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The incredible ways to get SEO traffic without ever ranking

Let’s face it, when it comes to generating traffic online, the quality of SEO traffic is unbeatable.

When you compare it to other online traffic sources including PPC, affiliates, emails and SMS, you typically find that when it comes to average time on site, low bounce rates and conversion rates,  SEO reigns supreme. Those navigating through SEO organic search are typically taking their time and making informed and more careful decisions – this is what leads to higher converting and more qualified customers.

The barrier though with SEO is that it can take several months, or even years, and incredible expertise to gain positions in the top search results on Google. However, just because you do not rank at the top of Google, doesn’t mean that you cannot have access to the best quality SEO traffic and even take up multiple positions – without even ranking your own website.

In this piece, we speak to some industry experts and startups to understand how you can access SEO traffic whether your site ranks or not.

Check who is on page 1 already

You might think that doing SEO for your company means optimizing your own website and getting it to rank, but why not consider who is already on page 1 and if you can partner with them in some way. From price comparison sites, news sites or just individual brands, there may be a way to help them monetize their traffic or collaborate in some way.

“As a broker, we are a lot freer to do SEO than other big brands and institutions,” explains Justine Gray, founder of online mortgage broker, Deedle.

“Big companies and banks are very nervous and bound by compliance to throw lots of content on their site and make regular updates. But for a small team like us, this is very easy.”

“In some ways, we have a better shot at getting to page 1 than a big corporate company – and as a result, we get companies of all sizes trying to partner with us. They may find that there are too many internal barriers to do good SEO for themselves, but we are open to collaboration.”

Using top 10 lists

“Top 10 lists have a very powerful ranking edge on Google,” explains Sithara Ranasinghe, co-founder of health insurance site, MediCompare.

“There are certain industries where Google really favours top 10 lists over a traditional site. If you were to search for anything related to casinos or something techie like email marketing or best softwares, you won’t typically find individual sites on page 1, but rather review sites or accumulator sites that list 10 different options.”

“I think Google likes this more impartial offering to a customer and the ability to see and compare different products. So, if you are a new entry to the market or looking to get SEO traffic, you should simply approach someone who already ranks on page 1 with a top 10 list or try to create one through a high domain authority site.”

“There are sites that are very good at this like CNet and Forbes who leverage their authority and strong domain – and there is no reason why you cannot have multiple listings on page 1 and clean up on the SEO traffic, regardless of where you rank.”

Using price comparison sites

Price comparison sites for products like mortgages, credit cards, hotel bookings, travel insurance and even tech have become huge in the last decade.

“Being a price comparison site can be an advantage with Google,” explains Mark Gomer of Proper Finance. “You target so many products and can gain backlinks across multiple industries and also benefit from people shopping around which increases your overall user time on the site.”

“When implemented well, you may rank really well for some products, but not others, but ultimately you can focus your energy on where you do.”

“If we have a strong position on Google for something like mortgages or secured loans, we could potentially work with 50 or 100 companies to help customers to compare the best rates – who all get access to SEO traffic, even if they don’t rank anywhere.”

Leveraging news sites with high domains

There are so many SEO factors to contend with, such as good technical optimization, site speed and quality content. But sometimes having a good backlog of backlinks and high domain authority is the fastest and simplest way to rank on Google and get to page 1 for key terms.

“When you look at major news sites, these are typically link magnets because of their authority – and they often scoop up lots of links from other authorities such as schools, universities, councils and governments,” explains Richard Allan, founder of funding platform, Capital Bean.

“So, when you create a landing page on your own site, you may have to wait months or years to build up authority – or you may never rank at all. But if you took this landing page, with all the right keywords and intent-driven content and placed this article on a major news site like SF Gate or Forbes, you can sometimes rank for this very quickly by leveraging their domain authority.”

“If you take some less competitive industries or more bespoke long tail keywords, they may not be used to having a site with a domain authority of 60 or 70 on page 1 and when you come in with a fresh article, you get the quick indexability of being a news site and can often get to page 1 within one day simply because it is on Google News.”

Concluding thoughts

SEO traffic is incredibly good quality and sought after, but as any SEO professional will tell you: it takes a long time to achieve and does not always last forever.

But as discussed by our experts, ranking on Google does not necessarily just have to be your own website. By seeing who is on page 1 and using sites with high domain authorities to include your company, you can take up multiple positions. And given the fluctuations of Google, you can use these techniques to always have some kind of presence on page 1 at any given time.

We leave you with one final question: Why take one position on page 1 when you can have several?

  The post The incredible ways to get SEO traffic without ever ranking appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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How Chat GPT is changing SEO

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 has been a real game changer for digital marketers across the world. SEO professionals are still trying to navigate the potential benefits and power of this technology.

The ability to type in search queries through live chat and get perfectly and uniquely written content hosts several advantages for those looking to create more content rapidly and scale their online businesses. Webmasters can also create codes faster than they can manually and this can be used to compliment or replace developers.

However, this may also present more challenges with increased competition across the digital marketing landscape and questions on how Google’s search results are going to react with increased marketing intelligence.

We speak to some industry experts and startup marketers to get more insight into how ChatGPT is changing SEO.

Content creation

For consumers, the ability to create unique content and do it almost instantly is probably the biggest advantage of ChatGPT.

“Many SEO professionals may have been dubious at first,” explains Andrew Baker of finance startup, Doddler.

“Writing unique content is something that is drilled into you from day one and anything that is automated or too good to be true can only be negative for SEO.”

“But the early evidence shows that ChatGPT is consistent and the content it produces is unique and can rank well if done correctly,” says Richard Allan of Divorce Bob.

“When it might have typically taken us 6 to 8 weeks to produce 50 pages of quality guides and blog posts, ChatGPT can do this in something like 3 hours.”

“We have been able to add pages for more than 1600 area codes across the US using ChatGPT – and this would have been a mountain to climb without AI or not something we would have considered doing.”

“It still needs a proper SEO person to interpret the right number of keywords, content length and other SEO bits like internal links and headings – but it certainly presents a very scalable way to push out content.

“It presents endless possibilities for targeting area codes, times, amounts and other long tail keywords both domestically and if you were to launch into different countries.”

Staffing and outsourcing

Outsourcing your content and code has been popular for many years, with startups and companies using the likes of Fiverr and outsourcing to India and Philippines for their marketing teams.

“But with ChatGPT, it questions whether you need to hire content staff at all,” argues Matthew Sullivan of consumer finance site, Harpsey.

“For years, there has been a question of whether you even need content writers or developers in-house and why pay local rates when it is cheaper abroad? But today, it is a question of whether you need to hire writers and developers at all.”

“This could mean that thousands of content writers could go out of work overnight. However, in practice, the early signs show that although millions are using ChatGPT, it is a small number to create an economic shock and that traditional businesses are still preferring the manual approach. But who knows if paid writers are using ChatGPT to do their work?”

Rapid prototyping and testing

“With the opportunity to create content so fast, this has given us an exciting way to test and try things out,” explains Gavin Cooper, the founder of Claims Bible. “And this is what a huge part of SEO really is.”

“We have been able to throw content together quickly and test out different site layouts and designs or even compare platforms such as Wix, Webflow or WordPress and determine which ranks the best in the SERPs. From there, we have been able to scale up and build out our business.”

“For us, we have been able to replicate hundreds of pages for different types of claims, whether it is for injuries, banks, car manufacturers and many more – and by having consistent meta-data and good backlinks, we have been able to secure positions on Google and generate quality leads.”

Changes in Google SERPs

If we imagine millions of websites using ChatGPT to put out new content and develop new sites, are we going to see huge fluctuations in rankings across all industries?

This does not appear to be the case yet, with ChatGPT operating now for more than 6 months. But it certainly will not be surprising if some industries which are very tech savvy such as consumer finance, casinos or crypto make huge strides in this area.

Hence, one might expect for some new brands to emerge on page 1 for some very competitive keywords, almost out of thin air, or for there to be some early wins for some sites and some even harder crashes if they get penalized.

Still need experience and SEO knowledge

SEO is always changing and no doubt, ChatGPT has created a paradigm shift and an exciting way to put out fast content and replicate code, allowing new and established businesses to scale up quicker than ever before.

Whilst the Google rule of thumb that ‘content is king’ still applies, one cannot deny it is how SEO professionals use this content that is truly important and will notably change the SEO landscape.

Whilst you can have content written quickly and to a high standard, it is not valuable unless it has smart and experienced SEO to back it up.

It is key to understand the right content to create, the right keyword research, user intent, meta-data and semantics – and if you can pair this with ChatGPT, this could be the recipe for true SEO success.

  The post How Chat GPT is changing SEO appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Optimize Google’s new Interaction to Next Paint metric

30-second summary:

Good page speed and user experience help your site stand out in search results

The Interaction to Next Paint metric is replacing First Input Delay

You can improve make your site respond faster to user input by reducing CPU processing times

The Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google has defined to measure how good a website’s user experience is. They first became a ranking signal in 2021.

While the metric definitions have been tweaked over time, the introduction of the Interaction to Next Paint metric is the biggest change since the launch of the Core Web Vitals initiative.

What is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?

Interaction to Next Paint is a metric that evaluates how quickly your website responds to user interaction. It measures how much time elapses between the user input, like a button click, and the next time the page content refreshes (the “next paint”).

To rank better in Google this interaction delay should be less than 200 milliseconds. This ensures that the website feels responsive to users.

How are the Core Web Vitals changing?

Google has announced that Interaction to Next Paint will become one of the three Core Web Vitals metrics in March 2024. At that point a website that responds to user input too slowly could do worse in search result rankings.

INP will replace the current First Input Delay (FID) metric. While FID also measures responsiveness, it is more limited as it only looks at the first user interaction. It also only measures the delay until the input event starts being handled, rather than waiting until the user can see the result.

Currently only 64.9% of mobile websites do well on the Interaction to Next Paint metric and it will be harder to get a good INP score than a good First Input Delay score.

How can I measure the Interaction to Next Paint metric on my website?

Run a website speed test to see how fast your website loads and how quickly it responds to user input.

Open the “Web Vitals” tab once your test is complete. You can see the Interaction to Next Paint metric at the bottom of the page.

In this case only 38% of users have a good INP experience.

How can I optimize Interaction to Next Paint?

Interaction delays happen when the browser needs to perform a lot of CPU processing before it can update the page. This can happen for two reasons:

Ongoing background tasks prevent the user input from being handled

Handling the user input itself is taking a lot of time

Background tasks often happen during the initial page load, but can happen later on as well. They are often caused by third party code embedded on the website.

Responding to a user interaction can require a lot of processing. If that can’t be optimized you can consider showing a spinner to provide visual feedback until the processing task is complete.

Running JavaScript code is the most common type of processing, but complex visual updates can also take a long time.

Use Chrome DevTools to analyze performance

The Chrome DevTools performance profiler shows what tasks are taking a long time and should be optimized. Start a recording, click on an element on the page, and then click on the longest bars in the visualization.

This allows you to identify whether the code comes from a third party or from your own website. You can also dive deeper to see how the task can be sped up.

Check the Total Blocking Time metric to identify background tasks

The Total Blocking Time metric tracks how often there are background CPU tasks that could block other code from running. If the user interacts with the page while a task is already in progress then the browser first completes that task before handling the input event.

You can use tools like Google Lighthouse to see how this metric can be optimized.

If processing-heavy tasks on your website are part of your core website code you’ll need to work with your development team to optimize these. For third parties you can review whether the script is still needed, or contact customer support of the vendor to see if it’s possible to optimize the code.

Monitor Interaction to Next Paint

Want to keep track of how you’re doing on INP and other Core Web Vitals? DebugBear can keep track of your website speed and help you optimize it.

Start a free 14-day trial today and deliver a better user experience.

Conclusion

The Interaction to Next Paint metric represents the biggest change to Google’s Core Web Vitals since they were originally announced. INP addresses the deficiencies of the previous First Input Delay metric and provides a better representation of how users experience a website.

Check how your website does on the Interaction to Next Paint metric before the ranking change is rolled out in 2024. That way you’ll have plenty of time to identify optimizations and make your website faster.

Try DebugBear with a free 14-day trial.

The post Optimize Google’s new Interaction to Next Paint metric appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Keeping up with the fluidity of the modern consumer

Humanity’s relationship with digital media is changing at an extraordinary pace. In 2021, adults in the United States were already spending an average of 485 minutes a day with digital media. That is over eight hours every day. 31% of U.S. adults claimed they go online “almost constantly” based on a survey from the Pew Research Center.

Because of the uptick in digital usage, we’re also exposed to thousands of ads daily. This represents a dramatic increase over the last decade thanks in large part to social media, among other apps, serving up heavy doses of targeted advertising.

Consumers are fully accustomed to the onslaught of ads, but expectations for relevancy are high. 71% expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this does not happen. So, while they spend more time engaged with digital media and online activities and want the abundance of engagements personalized and meaningful, they also aren’t eager to give up personal information to make that possible.

All of this makes building a unified digital identity, built around email addresses, even more important.  Utilizing the email address as the key identifier is the most effective way for businesses to ensure they’re reaching the intended consumer with consistent, personalized messaging across multiple channels.

 When MarTech and data explode

The pandemic brought about a wave of behavioral changes in consumers. From increased eCommerce sales and digitally purchased groceries and household goods, to reduced loyalty as consumers sampled new brands. Many of these changes seem to have staying power.

Managing digital identities becomes necessary, but more challenging, when you consider the expanding universe of data, devices, platforms, and channels comprising the digital world.

