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Author: Duane Brown As a marketer or business owner, you need to get the most return on investment as possible from the platforms and tools you use. If Google Ads is one of those platforms, you might wonder how you can get your budget to go further (after all, who has an unlimited ads budget?). Sharing your first-party data—the data you already have from your customers—with Google Ads can enable you to do just that. With Wix’s Zapier integration, you can automate data sharing with Google Ads to not only improve your audience lists and conversions, but also free up more time to focus on other strategic aspects of your business.  Let’s get started. Table of contents: Why you should share your first-party data with Google Ads Tools to automate ad management and optimization The customer data you’ll send to Google Ads How to use Zapier to automate data sharing between Wix and Google Ads Getting started Ways to use Wix customer data and Google Ads together Why you should share your first-party data with Google Ads Feeding customer data to Google Ads helps you guide the machine learning algorithms that power your campaigns. The more data Google Ads has about what resonates with your customers, the more efficiently it can run your campaign, which can translate to higher ROI and decreased costs. Plus you’ll be less stressed, which is already a huge bonus. First-party data is your life preserver as Google deprecates third-party cookies  As Google gets ready to remove third-party cookies  from its Chrome browser, more businesses are starting to pay attention to their first-party data (the data you own related to customers that have made a purchase on your website). This is because Google’s changes don’t affect your first-party data. What’s more, the privacy changes baked into Apple’s iOS 14.5 update  showed many marketers and business owners how valuable all that first-party data could be in this new privacy landscape.  So, how can you leverage your first-party data? How first-party data fuels better ad campaigns The big reason you want to get your customer data into Google Ads is to help Google’s AI learn more about your customers. Google can only optimize your campaigns when it has accurate data. So, the more data you can feed Google’s AI, the better your ads will potentially perform.  Now, just because you feed Google this data doesn’t mean your campaigns will magically improve. You still need to build the right campaigns and manage them correctly. If you’re already on top of this and you do share your customer data with Google Ads, then you are going to enable your campaigns to work even better.  Also, when it comes to optimizing your Ads account, keep in mind that Google only looks at data over the last 30 days . So keeping your data fresh in Google Ads is another reason to do this (in addition to the time saved by automating this task).  Next, let’s look at some tools you can use to automate various aspects of campaign management and optimization. Tools to automate ad management and optimization There are lots of ways you can automate porting your customer data into Google Ads. Plus, there are lots of tools you can use to automate work being done in and outside of Google Ads.  While the sections after this one will focus on leveraging Zapier to automate data sharing between Wix websites and Google Ads, the tools and options below are excellent complements that are valuable in their own right. Optmyzr Optmyzr  is excellent if you need to manage your Google campaigns and want more flexibility then what Google Ad Manager offers. You can set up more advanced rules and scripts that alert you to issues inside your Ads account. Plus, the platform also works with Microsoft and Amazon Ads, which means you have one central place to manage your different paid search campaigns.  The time savings alone is worth the price of entry. You should probably be spending at least $5,000/month to even consider using a tool like this, but it is helpful if you want something to use alongside Google Ad Manager. Feedonomics Shopping feeds are eCommerce brands’ bread and butter. If you run shopping campaigns (including Standard Shopping or Performance Max), then you are going to need a shopping feed. If your store has thousands of SKUs, then you would likely be better off using a third-party feed management tool to manage your shopping feed.  Feedonomics  should be the first tool you look at when it comes to feed management. My agency, Take Some Risk, has used tons of tools and apps and Feedonomics is the best of the best.  For example, it has a support team located around the world, which means you can get support almost 24/7. Their team has worked on thousands of feeds and understands the value of well built shopping feeds. Their data governance product  means you get alerts when something goes wrong. And, the platform’s relationship with Google gives users access to betas and alphas before many large advertisers.  Supermetrics Reporting  and pulling conversions data might be your least favorite task, but we all have to report or monitor how our campaigns perform. Tools like Supermetrics  enable you to pull data from Wix, Google Ads, and many other platforms so you can build custom reports.  Let’s say, for example, that you want to pull purchase data from Google Ads but you also get offline leads on your site. You can use Supermetrics to pull data from multiple sources and centralize that data in a report you have built in Google Sheets or Looker Studio . Unlike Zapier, that moves data from platform A to platform B, Supermetrics is about pulling data from platform A and B, and letting you use it to build reports in your tool of choice.  Zapier If you need to connect two platforms together and there is no native integration between the two platforms, then Zapier  should be your first port of call. There are tons of competitors on the market these days but Zapier is the grandfather of the industry.  My agency has been using it the last few years and we love how simple and easy it is. If I have data in Wix and I want to send that data to Google ads, Zapier can create that connection between the two platforms and automatically send the data on a regular basis. The customer data you’ll send to Google Ads As I mentioned before, you generally want to upload customer data to Google Ads to either help build audience lists or increase the conversion data the platform has access to. There are limits on what data you can upload to Google Ads, which includes (but is not limited to): Email address Phone number First name Last name City State/Province Country Zip/Postal code Attribution data (e.g., currency and conversion names) The above is the minimum data that Google Ads will accept. Sometimes you can upload other data, but it will depend on what you are trying to do. If you want to upload something else, you may be trying to do something more advanced, which I don’t recommend for your first attempt with tools like Zapier. How to use Zapier to automate data sharing between Wix and Google Ads Let's say you want to update your Google Ads audience lists once per day: Perhaps you have a remarketing list of people who abandoned their shopping carts and you want to show them ads after leaving your online store, or you may have customers that already purchased items and you want to stop showing them ads from your brand on Google.  In both cases, you’ll want to keep our audience lists updated to make sure that you are showing (or not showing) ads to the right people. Let’s walk through how to do this with Wix and Zapier. Getting started First, start by heading to Wix’s Zapier page . From here, use the search bar to search for Google Ads (the app you want to send your data to).  