If you haven’t been living under a rock for this last month, you’ve most probably seen that we’re about to release a new WordPress SEO Plugin 2018 version called Briefcase.
One of the main benefits of being subscribed to our email newsletters and our social media (especially Twitter on @SquirrlyHQ), is the fact that you get info on all the best releases, way before they reach our blogs.
Some of you have asked me why I keep insisting with the Elephant background, many of you going like: “Sure, the image looks good, but aren’t you guys overdoing it?”
Short, TL;DR answer to that would be: No.
The elephant in the background is now a symbol for our 2018 release of Squirrly Briefcase.
You can see it in the Briefcase Launch-related articles, emails, etc. Example here.
Memory – Remember Everything About Your SEO Strategy.
Here you have it. This is the answer. We keep showing the elephant because it’s a symbol for amazing memory.
Our WordPress SEO Plugin became way too powerful last year going from 100 features to 200 features by the time it reached Squirrly SEO 2018: Steve.
The Steve update brought so many powerful features that one could easily go wild with the power. Briefcase offers all your team, your clients, your contractors a clear reminder of what your SEO Strategy is like.
Briefcase helps you center everything around your Strategy and not fall into chaos.
Earlier, in the Powering Up Email from Squirrly, you got to see the massive improvements we’ve made to the Squirrly SEO software last year.
Squirrly SEO 2018: Steve was one of the best received updates yet. However, there was an important lesson for us to learn from it.
Squirrly Steve (to keep the name brief) brought radical change that currently helps over 150,000 business owners, freelancers and marketers to grab high search engine traffic. This radical change did not come without its problems, though.
I was personally lucky enough to have most of you by my side. It’s something that I greatly appreciate. Your feedback helped us fix everything extremely fast.
Then it came time for Briefcase to be launched and we decided to go the silent ninja way. Only select few people got to use the new features. By 18th of January 2018 (today) we wanted to test Squirrly SEO 2018: Briefcase as much as possible before announcing the release.
Now, as I’m writing this email to announce the release, I feel more confident that the minute you make the update, you’ll get a great experience.
Briefcase awaits you: Version 8.3.05. Go to WordPress -> Plugins and update your version of Squirrly.
You’ll be able to build a Solid Core for your SEO Strategy, something that we’ve never found in any other SEO tool.
You can keep all your best keywords in Briefcase, so that you’ll always know which ones to use when optimizing your content, your SEO patterns, your snippets, your inner-links.
Briefcase helps you work more closely with your keywords. It’s fully integrated in the other tools from Squirrly. You can do a Keyword Research using our tool and then send the best keywords you discover directly to your briefcase.
Later on, when you go to optimize a page or a blog post, you can easily choose these keywords from your own Briefcase.
It keeps your entire collection of keywords and helps you manage your portfolio. It will even give you stats about how many times you’ve used certain keywords and you can choose to let it show you info about your main keywords without needing to re-do keyword research every time you look at keywords you found months ago.
You can also optimize ONE page for Multiple Keywords. Say you’re having a product like: “Captain America: The Winter Soldier Collectible Action Figure from Marvel”. You can now optimize that product page for keywords related to the Winter Soldier, to Marvel action figures and to Captain America.
Why ? Because all of these are connected, and people searching for these things will want to see your product page if Google displays this listing of yours in search results.
There are countless other examples, like you’re writing about John Coltrane Tribute Band and Jazz Concert and a certain city/state/region. You could be tempted to optimize just for “jazz concert tickets in Phoenix”, but why miss bigger opportunities?
You’re awesome for reading this and giving me the chance to introduce the update. Wait for my next emails. It will have more details AND it will have pictures and screenshots from this release.
Get your keywords ready in your own briefcase. It will help you and your writers or editors understand the strategy better.
Your briefcase is individual for each site. You can get a glimpse at all of it from Squirrly Cloud (your my.squirrly.co account). Head Over to SEOPlugin.xyz Where I do have some screens for you (https://trello.com/b/eIk8oyEx/next-features)
Just like Steve Jobs is an epitome of innovation, our updated Keyword Research Tool is aiming at the same level of excellence and innovation.
That’s why it follows the overall slogan for Squirrly’s Steve version – think differently.
For our keyword tool, thinking differently means providing the same quality while constantly seeking to be more customer-centric. We want to help you optimize your writing workflow while also ranking higher.