The MarTech ecosystem is bulging at the seams with companies trying to capitalize thanks to these new opportunities. As of 2022, there were nearly 10,000 MarTech vendors offering solutions, growing a staggering 6,521% from 2011 to 2022 (ChiefMartec).

The cause for concern runs high. With so many applications and solutions in play at any given time, it is easy to understand how organizations struggle to keep consumer data up to date and synced appropriately. It’s common to discover companies have conflicting or incorrect information.

Moreover, people may use different email addresses depending on how and with whom they interact. For example, online shopping. Retailers may have a customer’s email linked to their billing information, another tied to promotions and loyalty programs, and perhaps a third from contact with customer support. Finding that multiple email addresses link back to the same person is highly beneficial.

Not only do consumers use multiple email addresses, but when close to 30% of data decays annually, it’s likely some of them created or are using a different email address than what exists in a company’s system. Targeting can only reach the audience if based on up-to-date and preferred information.

Despite the growing number of apps in companies’ tech stacks, businesses are recognizing the importance of properly and actively managing digital identities by placing them in the hands of the marketers and data analysts that use these profiles every day. This renewed focus is the only way forward to meet customer’s expectations for personalization, keep retention high, and effectively improve digital marketing overall.  

Email data underpins digital identity

Centering around consumer email data provides marketers with the strongest foundation to keep pace with customers and prospects. That’s because email remains the center of digital transactions for a large number of industries. The most effective way marketers can make sure they have clean, valid email addresses and connect with actual customers is by utilizing a process for email validation.

Marketers need to verify that email addresses exist, are deliverable, and contain no risk. Running email addresses through a series of syntax, domain, and mailbox checks will meet the goals of pinpointing and deleting bad emails, correcting errors, and resolving discrepancies.

After all, messaging that doesn’t reach the recipient wastes resources with missed opportunities and poor campaign performance. When it comes to email marketing, for example, email service providers may direct senders with bad lists to the spam folder or worse, block emails entirely.

Email validation helps digital omnichannel campaigns reach their targets. And good email data can also help companies protect themselves against fraud as an estimated 40% of fraudsters use a newly created email, and 10% of fraud is attempted using invalid or fake addresses.

Keeping up to speed with the modern consumer as they engage brands across a plethora of touchpoints is not easy. Even the number of connections attributed to the average consumer is growing – over 13 for North America in 2023 (

The one common thread tying together all of these transactions and interactions? The email address.

Managing this data doesn’t need to be as daunting as it might seem. With proper validation you can be certain you’re using good information. Utilizing email intelligence will allow for the personalization consumers are expecting. Resolving digital identities will make their experience consistent. And the proper data will help reduce potential fraud. All of this revolves around strong email address data.

Learn how the right email-centric data drastically affects digital marketing

  The post Keeping up with the fluidity of the modern consumer appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Outreach: Make every email count

30-second summary:

Send emails manually to be able to build longer-lasting relationships with your recipients

Set up your email signature to make your emails look professional

Track email opens to be able to tell which emails were never seen

Create an effective follow-up strategy (which includes Twitter)

Organize your email campaigns using labels

Email fatigue is real: People get weary of opening yet another email pitch, especially people like bloggers and journalists who are bombarded by emails on a daily hourly basis.

Editors are skeptical of people looking for links, popular bloggers have more offers than they can handle and influencers are too busy to give your email a chance.

Fortunately, there are a few little email tricks you can use to help make things easier and help you get more responses.

Don’t email from an outreach tool

I know the overall industry’s standard is to always use some kind of email outreach platform in order to be able to send hundreds of emails a day. Most outreach managers will tell you that you cannot have a successful email outreach campaign without streamlining it with tools (and they actually told me that).

When I am not a professional outreach manager, and when you do outreach for clients, that’s likely true. But when you reach out to people on behalf of your own business or about your own project, have your team do it manually.

Yes, it will take more time but the reward will be more niche relationships.

Somehow tools make it too quick and faceless. You automate pretty much anything and move on from contact to contact without paying much attention.

When you send manually, you get to know each contact better. You spend some time reading their site or their column. You may even click on their social media links and follow them. You take time to personalize your email with some nice details.

People respond to these emails better. It always feels like there’s a truly personal touch. You just cannot fake it.

Create a detailed email signature

Have your outreach people set up their email signatures which would mention your business, their position, and maybe your social media accounts.

This is a great way to show that you represent a trustworthy brand and can be worked with. It makes it easy for the editor you’re trying to reach to do a little bit of research on you beforehand and know that you’re not hiding anything.

Here’s how to add a signature in Outlook, and here’s how to do that in Gmail. Here’s also a guide for Mac Mail users.

It is also a good idea to include some kind of soft CTA into your email subject. For example, you can invite your prospects to subscribe to your newsletter. This way there will be an additional conversion funnel for those who didn’t feel like replying right away.

Experiment with your copy

This step can never be perfected because there are no limits to improving your response rate. Just try different subjects and copy ideas to try and get more people to notice your email.

Asking ChatGPT for some email subject and copy ideas is a good way to get inspired!

There are also quite a few templates to experiment with different layouts and wording.

Track your email opens

There are quite a few tools that track certain emails to see whether or not they’ve been opened. You are in control of which emails you want to track so you are not overloaded with information, and those tools work with Gmail, Outlook, and even a few specialty email platforms.

I am using one called Mailtrack, and here’s what it looks like when my email wasn’t read:

The icon changes once your email is opened:

If an email has been opened, you will get a notification at the top of your screen. You can also organize your sent messages to show only unopened emails you are tracking. You can “mute” a conversation whenever you’d like and there are plenty of customizable settings.

This is an excellent way to see where you should spend your time sending follow-up messages. If you know that someone opened your email and did not respond, it means they will likely recognize a second one and may have forgotten to respond. You don’t want to be overbearing, but this helps you see where your opportunities may lie.

Fine-tune your follow-up strategy

Life is busy, so your email may be unnoticed by those who would otherwise find it useful. Following-up is an integral part of any outreach.

Gmail comes with a few nice features helping you follow up manually. For example, it will remind you of unanswered emails automatically after a few days. You can also snooze your emails to be reminded of them once the time comes. To enable snoozing:

Select the email you want to Snooze.

Click the Snooze button on top of the list

Pick a date and time to bring that email back to the top of your inbox.

You can find your snoozed emails in the Snoozed tab in Gmail.

When it comes to follow-up, a little automation won’t hurt, so you can use one of the many follow-up solutions that work on Gmail or your email client.

It is always a good idea to ping that person on Twitter. This will make you look real and will likely help your lead remember you and find your email in the inbox. Obviously, you can only do that for those contacts that are very important to you.

Use labels to create folders for your pitches

There are certainly different ways you can craft your email pitch, but there are also methods you can use that are directly related to your email interface that can help you stay organized if you use them in the right way. Using labels is one of those methods.

This is another way to stay organized if you’re trying to find different opportunities. As you continue to pitch different editors, you can create a label to sort out all of your emails. You will already have System Labels, such as your Inbox, Starred, Sent, etc., as well as Categories, such as Social, Updates, etc., but you have the opportunity to create custom labels.

If you group your email pitches using campaign-based labels, you can help keep them away from your other work emails and have one specific place to see everyone you’ve tried to reach out to within every campaign; thus helping you know when it’s time for a follow-up email.

Conclusion

Email outreach is still the most effective way to generate backlinks, build niche contacts and create brand awareness. It is becoming harder year by year. Hopefully, the above tips will make yours easier and more productive!

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

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The post Outreach: Make every email count appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Five video optimization tips to help boost your landing page conversions

30-second summary:

According to various studies, videos help engage your page visitors as well as get them to remember your value proposition better and help them make purchase decisions

When creating marketing videos to add to your landing page, keep them shorter than 2 minutes and position them prominently on the page

Make sure to add convincing CTAs within your video to drive action

While videos can boost on-page engagements, they can slow down your page (which may hurt its rankings), so make sure to lazy-load your videos and keep an eye on your Core Web Vitals

Optimize your video page to increase its chances to rank in Google and generate traffic and product awareness

Video marketing has been on the rise for over a decade now. Consumers are getting more and more used to watching video content wherever they go, be it on Facebook or on a product page.

Which may make one think:

Isn’t video content expected by now?

Shouldn’t we produce a video every chance we get?

However, the real question is: Will videos be a conversion ignitor or a conversion killer?

Let’s find out!

First, some tempting stats…

There are plenty of case studies and reports claiming that using a video on a landing page is a great idea for boosting conversions:

How-to videos is the most popular type of videos. According to Google itself, it is the most popular format of the video, even more popular than music or gaming.

Viewers tend to remember 95% of a message after watching a video, and only 10% after reading it. Moreover, videos are capable of boosting conversions by 10-20% (Studies vary here, so numbers can even be much higher).

Consumers tend to watch a video about a product rather than to read about it. Forbes Insights found that 83% of people prefer watching video to reading text.

In an older Animoto survey, nearly all the respondents (96% of them) found videos helpful when making purchasing decisions online.

Now, some important technical stats…

1. The longer a video, the lower its engagement

You have about 10 seconds to grab the attention of viewers with a video marketing clip. According to Facebook, people who watch the first three seconds of a video will watch for at least ten more seconds, so there’s a pretty tight window here.

Once your video manages to grab a viewer’s attention, they will likely engage for two more minutes. After two minutes the engagement is sharply declining. Obviously, the more interesting a video is, the more people will watch but since we are talking about the engagement with a landing page, it is not about narrative videos that are able to hold viewers’ attention for 30 minutes or more.

That being said:

Make sure your video’s first 10 seconds will grab attention

Then make it no longer than two minutes to ensure your page visitors will perform a desired action on the page, instead of feeling bored or vice versa too engaged with your video.

2. In-video CTAs work!

Lots of landing page videos I’ve seen are missing in-video CTAs which is unfortunate because a video on a landing page is a very essential part of most buying journeys. In fact, a call-to-action within a video may drive as much as 380% more clicks to a landing page.

The whole purpose of a video on a landing page is to drive conversions, so create a video that leads into the sales funnel and gives detailed instructions on what to do next.

In-video CTAs can be in the form of verbal messages (i.e. the narrator encourages users to follow certain steps) and graphic end screens (an end screen with a call-to-action).

Don’t forget that your video may also be a traffic driver (i.e. people from Youtube clicking a link in the description to get to your landing page) as well as the discovery channel (people watch that video elsewhere and become aware of your product).

So make sure those CTAs can be followed directly without visiting your site, for example, where possible provide a phone number to call right away. On a similar note, make sure that desired action can be performed any time without direct involvement of your team. Set up smart AI-powered communication technology that can engage your leads during off-hours, like IVR or chatbots.

3. Video placement matters

Video placement is never something to take lightly. There’s no single tactic here, because no product or page is the same. A/B test different layouts and then experiment more.

From an SEO perspective, Google recommends using a video prominently on a page for it to index it and potentially generate video rich snippets.

Prominent videos can boost engagement by 50%. Additionally, repeating a video in the product image carousel and then lower on the page can improve performance of a page.

If your site runs on WordPress, there are a few themes that have video landing pages already coded up. I have found a few great ones on this list, so check it out when you have a moment.

4. Videos can slow down your page

Embedding any third-party content, including videos, will slow down the page, and lower your Core Web Vitals score. This can, in turn, hurt your page rankings because Core Web Vitals are official ranking signals. As an examples, here are scores before I embed a video:

And here’s the same page but with a video embedded:

Depending on your content management system, there may be different solutions to make this step easier. Here’s the workaround for WordPress (which will also help speed up your whole site, not just that specific landing page), and here’s a tutorial for Shopify. Wix claims to handle video lazy-loading for you. Check with your current CMS if you are using an alternative one.

5. Videos rank!

Wherever you are hosting your video (Youtube, Wistia, or else), don’t forget the basics: Use your keywords in the most prominent places (title, description, file name, etc.). Remember: Videos rank incredibly well and they can actually drive more people to your site and build awareness, not just help boost conversions.

Video page optimization is not much different from any content optimization process: You need relevant and useful content surrounding your video. You can also check out my Youtube optimization checklist to get your videos to rank higher:

So, should you start pumping out videos?

Videos can be very expensive and time consuming to produce. Which makes creating them difficult to justify if you’re a conversion focused organization.

What it really comes down to is your list of conversion hypotheses. Every growth team and conversion optimization team should have a running list of hypotheses to test. Each hypothesis should be ranked (at the very least) by:

Test ease (or difficulty).

Test cost. Consider developer-hours, video production costs, designer costs.

Potential reward. How much do you expect this particular hypothesis to move the needle and why?

By creating a list that ranks your hypotheses, you can make better judgment calls as to what tests to run immediately and what tests you should put on the back burner.

You may have significant data (qualitative and/or quantitative) that suggests creating videos will produce a large return on investment. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid – get your director’s hat on and start pumping out video!

Side note: The system you create for your hypothesis list will most likely require continual improvement and tweaking to get it right. The important thing is to start one now if you haven’t. As you run tests, you’ll figure out what other metrics or ranking factors help you make better decisions for choosing what tests to run. Just be sure to iteratively improve your system according to your new findings.

Do you feel up to it?

Using videos to increase conversions is yet another risk vs. reward calculation. The upside can be huge, so don’t shy away from this conversion boosting technique.