Of course, you could also send your data to Microsoft Ads, your CRM tool, or any number of other platforms, but for this article, we’re going to keep the focus on sending data from Wix to Google Ads. Under the “Create your first workflow” section, Zapier lists the most popular workflows (or what they call “recipes”). For this particular example, the one we want is “Add Contact to Customer List With Email in Google Ads for Automation Rule in Wix,” as it lets us add our customer data from Wix into Google Ads to build an audience list.  Once you click on the workflow card, you will see the integration screen for this workflow. Click on “Try this template” to be taken to the workflow dashboard, where you can log into your platform and set up the workflow. The first thing to do is sign into your Wix account.  Then, you will need to sign into your Google Ads account. If you happen to have a Google Ads Manager account, you will need to designate which sub-account has the audience list you want to automate updating. You only need to do this if this is the first time you are using Zapier. Next, look to set up filters or other actions to tell Zapier how it should handle your data when it goes from Wix to Google Ads.  There may be certain scenarios where you do not want to import your data, such as when you only want to import data based on a type of email address (e.g., Gmail vs. Yahoo) or only data from customers that spend a certain amount of money with your business. Once you pick the filter option, you can tell Zapier how to filter your data. If I want to filter by email provider, then I can tell Zapier to filter based on what the email address does (or does not) contain. For Google Ads, I only want to share the email addresses that end in “ gmail.com ” because Google has a hard time matching non-gmail addresses to Google Accounts (Google needs to match the email address so they know who they are showing the ads to). I will simply pick “(Text) Contains” and then in the next box, add “ gmail.com .”  This will tell Zapier to only send customer data to Google Ads if it’s a Gmail address. Save the changes and then run a test workflow. If you don't get any errors, you are ready to publish your workflow and have your audiences (with Gmail accounts) uploaded in Google Ads. This is just one example use case—there are tons of other ways you can use Wix customer data and Google Ads together.  Ways to use Wix customer data and Google Ads together Here are some of the other amazing options that could help save your business time while optimizing conversions: Send offline conversions to Google Ads If you have products that have longer sales cycles, you can capture that customer data in Wix and then, when that person does purchase, you can send that customer data to Google Ads using Zapier.  You will need to combine Zapier and offline conversions  tracking in Google Ads, but this is a great way to automate this longer sales cycle and upload the conversion data. This works well if your business also gets a lot of phone calls before someone buys. Update Google Ads campaign statuses If someone makes a new purchase on your site, you could add a rule to update your campaigns in Google Ads.  If you have just run low on inventory for a popular product, you can have Zapier pause your campaign so you don’t advertise something that is nearly out of stock. Generate Google Ads reporting If Google Ads is your only marketing channel, you could set up a workflow to generate a report every time you make 10 sales. That way, you can keep track of how well your business is doing as you grow in sales each week. Track leads If your business uses an intake form, you can have Zapier send that lead data to Google Ads so you can track which of your campaigns is driving a lead on your site.  Of course, you can still send and track purchases on your site, but this helps you see which campaigns are driving a lead and then  a purchase for your business. Online privacy is evolving—leveraging your first-party data helps your business evolve, too There are lots of ways you can capture customer data on your Wix site. The first thing you always want to do is figure out what customer data (AKA first-party data) you have access to, and then consider how you can use that data to your advantage in your Google Ads account. Once you do that, you can look at how to automate that data to help drive better results and more efficient campaigns for your business. Duane Browne - Founder & Head of Strategy at Take Some Risk Inc. Duane has lived in 6 cities across 3 continents and visited 55+ countries globally. He works with brands including LARQ, Birdies, Pela Case, FTD, and Tiger Companies. Him and his team, at Take Some Risk, help eCommerce brands grow through strategy, PPC marketing, and data. Linkedin

Author: Colt Sliva Google Trends is one of the mightiest SEO research tools available. It’s also free, and if you know how to take full advantage of its features, it may become one of the most impactful options in your tool belt. In this article, I’ll walk you through Google Trends use cases and features so you can identify opportunities to use the tool for competitive insights. Whether you’re a small business owner learning how people search for your products or a working SEO, these techniques have an evergreen place in your strategy. As a brief overview, the competitive advantages lie in a few key areas: Google Trends provides years of historical data, sometimes going as far back as 2004 for some search terms. This is a superpower when data sources like Google Search Console are limited to 16 months. While the data is relative and doesn’t give absolute traffic numbers, it does help you estimate the current macro environment for a search trend. If you do have traffic data for a term, you can use Google Trends to review its historical trends to estimate previous ranges of traffic. Google Trends is as close to real-time data as you can get within Google’s black box of search data. The “ Trending Now ” section provides current trending entities and events based on news sources and active searches. Lastly, Google Trends can yield insights into how Google groups traffic together, which can help inform the topics you cover on your website. So, let’s jump into five Google Trends tactics that can make it a potent tool for your search optimizations. Table of Contents: 01. Explore search intent 02. Identify top, rising, and breakout keywords 03. Target the right distribution channel 04. Target the right location 05. Compare time frames 01. Explore search intent Understanding the questions people are asking (so you can create a document with the answer) is a big part of SEO. When you can find the right questions to answer, that is a working definition of addressing search intent . Google Trends provides some insight into search intent by tagging different types of searches (as shown in the example below). Let’s take the query Apple , for example—it could be the technology company or it could be the fruit. The search volume for the keyword is the sum of intent for both of those. Additionally, the Apple topic can receive traffic from similar searches, like Mac , because the intent is the same. The example Google’s documentation gives is London, Capital of UK, and Londres all being included under the same topic: “Topics are a group of terms that share the same concept in any language. You can find topics below your search term. For example, if you search London, and choose the corresponding topic, your search includes results for topics like ‘Capital of the UK’ and ‘Londres,’ which is ‘London’ in Spanish.” — Google Trends Help This helps take many unstructured searches that people make and consolidate it into a single search result. Pick the search term with the topic that is the most specific option for your audience. That is the version of the keyword that will best represent potential traffic. Compare this to the broader “Search Term” (this is the blue line in the example above) and look at the size of the difference. That gap will inform the competitiveness between topics. In the example above, the fruit will rarely receive traffic from its head term Apple , whereas the topic and the technology company are far more likely to receive traffic for this keyword. 