SparkToro Blog

Posts by Rand Fishkin:

Data Industry SEO

An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Update: We are diving deep into the Google API leak and what it means for marketers in our next episode of SparkToro Office Hours on June 27. Join Michael King, Founder & CEO, iPullRank, and Rand Fishkin, Co-founder & CEO, SparkToro, to learn more. RSVP for the free webinar. On Sunday, May 5th, I received an email from a person…
Marketing Product SparkToro Tactics

Don’t just “Get a sense” for your customers. Make audience research actionable through revenue-lifting tactics.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
There’s nothing wrong with running a quick SparkToro audience search, scrolling around for 5 minutes, and coming away savvier and better-informed about a group’s behaviors and demographics. But, if that’s all you’re doing with the tool’s output, you’re missing out. Instead of telling you, I’ll show you. Let’s use the example of Klaviyo.com; a company whose marketing automation, email segmentation,…
Marketing Product SparkToro

SparkToro V2 is Finally Here. It Can Do Incredible Things for SEO, Content Marketing, PR, and Ad Targeting.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s an exciting, relieving, high-anticipation day for all of us at SparkToro. Today’s launch—which we call “V2″—is the culmination of more than a year of work, including a complete rebuild of the infrastructure and data sources for our product. And though, for many months, Casey, Amanda, and I feared we might lose key pieces of V1’s functionality, the opposite is…
Analytics Data Industry Marketing Tactics

Where Web Users Spend Time vs. Where Traffic Referrals Originate

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
“Most of our site’s traffic comes from Google, so most of our digital marketing efforts and spending should be on Google, too.” – An absolutely terrible way to invest in marketing On Monday of this week, I published a comprehensive look at how traffic flows on the American web. Unfortunately, some folks in the social feeds where this research was…
Analytics Data

Who Sends Traffic on the Web and How Much? New Research from Datos & SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
In the era of zero-click platforms, native content, and walled gardens, does anyone still send meaningful traffic to the open web? Is Google responsible for 50% of all traffic referrals? 75%? Is social media sending half what search does? A quarter? Less? Are the major platforms sending less traffic overall than they did a year ago? These are frustrating, hard-to-solve…
Data Industry Marketing Tactics

Email is the Most Consistent, Reliable Marketing Channel on the Web and I Can Prove It

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
This is a very short post to say: If you’re not investing in your own email marketing list, you’re making a bad choice. Social media engagement rates have plummeted the last 15 years. Ad engagement, too. Google CTRs have fallen massively the last decade with the rise of zero-click searches. The visibility of TV and print advertisements have died off…
Personal SparkToro Startups Team

The Chill Work Manifesto

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Shortly after Amanda Natividad joined SparkToro, she coined the term “Chill Work” to describe the unusually patient, mature, laid-back approach we take to building this business. And for the last three years, it’s become a bigger and bigger part of how I think about not only this company, but everything I do professionally. Today, I want to share a documentary…
5-Minute Whiteboards Agencies Industry

Why Digital Marketing Agencies Have it Tough in 2023 | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
3 months ago, a dear friend’s agency closed for good. 2 months ago, another close friend had a round of layoffs at their firm. And in just the last two weeks, I talked to four agency owners who reported their first revenue-declining year in the last five. It’s rough out there for a lot of digital marketing agency owners. My…

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