Q&A: Is there a challenge of potentially losing search Rankings switching to Squirrly from other plugins? 

Recently, Marv Dorner from the BeBizzy Break Podcast invited Florin Muresan, Squirrly’s CEO, for a conversation about Squirrly SEO and Search Engine Optimization in general.  

Coming from a WordPress developer’s side, Marv had a distinctive approach to learning more about Squirrly SEO, which translated into some very interesting questions.

His questions are probably some of your questions as well, which is why we decided to share segments of that conversation here on the Squirrly blog as well. Check it out. 

Marv: Is there a challenge of potentially losing search Rankings switching to Squirrly from other plugins, like Yoast? 

Florin: It’s very easy (switching to Squirrly from other plugins) because when you install the Squirrly SEO plugin, it tells you to Import Settings. So basically everything that you’ve optimized in Yoast (for example) is going to be available by default in Squirrly SEO. 

So, once you make the switch and deactivate Yoast, you’ll have everything that you used to have still in place. You’re not losing anything over the switch. 

Marv: Yeah, I can see this being a concern for people that are doing this, either as a professional or if that’s their company website, they’d hate to blow up what they already have.

Does that work as well with other SEO plugins or do you have just a few of them where that import process works, or does it just grab everything that’s currently there? 

Florin: I think we have everybody. And, I mean, Yoast is the most complex, and the others were very easy to do.

For Yoast users (in particular), because we do have a lot of people buying the PRO or the Business plans from Squirrly and who are using both plugins, we’ve made it easy to use both plugins. 

For example, you can let Yoast deal with the technical side of the optimization and use Squirrly’s keyword research tool to find new opportunities for which to build content.

Marv: So, you can run both at the same time; they don’t conflict each other cause you’re importing data basically from the database. 

Florin: You can tell Squirrly to NOT create the codes for METAs, for JSON-LD, for Open Graph, for Twitter Cards – and then Squirrly will not create any code for those. In this case, your WordPress site will get the Settings from Yoast, Squirrly will do nothing on this.

Then you can just use the other features from Squirrly, like the SERP Checker which shows you your true position on Google, the SEO Audit, the Keyword Research, the Live Assistant for when you optimize content.

Marv: Hmm, now you got me thinking. That’s a bit more frosting on the cake, I guess. 

Florin: Yeah, we’ve spent about three months before the release of the new Squirrly version because we wanted to make even the Focus Pages feature work with Yoast, but in the end, we thought that since Yoast updates the plugin so much, we might have a lot of problems in the future.

So, we decided that if you want to use Focus Pages, you must switch everything to Squirrly, but it was one of our ideas to also make Focus Pages detect the settings made in Yoast. 

Marv: Awesome! That’s amazing. Now you got me thinking that I definitely have to try this out and look at this a little closer, cause the fact that you can still run the technical side…

You know, I come from a WordPress developer’s side and do some SEO stuff, so I have a place in my heart for the technical side, because that’s something that people forget about; they write all kinds of great content but on the tech site, their site is a mess and is not managed correctly.

If you have a tool that is already doing that and then now you have a tool that it can actually help you on the content side and be way better at it, and you can run them in conjunction with each other – that’s a pretty good solution. 

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This is a transcript of a section of an extended conversation between Marv and Florin.  (answer featured in this article starts at 22:22). 

For the full interview, check out Marv’s podcast here.

If you’re interested in Marv’s thoughts on Squirrly SEO after this interview, make sure to read this article here. 

Squirrly SEO features mentioned in this segment of the conversation: 

Click on the links to learn more about each one of the features. 

Q&A: SEO is a lot more complicated than it used to be. How does Squirrly SEO help?

Recently, Marv Dorner from the BeBizzy Break Podcast invited Florin Muresan, Squirrly’s CEO, for a conversation about Squirrly SEO and Search Engine Optimization in general.  

Coming from a WordPress developer’s side, Marv had a distinctive approach to learning more about Squirrly SEO, which translated into some very interesting questions.

His questions are probably some of your questions as well, which is why we decided to share segments of that conversation here on the Squirrly blog. Check it out. 

Marv: SEO is a lot more complicated than it used to be, but having tools like Squirrly SEO really helps out. 

Florin: For us here at Squirrly, it was a huge benefit that Google became more complicated because our tool is best-suited to give a lot of details about sites. In the past, you didn’t really need all these details, because there weren’t many ranking factors. 

As you said, you could just stuff in keywords and nobody needed tools for optimizing content, for verifying it, for auditing your content/your pages, or the technical aspects of SEO, like the traffic data.

We even audit Traffic data, and nobody cared about that in the past. 

But right now, because there are so many ranking factors, you need a tool that is much more complex. 

