinding popular, low-difficulty keywords in Organic keywords

How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t

  1. Go to Competitive Analysis
  2. Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
  3. Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section
Competitive analysis reportCompetitive analysis report

Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.

Content gap reportContent gap report

You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.

Volume and KD filter in Content gapVolume and KD filter in Content gap

How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t

  1. Go to Competitive Analysis
  2. Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
  3. Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section
Competitive analysis report with multiple competitorsCompetitive analysis report with multiple competitors

You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.

Content gap report with multiple competitorsContent gap report with multiple competitors

You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:

Selecting all 3 competitors to see keywords all 3 competitors rank forSelecting all 3 competitors to see keywords all 3 competitors rank for
  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
  2. Enter your competitor’s domain
  3. Go to the Paid keywords report
Paid keywords reportPaid keywords report

This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.

Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.

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You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.

1. Create pages to target these keywords

You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.

However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.

Here’s how to do that:

  1. Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report
  2. Paste them into Keywords Explorer
  3. Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
Clustering keywords by Parent TopicClustering keywords by Parent Topic

For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.

Keywords under the cluster of "digital marketing"Keywords under the cluster of "digital marketing"

2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics

You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.

How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:

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  1. Export your competitor’s keywords
  2. Paste them into Keywords Explorer
  3. Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
  4. Look for Parent Topics you already have content about

For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”

Our competitor ranks for seven keywords that fall under the "press release template" clusterOur competitor ranks for seven keywords that fall under the "press release template" cluster

If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.

Site search finds that we already have a blog post on press release templatesSite search finds that we already have a blog post on press release templates

If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”

Keywords under the cluster of "press release template"Keywords under the cluster of "press release template"

To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”

3. Target these keywords with Google Ads

Paid keywords are the simplest—look through the report and see if there are any relevant keywords you might want to target, too.

For example, Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter.”

Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter”Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter”

If you’re ConvertKit, you may also want to target this keyword since it’s relevant.

If you decide to target the same keyword via Google Ads, you can hover over the magnifying glass to see the ads your competitor is using.

Mailchimp's Google Ad for the keyword “how to create a newsletter”Mailchimp's Google Ad for the keyword “how to create a newsletter”

You can also see the landing page your competitor directs ad traffic to under the URL column.

The landing page Mailchimp is directing traffic to for “how to create a newsletter”The landing page Mailchimp is directing traffic to for “how to create a newsletter”

Learn more

Check out more tutorials on how to do competitor keyword analysis:

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