Articles by Ross Hudgens
The Future of SEO with Clearscope's Bernard Huang
This week on Content & Conversation, Bernard Huang, founder of Clearscope and Ross dive deep into the state of the SEO industry and how this could impact the future of SEO. Bernard brings expertise in SEO and computer science to give a unique point of view on this wave of AI (and exponentially growing AI content), how it’s changed the landscape thus far, and how it could continue to evolve content and search down the line.
Lessons from 70 SaaS Content Interviews w/ Jimmy Daly
This week on Content & Conversation, Jimmy Daly, founder of Superpath and former Marketing Director at Animalz, delves into the intricacies of what makes a SaaS content marketing team truly excel. Drawing from countless interviews with industry leaders, Jimmy shares the recurring themes he’s identified among the best in the business.
Programmatic SEO With Zapier’s Former Lead SEO
Subscribe to Our Blog Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ Download the Resource Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ Download the Resource Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ In today’s fast-changing digital landscape, is programmatic SEO the right strategy for you?
Product-Led Digital PR: A Critical Strategy for 2025
It’s also worth noting that we have only recently started incorporating the first-party data across our SEO content to the extent we should be, so we believe there’s still upside from here. Another one of our clients has already made this a heavy part of their strategy. Their graph looks pretty, too. As context, traffic value metrics are in the several millions per year. Using Data Outside of Statistic Posts We started with this process by adding the first-party data to the top of statistics posts.
SEO News: Google’s Algo Leak, AI Overviews & Hreflang’s Future
Subscribe to Our Blog Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ Download the Resource Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ Download the Resource Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ Now that the dust is settled, what does Google’s search algorithm leak really tell us?
AI Overviews SEO Impact Report [New Data]
SEO might not be dead after all. Last week, Google rolled out its much-feared Search Generative Experience (SGE), now called “AI Overviews.” Going into it, there was significant paranoia around the feature’s potential traffic impacts. I even created a LinkedIn post quoting a potential 11% to 18% decline in search traffic. What I got wrong about that estimation is that the new link cards in these results have been purported by Google to actually increase CTR versus normal organic listings.
The Optimal In-House Content Team Structure
Struggling to find the right formula for your in-house content marketing team? You’re not alone. Balancing internal bandwidth with outsourcing can be a complex endeavor, leaving many wondering how to achieve maximum performance and scale. In this episode of Content & Conversation, Ross and Drew dive into the nuances of crafting the ideal in-house team structure for content marketing success.
Content Marketing Trends and Insights [2023 Report]
Siege Media and Clearscope are forecasting the content marketing trends for 2023 and beyond. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, economic instability — is content marketing a dying industry? In our opinion, far from it — and we have facts to back it up. Clearscope and Siege Media teamed-up to create the 2023 Content Marketing Trends Report for content marketers, by content marketers. Clearscope is an SEO content optimization platform that levels up your content with seamless integrations.
22 Unique Employee Benefits for 2022
Talented employees look for more than the traditional benefits package. Now that remote work has put the entire world at their fingertips, applicants have more options. Aflac reported that 38% of employees think that a comprehensive benefits package shows that their employer cares. So, to stay competitive, you’ll need to offer creative employee benefits that other employers aren’t. But what benefits are attractive to employees? What do they really want?
10 Essential Remote Work Skills for 2022
Remote work has changed a lot about the workday. Employer and employee expectations have both shifted to account for new workflows, processes, and communication styles. Additionally, remote work looks different between various employers distributed throughout the globe. One commonality between a lot of remote jobs is the remote work skills workers need to succeed. We’ve put together a list of some must-have skills for those looking to work from home. 1.
7 Life-Changing Things I Learned in 2020
Working out of a hotel with my son Ronin during Q3. 2020 was a hard year for everyone. Siege was “lucky” to only have ~20% of our revenue disappear during the height of the crisis. That this was the worst thing that happened to me this year is something I feel grateful for. That revenue came back to Siege and the company is now at all-time highs. I know many small businesses can’t say that and many people have lost friends and loved ones during this pandemic. All things considered, I feel quite lucky.
Link Reclamation
The one thing any good marketer appreciates more than a mention of their brand is a link back to their own domains. For a variety of reasons, some authors—no matter how well meaning they are—don't include that link with the mention. With the right tools and a little diplomacy, these are some of the easiest opportunities to earn valuable links back to our own properties, and in today's Whiteboard Friday, Ross Hudgens gives us several great places to start. Hey Moz fans, welcome to Whiteboard Friday.