Because the fewer time it takes you to research the keywords, the more time you can allocate to creating the finest content (which is another part Squirrly SEO helps you excel at with the improved 2018 Inspiration Box).
That said, let me introduce the upgrades that help you both with writing and SEO.
Time for A New Look
Right off the bat, you’ll notice a change in the visuals department.
This is how the tool looked like with the 2018 version.
And this is how it looks now with the Squirrly SEO 2018: Steve version:
The information was visible only when hovering over a specific item on the list – which some of the Squirrly SEO users did not notice. So we worked on the issue and came up with a more intuitive display of the research results.
As you can see with the Steve version, Squirrly now has a more user-friendly interface and displays the results in a neat table. You won’t have to hover over each keyword in order to get the data you’re looking for. The Squirrly SEO 2018: Steve keyword research tool saves you some effort and tries to make everything as straightforward as possible.
We gather the keyword data based on the same algorithm, but we introduced intervals for the search volume figures, to make it more relevant for values under 2000. SEMrush was our main provider for the search volume in the past, but they seem to have few keywords available (I mean.. they are a LOT, but still not enough for all our users. We’ve studied this). So for the ones that SEMrush doesn’t know about it we now have our own algorithm that shows the search volume.
To optimize your experience even more, we added the Options column, where you can press the Use Keyword button for the item you select. Once you do this, the keyword will be used in the “Optimize for Keyword” box.
Inside scoop: our next plugin update will let you create and manage your own space for keyword optimization across the entire website. But more on that towards the end of the year – until then, you can check what’s up with this version (called Squirrly Briefcase) on our public Trello board.
Fine-Tuning Your Keyword Research Experience
The Squirrly 2018 keyword research tool was a hit with our users, but we soon realized not all of them had the same needs when it comes to finding keywords.
This applies not only to the number of results retrieved but also to the amount of time different users are willing to spend within this stage of content creation.
So we sorted that out and added a button at the top of the keyword research box. What it displays is a list of 3 options:
Fast: retrieves up to 10 results in 20-50 seconds;
Normal: up to 20 results in one minute maximum;
Complex: up to 50 results in 300 seconds tops (this option analyzes more pages and the retrieval time depends on the type of keyword you enter. For a longtail or less common search query, our algorithm will naturally need more time to analyze the results.
Note: When you get the Squirrly Steve version, the keyword research will be set by default on the Normal mode. If you need fewer or more results, make sure you choose Fast or Complex.
From all our tests, we could see that the Complex search really does the work of an in-house SEO when it comes to researching keywords. It’s true that not everyone wants to spend so much time with the researches, but the results are really impressive. You can uncover many opportunities which would otherwise remain hidden.
Countries. All of Them
Okay, most of them would’ve been a bit more accurate. Read on to see just how many we have available for you now.
As proud as we were of the Squirrly SEO 2018 version, there still was something missing.
Namely, the Keyword Research Tool displayed 26 countries users could perform the research for.
But since our user base is global, we kept getting asked about this or that country, so it didn’t take long until we added the 114 countries more. This makes for a total of 140 countries you can check. Right inside your WordPress editor. No additional tool needed.
It will give you the search habits and search patterns of people in 140 countries. You can find out exactly how they search in their own country. Searches are way different sometimes even between the U.S. and Australia. Imagine the difference from google.com to google.com.br
And as always, everything that we feed into the algorithms for those 140 countries is un-biased (unaffected by any Google personalization which usually happens in browsers and apps)
SEO specialists or not, you can all rejoice: whichever part of the world you are from, you now get to carry out targeted keyword research. Something like this:
A Keyword Research Tool with A Twist
The thing with keyword research tools is that they grant you the opportunity to fine-tune your marketing skills.
But fine-tuning does not imply a better understanding of analytics only. It also requires strategic, long-term thinking. Being able to interpret past results and make informed decisions for the future.
Being well aware of this, we enriched our keyword tool by adding the icing on the cake – the Export List option. It is a button you can find at the bottom right of the Keyword Research Tool box :
Click on it and Squirrly will automatically generate a downloadable Excel document featuring all the keywords generated across a research session.
Now, all the information generated by the Squirrly Keyword Research Tool will be stored inside a separate folder that you can visit anytime you need.
Want to become a better marketer?
You can start by building a keyword research database. You can even compare how these insights changed over a period of time and then assess future changes in trends.
