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

Author: Lazarina Stoy Visitors generally come to your site looking to learn something or perform an action. The more intuitively they’re able to get what they came for, the more likely your business will also benefit. However, locating a resource or a piece of information on a site can be frustrating if the right signposts aren’t in place. CTAs present one way to guide those visitors, turn them into leads, followers, or even nudge them towards the final step of buying your product or service. It can also help them become brand ambassadors post-purchase. In this guide, we’ll discuss what you need to know to begin creating compelling CTAs that benefit both the business and its strategic growth objectives, as well as the visitors of your site, including: What a CTA is How CTAs help your business and your audience CTA types CTA types based on business goals CTA types based on desired user action CTA types based on medium How to choose the right CTA Other elements to factor into your CRO strategy Key takeaways Frequently asked questions about CTAs What is a call-to-action (CTA)? The CTA acronym stands for call-to-action, which is a signal or prompt to a user to perform a desired action. The action the user is encouraged to take typically aligns with the business or strategic goals of the brand or website and often is considered the next logical step of the user journey. Some might say that CTAs should always encourage an immediate sale or other type of conversion (e.g., sign-up). This is a misunderstanding, as most sophisticated conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies use various combinations of different CTAs according to the stage of the funnel that the user is in . This enables a smoother approach to nurturing leads —one that is mindful of the different needs of users with different intents and fosters a trust-based relationship between the user and the business. What are the benefits of a good CTA? Having a good call-to-action can benefit every online space (not just websites) as it helps alleviate decision fatigue for users by broadcasting the next step in the journey (for those interested in taking it). At the same time, well-crafted CTAs also encourage users to take actions that are beneficial to the business, such as signing up for a newsletter or buying a product, for example. Here are some of the benefits of creating good calls-to-action for your users: Better understanding of potential avenues to take as a visitor Quicker access to important content Improved user experience and quicker navigation Less stress and frustration from decision-making and self-navigation, in turn promoting better website and content usability Creating strong CTAs is also beneficial for your business as well. They can help you: Increase engagement, which can help you improve website metrics such as bounce rate , time on page, session duration, and pages per session. If you’re working with videos as a medium, they can help bolster metrics such as watch time and click-through rate , all of which are associated with improved organic performance. Improve your understanding of users’ online behavior Improve performance of targeted goal completions CTAs can be applied to almost any content or online space, including in different places within a website, throughout social media pages, or even in videos, such as on YouTube or TikTok. So, at this stage, you might be wondering what a good call-to-action looks like. Let’s go through some examples from different domains and for different use cases, but first, let’s break down all the different CTA types. What are the different CTA types? One way we can break down CTA types is based on the business goal. In other words, what is the call to action trying to achieve and how does it help the business strategy? Here, we have summarized a number of different CTA types, but will go into further detail in the sections that follow. CTA type Aim Suitable for User acquisition Turn a visitor into a user Any business that allows users to sign up to a service using the website or allows users to purchase a product through the website Lead generation Turn a visitor into a lead Any business that can save customer service costs by allowing users to become better informed about a product or service through the website, submit a purchase order form through the site, or get their main questions answered through the site Lead nurturing Turn a lead into a qualified lead Any business that has a multi-step funnel (purchase process) and/or can offer something to the user (such as a downloadable resource or discount, for example) Promotion Generate awareness about something, such as a product launch, services, your brand, or its unique competitive advantages Any business, regardless of size or structure CTA types based on business goals User acquisition A user acquisition CTA aims to attract users directly by turning a visitor into a paying customer. This can be achieved via a complex CTA setup (which may be more appropriate for mature brands with greater resources), but can also be achieved via a simple button, a compelling, consistent business proposition, and a good user experience. What user acquisition CTAs can achieve User acquisition CTAs aim to attract users or paying customers. For an eCommerce website, that would be someone purchasing a product via the website. For a service website, that might mean someone booking a consultation and purchasing via the site. And, for SaaS companies, this could be someone subscribing to a service (with or without a trial period). What businesses user acquisition CTAs are best suited for This CTA type is suited for businesses and organizations that have a self-service product, service, and/or payment process (for example, a SaaS company with a self-sign-up product, like Asana or Monday.com, or an eCommerce organization like Amazon or PrettyLittleThing.) Examples of user acquisition CTAs Retail giant Amazon’s instant purchase tactics are one of the most recognizable examples of this type of CTA. The site’s buy now and one-click checkout buttons make it as easy as possible for visitors to become users. In other niches, user acquisition CTAs would typically include “sign up”, “get started,” or “create an account” buttons, but can also be CTAs based on the proposition of a free trial. Where to place user acquisition CTAs User acquisition CTAs are the money makers, so they should always be placed in prominent locations throughout the website. One common placement is in the top navigation menu, but these CTAs can appear in multiple different ways throughout a blog or resource section, as well as in service (or equivalent) pages. Lead generation A lead generation CTA is a broad CTA group encompassing elements that enable visitors to fill in their contact information, whether it’s through a form, signing up for a newsletter or something similar, effectively turning a visitor into a lead. What lead generation CTAs can achieve Lead generation CTAs can help you achieve just that—generating leads. This sounds simple enough, however, a crucial component of any worthwhile CRO strategy will ensure that lead generation has a purpose and the data that users provide will be utilized by the business in some form of value exchange—not for the purposes of irrelevant communications, solicitations, or for selling to third-parties. What businesses lead generation CTAs are best suited for Lead generation CTAs are used by small and large businesses alike, as each business (regardless of size and function) can benefit from having a self-service lead generation model via their website or other channel that enables user data collection. Examples of lead generation CTAs One of the most popular examples present on almost every website is a subscription pop-up or nudge. These can include direct email entry boxes, as shown below. Alternatively, they can also be a lot more creative, yet achieve the same purpose. Where to place lead generation CTAs These types of CTAs are most often placed within the content of a page. You can also choose to make this CTA type ever-present by adding it to a side menu or the footer menu, however, bear in mind this may hinder its effectiveness, as some visitors might not make it to the footer of the page. Nevertheless, that can be a good place to get user information via a simple email subscription form, or your last chance to make a good value proposition in return for lead information. One way to calculate the potential effectiveness of the email sign-up