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

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Insights to empower 2023 ecommerce strategies

30-second summary:

Retailers should use a data-driven approach to develop their marketing strategies to succeed in today’s volatile economy

Current tumultuous economic conditions are disrupting the retail landscape by forcing store closures and forecasting bankruptcies

Marketing intelligence for pricing, advertising, and promotions is critical in gaining an edge against competitors

Managing director at GrowByData, Prasanna Dhungel, shares ecommerce strategy tips for 2023 to attract, convert and retain customers

The economy in 2020 was in a volatile state, primarily due to the pandemic. In November 2020, despite rising Covid cases, retailers were providing SALE offers on 13% of ads and special promotions on only 7% of ads. On the other hand, consumer spending growth was recorded at 9%.

Fast-forward to 2021 – The economy was recovering from COVID that was evident in consumer spending growth of 13.5%. With a slightly eased supply chain and better economic conditions, November holidays in 2021 saw 14% growth in special offers, which had grown twice as much compared to 2020. Furthermore, SALE offers were seen on 12% of ads which was slightly lower than the previous year.

However, in 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war coupled with unfathomable COVID rise in manufacturing nation like China impacted the economic indicators once again. With rising inflation, consumer spending had fallen drastically to mere growth rate of 6%-8%. For this year’s November Holiday, 60% of consumers mentioned discounts and promotions playing a huge role in their purchasing decisions.

Surprisingly, during November 2022, there was a drop with only 8% focused on special promotion ads.  However, SALE offer was in a rise visible in 15% of ads.

A similar trend was seen in average pricing in Google Shopping ads that is, turbulent economy was reflecting in lower average price in 2020 and 2022 compared to 2021 – when the economy was flourishing.

Heading into a deeper recession in 2023 

As we enter 2023, we expect to continue heading into a recession.

According to a monthly survey conducted by Bloomberg, the likelihood of a US recession in 2023 jumped to a whopping  70% – as a series of Federal Reserve interest hikes drove fears of a stagnant economy. To make matters worse, a rise in US unemployment throughout the year has also been predicted to cause more pain in the labor market.

On the contrary, to remain competitive in the market, gross margin in retail is expected to go down. In this paradigm, pressure will rise on spending like advertising.  Consumers will start scouting for cheaper products causing retailers and advertisers to provide low-priced products to win market share. Therefore, the road ahead for retailers is going to be bumpy.  Per UBS analyst report, 50,000 store closures in the US is expected over the next 5 years. News of mega-stores like Bed Bath & Beyond potentially going to bankruptcy has emerged.

Based on our 2020 and 2022 economic analysis, retailers most likely will have unsold inventories to clear during the 2023 November Holidays. That said, consumers will see more SALE ads over special promotions, alongside noticing a drop in average pricing in shopping ads.

Tips for 2023 ecommerce strategies

Consumer spending, which has been decreasing in the last 3 years, will most likely fall in 2023 as well. Discounts, Promotions, and cheaper prices are the only ways to attract customers to stretch their wallets.

Despite the bleak outlook, retailers utilizing marketing intelligence for their pricing, advertising, and promotions will most likely survive and gain an edge in 2023. Here are a few tips for retailers and advertisers to succeed in 2023 –

1. Optimize ecommerce trustworthiness factors to boost conversion

Trust plays an integral role in converting business. To ensure a high conversion rate, it is imperative to build a customer’s trust in your eCommerce ecosystem. It is fair to say that online shoppers are often reluctant to make a purchase due to uncertainty on an unfamiliar channel or brand or product. For an eCommerce business, gaining trust is crucial as customers are unable to physically see the product. Businesses must focus on optimizing trustworthiness as it will have tremendous impact in the conversion. That being said, trust is a psychological state that can be easily influenced.

Here are the ways to optimize your ecommerce trustworthiness.

Showcase customer reviews and ratings, use trust badges and seals, offer secure payment options, display contact information prominently, maintain a strong presence on social media – all these attributes gain trust from your customers. Additionally, have good shipping & return policies, and enhance your website’s user experience. This will reassure your company’s transparency and guarantee customer satisfaction. All these should lead to increased customer loyalty and sales. For instance, Google rewards the “trusted store” badge to stores offering fast shipping, good return policies, a high-quality website, and good ratings – all the factors that signify a good customer experience.

Shopping ad extensions is another great way to improve the trustworthiness and effectiveness of your shopping ads. Ad extensions allows you to provide additional information about your product/business in your ad, which will help increase the credibility of your ad and the likelihood of users clicking on it. For example, you can use the “product review & ratings” extension to display the average rating your business has received from customers. This can help potential customers feel more secure during their purchase journey.

Offer competitive shipping and return policies to add a layer of trust and credibility for your brand. Customers generally prefer to shop with brands that offer free shipping or expedited shipping options. A hassle-free return policy will not only help build trust with customers but also create a good brand image since you have taken that extra step to ensure the customer’s satisfaction. For example: if you offer a 10-day return policy while your competitor is offering a 3-day return, customers are more likely to choose your product vs your competition. Additionally, having a local presence in the market is also a plus point. Customers will know you exist in their market. Offer 24/7 customer helpline and chat for your customers to get feel like they can contact you easily.

If you are a brand, you should have a MAP policy in the US and Canada. Having a MAP and channel policy helps ensure your brand’s product’s price and channel consistency across the digital shelves.  You must clearly communicate your MAP policy to your retailers & partners and provide them with the necessary guidelines for selling your products. Setting up a MAP policy and ensuring its enforcement helps brand maintain their value and ultimately improves trust and credibility amongst resellers and ultimately shoppers.

2. Optimize ROAS by lowering advertising cost

Here are six ways to achieve this –

Pursue Holistic Search Strategy to mobilize budget across SEO and SEM to dominate Google SERP. In 2022, our top Auto retailer client increased 20% revenue by redirecting ad spending from keywords where they were doing well in Organic.

Improve your keyword quality score to boost impressions and CTR with lower CPC. We have noticed retailers not utilizing special offers during this adverse time. We humbly disagree with this strategy as it is imperative to offer discounts through special offers over dropping prices. This simple tactic can improve your ad quality and reduce your CPC.

Optimize your product experience by focusing on product title, price, quality, color, description, promotions, reviews, etc. This will not only increase your chance of conversion but also help improve your keyword quality score.

Ensure affiliate compliance to reduce revenue churn and better partner with your loyal affiliates.

Monitor violations in your brand term that are inflating your CPC.

Enforce MAP Compliance to avoid pricing wars reducing your margins and brand value.

3. Dynamic pricing optimization to maximize margin

To be on top of the game, retailers must have insights into current market pricing to ensure optimum pricing to beat competitors. Approach taken for dynamic pricing strategies to penetrate while maximizing margin from the market will be critical for growth.

4. Strategic promotional planning to attract consumers

Consumers will always be gazing for promotions. In this adverse economic situation, a strategic promotion plan will help optimize advertising and conversions.

Conclusion

As the pandemic-riddled period comes to an end, innovation becomes a key factor for survival in the volatile market of today. Furthermore, with a shift in the retail landscape consumer expectations and demands will be a leading force in 2023.

Retailers and advertisers must remain flexible, adaptive, and affordable to get an edge against competitors to maximize their market share. They should use a unified marketing intelligence solution that showcases them versus competition in the eyes of the shoppers on the digital shelves. We recommend retailers use a data-driven approach to developing their marketing strategies to improve chances of success in 2023.

Prasanna Dhungel co-founded and runs GrowByData, which powers performance marketing for leading brands such as Crocs and top agencies like Merkle. GrowByData offers marketing intelligence for search, marketplace, and product management to win new revenue, boost marketing performance and manage brand compliance.

Prasanna also advises executives, board & investors on data strategy, growth, and product. He has advised leading firms such as Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation, Athena Health, and Apellis Pharma.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

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Seven huge, yet common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2023

30-second summary:

SEO has become a key area of practice for online businesses to gain visibility. If it’s done wrong, however, it can stagnate or even sabotage your online visibility

From filling an entire page up with nothing but images to creating tons of bad keywords or spending too much time on meta keywords

Here is a list of the most common SEO mistakes to avoid and be future-ready

It is easy to make mistakes when doing SEO for a website. I’ve even caught myself making stupid mistakes here and there. That being said, it’s important for webmasters to know what some of the bad things to do are when it comes to SEO.

Sites with no mistakes stand a better chance against the big guys. Sites that have many backlinks, but have some problems in the markup can quickly climb in the search results when the SEO boo-boos are fixed. Luckily for webmasters, most of these mistakes are extremely easy to fix and can be completely fixed within minutes.

For those with search engines regularly crawling their sites, the changes can be made search engine-side almost instantly. Those with slightly lower crawl rates will naturally have to wait longer, but the changes will have their benefits in time. I want to add also that this article will be reflecting the changes in SEO in recent years as meta keywords, for example, are definitely not as important as they once were.

Here are the most common SEO mistakes and how to solve them:

SEO mistake #1: Nothing to read

The problem:

You have either filled an entire page up with nothing but images OR you are using development methods that aren’t crawler friendly, for example a site that uses nothing but flash. The search engine has no text (or anything) to read.

You may have a well-written and keyword rich article that may be beautifully displayed in flash or images, but the search engines may not be able to read it. Therefore, you won’t rank very well for your keyword rich article.

The solution:

According to Google’s official webmaster guidelines,

“Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the ALT attribute to include a few words of descriptive text“.

Also, I would recommend you to always go for more plain text on your website. And just because it is called plain text doesn’t mean it has to look plain. There are some very beautifully designed sites that are easily readable by search engines. You don’t have to sacrifice beauty so that the search engines can crawl your site.

SEO mistake #2: Nondescript URLs

The problem:

You might have a great webpage on your website with a keyword rich description on let’s say strawberry cheesecake. You go in depth on your article about how wonderful and deliciously moist your cheesecake recipe is. Your URL, however just says https://ift.tt/IYGWAHb. Search engines place importance not only on the URL, which should describe your site in some way, but also on the slug which, in this case, I’ve called node61.

The solution:

Get a URL that describes your site. If you have a website on affiliate marketing, for instance, try to get something like https://ift.tt/pUMIBlr. If you write an article about affiliate marketing tips, insights or whatever else, make sure the slug represents that somehow so that the URL will be something like that one of this article about affiliate marketing programs. There are many ways to do this depending on the content management system you use. You can configure WordPress to automatically give you a descriptive slug based on the title of your article or you can also input your own slug.

SEO mistake #3: Meta keywords obsession

The problem:

You are spending too much time researching and finding the BEST keywords to use in your meta tags.

The solution:

Don’t spend too much time doing this.

According to Neil Patel, the co-founder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar:

“Meta keywords are no longer relevant in today’s SEO. Google may decide to change the rules in the future, but for now, you don’t have to waste your time on it“.

“If you’re a WordPress user, there’s no need to add more tags that you think are relevant to your content,” he added.

While there are still many webmasters who still think the opposite, they are definitely not as important as they were in the past. they were so important in the past, that I even still have an article on nothing but meta keywords! Now, however, meta keywords mean much less than they did in the past. I must confess that I DO still input information into those cute little metadata fields, but I do not spend nearly as much time on that as I used to. You shouldn’t either. Get some quick tags and a nice little description in there and call it a day. Basically just set it and forget it.

SEO mistake #4: Missing alt tags

The problem:

No “alt tags” on your images.

The solution:

Add alt tags to each of your images. By doing this, you’re giving search engines information about what’s in the photo. You don’t have to describe the entire picture, but at least put something descriptive there!

According to Google:

“… If you must use images for textual content, consider using the ALT attribute to include a few words of descriptive text”

Everyone likes to know what’s in a photo, even if they can’t see it. Many people do not have the time to input alt tags for every single little icon or part of the design. It isn’t really necessary to have alt tags on ALL images, just the important ones. The alt tag argument is becoming more and more controversial, but it doesn’t hurt to add them and personally, I’ve noticed a difference since adding them.

SEO mistake #5: Using HTML instead of CSS

The problem:

Everything on your site is HTML. You love HTML and can’t get enough of it.

The solution:

If your site design is in HTML, you’re committing a cardinal development sin. What year is this – 1997? Site design should be written in CSS. Why is this a problem? Search engines can have difficulty differentiating what is design and what is content if your site is written strictly in HTML.

Another difficulty faced by those whose sites aren’t in CSS is painstaking process of making changes to a layout.

SEO mistake #6: No backlinks

The problem:

Your site has no back links.

The solution:

A site’s on-page SEO really helps, but off-page SEO is what’s going to bring it to the top. Websites need back links and quality back links.

According to Patel:

“When deciding how to rank your website, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines look at how many links lead to your site (and the quality of those links)“.

“The more high-quality, trustworthy, and authoritative sites linking to you, the higher your blog posts and sales pages will appear on search result pages,” he added.

In fact, one of the most important part of SEO is back links. It’s important to also put your keywords in your backlinks. It’s important for backlinks to be natural… or at least appear natural, so webmasters must take care in not creating too many backlinks right away.

Too many backlinks in a short span of time looks fishy and sites have been penalized for this. Take it slow. Add a new backlink here and there. Taking it slow allows you a lot of space to dabble a little – to see what works and what doesn’t without a major investment of time or money.

SEO mistake #7: Bad keywords

The problem:

You’ve picked a great keyword, but you have 50,387 back links and still don’t rank for the keyword.

The solution:

You’ve picked some bad keywords. If you’ve already got a ton of backlinks and you wish to stay in your niche, you’ll probably bring a lot more traffic in with “ahem” slightly less competitive keywords.

Every niche has those extremely competitive keywords, but those with a little creativity and research, you can come up with some good keywords – ones that people search for often, but is something for which your website can rank.