Bottom Line
The ultimate goal we have in mind with the Squirrly SEO 2018: Steve version is helping business owners and marketers turn website pages from ‘never found’ to ‘always found’ on Google SERPs. In this respect, our updated Keyword Research Tool is certainly a key feature in our plan. Remember that the competition data is incredibly important because it tells you what chances each of your sites have of getting ranked on any keyword.
Here’s a recap on how it will achieve that for you:
more control over your keyword research experience;
140 countries to research your keywords for;
relevant estimates for search volume data;
improved possibilities for local and longtail keywords research.
Once you’ve picked a keyword and created the content optimized for it, you can proceed to use the other Squirrly SEO Plugin settings. Mind you, we’ve got plenty of other feature updates for this version, so I’d say keep an eye on your inbox.
Soon there’s going to be a new Squirrly and we’re calling it Steve to pay homage to Steve Jobs for inspiring entire generations of product developers to think differently and create customer-centric products.
We’re working on massive new features that will make working on SEO a seamless experience.
It was a Personal Assistant, Mentor and Coach for Digital Marketing. Yes, here is where the SEO Live Assistant from Squirrly and also our Settings Assistant have their roots.
At Squirrly we don’t just want to create a software for SEO. We want you to have a personal assistant which guides you through everything you need to do to go from “Never Found” to “Always Found” on the first page of Google.
You see? I’m not very sure that just a simple seo plugin could ever help you with that.
We’ve joined the “Think Different” mentality and movement because I do not want our mind to be limited by virtual boundaries that would naturally be set within our minds if we were to pursue the path of just building simple SEO software.
It was September 2013 when we decided that. It was during that month that we switched our logo to the Squirrly SEO product logo that you know today. And we sure ain’t changing it.
This logo reminds us that we need to keep thinking differently if we are to offer you the best possible solution of getting your pages to always be found on the first page of Google.
Back in 2013, we were the only ones building a software where you got weekly SEO Audits and progress reports. But not just basic crawling errors. Like full audits, sent weekly, for: blogging activity, traffic, SEO site structure, Social Media (if we want to improve your visibility we need to improve your social game as well), Links, Authority.
We would have never reached a point where we would give you such a complex audit on a weekly basis if we had stuck to traditional features. Apparently we were right. We were doing great things, because nowadays most SEO software comes packed with similar audits.
By thinking differently about what we can offer you according to your needs, we have built the Performance Analytics of Squirrly SEO. There’s never been an SEO plugin to offer SERP data, social media data, optimization data, even though these are some of the most important things that you can analyze and act upon.
I admit. Thinking differently set us on a weird path that ended up with us creating over 160 features for WordPress SEO. To understand this number, one could compare it to just 15 basic features present in Yoast, All In One SEO, Ultimate SEO and the others.
Yes, there are over 160 features, and by the time we finish Steve I think there will be a bit more of them.
Isn’t Bigger simply another way of saying Slower?
No. Not when it comes to the way we build software at Squirrly.
We were already the fastest SEO Plugin on the market. This happened in spite of having 108 features as opposed to just 15. Now we have over 160 features and we’re even faster than before. Squirrly SEO: Steve is faster than Squirrly SEO 2018.
Our amazing CTO, Calin Vingan, just outdid himself (again!) and re-wrote most of Squirrly SEO. Everything works better and it will allow us to build amazing things in Squirrly SEO 2018: Steve.
Squirrly is bigger and faster.
My number ONE goal is to help you get everything you need to go from never found to always found.
Other than just providing the tools for this, I want to make sure that you have an amazingly seamless experience with getting to that front page of Google.
That’s why in Steve you will see that it’s easier than ever to do any SEO optimization that you might want to do.
One of the great things you’ll see in Squirrly SEO: Steve is something that you (our amazing community) have told us we need to improve: the Quick SEO Plugin. It will no longer exist as a separate entity, because it has completely become a part of the basic Squirrly SEO offering.
This is not something that we wanted to do. But we do not care about that so much, because it’s important for us to offer you the best experience. An excellent experience, if you will.
Being customer centric is important to us. Being customer centric is more important than building whatever everyone else is building just to satisfy the status quo.
I mean… who’d name their company Squirrly? Well.. someone who IS squirrly. Super, super squirrly about being customer centric.
Does that mean we don’t build these things for us as well? Be 100% certain that we do.
We are also customers and we use Squirrly SEO non-stop. One of the big reasons why it keeps improving so often.
