we bought 3 affiliate keyword research gigs on fiv with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:00] People often look to Fiverr for freelance
SEO services.
[0:03] And that's probably why there are around
26,000 SEO-related gigs today.
[0:08] Now, because keyword research will usually
be the first and perhaps most important part
[0:13] in setting yourself up for SEO success, we
wanted to test just how good Fiverr keyword
[0:19] research gigs actually are.
[0:21] So we bought 3 gigs: one for $15, another
for 80 and a Pro gig for $150.
[0:29] Now, we didn't want to make the purchase under
the name "Ahrefs" because a lot of these people
[0:34] would be using our tools.
[0:35] So we sent in this guy to do the bidding.
[0:38] Now, he doesn't know very much about SEO.
[0:41] So he asked each freelancer if they could
provide some sort of action plan so he knows
[0:46] what to do with the keyword list.
[0:48] The sellers all agreed and so it began.
[0:50] They were each given a similar story - I plan
to start an affiliate website on laser pointers
[0:56] and I want to rank in the US.
[0:58] "Please tell me the keywords to go after
and what to do with these keywords."
[1:02] Now, because three minds are better than one,
I invited a couple of my friends at Ahrefs to
[1:07] help critique the deliverables.
[1:09] Patrick Stox, technical SEO at Ahrefs, and
Joshua Hardwick, our resident blog master.
[1:15] Now, in order to evaluate and critique these
keyword research gigs, we needed to come up
[1:20] with some baseline expectations.
[1:22] And the things we expected really just came
down to basics of keyword research:
[1:27] #1. We wanted a usable list of keyword ideas.
[1:30] #2. We wanted to know the search intent
behind these keywords.
[1:34] #3. The keywords should be relevant to
our affiliate business model.
[1:38] And for bonus points, we hoped to get some
educational material to better understand
[1:43] the reports, metrics, and any SEO wisdom
that would help.
[1:47] So as we dig through these reports, our team
will share our thoughts on the deliverables
[1:51] and also go a bit deeper into some SEO myths
that continue to spread in private conversations.
[1:57] Stay tuned.
[1:58] [music]
[2:03] Alright, let's get started with the $15 gig.
[2:06] This gig was specifically on keyword
research for affiliate websites.
[2:10] So despite the fact that it was $15, I thought
we'd get something decent to work with.
[2:15] But in my opinion, that wasn't really the case.
[2:18] Now, I wasn't sure if my expectations were
unreasonable, so I asked Josh and Patrick
[2:22] for their overall thoughts.
[2:24] Well, I think it looks kind of basic - it's
the first kind of impression I get.
[2:30] The kind of a list of what... 20 keywords -
30 keywords with the usual metrics.
[2:35] So basically it looks like an export from Ahrefs
with a few other metrics pulled in, which is not
[2:40] really keyword research in my opinion.
[2:43] This one was bad.
[2:44] Yeah, the action plan was a big miss,
it didn't explain metrics.
[2:50] And it really looked like this action plan is just
you reuse for, like, all of the person's report.
[2:55] I mean it looked pretty generic.
[2:58] I think they just send the same one to everyone
with a couple of little tweaks.
[3:02] Now, based on our baseline expectations,
the person didn't give us a fully "usable" list.
[3:08] And by "usable," I'm referring to keywords
we have a chance at ranking high for.
[3:12] And this came down to not being able
to match searcher intent.
[3:15] The SERPs for many of these keywords like "laser 303"
and "purple laser pointer" had clear transactional
[3:21] intent, seeing as the top ranking pages were
all ecommerce product or category pages.
[3:27] In fact, I was only confident in ranking
for 8 of the 33 keywords.
[3:32] Meaning, 25 potential keywords we'd create
pages around could be a total waste of time
[3:37] and money.
[3:38] Now, this brought up some interesting discussion
because we weren't all in agreement.
[3:42] Both Josh and I hoped to see keywords where
an affiliate blog could rank high with some
[3:47] degree of certainty.
[3:48] Meaning, we wanted to see SERPs that were
predominantly blog posts rather than ecommerce
[3:53] category or product pages.
[3:55] And again, that's because we wouldn't be able
to match intent with an affiliate blog.
[4:00] On the other hand, Patrick looked at these
queries as opportunities.
[4:04] And that's because one or two listicles
often squeeze their way into dominantly
[4:08] transactional queries.
[4:10] Take the keyword "coffee maker" as an example.
[4:13] You'll see that Amazon holds pole position and
then there's results from other ecommerce stores
[4:17] like Bed bath and beyond, Walmart, and Target.
[4:21] But Consumer Reports' "best coffee makers"
post is near the top of the search results too.