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This is a transcript of a section of an extended conversation between Marv and Florin.  (answer featured in this article starts at 11:17). 

For the full interview, check out Marv’s podcast here.

If you’re interested in Marv’s thoughts on Squirrly SEO after this interview, make sure to read this article here. 

Squirrly SEO features talked about during this segment of the interview: 

Click on the link above to learn more about the feature. 

Q&A: Is Focus Pages a separate plugin or is that all included in Squirrly PRO?

Recently, Marv Dorner from the BeBizzy Break Podcast invited Florin Muresan, Squirrly’s CEO, for a conversation about Squirrly SEO and Search Engine Optimization in general.  

Coming from a WordPress developer’s side, Marv had a distinctive approach to learning more about Squirrly SEO, which translated into some very interesting questions.

His questions are probably some of your questions as well, which is why we decided to share segments of that conversation here on the Squirrly blog. Check it out.

Marv: Is Focus Pages a separate plugin or is that all included in Squirrly PRO?

Florin: The Focus Pages feature is included even in the FREE version.

We give out a Focus Page that you can start using with the Free version of the plugin so that you can already start ranking one of your pages. 

And then, you know, when you are ready, you can buy the PRO and move on and rank more pages. 

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This is a transcript of a section of an extended conversation between Marv and Florin.  (answer featured in this article starts at 21:24). 

For the full interview, check out Marv’s podcast here.

If you’re interested in Marv’s thoughts on Squirrly SEO after this interview, make sure to read this article here. 

Squirrly SEO features mentioned in this segment of the conversation: 

Click on the link above to learn more about the feature. 

Q&A: Is Focus Pages something that can be used across the entire website?

Recently, Marv Dorner from the BeBizzy Break Podcast invited Florin Muresan, Squirrly’s CEO, for a conversation about Squirrly SEO and Search Engine Optimization in general.  

Coming from a WordPress developer’s side, Marv had a distinctive approach to learning more about Squirrly SEO, which translated into some very interesting questions.

His questions are probably some of your questions as well, which is why we decided to share segments of that conversation here on the Squirrly blog as well. Check it out. 

Marv: Are you looking to specify 4 or 5 or 10 pages as Focus Pages, or is it something that can be used across the entire website? 

Florin: You CAN’T use it over the entire website and it’s not that we can’t do it – it’s that we don’t want to do it.

If we would let people do this, they would just go all berserk, and they would place like 30 pages there, and the idea about Focus Pages is to focus on ranking a couple of pages at a time, and once you’ve ranked those, you move on to the next ones. 

Marv: You’re just looking for the low-hanging fruit and nailing those down, getting those optimized and then you take the next ten or the next 8 or 5, or whatever it is and just kind of move through the site periodically. 

Florin: Yeah, I’ve been helping somebody who has a podcast on entrepreneurship and I told him: “Okay, you can’t rank all of your podcast episodes in one week or one month. And if you just go around playing with stuff, you’re not going to get anywhere.

So, let’s take your episode about how to find a co-founder, let’s see if you picked the best keywords, let’s see if the technical SEO is there, let’s see if the traffic is alright; let’s see if you can promote it, let’s see if you can build backlinks, if you bring in traffic from social media. 

We get all the elements in place on that page before we move on to your next podcast episode.”

This is what we’re proposing: getting people to work on a couple of pages so that they can really focus, increase their chances of ranking, start ranking those pages and then moving on to the next elements (pages) of their website.

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This is a transcript of a section of an extended conversation between Marv and Florin.  (answer featured in this article starts at 17:16). 

For the full interview, check out Marv’s podcast here.

If you’re interested in Marv’s thoughts on Squirrly SEO after this interview, make sure to read this article here. 

Squirrly SEO features mentioned in this segment of the conversation: 

Click on the link above to learn more about the feature. 

The Rank Show: Episode 4

There’s a series of written episodes where you can see how marketers from a Business Directory WordPress site used the power of FOCUS to reach Page 1 of Google. Over and over again, after they cracked the case.

Episode 4: Success with Focus Pages


It’s Success Time Here on the Rank Show.

Andreea from Servicii app shares her success after the BIG switch she made back in Episode 3.

Remember how she said she was going to change her focus page and go for a different page to focus on?

In today’s episode you’ll see how that bet paid off.

Go Read Episode 4 Now.

Four Keywords On the First Page of Google Search -> and this is just for the new Focus Page that she had switched to.

All it took was to switch focus and create a great inner link from a valuable page.

Inner Linking is easily overlooked by website owners. Yet, it makes a difference.