I think we’re managing to keep a really healthy balance in all of this. Also, we really can admit when our ideas weren’t the best. (and keeping QSS separate really wasn’t the best, I can now admit).
Thank you very much for reading this. And also a big thank you to Steve Jobs, the legend who inspired us to go down this path of thinking differently and designing for the best customer experience.
Oh, yes. And we’re having a Youtube LIVE event soon.
This is what everyone has been wondering about lately and we finally reveal all the changes.
It took a while to get this page ready, because we’ve really improved a lot of aspects of Squirrly SEO. We had to make sure that we’re helping people do exactly what Google 2017 wants, with all the latest changes in the ranking factors AND also with all the latest focus on social media.
I’m saying Google 2017, because I want to make it obvious that we are 100% committed to making all the right changes inside of our software. To better express the changes from Squirrly SEO 2016 to Squirrly SEO 2017, we’re using the G16 vs G17 elements in design.
Very soon, the badges for each G will be available to you in the plugin.
Without further ado, I present to you:
Squirrly SEO 2016 vs 2017.
Keyword Research – G17. The best Keyword Research Tool Available for WordPress was re-designed to a whole new Level.
We’ll soon have more info available about our Market Intelligence: Keyword Research tools. You can read what we already have available here.. Until then, I want to show you some of the most visible changes you’ll notice.
3x Times More Long Tail Keywords than the G16 version of the Keyword Research Tool
The algorithm changes we’ve made helps us give you 3x times more Long-Tail Keywords. This is massive SEO value. Your focus should be on long-tail keywords because people who search for long-tails have a much clearer intention of making an action if the content is good. (buy action, subscribe action, time on page, check other pages, etc.)
Super Efficient. Data Driven.
The Keyword Research tool that you get from Squirrly SEO 2017 is more powerful than ever, thanks to its integration with the rest of the Market Intelligence features we place at your finger tips.
One of the biggest parts of our Market Intelligence features is Web Authority and all the website stats we collect from all around the web.
We take this data into account starting with Squirrly SEO 2017 to give you better suggestions for what people search on the web, to see the search volumes, the trends and the web authority of the websites you’re trying to compete with for different search queries.
2x More Countries Added – Soon to add even more.
We’ve integrated with data that we get about the search behavior of users from many other countries. Since the g16 version of our Keyword Research Tool we’ve added 2 times more countries that you can choose from.
Whenever you choose a certain country in our Keyword Research tool, it will start showing you how the people in THOSE countries search for the keyword ideas you have. This gives you the right information you need to tackle your desired market.
Our algorithm is better than ever and we’ve completely redesigned it. This allows us to add many new countries very soon.
Complete Focus Towards Actionable Data – powered by Market Intelligence.
The general information regarding Keyword Competition wasn’t as helpful as it should have been. You got the same kind of information for a keyword, no matter the site which you were using at that given moment in time.
Since the Keyword Research Tool from Squirrly SEO 2017 has now become part of our Market Intelligence Suite, we now show you a much better metric for each keyword. Oh, and it might be different from site to site.
Easy to Rank Vs. Hard to Rank.
You will no longer get some general info. You will get to see exactly if your current site really has a chance to outrank others if you go and optimize for that keyword.
My.Squirrly.Co G17 – Your Back-Office for Managing Squirrly feels More Like Your Office.
For us it was really time to get squirrly and start improving our back-office. The place where you kept track of the sites on which you’ve installed the Squirrly SEO Plugin and where you could find invoices and next billing dates.
We want your back-office for using Squirrly SEO to become a real office. That’s why with the g17 version of my.squirrly.co we’re giving you a lot more:
See the Latest Updates and Improvements we make for the Squirrly SEO software.
See your list of sites and find out if the Audit Suite features of Squirrly had any problems generating the weekly Audit for you.
Request a new Audit every single hour. (if you’re doing a lot of work on your WordPress site, this will sure come in handy)
Check out your usage stats. Better understand how much you’ve used Squirrly SEO recently.
Account Information. This was a missing piece of the puzzle. You can finally get a clear view over your current plan and the number of actions you can still make (like keyword researches, optimizations, etc.)
Keyword Research. Yes, we didn’t just make it better. We’re also placing this great re-designed feature inside your my.squirrly.co interface. It will allow you to perform many keyword researches and we’ll give you an option to download the results to CSV.
Re-Design. We’ve re-designed it to make it look better and offer more clarity.