Jacob McMillen is a copywriter, marketing blogger, and inbound marketing consultant. He can be found on Twitter @jmcmillen89 and LinkedIn as Jacob McMillen.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

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Seven tips to optimize page speed in 2023

30-second summary:

There has been a gradual increase in Google’s impact of page load time on website rankings

Google has introduced the three Core Web Vitals metrics as ranking factors to measure user experience

The following steps can help you get a better idea of the performance of your website through multiple tests

A fast website not only delivers a better experience but can also increase conversion rates and improve your search engine rankings. Google has introduced the three Core Web Vitals metrics to measure user experience and is using them as a ranking factor.

Let’s take a look at what you can do to test and optimize the performance of your website.

Start in Google Search Console

Want to know if optimizing Core Web Vitals is something you should be thinking about? Use the page experience report in Google Search Console to check if any of the pages on your website are loading too slowly.

Search Console shows data that Google collects from real users in Chrome, and this is also the data that’s used as a ranking signal. You can see exactly what page URLs need to be optimized.

Run a website speed test

Google’s real user data will tell you how fast your website is, but it won’t provide an analysis that explains why your website is slow.

Run a free website speed test to find out. Simply enter the URL of the page you want to test. You’ll get a detailed performance report for your website, including recommendations on how to optimize it.

Use priority hints to optimize the Largest Contentful Paint

Priority Hints are a new browser feature that came out in 2022. It allows website owners to indicate how important an image or other resource is on the page.

This is especially important when optimizing the Largest Contentful Paint, one of the three Core Web Vitals metrics. It measures how long it takes for the main page content to appear after opening the page.

By default, browsers assume that all images are low priority until the page starts rendering and the browser knows which images are visible to the user. That way bandwidth isn’t wasted on low-priority images near the bottom of the page or in the footer. But it also slows down important images at the top of the page.

Adding a fetchpriority=”high” attribute to the img element that’s responsible for the Largest Contentful Paint ensures that it’s downloaded quickly.

Use native image lazy loading for optimization

Image lazy loading means only loading images when they become visible to the user. It’s a great way to help the browser focus on the most important content first.

However, image lazy loading can also slow cause images to take longer to load, especially when using a JavaScript lazy loading library. In that case, the browser first needs to load the JavaScript library before starting to load images. This long request chain means that it takes a while for the browser to load the image.

Today browsers support native lazy loading with the loading=”lazy” attribute for images. That way you can get the benefits of lazy loading without incurring the cost of having to download a JavaScript library first.

Remove and optimize render-blocking resources

Render-blocking resources are network requests that the browser needs to make before it can show any page content to the user. They include the HTML document, CSS stylesheets, as well as some JavaScript files.

Since these resources have such a big impact on page load time you should check each one to see if it’s truly necessary. The async keyword on the HTML script tag lets you load JavaScript code without blocking rendering.

If a resource has to block rendering check if you can optimize the request to load the resource more quickly, for example by improving compression or loading the file from your main web server instead of from a third party.

Optimize with the new interaction to Next Paint metric

Google has announced a new metric called Interaction to Next Paint. This metric measures how quickly your site responds to user input and is likely to become one of the Core Web Vitals in the future.

You can already see how your website is doing on this metric using tools like PageSpeed Insights.

Continuously monitor your site performance

One-off site speed tests can identify performance issues on your website, but they don’t make it easy to keep track of your test results and confirm that your optimizations are working.

DebugBear continuously monitors your website to check and alerts you when there’s a problem. The tool also makes it easy to show off the impact of your work to clients and share test results with your team.

Try DebugBear with a free 14-day trial.

  The post Seven tips to optimize page speed in 2023 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Five things you need to know about content optimization in 2023

30-second summary:

As the content battleground goes through tremendous upheaval, SEO insights will continue to grow in importance

ChatGPT can help content marketers get an edge over their competition by efficiently creating and editing high-quality content

Making sure your content rank high enough to engage the target audience requires strategic planning and implementation

Google is constantly testing and updating its algorithms in pursuit of the best possible searcher experience. As the search giant explains in its ‘How Search Works’ documentation, that means understanding the intent behind the query and bringing back results that are relevant, high-quality, and accessible for consumers.

As if the constantly shifting search landscape weren’t difficult enough to navigate, content marketers are also contending with an increasingly technology-charged environment. Competitors are upping the stakes with tools and platforms that generate smarter, real-time insights and even make content optimization and personalization on the fly based on audience behavior, location, and data points.

Set-it-and-forget-it content optimization is a thing of the past. Here’s what you need to know to help your content get found, engage your target audience, and convert searchers to customers in 2023.

AI automation going to be integral for content optimization

As the content battleground heats up, SEO insights will continue to grow in importance as a key source of intelligence. We’re optimizing content for humans, not search engines, after all – we had better have a solid understanding of what those people need and want.

While I do not advocate automation for full content creation, I believe next year – as resources become stretched automation will have a bigger impact on helping with content optimization of existing content.

CHATGPT

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a powerful language generation model that leverages the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) architecture to produce realistic human-like text. With Chat GPT’s wide range of capabilities – from completing sentences and answering questions to generating content ideas or powering research initiatives – it can be an invaluable asset for any Natural Language Processing project.

The introduction on ChatGPT has caused considerable debate and explosive amounts of content on the web. With ChatGPT, content marketers can achieve an extra edge over their competition by efficiently creating and editing high-quality content. It offers assistance with generating titles for blog posts, summaries of topics or articles, as well as comprehensive campaigns when targeting a specific audience.

However, it is important to remember that this technology should be used to enhance human creativity rather than completely replacing it.

For many years now AI-powered technology has been helping content marketers and SEOs automate repetitive tasks such as data analysis, scanning for technical issues, and reporting, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. AI also enables real-time analysis of a greater volume of consumer touchpoints and behavioral data points for smarter, more precise predictive analysis, opportunity forecasting, real-time content recommendations, and more.

With so much data in play and recession concerns already impacting 2023 budgets in many organizations, content marketers will have to do more with less this coming year. You’ll need to carefully balance human creative resources with AI assists where they make sense to stay flexible, agile, and ready to respond to the market.

It’s time to look at your body of content as a whole

Google’s Helpful Content update, which rolled out in August, is a sitewide signal targeting a high proportion of thin, unhelpful, low-quality content. That means the exceptional content on your site won’t rank to their greatest potential if they’re lost in a sea of mediocre, outdated assets.

It might be time for a content reboot – but don’t get carried away. Before you start unpublishing and redirecting blog posts, lean on technology for automated site auditing and see what you can fix up first. AI-assisted technology can help sniff out on-page elements, including page titles and H1 tags, and off-page factors like page speed, redirects, and 404 errors that can support your content refreshing strategy.

Focus on your highest trafficked and most visible pages first, i.e.: those linked from the homepage or main menu. Google’s John Mueller confirmed recently that if the important pages on your website are low quality, it’s bad news for the entire site. There’s no percentage by which this is measured, he said, urging content marketers and SEOs to instead think of what the average user would think when they visit your website.

Take advantage of location-based content optimization opportunities

Consumers crave personalized experiences, and location is your low-hanging fruit. Seasonal weather trends, local events, and holidays all impact your search traffic in various ways and present opportunities for location-based optimization.

AI-assisted technology can help you discover these opportunities and evaluate topical keywords at scale so you can plan content campaigns and promotions that tap into this increased demand when it’s happening.

Make the best possible use of content created for locally relevant campaigns by repurposing and promoting it across your website, local landing pages, social media profiles, and Google Business Profiles for each location. Google Posts, for example, are a fantastic and underutilized tool for enhancing your content’s visibility and interactivity right on the search results page.

Optimize content with conversational & high-volume keywords

Look for conversational and trending terms in your keyword research, too. Top-of-funnel keywords that help generate awareness of the topic and spur conversations in social channels offer great opportunities for promotion. Use hashtags organically and target them in paid content promotion campaigns to dramatically expand your audience.

Conversational keywords are a good opportunity for enhancing that content’s visibility in search, too. Check out the ‘People Also Ask’ results and other featured snippets available on the search results page (SERP) for your keyword terms. Incorporate questions and answers in your content to naturally optimize for these and voice search queries.

It’s important that you utilize SEO insights and real-time data correctly; you don’t want to be targeting what was trending last month and is already over. AI is a great assist here, as well, as an intelligent tool can be scanning and analyzing constantly, sending recommendations for new content opportunities as they arise.

Consider how you optimize content based on intent and experience

The best content comes from a deep, meaningful understanding of the searcher’s intent. What problem were they experiencing or what need did they have that caused them to seek out your content in the first place? And how does your blog post, ebook, or landing page copy enhance their experience?

Look at the search results page as a doorway to your “home”. How’s your curb appeal? What do potential customers see when they encounter one of your pages in search results? What kind of experience do you offer when they step over the threshold and click through to your website?

The best content meets visitors where they are at with relevant, high-quality information presented in a way that is accessible, fast loading, and easy to digest. This is the case for both short and long form SEO content. Ensure your content contains calls to action designed to give people options and help them discover the next step in their journey versus attempting to sell them on something they may not be ready for yet.

2023, the year of SEO: why brands are leaning in and how to prepare

Conclusion

The audience is king, queen, and the entire court as we head into 2023. SEO and content marketing give you countless opportunities to connect with these people but remember they are a means to an end. Keep searcher intent and audience needs at the heart of every piece of content you create and campaign you plan for the coming year.

The post Five things you need to know about content optimization in 2023 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Move on from these nine fundamental content marketing myths

30-second summary:

Content does not equal authority: Creating content doesn’t automatically makes you an authority

Automation is good but don’t hinder creativity and expertise with smart AI tools

Not all of your content is going to rank or go viral, but will help you understand and strategize according to your target audience

Are you happy with how your content marketing strategy performs?

Chances are, you are (or your marketing team is) doing it wrong, and, from experience, those mistakes are often fundamental.

Content marketing is more than content that ranks – it’s the most effective way to promote your brand.

However there are too many myths that prevent your content marketing strategy from working.

Here are the most common ones:

Producing content makes me an authority

It is still surprisingly a widespread phenomenon: Someone publishes their first article and expects to wake up famous.

Just because you produce content it doesn’t make you an authority on your industry.

To do that, you have to regularly produce top content and be cited by other authorities as a reliable source. It’s not the fact of content, it’s the type of content.

A blog is enough

Having a blog is a good first step in content marketing.

But too many companies start blogs just because their competitors did.

If there is no planning or strategy, there’s no point in having a blog. Think of your blog as a pillar of your content marketing strategy. It’s a core platform for publishing original content to show thought leadership and build authority.

But just like building a house, your strategy needs other pillars, or it will collapse. Assuming your blog is all you need is a mistake.

The first question to ask yourself prior to starting a blog is “why?” Define your goals, and go from there. Plan content using keyword research and analysis, include your customer support to better understand your customers’ needs, using surveying, etc. Blogging involves a lot of planning.

More is more

If you’re seeing the benefit of producing a single piece of content, how much more attention would you get if you produced dozens really quickly?

It’s a risky strategy because you could overwhelm your audience with too much stuff. And if you’re so focused on quantity that you forget about quality, the content will actually HURT your reputation and rankings (Google is now insisting on helpful content which means content quality is crucial).

A better option? Produce well researched and authoritative content at regular intervals to boost your reputation and increase conversions. If you can, delegate content creation to your team members. You’ll be surprised how much talent you already have in your company.

Don’t publish more content than you have time to promote.

Automation can’t hurt me

Don’t get me wrong here: Some forms of automation are helpful and sometimes even necessary. You cannot succeed in email marketing without using automation to personalize it. Likewise, web analytics reporting and monitoring usually involves some level of automation.

Automation is dangerous when you start automating human interactions or creative processes. Yes, artificial intelligence can now automate your content creation but it is detectable (and probably soon punishable).

Over scheduling and over-automating can definitely hurt as well. Sure, it makes sense to schedule content for the times when you’re not available, but showing up and being there to talk is what builds the relationship.

Unless you’re already a mega-brand, if every tweet or share is automated, you’ll see the results in lower engagement.

If something works, why change it

Content marketing is one the fastest-moving marketing channels. What worked yesterday may actually hurt you today.

Too many businesses hang on to their old marketing tactics for too long. Yes, a decade ago a 300-word mediocre article could very well rank if you buy a couple of backlinks to it, but those days are long gone and both of these tactics may actually get your site flagged and filtered today.

Keep educating yourself, discovering new tactics and monitoring what is no longer acceptable. When it comes to corporate and brand-driven blogging, building trust is much more important than quick wins.

Content marketing is about advertising

Content does not translate into relentless promotion of your products and services.

Content marketing should provide something useful to the people who grab your content.

Don’t worry; you are allowed to use the soft sell, for instance in white papers where you identify a problem and show how your product can solve it.

In other words, you can create a conversion funnel from your content, but it is going to be a longer funnel from your commercial landing page. Instead of selling something right away, you’ll probably need to give away some downloadable content or entice your reader to become your subscriber.

Content marketing is about link building

Content marketing is about providing great content that builds authority and helps customers make favorable decisions about your brand, product or services.

Of course, if you create great content, then other people will think it’s worth talking about and link back to your site. Focus on creating content with depth, interest and relevance to users and you’ll get authority, search engine prominence and backlinks.

Content only succeeds if it goes viral

Everyone dreams of creating a piece of viral content, but don’t worry if you can’t. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t mean your content marketing campaign is a failure.

Measure your success in the amount of attention you get for your products and services and brand.

As long as you are reaching those goals, then your content marketing campaign is a success. Virality, if it happens, is just a fringe benefit.

Content marketing is easy

This is the biggest myth of all.

