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Welcome to Volume 156 👋
It’s October already, so let’s get a little cozy with some cider and read the news.
In this week’s newsletter, we cover:
- ✍🏽 How Yotpo Used Its Customers to Build Backlinks
- 👀 What’s the Latest in B2B SaaS This Week?
- 🧠 This Week’s Brain Food
- ➕ The Best Content Across the Web
Let’s dig in!
Looking for a marketing conference without the B.S.?
You’re in luck—Ross will be in Austin, TX, this October 18th to speak at the Marketingland Festival by the pros at The Marketing Millennials. With dedicated spaces for everything from branding and content creation to ecommerce and revenue tactics, it’s a day you won’t want to miss!
Check out the rest of the Marketingland lineup and book your ticket before they’re all gone!
SAAS CASE STUDY
How Yotpo Used Its Customers to Build Backlinks
There aren’t a lot of companies that are really innovating in technical SEO. But looking into how Yotpo builds a competitive advantage by making its product a part of its SEO strategy let me see one of the most innovative SEO strategies I’ve seen (outside of the ones my coworkers create here, of course).
So, I just had to write a whole post about it.
How Yotpo Turns Its Customers into Backlinks
Look at this button:
That little button is the secret to Yotpo’s SEO success.
How?
It’s a backlink to the company’s website. A lot of the time, it’s a “do-follow” link, meaning Google treats it the same way it would any other backlink between websites.
That means that every time a customer uses Yotpo’s product to put customer reviews on their own website, they give Yotpo a backlink. It’s absolutely ingenious.
But that’s not all.
By itself, that’d be a pretty advanced SEO playbook. But Yotpo doesn’t leave it there, with plenty of other SEO tactics and strategies that you can learn from.
Want the rest? Just check out my full article here!
👀 What’s the Latest in B2B SaaS This Week?
Google September 2023 Helpful Content Completed Rolling Out – Targeting SEO-First Content
Major Big Tech privacy watchdog in EU set to get two more commissioners soon
38TB of data accidentally exposed by Microsoft AI researchers
U.S. M&A perks up in Q3 but lags 2022
Want to sponsor our next issue? Reply to this email, and we’ll share how you can reach more SaaS founders and marketers today.
🧠 This Week’s Brain Food
The best comparison is no comparison.
I used to work in sales for a B2B tech company. I’d cold call these engineers with way more technical product knowledge than I had and try to pitch them on a product they already knew about. As you’d assume, they were pretty excited to talk to me.
But one thing I learned during that time is that the best way for us to differentiate our product from competitors’ was by strategically ignoring them.
We’d certainly talk about our competitive advantages. We’re easy to set up, your engineers already know how to use our product, etc. But we’d do it all without mentioning our competitors at all.
We didn’t even do the cheesy ad-read lines like “unlike certain unnamed competitors” since all that does is make your potential customers think of their favorite alternative to what you’re selling.
Instead, we just mentioned the aspects of our product that we knew we did better than our competitors did. We trusted our savvy buyers to figure out the rest, and for the most part, they did.
Anyway, all that’s to say is that sometimes, the best way to distinguish yourself from the competition is to ignore them completely.
🏅 X Thread of the Week
Giving ChatGPT long-term memory by Ethan Mollick
🎖️ LinkedIn Post of the Week
Four game-changing rules I abide to break free from being a control freak by Marie Tuason
🤳🏽 Nice Finds You Should Binge
- 9 Tips for How to Bring AI into Your SEO and Content Strategy
- The state of AI in 2023: Generative AI’s breakout year
- The Top 21 ABM Marketing Tools For 2023
- My Books Were Used to Train Meta’s Generative AI. Good.
- The AI Chatbot Assistants Are Here. Do We Actually Want Them?
🎧 What We’re Wired Into This Week:
Interviewed by AI: My Brandweek Miami Experience w/ Matilda
This marvelous marketing medley is brought to you by me, Chris Meabe!
If you have any feedback, suggestions, or ideas you want to see in this newsletter, feel free to email me at chris.meabe@foundationinc.co. We’re always looking for ways to improve and make sure you’re getting the best B2B SaaS marketing resources.
Have a great week(end), and stay safe!