Find Invoices
Find Billing Dates
SEO Audit becomes Squirrly Audit Suite.
The Weekly SEO Audit you get from Squirrly SEO has always been a lot more than just an SEO Audit. Especially if you had the PRO version and it gathered data about 100 pages of your WordPress site.
That’s why you’ll start seeing it called the Squirrly Audit Suite. The way it currently “lives” as a piece of software on our servers (yes, we had to buy more servers for the audits to work well) is the following:
the Blogging Audit
the Traffic Audit (which will get a Google Analytics integration this year)
the SEO Audit
the Social Media Audit
the Links Audit
the Web Authority Audit
So, basically it’s not just an SEO Audit that you get from us on a weekly basis (or hourly basis if you request new ones in my.squirrly.co). It’s a full on Audit Suite with different audits made for each marketing area that Squirrly SEO can help you with.
Other than the announcement of how the software works, how it’s divided into 6 pieces and how we’ll improve one of the audits this year by integrating with GA, I want to tell you that the data these audits provides is much better than it used to be.
The g16 version that we’ve had saw a lot of crawler problems, that we’ve now fixed in the g17 version. Also, after releasing Squirrly SEO 2016 Twitter decided to remove their Twitter shares (favorites and retweets) data from the API and no software provider could find any data about this popularity metric on the web. It’s the reason why we had to take it out for a while. But rest assured: we’re introducing it back again and it works really well!
Google Rank -G17. Understand How Well You Rank for Your Keywords. Now made to the full specs of Google 2017.
Remember when I said that Squirrly SEO really makes sense with a monthly or yearly subscription? >> It’s because of many updates like these.
When you make a static plugin or a WordPress theme you don’t really need to work much on it after you release the first stable version. You are never forced to continuously work on it and improve it to someone else’s ever-changing standards.
Well, at Squirrly we don’t really have that luxury of being lazy. We have to keep being squirrly, keep being agitated and agile. We need to keep up with all the latest updates and improve the software for you.
New Year. New Google.
Since our Squirrly SEO 2016 release, Google has changed a lot of things in the way it works. This pushed us to update the system that finds out your Objective keyword rankings on Google.
And I say Objective, because the results you get from us are the actual, 100% accurate results that people see when THEY search online, not when YOU search online. Because Google personalizes your experience, if you try to search for your keywords, you will always get biased data which is not true for the desired customers you target.
More Countries Added.
We’ve added more countries for which we can display your Google Ranking. The way you rank for Argentina is different than the way you rank for Spain.
More countries are now available, so if you target very specific markets this will surely come in handy.
Images -G17. Copyright-Free, High Quality and in High Volume. Perfect for Your Content.
Based on the keywords you choose for your articles, Squirrly SEO 2017 offers you great looking images that you can place in your content. Many copyright-free images. So many, that in fact we now offer you 4x more copyright-free images than ever before.
Added:
pexels
unsplash
pixabay
Better WordPress Integration.
It’s not only that you get more awesome images. They now get saved (if you choose) directly into your WordPress Media Library and you can continue using them in other WordPress features, plugins or themes.
Inspiration Box -G17. Turn Real Moments Into Stories.
If you want to write your WordPress blog posts like a true journalist you will care a lot about sources and about being in the loop with all the latest news from the blogosphere.
Sometimes the best way to do SEO and Social Media Marketing is to write about trending items. The fact that a trend is currently on the rise means that you can target a new keyword that other people haven’t covered yet. The best part is: the demand for that keyword keeps growing as the trend keeps rising.
This approach also helps for Social Media, because SM is all about What’s Happening Now.
The Inspiration box from Squirrly SEO gives you the opportunity to study these new trends directly in your WordPress dashboard, without having to leave; and without having to search in countless different places.
Sometimes, you need to understand what the “new thing” means, so that you won’t make mistakes (due to the fact that you don’t understand the new trend properly yet).
In your WordPress interface, you’ll be able to read all the latest ideas that people Tweet about the new subject. You’ll get to see if Wikipedia has entries about that yet and you’ll also be able to find what the latest blog posts from the World Wide Web have to say about the rising trend. You can even read the articles straight from WordPress.
This is a huge workflow improvement, that you can’t get anywhere else.
The G17 version is far improved from the G16 version and it works with the latest Google updates. Most of the older functions have become deprecated and we had to change them, in order to keep the Inspiration Box up and running for you.
