What You Will Learn
- All the hot IM topics of August 2020
August has been a true 2020 month on first sight.
It seemed to keep raining bad news down on the heads of affiliates.
But there was some good news too.
Including what the future holds for Authority Hacker…
The Little Update That Couldn’t
August 11th brought us approximately 16 hours when Google obviously fucked up.
Really crappy sites appeared at the top of the SERPs, pushing high-quality sites way down in the rankings.
I must admit, it was really entertaining to watch Tim Soulo rage at Google on Twitter while this happened.
But what appeared to be an update to Google’s core algorithm was referred to as a “glitch” by John Mueller.
Of course, everyone has a theory on what happened.
But what is interesting is that Google hasn’t actually run a major update of its core algorithm in months now.
So we genuinely could be due a massive update.
Or not.
My prediction, however, is that Google updates will soon reach a point where it’s more of a minor shuffle instead of the usual moshpit of chaos.
Search Volumes Are Bullshit?
I recently retested all the major keyword tools to make sure we’re still using and recommending the best resources for you.
And because I only tested premium tools I assumed that search volumes would be reasonably consistent across them.
But that was not the case.
Here’s an example of a keyword I used to test search volumes: “Best blenders”
| Tool | Search volume |
| Ahrefs | 9,100 |
| SEMRush | 33,100 |
| KW Finder | 34,600 |
There’s a 380% difference between the search volumes in Ahrefs vs. KW Finder.
That’s massive!
In my experience, AHREFS under-reports search volume when compared to other tools.
That’s why I have no problem writing articles on keywords with an alleged AHREFS search volume of 100.
Because those same keywords normally generate thousands of unique visitors per month.
So, does this mean you should abandon ship on all keyword tools?
Nope.
Because affiliates all over the world have made absolute fortunes using this “flawed” keyword data.
Also, you’ll be pushing up daisies if you’re waiting for the perfect keyword tool to come long.
A Free Outreach Tool…That’s Also Good?
We’ve used both GMass and Mailshake extensively over the years for our outreach campaigns.
At one stage or another, they formed the foundation of our Shotgun Skyscraper method.
But Mailshake has gotten pretty expensive – a basic package now costs $59 per month.
So we know many of you now need a more affordable alternative.
And that’s why we want to explain why Hunter.io is an option.
Hunter itself is a tool for finding email addresses, but they recently bolted an outreach tool onto their service.
You don’t even need a premium account – this feature works with the free version of Hunter.
And it’s actually really good, doing about 80% of what Mailshake does.
The only real downside is that Hunter is only compatible with Gmail/GSuite email accounts.
WordPress 5.5 and Elementor 3.0 Go Wild
Web hosts now default towards automatically updating your WordPress install.
You’ll get an email to confirm that it’s done…but not one asking for your permission.
This can then leave you with a broken site because new versions of WordPress are no longer compatible with a growing number of older plug-ins.
The good news is that you can fix most of these issues using the Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin developed by the WordPress team themselves.
WordPress 5.5 is actually pretty impressive, but releasing new tech sometimes means breaking old tech.
Otherwise, we’d all still watch black-and-white CRT TVs and think it was amazing.
In August 2020 Elementor 3.0 was another of the culprits behind broken websites.
But it wasn’t entirely their fault.
WordPress – in their infinite wisdom – introduced automatic plug-in updates in version 5.5
So not only did your WordPress install get updated, but Elementor did too.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Well…we found out…because thousands of websites experienced a cascade of technical problems.
On the plus side though, Elementor 3.0 looks like it’s going to have much cleaner code.
So bear with them while they iron out the other “undisclosed features” in their new release.
The Future of Authority Hacker
Gulp…and now for some news we’ve wanted to share with you for a while.
It’s time for change.
We know we don’t engage with our email subscribers nearly as often as we should.
Gotcha!
You thought we were retiring, didn’t you?
The thing is we don’t want to become those guys who only email you during a product launch.
So we’ve committed to emailing you once or twice a week and sharing some really cool stuff.
But only if you’re subscribed.
Also, if you don’t want to miss our best bits, make sure you get these emails in your inbox by dragging them from the promotion folder:
In the video this week, we discuss more August news but this email was getting a little long so I focused on the crunchy bits but if you want the full digest, go ahead and Watch/Listen above!
