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Author: Akvile DeFazio   For eCommerce brands, the quest to attract customers and drive sales is an enduring pursuit. In this competitive environment, the ability to reach out to vast audiences, introduce them to your brand, and drive sales can make or break your online store. If those are the goals you want to achieve, then do not overlook Meta’s ecosystem (most notably on Facebook and Instagram).   Let’s dive into the various options that Meta Ads offers for eCommerce brands looking to increase sales as well as the tactics you’ll need to increase your bottom line. Table of contents: Why Meta Ads is a mainstay for eCommerce brands Getting started: The Meta Ads Pixel & Conversion API How to set up Meta Ads tracking How to set up Meta Ads tracking on Wix Create and connect your product catalog Establish baseline performance with dynamic product ads Sales-driven campaign types Advantage+ shopping campaigns Advantage+ shopping campaigns vs. Manual campaigns Maximizing sales volume and sales value Utilizing AI for targeting with Advantage+ audiences Meta Ads best practices Ad copy Images Video Ways to increase profitability for your Meta Ads eCommerce campaigns Why Meta Ads is a mainstay for eCommerce brands Meta Ads is an advertising platform that serves ads across several platforms under the Meta umbrella, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other partner sites and apps in the Meta Audience Network . As one of the oldest social media advertising platforms, Meta has significant global usage that benefits brands looking to drive sales and scale their digital marketing.  It is comparatively more efficient (read: cheaper) than other advertising platforms, leverages advanced targeting capabilities powered by AI, and excels in accomplishing various business goals (i.e., driving website traffic, increasing brand awareness, acquiring leads for your newsletter, and bringing in sales). Getting started: The Meta Ads Pixel & Conversion API To use Meta Ads’ full capabilities for your eCommerce brand, it’s vital to implement the Meta Ads Pixel on your website and the Conversions API (CAPI) on your server. While you can run campaigns without it, doing so helps you track and understand which campaign, ad set, and ads your sales are coming from and will allow you to optimize for sales. Without at least one of these, your campaigns will struggle to optimize for sales. The Meta Ads Pixel and CAPI also aid Meta in more effectively optimizing towards your sales-driven goals and can help create custom audiences for you to target, including retargeting people that visited your website or abandoned shopping carts. How to set up Meta Ads tracking If you're a Wix website owner, the process is straightforward—you can read more about it in the section below. If your online store is on a different CMS, refer to Meta's instructions on integrating its Pixel and CAPI. How to set up and implement the Meta Pixel How to set up and implement Conversions API How to set up Meta Ads tracking on Wix With Wix, you can seamlessly accomplish both of these tracking set up tasks via the Marketing Integrations  section of the Wix dashboard (shown below, accessible by navigating to your dashboard Settings > Marketing Integrations ). After you connect the Meta Pixel and CAPI to your Wix website , you’ll be able to track events like product views, add to carts, newsletter signups, and purchases. Next, you can optimize for those events, which tells Meta what goal is most important for you in a given campaign (e.g., purchases). Create and connect your product catalog Now that you’ve got your Meta Ads Pixel and CAPI configured for your eCommerce store, you can upload your product catalog for the platform to show your products to users.  There are several options you can use to upload your products:  Data feed (i.e., a spreadsheet or XML file) A partner platform The Meta Pixel  Meta’s catalog batch API (better for stores with hundreds of thousands of products),  Manually Again, Wix site owners can use the built-in integration  to keep their Facebook Catalog in sync with their website inventory (or you can create your catalog in Meta’s Commerce Manager ). Your product catalog should include all the essential details of the products you sell, such as the product description , materials, dimensions, pricing, etc.  Establish baseline performance with dynamic product ads You can then promote your products using highly effective dynamic product ads (DPAs). Meta can serve DPAs showcasing products from your store that it “thinks” have the highest likelihood of purchase from the audience(s) you are targeting.  When deciding which products to promote in your DPAs, consider setting up these product sets first to determine benchmarks: Bestsellers New arrivals On sale All products If you have seasonal product sets or product themes (e.g. sneakers, boots, sandals), create those product sets and test those out as well. I often see that bestsellers work very well to increase sales volume as new customers are often drawn to popular items. Your best-selling products could be a great entry point to the brand, enticing people to shop. New arrivals also tend to perform well as many consumers want to be one of the first to own something new. If you have ten or fewer products, running DPAs in a catalog campaign may not yield sales at desirable costs, as there is not enough variety for Meta’s systems to rotate through and optimize for. For eCommerce brands with limited product offerings, consider launching other ad types that don’t require a catalog until you have more products.  Sales-driven campaign types There are currently six campaign objectives to select from:  Awareness Traffic Engagement Leads App promotion Sales Since we’re discussing Meta Ads to increase sales, you’ll use the Sales campaign objective for Conversions or Catalog Sales, then optimize for purchases at the ad set level. Optimizations selected in the ad set level can also be set for other events, such as “add to cart” (but since the primary goal here is to acquire more sales, you’ll optimize for purchases).  Next, let’s discuss Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns and whether a more automated approach is right for you.   Advantage+ shopping campaigns Advantage+ shopping campaigns (ASC) are a sales-driven campaign type designed for eCommerce brands. They leverage Meta’s AI technology to dynamically deliver ads to people that are most likely to make a purchase.  Advantage+ shopping campaigns vs. Manual campaigns While you are still able to set up campaigns via a more manual process, Meta is making a big push to use ASC so it’s possible that manual sales campaigns may disappear in the future (as they may on other platforms, like Google).  ASC uses a more streamlined approach compared to manually configured campaigns and their respective ad sets (where you specify budget, placements, optimizations, and other targeting criteria). This campaign type uses Meta’s technology to more effectively display your ads to the people that are most likely to make purchases (compared to a more human-selected targeting strategy).  Manual campaigns have historically worked better as advertisers tested their own selection of audiences based on interests, behaviors, and other detailed targeting combinations—until recently. While some of these detailed targeting options remain, Meta has removed many of them over the years due to changes in privacy legislation and technology.  Manual targeting can still work well, but is decreasingly less effective than it once was—on the other hand, AI-powered targeting continues to prove its potency as it learns and evolves.  I still recommend that digital marketers invest some time to get familiar with manual targeting, as this can help you better understand how automated targeting systems work and is valuable for determining what combination of automation and manual controls are best for your online store.  Maximizing sales volume and sales value “ASC achieves an average of 17% improvement in cost per acquisition,” according to Meta . That’s a pretty flashy statistic, and I, too, have seen positive results since the launch of ASC. But in addition to that, I’ve seen more sales at a lower cost, but also at a higher return on ad spend (ROAS), increasing profitability. Let’s learn about how you can reach that level of campaign performance. With Advantage+ shopping campaigns, you can tell Meta to optimize ads for the maximum number of conversions or sales, and (as of the end of 2023) there is a new option to optimize for the maximum value of conversions, enabling you to provide an optional ROAS goal. You can find more details about this setting and how to use it at the end of this article. (Note: The ROAS option is only available when selecting your website as the conversion location. If you choose to maximize the number of conversions, you can alternatively choose for people to make purchases via your website and shop [via Facebook or Instagram], just your website, or website and app.) When setting up your first ASC, you can certainly test either optimizing for maximum conversions or sales, but you may be more successful maximizing for the number of conversions so that you can establish a baseline of data.  Once you begin to drive more sales, see what is performing well (and what is not), and what kind of ROAS you can achieve, test out the other option to optimize for the maximum value of conversions with a ROAS goal. This goal should be slightly higher than what you saw in your initial campaign, so then the system can work towards the improved (yet likely attainable) new goal. In this secondary test, use your top-performing ads in the campaign.   If you have already run ads before, add your existing top-performing ads into your ASC as they will likely give you a better chance for success right out of the gate (as opposed to launching ads that have not yet been tested). Utilizing AI for targeting with Advantage+ audiences There are a multitude of ways to reach your customers, including targeting by age, location, gender, interest, behaviors, and other demographics, as well as custom audiences that you can set up.  More recently, though, Meta introduced Advantage+ audiences, a newer option that utilizes artificial intelligence to find your campaign audience. I’ve been using Advantage+ audiences and have also begun seeing more success than with some of the other aforementioned targeting options. With Advantage+ Audiences, you can add an audience suggestion to give the system some guidance as to who you want to target before it expands to find more people that are likely to accomplish your campaign goal (e.g., maximizing for sales).  Meta works best when it has data to work with. You feed it data and, in turn, it brings you more results. After testing a variety of suggested audiences, you may want to begin with these two suggested in-platform custom audiences, as they have been effective for many eCommerce accounts and may be a great starting point for yours as well:   Facebook – post/ad engagers – over the last 90 (or up to last 365 days) Instagram – post/ad engagers – over the last 90 (or up to last 365 days)   The longer lookback window may give Meta more data to better optimize, especially if you are newer to advertising on Meta or have a lower budget.  To create these audiences for use in your campaigns, go to Meta’s Audience area to create a new audience. Under “Meta Sources,” select “Instagram account” first and then come back to create the second one under “Facebook page” to cover both platforms.  On the next screen, ensure your account or page is correct under “Source,” then click the drop-down menu to select the “Event” you want, such as “Accounts Center accounts who engaged with any post or ad.” Then, select your lookback time under “Retention.” Name your audience and add a description so that other people working in your account (i.e., staff or other vendors like contractors and agencies) have some context about your custom audiences. Hit “Create audience” and you can now go apply your Advantage+ audience to your ad sets. Meta Ads best practices Next, I’ll help you increase your campaign efficiency with some ad creative best practices, as well as a few tactics to test that can also help you increase your profitability (not just sales volume). Ad copy You have several places to compose complementary ad copy:  Headline In the main text Description line Be concise with your ad copy. Speak to the value of the product, unique benefits, the solution they offer to a particular problem, and add a call to action (CTA) , such as “Shop Now” (in addition to selecting the same “Shop Now” CTA button that Meta appends to your ad).  If you offer free shipping, discounts, or promotions, mention that as well. Craft compelling copy for the text and headline, though you may want to forego description text as it doesn’t display on most ad placements. Many brands add “Free Shipping” copy there but instead, consider adding it to the headline as it’s bold and can be seen across more placements. Images When it comes to images, you want to shine a spotlight on your product and eliminate any potential distractions for the audience.  Aim for bright, bold colors so they stand out on the black or white platform backgrounds. Showcase your product so consumers aren’t wondering what you are advertising: If you’re selling shoes, make sure your models or the creators you are working with  don't have distracting backgrounds or other apparel to detract from your product and reduce the chances of a purchase. Video With video creatives, put your best foot forward in the first three seconds of your video:  Showcase your product. Add overlay text. Include an enticing hook (e.g., by asking a question or sharing something unique about your product, as that will keep people interested and watching more of your video). Add captions so everyone watching can understand what is being said (many people keep their devices on mute and you don’t want to alienate anyone who is hard of hearing).  If you don’t have video content, there are many free and paid tools that can take your images and turn them into videos by adding some subtle motion, overlay text, transitions, and effects. It’s worth trying out Meta’s free tool (in Ads Manager) that can turn your static images into videos via free templates and effects—this is an excellent way to repurpose existing content  and take advantage of automation to create fresh creative on a budget. Whether it’s video or images, it’s best practice to create two variations so that your ads will show optimally across most of the ad placements. Create a 1:1 (or 4:5) aspect ratio image/video as well as 9:16 version as well to fit in Stories and Reels placements. Refer to Meta Ads’ specs  for Facebook and Instagram images and videos.  Ways to increase profitability for your Meta Ads eCommerce campaigns As you begin to run Meta Ads and understand what is working, this would be a good time to test out some other tactics to increase profitability (in addition to increasing sales volume). Here are a few tactics to experiment with: Promote higher-margin products in ads by either manually configuring ads or by setting up dedicated catalog product sets for more profitable items in dynamic product ads. Test Advantage+ catalog ads in an ASC to give Meta more control over which products to serve in your dynamic product ads, so you can drive more sales and allow Meta to better optimize and potentially lift your ROAS. Try the ad set-level ROAS goal setting, where you can gradually increase your ROAS goal and maximize the value of conversions. Set this up in the ad set with the following selections: Leave no eCommerce campaign unoptimized By using the above strategies (such as setting up a detailed product catalog and deploying dynamic product ads to testing Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns and utilizing a more automated, data-driven approach), experimenting with various optimization settings, and serving ads to Advantage+ audiences, you can fine-tune your advertising efforts to focus on what truly resonates with (and converts) your audience. As Meta continues to evolve and present new features, embrace testing and crafting compelling ads, as that will solidify the foundation for long-term success in driving eCommerce sales and increasing your profits. Akvile DeFazio - President at AKvertise Akvile DeFazio is the president of AKvertise , an award winning social media advertising agency. With 16 years of experience, she works with eCommerce, lead gen, event, and entertainment clients to reach their goals through future-forward strategies. Twitter  | Linkedin

Updated: June 7, 2024 Author: Mordy Oberstein Google’s search engine results page is a complex and multi-layered ecosystem. What Google shows on the SERP for any given keyword can either significantly improve your chances of bringing traffic to your site or jeopardize those efforts, making this basic information critical for every site owner. Here’s a look at what the Google SERP has to offer and how it can impact your site’s organic traffic. Table of contents: What is the SERP? The organic text results Not all organic results are created equal Example of an organic result with multiple elements SERP features and paid results 01. Paid SERP features 02. Exploration features 03. Features that present organic opportunity 04. Features that don’t present organic opportunity 05. Local features and knowledge panels The mobile SERP What is the SERP? To the average person, Google’s search engine results page  (AKA the “SERP”) may not seem that complicated. What’s so hard to understand? The SERP is what appears on the screen when someone enters a query and Google returns a list of options to choose from, right? Yes, but not exactly.  Google’s SERP can be broadly divided into three categories: The organic results listings SERP features Google Ads For many years, Google’s “rankings” referred almost exclusively to the order of the organic listings. Today Google has become more complex, including a mix of listings, features, and ads throughout the search experience. The organic text results Let’s start with the most fundamental element on the SERP—organic results. Organic results are the list of websites we’re all used to seeing Google display when we search for something. They’re called ‘organic’ because the sites Google displays don’t pay to appear on the SERP. They appear because Google, for a host of reasons, thinks these are the best results to show a user for a specific keyword. Organic results are typically easy to identify. They include the page’s URL along with a clickable title  that sits above a description  of what can be found on the page. That’s not to say this is how organic results always looked on the SERP. Past versions of Google’s organic results included the page’s URL showing in green and the title resting above the URL. This means that you can expect the appearance of the organic results to evolve in the future as well. In fact, organic results look a bit different on mobile. The most notable distinction is that mobile results contain a favicon. (The mobile and desktop version of the SERP differs in many ways and we’ll get to that later on in this article.) Not all organic results are created equal It all sounds pretty simple and straightforward, but it’s not. That’s because Google employs what is known as rich results . Rich results can include all sorts of additional information and even visuals. Consequently, a rich result can be far more noticeable and therefore clickable than your “standard” organic result. Take this result from Edmunds.com, for example. It is visually distinct from standard search listings and provides users with a preview of the tutorial. A rich result like the one above takes up a lot more real estate on the SERP. That means it can be significantly more noticeable than your “average” organic result. The more noticeable it is, the more clicks it might get (in theory). The additional content and the amount of space it occupies on the SERP is only one advantage that a rich result presents. At times, rich results present visual elements that make them stand out from other results on the page. Example of an organic result with multiple elements Let’s take the result below as an example. It contains review stars as well as an image thumbnail. Imagine this was the only result on the page with the review stars and image thumbnail, wouldn’t it immediately stand out? What if your site was the only one without these elements, how much harder might it be for your page to get noticed and attract visitors? As is the case with standard organic results, rich results also look different on mobile than on desktop. How can you turn your organic result into a rich result? The short answer is by using structured data . SERP features and paid results Believe it or not, we haven’t even cracked the tip of the iceberg yet. Along with organic results, Google displays what is commonly referred to as “SERP features” on the results page. This is where our story gets a bit complicated. There is an almost countless number of SERP features that Google employs. Sometimes these features can take on various forms or include any number of secondary elements. In fact, there are often SERP features within other SERP features. So, what is a SERP feature? Google describes these as “ visual elements ” that are “t he building blocks of the Google Search results page that a user can perceive or interact with.” When SEO specialists discuss SERP features, they are often referring to  any element that is not an organic listing result but offers the user content or leads the user to new content a SERP feature. Sounds a little confusing, doesn’t it? Have a look at the image below. Do you see all of the elements placed within the red boxes? Those are all   SERP features. As you can see, the results page can contain a heap of SERP features. There were also one or two things within the organic results that could have technically counted as SERP features as well. Not only are there a significant number of SERP features that can appear on any given results page, but there are also far-reaching implications as to why they’re there. Instead of rattling off the dozens of SERP features, let's instead try to categorize them. In doing so, we’ll get a better understanding of the various types of features as well as what they mean for your site. The categories we explore are not part of any official breakdown. Also, as you will see, there are some features that don’t fit well into these categories. Still, categorizing the features Google shows will help us quickly get a sense of the complexity they bring. Here are five categories of SERP features you may commonly come across in the search results: 01. Paid SERP features 02. Exploration features 03. Features that present organic opportunity 04. Features that don’t present organic opportunity 05. Local features and knowledge panels 01. Paid SERP features Paid elements on the SERP are literally the exact opposite of organic results ie. these are results that are present because businesses have paid to advertise for these search results.  