Inner Linking – G17. Improve your SEO by placing more links to great pages from your site.
The Inner Linking feature of Squirrly SEO has been greatly improved since 2016.
In the inspiration box you have the button for Inner Linking. It used to offer fewer suggestions for pages from your own site to which you could link.
Now we’ve changed it so that you can search by keywords and find the most relevant pages from your site that you want to link to. A clear example: Let’s say you’re writing an article on “Content Marketing Tools Your Business Needs in 2017”. With the G17 version you can search for “social media tools” and find a relevant article you’ve written on this topic, which you can connect to your current article. By saying something like “for more details on Social Media tools that we use at Squirrly, you can check this blog post [link]”
SEO Star -G17. More Help For Content Marketing
We’ve improved our Web Authority Index and the Market Intelligence we provide in our Keyword Research feature. Therefore we factor in more ideas for increasing the SEO Star Score of our users.
Squirrly Snippet -G17. Powered by TrueRender
The Squirrly Snippet of Squirrly SEO 2017 is powered by TrueRender.
In the SEO preview that we provide in our snippet you will see exactly how the post will look like when people find your listing on Google.
Yoast, All in One SEO and the rest do not simulate the way Google will truly display the search result, which leaves a lot of margin for error, because many themes and plugins that you use can interfere with the code when WordPress generates your page. In these plugins, you might think everything will be displayed all right, when in fact it will not.
What you see in our Snippet is exactly what your potential customers will see on Google when they see you in the search results. This offers you the real control you need.
Better WordPress Integration
Also, the Customize Options have been improved to provide better control. Also, for the social media images that will be placed in Open Graph and Twitter cards you can now choose to place images from your WordPress Media Library.
Customer Service Channels -G17. Excellence in Customer Service. Now on More Channels Than Ever Before.
Since we first launched in February 2013, we’ve been obsessed with Customer Service. Unlike other WordPress services you’re used to, we don’t shy away from Customer Service. We encourage you to ask us questions.
Because of our approach to Customer Service we could develop the most powerful SEO Software available for WordPress. We kept making Squirrly SEO better, due to our interactions with you.
For customer service we had the following channels:
For the Squirrly SEO 2017 version we kept these channels, but we’ve also added new ones:
Youtube Live Chat, every Thursday 4 PM on our Youtube Channel
Twitter: we provide support, we write about new updates to the software products we offer, we write content marketing lessons (every Mon. and Tue.)
Facebook Page.
Sites: plugin.squirrly.co and howto.squirrly.co
JSON-LD -G17. We were the first to add this to WordPress. Now we’re the first to improve it.
In Squirrly SEO 2016 we’ve included the JSON-LD feature, which helps Google better understand what your WordPress site is about.
In this new version, we also introduced Instagram, Pinterest and Contact Information for JSON-LD.
Rich Pins -G17. 3 Times Better. Now with WooCommerce integration
The rich Pins have really been improved.
they work well now (we had a couple of bugs in the first release, from G16)
added the Rich Pins Validator
Works awesomely with Ecommerce for WordPress. Your products will look great when pinned to Pinterest user’s profiles.
Open Graph -G17. The best Open Graph Plugin for WordPress gets an Update. Videos.
Start using the Open Graph from Squirrly SEO. When someone shares your page on Facebook AND your page contains a video, the OG from Squirrly shows a clickable thumbnail in Facebook. When anyone from the user’s audience clicks that thumbnail, the video will start playing inside of Facebook.
We’ve had a couple of real estate agents try this out for the Facebook Pages of properties they were selling. They’ve told us this really increased their conversions and that their customers were happy to get to see the estates directly in Facebook, without having to navigate to other websites.
Also: you can now add a custom image for Open Graph when you optimize the front page (the homepage) of Your WordPress site. [works with both static and blog feed types of front pages].
Plugin and API Speed -G17. More Speed. Faster WordPress.
We were already 3 times faster than the Yoast plugin and 2 times faster than All In One SEO.
However, this didn’t stop us from optimizing the speed of Squirrly SEO even further. We’ve made it work well for users with very slow Internet Connections (the API used to have problems when the Internet speed was too slow).
Built-IN SEO Settings -G17. Powered by the Duplicate Remover.
One of the most important updates we’ve made is something that’s very specific to the WordPress environment which really becomes a messy jungle after installing more themes and plugins.
