Search Results

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

Author: Lazarina Stoy Keyword research is the starting point of all organic marketing projects. It unveils how, why, and when your target audiences search for (and discover) businesses like yours, and what their needs are.  For many years, this process focused on direct keyword targeting. Nowadays, keyword research aims to understand users’ content and information needs, and to pair that with brand content (in search results as well as on other platforms).  As an industry, we're transitioning to a more holistic and integrated approach that marries three critical components:  A user-focused strategy for interpreting search context as well as explicit and implicit search intent An insightful analysis of queries, pinpointing the topic and other indications of how the user wants information served to them A strategic decision-making process on content creation, informed by pre-existing knowledge, topics, and entities In this article, I’ll show you how semantic and traditional keyword research methods can come together to address these considerations so that you can create user-first content that also ranks well in today’s search landscape. Table of contents: Traditional keyword research: Still useful, but outdated Semantic keyword research uses context cues to modernize traditional techniques Traditional vs. semantic keyword research: What’s the difference? Semantic keyword research: Concepts and how to integrate them into your keyword process Entities, entity attributes and entity attribute values Search query sequences and query paths Query augmentation Query context and session context User search behavior Information gain Traditional keyword research: Still useful, but outdated With the introduction of semantic search, traditional keyword research needs to evolve. Traditional keyword research generally begins with identifying seed keywords, which you run through SEO tools to discover related terms. From there, you apply different criteria to filter out irrelevant terms, laying the groundwork for a keyword universe.  Of course, each of these steps can vary in complexity, influencing the quality of your keyword data. For example, to identify seed keywords, you can turn to sources like user surveys or first-party data, product or service research, competitor research, and so on, which can result in a more comprehensive data gathering process. Similarly, when sorting and filtering your keywords, you can incorporate additional data points, like keyword intent  classification, SERP features , and topical and brand relevance to ultimately create a higher-quality keyword universe. Even so, this approach is potentially heavily skewed by incomplete or flawed data and metrics, like search volume  and traffic potential, keyword difficulty  and competitiveness.  Traditional keyword research is metrics-driven and backward-looking, when it now needs to center around the user, their search journey, and content needs.  These practices worked for a long time, as many of Google’s ranking systems are based on text evaluation. In this context, keyword matching between on-page text elements (like the title or URL) and the search query was a pretty significant sign to search engines that the content would likely satisfy the user’s needs.  You still need some of the basics of traditional keyword research, though, as they provide essential context for subsequent steps in your content strategy. For instance, breaking down your keyword universe by different query characteristics (e.g., search intent, brand mentions) enables you to identify patterns of search behavior to understand how they relate to metrics like competitiveness and search volume. This granular analysis allows for more precise content targeting and optimization, ultimately enhancing your user engagement and satisfaction. Moreover, traditional keyword research excels at uncovering related keywords (semantically connected terms, synonyms, jargon, local expressions, or other language variations). This helps you better understand and align your website copy to the way  your potential customers express themselves, which can also make your website more discoverable in the process. F or example, if a region-specific term like ‘fizzy drink’ is more commonly used than of ‘soda’ in a particular market, incorporating this local expression can significantly improve search relevance for those audiences. In short, while search engine algorithms  have changed, the principles of traditional keyword research remain foundational. And, with the integration of semantic understanding in the content ranking process, SEO keyword research requirements have also changed.  Semantic keyword research uses context cues to modernize traditional techniques Incorporating semantics into SEO research has been a consistent theme in the work of researchers, like the late Bill Slawski , for more than a decade. These concepts are directly extracted from technology patents that Google and other search engines filed. Semantic keyword research evolves our understanding of user search behavior and context—as well as how to leverage it. This approach goes beyond traditional keyword research by integrating concepts like entities, knowledge graphs, the context of searches, the intent behind search queries, and so on—rather than just relying on the keywords the user puts into the search bar. Traditional vs. semantic keyword research: What’s the difference?  Unlike traditional keyword research (which prioritizes metrics), semantic keyword research focuses on real-world user behavior, placing the searchers thoughts and actions at the center of your keyword research practices. Semantic keyword research adds real-world context to the keyword process by emphasizing the user's search journey (i.e., the sequence of queries and platforms used) and the context surrounding searches.  Traditional keyword research Semantic keyword research Keywords Keyword length  Keyword search volume  Keyword difficulty  Traffic potential  Competition Entities, entity attributes, entity attribute values Query sequence Query path Query augmentation Query context Session context User search behavior Information gain Search intent  Knowledge graphs Semantic keyword research: Concepts and how to integrate them into your keyword process There are several concepts that inform how I approach semantic keyword research. They include: Entities, entity attributes, and entity attribute values Search query sequences and query paths Query augmentation Query context and session context User search behavior Information gain Entities, entity attributes and entity attribute values Keywords represent phrases or specific words that hold some value from an SEO perspective, while entities reflect things that exist in the real world. Sometimes these two things overlap in the context of keyword research.  