Despite this, they may very much look like organic results. At times, the only thing that makes a paid result distinct from an organic result is the word ‘Sponsored.’ What you see above is an example of what is known as a Google Search Ad. Like with organic results, these ads do come in various shapes and sizes. There are various elements that are, at times, added to Search Ads to make them more visible. Search Ads that appear on mobile may appear differently. These differences include elements that allow users to call the business directly from the ad, the ability for the user to send the business a text message, the insertion of image thumbnails and more. It’s important to note, that while Google used to show ads to the right-hand side of the organic results , as of 2016, this is not the case. Search Ads now appear either above or below the organic results. That means the first thing a user often sees is not your site (even if it is ranking 1st organically), but an ad. This is why it is important to keep tabs on the ads that appear on the same SERP as your organic results. There is another ad format to be aware of–Product Listing Ads (PLAs). PLAs are often a scrollable carousel of products that presents an image of the product, reviews, and even information related to shipping or sales, etc. Unlike Search Ads, it’s possible for PLAs to appear to the right-hand side of the organic results on desktop. It’s entirely possible that all of the above-the-fold content on the SERP contains sponsored content and for there to be additional sponsored content to the right-hand side of the results. Such is the case in the image above. Certainly, it can be hard to compete on a SERP like this. There are a whole host of places where sponsored content may appear on the SERP. At times, the presence of sponsored content may be more or less obvious. In either case, it is important to understand the competitive landscape paid results might present to your site. 02. Exploration features Let’s move away from the impact of paid SERP features and discuss navigational "Exploration features’. This group of features helps users navigate to additional content or even the content they initially intended to find. Disambiguation box Imagine you searched for the term ‘rangers.’ Did you mean the Texas baseball team? The NY hockey team? The army rangers? It can be hard for Google to know. So, Google offers a Disambiguation Box. Clicking on an item inside of the box takes you to a new SERP about that topic. What we have here is a SERP feature that helps users navigate to either additional content or the correct content they originally wanted. Related Searches The ‘Related Searches’ feature is a set of additional search terms that are related to the one the user originally searched for. Google often displays these at the bottom of the SERP to help users navigate to additional or more refined information. People Also Search For The ‘People Also Search For’ feature can also help users get closer to the information they’re looking for. This feature can be shown as a standalone element or as part of other SERP features. Refine this search More recently, Google has expanded its repertoire of navigational SERP features. This includes features that enable users to either broaden or refine their initial search queries. To that end, there are a wide variety of carousels and filters that enable users to explore related topics, products, and the like. Search filters Many of the navigational features Google employs are not standalone features. Google often utilizes a set of filters above its Image Packs and Video Boxes (and at times even as an independent set of filters shown at the top of the SERP). 03. Features that present organic opportunity While certain SERP features are pay-to-play and others merely whisk the user away to a brand new SERP, some features can drive a serious amount of traffic to your site (or other properties). Of course, with great opportunity also comes great competition. So, what exactly are SERP features that offer you organic opportunity? Well, they’re SERP features that showcase your page’s URL or link to your other properties, such as your social media accounts. The best example of this would be the Featured Snippet. Featured snippets A featured snippet is a box that contains a snippet of content from a website along with the URL for that page. This box is placed at the very top of the SERP (although it has been known to appear beneath ads) and takes up a large amount of space on the SERP. In short, a featured snippet is extremely visible and often very clickable (i.e., they can bring a significant amount of traffic to your site). Featured snippets can come in a wide variety of formats. There is the list featured snippet shown above, along with featured snippets that utilize table data and those that present a short paragraph of content. There are even featured snippets that present YouTube videos. Various elements can be added to featured snippets. There are featured snippets that include a carousel of images, ones that include a set of filters and more. There are all sorts of other SERP features that direct users to your site or one of your other properties. Take the People Also Ask feature, which is basically a cousin of the featured snippet. People Also Ask These generally appear as a series of four cards (each reflecting a question) that can be expanded to reveal a short snippet to answer each question. Like the featured snippet, the content snippets here also contain a URL to the page where the content was pulled from. Fun fact: As you expand a People Also Ask card, more question cards automatically load beneath it. Image results Since we're talking about various media, one thing to consider is the appearance of images on the SERP. Google, in various ways, presents users with a series of images when the query’s intent calls for visual media. When clicked, these images can bring you to Google’s Image SERP, where your URL might be displayed. Meaning, you can get site traffic from the placement of images on the SERP. Organic opportunities for your other properties There are also a host of SERP features that can drive traffic to your other properties (aside from your website). This highlights the importance of having a well-rounded content strategy. Google often shows video content within a standalone SERP feature. The Video Box presents a series of videos that overwhelmingly come from YouTube. Being featured here could be a nice way to direct users to your YouTube channel  and can make you relevant in the event you don’t rank organically. Social media also comes into focus. For example, if you Tweet often enough, a carousel of your recent Tweets may appear. This helps you control your own narrative when users search for branded keywords. Again, there are too many features to list here. The main takeaway is that there are opportunities for your URLs inside of SERP features. Sometimes these opportunities might apply to specific types of sites (such as Google’s news carousel) while at other times any site may have an open opportunity to garner more site traffic. 04. Features that don’t present organic opportunity The SERP, as you’ve seen thus far, is complicated. It’s also a bit controversial. Google has a series of SERP features that don’t present any page’s URL. These features also don’t lead to a social profile or even YouTube. Rather, these features directly answer the user’s question. For that reason, they are often referred to as Direct Answers or Answer Boxes. Here’s the situation: if Google answers the user’s question, why would that same user visit any of the sites among the organic results? Direct Answers can, and often do, limit the amount of traffic sites pull in. The matter becomes more complex when you consider the variety of Direct Answer Boxes Google has in its arsenal. There are Answer Boxes that present: Weather forecasts Sports scores and schedules Word definitions Translations Flight information Conversions (currency, units of measurement, etc.) Stock prices and trends Nutrition information This is not to say you won’t get any traffic if your page ranks on the same SERP as an Answer Box. It just means that your traffic potential might be diminished. It really all depends on the user, the keyword, and what Google presents as a Direct Answer. The most important thing to know is whether you are potentially competing with an Answer Box so that you can research the impact and adjust accordingly. 05. Local features and knowledge panels There are some SERP features that don’t really fit into the categories we’ve described above. Some features don’t have a URL per se but lead users directly to your Google business panel. Some features contain URLs, just not to your site. The two main features to discuss here are Local Packs and Knowledge Panels. Local packs ‘Near me’ queries are one of the most common types of searches. This is where a user might search for things like “best pizza near me” or “florist near me.” These kinds of queries almost always bring up GBP listings for local businesses  that generally appear towards the top of the SERP. It’s called the Local Pack and it gives the user a direct pathway to a local business. Notice, there’s a lot of information packed into each business's listing. This information comes from properly setting up a Google Business Profile . Without doing this, your business may not appear in a Local Pack. If your business does not appear in the Local Pack, there’s a good chance that most users will never see it, even if it ranks well within the organic results. This makes GBP optimization one of the most important elements in local SEO . Clicking on the listing brings the user to the Local Finder (shown below) and automatically brings up a full business panel for the listing (which includes a link to the business’s website when applicable). Here, the user can see a fuller set of local listings (the Local Finder is also accessed by clicking “View all” at the bottom of the Local Pack). Actually, the business panel you see above is the perfect segue to our next topic: Knowledge Panels. Knowledge panels Google has a way of understanding the relationships between things and topics in order to present users with a fuller set of information and connect them with other relevant material. Moreover, Google has a way of knowing that some words aren’t just words, but are also “things” or semantic “entities. ” It’s how Google, for example, knows Wix is not just a website but an entire product and corporation. This is called the Knowledge Graph. The most visual representation of Google’s ability to understand words as “things” and to understand the connection between related “things” is the Knowledge Panel. The knowledge panel  is a collection of all sorts of information related to anything from household names, like celebrities and politicians, to companies to sports teams to products and far beyond. Local knowledge panel In fact, one of the more common forms of knowledge panels looks a lot like the business panel we saw above. It’s called the local knowledge panel. On desktop, knowledge panels appear to the right-hand side of the organic results. This means that they do not impact which results do or don’t appear above the fold. Entity knowledge panel Your typical entity knowledge panel may contain a link to a webpage. However, that webpage is usually Wikipedia, as the site is a major source of Google’s entity-based information. On mobile, Google places the Knowledge Panel above the organic results (as a rule) thereby pushing the results significantly further down the SERP (and generally out of initial view). It’s worth noting that the Knowledge Panel can and does act like a Direct Answer Box in many ways. Look back at the above example for the movie A League of Their Own , there is a good deal of information that the user gets without ever having to click on a website. For instance, the user can see who the cast of the film was, the ratings the movie received, etc. All this without even clicking on the other tabs within the Knowledge Panel. The bottomline is that the Knowledge Panel is an important part of what users see when they search for your brand (at least, it should be). It’s also a huge source of information that often replaces the need to visit an actual website. The mobile SERP We’ve already taken a peek at the mobile SERP throughout this post. That said, it’s worth mentioning that the mobile SERP is is different from the SERP on desktop. The reason for this ranges from the amount of space available on a mobile device to user intent being potentially different on mobile than on desktop. It’s possible that your ranking on desktop may not exactly align with your mobile rankings for the same keyword(s). Not only that, due to the format of the mobile SERP, what might appear above the fold on desktop might not rank above the fold on mobile. When it comes to the SERP, different features have different capabilities, content, and elements on mobile than they do on desktop. The mobile SERP even contains some SERP features that do not appear on desktop at all (at the time of this writing). For all of these reasons, it’s extremely important to pay attention to both the desktop and mobile SERP independent of each other. That means monitoring your site’s organic performance across both devices. The SERP’s constant evolution Google’s SERP is constantly evolving. Each year, there are hundreds of tests and upgrades Google makes to the look of the SERP and to the features found on it. Some of these changes can be quite significant and can impact your site’s organic performance. That means it always pays to keep an eye on the SERP and how it’s evolving. This can involve anything from comparing your site’s organic performance across devices, monitoring your rankings on desktop vs. mobile, or simply paying a visit to the desktop and mobile SERPs every now and then. Mordy Oberstein - Head of SEO Branding, Wix Mordy is the Head of SEO Branding at Wix. Concurrently he also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is one of the organizers of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Krystal Taing As a local business, there’s no question that Google Maps and Search generate the largest volume of traffic and potential new customers compared to other search engines . Managing and optimizing a Google Business Profile (GBP) is one way to ensure you are present and discoverable by searchers looking for products and services like yours. However, it’s not enough to just add your business to Google—it’s important to understand how to best represent your business and offerings to searchers. For local businesses that are just getting started or looking to reevaluate their presence, this guide will help you focus on just a single, but largely impactful element of your Google Business Profile: your business category. Table of contents: The basics of selecting your primary GBP category Choosing a category that ranks Are more categories better? How your business category influences GBP functionality Quick steps to get started with your business category on Google The basics of selecting your primary GBP category When completing your Google Business Profile , the first field you are asked to complete is your business name. The second field is your category. It’s no mistake that Google includes this at such early stages of optimizing your profile. It’s a required field and you cannot move on to finish setting up your business until it has been designated. What Google does not inform you of at this stage is how your category can affect your business’ visibility and how searchers engage with you. Let’s begin with an introduction to the basics of categories on GBP. Your Google category should best represent and describe what your business is as a whole. Your category displays prominently on search and maps as a helpful indicator to customers. On an expanded business profile, the category is displayed right beneath the name and reviews (as shown below). Choosing a category that ranks While selecting a category may seem fairly mundane, Google has nearly 4,000 category options (which may vary by region) to choose from. It also adds and removes categories monthly . The category you choose can impact your business in a number of ways, including rankings, availability of fields and features, as well as other requirements for verification. So, what should you consider when choosing your category? It’s important to know that your category on Google does affect how you rank for searches. This means that Google uses the category you designate to better understand your business and to help it determine how and when it should return your listing as a relevant result for certain searches. You can improve how and when Google displays your profile by being intentional when selecting your category. The positive news is that you don’t get just one category—businesses can select one primary category and up to nine additional categories. If you find that there is more than one category that describes your overall business, you should add the most specific category as the primary category and any others as additional categories. While not as influential as the primary category, additional categories can still impact your rank and visibility in the search results. In most cases, Google will display your primary category to searchers. However, if Google determines that displaying one of your additional categories is relevant, it may dynamically display this instead. The general assumption here is that displaying a category that is more specific and relevant to the query tells the user why Google is showing them the result. An example can be seen in the search result below. When searching Day Spa San Diego , the first result shows the category “Day Spa.” However, upon clicking into the listing on Maps or looking at the business profile, the primary category is “Massage Therapist.” This means that Google has dynamically displayed one of the additional categories to better serve the search query. While the primary category does hold the most influence from a ranking perspective, Google still uses the additional categories to better understand your business. Are more categories better? For businesses that are uncertain about which category may be the most relevant, you can choose the one that you and your customers would likely describe your business as most often. For example, if you are a local gym that offers a pool, sauna, and tanning bed, you should choose the category that most represents the main features of your business. Your business category can set customer expectations Choosing the wrong category could be detrimental for a number of reasons. In this scenario, if the gym decided to set its main category to “Sauna,” users searching for a Sauna that see this listing as a result and decide to check it out could be disappointed as the gym requires a membership. The best category would be “Gym,” and the business should utilize attributes to describe the features and services that the gym offers. The business is not a pool or a sauna—rather, it is a gym that also has a pool and a sauna. Seasonality may influence your primary business category If your business changes primary services or focuses throughout the year, you can change your primary category to reflect this. These types of changes are typically core business services that are impacted by seasonality, such as air conditioning servicing in the summer and heating servicing in the winter. Because the primary category has more impact on your visibility, it can be strategic to align this with the main parts of your business if those vary by season. Your business segments may influence your categories There are scenarios where the additional categories can describe the overall business when the business is broken out into large segments that serve different needs. In the example of a department store, adding categories such as “Furniture Store,” “Baby Store,” etc. helps explain the types of products and services available. As long as the categories are relevant to your overall business, you can’t choose too few or too many . How your business category influences GBP functionality Google determines which functionalities and attributes your business gets access to based on your primary category. For example, a business that categorizes itself as a “Mortgage lender” would get access to the attribute that allows it to publish an “appointment URL.” Alternatively, a business that has the primary category of “Clothing store” would get access to the attribute that allows it to publish an “online inventory search URL.” Hotels have an entire separate section to complete their property attributes and room amenities. Other variables dictated by your primary category that you should keep in mind include: Food menus, which can be published on profiles within the restaurant vertical Service menus, which are available to service-based businesses such as plumbers and healthcare providers. (Note: Each service can be tied to a separate category.) Booking features for reservations and appointments, which are available to restaurants and service industry businesses. “General Update” or “Event” post types, which are only available to hotels. Limited visibility for reviews and star ratings, which applies to businesses with educational categories. These only display on the bottom of the profile. Stricter verification requirements, which can affect businesses that share categories where spam is more prevalent. This includes businesses such as garage door repair and locksmiths, which are also known to trigger reverification for very small data edits. The inability to hide your business’s physical address . There are some categories that Google does not allow this for, so if attempting to do this results in an error or you are missing this feature, it could be tied to your category. Mandatory business hours. Some businesses, such as property leasing companies, are required to publish primary hours on their listing in order to have their profiles published on Google. Quick steps to get started with your business category on Google Once you understand all of the impacts of your category on your Google Business Profile, how can you get started? You can begin your process by building a potential list of category options. 