[4:26] In fact, they've held a top 10 position for
this query for nearly one and a half years.
[4:32] So while we didn't disagree with Patrick,
I had to ask him…
[4:35] Aside from getting a ton of backlinks, relatively
speaking, how can a blog break that pattern and
[4:41] penetrate the SERP with a page that doesn't
match the dominant search intent?
[4:46] To me, it's the product selection.
[4:48] So if you've got some popular products that all
have search volume, those are the ones you
[4:53] wanna be reviewing, like, those are
the ones that people are looking for.
[4:56] And, like, they're the right answer, the right product...
[4:59] 'Cause, you've got... maybe not for a "laser pointers"
but in some cases you've got, like, millions of things
[5:05] to choose from... from "patio furniture," so...
[5:08] What I always do is... which ones of those are
people actually looking for, which ones have
[5:12] the most volume - those are the ones
I want to include in my list.
[5:16] Now, finding products with search volume
as Patrick suggested is pretty easy.
[5:20] For example, let's say you have a golf blog and
you want to write a post on the best golf balls.
[5:25] Just go to a golf ecommerce store like Golf Galaxy,
and head on over to the golf balls category.
[5:30] And most ecommerce stores will have a brand facet.
[5:33] Just copy these down and then paste them into
a keyword research tool like Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.
[5:39] Next, go to the Matching Terms report.
[5:42] Now, all you have to do is hit the Include
box, choose the "Any word" tab, and filter
[5:47] for the category related to your post.
[5:49] So I'll add "ball," and "balls."
[5:52] And now you'll see popular models like Callaway
supersoft, Titleist pro v1, Titleist velocity, and so on.
[6:00] Now, Josh being Josh, aka, Ahrefs' most stubborn
bloke, had some good points as to why he still
[6:07] wouldn't go after a transactional query
like "purple laser pointer."
[6:11] Oh, you know, I want to... I disagree with Patrick,
I just wouldn't do it because I think there's easier
[6:16] keyword to go for, more obvious keyword to go for.
[6:18] Just because you can do something, just because
someone else hasn't done something, it doesn't
[6:22] necessarily mean that it's a good idea.
[6:23] I mean, do people want a random post?
[6:27] Search intent seems to indicate no but
obviously these things aren't perfect
[6:31] So I can see where Patrick's coming
from but personally I probably wouldn't.
[6:34] Now, as you heard, all of us thought this
keyword research gig was a big miss.
[6:39] Aside from not meeting the basic requirements
we had hoped for, there was a lot of bad advice
[6:44] in the action plan.
[6:46] For a start, you know, these guys are talking
about LSI keywords, this is in the first sentence
[6:50] of the action plan, LSI keyword which... to me
are just complete nonsense, to most people
[6:54] a complete nonsense.
[6:55] Now, you might be shocked that we
called this bad advice.
[6:58] And while it's largely about semantics, Patrick
explained how people typically understand
[7:03] LSI keywords and what LSI actually is.
[7:07] The keywords that they're talking about
are just related keywords.
[7:11] If I'm talking about baseball - I'm going to be talking
about these.. maybe different teams, or, like, home
[7:17] plate, homerun, pitchers, batters, catchers, etc.
[7:21] It's all the related terms that are
relevant in the content.
[7:25] But LSI is an indexing method and without
going too in-depth it has absolutely nothing
[7:31] to do with your keywords.
[7:32] This person also gave a lot of on-page SEO
advice with a heavy focus on word count and
[7:38] keyword density.
[7:39] They said:
[7:40] "For 1500 word articles, you can use your focus
keyword 5-7 times and for 2,500 word articles,
[7:47] use your focus keyword 8-10 times.
[7:50] Here's what we think about word count and
keyword density as ranking factors:
[7:54] I don't care of them at all.
[7:56] A lot of my blog posts end up long but
it's because there's a lot of information.
[8:00] But in general I would say like just make your
blog better not longer, or your content in general.
[8:06] Like, how can you be more useful in the least
amount of time is probably the best answer.
[8:12] I can see why you might want to give some kind
of guideline to a writer just so that they don't write,
[8:18] you know, 50 words or 10,000 words.
[8:20] But, yes, I wouldn't take that into account
when writing content personally.
[8:25] The main takeaway here is that things like word
count, related keywords, and keyword density
[8:30] are usually going to be a natural
byproduct of content depth.
[8:35] Which is why we don't pay writers by
the word for Ahrefs' blog.
[8:38] I'll let Josh expand.
[8:40] We don't ever pay writers by word or give them
any kind of "this article needs to be X amount of
[8:47] words" or whatever.