Show Me The Links: Enterprise Link Building
Enterprise clients have their own unique challenges even though the budgets are usually bigger. In this episode of Show Me The Links we’ll discuss what those challenges are, how to work through them, and how to apply these ideas to clients with smaller budgets. This webinar is a panel discussion hosted by Julie Joyce. Live public questions are welcome.
3 Common Link Building Questions Answered By 4 Experts
I’m a forum rat, I visit several on a daily basis as a way to keep up with what’s going on. If there’s an update, cool new tool or SEO controversy brewing, chances are I’ll read about it on one of the forums before anywhere else. Conversely, if I have a question or want to bounce a theory off someone, I’ll head to one of the forums and ask. They’re a tremendous informational resource and social outlet for people passionate about SEO.
The Top 10 Most Remarkable Marketing Campaigns EVER
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Building a digital marketing agency from nothing
Andrew: Hey everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy, where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. I’ve always said, I do these interviews for an audience of real entrepreneurs, they listen to what’s being said in these interviews, they learn, they build their companies along the way. And today, we’ve got a great example of that.
How Much Does Link Building Cost in 2025?
Link building pricing can vary from $100 to over $1,500 per link, depending on the industry you are in. A common campaign budget is $5,000-$20,000/mo, often tied to content marketing activity that also has secondary KPis. However, if you’re Googling something like “link building cost”, you may have come in the door wondering how much you’ll need to pay someone to generate links for you manually. This answer is different, and can often lead you down the wrong path.
How To Change People - Ross Hudgens
Changing people is hard, but it’s possible. If you try and change a person by telling them to stop smoking cigarettes or to start doing pushups somewhat intermittently, you will have no impact. However, there are points where change can happen, change can be large, and change can make difference for the better in another person.
Indistinct Links & Link Building In Difficult Verticals
Link building in social-unfriendly verticals can be a heartache. At one point, before the reasonable surfer concept was implemented, it was possible for many websites in taboo verticals like poker, payday loans and pharmaceuticals to get by on footer and sidebar links alone – meaning links that never saw the light of a user’s eyes could still pass enough value to rank for the most difficult terms on the Internet.
Why Most SEO Advice Sucks (For You) - Ross Hudgens
There is no white. There is no black. There are only hues of gray. To think any different is to subscribe to discrimination – to believe one way or the other is to be ineffectively forced into a mindset without appropriate judgement of another. This post is not about white or black. That subject is dead (like SEO). This post is about this or that. Yes or no. Right or wrong. Rarely do these answers exist eplicitly to us – rarely are they imparted to us correctly in the form of outside opinion.
The Advanced Guide to Content Curation - Siege Media
Want to know a little secret? It’s something I’ve never shared with anyone before (not even my wife). Siege Media wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for content curation. Sounds crazy, right? Let me explain. While I was toiling away at my first few jobs, I realized there was great long-term value in building up my personal brand (even though I hated that term), as well as my own expertise.
Which Keywords Have the Worst CTR?
Have you ever experienced that amazing feeling of hitting that long-sought-after #1 ranking… and then barely seeing a bump in traffic? That’s the world Google has built for us, much to do with quick answers, which are now taking keyword searches and chopping down the true amount of traffic we can receive. I have the suspicion Google is now A/B testing these quick answers in order to surface the answer most likely to get people not to click a result.
How to Generate More Links From Non-Seasonal Content
For a long time, our team has defaulted to two forms of content: seasonal and non-seasonal. Seasonal was as you might imagine it: Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years — very clear cut, time-driven trends that inform sharp spikes of demand as they approached. However, as time has passed and we’ve done more and more top and middle funnel content for our clients, we’ve come to realize that this polarization is doing our work, and the data available to us, a disservice.
5 Unique Ways Reviews Can Make or Break Your Business
If you have an online business, there’s a good chance someone is reviewing it online. These reviews take on several different forms, and said forms can have big implications on a sale… or not. This fact may not be a shocker to you, but there are some subtle, not-so-obvious implications of reviews that you might not have noticed, that can still make a sizable impact on your bottom line. When people are deep in the purchase funnel, they often do searches like “Pepsi vs Coke”.
13 Actionable SEO Tips You Can Use Today
Want to know the most underrated and not-talked-about skill of successful SEO practitioners? It’s not knowledge of the newest SEO tips… Schema.org, site speed best practices, or AMP. It’s not important but less-groundbreaking SEO techniques like link building, CTR optimization, or technical SEO. Over the years, solving for the SERPs, for me, hasn’t come from reading search engine ranking factors, or learning the next and best SEO initiative. It’s come from Googling. And Googling. And testing.