form (or any other CTA placed in the footer) is to reference historical page-scroll data across your website and make an evaluation based on the percentage of visitors that make it down to the end of your pages. To summarize, lead generation CTAs can be placed throughout the website, in the content body, in a side menu, or in the footer. Some brands have also experimented with placing their lead gen CTA in their expandable menus (as shown in the example below). Lead nurturing Lead nurturing is the process of lead cultivation for audiences that are not ready to commit to a purchase straight away. To put it otherwise, lead nurturing targets top-of-funnel users or users with an informational intent , and anticipates that not every visitor of the website or platform will be immediately ready to buy. A winning lead nurturing strategy accounts for needs of the visitor based on who they are (using profile characteristics, such as title, role, industry, search patterns, interests, and so on) and where they are in their buying journey, adapting the strategy as needed. What lead nurturing CTAs can achieve Through lead nurturing, a business can ensure that it steadily grows its lead portfolio, despite being aware that a percentage of this portfolio might not make a purchase immediately (or even ever). What this strategy achieves is, in part, investment in the future potential of the collected leads as well as building brand awareness and positive brand associations with target consumers. What businesses lead nurturing CTAs are best suited for Lead nurturing CTAs are typically used by organizations that require a degree of education about their product or service or would benefit from getting potential customers more familiar with their brand to make those prospects more likely to commit to a demo or purchase later on. Examples of lead nurturing CTAs Here is an example of lead generation using a downloadable resource, which targets a niche audience. Where to place lead nurturing CTAs Similar to lead generation CTAs, there is no limitation to where you can place these, but each placement will likely have a different impact on the CTA’s effectiveness. What matters more than the placement is the copy and incentive used to entice the lead. Ideally, this should be something relevant to the visitor’s interest, search patterns, and persona. This information can typically be gathered via a combination of your first-party data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console . For larger organizations, collecting data about which landing page your leads were first introduced to and what enticed them to make a purchase can also inform this decision. Promotional А promotional CTA is a call to action that does not aim to collect any type of information from the user or nurture them down the funnel. Instead, this type of CTA acts as a signpost to promote something else on the website or channel. To give you an example, an info card within a YouTube video pointing to another YouTube video is a type of promotional CTA, and so is internal linking in the SEO world. Both essentially amount to you promoting something else that you believe would be useful to the user, based on their search intent and profile, without expecting anything else but the click in return. Promotional CTAs can be both buttons and links , but they can also be static visuals (e.g., an image or banner), or an auditory message delivered through a video or podcast. What promotional CTAs can achieve Promotional CTA can facilitate cross-pollination of resources across your channel or website. They often help promote smaller website goals that are not directly tied to revenue, such as increasing page views or subscriber count. What businesses promotional CTAs are best suited for Whilst helpful and necessary, promotional CTAs alone do not form a cohesive conversion strategy. Yet, without them, a cohesive strategy could not exist. Both small and large businesses alike rely on them, though they are not generally enough for hitting revenue-related goals, such as product or service purchases. Examples of promotional CTAs “Read more” buttons are one common example of promotional CTAs, despite there being a lot of research that suggests these buttons are ineffective from both a CRO and SEO standpoint . Specifically, such generic promotional buttons are not great for accessibility, nor do they clearly and cohesively communicate the link destination (thus, being misaligned with SEO best practices ). And, they don’t typically provide a clear call to action. Despite this, they are still prominent, as you can see below. Another, better example are buttons that are organized based on a clear aim the user might have, or a value proposition, such as “find a solution” or “start for free.” Promotional CTAs are also very common in eCommerce. Below is a great example of such a CTA in action. Where to place promotional CTAs Promotional CTAs can be placed anywhere on your site, including in menus and content. However, considering the prominence of the top-level navigation or main menu, it might be better to reserve the spot for lead generation or other conversion-related CTAs. CTA types based on desired user action Now that we have learned the main types of CTAs, let’s take a look at CTA tactics that can be used for completing common objectives and how they relate to the business goals we discussed in the previous section. ​ CTA tactic ​ Description Business goal Example Form completion Form completion CTAs require the user to provide you with their contact details (among other relevant details you can ask for). This can be used for things such as a newsletter subscription, to request contact, or solicit feedback/reviews, depending on the nature of the data collected. Lead generation Free trial/demo Free trial or demo CTAs are typically offered in the SaaS and cloud industries, wherever there is a self-service or sales-assisted model. Lead generation, user acquisition Free download ​Free downloads prompt the user to download a resource either in exchange for contact information or to promote user satisfaction and positive brand awareness. Lead generation, lead nurturing Sign-up/ create an account The sign-up CTA is intended to encourage people to sign up for a service or to an online community like a social media site, for example. This is only suitable for websites that have an in-site experience, such as an eCommerce, social media, SaaS, or other service sites. User acquisition Social share Social share CTAs encourage sharing on different social platforms. This CTA type is suitable for content that is highly shareable, and some websites even enable users to directly highlight snippets of the content. Promotion Social follow ​Social follow widgets are typically displayed in the footer menu, can be added as prompts, or appear as side-menu pop-ups. These social follow prompts can urge people to follow or subscribe, but the aim is establishing a connection between the brand’s business profile and the potential customer. These CTAs can be visual, but they can also be verbal as well in podcasts or videos on the site. Promotion Message/ live chat ​The message or live chat CTA is a nudge. It can be considered an extension of the contact form and a replacement of (or addition to) calling the business directly. This CTA is great for lead nurturing but can also be used for lead generation, depending on the degree of support that is required. Lead generation, lead nurturing Leave a review This type of CTA urges people to leave a review, testimonial, rating, or any other feedback about their experience. This helps businesses build trust via social proof, which also helps to build authority . Such signals can also be utilized by search engines for understanding whether a brand is a real or fraudulent subject matter expert, and whether it should be recommended to new users. Promotion This list above is not exhaustive but covers all the basic tactics that can support a business’s strategic action-based goals. One thing to note is that, while we have covered examples of CTAs with different structures, calls to action can be delivered through a variety of mediums, including audio, video, text, image, or a combination. Let’s now take a deeper look at CTAs by medium. CTA types based on medium Image CTAs Image CTAs are not uncommon in conversion rate optimization strategies. Oftentimes, the image, button, and surrounding text work collectively to achieve the goal. There are also cases where businesses use an image that looks like a combination of CTA