01. Create a list of category considerations. You can leverage this tool to search all available Google Business Profile categories in your region. If you can’t find an ideal category, you can always send feedback to Google support with the background of your business, which it could potentially add later on. 02. Review which categories your competitors have set on Google to see whether they might also be appropriate for your business. 03. Add categories that may not be reflected in your business name but are core to your products or services. This will give you a better chance of showing up for related queries, especially if your competitors have keywords in their legal business name. 04. Use keyword tools, such as Google Search Trends or Semrush , to measure search volume for your potential categories. 05. Don’t forget to monitor for new and changing categories every few months—Google may just add more relevant categories for your business. Krystal Taing - Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions, Uberall Krystal Taing is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall. She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU. She helps brands at managing hybrid customer experiences. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Maeva Cifuentes If you were searching for personal finance advice online, you’d discover content from (or quoting) Warren Buffet, who’s written shareholder letters, given countless interviews, and published articles about investment strategies and market insights. But if you wanted advice on how to deal with your dog’s fleas, you’d more likely take advice from the blog of a local veterinarian. Investing Dog care Warren Buffet is widely known as one of the most successful investors of all time, with his own holding company outperforming the S&P 500 over the long term. Plus, he has a wide body of publications and public appearances speaking on investment. The local vet likely has over eight years of education on animal health and clinical studies, as well as practical experience in the field. And if they publish a lot about it, caring pet owners will know and follow the local vet. Even if they both published content about one another’s respective topics, Google is more likely to prioritize investment content from Warren Buffet and pet care content from the local vet. This is topical authority. Not only do people prefer to consume content from someone that is an authority on a topic, Google prefers to serve that same content to them. Building topical authority can help you rank higher and faster, but it’s not the right choice for all businesses. In this article, I’ll help you navigate whether it’s right for your brand (or clients’ brands) and how you can measure and build your own topical authority to succeed in search. Table of contents: What is topical authority in SEO? When is topical authority important? Is topical authority a measured Google ranking factor? How SEOs measure topical authority Topical share of voice Number of mentions from other relevant sources on the topic How to build topical authority and choose your topics What is topical authority in SEO? Topical authority is the extent to which a website is an expert on a given topic. If you have high authority in a topic, all your pages on that topic are likely to rank higher than websites that have less authority regarding that topic (all other considerations being equal). And, the quality of your website’s creators and contributors are just as important as the quality of the content on your website. Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines even  says, “If the website is not the primary creator of the MC (Main Content), it’s important to research the reputation of the content creator as well.” The guidelines use the word ‘creator’ 146 times and often interchangeably with the website. It also warns quality raters that reputation research is required at all steps. So, authoritative, experienced authors  are a key part of the topical authority equation. In many of Google’s communications to SEOs, it tells us that credibility is what we should prioritize. Its E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness)  framework provides SEOs with a slew of guidelines on how to make content more credible.  In the aforementioned search quality guidelines, Google defines ‘authoritativeness’ as “the extent to which the content creator or the website is known as a go-to source for the topic.” What the examples in the intro have in common is experience and prolificness . For SEO practitioners, that means you can build authority by consistently publishing expert content  on a specific topic, both on your own website and on other reputable websites and content platforms. TL;DR:  If you want to rank well for a specific topic, you need to publish a lot of pages about that topic for Google to take you seriously. When is topical authority important? Not all businesses want to commit to building topical authority—and, not all of them have to. Oftentimes, businesses pursue topical authority because they operate in highly competitive verticals, so every advantage matters. Brands and SEOs working with clients in these sectors need to know that it can take a heavy resource investment (that’s also tricky to attribute) to generate topical authority that lifts your brand’s rankings in search results. This is because building topical authority requires you to publish a lot  of content around a topic, without it necessarily being content that immediately converts. So for resource-sensitive businesses, you might struggle to make sense of spending $1000 on a blog post about ‘The History of Beer Brewing’ when you could spend it on a ‘Best Beer Brewing Kit’ landing page. There are some reasons why you might not need  to publish about every possible angle around your topic: Your audience doesn’t need to be educated on the topic to buy (for example, in impulse purchases like fast fashion). The product or service has a short sales cycle, making long-form content less necessary, (e.g., concert tickets). The topic is extremely niche and competition is very low (in this case, you want to check whether investing in SEO in the first place is necessary for your business). SEO is just a nice-to-have and not a full-on revenue and brand strategy. In this case, you probably don’t need to invest so much of your resources across the customer funnel (illustrated in the example graphic above). You aren’t struggling to rank your ‘money pages’ in the top three positions and you can make money through search without people needing to know you as an expert. However, there are scenarios where you have very little chance of succeeding through organic search if you don’t have topical authority: You are competing in a highly competitive industry with well-established players , like many SaaS verticals. You provide a B2B product or service, where you’re selling to a buying committee rather than a consumer, with a more complex decision-making process. Your ‘money keywords’ are highly competitive and you can’t seem to get in the top three positions no matter what you do. Long story short, you don’t need to publish about the [history of t-shirts] and [best fabric for a t-shirt] if you can rank [womens white t-shirt] and get people to buy directly from that page. Save yourself the money and effort. But, if you want any chance of ranking in the top three for [affiliate marketing], for example, you can count on it being a challenging journey of publishing high-quality content fervently around all potential angles of affiliate marketing for years to come. Is topical authority a measured Google ranking factor? Nobody is sure whether Google actually has a measure for authority or not. In the above-mentioned search quality evaluator guidelines, Google only mentions authoritativeness 10 times. On the other hand, it mentions trust 177 times. So, while you can get a pretty clear idea of what trust means to Google and how it can tell if you’re trustworthy, there’s no clear indication of whether it measures topical authority, and if so, how. In May 2023, Google published a blog post  about a topic authority system:  “Publishers looking for success with topic authority should do exactly what their publications would normally do: provide great coverage about the areas and topics they know well. Such work should naturally align with what our topic authority system measures and with our general guidance about creating helpful, people-first content.”   — Jen Granito, Group Product Manager, Search at Google However, this blog post seems to be specific to SEO for news  websites and newsy queries, rather than normal businesses or publishers trying to use SEO to grow. There are many other instances where Google has specifically and openly stated that it doesn’t have an authority score embedded in the algorithm. For example, in this video , John Mueller, senior search analyst at Google, said, “From my point of view, we don’t have anything like a website authority score.” Yet, the May 2024 Google Search internal documentation  leaks revealed that there was indeed a site authority feature. That said, nothing in the leak showed weights or confirmed that these features were actually included in the current algorithm. It’s impossible to tell whether they are used at all and, if so, how.  So, we don’t know whether Google’s algorithm can actually gauge authority, and whether it directly uses it when ranking pages. However, websites with higher topical authority (measured via a proprietary topical authority score—more on that below) gained traffic 57% faster than websites with low topical authority, and  that high topical authority increased the percentage of pages that got their first click within three weeks of publishing, according to a study by Graphite .  I’ve seen this firsthand with Hotjar, a former client. Initially, the client had thousands of pages targeting UX designers. When we published content for this audience, it would often rank in the top two pages within 1–2 days. Later, the client wanted to target product managers, so we began publishing content on product management. Since there was no existing content for this audience, it took a couple of weeks for the new content to start being indexed and ranking.  Despite having a huge brand and one of the strongest possible domain ratings (Ahrefs’ proprietary metric), this content took a couple weeks for Google to index and rank after publishing—a testament to the power of topical authority. How SEOs measure topical authority Can you quantitatively measure topical authority? While there is no official measurement of topical authority (as far as Google wants to share), there are ways you can attempt to measure yours. If I were to create a framework for measuring topical authority, I’d look at two things: Topical share of voice Number of mentions from other relevant sources on the topic Topical share of voice I define topical share of voice as your visibility across all keywords/subtopics of a given broader topic compared to your competitors.  Let’s say you want to build topical authority around the topic of home brewing beer.  In Ahrefs (which I’ll use for this example because it provides share of voice), you can see that there are about 238 clusters related to home beer brewing with over 30,000 in monthly search volume . If you want to build authority on this topic, you could start by creating content to build out that cluster, tracking your share of voice across all the keywords in the cluster. The more keywords from that cluster you rank in the top three SERP positions, the better. To monitor the visibility of a set of keywords, you can add them to Ahrefs Rank Tracker: Set up a project. Click on “+Add keywords.” Add the keywords from your topic cluster . Click on “Add keywords.” Navigate to your Overview report to review the tracked keywords. Share of voice (SOV) and market share are strongly correlated . Studies show that for every 10% growth in market share, advertising brands have a corresponding 6% growth in share of voice. This means that, to hit your market share goals, you should aim for a share of voice that is slightly higher than your target market share. For example, if your goal is a 3% market share, you should aim for around a 5% share of voice. In Ahrefs’ keyword tracker tool, you can compare your share of voice for your specific keywords against your main competitors.  There isn’t much data available on benchmarking your SOV percentage. What a good SOV percentage is depends on many factors. The industry, your competitors, your keyword strategy, local vs. global focus, etc. all play a role in what percentage can be considered a ‘strong’ share.  A good rule of thumb is to align your SOV goals with your market share goals. What’s a ‘good’ market share for a company of your size in your industry? A similar rate is probably good for share of voice. Number of mentions from other relevant sources on the topic If nobody has ever wanted to quote you or hear your opinion about a topic, are you really an expert on it? If you want to build a business, would you rather take advice from a successful serial entrepreneur that you’ve heard about from reputable sources, or a random person who told you they ‘know how to run a business’? If you didn’t personally know either of them, you’d probably trust the entrepreneur who’s been more abundantly quoted and celebrated in the press, rather than take chances on the unknown. That’s essentially what Google does. It’s essentially saying, “If other websites that talk about brewing beer are citing this person, they must think they’re an expert on that topic. So I also think they’re an expert on that topic.” You can keep a Google Alert on to get notified of publications mentioning your brand, or use social listening tools like Hootsuite or Brandwatch. How to build topical authority and choose your topics The idea behind topical authority is that if you want to rank easily about a given topic, you want to publish a lot of helpful content about that topic. If you have a gardening website, and you have a large library of content around permaculture, perennial flowers, and soil types, does that mean you need to start from scratch to rank anything about tomatoes? As a rule of thumb, if you can only come up with one or two article ideas around a topic, it’s not enough diversification for you to consider it a topic on its own. In that case, you can broaden the scope under which that topic might fall and write more about that overall cluster (i.e., zoom out of the topic a bit). It’s not an exact science. You could probably come up with hundreds of topics around tomatoes specifically, covering things like: Tomato growing kit How long does a tomato take to grow? Growing tomatoes indoors Tomato plants stopped growing Tomato seedlings stopped growing How to grow tomatoes Best soil for growing tomatoes With each new page you publish about tomatoes, you’d add internal links  to all the other tomato-related pages. This creates a strong semantic network on your website , enhancing its relevance and authority on the topic of tomatoes. As you grow this cluster, it would become increasingly easier to rank future content about tomatoes. Then, you could connect overlapping topics and build out other clusters as a method of expanding your topical authority to new, related areas. An article about the [best soil for growing tomatoes] could be linked to ones about the [best soil for growing zucchini] and [best soil for growing lettuce], and then suddenly you have a ‘best soil’ content cluster. That said, you probably couldn’t create a whole topic cluster about [rare herbs] in backyard gardens because it would be too niche and would probably fall under the topic of [herb gardening] instead. By strategically building out topic clusters and interlinking related content, you create a robust network that signals to search engines your comprehensive coverage and expertise on a subject.  This approach not only enhances your website's topical authority but also improves its chances of ranking well for various related keywords. More topical authority, more traffic, more revenue At the end of the day, whether topical authority is an actual ranking factor or not, it will help your website. If you work with experts to publish super helpful content on a topic, audiences will  respect your voice around that topic more. If you publish a lot about it, you’re more likely to be found in Google Search for that topic. If you publish a lot about a topic, you’ll grow more traffic around the topic you want to be known for. And, if you publish a lot about a topic and support all those pages with internal links, you’ll be able to rank higher for all the keywords in that topic. The rising tide lifts all boats. Maeva Cifuentes - CEO & Founder, Flying Cat Maeva is the founder and CEO of Flying Cat Marketing , an SEO and content agency driving growth with a holistic, revenue-based SEO approach for B2B SaaS companies in HR tech, martech, and salestech. Maeva is also a fractional CMO, marketing advisor, and certified confidence coach. Linkedin