The 3 Most Effective Content Curation Strategies
I realized the other day that my business wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for content curation. When I was working for other companies, figuring out my place in the marketing world, it became clear that I also needed to work on my personal brand (regardless of how much I disliked that term at the time). Every night, I would find the best “underground” content to share on Twitter. I continued at it consistently and the persistence paid off. After a couple of months, I saw steady and healthy growth.
The 3 Most Effective Content Curation Strategies
I realized the other day that my business wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for content curation. When I was working for other companies, figuring out my place in the marketing world, it became clear that I also needed to work on my personal brand (regardless of how much I disliked that term at the time). Every night, I would find the best “underground” content to share on Twitter. I continued at it consistently and the persistence paid off. After a couple of months, I saw steady and healthy growth.
How to Increase Website Traffic by 250k+ Monthly Visits
I’ll be honest… the title of this post is a lie. The number is actually larger… but I thought you wouldn’t believe me. The accurate, true-to-life title I should have used is “how to increase website traffic by 500,000 monthly visitors”… because that’s what we achieved. And we did it for our clients not once… … but three times in the past 24-36 months. To be fair, by no means are we the only ones responsible for these lifts.
How to Increase Website Traffic by 250k+ Monthly Visits
I’ll be honest… the title of this post is a lie. The number is actually larger… but I thought you wouldn’t believe me. The accurate, true-to-life title I should have used is “how to increase website traffic by 500,000 monthly visitors”… because that’s what we achieved. And we did it for our clients not once… … but three times in the past 24-36 months. To be fair, by no means are we the only ones responsible for these lifts.
How to Increase Website Traffic by 250k+ Monthly Visits
Increasing website traffic by 250,000+ monthly visits — even 2,500 monthly visits at the start — can feel impossible. It’s not. Website traffic growth is at the top of any business’s KPIs because we know that traffic growth leads to: Brand recognition Revenue growth Repeat customers … and more. With this in mind, we developed tried-and-true methods for long-term, sustainable growth in the thousands (and hundred-thousands).
The 100 Best Infographics [Interactive]
30 Shots Mixed shots are a popular pastime for many people, and they are represented well in this infographic. Using gradients to represent each, the designer found a way to create an elegant landscape to represent the alcoholic concoctions. It's useful, too — such simple recipes mean the details below make the shots easy to recreate.3D Agriculture This infographic is my favorite on this list in terms of sheer visual beauty.
Content Curation for Marketers: The Definitive Guide
Want to know a little secret? It’s something I’ve never shared with anyone before (not even my wife). Siege Media wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for content curation. Sounds crazy, right? Let me explain. While I was toiling away at my first few jobs, I realized there was great long-term value in building up my personal brand (even though I hated that term), as well as my own expertise.
15 Actionable Content Marketing Tips to Drive More Traffic
There are few things we like more here at Siege Media than picking up something new—something new that drives us to improve our process, do things more efficiently for our clients and generate more results. It’s not easy to come by, as for every post on content marketing that offers something new, there are 40 more that say “add images to your tweets”—a concept you’ve probably heard 400 times in the past year if you’ve been paying attention.
How to Deal With Content Launch Anxiety
I’ll admit it – I often have content launch anxiety. And as you might have heard, the best way to deal with a problem is admit that you have one. Content launch anxiety, as I define it, is the fear and stress felt before a piece of content you’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into is about to be launched.
10 Outreach Best Practices That Separate Success From Failure
It’s easy to copy and paste a template and then hit send – we see it all the time, as you yourself probably got two to three pitches at least today, no matter your profession. And most of those pitches are bad: they are bad for lots of different reasons, but most of the time, there are subtleties of “badness” that permeate through them that will prevent you from ever giving them the time of day.
How to Build Landing Page Links With Content Hosted on Your Blog
We frequently get the comment from clients that they don’t want “blog links”. This means that many businesses are on to the content marketing game, but they understand that they still need links to their “money” pages in order to rank well – that is, the commercial landing pages that are increasingly difficult to build natural, sustainable links into. It is very possible to build links into money pages with content you host on the blog – if you do it right.
The Powerful Twitter Tactic 73% of You Aren't Using
Some things are so simple they end up getting ignored. Sometimes, though, these simple strategies that end up getting ignored are so powerful that the fact that they’re getting ignored warrants a blog post. This is that blog post. In the past two weeks, I gave the same Twitter recommendation to three of our clients. A recommendation that, as someone frequently using Twitter, I thought was obvious.
10 Content Creators to Inspire Your Content Marketing
In 2012, I did a presentation on how you can imitate your competitors as a method of building links. I talked about how you can learn from businesses in different markets to inspire your own methods, and use their success to build your own. While a lot has changed since 2012, the main concepts have not.
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