elements, such as text, other images, and a button, yet is structured as one clickable creative that takes the user to the destination page to complete the desired action. While this can sometimes enable an easier user experience, it might limit SEO value as the text CTA is contained in an image, thus not parsed by crawlers, and the internal link is processed as a no-anchor (also referred to as a “naked”) link . These CTAs might look like a banner ad and contain an image of the offer alongside copy explaining the value. Image CTAs could also be an image of the offer itself, which makes sense if promoting a template or a tool. HubSpot has shared its approach to generating more conversions on its blog via image CTAs by incorporating two of them per article, which are hyperlinked to the landing page with the relevant offer. Text CTAs Text-based CTAs, while often overlooked, can be very efficient for SEO purposes, but can also be pivotal to the success of a CRO strategy. For instance, HubSpot’s frequently referenced case study explains that the company uses anchor text with different styling as part of its blog to help captivate readers’ attention (as shown below). Below is another example from Alaya. The same tactic is used as part of a sentence in the text, highlighting the value proposition via the link and the relevance to the user via bold text. Video CTAs Video CTAs can be longer, compelling the user to take an action through the art of storytelling, or they can be shorter and more to the point. A video, created with the purpose of attracting users (user acquisition), would often have other CTAs within it. For instance, a video about the story, vision, and aims of a brand might contain a product demo, which is lead nurturing, as well as call for a social follow on the platform where the video is hosted. Video CTAs are extremely rich in potential and, when constructed with thought and care, they can garner great results, not only by generating revenue for the organization but also by decreasing the need for sales assistance. GIF or short videos are also possible CTA types, depending on how they are aligned with surrounding elements. Short clips (like the one below), whilst meaningless out of context, can be positive for conversion rate optimization when positioned around a strong, compelling message and quick access sign-up links. Hybrid CTAs Within the hybrid category, there are a few notable mentions which essentially cover different combinations of CTAs across different mediums. One great example is the in-post banner by Alaya, which combines image, text, and a button to deliver a compelling message. How to choose the best CTA for your website and your visitors? There are different factors to consider when choosing a CTA type. First, it’s important to use a variety of CTAs to keep things interesting for your users. Depending on your business goals, and the specific locations (sections, pages, or resources) on your site or channel that you might want to promote, you can shortlist different CTA tactics to test across different mediums. When thinking about CTAs and actions that the user should complete, it’s important to take into account the user’s search intent and the particular stage of the customer journey that they’re in. Looking at first-party data can be a great way to start building behavioral models for your current and ideal personas. This can help reduce tension between the business and the consumer and ensure that the latter does not create a negative association with the brand. Considering search intent when designing your CRO strategy can also ensure that the website is organized with a cohesive intent-driven architecture , and each action is aligned with the interest of the user. Ultimately, it will be the visitors of your site that determine the effectiveness of your CRO strategy, so it’s important to monitor and measure the performance of your CTAs and adapt them as needed. What other factors should you keep in mind when designing your CRO strategy? In addition to your CTAs, there are three important components that you should keep in mind when designing your conversion rate optimization strategy: the copy used, performance tracking, and whether you will implement testing. When writing copy for your CTAs, you should keep in mind the principles of good copywriting , as well as ad copy best practices . When thinking about performance measurement and testing, consider whether you have the capability to A/B test your CTAs. If your traffic performance does not yet allow A/B tests to be implemented and show statistical significance, rest assured that you can still work on CRO initiatives. You can still implement custom tracking via platforms like Google Tag Manager , and self-report on the performance of different events (e.g., button clicks, banner clicks, image clicks, etc.) via Google Data Studio through its integration with Google Analytics. The aim of such a report would be to monitor the differences that result from the changes you make to the site, such as swapping button text, whilst you work on improving traffic. Key takeaways There are many different avenues that your conversion rate optimization strategy could go in, even just based on the types of CTAs you choose for your site. This article mentioned a number of different CTAs, split into three groups: CTAs based on business goals CTAs based on desired user action CTAs based on medium To choose the right CTAs, you should consider what would benefit the business, how this can be communicated to the user, how the user can also benefit from the interaction, and how and where the nudges will appear to best encourage action. When implementing CTAs it’s also important to consider aspects like copywriting, A/B testing, and performance measurement. Calls to action FAQ What does CTA stand for? The CTA acronym in marketing stands for a call-to-action, which is a directive that is used to provide a signal or prompt to a user to perform a desired action. The desired action the user is encouraged to take is often one that aligns with the business or strategic goals of the organization, and often is considered the next logical step of the user journey. What does call to action mean? A call to action refers to an explicitly communicated nudge by a business or organization to the consumer of their content to perform an action that would benefit either the user or the organization, or both. Common examples of calls to action include “buy now,” “sign up,” or “read more,” for example. How do you write a call to action? To write an effective call to action, you must have a good understanding of: Your audience’s needs and how they can be best addressed What your business offers to address those needs Any overlap between your business goals and your audience’s needs When you are ready to write your call to action with regard to these considerations, it’s best to also keep ad copywriting best practices top of mind. What are the main CTA types based on business goals? There are four main types of CTAs based on business goals: user acquisition CTAs, lead generation CTAs, lead nurturing CTAs, and promotional CTAs. What are the main mediums for CTAs? CTAs are delivered via four main mediums: text, image, video, and audio CTAs. Oftentimes organizations will combine different formats, generating hybrid CTAs to improve their conversion performance. 