Author: Mordy Oberstein Every year, Google updates its search results thousands upon thousands of times. While the majority of these updates are small adjustments to Google’s algorithm, they can have big implications for you, your site, and your potential revenue.  Understanding Google’s various types of algorithm updates and their purpose helps you create better content, recover from rankings changes associated with algorithm updates, and “future-proof” your website. If your business or brand relies on ranking above competitors in the search results (and most do), then here’s everything you need to know about Google algorithm updates. Table of contents: What Google algorithm updates are Why Google algorithm updates take place How often does Google implement algorithm updates? The types of Google algorithm updates Core algorithm updates Targeted algorithm updates Google best practice updates Unconfirmed Google updates How to handle confirmed Google updates Future-proofing your website against Google updates What is a Google algorithm update? When Google introduces new and better technology and considerations into its search algorithm, these are called “Google algorithm updates.” Google makes these updates so that it can better understand page quality and relevance (or a domain overall, as many of Google’s quality assessments look at the quality of the entire site—not just a single page).  While we often think of an algorithm update as reevaluating the weight of certain factors on a SERP  (search engine results page), this is an oversimplification. Many of Google’s algorithm changes incorporate technological advancements, specifically in machine learning.  To that end, some experts speculate that many of Google’s updates are not changes to the algorithm in the strictest sense, but machine learning recalibrating and testing. These changes are perhaps behind a good number of unconfirmed Google algorithm updates. Why Google algorithm updates take place To satisfy users, Google needs to serve the best results possible, considering many factors, including user expectations and technological advancements. So, the search engine often updates or “tweaks” its algorithm to change what the SERP shows.  In the early days of SEO, Google would release updates to keep people from manipulating the algorithm. For example, the Penguin update  targeted spammy link practices, and the Panda update  protected against thin content.  While Google still releases updates targeting spam, recently the company is placing more emphasis on surfacing the highest quality content for users. How often does Google implement algorithm updates? Google implements algorithm tests and changes daily. Though many of them are small, the company’s own documentation suggests that there were over 4,000 updates in 2021 . Core updates (specifically) tend to occur four to five times a year. Historically, Google would carry out major updates one at a time. However since 2022, large-scale updates like the Product Reviews update and core updates have rolled out concurrently or in quick succession.  While this is a recent trend, it’s important to note that we don’t know if this trend will continue. Nevertheless when trying to understand how your site has been impacted by an algorithm update , rapid changes like this can make it difficult to pinpoint the particular cause of a visibility surge or drop. What kinds of algorithm updates does Google make? Google’s algorithm updates fall under the following categories: Core updates Targeted updates Unconfirmed updates Let’s explore each of these update types further. Core algorithm updates “Core updates” (or “broad core algorithm updates”) are when Google implements wide-ranging changes to how its algorithm works.  Rather than slight modifications to ancillary aspects, these updates signal a broad change in how Google’s algorithm ranks pages and sites . These updates are important because, rather than affecting how a single page may rank for a keyword, they can impact domain-wide visibility. Think of the “core algorithm” as a stew, where each spice and ingredient works in relative harmony with the others. An update to the core algorithm might mean a change in how those various ingredients factor into each other and the role they play in the overall stew—among other things (such as advancements that enable the elements within the core algorithm to function at a higher level). While Google has long released broad core algorithm updates, Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan began officially announcing  core updates  in March 2018.  These updates have tremendously impacted how search marketers think about content. Perhaps the most notable of these updates was known as the Medic update (AKA the August 2018 core update), as it disproportionately impacted Your Money Your Life (YMYL)  sites, including finance, health, and other sites that could significantly harm users if they present inaccurate information. In many ways, the Medic update served as the prototype for subsequent core updates. It showed a clear qualitative leap in Google’s ability to understand and profile content. Those significantly impacted by the update included sites with a thin content experience and those that put marketing aims above substantial content.  For example, if a user searched [how to eat better], pages that use heavy marketing language or those that showed bias towards their own product or service would likely rank lower after this update. On the other hand, Google’s algorithm rewarded authoritative, expert, and unbiased articles on the same topic. Since then, Google’s core updates have shown an increased ability to understand what quality content looks and sounds like. This includes cases of Google demoting pages that, instead of offering informational content, took a marketing tone as well as instances of rewarding pages that offer a highly targeted content experience that is of clear value to users.  Targeted algorithm updates Along with core updates, Google also carries out updates that target specific types of content. These align with ranking systems and include: Spam Updates  Link spam updates Reviews updates These updates can cause ranking changes for some website types and not others.  It’s important to note that while each of these updates may focus on a certain content type, Google sometimes releases the updates concurrently with core updates, which can make it difficult to tell if the impact was due to one ranking system or another.  For instance, the March 2024 spam update released at the same time as the March 2024 core update . Some sites could be affected by one or both updates, so it may be difficult to isolate the impact and identify solutions. Google best practice updates In rare instances, Google will announce a new algorithm update ahead of time. Examples of this include the:   Mobile-first update HTTPs update Page Experience update , which introduced performance metrics (known as Core Web Vitals ) These updates are similar in that they seek to reward sites making adjustments based on Google’s newest best practice recommendations for website management and user satisfaction. When these kinds of updates occur, Google’s teams often create new tools and documentation to support SEOs and developers adapting to the changes. In the case of the Mobile-first update, for example, Google introduced a mobile-friendly testing tool , while Core Web Vitals ushered in a suite of UX tools in Lighthouse .  Unconfirmed Google updates Google makes thousands of changes to its algorithm every year, yet only officially announces a fraction of these updates.  Instead of relying purely on confirmed updates, search marketers use “SEO weather tools” to track significant algorithm changes. These tools  indicate rank volatility level by visualizing ranking movement (as shown below). Google’s broad core updates have been the most commonly confirmed update type, but other confirmed updates include   the Spam updates that worked to reduce the prevalence of websites that violated Google spam policies in search results.  In general, confirmed updates result in far more rank volatility than unofficial updates. How to handle confirmed Google updates An official core update (or other confirmed update) is a bit different than the run-of-the-mill unconfirmed update. In some cases, ranking gains and losses can be more long-term, with there being fewer reversals.  If you believe that your site was affected by an algorithm update, it is important to assess the impact of Google algorithm updates  thoroughly before you take steps towards recovering from core update ranking changes . You need to understand how Google views your site as well as the topic that the keyword(s) represent. While Google may see you as an authority on one topic, it may think another falls just outside your site’s identity (in which case you would want to show Google that the topic is pertinent to your site by creating highly-detailed and nuanced content around it that connects to the other aspects of your website/business).  There are a variety of reasons why Google would no longer look at your content the same way. It could be that the intent of your pages around a given topic is not aligned with how Google sees user needs here.  Your job is to figure out where this is happening and to analyze the SERP so that you can see what Google is after and then do that, but better and with differentiation.  Future-proofing your website against Google updates Rank volatility is just a natural consequence of competing on the Google SERP. No site is without rank volatility. Every site sees some of its rankings come and some of its rankings go. Expecting that your rankings will always be at the top of the SERP is like expecting bad things will never happen to you. So much is out of your control—especially in competitive spaces where many pages are vying for top rankings.  However, the most basic and important thing you can do is create really good content, which is what most of Google’s own advice on core updates  discusses.  Remember—like everything in SEO, what good content looks like  depends on your vertical. The tone, structure, and feel of a basic outline on heart diseases, for example, will look different than a thesis on quantum physics, which will be different than a post about a local baseball game.  So long as you keep your audience and their needs in mind—and present them with a first-class user experience—you’ll be able to insulate your website from Google updates as much as any business possibly can. Mordy Oberstein - Head of SEO Branding, Wix   Mordy is the Head of SEO Branding at Wix. Concurrently he also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is one of the organizers of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Mark Williams-Cook You need to know exactly why visitors came to your site if you want your offerings to be relevant to them. So, how do you find out what they want to know? And to take it a step further, how do you find out all their questions and pain points surrounding that topic so that you can address them? Data from Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) search feature is one of the most valuable, accessible sources available to help you understand search behavior and, ultimately, your customers. Armed with this knowledge, you can get insights that transform your content strategy as well as your business’s visibility in the SERPs. Table of contents: What are People Also Ask results? What are People Also Ask results for? Intent proximity in PAAs can guide your content How to get PAA data with AlsoAsked 4 ways to use People Also Ask data for better digital marketing 01. Make helpful content that’s user-first—not topic-first 02. Get intel on trending keywords for first-mover advantage 03. Audit your brand profile and inform your content strategy 04. Get inspiration for social posts PAAs: Check back often to understand when to update your content What are People Also Ask results? The People Also Ask search result feature  on Google is a set of questions related to your initial search.  PAAs appear in over 80% of English searches , generally within the first few results. Clicking on one of these questions will reveal an answer snippet, lifted directly from a cited source website. The box will also cascade down to add additional questions related to the one you clicked on. For SEOs and website owners, the PAA results tell you a lot about searcher behavior patterns, how Google interprets the query, and what your audience is looking to learn. I’ll explain more about this and provide some use cases in the following sections. What are People Also Ask results for? For many complex queries, Google’s research tells us it takes on average eight searches for a user to complete a task . One of the ways Google can provide better results (potentially reducing the amount of average searches to complete a task) is by helping the searcher get more specific with their query via prompting them with questions.  In a nutshell, People Also Ask results help Google understand queries better. In the above example, the search for [building a business] is quite broad; it may mean different things to different people. However, Google has determined that the majority of the searches around starting a business are actually to do with money. By offering these additional results and other off-ramps (such as the more generic [how do I start a small business?]), Google creates an induction loop  from user feedback, offering them an understanding of the query via what results (in this case, PAA questions) users click on next. These People Also Ask results offer value to the searcher by tapping into the wisdom of crowds. For instance, my search for [how to change car battery] generates the question [Which battery terminal do you take off first?]. If it’s your first time changing a car battery, you might not have even considered this as an important thing that you should know! Intent proximity in PAAs can guide your content ‘ Intent ’ generally refers to the overall goal the user wants to achieve, which can involve a number of search queries. People Also Ask data is a great way to identify search queries that are closely related by ‘intent proximity’ (meaning they commonly occur close to each other when a user has that intent). One of Google’s internal metrics for how well its search engine is doing is Time To Result (TTR) . This essentially measures how long it took the searcher to complete their mission and satisfy their intent. Google’s goal is to get this number as low as possible, which means that if it can find content that covers many of the searches that are close in intent proximity, it will likely determine this content is better and will serve it higher up the search results. This is how People Also Ask data can help you not only understand your audience better, but also improve your website rankings. How to get PAA data with AlsoAsked While PAA data is available in the search results, collecting it quickly, in the volumes needed to conduct research can be challenging: If you want to fetch results for other regions/languages, you’ll likely need to invest in a VPN service to get accurate results. You can use Chrome extensions to ‘scrape’ the results, but this process is very time consuming. If you scrape too much, Google will likely give you ‘CAPTCHA’ challenges to complete or temporarily block you. AlsoAsked  is a freemium, web-based service that can collect this PAA data for you for free, without account creation. We created the web version after I demonstrated a local command line version we’d been using for years at an SEO conference. The overwhelming feedback I got was that there was no easy existing way to get this intent data online, so AlsoAsked was born. Simply go to the homepage, enter the query in the box (as you would with Google), then select the language and region you would like to investigate and hit ‘Search.’ AlsoAsked searches Google in real time and ‘mines’ the People Also Ask section by simulating clicks on the generated questions for you. Within a few seconds, it will put together a graph that looks something like this: With the original search on the far left, you can see the first four results are the same as our previous manual Google search. And, AlsoAsked automatically gathers all of the possible next questions, as if the user clicked on each one of those questions, and shows you how they are connected. You end up with a map of generalized user intent as Google understands it, plotted out by search terms. Already, this is incredibly valuable as Google has ‘ clustered ’ these search terms for you. You can explore deeper into these maps by hovering over one of the ‘+’ signs and clicking ‘Search.’ This will conduct a new search, with the term you selected as the root question. The free version of AlsoAsked gives you three free searches per day, which is enough to get started. There are paid plans  with more monthly searches and advanced features (such as exporting CSV/XLS results, including the answers and ranking websites, as well as an API for programmatic use), but we’ll stick with the free version for the purposes of this guide. To save your results, you can click on ‘Download results,’ which allows you to download the intent graph as a PNG image file. 4 ways to use People Also Ask data for better digital marketing Now that you know a little bit about PAA data, where it comes from, and why it exists, let’s look at some examples of practical applications: Make content that’s user-first—not topic-first Get intel on trending keywords for first-mover advantage Audit your brand profile and inform your content strategy Get inspiration for social posts 01. Make helpful content that’s user-first—not topic-first Combine PAA data with your own topical expertise  to create outlines for content that’s truly helpful for your target audience. Google’s advice  on content creation centers around creating “helpful, reliable, people-first content.” This is what your People Also Ask data is going to help you achieve. If we look at case studies of websites that have performed well  since the March 2024 updates, you can see Google focusing on and rewarding websites that have content that is far more ‘user-first’  (as opposed to ‘topic first,’ which is where some traditional keyword-based tools may lead you). PAAs are one of the only sources of ‘zero volume’ keyword data  that gives you an in-depth view of almost any search term. This means you can use it to guide your content creation and rest assured that it is, in fact, people-centric and helpful! Here’s an example: You’re writing an article to help potential customers find the best running shoes, what kind of things might you consider? You can start with the query [what are the best running shoes?] and zoom in from there using PAA data. AlsoAsked gives you this output for our example query: Just from looking at this data, you can identify that users are interested in: Which brand  of running shoes might be best (in addition to mentioning it in this article, it’s likely worth exploring ‘brand vs. brand’ type content somewhere else on the site) The styles  of running shoe How comfortable  different running shoes are (in relation to both style and brand) Which types of running shoes professionals  use Whether running shoes make you run faster You can click on these results and continue almost forever down these intent rabbit holes, so at some point you need to make a human decision about what to include in your article and what might make sense to make another page for . 02. Get intel on trending keywords for first-mover advantage One of the downsides of traditional keyword research  is the time lag before data becomes available. For instance, as I write this, GPT-4o  was released three days ago, but major keyword research tools (incorrectly) say there are zero searches for [GPT-4o]: In contrast, one of the huge advantages of PAA data is that Google refreshes results within hours and new intent emerges or existing intent shifts in near real-time. From the PAA graph above, we can conclusively see that people are indeed searching for [GPT-4o], and within hours we were already getting data about the kinds of things they were asking.  Initially, most of the queries were around the cost  of the new version of GPT-4, then a day or so later, we could see many questions were around how to access GPT-4o, how to use it, and what it does differently than GPT-4. Being first to publish is a significant advantage for SEO. Not only are you operating in a much smaller set of results (which increases your chances of ranking well), you’re also much more likely to get cited by other websites (potentially earning you backlinks ). Other websites linking to you (via citation) is one of the strongest signals  search engines use to gauge the quality of your content for ranking. With links, not only is your content more likely to ‘stick’ high up in the search results, but those citations will help your website as a whole become more visible in search. Any time a topic is in the news that’s related to sites I’m working on, I’ll pop the topic into AlsoAsked and make sure we’ve got some content coverage! 03. Audit your brand profile and inform your content strategy One overlooked use for PAA data is understanding how consumers view brands and what their main concerns, perceptions, and questions are. Let’s take a look at an example for Revolut bank. If I am a product or brand manager, these questions are hugely valuable for me. For Revolut, we can see that customers: Consider Monzo to be a main competitor Have concerns about the safety of their money using Revolut Have concerns about the country Revolut is operated from Want to know which bank backs Revolut Want to know how Revolut reports to HMRC (the UK tax authority) Want to know if known experts, such as Martin Lewis, recommend Revolut As you might expect, when it comes to putting money somewhere, customers have concerns around safety. The PAA data gives us the specifics, so rather than just saying “Revolut is safe,” we know how to qualify this in consumers’ minds with information on HMRC, transparency on country of operation, as well details on which banks work with Revolut. Outside of this, we know it would be a good idea to make some content comparing Revolut to Monzo and likely reaching out to some independent third parties, like the Martin Lewis Money Saving Expert website, to be reviewed there. This can be your quick checklist to see if your current brand research and content strategy stacks up against what the data says your customers are asking. 04. Get inspiration for social posts PAA data can help you discover topics for social media posts that your audience will be interested in. Let’s take the above example (Revolut bank) and imagine that one of the objectives of your social media strategy is to educate potential customers about what Revolut is and how it works. One of the nodes we saw in the PAA data was [What exactly does Revolut do?], so you immediately know this is a valid line of questioning!  