Because most developers do not follow the very clear guidelines of WordPress.org lots of problems appear.
The most common one we’re seeing is WordPress Sites having multiple Open Graph Tags, Twitter Card Metas, Title METAs, Description METAs, JSON-LDs, etc. This is completely wrong and it affects aspects like: Google Rankings, html code errors.
The Built in SEO Settings from Squirrly SEO are now powered by the Meta Duplicate Remover we’ve created, which makes sure that only ONE entry for each type of META will appear in the final code rendered by the browser.
Active by default.
Also, by popular opinion from our users, we’re now making the SEO Settings from Squirrly active by default.
This has always been requested, and we’re finally doing it. The SEO Settings we offer have become truly amazing over the last years. Squirrly SEO 2018 will need these settings active anyway, for the great SEO surprise we’ll soon reveal to everyone.
Tracking -G17. They Change. We Change.
Changes for 2017.
The tracking codes from Google and Facebook have changed since 2016, and we’ve updated the way we help them do the tracking for your WordPress site.
Added AMP support for Google Tracking.
When your site is in AMP mode, the Google Tracking will keep working due to this update we’ve made.
So, you think Squirrly SEO 2017 is Cool? Wait ’til you see Squirrly SEO 2018.
We got really squirrly with all our development and moved much faster with our plans for the innovation we had prepared for Squirrly SEO 2018.
That’s why Squirrly SEO 2018 will be released in April 2017.
Until then, know that once we finish the release for Squirrly SEO 2017, your license will automatically be updated. No extra actions required to update the license. You’ll just have to update your plugin to the latest version.
We’re getting closer and closer to the full release of Squirrly 2017. We’ve just tested the G17 version of our Squirrly Keyword Research tool. We’ve taken a lot more details into account when offering the new keywords for you.
Anyway, until I tell you more about what’s going on right now in the background there are some questions I need to address.
Since my last developer update, many of you have asked questions regarding the PRO subscription and the new releases of Squirrly SEO.
It’s my job today to clarify what the new updates mean to you.
Here is the Summary for what we’ll have in today’s blog update:
1) Do I Need to Purchase Something Else ? Do I need to purchase anything?
2) Why would I pay the PRO Version? How Is this Early Access?
3) Why Squirrly SEO and Not Other Plugins?
4) License and Terms
5) BackStage Access
6) Youtube Channel Winners
7) Announcing the Dates for the Release of 2017 and 2018.
Let’s see:
1) Do I Need to Purchase Something Else ? Do I need to purchase anything?
No, you do not need to purchase anything else, in order to get access to Squirrly SEO 2017.
This answer holds true for the following types of licenses: free, pro, agency, lifetime.
Versions of software products like Microsoft Windows, or versions of hardware products like the iPhone usually require a new kind of purchase every time these companies launch something new.
Your Free, PRO and Agency licenses always cover you for the features that we launch for our Squirrly SEO software.
The only license type that has restrictions is the One Time Fee plan. The one time plan (also called: Lifetime License or Old Squirrly) only has upgrades including the 2017 version of Squirrly SEO, but then it stops. Which means that the new innovations and features of Squirrly SEO 2018 will only be made available to free, pro and agency users, not one time.
2) Why would I pay the PRO Version? How Is this Early Access?
The best part of being a PRO user is that you always get the best updates that we make, without having to wait for special release events. That’s why in one of my last emails I told you that already 70% of the 2017 version has been rolled out and you can start using it.
Because you pay us a monthly fee, we can keep improving the product for you. It then seems only fair to me that we make sure you get quick access to everything we build.
Unlike other plugin developers, we don’t make you go to a special website to download the latest .zip file. We don’t ask for un-installs and re-installs and stuff like that. We provide you with a frictionless experience, because you deserve it.
The Early Access has already been rolled out server side (on our own servers, where most of your Squirrly SEO works from) and in the latest version of the plugin (which you get simply by clicking Update inside your WordPress -> Plugins interface).
3) Why Squirrly SEO and Not Other Plugins?
This is another question that we get asked a lot. Here’s the most common question and then our own answer:
“I have a very sensitive question to ask. I know this may sound brash, but I have decisions to make.
Can you–without tons of super-salesman promotion–tell me how your product is different from Yoast?”