02. Identify top, rising, and breakout keywords Google Trends highlights “Breakout” keywords (terms that had a tremendous increase in search frequency, probably because these queries are new and had few, if any, prior searches). This gives you access to near-real-time insights (whereas most search reporting is generally lagging behind by days). These breakout trends can last anywhere from a few hours to months. They can also change the SERPs in that content surrounding a trending topic is more likely to rank while people are searching for a breakout term. After entering your search term, you can use the Related Queries card (shown above), to sort related search terms by “Rising” or “Top.” The “Top” option can help you find certain niches (or long tail variations ) around a topic that are driving interest in real time, which may be helpful for building a breadth and depth of keywords around a topic . Select the “Rising” option to sort queries with the largest increase in search frequency since the last time period. You can use this option to identify trends early on and create content for them. Being early to a search trend is like creating luck for yourself. In addition to the related queries for a specific topic, you can look at what is trending in real time or within the last day . This search trends list is organized by a common topic as well as a trending piece of content. You are also provided with an estimated number of searches that made the topic trend. This number is sometimes not as high as you would expect and provides a rough estimate on what it takes to get content trending . 03. Target the right distribution channel Organic search starts with the search box, but has many distribution channels (YouTube, Google News, Google Shopping, etc). Google Trends offers a few of those distribution channels as filterable options. This is because these channels offer very different experiences tailored to a particular search intent (like seeking out breaking news with News Search or eCommerce via Google Shopping, for example). If you are a news publisher, filtering by “News Search” is key. Search behavior in Google News is oriented toward content that has a short half-life. So, this filter can help identify trending content opportunities to cover in Google News. If you create video content, filtering by “YouTube Search” can help you discover how viewers may be hunting for content. This type of content commonly leans toward multimedia-related queries, such as music, entertainment, movies, or video of an event. For eCommerce businesses, the most helpful filter will be “Google Shopping.” There is generally less data for this filter, but it does have very clear product intent behind it. 04. Target the right location Location can be a very important ranking factor in organic search. Different regions have different cultures, experiences, and search behaviors . Take the topic of Air Conditioning , as an example: In the southern United States, air conditioning is in greater demand year round. In a northern US state, the demand actually peaks higher than the south briefly, but quickly dissipates. That experience could inform how companies should operate and market in different locations. To filter and compare locations, hover over a searched keyword and click the three vertical dots that appear. Then select “Change filters” and modify the location (this option will only appear if you are comparing two or more keywords). 05. Compare time frames Similar to filtering locations, you can also filter over different time frames. This can help answer questions around turbulent times (like during core algorithm updates and holidays). Check Google Trends to see if your traffic changes are related to seasonality or if it is related to ranking changes. Looking back at the Christmas season for 2021 compared to 2022, there is a sizable gap between the two (2022 peaks at a relative score of 84 out of 100). This dip in search interest might have contributed to traffic and/or conversion declines for Christmas-related content from 2021 to 2022, for example. Hanukkah inverted that trend, with 2022 trending higher. During the 2022 Hanukkah season, sites on the topic of Hanukkah and Judaism would have likely experienced a higher number of search impressions. Understanding how these macro trends shift around the holidays can help explain what is going on with site traffic or how to better market to your website visitors. Stay ahead of consumer interest with Google Trends It’s instinctual for people to be curious about the next big thing. Creating content early and often is a powerful strategy, whether it’s SEO, SEM, or social media marketing. Target your locale with the right distribution strategy and during peak seasons for a potent marketing combination that can put you and your website ahead of competitors. Colt Sliva - Senior Technical SEO Analyst Colt Sliva is a technical SEO who has experience working with SaaS, eCommerce, UGC Platforms, and News Publishers across the Fortune 500. His main area of study is SEO at scale, automations, and breaking things to see how they really work. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Abby Gleason TikTok is where pop culture begins. The social media platform has invented its own language. “BookTok,” “cottagecore,” “hair theory”—the list goes on. None of these terms existed before TikTok emerged, but they now have a huge impact on how people search across platforms. Yes, I am saying that the unique terms you see on TikTok have ripple effects on Google Search, advertising, and across other social media. They are keywords , and should be seen as such. Want an example? Let’s refer back to “BookTok,” a term that references the reading community on TikTok. This is a word that did not exist prior to TikTok’s arrival in 2016, but since then has become a pop culture phenomenon, impacting Google Search, Instagram, Twitter and more: Put simply, if you aren’t using TikTok for keyword research, you’re missing out on major opportunities. This platform is one of the best places to find emerging keywords in your niche—an SEO tactic that has become especially important since traditional keyword research tools do not do a great job of surfacing trending terms (like ChatGPT). In this article, I’ll show you exactly how TikTok and SEO intersect, and how you can take advantage of that overlap to attract more visitors to your site. Table of contents: What does TikTok have to do with SEO? Examples of SEO content that leverage TikTok trends But, what if my audience isn’t on TikTok? How to conduct keyword research on TikTok How write about TikTok topics for SEO What does TikTok have to do with SEO? TikTok is where you can find high volume, low competition search trends that very few are writing about for SEO. I am suggesting that search marketers should view TikTok keywords as viable, valuable search terms that they can target to rank in Google. The logic goes as follows: If a topic like “BookTok” has 135 billion views on TikTok, one can assume that some of that interest carries over to Google Search. As you can see from the Google Trends results I shared earlier , that search interest has grown exponentially and has brought websites targeting BookTok a lot of SEO traffic. It may help to think about TikTok trends somewhat akin to cultural phenomena, like the Super Bowl. The event creates waves of search demand for everything from tourism in the host city to buffalo dip recipes. (Just for fun, check out search spikes for “buffalo dip recipes” in the past five years. Recognize a pattern?) What’s trending in the world—which is essentially culture—is a driving force in search demand. Traditional SEO keyword research tools don’t do a great job of staying up to date with emerging or seasonal keywords , so you need to equip yourself with other methods to find them. While there are many ways to find trending keywords , I want to hyperfocus on TikTok because it’s a cultural epicenter, and therefore a topic idea gold mine that few search marketers seem to be taking advantage of. I ran a poll in early 2023 asking who used TikTok for keyword research, and 83% (of the 150 respondents) said no. If you target trending topics as they’re happening, you’ll have the first-mover advantage for driving SEO traffic, and the added benefit of showing your audience your brand has its finger on the pulse. Relevance + awesome content = brand loyalty. Examples of SEO content that leverage TikTok trends While targeting TikTok trends in your SEO content might not be mainstream yet, there are plenty of brands that have used this tactic successfully: Architectural Digest writes about the TikTok design trend “cluttercore,” which refers to the joy of cluttering your space with items that make you happy—the antithesis of minimalism. The brand shared an editorial perspective on this trend and it’s been rewarded in search results. This page currently ranks #1 in Google for the term cluttercore , which drives 53,000 searches per year, with a 0/100 keyword difficulty (according to Keywords Everywhere ). In another example, Glamour covers one of TikTok’s latest beauty philosophies: “hair theory,” which sets out to prove that your hairstyle can transform your entire appearance and the way you’re perceived. The article defines the term “hair theory,” recognizing that the audience might see this term on TikTok or hear about it in conversation, and want to understand what it means. This page currently ranks #2 in Google for the term hair theory , which drives 29,000 searches per year, with a 0/100 keyword difficulty, according to Keywords Everywhere. I could share dozens more examples, but you get the point: TikTok trends are often low-hanging fruit, and brands are earning SEO traffic by sharing their perspectives on them. But, what if my audience isn’t on TikTok? I hear you. Depending on your business, your audience might very well be completely inactive on TikTok. I’m certainly not suggesting your brand invest resources in creating your own TikTok trend-related content if it doesn’t make sense to. The idea isn't necessarily that your audience has TikTok accounts and is actively engaged on the platform, but that TikTok is still a valid place to identify cultural trends in your industry. For instance, Chia Pets have been one of TikTok’s many obsessions. If you're a garden center, you may not think your audience is impacted by TikTok. However, you may see Chia Pet sales rise as your customer base expands as a result of this trend. Your results with this strategy will depend on your industry, your brand, and your creativity. So, keep an open mind and do a bit of research on TikTok to see if this process could work to attract more web traffic to your site. How to conduct keyword research on TikTok While finding relevant topic ideas on TikTok may initially seem like finding a needle in a haystack, it’s actually fairly straightforward. 01. Start with audience research Before you start with keyword research, you have to know your audience. What are they interested in? What questions do they have about your product or industry? To understand your customer base, conduct user interviews, talk to customer-facing teams , or use tools like Sparktoro to get a sense for where your audience spends time online. For instance, if you sell young adult clothing, and your audience research reveals that your potential customers also spend time watching Netflix, that can give you more ideas for topics to dig into. Example: After the hit TV show Wednesday aired on Netflix, searches for Wednesday clothes skyrocketed. If your young adult clothing brand created a “ Wednesday ” category page, you can imagine how the traffic might start flooding in. 02. Check out TikTok’s Creative Center Want to find topic ideas on TikTok? An excellent place to start is TikTok’s free Creative Center . This is one of the most efficient ways to browse what’s trending in your country for a variety of industries and topics. I like to look through top hashtags and videos to see what topics come up. Keep a spreadsheet handy, and get ready to jot down ideas. Note: The popular hashtags shared here can be a bit broad. For instance, looking up “Home Improvement” trends takes me to topics like #gardening and #PlantTok (a community for plant parents on TikTok). Clicking into a hashtag gives you more specific information about each topic. For instance, #PlantTok shows me trends over time, top videos, and audience insights (like age range and related interests). This may have been how I discovered Chia Pets were back in style… 03. Browse specific topics on TikTok The Creative Center can provide some quick wins, but to get the widest breadth of topic ideas, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and dig into some videos. Do a TikTok search for your industry or product and look for themes. For example, check out the interior design hashtag on TikTok. In five minutes of searching, I identified that top videos included topics like: NYC thrifting How to furnish a 7x7 foot room Material combinations The videos in each hashtag are sorted by popularity, and many videos boast millions of views. One can assume that topics that drive that much engagement on one platform might also perform well in search. 04. Search Google for “[industry] TikTok trends” It may seem deceptively simple, but searching Google for TikTok roundups can quickly clue you into what people are most interested in about your industry on the platform. For example, a search for interior design TikTok trends gave me ideas like: Cottagecore Grandmillennial Maximalism Boho decor Monochrome These are topics that may not easily be found through more traditional keyword research methods, as many are relatively new terms, like “cottagecore” or “grandmillennial.” 05. Follow creators in your industry A great way to stay on top of TikTok trends is to simply be active on TikTok. Follow creators and hashtags to stay up-to-date on the latest trending topics, and track them for your keyword research efforts. And if you simply can’t dedicate time to monitoring another marketing channel, see if top creators on TikTok are active on other platforms you use. Maybe they’re also active on Instagram, or perhaps they have a weekly newsletter summarizing their content. By keeping an eye on creators in your industry, you’ll stay up to date with the latest trends and can create content that ranks based on it. How write about TikTok topics for SEO You’ve got your list of topics—now what? Depending on the topic, there are several effective ways to target each keyword. Here are a few ideas to get you started: 01. Define the term/trend Terms like “hair theory” or “cottagecore” do not refer to obvious or mainstream trends. People who hear about these trends in conversation or see them pop up on social media might naturally look for a definition. For example, they might search What is cottagecore? (It’s an aesthetic that celebrates a rural lifestyle, but it’s impossible to know that without context). You can seize this opportunity by creating content that clearly defines the term and the context behind it: What does it mean? How did it become popular? What are some examples of this concept? You may even go a step further and share how it’s impacting an industry (like yours) or culture (like your audience’s). Tip: Google your term and see what the autocomplete and People Also Ask features reveal. This can clue you into popular questions about your topic or give you even more topic ideas to run with. 02. Explain how to lean into the trend Your brand may be in a unique position to explain how readers can incorporate the trend into their lifestyle. For example, “How to embrace the cottagecore aesthetic in your home” could be an effective angle. This content will be especially compelling if your brand has authority on the topic and solutions to fit the need. If you’re a home goods retailer, this content could even drive users to your product pages as a way to embrace the trend. 