[8:49] We just pay per article.
[8:52] A lot for the time we work with them to shorten
articles rather then make them longer.
[8:58] I think a lot of people tend to overwrite and these first
drafts tend to be much longer that they need to be.
[9:04] A lot of this stuff you can cut out because it's
not actually adding much value to the post.
[9:08] you can cut it out and the post becomes more
valuable because you've focused key points by
[9:13] cutting out these kind of unrelated
or semi-related points.
[9:18] Now, there was one piece of good advice
for new websites.
[9:21] Aside from the fact that this has nothing to do
with keyword research, the person recommended
[9:26] to build links to content on page 2 and 3 of Google.
[9:30] Why is that good advice?
[9:31] Chances are more good links to a page is
going to push it onto page one and if there's
[9:36] volume in the keyword and the topic,
I mean, that’s where you want to be.
[9:39] And this can be done pretty easily with
a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account.
[9:43] Just enter your domain in Site Explorer and then
head on over to the Organic keywords report.
[9:48] Now, all you have to do is filter for keywords
ranking in positions 11 to 20 or 11 to 30.
[9:55] Now, because we can't go through each report
line by line, all of us rated this keyword research
[9:59] gig on a scale from 1-10 -- 10 being
bang on and 1 being so far off.
[10:05] And here are the results for the $15 gig.
[10:08] I'm going to give this one a 2, it was pretty terrible.
[10:11] I probably say 2. I don't think that someone who
doesn't know much about keyword research could
[10:17] really interpret this, and actually put into action, and
start ranking, and start constantly making money,
[10:23] and start actually getting somewhere.
[10:25] I don't think that's really possible from this gig.
[10:28] And I'll give this a 2 as well because
of peer pressure.
[10:31] Plus, the keyword list wasn't great and the
action plan was more misleading than helpful,
[10:36] just as Josh had said.
[10:38] Alright, let's move on to the $80 gig.
[10:40] This gig cost $30 for a list of 10 keywords
and 1 competitor researched.
[10:46] But we paid an additional $50 to get the action
plan, bringing our grand total to $80.
[10:52] Now, the one thing about this gig that I absolutely
loved is that the freelancer was extremely
[10:58] transparent from the start.
[11:00] I asked him if he was using Ahrefs and he said,
"If you're already using that for your own keyword
[11:05] research, then I'm not sure how much
extra help I can be."
[11:09] So not only is he using Ahrefs, but he thinks
it's an insanely powerful tool, so much so that
[11:15] he thought he wouldn't be able to provide
additional value.
[11:19] I liked him, so without a second thought,
I purchased the gig.
[11:22] Now, he delivered way more than 10 keywords.
[11:25] And instead of a written action plan, he recorded
a detailed video that was nearly an hour long.
[11:31] But are more keywords better?
[11:33] Well, in order to understand why we got hundreds
of keywords, you need to know how he generated
[11:38] his keyword list.
[11:40] Well, I think this is the same kind of thing by
the looks of it has that first gig, the $15 gig,
[11:45] where it's literally just an export once again.
[11:48] I thought it was interesting too because he
promised here, like, a certain number of keywords
[11:52] but then these are mostly, like, full exports.
[11:55] They had a few things deleted which
I thought was weird.
[11:59] The video was the really nice touch with this one.
[12:02] So at this point, we've paid $30 for a bunch
of Ahrefs exports which we could have done
[12:07] for $7 on a trial.
[12:09] But as Patrick mentioned, the video action
plan was a nice touch to this gig.
[12:14] I'll let him expand on his Fiverr crush.
[12:16] He was very educational throughout, like, he
explained metrics, he told you things, he showed
[12:22] you his processes since you already had
the tool, which I though was brilliant.
[12:26] And even setting expectation, he's, like, you know...
keyword research - that's just a start, like, you have
[12:32] a lot more you have to do around, like
content, and links, and stuff to rank.
[12:37] And he's like, "Here it is, you start with this," but this
is not going to magically make you rank for things.
[12:44] You still have to do the work.
[12:46] So, I think it's good to see how he came to
the conclusions that he did, how he found
[12:51] the keywords that he did.
[12:53] And why, you now, you might want to
even target these keywords.
[12:56] From what I remember, he was talking about
search volume and categorizing keywords
[13:01] possibly into groups, you know, red, green, white,
blue, and saying that, you know, you can basically
[13:07] just create a section all about the different colors
of laser pointers, all about the different types of
[13:12] laser pointers, this kind of thing.
[13:13] As both Josh and Patrick mentioned, the educational
aspect was a huge win in this action plan.