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: Lazarina Stoy For small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), on-page SEO is absolutely essential because it’s the lever that site and business owners have direct control over to enhance their organic visibility. While other strategies do exist (and are largely complementary, like PPC or link building ), they may not have the long-term ROI of on-page optimizations. In addition, SMBs often have another distinct advantage over larger businesses: proximity to their target audience. Combining insights and feedback from customer relationships with on-page SEO best practices is something that all brands should do to maximize their online presence and serve potential customers in ways that competitors just aren’t. In this guide, I’ll discuss three broad, effective strategies for implementing on-page SEO, what the strategies aim to achieve, and the specific tactics you can use to implement them for your SMB. Table of contents: Create content that addresses and fulfills user intent Tactics that can help you align with search intent Create content that is easy to comprehend for both users and search engines Tactics that can facilitate easier content comprehension Link to authoritative sources and other topically relevant content on your website Best practices for effective links SEO tools to help with your on-page optimizations How to measure the value of your on-page enhancements Key takeaways Create content that addresses and fulfills user intent Search intent refers to the intention a user has when they visit a search engine to perform a search (i.e., what they’re looking to achieve when they search a given keyword or phrase). Most search intents can be classified into one of four categories: Informational queries Transactional queries Commercial evaluation queries Navigational queries So, why do you need to address search intent? There are multiple reasons: Topical relevance Search engines like Google use query matching (among many other factors) to determine which results to show. Previously, this meant that it was important to mention certain keywords on the site. Today, this notion has evolved into topic relevance and entity-relationship matching . The words you use still matter, but it’s more important to write about a topic in both a coherent and competitive (to other content that exists out there) manner. To do this, focus on explaining the relationship between other related entities, while also aligning the language you use to the language your potential audience might be using. In other words, this means creating content that’s relevant to your audience and answers the potential questions/pain points they may have, and meeting them where they’re at using language and perspectives that they’re already familiar with. Search engine results page diversity Search engines want to surface different types of content on the first page of search results (both in terms of content type and domains) so that users can always find what they are searching for quickly, even if their query is ambiguous or might be answered with multiple different search results. This means that there is more competition for the top positions, and certain spots are “reserved.” For instance, definitions are often served by Oxford Languages or Wikipedia, reviews might be sourced from G2 or another review platform, and image or video packs might be a mainstay on search engine results pages (SERPs) for certain queries (e.g., informational searches). A robust focus on search intent (in each page and piece of content) means that Google is more likely to prefer your site to address searches that match your content. User experience Addressing search intent also means offering a good user experience. If someone is searching for something and they find it on your website, this may signal to Google that your website offers a good experience that satisfies visitors. Conversely, look out for short, non-descriptive pages and/or doorway pages , as these often lead users to jump quickly onto another page or go back to search—both of which signal poor user experience. Tactics that can help you align with search intent Now that you know why it’s important for your content to match the appropriate search intent, let’s talk about the tactics you can follow to ensure that they do. Perform intent-driven keyword and topic research Aligning search intent starts with keyword and topic research so that you know the intent search engines attribute to the keywords you’re targeting—after all, you’d be wasting your time if you wanted to rank an article about fixing iPhones for the query buy new iPhone , for example. To get the most insight from your keyword research, you must have a complete understanding of your business’s/product’s unique selling points, but also how your audience searches for products (and whether there are any differences in how users might search for what you offer based on their language, location, or culture ). Instead of simply collecting keywords and targeting them based purely on search volume (for example), identify patterns in the way users might find your product and business at different stages of the user journey . For instance, when buying an iPhone, people might first research product specifications, using informational search queries that contain the words “what” or “how” (e.g., how many MP iphone 13 pro max ), while at a later stage, they might inquire about product comparisons and the commercial landscape (e.g., differences between iphone 13 and 14 , best phone 2023 ), before finally searching for terms related to pricing, places to buy, or discounts. Informational search examples Commercial search examples Transactional search examples Once you identify your keywords and group them based on possible user intent, you will be better equipped to create content that is aligned with the desired user experience—and have a clearer understanding of which intent buckets are more prominent for your products and service. When doing intent-driven keyword research, avoid dismissing keywords entirely based on search volume alone (or other metrics that third-party tools might provide). Instead, focus on the user, their experience, and the user journey. As an SMB owner, you might find greater success targeting longer, niche keywords instead of competing for short, ambiguous queries with search volumes in the hundreds of thousands. Address all entities and concepts that might help the digital user journey In addition to researching for keywords and topics to center your content around, strive to explain the entities that make up the subject matter and the relationships between them. These are important as they often are used by audiences to make purchase decisions. For instance, a person would not purchase a car without an understanding of the major concepts that form the basis of this decision, such as the different types of cars available, the different types of fuel that power cars, concepts such as manual or automatic controls, and even different finance options. A prospect might have information about all of these things before starting the purchasing journey, however, their knowledge might be limited or they might not know enough to make a decision. Here is where the website, its pages, content, and organization, should act as a digital salesperson to help with the educational component and enhance the decision-making process. Similarly, if you sell a service or product, ensure the content you create addresses all potential questions users might have about it . Organize your site to facilitate visitors’ search intent This could mean a few different things, but mainly it pertains to leading users to their next intended step (which is ideally closer to converting). Here are some examples: Inviting them to learn more about a topic by suggesting a related post Prompting them to learn more about your services after inquiring about your brand Showing related products after they’ve expressed interest in purchasing something from your site This can also be approached from the opposite direction: Are there any potential blockers that might cause prospective customers to abandon their journey? Anything from subpar site security to questionable grammar to a lack of diverse product images could hold back your business—it’s up to you to identify and remedy those issues. Continuously collect and analyze first-party data for insights Utilize your first-party data sources (e.g., feedback forms, customer service conversations, user research, etc.) to create content, pages, and experiences that align with the needs of your users. Below are some other examples of data sources you can use to satisfy your existing or target customers: YouTube and/or TikTok comments can help you discover new blog post ideas. Forums and discussions in online community groups can help you understand how users speak about products like yours. Amazon (or other platforms’) reviews of your product (or products like it) can help you understand your audience’s main pain points, which you can address when discussing your product on your site (following the necessary improvements, of course). Create content that is easy to comprehend for both users and search engines Creating content that positively impacts your business isn’t just about what you know and what the audience is searching for—it’s also about how you present it. Let’s now discuss some basic considerations to help out both search engines and potential customers. The fundamentals of site discovery In order to show up in search results, your site must first be crawlable and indexable (i.e., visible to search engines). This will indicate to search engines that the site can be crawled and