The answer:
The main difference is that Squirrly offers 108 features as opposed to just 15 for SEO. Yoast is a very basic plugin, even though it is indeed a good one. Even if you have the free version of Squirrly, you still get a lot more for SEO than you would using other plugins. With the new version we’ll soon launch, you will be able to optimize every single URL of your site. Something you can’t do in any other plugin. You will have full control over how Google sees your pages and over how people see your pages in social media feeds (on Facebook, twitter, linkedin, google plus).
Yes, and this part that gives you full control will be an addition to Squirrly SEO and it will be free of charge. Also, it will have most of the premium stuff offered in the pro version of yoast.
Squirrly’s PRO features are things that would cost over $600 / month to get from other SEO Software: exact google rankings for pages, advanced SEO keyword research, SEO Audits, Blog Audits, Social Media Audits, Inspiration Box, copyright-free images, Performance Analytics. yoast nor any other classic SEO plugin offer any of these functions.
I hope this answers the question in a non-salesy way. People keep recommending yoast because it has been around for 8 years and because it’s very simple. Also, people recommend it because that’s what people typically recommend and they want to simply go with the flow and “say what people are saying”.
It’s the reason why we’ve made Squirrly SEO integrate with it. We think those features are basic anyway, and the PRO features we offer are what really make the difference in on-page SEO.
The continued use of our products and websites means that you agree with the terms written there.
5) BackStage Access
Very soon we will launch BackStage access for those of you who are our best fans.
The backstage access will allow you to get the best written updates about what we’re working on and what we’re introducing in Squirrly SEO 2018 (which has still just been rumored, but too few is known yet).
You will get to see it before anyone else. We will pick the ones who we think are most interested in our products. If you think you want to be on the list then write me (at florin@squirrly.co) an email saying: “I want in!”
I’ll know what to do. Backstage access is the best way for you to prepare for our next version of Squirrly SEO.
6) Youtube Channel Winners
Yes, the Youtube Winners! A lifetime license has just been won today, when I drew the winner LIVE on youtube. I did this because I’m a big believer in the new ways the Internet allows companies to be more transparent about how they do business.
The winners of the Better Marketer giveaway had also been drawn live after that campaign ended. The feedback was really great, because everyone could see the winners being drawn fairly.
These are super exciting times for us at Squirrly, because we’ll soon release TWO versions of the software at the same time.
Squirrly SEO 2017 and Squirrly SEO 2018 will soon be released.
The best way for you to learn about the latest updates is to follow us on Twitter right here.
70% Of the Squirrly SEO 2017 version is ready to be tested. Get Early Access
Most of Squirrly SEO 2017 has already been released to the plugin and also to our web-based platforms. You can get the latest update from the WordPress Directory or by downloading the plugin from here.
Since most of the 2017 version has already been released, you should check it out. As always, we’re super open to feedback on all our channels. Just check the Contact section.
my.Squirrly.co and the SEO Audit – massive improvements
My favorite part so far is the massive re-vamp of my.squirrly.co where you access your account data and check the audits we make every single week for your sites. You should check it out as soon as possible.
For the first time in the history of Squirrly, you’ll be able to request a re-audit right there on the spot. Now, if you make changes you can get re-audited to see if you indeed managed to improve the score.
Developer Update Video: 17 completely new features presented.
In this video I released the rumors about 2017 and 2018 being launched at the same time. Check it out! I present 17 new massive updates that you didn’t know about.
Squirrly 2018’s integration with Quick SEO plugin by Squirrly.
Unlike Apple, we don’t remove integrations. We create more integrations.
At the launch event, we will present the Quick SEO Plugin to the world. This one will be a free plugin. It will only integrate with the Squirrly SEO 2018 available versions: Free, PRO and Agency. It requires a Squirrly SEO 2018 license to work.
It will give you, for the first time ever in WordPress history, the possibility to optimize each URL in your site. For both Search Engines and Social Media platforms.
It works for WooCommerce as well.
Until now, there have only been plugins that allowed some sort of automation for the optimization (only SEO-related) of URLs. However, no other plugin allows you to manually customize everything. That is bad for search engines, but it’s especially bad for Human readers.
If I go to your store and share a category or tag page, you want my Facebook friends to see that page in a beautiful way that will invite them over to your store. That’s what I’m giving you right now with Squirrly SEO 2018. The possibility to be in control of this.
Stay tuned to our Blog, our Youtube Channel and our Twitter. More announcements will follow. We’ve worked very hard to deliver these amazing new software updates to you.
People are looking for companies in your space. I want them to find YOU in the search results.