Sure, if you equate content marketing with just blogging or just doing social media, you might think it’s easy to do. But it’s not. Successful content marketing means thinking about content types and goals so you get the most benefit from your efforts.

It’s not easy, but that’s why the rewards are so large for the people who understand it and do it right.

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

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The post Move on from these nine fundamental content marketing myths appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Three must-have GA4 SEO reports you can build in under 30 minutes

30-second summary:

If conveying the value to C-suite wasn’t challenging enough, SEOs are now having to deal with the GA4 shift

Does your SEO reporting take hours or days? Is it too detailed, or not detailed enough?

Buy back some time for a cuppa and a catch-up, use this super-detailed guide that will save you hours and get you the most effective GA4 reports

Have you experienced this… desperately trying to find where your favorite GA3 reports are hiding inside the new Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

The process can feel daunting for all teams–including SEO teams looking to trace the impact of their search engine optimization efforts on the website’s overall performance. That is because many GA3 (also known as Universal Analytics) reports are either difficult to locate or need to be custom-built from scratch inside the new GA4.

That’s where these three reports come in!

Here are the three GA4 SEO “P” reports we will be creating together in GA4

1. SEO Pages report

Which of our web pages are successfully ranking in the search engines and generating the most traffic, conversions, and sales for the business? With this report, you can instantly pinpoint the pages that need more “SEO” optimization so you can increase your website’s traffic, conversions, and sales.

2. SEO Profiles report

What locations, interests, age groups, and other characteristics define our SEO audience? With this report, you can confidently define or redefine your ideal customer–so you can attract more of them.

3. SEO Paths report

How do our organic search traffic visitors navigate our website? What is their most common path to conversion? With this report, you can quickly discover and remove any roadblocks that are preventing your visitors from converting into leads and customers.

So we’re all on the same page: Throughout this article, I will use the phrases SEO traffic, organic search traffic, and organic traffic synonymously. They all mean people who typed a query into Google, looked through the unpaid (non-ad) search results, and then clicked through to your website.

Step 1: Create your SEO Pages report

One of the time-saving beauties of Google Analytics 4 is the Explore feature which allows us to create fully custom reports from scratch. We will use this feature to create our SEO Pages report. Quick note: Google has announced a new landing page report in GA4 that you can use to build this report as well. For now, let’s keep going with the quick and easy steps outlined in this article.

Click Explore. Click Explore in the left menu

Click Blank. On the next screen, click Blank

IMPORTANT: Don’t see it? If you do not see the option to click Blank, your access to GA4 is set too low. You need to ask your GA4 administrator to upgrade your access so you can create reports. Once you’ve done that, come back and continue the steps.

  Name exploration. Under “Variables” change the Untitled exploration to SEO Pages. You have now named your report.

Create Organic Search segment. Click the + sign next to “SEGMENTS” > User segment > At the top, change the segment name from “Untitled segment” to “Organic Search Traffic” > Add new condition > search for and click on First user medium > click Add Filter > select contains > type and select organic > Apply. You have just created a segment (or filter) that automatically only displays information about your organic search traffic in the report you’re about to create.

We’re going to bulk-add: Now that you have created your organic search traffic segment, it’s time to build a custom report, then apply your segment to it. In the coming steps, we will bulk-add all the metrics and all the dimensions we will need for all three SEO “P” reports.

Add Landing Page dimension. Click the + sign next to DIMENSIONS > in the search box, type landing page and when it appears, check the Landing Page + query string box.

Add additional dimensions. Repeat the previous steps by searching for and checking the checkboxes of the following dimensions:

Device category

Browser

Country

City

Type “demographic” and check all the demographic dimensions you want to report on, such as Age, Gender, and Interests. Note: For these selections to report any data, you will need to enable the Google Signals functionality in GA4 which you can do by opening another tab and going to Admin > Data Settings > Data Collection > Get Started > Continue > Activate. Be sure to read Google’s policy to ensure that it complies with your organization’s privacy requirements If not, skip this bullet.

Import all dimensions at once. After the final dimension’s checkbox has been checked, click the Import button to bulk-import all of the dimensions into your exploration report.

Add Entrances metric. Click the + sign next to METRICS > in the search box, type entrances and when it appears, check the Entrances box.

Add additional metrics. Repeat the previous steps by searching for and checking the checkboxes of the following metrics:

Entrances

Views

Views per user

Engagement rate

Bounce rate

Conversions

Session conversion rate

User conversion rate

New users

Returning users

Total users

eCommerce revenue (if you have an eCommerce website)

Optional step: Add other metrics–If you prefer to use different metrics than the ones listed above, GA4 makes it very easy to do so. Just leave the search box blank and use the “All” column to expand and add additional metrics you’re interested in. Hovering over a metric shows a definition of the metric, which is very helpful. You are free to do this now, or later. For now, let’s keep going.

Import all metrics at once. After the final metric’s checkbox has been checked, click the Import button to bulk-import all of the metrics into your exploration report.

Name the report. Rename the Free form report to Landing pages by clicking and typing over it.

Add dimension to the report row. Double-click the “Landing page + query string” item under DIMENSIONS > this will add it to the “ROWS” section under the “Tab Setting” section.

Add metrics to the report column. One by one, Double-click the following items under METRICS and they will be added to the columns of the report we are building: Entrances, Views, Views per user, Conversions, Session conversion rate, User conversion rate.

Change cell type. Under the “Tab Setting” section, scroll down and change the Cell type to Heat map.

Congratulations! You have successfully created your SEO Pages report.

How to read your SEO Pages report

What the SEO Pages report tells you

Because the SEO Pages report uses the Organic Search Traffic segment that we created, here’s what the report tells you: The pages of your website that are responsible for generating the most organic search traffic, conversions, and sales to your business. (You can change the time frame on the left to adjust to different periods.)

Now what? 

Are these the pages you expected? Any pages glaringly missing from the report? This report helps you quickly pinpoint the pages that need more “SEO” optimization.

How? Because if you notice that key pages of your website–perhaps your core product pages, your main service pages, the big blog post your team spent weeks on, etc.–are missing from or are near the bottom of the SEO Pages report, this means those key pages are likely not ranking well in the search engines when your prospects are “googling.”

This tells you that it’s time to optimize these pages so they can start generating more traffic, conversions, and sales for the business. If you’re not sure how to optimize your web pages, see SEO Sprints on SprintMarketer.com.

Bonus Tip: Sorting

If you want to sort the report by another metric other than Entrances–for example, conversions–simply drag that metric to the top of the “VALUES” list under “Tab Settings.” In doing so, you will be able to quickly report on which pages of your site are responsible for generating the most conversions from SEO traffic.

Step 2: Create your SEO Profiles report

Because we’ve already created the SEO Pages report, we will use a shortcut to create the SEO Profiles report. Let’s dive in.

Click Explore. Click Explore in the left menu.

Duplicate the SEO Pages report. On the next screen, find your SEO Pages report > click the 3 dots to the right of your SEO Pages report > select Duplicate.

IMPORTANT: Don’t see it? If you do not see the option to click Duplicate, your access to GA4 is set too low. You need to ask your GA4 administrator to upgrade your access so you can create reports. Once you’ve done that, come back and continue the steps.

  Rename the duplicated report. A new report will appear and it will be named “Copy of SEO Pages” > click the 3 dots to the right of that report > select Rename > change the name to “SEO Profiles” > Submit.

Create your Device category report to profile the devices your SEO traffic uses to access your website.

Open the report. Click on the name of your SEO Profiles report to open it > now it’s time to modify our dimensions so you only see the dimensions that give you insight into the “profiles” of your SEO visitors.

Remove old dimension. Under the “Tab Settings” column, hover over the Landing page + query string dimension located under “ROWS” > then click on the X to remove it from the list of dimensions. This will make your report “disappear” because there is no dimension selected, but not to worry–we will bring it back right away.

Add new dimension. Double-click the Device category dimension. This will move the Device category dimension under “ROWS” in the “Tab Settings” column. Voila, your report has now reappeared.

Rename your table. Now that your Device category report has been created, you need to change the name of the table from Landing pages > Click on the words Landing pages > type “Device” > click Enter on your keyboard.

Sorting. I prefer to sort this report by Total users so I can know the device preference of my individual users–this way, I’m not sorting by Views, Entrances, Sessions, or other metrics that may be inflated by a small number of users who visit frequently. To sort the report by Total users, simply drag the Total users metric to the top of the “VALUES” list under “Tab Settings.”

You’ve created valuable data. Your new Device category report gives you insight into the profile of your SEO traffic by telling you their preferred devices (mobile, desktop, tablet, etc.). This is helpful in case your website experience is faulty or glitchy on certain devices, in which case if that device shows up near the top of your report, it should be a priority to fix those issues.

Create your Browser report to profile the browsers your SEO traffic uses to access your website.

Duplicate. Creating this report will be a breeze because you only need to duplicate the previous report and make some quick changes. Click on the arrow next to “Device” > select Duplicate

Rename table. A new table will appear. Let’s rename it > Click on the words Device in the new table > type “Browser” > click Enter on your keyboard.

Remove old dimension. Under the “Tab Settings” column, hover over the Device category dimension located under “ROWS” > then click on the X to remove it from the list of dimensions. This will make your report “disappear” because there is no dimension selected, but not to worry–we will bring it back right away.

Add new dimension. Double-click the Browser dimension. This will move the Browser dimension under “ROWS” in the “Tab Settings” column. Voila, your report has now reappeared.

Sorting. Make sure your table is sorted by Total users. If not, here’s how: To sort the report by Total users, simply drag the Total users metric to the top of the “VALUES” list under “Tab Settings.”

You’ve created valuable data. Your new Browser report gives you insight into the profile of your SEO traffic by telling you their preferred browsers. This is helpful in case your website experience is faulty or glitchy on certain browsers, in which case if that browser shows up near the top of your report, it should be a priority to fix those issues.

Create your additional profile reports. Follow the steps in bullet 5 to create tables for all the additional dimensions such as City, Country, Age, Gender, Interest, and any other dimensions you may have added in Step 3 when you created your SEO Pages report.

Congratulations! You have successfully created your SEO Profiles report.

How to read your SEO Profiles report

What the SEO Profiles report tells you

Each tab of your new SEO Profiles report provides an insight into your SEO audience. For example, you know their device preferences, their browser preferences, their ages, their interests, their top locations, and more. (You can change the time frame on the left to adjust to different periods.)

Now what? 

With this information, you can confidently define or redefine who your ideal customer is and use this invaluable information to:

Rework the wording your use on your website so it’s more effective for this group

Redefine the audiences you’re using for your ads (if you’re running ads)

Update the wording you use in your offline messages to align with your audience and more.

Understanding who your audience is and speaking their language is a marketing superpower that can create emotional connections between you and your potential customers, and drive up conversions and sales.

Step 3: Create your SEO Paths report

IMPORTANT: Do you have events set up? This SEO Paths report requires that you have added events and conversions to your GA4 property. For example, have you configured your “purchase” or “lead” events so GA4 knows how to spot your conversions? If not, search for articles on this site, or see Analytics (GA4) Sprints on SprintMarketer.com.

  In this step, we will build two powerful reports. The first one is your Traffic Flow report which tells you how all SEO visitors navigate your website, and the second is your Conversion Flow report which tells you how your *SEO visitors who converted into leads or sales* navigated your website.

Ready? Let’s go.

Click Explore. Click Explore in the left menu.

Duplicate the SEO Pages report. On the next screen, find your SEO Pages report > click the 3 dots to the right of your SEO Pages report > select Duplicate.

IMPORTANT: Don’t see it? If you do not see the option to click Duplicate, your access to GA4 is set too low. You need to ask your GA4 administrator to upgrade your access so you can create reports. Once you’ve done that, come back and continue the steps.

  Rename the duplicated report. A new report will appear and it will be named “Copy of SEO Pages” > click the 3 dots to the right of that report > select Rename > change the name to “SEO Paths ” > Submit.

Open the report. Click on the name of your SEO Paths report to open it > now it’s time to modify your report. Let’s dive in.

Start new report. Click the + sign next to the Landing Pages report > Select Path exploration.

Click Start over. Click Start over to clear everything in the existing report.

Delete old report. Click on the old Landing Pages report > click on the arrow next to its name < select Delete.

Rename report. Let’s give your report a more intuitive name. Click on the words Path exploration in the report > type Traffic Flow > click Enter on your keyboard.

Add new dimension. Double-click the Device category dimension. This will move the Device category dimension under “ROWS” in the “Tab Settings” column.

Apply segment. Double-click the Organic Search Traffic segment to apply it to the new report (since we started over).

Remove old metrics. Under the “Tab Settings” column, hover over Event count located under “METRICS” > then click on the X to remove it from the report.

Add new metric. Double-click the Total users metric. This will move the Total users metric under “METRICS” in the “Tab Settings” column and apply it to your report.

Build your Traffic Flow report. This report shows how your SEO visitors navigated your site once they landed on it. This is a fantastic report for confirming whether the path you think people should take is indeed the path they are taking.

Set Starting Point. Let’s begin by telling this report what we consider a starting point for traffic to our website. Click Drop or select node inside the Starting Point text on the report > select Event name > select session_start

Rename steps. Click on the dropdown menu under STEP +1 > select Page title and screen name. This will expose the names of the pages that your visitors visit during their session. The bigger groupings represent the most visited pages.

Reading this report. For example, in the screenshot below, I can see that, for the date range selected, after leaving the Google Online Store, the majority of the SEO visitors navigated to the Home page followed by the Men’s / Unisex Apparel page, followed by several other pages. I now know that people go back to the home page when I don’t expect them to–which could indicate that the calls-to-action on the Google Online Store page may not be clear.