Entities are distinct and well-defined concepts , such as people, places, things, or ideas. (E.g., Barack Obama, The Louvre, a smartphone, etc.) Entity attributes are characteristics or properties of entities. For example, for the entity ‘dog’, attributes include ‘breed’, ‘ fur color’, etc. Entity values represent the specific values of entity attributes, such as ‘Labrador’ for the attribute ‘breed’ for the entity ‘dog’. Let’s contrast this understanding against how SEOs traditionally considered keywords.  From the context of a user typing a search query into a search engine like Google, the query is composed of keywords of varying importance for SEO, some of which might also be entities. Let’s look at some examples. Search query Keywords and importance Entities and type [Shop online Nike Jordan Air force one] Shop  — Transactional intent Online  — Navigate to website or store Nike  — Branded search  Jordan air force one  — Product search Nike  — Organization Air force one  — Product (Michael) Jordan  — Person [Beginner guide to SEO research] Beginner  — Level of complexity need, introductory content Guide  — Content type need, informational intent SEO  — Main topic Research  — Subtopic Beginner -  other SEO research  — other Guide  — other Understanding entities is essential as it aligns your content with the way modern search engines interpret queries. Google uses entities in many of its ranking systems to: Interpret content and evaluate its relevance, prioritizing pages that comprehensively address the user/query’s context. Connect entities in its knowledge graph  to deliver richer, more personalized, and contextual search results (as both are used to improve recommendations for search results and SERP features).  When researching keywords, instead of just taking them at face value, incorporating entities can help you:  Understand different ways people refer to concepts. Identify entity attributes that people commonly search for and their most popular variants, indicating potential content and site structures. (E.g., when referring to ‘dog food’ people might often search for specific types like ‘kibble’ or ‘canned’, so for the entity ‘dog food’, an attribute would be ‘food type’ with variables ‘kibble’, ‘canned’, and so on.) Detect information gaps that you can address to create more comprehensive content. (E.g., If you identify that web content commonly discusses kibble and canned dog food, but not raw or semi-moist, researching and writing about these food types on the web can set you apart from competitors). Improve the contextual relevance of your content, enhancing user intent alignment. It’s also worthwhile to consider entities, entity attributes, and values whenever your website can potentially help out users—even if such search terms are not widely popular .  To start extracting entities from your keyword lists with Google’s own Natural Language API , use this free, no-code, beginner-friendly template in Google Sheets .  Search query sequences and query paths In semantic keyword research, you should also aim to understand the sequence in which users perform search queries. The aim here is to grasp (in the same way that search engines do ) the relationships and sequences of queries performed in a single session, and use this information to enhance the content you produce.  This involves analyzing how users refine their searches, the progression of their queries, the number of queries they conduct, and how their search behavior evolves during a session.  Here are just a couple of ways to achieve this:  Run important keywords for your business through Google Autocomplete to see the searches that Google is recommending to users (related to their original search).  Scrape data from the Google SERP for your important keywords, specifically the modules (e.g., Related Searches, People Also Ask, People Also Search For, People Search Next), as these indicate queries that are semantically related in terms of topic, intent, and session context. Tools like Semrush  can help you do this for individual searches, while DataforSEO  can help you do it at scale. Query augmentation Augmented search queries  are queries where the user incorporates additional information derived from entity references within a query. The concept of augmented search queries involves recognizing specific entities, such as people, places, or things (or a combination of them), mentioned in a user's search query.  For instance, if someone searches for Blake Lively (Person) and Ryan Reynolds (Person), the search results would recognize the entity references in the query, and would suggest augmentations to the query to introduce new information to the user, like movies they starred in together, or whether they have kids. Google can then generate additional queries based on these entities and their attributes, integrating the results with the original search query outcomes. These fused results ensure users receive a richer and more detailed set of information. To incorporate augmented search queries into your keyword research process: Ensure that your content clearly identifies and references significant entities relevant to your topic. Understand how different entities can be logically combined with one another in searches. For instance, the entity Kamala Harris (Person) might be logically combined with Douglas Emhoff (her husband; Person), but it might also be combined with ‘2024 US elections’ (Event). Pay attention to search queries that reference entities that appear in your Google Search Console  data. Analyze all queries that contain the same entity and ensure that there are different pages on your website that reference said entities, and that they are linked . Understand and incorporate thematic searches. For instance, around Coachella (music festival), people might search for festival wear, sparkly tops, boho shorts, or simply search for [Coachella outfit]. With that same logic, you can also improve your product category structure, adding pages based on interests, not just product characteristics. Query context and session context Contextual search leverages natural language processing to optimize search results based on the context the user provides in their query or in their overall search session.  For example, if a user asks Google something along the lines of [What’s the capital of France?] followed by [What are some popular tourist attractions there?], the search engine uses the context from the first query (query context) and the sequence of interactions (session context) to answer the second query accurately.  