[13:19] He also indirectly talked a bit about content
structure by using keyword grouping or clustering,
[13:24] which is helpful to both web visitors
and search engine crawlers.
[13:28] Now, the action plan was far from perfect
because there was still a lot of poor SEO
[13:32] advice in there like meeting word count
and keyword density quotas.
[13:37] But there was more.
[13:38] Fact that he didn't talk about search intent
which seems fundamental.
[13:41] And also although the video format for the report is
kind of good in the sense that it talks you through it,
[13:49] I think it was like an hour long so, you know, it takes
quite a while to watch and digest and you're going to
[13:54] have to making your own notes of what to do…
it just takes your time up, in a way.
[13:58] They didn't really get into the intent that well.
[14:01] Like he said, he focused on ecommerce a lot
and that still you feel like it were informational.
[14:07] He talked about grouping which was great
but he never, like, grouped things for you.
[14:12] So what I would live to see, you know, the pet
things, the color things, like, all kind of groups.
[14:18] He could have actually done this right inside Keywords
Explorer because we have those... the keyword grouping
[14:24] on the left side, and he's using Ahrefs.
[14:27] He could have literally just click on one of those,
export those results, and give that to us.
[14:31] And how much longer would it have taken?
Five minutes, if he's not looking at intent.
[14:34] Not even five minutes - two minutes per
keyword basically.
[14:37] And so he had just chosen five different groups
of keywords - that could have provided a lot more
[14:43] value in terms of what he was trying to achieve.
[14:45] So missing search intent which is fundamental
to keyword research as well as disorganization
[14:50] that led to wasted time were two big factors
that played into our ratings.
[14:55] So on a scale from 1-10, 10 being bang on and 1
being so far off, here are the results for the $80 gig.
[15:03] Obviously, the keyword list, it was just
an export from a keyword research tool.
[15:07] Again, he didn't talk about search intent so I
probably put it on the low-end at at 3 or 4.
[15:13] I give this 7.
[15:16] Hmm, interesting!
[15:18] I think I just really appreciate the fact that he's
showing personal process, as he's explaining so much
[15:25] And for someone there, to beginner, you know, who has
the access to the tool, I thought it was really perfect.
[15:31] He hit the market perfectly, not everything was correct,
things could have been done better, but overall the fact
[15:40] that he was really explaining things and trying
to teach you to do it yourself, I think I gave him
[15:47] maybe a little extra for that.
[15:50] Yes, you were emotionally swayed.
[15:54] As for me, I gave this gig a 4.5 because just
as Josh had said, he basically just sent Ahrefs
[16:00] exports which he knew I had access to and
he didn't touch on search intent at all.
[16:06] Now, just as Patrick was emotionally swayed by
the $80 freelancer's charisma, I was emotionally
[16:12] swayed, maybe too much, by the next gig.
[16:15] So our final gig was the $150 one and the only
Fiverr verified "PRO service" of our 3 purchases.
[16:23] By profile alone, this person seemed to be
extremely promising.
[16:28] They had testimonials on their website from known
SEO influencers, claimed that a big publication
[16:33] had rated them as a Top 20 SEO influencer, and
had written for some well-known SEO blogs.
[16:40] To top it off, they had spoken at a good number
of SEO conferences, making them stand out
[16:44] from the pack.
[16:45] But the moment I started communicating
with this person, something just felt off.
[16:50] Their gig explicitly states that an action
plan is included.
[16:54] But when I asked, they said that it'll cost extra.
[16:57] And that was followed by some vague
information about their services.
[17:01] After numerous exchanges, I just straight up
asked for some screenshots because I had
[17:06] no clue what their gig included.
[17:09] And they sent me this screenshot.
[17:11] Finally, someone who's ready to talk
about search intent.
[17:15] We exchanged numerous more messages because
when I asked if this is what I would get, they said
[17:21] "If that's what you need..."
[17:23] So I just straight up asked
[17:25] "Does your $150 gig include the title, intent, and
write up" - and I was referring to their screenshots.
[17:33] They confirmed, so we reluctantly bought the gig.
[17:36] Now, after doing some due diligence, their
claim of being called a so-called "Top- rated
[17:41] SEO influencer" wasn't fully accurate.
[17:44] Their mention was actually from a press release, which
just happened to get syndicated on the publication
[17:48] in question.
[17:50] Anyone who's willing to pay for a press release,
write half-way decent content can also claim
[17:54] to be a "top 20, 10 or even just top
SEO influencer in the world."
[18:00] All of this aside, let's take a look at the deliverable.
[18:03] At first glance, it looked a lot more professional
than what the $15 and $80 gig had to offer.