Add more paths. (1) Double-click any blue bar to expose additional visitor paths and see how your visitors navigated from one page to another. (2) Hover your mouse over any blue bar to see that page’s visitor breakdown by Device category. See the screenshot below.

Congratulations! You have successfully created your SEO Traffic Flow report.

Build your Conversion Flow report. This report is a superb companion to the Traffic Flow report because it shows how users who converted navigated your site before they converted. This is a fantastic report for verifying if the funnel you think people should take is indeed the funnel they are taking.

Duplicate. Click the arrow next to the Traffic Flow report > Duplicate > Rename the new report Conversion Flow > click Start over to clear the existing report. It’s now time to quickly create your Conversion Flow report.

Set Ending Point. Let’s begin by telling this report what we consider to be an ending point (conversion event). Click Drop or select node inside the Ending Point text on the report > select Event name > search for and choose the event that represents the conversion you’ve set up for your website, for example, purchase, generate_lead, or etc.

Rename steps. Click on the dropdown menu under STEP +1 > select Page title and screen name. This will expose the names of the pages that your visitors visit during their session. The bigger groupings represent the most visited pages.

Reading this report. For example, in the screenshot below, I can see that, for the date range selected, the weakest link in the checkout process is from the Shopping Cart to the Checkout. Now I know that we need to get better at encouraging people to check out once they’ve added items to their cart.

Add more paths as needed. (1) Double-click any blue bar to expose additional visitor paths and see how your visitors navigated from one page to another.(2) Hover your mouse over any blue bar to see that page’s visitor breakdown by Device category. See the screenshot below.

Congratulations! You have successfully created your SEO Conversion Flow report.

How to read your SEO Paths report

What the SEO Paths report tells you

With your Traffic Flow report, you can now observe exactly how your SEO visitors experience your website and make fixes where unexpected behavior might be occurring.

With your Conversion Flow report, you can now observe the most common steps your SEO visitors take while converting into leads or customers–and you can use this knowledge to make fixes where unexpected behavior might be occurring.

Now what? 

How do our organic search traffic visitors navigate our website? What is their most common path to conversion?

Maybe you need to add a call-to-action on one of your drop-off pages, so visitors know exactly what their next step should be.

Maybe you need to add an upsell to your checkout process so you can increase your transaction value.

Maybe you need to remove or completely rework a certain page because it’s proving to have the highest drop-off rate in the funnel.

Understanding and removing roadblocks from your users’ experience is a powerful marketing technique that can help you generate more conversions and sales from your existing traffic without having to generate new traffic.

Let’s summarize

Google Analytics 4 can feel daunting for all marketers, and SEOs are no exception. But with these quick and mighty GA4 SEO “P” reports, those of us who manage search engine optimization campaigns can easily monitor and communicate the impact of organic search traffic on the business.

Bonus: Sharing your GA4 SEO reports

When you first create an exploration, only you can see it. Would it be valuable for you to share your 3 reports with other members of your team? If so, this bonus is for you.

Sharing your Explore reports

Click on the report you want to share

In the upper right, click Share exploration

That’s it. Anyone who has a Viewer role (or higher) in your GA4 property will be able to see your report when they log in and go to Explore.

If you’re not sure how to create Viewers or any other roles inside GA4, it’s very easy. Just go to Admin > click Access Management in the Account or Property column > Assign roles to new or existing members. If you get stuck here, check out this access management article from Google.

Exporting your Explore reports

In the upper right, click Export data.

Select the export format:

Google Sheets

TSV (tab-separated values)

CSV (comma-separated values)

PDF

PDF (all tabs)

When you export to Sheets, TSV, or CSV formats, all the data available in the selected visualization is exported. This may be more data than is currently displayed. When you export to PDF, only the data currently displayed in the visualization is saved.

Happy SEO GA4 reporting!

Mary Owusu is CEO at Sprint Marketer, Professor of Digital Marketing & Analytics, President-Elect at the Digital Analytics Association Board. Mary is also an ATHENA Award Winner and FOUR Under 40 Emerging Leaders (AMA).

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post Three must-have GA4 SEO reports you can build in under 30 minutes appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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Is your SEO performance a dumpster fire? Here’s how to salvage it

30-second summary:

A failing SEO strategy can happen to the best of us

No doubt it’s disheartening when your competitors are miles ahead and your business is struggling to bring in new leads

Founder of LSEO and best-selling author, Kristopher (Kris) Jones provides comprehensive steps and advice on how you can salvage your SEO performance

Dumpster fires: surely they can’t happen to you. Right? But before you know it, your website’s traffic has tanked, your competitors are getting all the organic love, and you couldn’t get a conversion if your life depended on it. Folks, if your SEO performance sounds like that, you might just have a dumpster fire on your hands.

A failing SEO strategy can happen to the best of us. There’s no doubt it’s disheartening when your competitors are all miles ahead of you and your business isn’t bringing in new leads.

The good news is that it’s never too late to turn things around.

When is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago.

When’s the second-best time? Right now, so let’s get to it.

Here’s how to salvage your dumpster fire of an SEO strategy.

1. Review and optimize all your current content

I’m going to talk about content a few times in this post.

That’s because content has long been and remains the most important element to focus on in your overall SEO strategy.

Websites are nothing without content.

You can see a website getting by with no meta descriptions, you can see them getting by without optimized images, but without content, what do you have?

Not a website!

But if you’re focusing on content first to turn around your SEO strategy, where do you start?

Yes, you optimize everything you already have.

You don’t want to get ahead of yourself by constantly creating new content when you have a whole slew of old pages and posts that may have fallen into SEO disrepair.

Google treats optimized content the same as new content, so to start out, you’ll want to audit your existing content to see what’s good, what’s bad, and what you can fix up to be good again.

You can use a content audit tool like that found in Semrush, or, if you have a more manageable load of content to work with, checking things out manually would work well, too.

This is about more than just deciding what content you like or do not like, although you should be able to tell at a glance which topics are still relevant to your website.

But to check out the SEO performance of each page and post, you can use Semrush as I said, or go manual with Google Search Console.

What I like to do is to put each URL into Search Console and check out how it’s doing as far as impressions versus clicks, click-through rate, and the average positions of its ranking keywords.

That gives me a decent snapshot of which pages need attention.

For example

A page with 10,000 impressions in a 30-day period but only 100 clicks will have a CTR of only one percent (not too great).

I would then go to that page to figure out what is causing the low CTR.

The page is obviously being ranked for the keyword, given its high impressions, but if few people are clicking, then maybe the page isn’t as relevant for the term as it once was.

If that’s the case, then optimizing the page for SEO could be a matter of creating new sections of content around that keyword, and certainly retooling what’s there already.

Optimizing your website’s content is a major part of improving your SEO strategy because it involves so many things that are going to help you.

For this first point, I focused only on the writing and editing part of the content optimization.

Let’s now move on to some other parts of an SEO strategy where you could update things (things that could nonetheless still be involved in content optimization).

2. Assess and update all meta tags

Your pages’ meta tags play an important role in your website’s overall SEO health.

Meta tags are also one of the easiest things to let slip by as you work on your website, because they’re so brief and simple, and there are so many of them.

The thing is, meta tags can go out of date as the landscape shifts around your industry and the keywords for which you were optimizing are no longer relevant.

Meta tags are a classic example of why you can’t set it and forget it with SEO.

Meta tags are another element to look at as you go through your content pages to improve their CTR.

Sure, a lot of your content itself could use updates, but retool the meta titles and descriptions, as well.

Remember, the meta information is what organic users see as they scroll a SERP.

If your title and description aren’t interesting or urgent enough to draw in audiences that are in the awareness stage, then those people will keep on scrolling.

Redoing meta tags could include using a new target keyword, rewriting the call to action, or making everything more concise.

Maybe start with a handful of pages only, say 20 or 30, and A/B test the old and new titles and descriptions to see how traffic and CTR change after your edits.

Doing that will confirm for you whether the updating you’re doing is worth it, and whether you should continue down this road with the rest of your pages.

3. Work on your technical performance

When you have to turn around your entire SEO strategy, you have to think about your website holistically.

That means focusing not just on your keywords and content, but also on how your pages perform technically.

I’m grouping issues such as image compression, site speed, mobile responsiveness, and Core Web Vitals all together under the umbrella of “technical performance.”

Although these factors are less “creative” and open-ended as compared to performing new keyword research or optimizing content, they matter just as well.

When people get to your website and are greeted with slow pages, a messy mobile appearance, and content elements that jump around as they load, their trust in you drops.

In a world as competitive as ours, you can’t afford to give people cause for distrust, because you can bet that there are a hundred competitors waiting in line to market to those customers if you can’t do so successfully.

If development work isn’t your forte, look into contracting out to someone who can clean up your website’s coding and otherwise speed things up while also optimizing for mobile.

Images should be compressed so they take up less space but don’t lose any of their quality, and each image should have optimized alt text.

Compressing and optimizing images is something you can definitely do yourself, either through a plugin (on WordPress) or manually if it’s feasible.

Even though page speed and load times aren’t always the most accessible kind of work to business owners and website owners, those are important issues to keep in mind as you labor toward turning around your dumpster fire of an SEO strategy.

4. Resume creating new content

You can turn around even the worst SEO strategy in the world.

Google isn’t going to hold you to the fire forever just because your SEO has been in the dumps even for the last few years.

Google crawls your site every so often whether you’re doing something with it or not, and as it sees that your SEO is improving, it can start to rank some of those pages higher.

So here is where we get into creating all-new, high-quality content.

Content in 2023 can mean a whole range of things, from blog posts to infographics to videos and podcasts and webinars and slide decks.

Whatever makes sense for your business and your industry is what you should do. Whatever types of media you know your audiences like to consume, give that to them.

In 2023, however, you have to be incredibly mindful of being comprehensive and useful for people.

If there’s anything that we’ve learned from 2022’s helpful content update, it’s that you just cannot skimp on content creation (not that you ever could, but Google is smarter than it was 10 years ago).

Gone are the days of skirting by on SEO-centric content, created just to score some ranking for this or that keyword.

Google is paying much more attention now to the intent and usefulness of a piece, and rewarding those web pages featuring actually helpful content (get it?) with higher rankings.

A perfect example of how Google is thinking these days is the product review update, also from 2022.

Google is now deprioritizing the ranking of low-quality product reviews in favor of more expert-level reviews where the reviewer has actually used the product or service and can speak to its pros and cons.

Why? Because Google wants to direct users to content they can actually trust to help them.

When you take the product reviews update and helpful content update together, you can see why content marketing has gotten so much harder over the years.

You can’t just rank after spending an hour on a 400-word blog post anymore.

You have to be a real expert, or at least put in the time and effort to create deep content if you work for a client portfolio.

These are all things you must keep in mind as you create new content for your website in the name of putting out your dumpster fire of an SEO strategy.

Now, of course, there are the nuts and bolts you have to remember, as well, when it comes to new content.

You have to mine the SERPs, develop the proper keyword strategy, and understand the correct intent behind those keywords to be sure you’re creating what people expect to see when they search that keyword.

That stuff you can all learn.

What I want you to take from this section is the idea that you have to work to create that new content. You have to put in that time and dedication to do it well.

5. If you’re local, focus on reviews

I don’t want to leave out the local businesses here: if you’re a local business, do you know that one of the single largest factors in helping your SEO is getting positive Google reviews?

Now, local businesses need to perform all the on-page SEO work that anyone else does, but what do you do as an ongoing SEO strategy?

The play here isn’t keyword-driven SEO content so much, because your local audience isn’t really going to find you that way.

Local audiences find local businesses by performing local searches and checking out the reviews in the map pack.

In fact, 77 percent of local buyers always read online reviews while checking out local businesses.

Your reviews affect the level of trust the public has in you. More people are likely to visit your website and use your business when they see that others have had a positive experience with you.

The cycle goes on when you encourage your customers to leave positive Google reviews.

The more reviews you have, and the more positive they are, the better off your chances will be of rising to the top of your local map pack.

Being at the top should translate into more traffic and better SEO overall.

6. Build natural backlinks

Finally, I want to mention another pillar of Google’s list of known ranking factors: natural backlinks.

Links are what unite everything on the internet together.

They’re also vital in keeping the ranking juices flowing to your web pages when it comes to your SEO strategy.

Backlinks to your website from other websites show Google that you’re an authority in your market niche since people want to reference what you have to say.

Link building, then, is really about building relationships to get your name out there as a trustworthy resource for others.

When Google sees your links coming from relevant, authoritative websites, it will assign more trust to your own site.

Just remember to keep the links coming from websites that make sense to your own.

The quality matters much more than the quantity here.

To do it, create content that people would want to link to, something with a lot of useful stats and other data.

You can also scout other websites in your niche to see where they may have content gaps, and then create content to fill that gap and ask for a link back.

It takes time and effort, and you’re not guaranteed anything, but it’s the natural way to earn backlinks that will actually help your SEO.

Give your SEO time to turn around

You can put out even the biggest dumpster fire when you know what to do and how to do it.

I’ll say again that SEO dumpster fires can happen to the best of us. Sometimes we go all-in on things we think will work, and they don’t.

Sometimes we get lazy and let our SEO go for years.

But it’s never too late to correct things.

It will definitely take time to see things start to shift for you, though; SEO isn’t an overnight solution. It needs anywhere from three to six months or longer to start showing a difference.