In this example, even though the second query does not contain the query context (i.e., in France), Google suggests query refinement and incorporates the query context in the search results to better address the searcher’s intent. Query 1: [capital of france] Query 2: [popular attractions] Note the suggestion at the top: “This search may be relevant to recent activity: popular attractions  in france ” To incorporate query and session context into your keyword research process:  Use Search Console to understand the co-occurring queries related to your website’s key entities. Especially if you have similar types of pages, like tutorials or guides, researching the query patterns on how these are found by users can help you adjust the on-page content to better reflect user search patterns. For instance, a tutorial might rank for a query containing the term [how to fix ‘problem X’], but it might also rank for a query containing the term [how to ‘desired outcome’].  Session query 1 Session query 2 Analyze the SERP  and the top-ranking pages to find co-occurring entities and keywords that might help those pages rank for more terms. Understand subtopics of the content that ranks well in your niche. This can help you incorporate context in your content (in places like headings, anchor text, and on-page text ) and understand the context you need to add when discussing certain entities. User search behavior User behavior data like click-through rate (CTR), dwell time, and bounce rate can impact search rankings. High CTR and long dwell time can signal quality content, while low bounce rates and reduced pogo-sticking can lead to improved rankings over time. Google may also use SERP interactions  and user feedback to re-rank pages. Positive interactions enhance credibility—this can be anything like the actions a user takes on the SERP or the queries typed in after the page visit. To incorporate this data into keyword research:  Merge data in Looker Studio, combining ranking queries from Google Search Console, entity data from those queries, and GA4  metrics like bounce rate, exit rates, and other user engagement metrics to monitor for patterns or any glaring issues. For instance, you might notice that all pages that rank for queries containing a certain entity are failing to engage users. Utilize tools like Microsoft Clarity  to identify which page elements or content sections cause negative user interactions. Then, compare these findings with the elements and sections of better-performing competitor content to gain insights and make improvements. Information gain Information gain refers to how much additional useful information a new document (web page) provides to  users who may have already seen other pages on the same topic. As you may have already gathered, Google has a patent  on information gain scoring and ranking pages based on this concept. Put simply, pages with higher information gain scores may get ranked higher because they provide more unique and valuable information. This helps prevent users from seeing repetitive information across multiple documents, thereby enhancing Google’s search experience. You need a thorough grasp of entities, their attributes, and attribute values, along with a keen understanding of the current information available in the search landscape in order to effectively apply this concept in your keyword research.  Focus on presenting new or proprietary information—not just replicating the articles that currently rank. Incorporate user research  and first-party data to validate new keyword variations without compromising quality and search experience.  This is where semantic keyword research departs from traditional methods: Instead of only focusing on metrics from third-party tools (like search volume), understand the information gaps and fill them through your content. For instance, before Zapier created their templated ‘integrations’ pages, the keyword volume for connecting niche tools with one another was likely negligible. Yet, as the product addressed this need, the demand grew, validating the importance of focusing on user intent and behavior, rather than just keyword metrics.  This approach shows that understanding the entire search journey, including the sequence of queries and the entities mentioned, leads to better content strategies and improved user satisfaction. In keyword research, the semantics matter Traditional keyword research still carries value, but there are more advanced concepts that search engines use to understand users that you should incorporate into workflows to ensure your pages are competitive.  Instead of relying solely on keyword suggestions from third-party tools, incorporate different data points from user research, SERP analysis, entity analysis, and topic research.  Understand the topic that you’re planning to cover and the subtopics that make it up. Research the entities your content is about, their attributes, and the values that are commonly mentioned alongside them to advance the existing information landscape. In terms of practical steps and tools to incorporate in your process, I’ve prepared a handy checklist  that features the steps needed to conduct semantic keyword research, the tools you can use to get started, and additional resources to help you grasp the concepts mentioned. Lazarina Stoy - SEO & Data Science Consultant   Lazarina  is an organic marketing consultant specializing in SEO, CRO, and data science. She's worked with countless teams in B2B, SaaS, and big tech to improve their organic positioning. As an advocate of SEO automation, Lazarina speaks on webinars and at conferences and creates helpful resources for fellow SEOs to kick off their data science journey. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author:  Abby Gleason Fact: People want advice from Reddit. Searchers have been appending [Reddit] to Google search queries at an increasingly high rate (especially since late 2021), and Google has been rewarding the platform with massively increased SERP visibility. But what is it about Reddit that searchers (and Google) like? As an SEO , I’ll admit I didn’t think forum sites had the potential to be SEO powerhouses:  There’s no clear, immediate indicator of contributors’ expertise. Spam and sometimes offensive speech crops up. The content itself doesn’t follow typical on-page best practices, like scannable headings and summarization.  