You can see there are lots of questions that fall into this bucket (such as if Revolut can be used abroad, how to put money on a Revolut card, how fees work, and how to withdraw money). Apart from approaching this data through the lens of written web copy, consider a social media strategy of short-form videos that simply answer one each of those questions in less than 60 seconds. With a paid version of AlsoAsked, you can also upload up to 1,000 search terms at once, giving on average 25,000 questions—the basis of your social media content for the entire year. PAAs: Check back often to understand when to update your content People Also Ask data is a quick, cheap, and effective way to get insight into your customers, whether you’re an SEO, producing content, or a product, brand, or social media manager. Use it to kickstart your brainstorming, get quick insights, or as an addition to the data you use to build content briefs . Apart from getting started right away, one final tip I would give is to check PAA data often, as it changes and evolves over time. This serves as an indicator that your content also likely needs iteration and improvement as well. Of course, if you’re tech savvy, there are ways to tie tools together to automate this process entirely ! Mark Williams-Cook - Digital Marketing Director at Candour   Mark has over 20 years of SEO experience and is co-owner of search agency Candour , the founder of AlsoAsked, and runs a pet category eCommerce business. Outside of speaking at conferences, Mark has trained over 3,000 SEOs with his Udemy course. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: James Clark As a digital marketing agency, creating custom reports for your clients in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) helps them make sense of their web analytics  data. Done correctly, it also highlights the excellent results you’re delivering and gets you buy-in for your recommendations.  But, with GA4 offering a range of customization options as well as bespoke “explorations,” it isn’t a case of one-size-fits-all. Here’s what to consider when creating custom reports, both from a business and a technical perspective, so that your clients can get a clear overview of how you’re moving their business forward. Table of contents : Why create custom GA4 reports for clients Create custom reports based on GA4’s standard reports How to customize report navigation How to customize standard GA4 reports GA4: Reports vs. Explorations How to create explorations in GA4 Example: Identify spam traffic in GA4 with explorations The limitations of explorations How to share explorations with your clients Advanced custom reporting techniques Why agencies create custom GA4 reports for clients If you’re already up to speed with GA4 , you know that it comes with a suite of pre-made reports (that are personalized based on the business objectives selected when the property was set up): For example, if you or your client selected “Generate leads” when creating the property, GA4 will show reports relating to traffic acquisition, landing pages, and user attributes. So, as an agency providing SEO or other digital services, why should you create custom reports for your client? Because the standard reports almost certainly won’t give your client exactly what they need. Instead, they’ll provide: Too much information—overwhelming the client Too little information—frustrating the client The wrong information—confusing the client Custom reporting also lets you guide the narrative, encouraging your client to focus on important business metrics ( such as conversions ) instead of irrelevant ‘vanity metrics’ that may get highlighted in one-size-fits-all reporting. This, in turn, encourages your client to focus on the impact of the work you do for them—or the potential benefit of the work you are proposing . Before you start to build a report, think about your client. The report is for their benefit after all. Here’s what you need to consider (I’ll cover them in detail in the sections that follow): Your stakeholder The business’s requirements Your client’s data literacy Identify your stakeholders Who will sign off on your reports? And who will reference it on a day-to-day basis? These two groups are often not the same. (A senior stakeholder may want a report containing everything but the kitchen sink, then never look at it again.) Also identify the departments that will use your reports. If the report is for sales and marketing, for example, it’s likely that these two departments have different but overlapping requirements. Should you build one report that meets both teams’ needs or create two separate reports? One report may become cluttered, but two reports may require more work to build and maintain.  With these sorts of questions, there’s often no right or wrong—simply a balance to achieve. Understand the business requirements Once you’ve identified your stakeholders, work with them to understand their requirements and nail down the specifics of the report. Requirements vary widely, but every report needs: A purpose.  This could be to inform a strategic decision, to assess the impact of a marketing campaign, to provide the sales team with actionable information, etc. A link to business goals.  There must be a clear connection between the purpose of the report, the measurable objectives of the site , and the wider goals of the business. For example, if the purpose of a report is to assess the impact of a marketing campaign, that marketing campaign should support an objective such as increasing retention rate, which in turn should connect to a business goal (perhaps related to growth or profitability). If the report doesn’t have a purpose, nobody will use it. If the purpose doesn’t link to a business objective, stakeholders may look at it but they will waste their time doing so. Understand your client’s data literacy Your stakeholders’ data literacy is the final consideration—how comfortable are they at interpreting graphs and understanding the stories that reports tell?  Stakeholders with lower data literacy will need simpler reports that tell simpler stories. Multi-page dashboards (like the one in the example below) look impressive, but they are likely to frighten more than enlighten: Once the report is finished, plan a handover meeting to ensure that stakeholders can access the report in GA4 as well as interpret it correctly. If you don’t, it won’t get used. Create custom reports based on GA4’s standard reports Before you build a completely bespoke report, it’s worth looking at the standard reports to see if you can tweak one of these to give your client(s) what they need.  Standard reports in GA4 are organized into “collections.” These are the top-level menu items in the Reports section (e.g., “Business objectives,” “Life cycle”): Reports themselves can either be “overview” reports or “detail” reports: Overview reports consist of a number of small summary “cards” Detail reports go into more depth on one particular area The reason for going over this structure is that you can edit it at every level. GA4 lets you publish and unpublish collections, change which reports are in a collection, swap around the cards in an overview, or customize a detail report by adding a filter or new metric. Note: Before we proceed, you need to have the Administrator or Editor role to customize your reporting in GA4. If you don’t, many of the options I mention below will be unavailable. How to customize report navigation At the top level, you can customize the report navigation by publishing and editing collections. This is also useful if the wrong business objectives were selected when the GA4 property was initially configured. Keep in mind that any changes you make here will affect everyone with access to that GA4 property. To customize your report navigation in GA4: 01. Go to Reports > Library . 02. To publish a collection (e.g. “Life cycle”), click on the three dots to open the action menu and select Publish . 03. To edit a published collection, click on the three dots and select Edit . 04. Drag and drop reports from the panel on the right into the collection on the left. 05. Click Save . How to customize standard GA4 reports Customize reports either from the Library or by going to the report itself and selecting the pencil icon   in the top right. If you’re customizing an overview report, you can add and remove cards, or reorder them by dragging them around: If you’re customizing a detail report, you can add and remove metrics and dimensions, change visualizations, and apply a filter that affects everything on the report. For example, a client of mine wanted the “Pages and Screens” report to only show information on the main domain (and not any subdomains). I achieved this by adding a filter where Hostname exactly matched the main domain: When you finish customizing and click Save , you’ll have the option either to save the changes to the existing report or as a new report. This can be useful if you edit a report for one stakeholder but others were happy using the original. Options for sharing reports Your customized report is available to everyone with access to the GA4 property, but you can point stakeholders in the right direction by sending them a direct link to the report. Do this by going to the report, clicking on the share icon in the top right, and then Share link : In this same menu, you can select Schedule Email  to send the report out as a PDF or CSV. You can even set a schedule to automate monthly report sharing for up to 12 months (like in the example below): There’s one limitation here—you can only set the report to go out to users that have access to the GA4 property. If you want to give access only to a subset of data, consider a different solution, such as a Looker Studio dashboard (which I cover in the “advanced techniques” section later). Google Analytics 4: Reports vs. Explorations In addition to the standard reports, GA4 offers “explorations”: custom reports you put together yourself by combining dimensions and metrics along with optional filters and segments. Explorations are great for exploring data (as their name suggests)—either to answer questions or discover insights. However, there’s nothing stopping you from building read-only explorations for your clients so they can monitor their KPIs. While standard reports contain a number of components all on one screen, explorations consist of one or more “tabs” (a bit like Excel) with a single visualization on each. This means explorations are often the better choice if you want to convey important information clearly and simply: Explorations offer a number of visualization techniques, from the simple table through to funnels, paths, and segment overlaps (as shown in the image above).  You will see these techniques in GA4’s standard reports too, but only in specific circumstances. For example, funnels appear in some of the eCommerce reports. Explorations let you use visualizations to answer a wider range of questions, making them more flexible than the standard reports. One other benefit of explorations is that you don’t need to be an account Administrator or Editor to create them. The feature is also available to users with the more restricted Marketer or Analyst roles. In this section, I’ll walk you through creating an exploration, using (as our example) an exploration that helps to identify the source of spam traffic. We’ll consider the limitations of explorations and finally see how to share explorations with your clients. How to create explorations in GA4 GA4 offers seven exploration templates (AKA “techniques”). Each one lends itself to a different kind of analysis. For example, if your focus is on user journeys then choose the “Path Exploration” technique. If you have an eCommerce client and are looking at average lifetime value, then choose the “User lifetime” technique. To create an exploration, go to Explore in GA4’s left-hand navigation menu. Here you can start with either a blank exploration or one of the seven techniques: Choosing one of the techniques gives you an example report (with the relevant metrics and dimensions already included). There’s also a link to a template gallery that contains a few extra templates for specific use cases and industries. You can also start with a blank exploration, choose a technique from the dropdown menu within the builder, and add your own metrics and dimensions from scratch. There’s one other way to create an exploration, and that’s to convert one of GA4’s detail reports. Go to the report you are interested in and click on the Export this report to analysis  button in the top-right. Each element in the report will appear as a separate tab in the exploration. GA4 automatically saves all explorations you create, even if you don’t name them or edit them. So if you’re clicking in and out of the different techniques available to you, your Explore section will soon contain lots of blank or default reports (shown below): Delete these as you go along, otherwise it may be difficult to find the genuine reports you want to share with your clients later on.  Also, come up with a naming convention that makes sense to both you and your clients: there’s no way to sort your explorations into folders, you can only browse and search by name. This means how you name your explorations is all-important. Example: Identify spam traffic in GA4 with explorations Let’s take a common scenario: You’ve noticed a spike in users on a particular day, and suspect it’s spam traffic. How can you use an exploration to find out where the traffic is coming from and whether it’s spam? Once you know that, you can filter it out from GA’s standard reports and save your client from some confusion in the future. Go ahead and create a blank exploration. This defaults to the “free-form” technique, and the “table” visualization: Explorations, like GA4’s other reports, consist of metrics (that have a number value) and dimensions (that have a text value). Before you can add dimensions and metrics to an exploration, you need to “import” them so they are available to use. Let’s import our metrics first: 01. Under METRICS, click + . 02. Click on Search metrics  and start typing “Users.” 03. Tick Total users . 04. Click on Search metrics  again and start typing “Sessions.” 05. Tick Sessions . 06. Click Import . Now do the same for DIMENSIONS, but this time import the dimension First user source / medium . This shows you how users landed on your website or app for the first time. For example, did you acquire them from “google / organic” or perhaps “ Youtube.com / referral”? The final stage is to build your exploration: 01. Double-click on your dimension to add it to the exploration. 02. Double-click on each of the two metrics to add them, too. 03. Choose your date range using the date picker in the top-left. In the panel on the right, you’ll see a table breaking down sessions and users on that day by their first user source. See if you can notice anything strange in my example: My top source for users was referrals from “ urlumbrella.com ,” but these users aren’t generating any sessions (as you would normally expect). This strange behavior is a clear indicator of programmatic spam traffic rather than genuine human visitors. So I’ve uncovered the source of my traffic spike—but if this didn’t work, I could try swapping out some different metrics or dimensions. Perhaps the traffic all came from the same city, another common indicator of spam. The limitations of explorations Although explorations are more flexible than GA4’s standard reports, they do have limitations. Here are four limitations to be aware of: 01. Can’t sort by dimension: GA4 lets you sort table visualizations by metric but not by dimension. What does that mean in practice? Let’s say you have a simple exploration with a dimension of Day (from 1 to 31) and a metric of Views: You can sort by views, from high to low (or from low to high). This will show you which days received the most views (as in the image above). But you can’t sort by day to show days 1 to 31 in consecutive order.  This can make it more difficult to work with some time-related dimensions in explorations than in standard reports. One workaround is to export the data and sort it in Excel. 02. No annotations:  Annotations were a popular feature in Universal Analytics (before GA4) that let you leave explanatory notes on specific data points. Perhaps tracking broke on a particular day, or a campaign launched—seeing this as an annotation would provide useful context for the data. Unfortunately, the annotation feature hasn’t made it across to GA4. There’s currently no way to add annotations (or commentary in general) to an exploration to help your client understand what they are looking at. This is also an issue with the standard reports, but feels like more of an omission with explorations because they are custom. 03. Data retention:  User-level and event-level data in GA4 gets deleted at the end of its retention period. For free GA4 accounts, this period is either two months or fourteen months (depending on your setting under Admin > Data Retention ): Explorations won’t show you data outside this period. On the other hand, GA4’s standard reports are based on aggregated data tables so they aren’t affected by this restriction. 04. No automated scheduling. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get a sharing link for an exploration or schedule it to go out via email. This is one way that explorations are less flexible than standard reports. How to share explorations with your clients To share your exploration, click on the “three dots” menu icon alongside it and select Share : This will make the exploration available to any other user with access to the property. However, only the original owner can edit the exploration; for other users, it will be read-only. If your client wants to make changes to an exploration you’ve built (such as choosing a different time period, for example) they will need to duplicate it first. This new copy will belong to them and they can edit it (but you can’t). Although this is restrictive, it does prevent your client from accidentally breaking or deleting explorations you’ve built for them. As I mentioned above, there’s no way to get a share link for an exploration. If you’re sharing an exploration with your client, I suggest emailing them to let them know that it’s now available to them in their GA4 property. Alternatively, you could make note of the exploration within a handoff or resource document for the client. Advanced custom reporting techniques Now that you know the basics of customizing standard reports and creating custom explorations in GA4, here are two advanced techniques to further impress your clients: Curating reports over time Analyzing GA4 data in other tools Curate your reports over time You’ve produced a report for your client based on their requirements and made sure they are comfortable using it. That’s not the end of the journey. Over time, your client’s requirements will evolve, their data literacy may improve, stakeholders themselves could join or leave. It’s worthwhile to check in with clients periodically to ensure that reports are still delivering value. Often, a client who spends time with a report will find that it triggers new questions that require further analysis.  And, don’t be afraid to delete or unshare reports that are no longer relevant: keep the reporting as uncluttered as possible, so clients can easily find what they need. Analyze GA4 data in other tools  Custom reporting in GA4 has one large restriction I haven’t mentioned yet: you can only report on data that is either collected in GA4 or pulled from a few specific Google sources (e.g., Google Search Console ). In reality, your client may have many different sources of data. Thinking just about marketing, that may include data from social media, email newsletters, and even offline activity such as trade shows. Bringing all this data together in one report can be highly insightful. For example, do your client’s direct mail campaigns correlate with increased website revenue? This is where a data visualization or business intelligence tool comes in. Many GA4 users gravitate towards Looker Studio , because (like GA4) it is free—plus it has official connectors to Google Analytics and most other Google products. You can add your offline data to Google Sheets and pull it in that way: Building a dashboard in Looker Studio or a BI tool such as Tableau also overcomes some of the GA4 limitations we looked at earlier. For example, you can add commentary and annotations  to your dashboard to contextualize the data for your client. It’s also possible to sort your data by dimension (such as “Day”) as well as metric: Data retention was another limitation I talked about. To get around this, you can use the free link between GA4 and BigQuery , Google’s cloud-based data warehouse. Your user and event data is safe from automatic deletion in BigQuery.  However, working with your client’s data in BigQuery isn’t as straightforward as working directly in GA4, as you’ll have to query it with SQL. But, when it comes to visualization, one option is to use the BigQuery connector in Looker Studio and build your client’s report there. Deliver relevant insights and showcase your value with custom GA4 reports As you consider which approach to take with your reporting, remember to always put the focus on the client. There’s no point building an insightful dashboard in Looker Studio if they log into GA4 every day and don’t want to have to grapple with another platform.  