03. Roundups Another approach is to create roundups related to each topic. Sticking with the “cottagecore” example, this could include: Homes that are embracing the “cottagecore” trend Our favorite “cottagecore” influencers on Instagram Most affordable “cottagecore” brands To get ideas for roundup topics, you could do a Google search for best [topic] and see what autocomplete comes up with. 04. Product-focused content TikTok trends might even influence your product offerings. You can tweak your positioning to capitalize on a popular trend and reap the benefits in search. Consider showcasing your product(s) which reflect a popular trend. Going back to the home goods retailer example, this may involve creating an entire category dedicated to “cottagecore” and featuring it on your homepage or linking to it from your blog. Culture = keywords New search terms are created on TikTok constantly, and if you want to keep up, you have to be there. This may involve spending one hour on TikTok each month to gather new content ideas, or it may mean regularly checking in with top creators to see what’s trending. Regardless of the frequency, incorporate this platform into your keyword research process and you’ll almost certainly find emerging, low competition topics to target. Or at the very least, you may get some new interior design ideas for your home. 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: Joshua George More relevant content means more potential traffic from search engines, right? No, not always. Too much similar content (i.e., duplicate content) can actually hurt your Google rankings. For eCommerce stores, one of the first issues to look into and resolve is keyword cannibalization, which can result in wasted effort, user confusion, and essentially competing against yourself in search results. To help you get the most return (and organic visibility) from your SEO efforts, let’s take a look at what keyword cannibalization is, how it can affect eCommerce sites, and how you can go about resolving it for potentially more traffic and conversions. Table of contents: What is keyword cannibalization? How cannibalized keywords can hurt your SEO How keyword cannibalization happens on eCommerce websites How to identify cannibalized keywords on your eCommerce site How to resolve keyword cannibalization 01. Combine content into a single page 02. Delete unnecessary pages and implement 301 redirects 03. Determine the canonical URL Tactical tips to resolve common eCommerce keyword cannibalization issues What is keyword cannibalization? In a nutshell, keyword cannibalization refers to having two or more pages on your website rank for the same keyword. This could result in weaker rankings, competing against your own content in search results for the same query, and even confusing potential customers. The most common occurrence of cannibalized keywords in a website is when a site owner (mistakenly or otherwise) creates content identical to something that was already published on the site. Both pages would likely contain similar (if not the same) content, leading Google to index them both for the same search term. How cannibalized keywords can hurt your SEO At first, keyword cannibalization doesn’t seem too bad. So what if multiple pages rank for the same keyword? That means there’s more opportunity for you to get more clicks on your website when shoppers search that term, right? This line of thinking assumes that your pages rank on the first page of Google Search for their keyword(s). Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. While you could get a few clicks to these pages, addressing this issue is much better over the long run because keyword cannibalization can: Diminish the authority of the more relevant page. If you have a page already ranking for its target keyword, its position could drop if search crawlers find another page with similar content. So, while the identical page may get indexed for the search terms, you may lose organic traffic that would have otherwise gone to the original page. Decrease the impact of your links and anchor text. Cannibalization affects your link building efforts because you have to spread your link acquisition to both pages instead of just one. Waste crawl budget. Google (and other search engines) will only spend a finite amount of time crawling your site (i.e., “crawl budget”). Unmitigated keyword cannibalization may mean that the search engines are crawling duplicate content instead of new pages, which could result in other important pages not getting crawled or indexed (thus not appearing in search results). Be a sign of poor page quality. Optimizing two or more pages for the same keyword (intentional or otherwise) shows that you don’t have a proper eCommerce SEO strategy . Let’s put additional context to the disadvantages cannibalized keywords bring to your site’s SEO performance: The top three positions on search engine results pages (SERPs) generate click-through rates of 25.6%, 10.15%, and 6.87%, respectively (as of February 2023, according to Advanced Web Ranking ). As an example, let’s pretend one of your most important pages ranks at the top of search results for a keyword. If you create content that significantly overlaps and isn’t substantively unique or distinct from an existing page, Google may knock your existing page down a position or two, if not even lower (because of the reasons listed above). That means even if your pages rank on the second and third positions on SERPs for the same keyword, you’re still likely to lose traffic because the first position gets more clicks than any other two search results positions combined. How keyword cannibalization happens on eCommerce websites Among the various website types, eCommerce sites are the most prone to keyword cannibalization. This is because an online store’s site structure and product inventory can give rise to SEO issues that make crawling more difficult for search engines. Below are instances when keyword cannibalization may happen on eCommerce websites: Faceted navigation Faceted navigation helps users find pages or products on your online shop with much more granularity than a regular navigation menu. It enables users to filter product listings according to attributes like price, customer rating, weight, brand, and others. Amazon lets you do this when you visit one of its category pages (as shown below). While faceted navigation provides value for visitors and helps convert them into customers, it doesn’t have the same positive effect on your SEO. Some sites generate new URLs whenever visitors create filters to find the products they’re looking for. If you don’t address these additional URLs, Google will crawl and index them. And if you have thousands of visitors using your faceted navigation, that means thousands more pages for the search engine to crawl and index. This becomes a problem, especially when multiple URLs with similar (if not the same) content rank for keywords that you optimized your product pages for. The original page’s ranking might be negatively impacted because Google will also spread out its resources to continue indexing for the page(s) generated using faceted navigation. URL parameters in ad campaigns You may have run ad campaigns for your landing pages and created URL parameters to monitor their performance. Tools like Google’s Campaign URL Builder let you add URL parameters to help you track where users found your page, the marketing channel used to promote the page, and others. If you track the page on Google Analytics , you will see more information about its overall performance. From here, you can make the necessary changes to the campaign and improve