Despite all of this, it turns out that forum sites like Reddit are exactly what some searchers are looking for. Put simply, their content is incredibly human . Reddit threads exist for nearly every topic, filled with helpful, firsthand advice and the signature candid remarks of frequent forum lurkers. With AI-generated content and “SEO-ed” affiliate content flooding the SERPs, users are getting wise and turning to the realest corners of the internet when they need advice they can trust. This is why it’s more important than ever to have a human touch in your content strategy .  In this article, we’ll dive into:  Reddit’s massive increase in SEO traffic Why searchers add [Reddit] to their queries  How you can incorporate Reddit’s best practices into your own strategy (and no, you don’t have to be a forum site to do this) The meteoric rise of Reddit’s SEO Reddit hasn’t always been an organic powerhouse. In fact, prior to mid-2023, SEO traffic had been incredibly flat since the site launched in 2005. In June 2023, Reddit was attracting about 80 million monthly visitors from Google, according to Ahrefs. In March 2024, it brought in nearly 500 million  monthly visitors. That’s more than a 500% increase in less than nine months. In addition, Reddit shows up 97.5% of the time in Google Search product review queries  and takes up nearly two-thirds of the space reserved for Google’s “Discussions and forums” SERP feature. Put simply, Google is heavily prioritizing Reddit in search results. Why did Reddit’s traffic increase so dramatically?  Google announced its “ Hidden Gems” helpful content update  in May 2023, right before Reddit started seeing the traffic increase.  In Google’s own words , it tweaked its search results to “focus on content with unique expertise and experience… created from a personal or expert point of view.” Reddit is chock-full of these “hidden gems.” “Helpful information can often live in unexpected or hard-to-find places: a comment in a forum thread, a post on a little-known blog, or an article with unique expertise on a topic. Our helpful content ranking system will soon show more of these ‘hidden gems’ on Search, particularly when we think they’ll improve the results.” — Google , May 2023 My personal hypothesis is that Google’s Hidden Gems update occurred in part due to more searchers appending [Reddit] to their queries over time. For example, see the increase in popularity of searches for [best protein powder reddit].  I, myself, add [Reddit] to quite a few queries, primarily when I want advice from real people. I want to avoid affiliate link-filled articles written by generative AI —basically, I want to read suggestions from experienced people who aren’t incentivized beyond wanting to help. Others feel similarly. I asked folks on  why they add [Reddit] to queries and got some similar responses. Generally, searchers prefer Reddit when they want an unbiased opinion, social proof, or are searching for a particularly niche topic. In terms of topics, this can span pretty much anything from product recommendations to life advice and everything in between. Google itself  even gave “product recommendations” and “travel advice” as examples of two key topic areas in which searchers frequently turn to Reddit. Side note : The reason I think people search on Google for Reddit threads (instead of searching directly on Reddit) is because Google’s algorithm does a better job of surfacing relevant threads—not necessarily because users want more Reddit in all their search results.  How to use Reddit’s best practices in your own content strategy You don’t have to run a forum to replicate Reddit’s best SEO plays for your own website. You can add unique, human elements to your content to instill trust with users the way Reddit does by: Hiring writers/editors that have firsthand expertise Adding a rating system for your content Fostering a healthy comments section Prioritizing UX by getting to the point quickly Writing with a distinct voice Hire writers and editors that have firsthand expertise with the topic I’m not burying the lede—this is the most important tip in this article, and the number one reason why I think people turn to Reddit: users with a variety of real experiences can share their experience to help others learn. Searchers want to trust that the content’s writers and/or editors have firsthand expertise in the topic they are writing about. For example, if you are searching for [best travel backpacks], you want advice from someone who has personally tested out several travel backpacks and can recommend the best ones based on price and quality. Do your due diligence—hire writers and/or editors that have firsthand experience in what they are recommending. It’s obvious when advice is generic, and your audience will sniff that out right away. If you don’t have a writer with personal experience in your topic, you may be able to find other ways to crowdsource that expertise. For my previous client, for example, my team crowdsourced ideas from the client’s Facebook group and embedded them into the content. In one blog post that we applied this tactic to (about what to bring a friend in the hospital), the comments really added value for our audience because they knew they could trust other people who’d been through the same thing—it developed instant trust and rapport. You can also interview subject matter experts and include their quotes in your content. Whether your writer has the expertise or you source it elsewhere, ensure that the reader knows why they can trust your advice. Add a rating system for your content The comment rating system is something I love about Reddit—even though I can’t prove that the commenter has expertise, I gain trust from others upvoting (or “liking”) and replying to the comment. Social proof builds trust. Sorting content by “likes” provides additional validation that the advice is sound. Sure, I’d be willing to trust one person giving me advice if they clearly had experience… But I’m more willing to trust the advice when I have other readers’ endorsement as well. In your own content, you could allow readers to “like” the sections in your listicles. Next to each list item, you could either show the number of likes or clearly mark “#1 most liked” to prove its been validated by other readers. Consider setting the post to automatically sort by the most liked sections, or frequently update it manually.  