TURNING SEARCHES INTO TRAFFIC
CONTENTS
Start Here 👋
Intro to Course 2 mins
1. Getting Set Up 🚩
We walk you through setting up the exact template we use for our paying clients, then give you a tour of how to use Ahrefs, the main tool we’ll be focusing on throughout the rest of the course.
Installing Our Google Sheets Template
A Note on Free Trials
Ahrefs Keyword Research Overview
2. Identifying Your True Competitors ⚡
Ask Your Client Directly (using these questions)
Use Sparktoro to Find Sites Your Audience Trusts
Use Ahrefs to Find Competing Domains
3. Creating a Master List of Everything Your Competition Ranks For 🔥
Exporting (Relevant) SEO Data Per Each Competitor
Adding the Data to Google Sheets, Removing Duplicates and Organizing
Stylizing, Formatting, and Making the Data Readable
How to Interpret The Master List (and put it to good use)
4. Planning Your Marketing Funnel Around Easy-To-Rank-For Keywords 🍰
Importing Your Master List Into Ahrefs to Make it Filterable
🎈 Resource: Save this Funnel Image
Applying Informational Intent Filters and Exporting Back Into Google Sheets
Applying Commercial Intent Filters and Exporting Back Into Google Sheets
Organizing the Data and Making Each Tab Readable
5. Creating an Expert-Level Content Strategy 🧙♂️
What Topic Clusters Are and Why They’re Important for Growing Your Traffic
How to Plan a Topic Cluster Using Your Completed Spreadsheet
6. Estimating ROI in SEO and Content Marketing 💰
Forecasting ROI is often an abstract hurdle for SEO pros, while managing expectations is crucial for avoiding disappointed clients. Everyone needs to be on the same page about how long it might take to see substantial results and how those results can reasonably be forecasted (to justify the up-front investment).
Using the ROI Calculator
🎉 BONUS: Find the Keywords Your Competitors Share (that you’re missing out on)
The Ahrefs Content Gap tool allows you to analyze and compare multiple websites against one another. The tool can show you (quite granularly) which keywords that Site A, Site, B, and Site C all share with one another that Site D…does not. You can also filter the keywords you discover by volume, difficulty, and cost per click.
How to Do a Content Gap Analysis
🛠 Resources
🐦 SEO Super Brain Twitter List