its results. However, here’s the caveat: Google considers the original page URL different from your landing page with URL parameters, even though the content may be identical. If your landing page with URL parameters gains traction, Google may crawl and index it for the same keyword as the landing page without the parameters. Poor keyword optimization This beginner’s mistake usually happens when you target the wrong keywords for your pages. In the case of eCommerce sites, you may have targeted a long tail keyword that overlaps with a short tail keyword you’re already ranking for. For example, you optimized for the keyword best deadbolt smart lock with a product page but you also created another page for the keyword what is the best deadbolt smart lock. You may argue that, because they don’t have the same number of words within them, one keyword is different from the other. But, Google treats them identically because they have similar search intent . A quick Google search should confirm this. Below are the results for best deadbolt smart lock: Barring the featured snippet, the results are the same when you search for what is the best deadbolt smart lock: How to identify cannibalized keywords on your eCommerce site Now that you’re familiar with some of the causes of keyword cannibalization that can plague eCommerce sites, it is up to you to identify these pages and assess whether these issues threaten your SEO performance, and find the best approach to fix them. That said, below are ways you can identify them: Run a “site:URL + keyword” search Google Search can give you an overview of indexed pages that may be cannibalizing keywords. To do this, use the “site:[URL]” search operator . It searches pages exclusively on the domain you enter here. In this case, replace [URL] with your domain URL and enter your keyword beside it in the search bar. As for the keyword, you’ll need to have an idea of the terms you want to check. Get started by typing in your most valuable keywords or search terms that your product pages are already ranking for. You want to see if your site has similar pages that may cannibalize your search position for the same keyword. In this case, let’s look at the online store Slimfold for the keyword thin wallets. Here’s what the search query would look like: site:slimfoldwallet.com “thin wallets” I enclosed the keyword with quotation marks because I want Google to check pages on the site that include the exact phrase within the content. Below is a snapshot of the results: Six pages match the query. However, Google may return vaguely matching results, meaning the pages aren’t necessarily ranking for the same keyword. To know for sure, visit each page in the results and verify if the content is identical to the other pages on the list. Perform host clustering While using “site:[URL]” helps you find potential keyword cannibalization issues, it doesn’t give any insight into a given page’s value on the search results for a keyword. In a regular Google search, the search engine only shows you up to two of the best-performing pages from a domain . So, if the domain has multiple pages ranking for the same term, you wouldn’t necessarily find out about them all here. However, you can show all pages ranking for a keyword (regardless of domain) by adding “&filter=0” at the end of the SERP URL. This is referred to as “host clustering” and by doing so, you reveal potential keyword cannibalization issues on your eCommerce site. As an example, here’s a snapshot of the SERP for the search query thin wallets: The SERP URL for this query is: https://www.google.com/search?q=thin+wallets As you can see, there’s only one result from Amazon on the page. Now, check the search results after performing host clustering by changing the URL to: https://www.google.com/search?q=thin+wallets&filter=0 As you can see, Amazon has multiple pages indexed for the search term! This normally happens in eCommerce sites that sell products with similar and identical descriptions. Since they share words like “slim,” “thin,” and “ultra thin” in the page’s title tag , Google treats each page with varying degrees of attention. That means it will try to show these pages on search results for terms like “thin wallets,” “slim wallets,” and other similar queries. So, instead of just focusing on ranking the page optimized for “thin wallets,” Google also picks up the other pages with synonymous titles. As a result, these pages pull down the top Amazon page intended to rank for the query. Suppose you have the same issue on your online store. In that case, you need to learn how to differentiate identical yet different product pages from one another to prevent Google from indexing them for the same keywords. We will discuss potential ways you can resolve this problem later in this guide. Use Google Search Console Google Search Console (GSC) can also show you possible keyword cannibalization issues by giving you direct access to queries that your pages rank for. Upon logging into your account, go to your Performance report . Review the Queries table (below the search performance chart) and select one to review what pages rank for that keyword (the search performance chart and tables will update according to your selection). Next, select the Pages tab (as shown below) to see which pages on your online store get impressions and clicks from the search term. If you see more than one page here, that means Google indexed multiple URLs from your site for this keyword. However, in certain instances the URLs may come from the same page. For example, if you use a table of contents with jump links on your blog posts (like this article does), Google can crawl your page for these sections and show them in search results. In this case, you don’t need to do anything. Refer to your SEO tool Instead of manually searching for cannibalized pages on your site, you can automate the process using Semrush’s Cannibalization Report. Other tools offer similar capabilities, but for our purposes, I’m just going to focus on this particular tool. Semrush’s Cannibalization Report lists the cannibalized keywords that need your attention. To access this feature, you must enter keywords you want to track on your site from the Position Tracker page. After setting up the keywords in Semrush, you will see a Cannibalization Health score (on a scale of 0–100). A score of 100 means Semrush didn’t detect keyword cannibalization issues on your website. From the report, click on the cannibal page that you want to analyze. It’ll show you keywords the page is showing for on SERPs. Next, identify which keywords are irrelevant to the page and make the necessary changes. How to resolve keyword cannibalization Once you have confirmed which pages on your site cannibalize keywords, you need to know which approach is the best for fixing them. Below are potential solutions to each of the keyword cannibalization issues mentioned above. 