In its simplest form, try including a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” button on your articles so readers can see how much others liked it. This can also help you learn about what types of content your audience prefers . Foster a healthy comments section Reddit is basically one giant comments section. Reviews and article comments can be a great way to add relevant on-page content that provides additional expertise. For example, the New York Times Cooking  recipes have one of the best comment sections I’ve seen. Recipe testers share their feedback and offer tweaks that worked for them. It adds a lot of value to the content and is one of the reasons I subscribe. Or take The Sill, an eCommerce plant company. In its plant care guides, the brand features a comment section where readers can ask additional questions—the company answers nearly every question. Pro tip: The questions your audience asks in the comments can provide helpful insights for your product or future content as well. Get to the point—fast Reddit gives you answers, fast. The first answer in a thread is often the most upvoted and may give you the advice you need. Strive to provide a similar experience with your content. We all dread the recipe blogs where you need to scroll for half a minute to get to what you’re looking for. So instead of burying the answers and frustrating your readers, include clear answers and takeaways that they can easily scan. You should also evaluate the design and experience of your page. Reddit has minimal interruptions, like ads or pop-ups, making helpful comments the main content on the page. Write with a distinct voice Reddit is notorious for featuring snarky voices. The witty, humorous responses make for an entertaining reading experience. The storytelling and raw, “real life” anecdotes certainly add some flavor when looking up product recommendations. Obviously I’m not suggesting you add cuss words or emojis to your brand’s messaging . But consider the essence of what makes Reddit readable:  Straightforward advice Personable tone Not afraid to have a bit of fun Brand voice will differ for every business, but don’t be afraid to use the language you know your audience resonates with. That’s what makes your content not just informative, but memorable. Take a page from ‘the front page of the internet’ Searchers love Reddit’s content so much they search for it by name. By incorporating human elements, like firsthand expertise, into your content or fostering a healthy comments section, you develop trust with your audience—and trust is the real  SEO best practice. Abby Gleason - SEO Product Manager     Abby Gleason is a content-focused SEO with 6+ years experience leading successful organic search strategies for SaaS and eCommerce brands. She loves to share her learnings and has been published on Moz, Semrush, Search Engine Land and more. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Krystal Taing Every so often, consumer preference shifts reshape the retail scene, emphasizing speed, convenience, and experience—both on and offline.  COVID-19 amplified various shopping trends, such as curbside pickup and contactless delivery. At the heart of these online-to-offline trends is BOPUS (Buy Online, Pick Up in Store).  Prior to the pandemic, these services were mostly limited to big-box retailers. In a post-COVID landscape, however, shoppers expect these services from all businesses, both large and small. Initially adopted on a large scale by major retailers, BOPUS has set new standards for the online-to-offline shopping experience. This tactical guide is tailored for businesses exploring the BOPUS model for the first time. Let’s take a look at the nuances of BOPUS, its benefits, and actionable insights for seamless implementation. Table of contents: What is BOPUS Why shoppers prefer BOPUS Understanding the customer journey in BOPUS How to promote BOPUS for your store Via Google Business Profile Via Google Merchant Center Enable BOPUS on your Wix website BOPUS best practices What is BOPUS? BOPUS stands for “buy online, pick up in-store.” This fulfillment option allows customers to purchase products online and pick them up at a physical store, often within the same day. This model offers convenience, saves shipping costs, and reduces wait time for customers. BOPUS’s key benefits include: Enhanced customer experience  — Shoppers appreciate the ease of browsing and purchasing online combined with the speed of in-store pickup. Reduced shipping costs  — BOPUS eliminates shipping fees for both the business and the customer, offering a cost-effective alternative to traditional online shopping. Increased foot traffic  — Drawing online customers into your physical store can lead to additional in-store purchases. Improved inventory management  — BOPUS streamlines stock levels by moving products faster from the warehouse to customers. Greater customer satisfaction and loyalty  — BOPUS offers a flexible shopping experience that meets modern consumer expectations, encouraging repeat business. While BOPUS is now a common option amongst big box retailers, its adoption amongst smaller local businesses is relatively sparse (especially outside of takeout food pickup), meaning that adding BOPUS to your website may help distinguish your business. Why shoppers prefer BOPUS These stats highlight BOPUS’s growing popularity among consumers across numerous markets. This trend represents a lasting change in consumer behavior, highlighting the need for businesses to adapt to these new shopping preferences. Shoppers are drawn to BOPUS for several reasons: No shipping costs:  Eliminating shipping fees is a significant incentive for many online shoppers. Immediate product acquisition:  Customers can enjoy their purchases within hours of buying. Easy returns:  BOPUS simplifies the return process, as customers can return items directly to the store if necessary. The customer journey with BOPUS Adding BOPUS (or “click and collect” in some regions) to your delivery options modernizes your online and in-store customer experience, but to extract the most value from it, you need to understand and map the customer journey from start to finish.  The customer journey begins the moment a visitor discovers your online storefront. Here, they can view your products and purchase items online for in-store pickup.  When the customer checks out, they’ll provide their details and select “Pickup In Store” as their delivery method. Upon completing the purchase, customers should receive a confirmation email or text message that includes order details, pickup instructions, and business location.  Your business prepares the order for pickup, ensuring it’s ready by the specified time.  Upon arriving at the store, customers are guided by clear signs to a designated pickup area. Here, a welcoming staff member confirms their order details and provides them with their purchase. The customer journey above is a fairly uniform experience across stores that offer BOPUS, so it’s likely the frame of reference that your customers have when evaluating your BOPUS checkout experience.  