Get my Free Digital Marketing Jumpstart Kit!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nExample long tail phrase #1: what is a backlink?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
For our second example today, we’re going to look up the question of what is a backlink and learn all about that. You should know what a backlink is, but in the case where you don’t, a backlink is essentially linked back to your website from another domain that signals to Google that this is an authoritative source on this topic because what they do is they search the web for all the different backlinks in the world and the websites that have the most backlinks are typically the ones that rank higher in the search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digging into WP Beginner’s result<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Digging right in, we can see that the first result here is WPbeginner.com. They cover what is a backlink, how to get more backlinks. Backlinko is number two of what our backlinks and Ahrefs is number three, and we’ve got MailChimp as number four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s go ahead and follow the same process where we start to ask ourselves the same sort of questions that we asked in the first long-tail search that we looked for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this situation, we can see that WP Beginner what is a backlink it has a nice little custom visual in terms of explaining what a backlink is. We have that same sort of header formatting being used in terms of the key questions being set as headers or key definitions or sections being set as headers, types of backlinks, you’ll see that they have more of those visuals that help break up the text. You also see how they answered some key questions. And have some supporting visuals as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this is a really short and simple to the point post on what is a backlink. And so overall, this makes sense as to why it is getting the top spot, just because it is going well in depth in terms of this particular phrase, but not too in depth, potentially for the phrase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digging into Backlinko’s result<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Now, if we go to the Backlinko approach, let’s take a look here. Backlinko also has an SEO marketing hub, and you can see here how they talk about what are backlinks. They also have some great visuals. But you’ll notice right off the bat that this has a lot of visuals. In fact, in this situation, they even have examples of how you can get backlinks. So it’s actually even more actionable than the first post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this is a good example of really in-depth content that potentially is not ranking number one but it probably could be if it were just to be updated. Notice how, when we went back to the search results, this hasn’t been updated since 2021. So potentially the Backlinko team just has to refresh their content in order to outrank WP Beginner or what we’ll find as we start to dig through some of the other search results Google doesn’t actually want all of this in-depth breakdown that Backlinko is providing and that Backlinko would actually be better served to cut down on the length of the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that really gets down to the essence of today’s question, which is, is your blog posts good enough? Because ultimately sometimes they are long tail phrases that Google only wants a thousand words for. They don’t want 3000 word articles. And what’s happened is in the last few years, SEOs have found this study that has been frequently cited where longer form content will typically ranked higher up. And so, as a result, they’ve just followed that like the back of their hand, as opposed to actually taking a look at what the search results seem to indicate of what Google was algorithm looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digging into Ahrefs’ result<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If we look at the third example here, we see Ahrefs what are backlinks. All right. It was updated in 2020. So right off the bat, my guess here is that it’s a similar sort of issue with Backlinko in which they haven’t meaningfully update this post and about two years or so. And so what might be happening is they are simply just not refreshing their content similar to Backlinko, but what’s nice here is that they do have their own custom visuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They have some interesting graphics as well that only they have, which is a great way for them to really just draw attention to themselves and also potentially build more backlinks because when somebody is researching on backlinks, they might pull some sort of study from this particular post itself. What’s also nice is they have some product marketing here for their respective product and they talk about similar things to what Backlinko was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So very similar. It is still in depth, but what can we see here? Let’s see if we can find when this particular post was last updated. If I want to go ahead and open up the detailed.com app Chrome extension, I can potentially see this information and, in this situation, this was last updated actually in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it’s potentially just the case where this has more backlinks. If I want to go ahead and check that though, I can actually pull up the Ahrefs backlink checker to take a look at this particular domain and see how many backlinks it has. Okay, so in this situation, the WP beginner website has 2,588 backlinks with 44% of those being do-follow links to their particular glossary page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this case for Backlinko, I can see that they have 9,041. That’s a lot more though. And then in the third case, we can see, do they have 4,000? I mean, this is a really interesting case study, right? It goes to show you that in some situations, the best content might not always just be ranking number one. In fact, the best content might be a little bit further down the fold, but in this situation for whatever reason, Google has given WP beginner the top-ranking even though both of these other websites in terms of Backlinko and Ahrefs seem to be going even more in-depth around the topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what I would guess that would make this different is in the case where Ahrefs or Backlinko were to refresh their pages, refresh their content. I think they could overtake this particular spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digging into MailChimp’s result<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
But if I were to also look at this fourth example here, I can see MailChimp here we have a bunch of, it’s a lot of similar content, but this is actually inferior content I would say to the Backlinko and Ahrefs example because it’s not as visually appealing in terms of some of the coverage here. So right off the bat, this is also a website in which MailChimp is email marketing, which is a little bit more tangential to backlinks than the other three websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if I go ahead and take a look at this particular post, it does have fewer backlinks than the other ones. And it also has a lower percentage of do-follow links. So that makes sense as to why MailChimp is not ranking above the other three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something you should remember is that SERP rankings are fluctuating all the time. So it’s potentially just the case where today I cut WP beginner on a good day. But what they should show you is that even in the second example, we saw instances where all three of the websites were following some of the same core principles. They were having a ton of great helpful headers, they were providing visuals in terms of illustrating the points, or they were positioning their content to be a little bit more unique than their competitors. And they had the authority around the particular topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you liked this article, be sure to\u00a0check out my YouTube channel<\/a>\u00a0to get new videos every single week. I\u2019ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you think might benefit from learning how to write a good blog post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n