01. Combine content into a single page Merging pages that rank for the same keyword is ideal if the affected pages have the same search intent (i.e., commercial, transactional, informational). This also makes link building easier, as you can just point backlinks to a single page instead of scattering them to different pages. To do this, identify the page you must keep (i.e., distinguish it from the other pages ranking for the same keyword). Again, host clustering is an excellent way to find out which page Google values the most—the higher the page’s ranking is, the more important Google deems the page to be. However, this process doesn’t consider the number of actual keywords the page is ranking for or its backlink profile. To get more context about the page (for better decision making), use Google Search Console to determine which pages generate the most impressions and clicks from which queries. You can also use a tool, like Ahrefs, to identify which page has the most backlinks pointing to it. 02. Delete unnecessary pages and implement 301 redirects Next, you’ll consolidate content and delete the extra pages. The goal is to salvage as much content as possible from the pages you plan to delete and to continue to put it to good use. If the content of the pages repeats information that already exists on the page you’re keeping, you can go straight to deleting their URLs. However, consider keeping a draft of the content for future use (i.e. repurposing it as a guest post or social media post). Before deleting the rest of the URLs, replace the internal links to pages you plan on removing with the one you will keep. Doing so prevents broken links on your website, which facilitates crawlability for search engines and the user experience for your human visitors. Below, I’ve used Ahrefs to find links pointing to the pages to replace (although you can also do this on other backlink tools). In Ahrefs, go to Backlink profile > Internal backlinks and find the URL of the page you’ll delete. Here, you will see the pages linking to it that you will need to update the link URL for. After deleting the pages, redirect them to the page you will keep. This helps prevent 404 error pages that disrupt the user experience and points visitors to the correct page. You can do this manually by configuring your .htaccess found in the root directory of your web host. If the file doesn’t exist, create one. When editing the file, use the template below: Redirect /old-url-path /new=url-path Replace “/old-url-path” with the page you deleted and “/new-url-path” with the one you kept. Enter the same command on the next lines until all the deleted pages redirect to the correct one. If done correctly, your site will redirect users visiting the deleted pages to the correct one. Note: Wix site owners can also set up single 301 redirects or redirect multiple URLs at once using the Group Redirect feature. 03. Determine the canonical URL Canonicalization helps point search engines to the original or correct version of a page. This makes it ideal when the pages ranking for the same keywords are URL parameters (you probably don’t want to delete pages with URL parameters since you’re tracking them for your ad campaigns). At the same time, trying to delete the pages that your faceted navigation automatically generates would be cumbersome, especially if you have thousands of pages using this feature on your site. To set the canonical URL, add the canonical tag inside using the code below: Replace the URL with one where you want the pages with URL parameters to point to. Note: Wix site owners can set the canonical URL within the Wix Editor to help Google acknowledge the correct page on your site. Tactical tips to resolve common eCommerce keyword cannibalization issues Here are some additional tips to help you address the common eCommerce keyword cannibalization scenarios I described earlier : Faceted navigation — Go to GSC and identify pages generated by faceted navigation. Add the canonical tags in these pages’ section and link back to the page that you want Google to crawl and index. URL parameters in ad campaigns — Before launching your campaign, add the canonical URL on the section of the landing page. This tells Google not to index the page from the outset, helping you to avoid cannibalization altogether. Poor keyword optimization — Identify product pages that are ranking for an incorrect intent. Then re-optimize them for queries that reflect the appropriate intent. If your cannibal pages are blog posts, consider merging them to form a single resource page instead of maintaining multiple posts. It will also help if you create a keyword matrix to prioritize keywords you must optimize for your site. For keyword cannibalization, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure Keyword cannibalization is just one of the many culprits of poor SEO performance. But if not addressed properly, it can be a significant roadblock to achieving success with your eCommerce website. After all, if potential customers aren’t able to find your brand in the search results or are confused on which listing to click on, they’ll likely go elsewhere. Following the steps outlined above helps you identify and remedy this issue, but you should also continuously monitor for cannibal pages to ensure your eCommerce website isn’t wasting its crawl budget. If done correctly, you should be able to drive more organic traffic to your store and enjoy more sales and conversions! Joshua George - Founder of ClickSlice Joshua is the founder of ClickSlice , a results driven SEO agency in London. He has almost a decade of experience as an SEO consultant and has provided SEO training for the British government. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Lily Ugbaja I once ran a blog that barely scratched 100 organic sessions per day in the first two years—the majority of its traffic came from Pinterest. One day, as I scrolled through Pinterest, I noticed a topic that I would never have come up with on my own, so I published a blog post on it. What happened next was wonderful, but curious: My blog’s Google search traffic went from less than 100 daily sessions to nearly 1,000 daily sessions in less than two months. It turns out I had stumbled on a high-volume keyword that was just starting to trend. Over the next weeks, I looked for patterns to understand how I could find more SEO keywords like that: I discovered a keyword research technique that helps to grow traffic to new domains by finding and analyzing keywords on competitor sites with skewed traffic profiles (i.e., when a site's two or three top-performing pages receive significantly more traffic compared to the rest of the site). Testing my theory on another website (which was four to six months old at the time), I saw the site go from 0 to 100 daily organic sessions within three months. That number of sessions may not seem impressive, but it certainly shows that I achieved the goal of ranking the new domain and it’s a great starting point to gather data to formulate a longer-term SEO strategy. You don’t need to wait six months for traffic to start rolling in, and you don’t need to build tons of links first. Just find the keywords your less obvious competitors are ranking for, and target them. Table of contents: How skewed traffic profiles offer opportunities for new domains 01. Find the first 100 URLs ranking for your main keyword 02. Filter ranking domains by age 03. Isolate domains with skewed website traffic distribution 04. Analyze top-ranking pages to identify potential keywords How skewed traffic profiles offer opportunities for new domains Skewed traffic profiles can often be attributed to high-volume keywords that a site inadvertently targeted. The site owner likely published a blog post based on a personal interest or reader requests and doesn’t have a strategy to replicate their results. This often means that the keyword they’re ranking for is one that many other publishers haven’t discovered yet—making it a low-competition keyword. Here’s an example of what this might look like in practice: A site has published 100 blog posts and is getting 20,000 monthly pageviews. But, 15,000 of those pageviews come from only three (of the 100) blog posts. It’s likely that the publisher didn’t intend to target the keywords that are bringing in traffic for those three posts. This tactic is even more effective when you identify a new domain with a skewed traffic profile: Older domains often have backlinks (which are a search ranking factor) from other sites. This means they tend to rank higher for relevant keywords. If your skewed traffic site is on an older domain, there’s a chance the brand/site owner has just started doing SEO and are ranking for keywords that a newer site like yours may struggle to rank for. But, if you have a new domain, it’s highly likely that you can rank for the same keywords as other, younger domains, since you’re also likely to be starting from scratch in terms