To provide a seamless experience that promotes repeat business, follow the advice in this article by contextualizing it with respect to where the potential customer is currently at (within the overall customer journey). How to promote BOPUS for your store If you want the business benefits that come with BOPUS, then you need to make your audience aware that you offer it. Utilize social media , email marketing, and your website to highlight the convenience and benefits. Create compelling in-store signage and online content to drive awareness and adoption.   This includes highlighting delivery options in your Google Business Profile (GBP)  via Google Merchant Center, and on your website, which I’ll explain next. Showcase BOPUS on your Google Business Profile Local businesses looking to get started with BOPUS should leverage their online business listings—specifically, their Google Business Profile. Setting in-store pickup as an attribute To ensure that your business profile is eligible to show up in searches filtered for “in-store pickup,” you need to enable the “in-store pickup” attribute. Add the “in-store pickup” attribute to your GBP by following these steps:  Sign into your Google Business Profile : Visit the Google Business Profile website and log in using your business account. Select your business : If you have more than one business, select the one you want to manage. Edit your business information : Click on “Edit Profile,” navigate to “More” and click the edit pencil icon under “Service Options.” Set your options  and save them. Managing and adding products to GBP Small businesses that want to publish products directly to their GBP can use the Products Editor. This feature does not connect to live inventory and is best used to highlight unique and new products and product categories.  You can add information within the product description about availability and pickup options. Additionally, you will want to include a link to this product on your website, where customers can make their purchase (as users can’t transact directly in GBP this way). As you introduce new products or run out of some of your inventory, remember to manage your products in GBP regularly so that online shoppers know what’s available for in-store pickup. Similar to the steps for adding the in-store pickup attribute (above), you’ll first need to sign into your GBP and select your business. From there:  Navigate to your products : Find the “Products” section in the menu. This is where you can manage your inventory. Add a product : Click on “Add Product.” You’ll be asked to provide details such as the product name, category, price, description, and photos. Save your product : Once you’ve added all the necessary details, save the product. It will now be visible to customers viewing your business profile. Google Merchant Center: Getting started with BOPUS For businesses that have an inventory feed and would like to highlight live inventory and pickup options on their Google listings, Merchant Center is likely your best option.  Merchant Center connects directly to your GBP account, allowing you to set availability and pickup options by product. Once connected, the inventory feed will enable a feature on your Google listing called “ See What’s In Store ,” which creates a mini shopping experience directly within the Google search result page where the pickup options are highlighted on each product based on your settings. How to set in-store pickup with Google Merchant Center Create your account : Go to the Google Merchant Center website and sign up for an account. Follow the setup process, which includes verifying your website and agreeing to the terms of service. Set up a local products feed : Provide the platform with a feed of the products available for pickup at your physical location(s). Enable local inventory ads : Within Google Merchant Center, enable local inventory ads . This feature allows you to show that your products are available for in-store pickup. Specify pickup options : In your Merchant Center settings, specify that you offer in-store pickup. Include any relevant details, such as how quickly items will be ready for pickup after a customer places an order. Update regularly : Keep your product availability up to date to ensure customers receive accurate information. Enable BOPUS on your Wix website You need to indicate that you offer BOPUS everywhere customers can transact with you—especially on your own website. You can add BOPUS to your Wix website  by following the instructions below.  Access your Wix dashboard : Log into your Wix account and select the site you want to edit. Navigate to Settings > Shipping : On the left-hand side of the dashboard, click on Settings , then select Shipping . Select +Add Pickup . Configure your pickup settings : After selecting the pickup option, you’re prompted to fill in details such as the pickup location, pickup instructions (like time slots, specific location within a building, etc.), and whether you want to charge for this service. Save your settings : It’s a good idea to review all the details to ensure accuracy before proceeding. Inform your customers : After setting up in-store pickup on your Wix website, consider updating your content to inform your customers. You might add details to your FAQ page, product pages , or checkout page about the availability of in-store pickup, instructions for pickup, and other relevant details. Test your in-store pickup workflow : Before officially launching, it’s crucial to test your new pickup option. Make a test order on your site and go through the checkout process as a customer would (selecting in-store pickup). This will help you identify any issues or areas for improvement in the customer experience. Success with BOPUS: Best practices Adding BOPUS to your GBP or website is just the setup process. To make BOPUS work in lockstep with your offerings and the rest of your business model, you’ll need an intuitive online interface, clear communication, and a smooth pickup process. By focusing on these areas, local stores can ensure a positive BOPUS experience that encourages repeat business. When creating your BOPUS experience, focus on:  User-friendly website design:  Ensure that your online store is easy to navigate, with clear categories, product descriptions , and images. This facilitates the shopping process, making it more likely that customers will choose the BOPUS option. Personalized communication:  From the moment a customer places an order to when it’s ready for pickup, personalized communication can enhance the customer experience. Consider