Whether your report relates to search performance or a different marketing area, focus on clarity, simplicity, and ease of use. That way, you stand the best chance of providing reporting that actually gets used—delivering business value and reflecting well on you as a trusted partner. James Clark - Web Analyst   James Clark is a web analyst from London, with a background in the publishing sector. When he isn't helping businesses with their analytics, he's usually writing how-to guides over on his website Technically Product . Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Michael Patten Data is an increasingly valuable and powerful asset for online businesses—most particularly, the data captured from user behaviors when they interact with your product or service. However, data privacy regulations (along with the significant penalties that come with violating them) present a huge challenge for most digital marketers, analysts, and website owners. Without possessing a perfect mix of legal qualifications, technical abilities, and extensive platform knowledge, running the most basic tracking on your website can feel like a confusing and stressful order. After guiding hundreds of businesses over the years to become ‘cookie compliant,’ I have condensed my key learnings below to help you strike the balance between abiding by the regulations whilst also maintaining a healthy volume of actionable business data. Table of contents: How privacy regulation impacts your user data Not everything is GDPR, but a lot of it is Why non-EU businesses need to care about user consent How to ensure your cookie banner is compliant Cookie banners on Wix Work around what you can’t track and understand what you could never track anyway Cookie banner and CMP implementation mistakes to avoid What you can do to ensure cookie compliance—even if you’re not a developer How privacy regulation impacts your user data Advanced analytics are no longer solely reserved for the Unilevers and the HSBCs of the world. Now that machine learning is woven into the core functions of most popular analytics and digital ads platforms, data literacy is also the key to intelligent business decisions for family-run bakeries, hand car washes, and online caricature artists alike. On that note, it’s easy to forget that data is no longer reserved for us humans. Feeding accurate, consistent data to ad platforms not only aids the return on your advertising investment (via smart bidding solutions), but also helps you reach the right prospective customers (through predictive audiences). There isn’t a single, successful growth strategy that I’ve led in the past five years that doesn’t reflect this at its core.  However, you can no longer track everyone who visits and everything they do on your website by simply slapping a code snippet on every page. Increasing privacy regulation around the world emphasizes the rights of the end user over:  The information that can be stored on their device The types of communications that can be sent to them How their personal information is stored on company databases Ignoring these regulations (and user preferences) can lead to platform suspensions, legal action, and rather hefty financial penalties—whether you’re an enterprise or ‘just a small business.’ More and more digital marketers feel that there is an aspect of ethics to consider as well. If a user declares they do not want you to track them, then you should honor their preference regardless of how strict the regulations govern this. After all, behind every businessperson leveraging user data is a person with personal data to protect as well. Not everything is GDPR, but a lot of it is If you operate from (or for) a European territory, you are likely aware of GDPR: the General Data Protection Regulation. If you are in a state or country that has alternative privacy regulations, chances are that GDPR was a reference point for its foundations. ‘GDPR’ has become shorthand, like Jacuzzi to hot tubs, Kleenex to tissues, or Google to search engines. And, there are a variety of different, significant privacy regulations within the European territories as well (i.e., the ePrivacy Directive, the Digital Services Act, and Digital Markets Act). Admittedly, ‘GDPR’ is a lot faster to say, so it gets used quite loosely. These laws and guidelines cover more than just tracking pixels and browser cookies—these are far-reaching requirements that span many areas of your business as well as the information in your customer base. To give a very top-level (perhaps even oversimplified) view, I’ve summed up the distinctions between these regulations that pertain to website tracking: GDPR  — The General Data Protection Regulation, enforced since 2018. Articles 4, 7, and 21: Defines what ‘consent’ is in exact terms The demonstration that valid consent has been obtained from the user Clear presentation of the purposes and means of processing user data Providing the right to object and withdraw consent ePD  — The ePrivacy Directive, enforced as ‘ the cookie law ’ since 2020. Article 5(3): Consent must be obtained to store information in a user’s device. Data processing purposes must be clearly defined and presented. Classification should be given between essential and non-essential functions. In addition to cookies, this also covers other types of information storage (such as local or session storage). DSA  — The Digital Services Act, enforced since 2024. A focus on platforms and large online organizations to provide specific levels of transparency and online safety The outlawing of ‘dark patterns,’ visual trickery employed to manipulate a user’s choice over their own data DMA  — The Digital Markets Act, enforced since 2024. Introduces the concept of ‘gatekeepers,’ significantly large online entities that process substantial amounts of user data, such as Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, etc. Gatekeepers are required to uphold stricter standards around privacy protection and user control. Whereas the GDPR and ePD are geared more towards us marketers, analysts, and website owners in our own practices, the DSA and DMA affect us in an entirely different way—the requirements needed from the ads and analytics platforms we utilize and, by extension, the way they track. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the requirement for anyone serving Google Ads tracking to users within the European Economic Area (EEA) in the release of Google Consent Mode v2. Whereas v1 provided the option to simply track opted-out users on a cookieless basis, v2 requires that you declare that the user data you send to Google’s servers was collected in a compliant manner. These declarations are processed on every hit sent via various parameters. Failure to integrate this feature can lead to various tracking restrictions, particularly when it comes to re-engaging previous site visitors. Why non-EU businesses should care about user consent All too often I hear, ‘We don’t need to care about the cookie law because we’re not in the EU,’  or similarly, ‘We don’t need to worry because we are a small business—only corporations are at risk of fines.’   For the most part, it’s not about where your business operates, but the location of the users that can access your site (and therefore be tracked by it). By competing globally online, you are also responsible for catering to your global audience’s privacy preferences. And while the majority of cases making headlines are about large multinational companies, smaller businesses are not invisible to the eye of the authorities. And, bear in mind that companies, such as Google, are obliged to restrict, suspend, and outright remove the tracking and accounts of any website detected to be in breach of privacy regulations—which, in my experience, is a more likely and frequent outcome. How to ensure your cookie banner is GDPR compliant Fortunately, when it comes to user tracking and the methods in which this is handled, there are many observable similarities between regulations. Below, I’ve grouped the main tenets for consideration: User control over what they consent to Categorize cookies by essential and non-essential functions, but also by purpose: analytics, marketing, optional site functionality, etc. Provide separate levers to opt-in and opt-out of these categories. The definition of ‘giving consent,’ at least under GDPR, is when it is given freely, is specific, informed and unambiguous in relation to the user’s wishes, and given via clear, affirmative action. Consent can no longer be assumed; cookie banners that state ‘by browsing this site, you automatically agree to have cookies set,’ no longer comply. For territories with stricter regulations (e.g., the EU), non-essential cookies cannot be set on landing for a new user until they have accepted them (referred to as an ‘opt-in’ model). Users should also be able to change their preferences whenever they desire, typically via a link or button that re-summons the cookie banner. This concept extends further than just cookies; for instance, a user should be able to explicitly express whether they would like to be included in marketing communications. Information clarity Cookies set within a user’s browser, both essential and non-essential, should be listed on your cookie policy page (or failing that, your privacy policy page) with details around their purpose, lifespan, domain, etc. Details should be clearly viewable before  a user has given consent (typically provided as a link to the privacy and/or cookie policy via the cookie banner itself). Take accessibility  into account when presenting information, as per the rest of your website. E.g., even if your company brand colors are a mix of neon green-on-lime green, when presenting matters of user data privacy, you need to ensure that everyone (including those with vision impairments) are able to receive this information. Trickery and manipulation The language you use to outline any and all aspects of your user privacy policy should be clear, plain, and easy to understand. Avoid ‘dark patterns’ (tactics that mask or disguise unintentional actions) when you design your site. For example, covering the ‘opt-out’ button with a site popup or coloring the button to obscure it in the background is unacceptable. Likewise, adding tens of unnecessary options that make the user feel that opting-out of non-essential cookies is too much hard work is also unacceptable. Do not force users to opt-in to non-essential functions in order to perform core functions. For example, not allowing a user to buy a product unless they agree to be tracked via marketing cookies that have no bearing on the site’s checkout process itself. However, using a banner overlay that interrupts the user from interacting with the website until they have expressed their levels of consent generally appears to be acceptable. It is simply not enough to appear  as if you are performing these aspects. The onus is on you to ensure that, if indeed you are presenting the user with a comprehensive and compliant cookie banner, that the controls given do exactly that—control.  Too many past clients that I onboarded arrived with a cookie management platform (CMP) that appeared to be compliant, but failed immediately in core functionality. To put it metaphorically, the clients were under the impression that they had a fully fledged house alarm system, only to discover that what they were sold was a small box on the side of their home with a blinking LED light inside it. Whilst I was able to help some clients before their non-compliance was detected, others suffered a more challenging process. For the latter, Google issued them a non-compliance notice that declared they must improve before a very short and strict deadline. Even those that quickly mobilized their developers and overhauled their tracking logic were not guaranteed to carry on as normal, as Google often did not detect the consent-focused changes before the deadline came. The result was not only that their ads tracking was suspended (leading to no conversion visibility or ability to remarket), but a manual review process with Google’s GDPR team followed, and that spanned many weeks. This proved to be the only way to get tracking reinstated, all the while conversion volumes dwindled and cost-per-acquisition rose to an unsustainable level. Cookie banners on Wix For Wix site owners, once you add a cookie banner to your site , non-essential cookies and scripts are automatically disabled until your visitor consents, helping to ensure that you stay on the right side of compliance.  Within your Wix cookie consent banner, you can also add a link to your privacy policy so visitors understand all the ways your site collects, uses, discloses, and manages their data. Alternatively, you can also manage your cookies and privacy settings with an app like Cookiebot for Wix . Work around what you can’t track and understand what you could never track anyway Giving users control over how their interactions with your site get tracked means that you’re unable to obtain a ‘full picture’ of user activity. When the ‘cookie law’ was getting implemented, many digital marketers needed to learn how to navigate the sudden and significant loss of reported traffic as soon as cookie management was activated. This was completely understandable, but there are some important factors to consider with regards to the ‘missing’ data: User type Description Impact on your reporting Segment one The proportion of users who opt-in to tracking in the traditional way. These are the users generating the reporting data that you still have access to. Segment two The proportion of users that land on the site only to leave without interacting with the cookie banner.  These users will no longer show in reports, which, frankly, is no great loss. While this will make overall traffic seem smaller, these users do not bring value to your data (or your ability to make smart decisions from that data). Segment three The proportion of users that explicitly and consciously opt-out of non-essential tracking on your site. These users also no longer show in reports, which is perhaps more concerning up-front. These users may be interacting with your site in a meaningful way, although according to Google , at a much lower rate than those who opt-in. If you receive reports on the proportion of users who purposefully opt-out (which some consent management platforms offer), you can use this figure to model the ‘lost’ activity against users who opted-in, or against the number of sales/leads received in your CRM vs. the reported totals. This presents an inconvenience, but not a catastrophe.  You may also track users via newer, cookieless methods. Marketers who subscribe to the ‘no means no’ mentality deem cookieless tracking to also be unethical, perhaps even in technical contradiction to existing laws and regulations. Nevertheless, solutions such as the advanced flavor of Google Consent Mode, server-side tracking, and various per-platform conversion APIs (cAPIs) are available to help you ‘regain’ this reporting visibility, either via machine learning-assisted activity estimations or by sending information about on-site activity to a separate, dedicated data processing server. It’s worth noting that such solutions require advanced expertise to set up, and many come with an additional running cost. Segment four The proportion of users who, even before user privacy regulations, were not trackable.  Whilst privacy-centric browsers such as Brave have become more common in recent years, blocking cookie-serving tracking scripts is not a new concept, with many browser extensions serving that purpose for years. Even before then, with knowledge, a user could disable scripts through the browser’s developer console. This fourth and final segment is an important reminder for those with rose-tinted glasses:  Even in the days gone by, reporting never represented 100% of user activity. Whilst we’re so used to obsessing over quantity (be it number of sessions, users, and pageviews), the most important questions are answered by those providing the highest quality of actionable data—the users that actively opt in and meaningfully interact with your product or service. Cookie banner and CMP implementation mistakes to avoid There will always be a level of ‘managed’ or ‘known’ data discrepancies to accommodate when first becoming cookie compliant, because (as mentioned before) those who immediately bounce or opt-out of tracking will be missing from the reports you typically see them in. However, imagine the distress of loading up your analytics platform  only to find that, not only has traffic dropped overnight, but now everything is completely misattributed to ‘direct.’ Imagine weeks later learning that your remarketing audiences no longer perform, as the list stopped populating with new users from the date your CMP was activated. Perhaps, the other end of the scale is true: sessions and users have skyrocketed but reported conversion  rate severely dropped as a result. Unfortunately, this is far too common and signals a rushed or incomplete CMP integration. Symptoms of this include: Cookies set for the user upon landing, only to be hastily deleted as the CMP loads on the page, only to reset the cookies again once they are accepted. This is a typical cause of user and session inflation, as two user and session IDs are assigned during the same page load sequence. Cookies accepted by the user, but do not set until the second  page view in their journey. Not only is attribution information now lost at the point that your analytics platform springs to life, but those who only view one page in their session are not recorded. This is a typical cause of user and session suppression, along with attribution issues. Autoblocking functions (which are a common feature offered by many CMP providers) operating at an overzealous level and blocking website features unrelated to non-essential cookies. This is a common cause of a whole host of website issues that can potentially disrupt the entire user journey to conversion. It’s an uneasy situation to find yourself in, particularly if you invested significant time and/or money in getting your website compliant, only to then need expert help in order to get your data back in balance. What you can do to ensure cookie compliance—even if you’re not a developer Whether you have yet to begin your journey to cookie compliance or already have a fully fledged CMP in place, there are some simple checks you can perform and some handy free-to-use tools available to make it easy—even if you have no experience with front-end web development or tracking code. Data is an increasingly valuable and powerful asset, after all, so ensuring you can use it to its fullest may well be the difference between business success and failure. Get familiar with your browser’s developer tools console . Here you can not only see the cookies set by the website, but also the hits that are sent from your website to third-party providers. Clear your browser cookies or open a new ‘guest’ window (this is not the same as an ‘incognito’ window that can still reference previous browser storage). Go to your website and observe the cookies that are set before you interact with anything by opening up your browser’s development tools window. Does anything surprise you? Some common, non-essential cookie names to keep an eye out for include: Cookies starting with ga almost always relate to GA4, along with those that start with gcl  typically relating to Google Conversion Linking functions for Google Ads. Cookies that begin with _hj  likely belong to user experience tool Hotjar, used for visualizing how users interact with your site via engagement tracking. fbp  is a cookie that relates to Facebook Ads/Meta, whilst those starting with tt  relate to TikTok  Ads. These are used for tracking the success of marketing activity and audience list generation. Similarly, those starting with _pin  likely relate to Pinterest  Ads. There are some cookies that aren’t so easy to spot in relation to the name of the platform that set them. You can use Cookiepedia  to find more information on some of the lesser-known platforms that are integrated with your website. Though this resource isn’t the most complete or up-to-date record of cookie information, at the very least it will point you to other websites that have been detected as also serving that type of cookie. The more reputable sites on the list should  provide more info via their own comprehensive cookie policy pages. Familiarize yourself with how to view the network hits going from your site to third-party servers. To make this process a lot easier (especially for Chrome users), I recommend an extension such as David Vallejo’s Analytics Debugger  as well as Omnibug  by omnibug.io. Using the tools mentioned above, you can view all the information getting sent off-site much more easily. Many analytics and ads platforms will assign a user a unique session or user ID. Can you spot any of these IDs changing between your first and second page view on your site? To break this particular process down, let’s use GA4 as an example: Google’s support pages for GA4  state that the ga  cookie is used to distinguish users, and the ga_ cookie is used for identifying sessions. Either using a browser extension or by viewing the cookie values within the developer console, both the Session ID (used to tie interactions to a single browsing session) and Client ID (used as an effective user ID to tie interactions to a single device) are viewable. Start browsing your site from a fresh ‘guest’ window. Observe the IDs immediately after accepting analytics cookies, and then again after clicking an internal link to another page. If the IDs change between any of these steps, this may indicate that non-essential cookies are able to set for a split-second when they have not been permitted to do so. It is likely that your CMP is not correctly set up and your analytics data will be skewed.  These tools can also show whether consent declaration parameters, such as those required via Google Consent Mode v2, are applying correctly and in accordance to user preferences. Use a VPN that allows you to spoof your location to view your site through the lens of a new user in different territories around the world. Does your cookie banner still hold up? In addition to auditing active technical issues, ensure that you follow best practices on how to present consent controls and related information on your website: Ensure your cookie banner meets current standards. Referencing the main principles contained in this article, ensure that your cookie banner is active, functional, and gives the user the correct level of choice and control over their consent preferences. Do not use trickery and manipulation to artificially influence a user’s choice over their data. Present detailed information about the cookies you use, their purpose, and their attributes on your privacy policy or cookie policy page. Provide the user with information about what they can do to amend or revoke their consent choices at any time during their visit. Ideally, provide a way to re-summon your cookie controls. Consumer privacy is here to stay Moving forwards, privacy laws are not going to disappear—in fact, they are almost certain to continue to grow and evolve (and quite rightly so). Growing and evolving your own skill sets in parallel is not just a requirement, but also presents a fantastic opportunity to expand your capabilities in your role. And, if you’re already ‘wearing too many hats,’ rest assured that there are a range of data privacy experts out there to lend a hand. Michael Patten - Analytics Manager at PMG Michael is a multi-disciplinary data expert with over ten years of agency-side experience in paid media and analytics. He has a passion for problem solving and skill for demystifying data, which he uses to help businesses of all shapes and sizes create enhanced, actionable insights. Linkedin

