30 March 2020
This week's additions focus on marketing, strategy, and leadership, with new digests from Founders, Masters of Scale, and Noah Kagan. Highlights include A $10,000 Ford stake returned $32 million to the Dodge brothers. COVID-19 triggered two distinct mental health waves, not one
Showing 43 digests for 30 March 2020.
How to compete with big brands in Google search
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Top-ranking pages gain backlinks on autopilot, compounding their lead.
Chasing big keywords before you have the audience is wasted effort.
Build authority on low-competition terms first, then scale up.
How to find keywords your competitors rank for using Ahrefs
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
SEO
9
Content marketing
5
Top pages report reveals competitor traffic faster than organic keywords view
Low referring-domain pages are easiest to outrank — prioritise those
Competing domains report lets you chain outward to find more rivals
How to build and keep an engaged email audience
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Email marketing
10
Content marketing
6
Retention & loyalty
5
List size is vanity — open rate and reply rate are what matter.
Email is the only channel you truly own; every other platform can cut your reach.
Prune inactive subscribers ruthlessly to protect deliverability and open rates.
Publishing frequency doesn't drive SEO traffic — keyword focus does
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
SEO
9
Content marketing
7
Publishing less often can still grow traffic consistently month over month.
One article ranking for 9,000 keywords beats dozens of unfocused posts.
SEO traffic is predictable; use competitor URLs to estimate potential before writing.
How building a large audience replaces manual link building
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
SEO
9
Content marketing
7
80% of Ahrefs backlinks arrive naturally via audience broadcast
Emailing a heads-up still counts as manual — true natural links need no targeting
No audience yet? Manual link building is unavoidable until you build one
How to find the right keyword to target using search traffic data
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Low-volume queries can drive real traffic through hundreds of ranking variants.
The top keyword column reveals the highest-traffic phrasing — target that.
Four steps from brainstorm to a prioritised content idea list.
Content marketing
YouTube
How to create unique content that stands out
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Content marketing
9
SEO
7
Proprietary data, experience, and expert access are your content edge.
Challenging conventional wisdom with real survey data earns hundreds of links.
Fewer people do hard original work — less competition for those who do.
Content marketing
YouTube
Finding great blog topics by studying your niche
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Content marketing
9
SEO
8
Reddit and niche communities surface better ideas than brainstorming.
Always validate topics with keyword data before writing.
Obvious-seeming topics can drive thousands of monthly visitors.
Four guest blogging hacks to get more links in less time
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
SEO
9
Content marketing
7
Pitch more blogs than you can handle to create a waiting queue.
Linking to other guest posts passes PageRank and earns goodwill.
Target unlinked domains — each new site adds more ranking power.
How Ahrefs keyword difficulty score actually works
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
KD is an average of referring domains in top 10 results — not a ranking guarantee.
Outliers skew the average; always review actual top 10 pages before targeting a keyword.
Use 'Best by links' in Site Explorer to find your realistic KD ceiling.
Email list building strategies: on-site, off-site, and engagement
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Email marketing
9
Growth hacking
8
Retention & loyalty
6
Content upgrades on high-traffic posts lift conversion from 2% to 10%.
142 partner webinars in one year took ConvertKit from $10k to $1M MRR.
Eight-week email series builds relationships and creates long-term SEO assets.
Content marketing
YouTube
Blogging for Business: growing blog traffic into a customer acquisition channel
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Content marketing
9
SEO
8
Traffic that doesn't convert into customers is worthless
Ahrefs 10x'd blog traffic using strategies condensed into 10 lessons
Bonus interviews with Noah Kagan, Brian Harris, and Ramsey Tapling
How to measure a keyword's true traffic potential using Ahrefs
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
SEO
9
Content marketing
5
Search volume alone can underestimate actual traffic by 5x or more
Top-ranking pages typically rank for ~1,000 related keywords simultaneously
Deeper content earns more keyword rankings than a shallower top-ranked page
How to use email outreach for content promotion
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Email marketing
9
Content marketing
6
Outreach is content promotion — opens and clicks count, not just links
Spam vs. outreach is a spectrum; calibrate effort per email carefully
Perfect emails still fail — uncontrollable factors decide most outcomes
How to match search intent to rank in Google
Ahrefs
April 1, 2020
Mismatched intent causes bounces — Google notices and won't rank you
A low-volume keyword that fits your content beats a high-volume mismatch
Check the top 10 results to confirm you've read the intent correctly