included in their index. Note: By default, Wix sites allow search engines to crawl and index them . After ensuring crawlability and indexability , the next step is to create page structures that enable search engines to easily comprehend the content and match it to user queries. How to structure content for easy consumption At a bare minimum, this means ensuring that each page has a consistent and easily digestible heading structure, including: A title that cohesively explains what the content is about An H1 heading that expands on or contextualizes the title to help indicate the page’s purpose H2-H6 headings that indicate the hierarchy of the different page sections and the content within them, enabling skim-ability for high-intent users At a more advanced level, this includes ensuring that content is written in the language that audiences use to discover your business. This involves both writing and adapting content to the way your target customers express themselves, but also researching and validating your brand voice with both these groups. At an expert level, this involves adding structured data , which search engines use to contextualize your pages. Adding different types of structured data (depending on your page or content type) can make it easier for Google to understand what your pages, products, and your website are about. It will also help your site appear in rich results in Google Search , which can help improve the click-through rate by making the result more enticing to click on. Tactics that can facilitate easier content comprehension Here it is important to understand that your aim as an SMB is to maximize the opportunity for user engagement on the site, whilst also providing the ability for users to consume only what they need. The strategies below will help you do just that. Set your content to be visible for search engines Ensure that all public-facing content (more on this below) is published and set to enable search engines to crawl and index it. Check that your sitemap is active and reflects all the pages on your website (or otherwise, does not contain broken pages, redirected pages, or other status pages besides live pages), and is accessible via the URL: domain name + “/sitemap.xml” (e.g., https://www.mywixwebsite.com/sitemap.xml) You should also verify that your robots.txt file is accessible via the URL: domain name + “/robots.txt” (e.g., www.mywixwebsite.com/robots.txt). You can use your robots.txt file to block pages that you don’t want to show up in the search results (like a “thank you” page or your entire site if it’s under construction, for example), but you’ll also need to ensure there are no live links on the site to sections that have not been published to avoid errors or a bad user experience. Improve user engagement from the SERPs Use a keyword-rich, descriptive, and enticing title to encourage clicks to your site. Your meta descriptions should communicate value and promote action from the search results. To get more potential visibility from the content you’re already creating, add structured data to your pages (where suitable) to enable your content to appear as a rich result on relevant SERPs. Whenever appropriate, add images to your pages, as these can also be displayed in search (e.g., in author pages or blog posts). Whenever you add images (not simply decorative graphics or icons), ensure that they are compressed before uploading them, and add alt text and descriptive captions to reflect the contents of the image. Organize content coherently Your titles should be based on the primary purpose of the content/page. If a page you’re publishing is primarily a tutorial, but it has a conceptual introduction, try to write a task-based title instead (for instance, “How to select the right SUV” is probably more aligned with your target audience than the more ambiguous “Selecting the right SUV”). Likewise, section headings are also written based on the type of content in that section. As a basic hygiene check to avoid duplication, make sure that there is no repetition between the title and headings. And, when writing titles and/or headings, avoid using the -ing verb forms as the first word where possible (words like “billing” or “pricing” are exceptions to this). In terms of formatting, Google has surfaced a number of best practices : Write headings and titles in sentence case. Delete numbers in headings that indicate a sequence of sections. Use punctuation in headings sparingly. When using an abbreviation in a heading or title, spell out the abbreviation in the first paragraph that follows the heading or title. Finally, make sure there are no empty headings or headings with no associated content beneath them. Remember, heading tags are used to structure content hierarchically. To change the visual formatting of a heading, it’s better to use CSS than a heading level that doesn’t fit the hierarchy. Don’t make up your own formatting for headings. There are also no skipped levels of the heading hierarchy. For example, H3 heading tags should only go under an H2 heading tag (or follow other H3 tags if it’s a list). H2 through H6 tags should similarly be used to structure the rest of the content and correspond to the semantic structure of the page (as this formatting is used for more than visual purposes). Additionally, including links within headings is not a good practice, as this can easily be confused as a style applied to a heading instead of a link, so avoid placing links in the heading text. To assist users with specific intentions, consider adding a table of contents (where appropriate) to aid quicker content discovery and a better user experience. And to maximize conversions, ensure that all call-to-actions are clear and strong , prompting the user to take the desired action—whether that’s signing up to a newsletter, downloading a resource, buying a product, or signing up for a service. Link to authoritative sources and other topically relevant content on your website Links don’t just take you from one page to another—with the right execution, they can guide your users, add authority to your content, and help search engines discover your pages. Let’s take a closer look at how links can support all these goals. User experience improvements Linking to authoritative sources within your own content allows you to cite the claims you are making within your copy. This is important as it highlights that your content is informed by trustworthy, credible, and authoritative sources . Despite popular belief that Google uses outbound link quality as a metric to determine rankings or that there’s a magic number of authoritative outbound links required to gain more traffic, these claims are not substantiated by Google . Instead, Google spokespeople emphasize that such links, when appropriately used throughout the content, can improve the user experience by informing the audience of other resources that may be relevant to their search intent. In its guidance on creating helpful content , Google also advises creating content that “presents information in a trustworthy way, with clear sourcing, evidence of expertise, and background information about the author or the publishing site.” Discovery improvements for relevant pages and queries on your site Linking to other relevant content on your site means that you are enabling visitors to discover more of your pages that are relevant to their interests, which could lead to engaging with new blog posts, products, and/or services. Internal linking also helps Google (and other search engines) discover new pages and new ways that these pages can be served to users via the text you use to link to the content (referred to as anchor text). These links also help indicate the relative importance of pages on your site by distributing link equity. Besides the anchor text, the surrounding text can also be used for hints on what potential queries the linked page can be matched against. Best practices for effective links First of all, avoid generic anchor text. Everything in the realm of “read more,” “learn more,” and “click here,” will not serve your search engine visibility goals. Ensure all linking text is descriptive of the link destination and provides enough context for the user. This is true for both internal and outbound links, as both should strive for wording that describes the destination page. In terms of link settings, below are some quick best practices to follow : Ensure there are no links pointing to redirected or 404 pages. Set all internal links using the “follow” link setting . When linking