[18:08] But as we continued to read through the report,
the same interesting style of communication
[18:14] began to surface.
[18:15] Josh summarizes the keyword list nicely.
[18:17] A lot of these keywords, looking at the actual keywords
themselves, don't seem to make a lot of sense.
[18:22] You've got things like "laser pointer amazon".
[18:24] Why that would be included or potentially even
a good keyword to go after, I don't fully understand
[18:28] Because people are clearly searching for
a specific website there.
[18:31] Things like "laser pointer near me"  - I don't
understand why that would be in this.
[18:35] You know, not only is this for an affiliate site -
so it doesn't make sense anyway because it's
[18:39] a local keyword.
[18:40] So there's quite a few keywords in there that just
don't seem to make any sense whatsoever.
[18:45] That's why a few keywords in there that, again,
the same mistake or issue as the other report,
[18:50] the other gigs, which is that I would guess most
of these - many of these - are commercial intent -
[18:55] people looking for products, so there's no real thought
being put into these keywords from what I can see.
[19:01] Now, not only was the keyword list more or
less useless, the person made the report even
[19:06] more confusing by doing two things.
[19:08] #1. They said they created a "complex
formula" to prioritize the keywords.
[19:14] And this formula was search volume
times CPC divided by difficulty.
[19:19] Now, I didn't really understand the purpose behind
this so I asked Patrick what this was all about.
[19:24] I have no idea.
[19:25] He gives us score and that's, honestly, what
a lot of people want is... they want just some
[19:31] way to prioritize, so..
[19:33] It's hard to say whether those scores are really
right or wrong - there's a bunch if different ways
[19:37] of doing it.
[19:38] He probably saw this on someone's
blog and copied it.
[19:42] And the second thing…
[19:43] I think he's just going backwards and forwards, like
they're saying, making one point then contradicts
[19:47] himself, making the other point - contradicts himself.
[19:50] So it becomes unclear what exactly you're
supposed to do when looking at this document.
[19:55] But there was some good stuff in this report
too that clearly proved his experience went
[19:59] beyond the other two freelancers.
[20:01] Patrick and Josh pointed out some
of these things on our call.
[20:05] I would say where he got down to recommending
specific articles and what do I include in those.
[20:11] Because that's... that's really distilling it down,
you know, keyword research, the purpose is
[20:17] sort of to create the content, so...
[20:20] Ideally, someone new doesn't even really want to
see keyword research, they just want someone to
[20:25] tell them what to do.
[20:27] I want you to make this page and talk about
this, this, this, and this. Done.
[20:32] He's talking about internal linking - adding links
to the pages you create to try to, you know,
[20:37] from other pages on your website to help
them rank and that kind of thing.
[20:40] And he's talking about basic, very basic
on-page optimization, though.
[20:43] So these are things that you would want
to do, it's not bad advice, it's good advice,
[20:49] erm, so I'd say that that's probably the best
part of the content plan.
[20:54] Now, as much as I'd love to take you line
by line through this report, I think it would
[20:58] be pretty fruitless because there wasn't
anything too different from the other gigs.
[21:03] So instead, let's rate this gig on a scale from 1-10,
10 being bang on and 1 being so far off.
[21:10] I give a 4.
[21:11] I've would have given it more if the recommendations
on the data just wasn't so bad.
[21:19] He really... he gets so close - and, like,
some of the stuff has really good advice.
[21:24] But, yeah, the data - no cleaning, no checking, and
then some of the other advice was not great, so...
[21:33] I probably give it a 4.
[21:36] It's no better than the previous gigs,
possibly no worse, but I think it
[21:41] doesn't really although looked complex, it probably
leads the person purchasing it in the astray, it leads
[21:46] them in the wrong direction
[21:48] And I would probably give this one a 2.
[21:50] There were just way too many contradictory
statements, keywords that had absolutely
[21:55] nothing to do with our niche, and I agree with Josh.
[21:58] The report is more likely to lead someone
astray than to set them off in the right direction.
[22:04] Now, while we weren't really fans of the keyword
research gigs we got, there is an interesting
[22:08] take away here.
[22:09] None of the gigs had an overall passing score.
[22:12] Meaning, there could very well be an opportunity
here for someone to learn keyword research
[22:17] and dominate the Fiverr keyword research market.
[22:20] And we have tons of videos and blog posts on
how to do keyword research effectively, as well
[22:25] as a full SEO course for beginners which covers
the main facets of search engine optimization.
[22:31] All of these resources are free so go and
check those out and if you enjoyed this video,
[22:35] make sure to like, share, and subscribe for
more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials.
[22:40] I'll see you in the next one.

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