How do you create "OG images" for your blog?

- Grab a random image from an article?
- Find a relevant stock photo & slap some text on it?
- Use Canva?
- Order a custom illustration for each article?

Here at @ahrefs we just switched from custom design to auto-generating them.🙂 There's actually an entire story behind our blog's "featured images," which I shared a few years ago.

Check it out here:

https://twitter.com/timsoulo/status/1293546641023148035

Since the topic of traffic estimations is top of mind again, let me throw my 2 cents in.

"How accurate are the traffic estimates in @ahrefs ?"

It depends 🤷‍♂️

Does the website get lots of traffic from:
- long tails?
- branded searches?
- seasonal queries?
- news/trends? ^ each of these types of search queries have their own caveats.

@ahrefs might not have enough long tails, or underreport the branded searches or lag behind some seasonal trends...

Those things might seem straightforward, but in reality they're super challenging to get right.

Zero-Volume Keywords

^ they seem like one of the latest hot trends in SEO.

But I honestly don't get what all the hype is about. 🙂 So an SEO tool like @ahrefs shows that there's little to no searches for a given keyword.

Then you rank for it and look it up in GSC..

And there's actually a bunch more clicks than Ahrefs has promised.

So..? :)

5 useful things you can do with @ahrefs SEO toolbar.

( 4 of them are FREE ) I'm sure most of you folks are aware of the "original" functionality of Ahrefs' SEO toolbar:

• Show Ahrefs' metrics of a visited URL
• Show Ahrefs' metrics of every page in a SERP

Keyword Difficulty...

- How much can you trust this 2-digit number?
- How is it even calculated?
- Is KD enough for gauging your chances to rank?

^ I answred all of these questions (& more) in my latest article on the Ahrefs Blog:

ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-d…

TL;DR thread below 👇 Let's start from the last Q:

"Is KD metric enough for gauging your chances to rank?"

NO!

Ask any professional SEO to MANUALLY gauge your chances to rank for a given keyword & I'm sure they will refrain from making any specific promises (if they're a true professional ofc).

9 "interesting" marketing stunts that we did at @ahrefs Let's face it, most of digital marketing is rather "unexciting:"

- Create "SEO content" & grow traffic
- Run ads on BOFU keywords
- Retarget visitors with FB ads
- Build an email list & setup automation
- Optimise your landing pages
- Start a community
- etc

🥱

Buy the brave defenders of Mykolaiv a "coffee."

You may or may not know that my hometown Mykolaiv is now standing in the way of Russian army and not letting them advance further into the country.

As Putin is getting more desperate, the shelling of the city is getting worse. There are some rumours among our military that Russians will be making a larger scale attempts to invade the city in the next few weeks.

Our city defenders need help!

28 days of war in Ukraine.

The natural reaction of human psychology is to adapt and move on, but we should KEEP TALKING about what is happening!

You may think that tweets, likes and comments don't do much to help Ukraine in our battle against Russia.

But they do!

I'll explain This is a video of Mariupol' - a city in Ukraine that has suffered the most from Russian shelling.

Putin's army has caused a great deal of devastation to residential buildings and created a severe humanitarian catastrophe with their siege.

*Five Levels of Content.*

Everyone talks about creating "high-quality content."

But don't you think that "high-quality" is rather a vague concept? Isn't there something more tangible?

I analyzed our own content at Ahrefs & figured there are 5 fairly distinct levels to it. Here they are:

Level 1: Simple listicles
Level 2: Advanced listicles
Level 3: Guides / Deep dives
Level 4: Experiments / Surveys
Level 5: Research studies / Original ideas

25 days of war in Ukraine. Kharkiv. Russia is using cluster bombs.

12 days of war in Ukraine.

The news about the destruction and devastation that Russia brought to my home country are becoming a routine at this point.

And this in itself is scary.

I'm still posting these daily threads to keep you folks in the loop with what I'm seeing. Third round of Russia-Ukraine negotiations finished with no result. (as expected)

Putin wants:
- Crimea
- Donetsk/Luhansk
- to appoint his own prime minister in Ukraine

Ukraine obviously won't agree to any of that.

11 days of war in Ukraine.

No major changes unfortunately.

Ukraine is not surrendering. Putin is not backing off.

I keep posting these daily threads to keep you folks in the loop. There were pretty significant anti-war protests in Moscow yesterday.

I applaud Russian people who don't believe Russian propaganda and who openly protest Putin's actions.

Mad respect to folks who try impeding Russian police from arresting peaceful protesters.

10 days of war in Ukraine.

Another daily thread to keep you folks in the loop. The city of Melitopol'. It was recently occupied by Russian forces.

The Russian propaganda is saying that their army is here to save Ukrainians from oppression.

Meanwhile, unarmed Ukrainians are protesting against armed solders, who are firing their guns in the sky.

8 days of war in Ukraine. 🇺🇦

And there's no end to this war in sight.

I tweet these daily threads to keep you informed about how the Russian war in Ukraine looks like. I think at this point I'm personally entering the "5th stage of grief" - Acceptance.

Nothing seems to be helping to stop this war, so us Ukrainians will just have to endure it.

And this is very saddening, to say the least.

7 days of war in Ukraine.

Putin's devastation of my home country continues.

I will keep posting these daily threads to make my tiny contribution in letting the world know what this old psychopath is doing to Ukraine.

#UkraineUnderAttaсk #StopPutin Irpin', a small town on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Six days of war in Ukraine.

No major city was conquered by Russians so far.

Putin must be furious right now.

The big scary Russia with all its military gloly is barely having any progress at all.

Every day I start a new thread and share the updates which strike me the most But there's a downside to that lack of progress too.

Putin can't afford to lose this, because that woul be the end of him.

So he has started bombing our cities more heavily.

The video shows (allegedly) the "3M-54 Kalibr" missile.

Five days of Russian full-scale military invasion in Ukraine.

Five days of death, pain & suffering.

And it's not over.

It's only getting worse.

I will continue writing these daily threads with updates about the war in Ukraine and pleading for your help to stop this nightmare. We really REALLY need your help to stop this:

- retweet messages about the Russian invasion
- write to your polititians and demand real action
- donate to Ukrainian army & charities

If Russia conquers Ukraine, it won't stop there. It will continue attacking other countries.

New day, new thread with updates about Russian military invasion in Ukraine.

Today would be the 5th day of the war.

There are tons of news on Twitter already, but I feel compelled to share the most notable updates that I'm seeing in Ukrainian news outlets.

#UkraineUnderAttack Today Ukrainian delegation will be having negotiations with the Russians.

They'll meet at Belarussian border. (Russians are already there waiting, Ukrainians are on the way.)

Somehow I'm pretty sure that Russians will have some utterly ridiculous demands.

But we'll see...

This is my second thread about the Russian military agression against Ukraine.

The first one got too long, so I'll just start a new one every day.

Please help spread the word & tag your country's politicians to pressure them to do something meaningful. 🙏 Russian soldiers shooting civilians on the road to Mariupol'

The war in #Ukraine continues...

My hometown is under attack for 2 days now.

My friends had to sleep in cold bombshelters together with their families and small children.

People are shocked & terrified.

Many are dead, many more are wounded.

WE NEED TO STOP THIS! When I started tweeting about the war in Ukraine, I thought most people would ignore me.

But I got TONS of support from you folks!

HUGE THANKS for helping me spread the information about the war in our community of digital marketers. 🙏

https://twitter.com/timsoulo/status/1497354643466117126

I'm going to post all further updates about #RussiaUkraineWar in this thread. These children are now hiding in Kyiv subway because of regular air attacks in the city.

I can't even imagine what their parents feel right now.