sending personalized emails or text messages that confirm the order, provide pickup instructions, and thank the customer for their purchase. Efficient pickup process:  Design a pickup process that is quick and hassle-free. This could involve dedicated BOPUS parking spots, a designated pickup counter, or even a drive-thru pickup option. Comprehensive employee training:  Train your staff to ensure they are equipped to handle BOPUS orders and deliver exceptional service. Merge digital convenience and in-person retail with BOPUS Implementing BOPUS goes beyond merely aligning with retail trends; it involves strategically elevating your business to meet and surpass customer expectations. By adopting BOPUS, you can: Leverage your store’s physical presence : Use your storefront to provide a quick and personal service that online-only competitors can’t match. Capitalize on impulse purchases : Increased foot traffic from BOPUS pickups can lead to additional sales from customers browsing in-store. Strengthen customer relationships : Personal interactions during pickup create opportunities for feedback and personalized service, deepening customer loyalty. Stay competitive in a digital-first market : Offering BOPUS positions your business as customer-focused and responsive to consumer preferences—essential qualities in today’s retail landscape. As you embark on integrating BOPUS into your business, start small and focus on the core benefits to streamline the process. Test, learn, and adapt based on customer feedback and operational insights. The journey towards BOPUS is an exciting opportunity to innovate and grow your business in ways that resonate with today’s consumers. Take the first step today and unlock the potential of blending digital convenience with the tangible, rewarding experience of in-store shopping. 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: Mordy Oberstein Google’s core updates can be anxious, frustrating times. But, they’re also filled with hidden gems about how search has changed.  Analyzing the fallout of a core update helps us better understand:  What Google can do algorithmically  What Google is looking for from our content While I love analyzing Google algorithm updates in aggregate (and have written dozens of articles on this), diving deep at the page level can offer a more qualitative look at what drives visibility changes on the SERP.  Below are two cases that make me think Google has turned another corner in how it deciphers quality and “helpfulness.” Yes, they are just two cases, but they really stood out to me in my analysis of over 300 SERPs (and diving deep into more than a dozen “ranking cases”).  Both cases present a very similar and substantial theme. They show how Google is looking to move past sterile content and instead present the user with content that accounts for the context of the query—as in, the user’s particular situation.  Let’s see how these varied content approaches played out as Google’s March 2024 core update reshaped the search results. Table of contents: Case 01: Topic-centric content for ranking wins [Bankrate] Why brands and SEOs should adopt situational writing Case 02: Situational content pushes past keyword-specific pages on the SERP [Yale Medicine] 01. Bankrate moves past topic-centric content for ranking wins Let’s start with Bankrate. I noticed the site improved for the keyword [payday loan fees]   and it took me down an entire rabbit hole. Prior to the March 2024 Google core update, this page ranked at position 7 but jumped up the SERP to position 3 by the time the update finished rolling out. Looking at this page (and then the wider performance of similar content) led me to revisit situational content . Why brands and SEOs should adopt situational writing To be honest, when I looked at Bankrate’s page  relative to similar ranking pages (such as the one from LendingTree ) I didn’t see much differentiation.  I couldn’t quite understand why Google didn’t reward Bankrate’s page with a top-three position prior to the update, but suddenly did post-update.  That’s why I went to the Wayback Machine (Internet Archives) to see if the page had been updated  since the previous Google core update back in November 2023—sure enough, it had and the improvements were significant.   Two noticeable changes were: 1. A new key takeaways section to summarize the main points of the page 2. An expert insight section (which, in this case, was written by the author of the content) While these changes are “nice,” I don’t think they qualify as “extensive,” and I don’t think they fundamentally make the page substantially more valuable.  So what then? What changes did Bankrate make to the page that significantly increased quality (and rankings)? For starters, Bankrate reorganized a good bit of the content. For example, the old version of the page had separate headers for “ What is a payday loan?” and for “ How payday loans work, ” whereas the updated version combines them into “ What are payday loans and how do they work?” In and of itself, that isn’t a big deal. The difference in approach that perhaps led to this change, however, is a big deal. Here’s how the old version broke down the section on how payday loans work: It’s entirely topic-first, which is typical. If I had to speculate, some SEO tool  told the Bankrate’s team that if they want to rank for the keyword [how payday loans work], they need to have both a separate H2  and must include content on credit checks, repayment, and fees (as shown above).  This looks and feels very much like “SEO-first content.” It’s both sterile and predictable.  Compare that to the updated section:  This updated content is far more user-first (and far less topic-first). For example, the paragraph that immediately follows the main summary of what a payday loan is (highlighted in yellow) explains to site visitors what they can expect to happen if they take out such a loan. The old version had none of this: And that’s the real story with this page.  The updated page adopts what I’ve been calling “situational writing.” It takes the context and situation of the user into account. Fundamentally, it means predicting what the user will experience at some level. So while both pages cover the risks of payday loans, only the new version has a section about when payday loans are a logical option:  Why? Because discussing if they are worthwhile (unless some SEO tool told you to do so) only becomes relevant when you start thinking about the end user’s situation and when that situation may call for taking out a payday loan.  