internally, set links to open in the same window. When linking externally, set links to open in a new window. This enables improved user engagement tracking for internal link interactions, while also providing a better user experience for those that click on external links as they can always quickly come back to your site by returning to the original tab in their browser. SEO tools to help with your on-page optimizations Here is a selected collection of tools I use to do on-page optimizations, keyword research, and other enhancements, suitable for people with little or no prior experience in SEO and for SMB owners. For intent-driven keyword and opportunity research, you can use any SEO platform like Semrush , Ahrefs, etc. They come at a heavier monthly cost, but can help with a wide array of SEO research and opportunity identification tasks. There are also free alternatives for identifying relevant keywords, such as: Google Keyword Planner to identify broad match keywords (which contain the term you enter to start the search) and semantically related keywords (which contain other similar terms) Autocomplete Keyword Tool by PEMAVOR to bulk-export terms that Google suggests based on a given keyword SEO Minion browser extension to bulk-export PAA (people also ask) question and answer pairs from the SERP, quickly identify organic competitors, and analyze headings, titles, and other on-page SEO elements. To identify the structured data that your competitors are using, try the Ryte Structured data helper browser extension . To speed up the process of creating the structured data for your website, use a structured data generator (e.g., by ClassySchema or Merkle ). For creating content briefs, there are multiple tools to choose from, depending on your budget. Paid options include tools like Keyword Insights , but to get started for free, test Contenteum ’s content generator (which is based on the URLs and titles ranking within the SERP) or Dashword ’s AI-powered content generator. If you just want to conduct a quick spot check of existing content, you can use a tool like the SEO Pro Extension for Chrome to get an overview of the title tag, meta description, canonical tag, word count, headers, links, and so on. If you're a Wix site owner, you can use the built-in SEO Assistant to ensure that you've already optimized aspects of on-page SEO (like headers, alt text, structured data, meta description, and more) before you publish your blog post. How to measure the value of your on-page enhancements How can you determine whether your strategies are having an impact ? Here аre metrics you might want to monitor to ensure that the tactics you’ve implemented are serving search engines, your visitors, and your business. Organic keywords and traffic Review the keywords your site is ranking for and ensure that they are aligned with your target keywords, topics, and entities. Consider whether these are also aligned with your business proposition and whether they help further your company’s goals. User engagement Review metrics like: Average time on page Bounce rate Exit rate Average number of pages per session Average session duration Etc. Improvements in all of these (with a decrease in bounce rate) are a good indicator of intent alignment and effective site architecture. Site engagement events Review metrics such as: Page scroll Button clicks On-page events (shopping, browsing, social follows, etc.) Improvements here indicate that the experience on the page is enticing for users and content is organized in a way that promotes engagement. Search performance If you’ve added structured data to some of your pages, you can also monitor for improvements in clicks and click-through rate, as well as overall search visibility (namely in the Rich Results and Enhancement reports in Google Search Console ). Key takeaways Greater search visibility often correlates to greater revenue for your business. Although there are many tactics that can help you get more visibility in the SERPs, on-page SEO elements are the ones that are under your direct control. While I’ve discussed many considerations in this article, it’s important to see the forest for the trees. In short: Create content that addresses and fulfills your audience’s search intent Make that content easy to comprehend for both users and search engines Link to relevant content internally and authoritative content externally By focusing on these three areas, you’ll make your site more user-friendly for potential customers and more easily understood for search engines. 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: Lazarina Stoy I n a landscape where online presence is paramount, taking proactive steps to optimize your website  by eliminating duplicate content can significantly improve your brand’s success at multiple stages of the customer journey. For instance, at the start of their journey, users browse search results for the most relevant, high-quality websites, but duplicate content can reduce your brand’s search visibility and competitiveness.  And, as users proceed down the marketing funnel, duplicate content threatens the conversion once again due to a fractured/frustrating user experience, making it difficult to locate all the information about a given product, service, or topic on a single page. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the nuances of content duplication, show you how to identify duplication on your website (and other properties on the web), and share some fixes you can implement to resolve any content overlap. This article primarily focuses on the type of duplicate content you have control over—on your own domain—however, external duplicate content can also diminish your search performance, so I'll also address that as well. Table of contents: What is duplicate content? Types of duplicate content When is duplicate content a problem? Duplicate content metrics How to identify duplicate content How to check for internal metadata duplication How to check for internal duplicate content How to check for external duplicate content How to fix duplicate content issues Fix internal metadata duplication Fix internal duplicate content Fix external duplicate content Takeaways What is duplicate content?  Duplicate content refers to content that’s very similar (or identical) to other content on the web, either on another website (i.e., external duplicate content) or another page of the same website (i.e., internal duplicate content).  You can flag a page as duplicative if you see that it has one (or more) of the following characteristics:  Significant content overlap  — The content portions of a web page are either exact copies or very similar versions of the original content. Structural and semantic similarities  — There are substantial similarities in the overall structure of the page, including the on-page metadata (e.g., URLs, headings , subheadings, paragraph structure, etc.), as well as semantic similarities  (e.g., entities mentioned, arguments made, etc). Content in which minor subtleties are the only differentiator can signal that the pages are trying to appear different, but actually serve the same purpose. Lack of thought originality  — The content is informed by the same sources and presents similar perspectives.  Similarities in ranking queries  — Both pages are ranking for an identical set of keywords (signaling a lack of unique content) and target the same intent and audience. Types of duplicate content In addition to the internal and external duplicate content classifications I mentioned above, you can also examine duplicate content through the lens of similarity (i.e., exact duplicate or near duplicate). Duplicate content type Exact duplicate Near duplicate Internal duplicate content Duplicate on-page meta data Parameter URLs that are indexable and non-canonicalized, leading to the same page Feed content pages (e.g., blog archive, tag pages, category pages) Paraphrasing copy/pasted content Content cannibalization Boilerplate content, like on-page banners and CTAs, product descriptions, or info boxes, that are very similar or identical across many pages Using a similar page and heading structure across multiple pages Overlapping phrasing, sentence, and paragraph structure over multiple pages External duplicate content Syndicated content published on multiple sites Unauthorized republishing, scraped, or “cloned” content (copied without permission or proper attribution) Cross-domain duplication Partial copying (e.g., when affiliate websites use similar or identical product descriptions, borrowing from the original website’s product description) Paraphrased content, content structures, and website architecture (e.g., websites, created to manipulate search engine results and not add value for user) Fully AI-generated content  is also inherently unoriginal, especially when paired with site structure copied from another website It’s useful to assess whether a page is an exact duplicate or a near duplicate for the sake of prioritization, but also to understand how Google will perceive and rank the page.  