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 | 1PM ET The emergence of generative AI has led to a revolutionary number of sites relying upon the technology for their site’s content. For AI generated content to be worthwhile and impactful—the human input has to be polished and insightful. In this webinar you'll learn: How to improve the quality of your AI content The best use cases for AI content creation The challenges for optimizing AI content at high volumes Meet your hosts: Dale Bertrand Founder & CEO, Fire&Spark Dale Bertrand is a marketer and founder of Fire&Spark, an SEO and content marketing agency. He has two decades of experience in AI and marketing, drawing on his BSc and MSc in Electrical Engineering from Brown University with a focus on AI and computer engineering. LinkedIn Giuseppe Caltabiano VP of Marketing at Rock Content Giuseppe is a global marketing leader with 20+ years' experience. He excels in crafting content and marketing strategies for SaaS enterprises. Recognized as 2-time influential European B2B marketer, he has an MBA from SDA Bocconi and is trained in M&A at London Business School. Twitter | Linkedin Crystal Carter Head of SEO Communications, Wix Crystal is an SEO and Digital Marketing professional with over 15 years of experience. Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds and Tomy. An avid SEO Communicator, her work has been featured at Google Search Central, brightonSEO, Moz, Lumar (DeepCrawl), Semrush and more. Twitter | LinkedIn Mordy Oberstein Head of SEO Branding, Wix In addition to leading SEO Branding at Wix, Mordy also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is an organizer of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Tune in to hear him on Wix’s SEO podcast SERP’s Up, as well as Edge of the Web. Twitter | LinkedIn

Author: Celeste Gonzalez Your involvement with the community you serve can (and should) improve your local SEO . After all, it’s your context and history with your area and your customers’ needs that makes you an expert—and searchers want to hear from experts. In this guide, I’ll show you how local activities can pave the way for backlinks that improve brand awareness, bring in referral traffic, and benefit your rankings on Google. I’ll also show you to leverage your local expertise for backlinks via guest posting or through your own business website’s blog. Let’s get started. Table of contents: Why backlinks matter for local businesses Local link building opportunities Local citations and review platforms Local activities for coverage and backlinks Local business partnerships Create local content for backlinks and brand awareness Collaborate with local blogs Maintain your own topically and locally relevant blog Why backlinks matter for local businesses Links are one of Google’s most fundamental ranking signals—the company even says so in its documentation about how Google Search works :  “For example, one of several factors we use to help determine [quality of content] is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content. This has often proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted.” — Google Whitespark, a local SEO software company, publishes its Local Search Ranking Factors Report  every year after surveying the top experts in local SEO about ranking factors and their importance. The general consensus among the local SEOs is that links are amongst the most important local search ranking factors. From your audience’s perspective, backlinks convey trustworthiness . If a local journalist quoted a home builder (and added a link to their website) in their story about new city ordinances that affect permitting for new home construction, readers would see that home builder as an expert on the topic. These positive mentions build trust and could have significant benefits for your local business’s marketing and revenue.  Local link building opportunities There are numerous ways to attract backlinks  for your local business—each with its own particular strengths. Embrace the ones that best complement your business model and/or marketing workflow.  In this section, I’ll cover link building via: Local citations Local business activities Business partnerships Creating content as a way of earning backlinks is also one of the most fundamental strategies, which I’ll discuss later in its own section. Local citations and review platforms Citations  are online mentions of your business’s name, address, phone number, and other useful information. They help build awareness for your business and offer social proof through reviews, photos, videos, etc. Your previous customers use these platforms to rate their experiences, while potential customers check out your citations to evaluate whether you’re the business they’re looking for (often based on customer reviews ). Maintaining a profile on these review sites not only ups your credibility but also gives you the scoop on how to keep improving your service and/or products. Another benefit is that review websites and citation platforms (Yelp, Angi’s, HomeAdvisor, etc.) will often rank for high-volume, generic keywords that local businesses have a much harder time with.  Let’s look at the example in the screenshot above. Searchers who look up [plumber oceanside] on Google can click on the Yelp search result, see your business listing on their page, and either call to book an appointment or visit your website. Through Yelp’s high ranking, you have the potential to gain traffic from your business’s Yelp listing. This is one way your plumbing business could get in front of potential customers without having to compete for a top spot in the search results (although that doesn’t mean you should rely on third-party business listings instead of prioritizing your local SEO).  Find out which directories rank for your primary keywords  and claim your business profile to get your citations and reviews to do your marketing for you.  Some examples of citations across industries include: Industry Citation platforms Law Justia Best Lawyers FindLaw Medical RealSelf Doctor.com The Aesthetic Society Home services HomeAdvisor Angi Thumbtack Real estate Realtor.com HomeFinder Homes.com Local activities for coverage and backlinks If you like to get involved with your community, you can capitalize on local events to earn awareness and links, no matter what type of local business you operate. Leverage local media See what types of stories news outlets in your service area publish about local businesses. It could be as simple as finding out if they have a monthly spotlight on local companies and submitting your business.  If you are a brand new business or celebrating 25 years of service, for example, share that news in a press release and ask local outlets if a journalist can cover your event. Reach out to the media as well if your business has done (or will do) something newsworthy. Maybe your business works with a charity to fundraise, or you plan on running a big giveaway (more on this in the next section.  If it’s impactful to your community, it is worth sharing that information and seeing if your local media can spread the word to others.  Sponsor local events Sponsoring local events and organizations helps build community awareness for your brand, enables you to support the community you serve, and can result in backlinks that improve your local SEO.  To find these types of opportunities in your area, use the following search operators (in Google): “Our sponsors” [ city ] “Our donors” [ city ] Sponsors 5K [ city ] [ Holiday ] Sponsors [ city ] The great thing about this technique is that it applies to just about every local industry. A lawyer can sponsor a little league baseball team and an electrician can sponsor their city’s holiday 5K run. It’s a chance to do something good for the community that also benefits your business. Offer scholarships to local students Scholarships are another way to do something good for the community while gaining backlinks from schools and/or media outlets. You can offer a scholarship to local high school students for whichever college they choose or a scholarship to current students at a local university. However you decide to go about this, make sure to include all relevant information on a page on your site and reach out to schools and universities about the opportunity. They likely have a page on their sites that displays all scholarship opportunities for students and can add yours to the list. Don’t forget to reach out to your local news outlets for coverage as well—particularly during college application season.  Local business partnerships Local business partnerships are a strategic way to boost your online presence and get in front of the audiences of complementary businesses. By highlighting your partnerships, you can enhance your visibility and establish your business as an integral part of the local ecosystem.  For example, if you operate a moving business that often refers customers to a packing business, it makes sense for you both to link to each other on your respective websites.  Create local content for backlinks and brand awareness Creating insightful or useful local content is a great way to get noticed online and make real connections with potential customers.  Whether teaming up with local bloggers or whipping up authoritative articles for your own website, ensure that the content is relevant and interesting for your audience (that’s generally people in your area, but if you’re a local business that’s well renowned, ensure that your content reflects a wider context —especially if customers travel to support your business). Collaborate with local blogs Guest posting on local blogs enables you to add links back to relevant content on your domain.  To get started with this tactic, think about topics that are relevant to both your business and the local blog’s audience (once you’ve identified one to guest post on).  To find these opportunities, try the following search operators: [ City ]   intitle:“Write for us”  [ City ]   intitle:“Write for me”  [ City ]   “write for me” [ City ]   “guest post”  [ City ]   “become a contributor” In the example above, we see that the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter  is looking for guest writers. They are a group with “...an extensive program of hikes/hiking, national and international travel, local conservation campaigns, political action, and programs for people of all ages.”  If you own a local plumbing business, for example, you could pitch a blog post about conserving water at home and tips and tricks for doing so. Or, if you’re an electrician, you could write about the big increase in demand for electric vehicle chargers in Los Angeles County homes based on your data/experience.  Use your expertise to speak to new, relevant audiences and inform them about something they are likely interested in. That way, they’re more likely to remember your business when they need services you offer. Maintain a topically and locally relevant blog Like my advice in the section before this, use your expertise to write locally and topically relevant content, but on your own business’s website. The electric vehicle charger example is the perfect case for something you could write about on your blog if you were an electrician.  You don’t have to limit yourself to writing traditional blog posts. Think about content that will serve audiences in your area. For example, a moving business might create a calculator to give estimates on moving costs to cities in their service area. This is helpful and puts your business right in front of potential customers. Maintaining a blog requires resources (time, budget, or both) but a well-optimized blog with topic clusters, pillar pages , and user-centric content can help you earn many backlinks. While the generic link-building advice  is that you should just focus on creating good content and the links will come naturally, unfortunately, that only sometimes applies in the local space. Often, small businesses need to reach a certain level of brand awareness before backlinks accrue organically.  Once you create your unique, relevant content, you’ll have to promote it on your other marketing channels (email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) to make people aware that it exists.  Backlinks are an online expression of local authority Remember to stay active and engaged with your community. Whether it’s through sponsoring a local sports team, partnering with a complementary business, or creating valuable local content, these efforts won’t go unnoticed. They will pay off and lead to brand recognition and the links and traffic to your site will follow.  By investing in these strategies, you’re not just boosting your online visibility; you’re laying down the roots in your community that will lead to lasting growth and success.  Celeste Gonzalez - Director of RooLabs at RicketyRoo   Celeste Gonzalez  leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Celeste Gonzalez Understanding your potential customers has never been more valuable than it is today. “Speaking their language” isn’t just a marketing cliché—it can be very lucrative to know the precise language people are using to search for local products and services like the ones you sell. Doing keyword research is how you can learn to “speak their language.” It can be as simple as describing your products/services and can involve identifying new ways to explain your offerings for different types of customers. It can even introduce your business to new audiences. This process is essential for any local business that wants people to check them out online. To find out where to start, you have to do keyword research—so, let’s get started. Table of contents: What is local keyword research? The difference between traditional and local keyword research How to find local search keywords General local keywords Modified local keywords Identifying local keywords by search demand (using tools) Factoring in search intent What you need to know about keyword research for local business blogs What is local keyword research? Local keyword research (or keyword research for local SEO ) refers to the process of identifying keywords that potential customers might search for to find local goods and services. Regularly performing this type of research and executing a strategy based on it can help local businesses appear in the searches best suited to bring customers their way. The difference between traditional and local keyword research Local keyword research is best suited for when a potential customer searches online for a product or service available locally, otherwise known as “local search intent.” This makes it a valuable technique for local business owners (or the marketers and SEOs that work for them). Traditional keyword research , on the other hand, is not limited to local search intent (more on this in the section specifically about search intent). This means that the businesses that engage in local keyword research are looking to appeal to customers in their service area, whereas traditional keyword research would be more appropriate for businesses that serve customers regardless of their geography. So, a larger company that operates in many markets, like Optimum Nutrition, might perform traditional keyword research to identify opportunities to get in front of searchers—such as those that want to learn whether plant-based or whey protein is better , for example. A local business would essentially do the same thing, except to cater to their audience that is looking for products/services locally. So, for example, a falafel restaurant chain might perform local keyword research to identify an opportunity to get in front of people looking for falafel catering in the Boston area and create a page specifically for that purpose . In practice, many parts of the keyword research process are similar whether you’re a local or global business, but there are important nuances, which I’ll explain next. How to find local search keywords In general, the content you create—whether it’s a local landing page or informational blog post or anything in between—should be informed by two perspectives: What you offer What your target audience wants Let’s look at keyword research for local SEO from both perspectives, starting with your offerings. For this portion of the process, it’s helpful to break down your keywords into two categories: general and modified. General local keywords based on your offerings When you think of general (or broad) keywords, think of all the products/services your local business offers. These are the main keywords you want to target (i.e., create content based on). Targeting these general keywords can help improve your business’s visibility in the organic search results. That way, when someone searches for detailing burbank , for example, your page about your Burbank-based auto shop’s detailing services might appear in the search results, which brings you closer to winning over a new customer. It helps to come up with a list of products/services you offer and organize them based on priority or how essential they are to your business. For example, a medical spa might list the following services (which could also function as general keywords to create content about): Botox Juvederm Restylane CoolSculpting Laser hair removal Facials B12 shots Depending on the nature of the product/service (and the questions customers have about it), you could create one page that lists them all or create a dedicated page for each one. Modified local keywords based on your offerings You can modify the keywords you identified (in your list of general keywords from the exercise above) by finding long tail variations —variations of the keyword that have low search volume , but higher intent behind them. This approach helps you appeal to potential customers that have a very specific need; for example, the way a local bakery’s page about their gluten-free, vegan breads appeals to a niche audience. Going back to the medical spa example, this can be as simple as specifying the types of Juvederm offered. Juvederm XC Juvederm Ultra XC Juvederm Ultra Plus XC Juvederm Volbella Juvederm Vollure This also applies for home services businesses. If your home service business offers 24-hour or emergency services, you should add that to your main service keywords as well. Lastly, another way to refine your list of keywords is by adding a relevant location to the front or end of the keyword. You can use “offering + location” (e.g., tacos near me ) or “location + offering” (e.g., los angeles tax services) for your keyword research. Identifying local keywords by search demand (using tools) Other than listing out your offerings, how else can you find keywords for your local business? Keyword tools like Google Search Console , Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Semrush , etc. can give you a sense of the keywords people are searching to find businesses like yours. You could even use Google’s autocomplete suggestions to help with keyword ideas. Google Search Console is always a great place to start. You’ll be able to find out what queries your business is already gaining impressions and clicks from. You could easily use this data to create part of your SEO strategy . For example, you can see the queries that a particular page has shown in the search results for. To do so, visit Google Search Console , then: Select Search results in the left-hand navigation menu Click + New in the filters section Select Page In the Page pop-up, select Exact URL from the drop-down menu Enter the page URL you’d like to check out The table beneath the chart shows you the queries that page has shown up in search results for. (Note: Google Search Console is not 100% accurate and does not reflect all data .) From here, you could enter these queries into Google Keyword Planner or Semrush to get local search volumes . You can then narrow down which keywords you’d like to target based on this list. And, remember, targeting a term doesn’t always mean creating a dedicated page for it—it could also mean adding a section about it onto an existing page, for example. Factoring in search intent Once you have a narrowed-down list of keywords you’d like to target for your business, it’s time to address their search intent . It’s important to look at the search results for the keywords you are researching. This will let you know the type of content that Google serves to people searching for these terms, which will influence your success when pursuing the given keyword. Take a look at what’s on the search engine results page (SERP) for a keyword you’re interested in. Are there videos? Are there mainly directories (Yelp, Angi’s, etc)? What you see in the search results can hint at the type of page and even the type of content you should include on the page for the keyword you want to target. Let’s say I’m doing keyword research for my medical spa and I noticed that I’m getting a few impressions for what is botox . So, I might want to target this keyword on my service page. Let’s check out how what is botox looks in the SERP. If I scroll down, I see that Google is mainly showing medical resources. This tells me that this keyword ( what is botox ) is not a good match for my botox service page . The intent of the search is informational , meaning that someone searching this term isn’t likely looking to pay for botox just yet. The results also primarily display medical sources, meaning that it may be difficult to create a blog post and try to rank for this term as a local business. If you look up another term like botox (insert city) , you’ll see local businesses or directories appear (as shown above). These are signs that the intent is to make a purchase or pay for a service. It’s a good signal that a service or location page could rank for this type of keyword. What you need to know about keyword research for local business blogs There are some important benefits to keeping a blog on your local business site. It can help you: Build up your site’s topical relevance Increase traffic and eventually funnel qualified readers to your goods/services Gain relevant backlinks Going back to the what is botox example from earlier, you remember that there weren’t any local businesses showing up in the search results—it was all informational pages or blog posts. However, they were from very well-known sites, like WebMD, not from local medical spa businesses. This can happen with all types of blog post keywords. Depending on the niche, Google may operate with stricter standards for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness , so the odds of a local business ranking for these keywords are lower. But, as long as you are producing quality content that is helpful to your audience, the blog posts will always be valuable. Sometimes, customers simply expect you to have a blog post detailing why your product/service is unique, for example—just because ranking for the ideal keyword for it might not be realistic shouldn’t deter you from creating that content. Ultimately, this is a marketing decision—you need to evaluate whether building credibility on a larger scale matters to your local audience. If it does, you can follow basic keyword research best practices , along with some of the tactics mentioned above, to get started with content your audience may be looking for. Get found in more ways than one What I’ve discussed above falls under the category of on-site optimization —just one aspect of controlling your business’s online presence. But, what goes on on your site is only half the equation for local businesses. Prospective customers may search for your Google Business Profile in Search or Maps, or look you up in a directory with reviews, like TripAdvisor or Yelp . In addition to the local keyword research you’re doing for your site, make sure to build out your presence in all locations that potential customers might look for you: Select the most accurate GBP category for greater relevance Earn local reviews for better rankings and more leads Use Posts to market and communicate with potential customers on Google for free Altogether, making sure that your website and profiles provide information that’s helpful to people looking for your offerings will be key to getting discovered by new customers. Celeste Gonzalez - Director of RooLabs at RicketyRoo   Celeste Gonzalez  leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Celeste Gonzalez So, you have a Wix site for your blog or business, hooray! Now that you’ve taken the first step in launching your website, how do you get people to visit it? Attracting people to your website when they search for services, products, or blog posts you offer can be accomplished through search engine optimization (SEO). When you optimize your site by following SEO best practices, you’re able to provide audiences with a better user experience by making it clear what your brand is about and helping them find what they came for. Not only will it help your users, but it will also help your site get found on Google and other search engines. By clearly communicating what you’re offering to both to users and search engines, you’ll be working towards: Gaining more visitors Attracting leads and potential customers Converting users into customers or subscribers Fortunately, you don’t need a professional to start optimizing your Wix website. Wix has plenty of convenient, easily accessible features built in so you can start dipping your toes into SEO and improving your site’s presence in the search results. In this article, we’ll discuss optimizations for site owners looking to cover the basics, which also serves as a foundation for those who aspire to take their SEO further. This includes: What to know before getting started with SEO Basic optimizations suitable for every type of web page Title tags How to add a title tag on Wix Meta descriptions How to write a meta description on Wix Headers How to write headers on Wix Image optimizations Image format and compression Alt text URLs How to edit a URL on Wix Internal linking How to add an internal link on Wix Other ways to optimize your Wix site Wix's SEO Setup Checklist The Complete Wix SEO Guide What to know before getting started with SEO Search engine optimization is about putting the user first. You are attempting to create a seamless experience for anyone who visits your website, including search engine crawlers (which are essentially programs that search engines use to index your site so that it can be featured in search results). SEO isn’t a one-off task where you go in, make a few changes, and you’re done optimizing your website forever. Instead, SEO is a dynamic process, as search engines release updates to improve the quality of their results. This shouldn’t scare you, though, since the basics almost never change. The time and energy you invest into your optimizations will continue to pay dividends as long as you keep in mind the principles of SEO and focus first and foremost on your audience. Basic optimizations suitable for every type of web page A website is typically just a collection of web pages. The following optimizations are suitable for every web page you want to be found in search results, and are thus suitable for nearly every website. Title tags Title tags are displayed as the clickable headlines of pages you see in the search results when you look something up (as shown below). Similar to a book title or the headline of an article, they help people (and search engines) understand the purpose of the page. Your SEO title tag is likely the first thing a potential visitor will notice when they see your site pop up in search results. That’s why it’s very important to have a title tag that accurately represents what the page is about and makes people want to click on it. If your title tag isn’t about the main topic of that page or includes irrelevant information, then people may bounce (leave the page without looking at any of your other content) or may not want to click on it to begin with. When writing a title tag, keep the following in mind: Although there’s no actual character limit, keep your title tag between 50-60 characters so that it doesn’t get cut off in the search results. Brainstorm a few title tag ideas and pick the one that most accurately reflects the contents of that page to pique a potential visitor’s attention. While Google still ranks content without keywords in the title tag , including the page’s primary keyword may be helpful for users. It’s important to know that Google may replace your title tag altogether. This doesn’t necessarily mean you did a bad job of writing your title tag, but that Google believes its rewrite is better for the user’s search. How to add and edit a title tag on Wix Wix makes it simple to create a title tag for each page on your site in four simple steps: 01. Open the Wix Editor (shown below). 02. In the left-hand menu, click the “Pages” icon. 03. Click the three dots next to the page you would like to edit to reveal more options. 04. Select SEO Basics . Here, you’ll be able to add your desired title tag. Meta descriptions Meta descriptions are those short paragraphs of information underneath a title on the search engine results page. Like title tags, this little piece of information helps inform users about the page and, with the right text, is an excellent opportunity to distinguish yourself from competitors as well as incentivize users to click on your content. This is your chance to offer additional information to support your title tag. When it comes to meta descriptions, stick to the following guidelines: Keep it between 125-160 characters to ensure that potential visitors can see most of the description. Include information that is relevant and unique to the page. Don’t duplicate meta descriptions across several pages. Add a call to action when applicable to signal to potential visitors what they should do next. Keep in mind that, like title tags, Google may also rewrite the page’s meta description in the search results. How to write a meta description on Wix You add or edit a meta description the same way as a title tag, through the SEO Basics menu (explained above). You’ll be able to add your description in the field underneath the title tag (shown below). As you can see above, Wix also shows you a search engine results page (SERP) preview so you can see how this might look on Google. Headers Headers organize and break down the content on your page. This makes your content easier to skim, enabling your visitors to find what they are looking for faster. The positive user experience this creates can decrease friction for visitors, enabling them to get familiar with your brand, which should ultimately get you closer to your business goals. Let’s use this article (the one you’re currently reading) as an example: You wanted to read general optimization tips for Wix, so perhaps you scrolled through and found the smaller heading titled “Basic optimizations suitable for every type of web page.” Then, you would have also noticed that there’s a smaller heading, “Title tags.” Including the title of this article, these are examples of H1, H2, and H3 header tags : How to start optimizing your Wix site for search Optimizations suitable for just about every site Title tags The H2 tag has supporting information for the H1 tag. Likewise, the H3 tag’s information supports the H2 tag’s content, and so on. Here are some tips that can help you make the best use of headers: Stick to one H1 per page . This is the title of your page, so you only need one. Order your headers properly. As mentioned before, if you want to expand on something within an H2 header, you’ll put that information under an H3 header, and if you want to expand on that subject even further, then you’ll use an H4 header, and so on. Use headers to distinguish important content. Users often want a way to quickly find the information they are looking for without having to read an entire page. By flagging key content with the appropriate headers, a user can skim through the content and find exactly what they need. Use keywords in your headers when possible and appropriate : Keywords are the topics that a user is searching for , so including them in your headers can help signal relevance. However, don’t add a keyword to your header for the sake of adding a keyword. If you’re including information that’s relevant to the topic at hand, you’ll likely end up with keywords in there anyway without additional effort. How to write headers on Wix You can add a header to your Wix web page by double-clicking a text box to reveal the Text Settings box, with the option to change the header tag, font, size, and more. Then, click on Themes and choose your header tag. Image optimizations Optimizing your website’s images for users is likely more important than you think it is: Images alone can be an important source of traffic . It’s common for people to conduct Google Image searches for things like products or infographics. If you optimize your images, you have a chance of capturing this organic traffic on Google Images as well as traditional Search. Wix conveniently handles a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to image optimization , like: Image compression , to make your image file sizes smaller without sacrificing quality. This can help keep overall page load times reasonable. Image formatting. Wix converts images from PNG, JPG, or JPEG to WebP, a format that Google released in 2010 that decreases file size anywhere from 25-35%. Lazy loading images. Lazy load delays the loading of your images that appear “below the fold” (content that’s only visible once you begin scrolling). Instead of all images on a page loading at the same time, the image will only load once it’s been reached by the user, which helps with your page’s initial load time. Low-quality image placeholders. If the image file is simply too big, Wix will load a lower-quality version of it immediately and, as the page continues to load, it will be replaced with the high-quality, compressed image. While Wix can take the lead on image optimizations, there are still some things to control on your end. Image name, format, and compression When you are ready to upload an image to your Wix site, there are a few things to check: The format of the image (JPEG, PNG, etc.) The size of the image If you upload a very large JPEG or PNG to your site, then it’s going to slow down your page load for users. While Wix does compress images that are under 25MB, if you’re regularly working with larger files, you can pre-compress them before uploading them to Wix using a free service like TinyPNG . Alt text Alternative text, or alt text, is a description of the content within the image—essentially, this is what the image depicts. It’s very important to include alt text on each content image that is uploaded to the site since it provides context for users that rely on screen readers to navigate your site. Make sure that your alt text describes the image, but in a concise way (around 140 characters). You don’t have to get down to the nitty-gritty when writing your alt text, but visitors should be able to understand the substance of the photo based on your description. In addition to being read aloud to users with screen readers, alt text is also read by search engines to understand what an image depicts. If you’re able to include a keyword in your alt text, then that’s great, but keep in mind that the point of alternative text is to help those who use screen readers. Do not artificially stuff keywords into your alt text in an effort to rank higher. The simplest way to check for images that need alt text is to use Wix’s Accessibility Wizard tool. To get started, go to your Wix Editor > Settings > Accessibility Wizard (as shown below). Once you click on Accessibility Wizard , the tool will scan your site and let you know of any images that are missing alt text. You can fill in your alt text directly within the Accessibility Wizard . Alternatively, you can check “This image is decorative, it doesn’t need a description,” if the image that was flagged is not crucial for the content of the page. “Decorative” images can include SVG files, a hero image, a featured image, or favicon. URLs A URL is the web address for a page. According to Google , a URL should be simple, logical, and easy to read so that it can signal to users and search engines what the page is about. How to edit a URL on Wix Users can edit the URL slug for all their Wix pages. A URL slug is the final part of the URL, after the last backslash (as shown above). To edit a URL slug on Wix: 01. Access your Wix Editor 02. Select the “Pages” icon from the left-hand menu. 03. Click “ ... ” for the page you’d like to edit the URL slug 04. Click SEO Basics 05. Add your URL slug under the “What’s the URL slug (last part of the URL) for this page?” section Internal linking An internal link is when you hyperlink to another page on the same website. For example, when a homepage links to the contact page, that’s an internal link. Internal linking helps pages on your site get discovered by search engines. It helps Google understand what the most important pages on your site are. If a page has a lot of internal links pointing to it, Google may consider that an important page (as opposed to a page with only one link pointing to it). Search engines also look at the anchor text of the link for additional context. Anchor text is the text that’s hyperlinked (this generally highlights the text, as you can see throughout this article). The anchor text you use should describe the content of the page you’re linking to. Think of an internal link as a chance to help a user find additional information about a topic you’re already discussing and the anchor text as a way to specify that information. How to add an internal link on Wix Highlight the text you’d like to add a link to. Click the link icon in the Text Settings that appear. Click “Choose a Page” and select the page you’d like to link to. There’s more than one way to optimize your Wix site When it comes to improving your site’s SEO, the optimizations mentioned above cover the basics, but the sky’s the limit. Below are two more resources you can use to improve your Wix site’s visibility in the search results. Wix’s SEO Setup Checklist The SEO Setup Checklist is a step-by-step guide designed to help you improve your site’s SEO (based on your business information and keywords). It also enables you to connect and verify your site with Google . You can access the SEO Setup Checklist by going to SEO Tools in your site’s dashboard and clicking Let’s Go under Get Found on Google . As its name suggests, the SEO Setup Checklist is a great starting point for your SEO efforts, whether you’ve recently launched your site or are just discovering this tool. Addressing each item will help add to your search presence as well as your user experience. The Complete Wix SEO Guide While the interface instructions mentioned throughout this article are specifically for static pages (e.g., Homepages, About pages, Services pages, Contact pages, Pricing pages, etc.) on Wix, the optimization tips apply to just about every type of web page. Dynamic pages (a page that can change its content while keeping the same design and layout, such as blog posts, product pages, event pages, etc.) may have their own unique (but similar) workflows to accomplish the same optimizations. The settings you’ll need to access will depend on the type of page you’re optimizing. Many of these optimizations are explained in our Complete Wix SEO Guide , which is updated quarterly. Bookmark this resource as a reference to aid you as your site grows, but also up to date with Wix’s latest SEO capabilities and integrations. Small optimizations can lead to a big impact for your business If you follow the basic optimizations listed in this article for all your pages and images, your site will have a great SEO foundation. Continue to put the user first and make decisions to align with that goal. As long as you do that, you’ll be working towards ranking in the search results, and gaining traffic as well as leads and customers over time. Celeste Gonzalez - Director of RooLabs at RicketyRoo   Celeste Gonzalez  leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Twitter  | Linkedin