If you keep in mind both the broad strokes and the specifics of everything I’ve described here, you truly can reinvent your SEO strategy and be on your way to business growth.

Kris Jones is the founder and former CEO of digital marketing and affiliate network Pepperjam, which he sold to eBay Enterprises in 2009. Most recently Kris founded SEO services and software company LSEO.com and has previously invested in numerous successful technology companies. Kris is an experienced public speaker and is the author of one of the best-selling SEO books of all time called, ‘Search-Engine Optimization – Your Visual Blueprint to Effective Internet Marketing’, which has sold nearly 100,000 copies.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

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How to harness RankBrain for ecommerce websites

30-second summary:

Let’s make this clear, RankBrain is not a Google algorithm, it is a component of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm

RankBrain is a powerful AI-based system that helps Google understand search queries better and generate more accurate results

If you want to break through the clutter of 12+ million ecommerce websites, marketers need to understand and align with Google’s RankBrain-driven search algorithm

This step-by-step guide will help you make RankBrain work in favor of your ecommerce website’s search visibility

Lack of search engine visibility is one of the top reasons ecommerce businesses fail. And it is understandable why.

Data shows that 38 percent of an ecommerce store’s traffic comes through organic sources. When an ecommerce website fails to rise in the search results, it loses touch with a massive chunk of its prospects. And with around 12 to 24 million ecommerce websites out there, disappearing in the search results and failing to interact with the audience means losing to vicious competition.

Attempting to rank higher, on the other hand, means understanding and aligning with Google’s RankBrain-driven search algorithm.

For relevance between search queries and results, Google uses RankBrain to rank websites. Any seller who wishes to rank high and gain exposure must optimize their ecommerce store for RankBrain. But how do you get about harnessing RankBrain for ecommerce?

What is RankBrain?

Google is very secretive about how its algorithms work, so we have little information about what RankBrain is.

But from what we do know, RankBrain is a powerful AI-based system that helps Google understand search queries better and generate more accurate results.

RankBrain helps Google understand the pattern in user search and browsing behavior. With this understanding, Google uncovers the intent behind a search and generates results that are conceptually and contextually relevant to the search.

From the example below, we searched for “Edison” in Google. Now, it could have been the city of Edison in New Jersey. But Google must have known most people who search “Edison” are looking for information on Thomas Edison, and hence generated results accordingly.

This is courtesy of RankBrain.

RankBrain is exceptionally accurate at matching search queries with results. In fact, it outperformed Google’s experts by 10 percent in doing that.

Google now uses RankBrain in all of its search queries. Therefore, it is critical for any ecommerce store looking for search visibility to optimize for RankBrain.

Before moving forward, it is essential to note that RankBrain is not a Google algorithm. It is a component of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm.

Now since that’s out of the way, let’s go ahead and talk about how you can optimize your ecommerce store for RankBrain.

How to optimize and make the most of RankBrain for ecommerce stores

Optimizing for RankBrain involves no rocket science. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Rethink your keyword research

If you are still optimizing your ecommerce store around one primary keyword, please stop. The search engine world has evolved far beyond that.

Yes, keywords are still relevant. But Google no longer uses exact-match keywords to find relevance.

You can see how the search query and keywords in the top search results differ:

Therefore, identify a core keyword and brainstorm other similar keyword ideas around it.

For example, when optimizing your crockery ecommerce store, your main keyword may be imported china crockery, but Google may also associate words like “imported plates” and “China sweet bowls” with your primary keyword.

Additionally, consider including medium-tail keywords. According to digital marketing maestro Shane Barker, medium-tail keywords are the perfect choice when optimizing for RankBrain.

Also, don’t forget question-based keywords. According to research, almost 8 percent of all search queries are questions.

Given that Google processes billions of search queries daily, 8 percent would form an appreciable number of questions.

Therefore, search for and include question-based keywords.

Finally, remember it’s no longer about keyword density. Optimization is all about user experience. Therefore, include keywords in a way that doesn’t disrupt the flow of the content. 

2. Create in-depth and quality content

RankBrain is big on user experience. This is why it gives extra weight to well-written content that offers value to the users.

So, first, identify your target audience’s struggles, and figure out their unasked questions and unsolved problems. And then create detailed content around it.

For example, you have realized your prospects are keen on learning about laptops. You have a topic on hand. Now, you can create a long-form blog or an ebook explaining all the types of laptops, what makes them good and bad, and how they can choose the right laptop for themselves.

Also, keep your readers in mind when creating this content and ensure that the style and language align with their preferences.

Keep your tone conversational. Write like you talk so the readers can feel a human-to-human connection and stay longer on the page, demonstrating satisfaction – something the RankBrain rewards.

3. Work on increasing your CTR

CTR is another indicator of user satisfaction. Google uses a quality-score algorithm. And CTR is an integral part of the quality score.

Activating featured snippets may help since listings containing featured snippets are reported to have 2x higher CTR than those without featured snippets.

When running an ecommerce store, you can use rich snippets to display your product’s reviews or your catalog and price.

Branding may also help increase CTR.

88 percent of customers say authenticity is critical when deciding what brands they want to support.

Therefore, invest in building your brand authority. Generating clicks will become much easier when prospects recognize and trust your brand.

Imagine searching for “running shoes” and coming across two listings, one of Nike and another of an unknown seller. Which one would you click? Nike, most likely because it is a trusted and recognized brand.

4. Focus on user intent and search intent

User intent is defined as the goal or intention of a user behind entering a search term into a search engine.

Imagine you have driven traffic to your ecommerce store. How are you confident that the traffic is here for shopping and not simply browsing?

This is where user or search intent comes into play.

To get more leads and generate more revenue, you have to focus more on the commercial and transactional intent of the user.

Your website ranks higher if you are using intent-specific words.

These transactional intent keywords often include the words discount, buy, deal, promo codes, coupons, cheapest, and purchase.

Thus, you are directed to the right customers using these transactional keywords.

5. Increase dwell time. Decrease bounce rate.

RankBrain collects information about user satisfaction and assigns ranks based on that.

When a user enters your website and leaves quickly, RankBrain thinks your website isn’t satisfactory enough for the user. And hence, your website may suffer in ranking.

As opposed to that, if a user visits your website and stays back for a long time, this tells RankBrain how users are satisfied with what you have on your website. Consequently, you may be rewarded.

This is why you must work on increasing your website’s dwell time and decreasing bounce rate. Here are some ways you can do that:

Work on site navigation

Site navigation is the process of clicking and looking through the pages of a website. It is a collection of user interface components and it helps customers to flow from one page of a website to another easily.

Simple site navigation allows the user to complete the task in less time. This increases the user experience as the user encounters fewer confusions related to the website.

Simple site navigation also allows search engines to crawl your website more easily and effectively.

Content

Effective content designing and formatting increases users’ engagement on a website and positively impacts the experience. According to a survey, 66 percent users prefer to interact with “beautifully designed” content.

User-friendly layout

Layout design and text size on a website can improve or disrupt the user experience. User-friendly layout of a website can be attained by using images and videos, organizing and formatting content interactively, and adding links to other related content.

User-friendly layout can also be achieved by adding related graphics, CTAs throughout the site and using clear headers.

Website structure

Website structure defines the arrangement of your site’s content, its design, and the way the pages are related to one another. A good website structure has various elements including taxonomies, internal links, breadcrumbs, navigation, and schema.

The most popular type of website structure is the hierarchical structure. This type of structure is useful for websites having a large amount of data. As ecommerce websites have a large amount of data, the hierarchical structure makes it easy for search engines to crawl your website. Thus it becomes easier for your website to be indexed.

Website load speed

Website load speed is the time it takes for your website to load as well as the time it takes for search engines to crawl your website.

Customers prefer fast-loading websites. This is why improving your website load speed enhances your user experience. 

More importantly, website load speed is a search engine ranking factor. Google uses it to judge a website’s UX while determining its rank.

Therefore, optimizing your website’s load speed is critical when enhancing your ecommerce store. 

Some of the methods to reduce website load speed are improving server response time, reducing redirects, and enabling compression for CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.

Internal links

Internal links help users navigate from one page on your website to the other, keeping them on the site for longer and prolonging dwell time. 

So, build a solid internal linking structure and make sure to link only relevant pages with one another. 

High-quality product images and include product details

Since you are optimizing an ecommerce site, use clear product photos and include as many details as you can about your products to keep the customers on your website for longer. 

Conclusion

With the advent of Machine Learning and advanced SEO techniques, avoiding new marketing technologies can drastically harm your ecommerce business.

RankBrain is a machine learning (AI) algorithm that Google uses to sort search results. It also helps Google process and understands search queries. RankBrain understands the user intent and provides relevant search results.

RankBrain will only increase in popularity with time and become even more crucial for ecommerce store optimization. Working to get yourself acquainted with RankBrain today will help you run your ecommerce store more successfully in the future. So, start now to foster your long-term success.

Atul Jindal is a web design and marketing specialist. He has worked on website/app optimization for SEO with a core focus on conversion optimization. He creates web experiences that bring conversations and transform web traffic into paying customers or leads.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

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The Search Engine Watch Top 5!

First, congratulations on surviving 2022, you’ve done great! 2022 was surprising, unique, and a challenging mix of several global events that kept us on our toes as consumers, brands, and search marketing professionals. The recession, great resignation, a war, FIFA finale, and several silent battles we all fought by ourselves.

As we recap the year gone by, let’s look at the world through the lens of search, SEO, analytics, and content creation.

Source

2022 has been about…

Looking at your consumers as human beings and not just data sets

Understanding how your target consumers perceive the world and how they experience life in a digital age

Tailoring and testing your strategies to meet consumers in their moment of need – all without losing budget (or your sanity!)

Finding most-effective tools, technologies, and talent to navigate business uncertainty

We present to you the #SEWTop5

A countdown of editor’s picks that the Search Engine Watch community loved and found great value in!

#5. Understanding the three awareness stages of your online audience

Businesses often forget that success metrics aren’t just numbers – they are living, breathing people who are driven by behavior and emotions. As customer journeys continued to remain complex and multifaceted, businesses competed to ensure they were at the finish line when prospects were ready to convert.

Add People’s Content Operations Lead, Jack Bird created a guide on harnessing a content strategy that caters to consumers and their journeys. He detailed the three key awareness stages of online traffic, what type of content fits these stages, and how to audit your existing content.

#4. A must-have web accessibility checklist for digital marketers

Did you know, 98% of US-based websites aren’t accessible? This year web accessibility moved out of the shadows and took center stage as one of Google’s search ranking factors – making the topic itself more accessible to discussions. Marketers could no longer ignore this critical aspect, because –

Stellar user experience >> Positive brand perception >> Greater appeal to value-driven consumers = Good for business

Web design and marketing specialist, Atul Jindal created a must-have web accessibility checklist for digital marketers. It went beyond dispelling “what is web accessibility?” and spoke about its benefits and action points on “how to make your website accessible?”.

#3. Google Analytics 4: drawbacks and limitations—is it worth sticking around?

On July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics properties stopped processing new hits, forcing users to switch to its successor, Google Analytics 4. This transition demanded SEOs and marketers to have a steep learning curve and adaptability since the shift meant losing some historic data.

This article dove into the issues with Google Analytics 4 from a user perspective and a privacy and compliance standpoint. Objective, hard-hitting observations helped inform SEOs and marketers’ decisions before switching platforms.

#2. The not-so-SEO checklist for 2022

While most of the internet focused on “what to do”, we took an offbeat path of “what not to do” that will help your SEO succeed from the get-go.

Best-selling author and SEW Advisory Board Member, Kristopher (Kris) Jones dispelled some major myths surrounding Core Web Vitals (CWV) and Google’s bigger, mainstream 2021 updates.

As an especially interesting, strategy-focused read, this was one SEOs could not miss before designing their 2022 strategy.

#1. Seven Google alerts SEOs need to stay on top of everything!

We as SEOs and marketers often forget that while we focus on consumers and clients, we too are humans – with limited energy (we mean coffee supply), 24 hours (wish we had more), and sleep deprivation (yes we mean sleep deprivation). As burnout crept in and to-do lists climbed, our very own Ann Smarty shared seven Google alerts that aimed at making life easier for SEOs.

These smart ways helped the community get ahead of competition, prevent a reputation crisis, fix a traffic drop, and do much more (without getting overwhelmed).

We hope you enjoyed this! Thank you for being valuable supporters throughout our journey.

Team Search Engine Watch wishes everyone a happy new year! Keep spreading the love and SEO wisdom.

Via GIPHY

*Ranked on target audience engagement, time on page, and bounce rate.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

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The ultimate 2022 Google updates round up

30-second summary:

2022 saw nine confirmed updates (including two core updates,) five unconfirmed instances where volatility was observed in page rankings, and one data outage that caused chaos for 48 hours

Video and commerce sites were the biggest winners in the May core update, while reference and news sites lost out most, especially outlets without industry specificity

This theme largely continued and saw ripple effects from the helpful content update

What were these ebbs and flows, who won, who lost? Let’s find out!

Joe Dawson takes us through another round-up post that gives you the complete picture of Google’s moves

Only three things are certain in this life – death, taxes, and an industry-wide hubbub whenever Google launches an algorithm update. Like any year, 2022 has seen substantial changes in how the world’s largest search engine manages traffic and page rankings, with some businesses winning and others losing out.

Arguably the most significant change in 2022 is awareness of the rise of AI for content creation, becoming a hot topic in the world of marketing software. “Helpful content” updates have intended to bolster content written by human beings, penned with consumer needs in mind, over auto-generated articles designed to game the SEO system.