You’ll see this quote in the article, but I just had to share it here as well:

“This episode will be a short one. I just wanted to share with you my success with Focus Pages by Squirrly, their latest revolutionary feature. Indeed, it’s a revolutionary feature, but you have to know how to use it.

It can make you smile or it can make you frown. It’s all up to you and how you read all the incredible information that the tool gives you.”

It’s a culmination of very impressive (and super hard) work from years of feedback and iterations. I’m proud of what my teams at Squirrly managed to achieve. Everyone from our company was involved in making this work. Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush have never come close to offering this level of detail for ranking a page.

I’m happy that people use this and get amazing results. Me and Calin have been working on tools that help small business owners become Digital Marketing Superstars since 2009. Yes, ten years, that eventually lead us to building the Focus Pages method. This started before we began Squirrly in 2012. Our desire was to empower business owners with DIY tools so they could boost their online visibility on their own terms.

As you could see in this series from ChiefContent, it can really show you the right way to do your SEO.

There are other 7 success stories published on our sites with people who became successful after we released Focus Pages in Squirrly SEO 2019.

Keep Ranking,
Florin Muresan
CEO, Squirrly

PS: we sell our subscriptions in over 90 countries, and I think this series of episodes they’ve written just goes on to show how well Squirrly works for any country. Finally an example that’s not for the EN speaking market. I know that many of you were waiting for something like this.

The Rank Show: Episode 3

Sometimes, all you need to do is switch the page you’re currently trying to rank. And that will lead you to much better results.

Episode 3: Change Your Focus Page


One thing I admire and appreciate in people is when they can realize that their current course of action is not the right one. Not everybody can do this. Most business owners and marketers will keep trying to rank for a certain keyword with a certain page. They’d work for years on end with no results showing, yet they don’t want to change their strategy.

Which is why I’m happy when I see people who can adapt. You see that something isn’t working? Change it.

In Episode 3 you will see how the team of Servicii app decided it was time to focus on their other pages, which were starting to grow better than their main page.

Spoiler alert: by Episode 5 you will see that this was the turning point which has lead to their ultimate success.

Remember: new website, no authority, little traffic (at first), yet by working with the Focus Pages Method they learned how to navigate SEO.

And sometimes, Squirrly will make you switch your main keyword, or switch your main page entirely. The purpose is to get you search engine traffic.

This is a great episode, one that you should not miss. It walks you through the time it took to rank pages, broken down by days.

I think it’s very useful that they’ve made this info available and that you can see the SEO works performed each week.

Here’s Episode 3.

Also: I was using “black panther costume” for an e-commerce store. And I was trying to rank that, but the movie came out and I was suddenly competing against Forbes dot com, INC, and other media giants. My store simply did NOT have that authority (as I could see in my Squirrly Audits).

Did I care? Nope, I changed my focus to things like “RWBY merchandise”, “Overwatch Wallets”, “Harry Potter Store” and I started to really rank well (AND sell products!) for many keywords related to these types of items. I wasn’t selling anything before I made the switch.

Keep Ranking,
Florin Muresan
CEO, Squirrly

PS: we sell our subscriptions in over 90 countries, and I think this series of episodes they’ve written just goes on to show how well Squirrly works for any country. Finally an example that’s not for the EN speaking market. I know that many of you were waiting for something like this.

The Rank Show: Episode 2

Finally a success story for a website that is not English-first. I know that many of you wanted to see if Focus Pages works for other languages.

Episode 2: Why You Should Never Stop Working

Rankings will drop from time to time.
What will you do about it?

Maybe you’ll get angry because your expectations are unrealistic. Well, let’s find out more from the team of Servicii app who published their experience on ChiefContent.

Google makes lots of changes to search engine results pages. All day. Every day. According to location, timezone and even the hour during that particular moment when a check is made.

Did you know that? – probably not, since experts don’t really talk about this.

Nobody wants to hear that things can go wrong.

In 2019, rankings have been more volatile than ever. It’s become more important than ever to check rankings properly and daily. (properly = with a SERP checker tool, that does local search) / (daily = meaning NOT with Google Search Console, because that one doesn’t show changes daily… it takes weeks, sometimes even months for the Google tool to update its average positions).

Anyway, this team did not get lost in such trivial details and kept pushing hard to recover. Spoiler: by Episode 5, they do so well with search engine rankings, it will feel weird to think this happened to them. However, I want you to see their struggle, because things like this will happen to you as well.

Read Episode 2 Today. Ranking drops are not the end of the world.

Not if you keep working.

Keep Ranking,
Florin Muresan
CEO, Squirrly

PS: we sell our subscriptions in over 90 countries, and I think this series of episodes they’ve written just goes on to show how well Squirrly works for any country. Finally an example that’s not for the EN speaking market. I know that many of you were waiting for something like this.