To elaborate, exact duplicates (when left unmanaged) almost certainly will result in lower rankings, worse user experience, and harm your website’s search performance overall. On the contrary, near duplicates are considered with nuance, depending on the context and the degree of similarity. When is duplicate content a problem?  Duplicate content isn’t always a cause for concern. In some instances, content duplication can be harmless and even intentional, like in the case of news syndication.  In general, problems occur when content duplication is malicious, misleading, hinders the user experience, and/or does not serve a specific purpose. When duplication is responsible and strategic, it can help you promote your content to a wider audience or serve other business functions. Here’s a breakdown of when content duplication is (and isn’t) problematic. Content duplication can be harmless when: Syndication and repurposing are enabled —   This allows you to share content across platforms (like social media or news aggregators) with permission and proper attribution. This can expand your content’s reach and enhance your overall brand. Fair use is implemented —   Duplicating content under fair use or licensing agreements is acceptable (e.g., quoting source material, educational materials, etc). Canonicalization and URL management govern distribution —   Use canonical tags  and proper URL management to specify the original version for search engines. This applies to both re-publishing content on a platform like Medium and managing URLs with parameters internally. Content duplication is problematic when: Copy/pasted (or exact duplicate) content accounts for the majority of the content on a page —   Word-for-word repetition across multiple pages or websites hinders search engine indexation  and confuses users. Purposefully copying content from other websites without attribution is also punishable by law. Paraphrased (or near duplicative) content accounts for the majority of the content on a page —   Similar content with overlapping phrases, similar structure, or semantically-related arguments can frustrate users and worsen the search landscape. Republishing is unauthorized or attribution is missing  —   Copying content without attribution or permission violates copyright laws and Google has said it “reserves” the right  to penalize such websites. “Duplicate content does happen. Now, that said, it’s certainly the case that if you do nothing but duplicate content, and you’re doing it in an abusive, deceptive, or malicious, or manipulative way, we do reserve the right to take action on spam.” — Matt Cutts, Google Duplicate content metrics There are several metrics that can show you whether your website’s content is duplicated internally or externally. Here’s what to look out for.  In Google Search Console : Metric Why Pages indexed Indexable pages that Google chooses not to serve can indicate poor content quality (i.e., duplicate content). Look out for high numbers of the following status issues :  “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user” “Crawled - currently not indexed" Erratic or declining traffic performance Traffic fluctuations or sudden drops can indicate duplicate content, cannibalization , or external content surpassing your own website’s content. Monitor for drastic changes in positions and clicks from search to help identify pages that are potentially affected. Ranking query overlap for internal pages Significant overlaps in ranking queries for internal pages can indicate lack of unique content and perspectives, causing diminished search traffic for one or both pages. In Google Analytics 4 : Metric Why Bounce rate on pages with similar terms or structure High bounce rate on these pages could suggest that users are struggling to differentiate between the pages, causing a poor user experience. Session duration declines for pages with similar terms or structure Noticeable drops in session duration for pages in the same topic cluster  could signal duplicate content problems. Time on page Track the average amount of time users spend on each page of your website. A longer average time on page suggests that users are engaged with the content and find it valuable. How to identify duplicate content To identify duplicate content internally, you’ll need to evaluate your website’s pages against one another. To check for external duplicate content, you’ll compare your pages against other pages on the web. In the following sections, I’ll take you through the process of doing exactly that. How to check for internal metadata duplication If you are concerned about duplicate pages on your website, the quickest way to validate the issues is to run a duplication analysis on your metadata. Check for similarities in elements like page titles , page headings and subheadings, meta descriptions , and URLs.  This is a simple, straightforward duplication analysis and can be performed with freemium crawlers like Screaming Frog, which extracts data for all the aforementioned elements on all your site’s pages.  To scan for duplicate metadata on your website, download and install Screaming Frog  and start a crawl. Once the crawl is complete, export all internal data to a Google Sheet and paste it into the first sheet of this template  (you’ll need to make a copy of the template first).  Next, click on Extensions > AppScript in the top-level menu, then select findanddisplayduplicateswithURLs.gs  from the list, and click on RUN, which will automatically sort the pages to show duplicate titles, headings, and URLs, as well as a summary, in the sheet titled “Summary of on-page duplication.”  You can also take your analysis a step further by analyzing your metadata for semantic similarities. This is useful for identifying patterns that might qualify as near duplicates, like abusing title or heading patterns, which can become tedious for users. While Screaming Frog doesn’t currently offer this semantic analysis for on-page data, there are workarounds you can use in Google Sheets. Once you have entered your data in the Google Sheets template I provided above, the template will automatically run a fuzzy matching (string similarity)  formula to weed out titles or headings that are similar but not exact. You can review these semantically-related on-page elements in the “Near Duplicates” tab, alongside the number of potential matches and most similar alternatives. This can help you pinpoint whether you’re abusing any particular title or heading formats or structures, e.g., “# Ways to connect {tool} with Looker Studio” or “Ultimate guide to X,” like below. This type of duplication analysis is suitable for sites of any size/age. Ideally, you should conduct this analysis as part of regularly scheduled reporting processes, especially in organizations where: There is more than one person (or team) creating content There is no tracking in place for new content/web pages  The website/publication is more than a year old These scenarios can lead to duplicate content (as a result of human error or lack of coordination and tracking), so you’ll need to be more vigilant if your website (or your clients’) falls under one of these scenarios. How to check for internal duplicate content If you have concerns about duplicate content on your own website, go a step beyond metadata analysis (mentioned above) and evaluate the written content on your website for self-plagiarism and duplication.  Here are my favorite, beginner-friendly, and readily available methods to quickly identify duplicate content on the same domain (according to website size and budget):  Method 1: Similarity assessment based on ranking queries Using the Search Analytics for Sheets Google Sheets extension  (free, with paid option for larger exports), pull out a report for organic ranking queries, grouped by Query and Page. Ideally, set the report to be extracted into the same Google Sheet template , in the Sheet tab titled “Query-based duplication,” as shown in the image above.  