Has this been successful, or is the world of online marketing set for a rise of machines in 2023 and beyond? Similar to my last year’s column, let’s review the Google algorithm updates issued in 2022. I hope this helps you decide for yourself and build your business model around the latest developments in page ranking.

Complete list of 2022 Google updates

2022 has seen nine confirmed updates to Google’s algorithms, while an additional five instances of volatility were noticed and discussed by influential content marketing strategists across the year. We also saw one major data outage that caused a short-term panic! Let’s take a look at each of these updates in turn.

1) Unconfirmed, suspected update (January)

The core update of November 2021 was famously volatile, and just as web admins were coming to terms with a new status quo, further fluctuations were noted in early January 2021. Google remained tight-lipped about whether adjustments had been made to the algorithm, but sharp adjustments to SERPs were acknowledged across various industries.

2) Unconfirmed, suspected update (February)

Again, webmasters noticed a sudden temperature shift in page rankings in early February, just as things settled down after the January changes. While again unconfirmed by Google, these adjustments may have been laying the groundwork for the page experience update scheduled for later in the same month.

3) Page experience update (February)

Back in 2021, Google rolled out a page experience update designed to improve the mobile browsing experience. In February 2022, the same update was extended to encompass desktop browsing.

The consequences were not earth-shattering, but a handful of sites that previously enjoyed SERPs at the top of page one found their ranking drop. As with the mobile update, the driving forces behind the page experience update were performance measured against Google’s core web vitals.

4) Unconfirmed, suspected update (March)

Fluxes in page ranking and traffic were detected in mid-March, with enough chatter around the industry that Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison for Search at Google, felt compelled to confirm that he or his colleagues were unaware of any conscious updates.

5) Product reviews update (March)

March saw the first of three product review updates that would unfold throughout the year. As we’ll discuss shortly, ecommerce sites experienced a real shot in the arm throughout 2022 after the core updates, so this would prove to be a significant adjustment.

The fundamental aim of this product review update was to boost sites that offer more than just a template review of consumer goods – especially when linking to affiliates to encourage purchase. Best practice in product reviews following this update includes:

Detailed specifications beyond those found in a manufacturer description, including pros and cons and comparisons to previous generations of the same item.

Evidence of personal experience with a product to bolster the authenticity of the review, ideally in the form of a video or audio recording.

Multiple links to a range of merchants to enhance consumer choice, rather than the popular model of linking to Amazon.

Comparisons to rival products, explaining how the reviewed product stacks up against the competition – for good or ill.

The product review update did not punish or penalize sites that failed to abide by these policies, preferring to list a selection of items with brief (and arguably thin) copies to discuss their merits. However, sites, that offered more detail in their assessments quickly found themselves rising in the rankings.

6) Core update (May)

The first core update of the year is always a nerve-wracking event in the industry, and as always, there were winners and losers in May’s adjustments.

The most striking outcome of this update was just how many major names benefitted, especially in the realm of ecommerce, much to the delight ecommerce agencies around the world. Sites like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy saw considerable increases in traffic and prominence following the update, perhaps due to the product review update that unfolded two months prior.

Video sites also saw a spike in viewers and positioning following the May update. YouTube videos began outranking text articles while streaming services such as Disney Plus and Hulu rose to the top of many searches. Health sites began to see a slow and steady recovery after the May core update, for the first time since the rollout of 2018’s Medic update.

News and reference sites were the biggest losers in the May core update. News and media outlets suffered the most, especially those with a generic focus, such as the online arm of newspapers. Big hitters like Wikipedia and Dictionary.com were also pushed down the pecking order. Specialist sites that dedicate their reporting to a single area of interest fared a little better, but still took a hit in traffic and visibility.

7) Unconfirmed, suspected update (June)

Minor nips and tucks frequently follow when a major core update concludes. In late June, many webmasters started comparing notes on sharp changes in traffic and page ranking. Google failed to confirm any updates. These may have just been delayed aftershocks in the aftermath of May’s core update, but the industries that saw the biggest adjustments were:

Property and real estate

Hobbies and leisure

Pets and animal care

8) Unconfirmed, suspected update (July)

More websites saw a sharp drop in traffic in late July, especially blogs that lacked a prominent social media presence. SERPs for smaller sites were among the biggest losers in this unconfirmed update.

9) Product reviews update (July)

A minor tweak to March’s product review update was announced and rolled out in July, but caused little impact – while some review sites saw traffic drop, most were untouched, especially in comparison to changes at the start of the year.

10) Data center outage (August)

Not an update but a notable event in the 2022 SEO calendar. In early August, Google Search experienced an overnight outage. This was revealed to be caused by a fire in a data center in Iowa, in which three technicians were injured (thankfully, there were no fatalities.)

This outage caused 48 hours of panic and chaos among web admins, with page rankings undergoing huge, unexpected fluctuations, a failure of newly-uploaded pages to be indexed, and evergreen content disappearing from Google Search.

Normal service was resumed within 48 hours, and these sudden changes were reversed. All the same, it led to a great deal of short-term confusion within the industry.

11) Helpful content update (August)

The first helpful content update of 2022 saw significant changes to the SEO landscape – and may change how many websites operate in the future.

As the name suggests, this update is engineered to ensure that the most helpful, consumer-focused content rises to the top of Google’s search rankings. Some of the elements targeted and penalized during this update were as follows.

AI content An increasing number of sites have been relying on AI to create content, amalgamating and repurposing existing articles from elsewhere on the web with SEO in mind. On paper, the helpful content update pushed human-generated content above these computerized texts. Subject focus As with the core update in May, websites that cover a broad range of subjects were likeliest to be hit by the helpful content update. Google has been taking steps to file every indexed website under a niche industry, so it’s easier for a target audience to find. Expertise The EAT algorithm has been the driving force behind page rankings for a while now, and the helpful content update has doubled down on this. Pages that offer first-hand experience of their chosen subject matter will typically outrank those based on external research. User behavior As a part of the helpful content update, Google is paying increasing attention to user behavior – most notably the time spent on a site. High bounce rates will see even harsher penalties in a post-helpful content update world. Bait-and-switch titles If your content does not match your title or H2 headings, your site’s ranking will suffer. Avoid speculation, too. Attempts to gain traffic by asking questions that cannot be answered (for example, a headline asking when a new show will drop on Netflix, followed by an answer of, “Netflix has not confirmed when >TV show name< will drop”) suffered in this update. Word stuffing Google has long denied that word count influences page ranking and advised against elongating articles for the sake of keyword stuffing. The helpful content update has made this increasingly important. 1,000 relevant words that answer a question quickly will outrank a meandering missive of 3,000 words packed with thin content.

12) Core update (September)

The second core update of 2022 unfolded in September, hot on the heels of the helpful content update.

This update repaired some of the damage for reputable reference sites that suffered in May, while those impacted by the unconfirmed update in June continued to see fluctuations in visibility – some enjoyed sharp uptakes, while others continued to hemorrhage traffic.

The biggest ecommerce brands continued to enjoy success following this update, while news and media outlets continued to plummet in visibility. Household names like CNN and the New York Post, for example, were hit very hard.

The fortunes of medical sites also continued to improve, especially those with government domains. Interestingly, the trend for promoting videos over prose was reversed in September – YouTube was the biggest loser overall.

13) Product reviews update (September)

A final tweak was made to the product reviews update in September as part of the core update, and it proved to be unpopular with many smaller sites, which saw a substantial drop in traffic and conversions. As discussed, it seems that 2022’s core updates have benefitted the biggest hitters in the market.

14) Spam update (October)

In October, Google rolled out a 48-hour spam update. This was an extension of the helpful content updates designed to filter out irrelevant and inexpert search results, in addition to sites loaded with malicious malware or phishing schemes.

Sites identified as potential spam during the update were severely penalized in terms of page ranking and, in some cases, removed from Google Search altogether. The most prominent targets of the update were:

Thin copy irrelevant to the search term, especially if auto-generated

Hacked websites with malicious or irrelevant redirects and sites that failed to adopt appropriate security protocols

Hidden links or excessive, unrelated affiliate links and pages

Artificial, machine-generated traffic

15) Helpful content update (December)

Early in December, Google began rolling out an update to August’s helpful content update. At the time of writing, it’s too early to announce what the impact of this has been. However, it promises to be an interesting time.

The August update faced criticism for being too sedate and failing to crack down hard enough on offending sites, especially those that utilize AI content and black-hat SEO tactics.

Many site owners will be crossing their fingers and toes that this update boosts genuine, human-generated copy created by and for a website’s target audience. The impact will become evident early in 2023.

This concludes the summary of 2022’s Google algorithm updates. It’s been an interesting – and frequently tumultuous – twelve months, and one that may set the tone for the years to come.

Google will always tweak and finesse its policies, and attempting to second-guess what Alphabet will do next is frequently a fool’s errand. All the same, it’s always helpful to check in with Google’s priorities and see which way the wind is blowing.

Joe Dawson is Director of strategic growth agency Creative.onl, based in the UK. He can be found on Twitter @jdwn.

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Google market pulse for search marketers

30-second summary:

Google is always testing new spots on the page for SERP components

In simple terms, the #1 position in organic or paid ads does not guarantee that your paid ad listing will be visible without scrolling

Organic position #1 reported by Google Search Console is not the actual position 1 on page

A lot of anomalies and assumptions impact your paid and organic clicks – is there a smart way to counter this problem?

Leading advisor and performance marketing expert, Prasanna Dhungel unravels four key insights marketers to maximize performance marketing initiatives in 2023

Over the last two decades, Google’s search engine results page (SERP) has evolved a lot. The Google SERP, which once only had organic listings now features dynamic paid ads and other organic SERP components as well.

Currently, Google SERP has many organic features like –

People also ask (PAA),

Popular products,

featured snippets,

Google MAP,

image packs,

videos,

Tweets, and many more that I believe we are just scratching the surface of

Paid features currently seen on Google SERP are –

Shopping ads,

text ads, and

MAP local search ads

These are some paid features advertisers should not ignore if they want to build better advertising and content strategies for maximum search marketing ROI.

Google varies the composition of SERP by keyword, geography, time of day, and device. Google is testing new spots on the page for SERP components. What does all this mean, you may ask? In simple terms, the #1 position in organic or paid ads does not guarantee that your listing will be visible without scrolling. It means that an organic position #1 reported by Google Search Console is not actual position 1 on the page. So, you have a much lower CTR than you expect, and all these impact your paid and organic clicks.

With this dynamic nature of SERP, search marketers must understand the SERP landscape and their brand’s true rank on Google vs competition. This view will enable search marketers to deploy the right paid and SEO tactics to maximize visibility and clicks.

Based on my experience and understanding of the dynamic SERP, here are four key insights marketers should focus on to maximize their performance marketing initiatives.

1. Analyze the composition of SERP for your keywords

Marketers must understand SERP features visible for their keywords. The graph below suggests that along with organic, SERP features like PAA and popular products are taking significant real estate for “apparel” and “accessories” keywords. Search marketers that are not targeting these components will miss acquiring customers in different stages of their buying journey that are clicking on People Also Ask.

2. Monitor emerging and contracting SERP features

Marketers must understand new SERP features that have appeared and are getting popular for their keyword traffic. This helps develop a long-term advertising and content plan that targets popular SERP features.

In the last quarter, we identified Map Local Search Ads and App Install (in mobile devices) SERP features appearing in the “apparel” and “accessories” keywords. We saw growth in the popularity of PAA and popular products across many keyword groups.

3. Keep track of above-the-fold SERP features

Understanding the SERP features visible above-the-fold real estate is critical. These insights will help marketers understand the dynamics of rising and falling SERP click-through rates. You may wonder why the clicks are declining even though your average position reported on Google Reports is improving. Such questions can be answered with true ad position in SERP.

As shown in the below graph, the usual organic component in this keyword landscape has lower above-the-fold coverage compared to SERP features like PAA and popular products.

Insights like these help marketers understand the fastest gateway to the first page above the fold position. Marketers can build a holistic search strategy to correctly allocate their search marketing budget across organic and paid SERP features.

4. Monitor competitor’s through SERP features

Google is an ultra-competitive channel. You have many domains appear on Google SERP from aggregators to publishers to actual competitors of your business model. To build the right marketing tactics -it is imperative to understand the top domains by SERP features, their competitive tactics, and the SERP landscape changes.

From planning link building to acquiring secondary traffic to improving authority score to crafting advertising and content strategies – SERP-driven insights like these help you maximize search advertising performance.

Additionally, monitoring your top emerging competitors’ tactics across SERP formats allows you to timely optimize your advertising campaigns. As shown in the graph below, Amazon has tremendously improved its Google Shopping Ads Share of Voice from May to July 2022.

When brands like this are heavily advertising in a category, marketers will need to advertise products in categories Amazon is not aggressively pushing and come back when Amazon advertising slows down.

Conclusion

Google is increasingly sharing less data. Google ad data doesn’t show advertisers which low impressions may be appearing and creeping up on your CPCs. Google search console data doesn’t show true rank, and the organic rank shared isn’t representative of the actual location on the page.

Going into 2023, it is imperative for search marketers to use SERP-driven insights to gain an edge in their performance marketing campaigns.

Prasanna Dhungel co-founded and runs GrowByData, which powers performance marketing for leading brands such as Crocs and top agencies like Merkle. GrowByData offers marketing intelligence for search, marketplace, and product management to win new revenue, boost marketing performance and manage brand compliance.

Prasanna also advises executives, board & investors on data strategy, growth, and product. He has advised leading firms such as Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation, Athena Health, and Apellis Pharma.

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