This also means realizing that you need to emphasize the human considerations inherent to your particular topic as well as the implicit intent  that drives users to your content. In the example above, the creators of the page predicted that (unless there was reinforcement around how to pay the loan back) readers might possibly end up in a tight spot.  That’s why the section ends with a warning about repaying the loan in full and offering some surface-level ideas of how to do that (considering the financial constants already implied in the loan type).  The search visibility improvement here was for the entire folder that the payday loans page belongs to. Bankrate has an entire corpus of content dedicated to loan information and that section of the site saw huge ranking gains with the update (shown above). I had a look at about a dozen or so pages within the folder and all of them had been rewritten since the last core update in November.  To that point, the domain overall did not see the same increase: Further investigation is needed, but this could signal the value of the content overhaul we’ve examined above. 02. Yale Medicine’s situational content pushes past keyword-specific pages on the SERP In the opening of this blog post, I referenced “sterile content.” Sterile content: Content that doesn’t live within the confines of the user’s experience. It simply presents a topic.  Sterile content is topic-centric—not person-centric. It presents topics as topics, instead of presenting them through the lens of fulfilling a need.  I think we might be seeing Google beginning to understand this. Momentous.  Let’s have a look at the ranking trends for the keyword [labrum hip surgery]   and two URLs with opposite rank trajectories. As you can see below, a URL from yalemedicine.org  went from position 9 (before the update) to position 6 after its conclusion: At the same time, a URL from mymosh.com  (an orthopedic hospital in Wisconsin) went from flirting with a top-ten ranking to being removed from the top 20 results altogether by the time the March 2024 core update completed.  So, what happened here?  What I think occurred with these two pages is very similar to the example I shared earlier with Bankrate’s content: the Yale Medicine site (which I do not believe is a subsidiary of the ivy league school) took a far more situational approach than most of the other sites on the SERP.  Look at how the page addressed how labral tears are diagnosed: Like the Bankrate page, this page does not take a purely sterile topical approach. It offers information in the context of what the reader will likely experience.  The page doesn’t just tell you how tears are diagnosed , but what happens to the user as they undergo the diagnosis .  In addition to the page being topically comprehensive, it speaks to the site visitor on a deeper level and, in doing so, transcends the topic itself.  At multiple steps along the way, the page tries to consider its audience’s situation. Another quick example is how it discusses treatment. It essentially considers a scenario where the treatment is not 100% linear, and where multiple repairs might occur during one surgery:  It’s very simple and subtle, but this example is a case where the content tries to understand (by predicting) the reader’s life situation.  I want to contextualize the rankings on this SERP a bit to show you how powerful I think this approach is. The top of the SERP is dominated by the super-authorities of the health space:  I don’t expect a “regular” site to compete here. If we look a bit further down, where the Yale Medicine page does rank, the results are pretty much filled with your typical, sterile sort of content:  How does this bode well for my argument that the Yale Medicine page is strong? Shouldn’t it rank above some of these more “old school” pages?  Yes, except to me, the Yale Medicine page is strong despite only covering surgery on a limited basis. It ranks among pages where all they talk about is hip surgery.  In fact, you can see the power of user-centric, situational content when you look at the performance of the mymosh.com page that lost rankings. For starters, the content here isn’t bad:  The problem (to me) is that it doesn’t have much going for it (aside from bulleted lists). For example, the UX here is not great. There’s a lack of proper spacing and so forth that just makes the content hard to consume.  At the same time, while some of the information is good, other tidbits of content are too thin (too many bulleted lists without much context, if any):  This page is a pretty good example of what I consider “typical web content”—it’s a bit on the thin side in some areas, lacks a user-first focus, perhaps tries too hard to rank for keywords, and as a result, has absolutely zero flow to it.  Pro tip: A good way to see whether your content is user- or topic-centric is to ask yourself if it flows. Does one subject or section flow easily into the next? If so, you might be on the right track.  You really see this shine through when you look at the overall ranking changes for both sites.  With the March 2024 core update, the Yale Medicine site not only saw an overall ranking boost, it now also ranks well for some serious and competitive keywords: Google likes the site and (as I mentioned above) ranks it for keywords even when the page’s content isn’t entirely dedicated to the keyword per se. In fact it ranks for 19.7K featured snippets!  While the mymosh.com sites does have some interesting keywords, they are not only far fewer but mostly uncompetitive:  When you start looking at what else ranks for some of the keywords I reviewed, it’s not a testament to the site that they rank well as much it is a knock at the web overall. (For the record, the mymosh.com site only pulls in 30 featured snippets).  The bottom line is having strong, situation-centric content can open up the possibility of ranking on SERPs when the competitors are ranking with keyword-specific pages. That’s a lot more bang for your buck. The move past sterile content—we’re getting there No, I am not 100% convinced the move past sterile content is pervasive across the web.  What I think we’re seeing here is not the conclusion of the process, but the very start of it. Google is doing the equivalent of dipping its toe in the “moving past sterile content” waters.  But isn’t that why we look to analyze Google algorithm updates ? To see what Google is beginning to do—to see what Google is starting to become capable of?  For all the criticism around the Google SERP these days, seeing a move to limit sterile SEO content is almost momentous. It’s also a reminder that getting the SERP right is a process that ebbs and flows for Google.  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