Ensure that the OverlapSummary sheet is empty, and navigate to Extensions  (top-level menu) > AppScript  > CalculateQueryOverlap.gs . Run the script. The template will automatically apply a formula that sorts the data to show only the duplicated queries, the number of pages ranking for each of these, and the corresponding URLs. In the sheet titled “OverlapSummary,” data will populate (via a custom AppScript formula) with a summary of the pages that overlap on ranking queries. Review pages that rank for more than 80-90% of the same queries, as you can either consolidate the content on these pages  or further optimize them, because, as is, they are not ranking for unique queries.  Method 2: Run your website’s content through a plagiarism checker Use a paid tool (like Siteliner , for example) to get a self-plagiarism report on your entire website. Siteliner provides a summary based on the page’s importance (how many internal links it has) and the degree of copied content on it. Siteliner also shows you the exact content that is duplicated on each page and the URLs of other pages containing the same content. You can even scale this approach for larger websites via Siteliner’s API. Method 3: Duplicate content analysis via crawling tools You can also check for duplicate (and near duplicate) content with Screaming Frog . By default, the crawler identifies exact duplicate pages. For smaller websites (under 500 URLs) duplicate content detection is free and automatic for every crawl.  Before starting a crawl, you can instruct the tool to also detect near-duplicate pages, based on a threshold of your choice (i.e., a percentage number, such as above 90% similarity). This feature requires a paid license and will return a custom duplication report.  Other crawler tools, like Sitebulb , offer similar duplicate content detection features. Here’s a summary of the methods you can use for internal duplicate content detection, with regard to their respective costs and advantages: Method Tool Cost Advantages Query-based analysis Google Search Console Free Quick and easy way to identify non-direct duplication Offers a view of your site as Google sees it Plagiarism checker Siteliner Paid (free for sites under 250 URLs) Great for getting a snapshot of issues on medium or large-sized websites Detailed analysis Hands-on interface Good for ad-hoc analysis Crawling tool Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or any other crawling tool  Can depend on the tool, but generally free for smaller sites and exact duplicates Great for getting a snapshot of issues on medium- or large-sized or large websites Detailed analysis Great for enhancing ongoing reporting  Additional metrics enable a more holistic analysis Historical comparison How to check for external duplicate content In addition to auditing for duplicate content on your own website, you should also actively search for instances where your content has been used (or copied entirely) elsewhere without your permission.  While external content duplication can sometimes be unintentional and harmless to your organic search performance (e.g., someone directly quoting a snippet from your blog), it can also be malicious in cases where the creator of the duplicate does not add any new information, is monetizing the copied work, or has not credited your original work.  One tool that I like to use for external content duplication analysis is Copyscape , which offers a straightforward and low-cost way to discover if your web content appears on other sites. There are several ways to use the service, like submitting a URL or sitemap, pasting a batch of URLs for analysis, or even via an API.  The tool then scans the web for any pages that contain similar or identical content, identifying the number of matches for each page, the degree of risk for the given page, top-matching sites, and even flagging any errors it encounters with the URLs provided. It not only identifies full copies (i.e., exact duplicates) of your content but also finds instances where parts of your text have been used. You can also set up automatic monitoring, which alerts you when the tool finds new copies of your content. By proactively monitoring for duplicate content, you protect not only your intellectual property but also your site’s rankings on search engines, as duplicated content can chip away at your organic search performance. How to fix duplicate content issues  Once you’ve identified duplicate content (using any of the methods listed above), you can take the following steps to reduce similarities in your website’s metadata or content.  Fix internal metadata duplication Use unique heading tags:  Headings help organize the content of a page and provide context for search engines. Similar to title tags, heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) should also be unique for each page.  Canonicalize product URLs:  For eCommerce websites, product URLs with parameter variations (like color, size, etc.) should be canonicalized to the main product URL. This tells search engines that the main product page is the authoritative source for product information. Fix internal duplicate content Aim for mostly unique content:  Ensure the content on each page is at least 70% unique. While some repurposing is expected in a website, there shouldn’t be patterns of content abuse with the aim of gaming the search algorithm. Consolidate and redirect, don’t delete:  When merging content, implement a 301 redirect  instead of deleting the obsolete page to avoid loss of link equity and 404 page status errors . Diversify your content portfolio:  Avoid writing in the same style, the same structure, or format for all your website content. Diversify the types of content you create by experimenting with listicles, case studies, tutorials, and so on. Fix external duplicate content Signal originality to Google:  Implement canonical tags on your website and make sure all content has a publishing date, revision dates (if any), and E-E-A-T -establishing information. Improve your content further:  Consider further enhancing your content by adding new perspectives and insights as a way to set it apart from the duplicated instances. Get in touch with the other website’s owner:  Some website owners would prefer to simply remove your content when requested, instead of risking escalation (more on that below). Report infringing content to Google:  In a video on content duplication , Google stated that, in certain circumstances, you can file for a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown. This only applies if copying your content is illegal (such as in the case of music, for example). Take legal action:  In case you have evidence of intellectual theft, take legal action under the DMCA or European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) (depending on your location). The goal for all of these content deduplication initiatives is improving your website’s organic search performance (by improving your content quality and improving user experience). As you progress towards that goal, you should also see improvements in the metrics I discussed earlier . How to audit your website for duplicate content: The takeaways Content duplication, while not always problematic, can be difficult to identify or manage, especially on larger and more established websites. It can manifest in several cases: internally or externally, by exact or partial duplication, or sometimes even unintentionally. In all cases, duplicate content issues should be monitored and, where possible, addressed to ensure optimal search performance and user experience.  To identify duplicate content issues, review your traffic patterns, search performance, and indexation in GSC data, as well as your page experience, engagement rates, and time on site in GA4.  Regularly audit your website  for duplicate on-page metadata like titles and headings, but also utilize tools like Siteliner for internal duplicate content analysis and Copyscape to identify copies of your content on the web.  If you identify duplicate content internally, implement the necessary actions to make pages and their respective content unique. In the case of malicious copies of your content elsewhere, try to get in touch with the website owner before reporting it to Google or the relevant authorities in your area.  By implementing systems to monitor and audit your content for duplication, and taking corrective action when needed by producing unique and helpful content, you are ensuring that your website and business are operating sustainably now and into the future. 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