of your backlink profile. Why not just target the keywords your obvious competitors are targeting? Your obvious competitors are the ones that show up in the search results for your core keywords. In the eCommerce industry, that’s often Amazon, eBay, Etsy, or other well-known retailers. For local search queries, the top results are often Yelp or Tripadvisor pages. This looks different for each keyword and industry, but the point is that you’re unlikely to outrank these mature brands with your relatively new domain. This is because there are many factors that can work in favor of older domains: Google might still be “figuring out” what your new domain is about, whereas the top domains for that keyword may be over a decade old. Mature businesses/domains likely dedicate resources to SEO, which might be tougher for newer brands that simply don’t have those resources. Established competitors may have generated valuable backlinks from other reputable publishers, which would be unlikely for a new domain to replicate. For these reasons (and many more that I won’t list here), targeting keywords with low competition at the domain level (by identifying skewed traffic profiles) is an effective way to get Google to rank your new domain. 01. Find the first 100 URLs ranking for your main keyword The first step of this process is to conduct keyword research to find as many relevant competitor domains as possible for your skewed organic analysis. Start your research with your main keyword so that you’re accounting for every domain that is loosely related to your niche. If you’re not sure what your main keyword is , think about your main offering (what you sell or provide) and who your audience is. I’ll use the keyword content marketing as an example for this article. It’s unlikely that the sites you’re looking for would rank in the first ten, twenty, or even thirty results for your main keyword because they just don’t have enough authority. That’s why we want to cover at least 100 URLs. You’ll need access to an SEO tool , like Semrush , for several steps in this process. First, plug your keyword into the tool to see what sites rank for the term. Next, export the search analysis so that you can use it in the next step. 02. Filter ranking domains by age I use domain age instead of domain authority (DA) because a higher DA is often a byproduct of rankings, which are influenced by the site’s backlink profile (which you’re not in a good position to compete against as a new domain). If a site about your domain age or less is ranking for a keyword, there’s a high chance you can rank for it as well (even if your DA is not as high). How to check domain age To identify the age of relevant domains, copy the URLs you extracted in the last section and paste them into a bulk domain age checker tool (like Bulk SEO Tools , shown below) to find their registration dates. Next, you’ll need to organize your findings. Sort the domain list by “Date created” and export it as a CSV. In your CSV file, delete all sites older than yours and filter out domains that are outside your niche. For URLs with incomplete data in this tool, you can review the URL’s historic ranking data by using a rank tracking tool to see when the page started ranking. In the example below, you can discern that the domain is around three years old (at the time of publishing). 03. Isolate domains with skewed website traffic distribution Analyze the traffic profile of each of the remaining domains in your CSV file with a tool like Semrush. You’re looking for sites with a handful of posts (mostly one or two) driving the majority of the pageviews to the domain overall. For illustrative purposes, a skewed traffic profile may look something like the example below. Notice that there’s a relatively large dip in pageviews between the top page and the second-highest performing page, and there’s also a large dip between the second-highest performing page and all other pages. Page Skewed traffic profile ✅ Distributed traffic profile ❌ Top blog post 1 74.5% of pageviews 27.9% of pageviews Top blog post 2 16% of pageviews 23.2% of pageviews Top blog post 3 3.5% of pageviews ​18.6% of pageviews Top blog post 4 3% of pageviews 16.2% of pageviews Top blog post 5 2.8% of pageviews 13.9% of pageviews​ Here’s what a skewed traffic profile would look like in a tool like Semrush: Here we have a website with overall monthly traffic of around 45K, where two blog posts are driving over 17% of traffic with just six keywords. You can see that these two blog posts account for nearly 47% of traffic to the site. Though there are 306 ranking pages on the website, almost half the traffic is via these two pages. This traffic suggests that the keywords those two blog posts rank for are low-competition keywords that the publisher inadvertently targeted. 04. Analyze top-ranking pages to identify potential keywords Once you find a site with a skewed traffic profile, analyze the top-ranking pages to see what keywords they rank for. Let’s say you’re analyzing a page about personal loans from Nerdwallet, for example. You can run an organic research report in a tool like Semrush for that exact URL. That way, you’ll see only the keywords that page is ranking for. Filter the results by traffic to find the main keyword the page ranks for. This will be the primary keyword you target for your article because it’s already proven to have the best chances for a new domain. For example, if a page about personal loans gets the majority of its traffic from the keyword best personal loans , then the latter will be your primary keyword. Rule out variables To rule out extenuating circumstances that could lead to outliers in your data (like a link-building campaign , for example), run a quick analysis to find the top-ranking pages for that keyword as well. Your keyword tool should show at least three to five sites around your site’s DA rating in the top 10 for that keyword to be viable for your website. You have the keywords—all that’s left is to create the content Even without optimizing every aspect of your content, the keywords you’ll find using this keyword research method should be relatively easy to rank well for. But, of course, the best results come from publishing search-optimized articles that consider search intent and focus on creating value for the reader. To that end, always: Analyze what’s ranking on the search engine ranking pages (SERPs) for your keyword. Evaluate the content you create for logic and actionability . Utilize keywords naturally in your content. Add keyword rich meta descriptions and descriptive alt tags for image search. But, look beyond individual keywords, too. After a while, more competitors tend to discover hidden-gem keywords and if their brand has greater authority than yours, they could displace your content. Invest in content around the entire topic (we call them topic clusters ). That way, you don’t just rank for a keyword, you completely own the SERPs for those topics. Lily Ugbaja - Fractional Content & Growth Manager Lily is a content marketing consultant for brands like Zapier and HubSpot. For seven years, she has built and managed content sites (including three of her own) that rely on SEO as the main distribution channel. In her spare time, she writes the marketing newsletter Marketing Cyborg . Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Veruska Anconitano Despite a myriad of transformations in recent years, SEO remains a pivotal component of the digital user’s journey. However, traditional SEO approaches focusing solely on keywords or backlinks are no longer enough. The true game changer in today’s SEO is understanding the user’s search intent —the information they are seeking when they type a query into a search engine. While explicit intent, dictated by the specifics of a query, has been a focal point of SEO strategies for years, implicit intent—the unspoken, often unrecognized motivations and desires of searchers—is frequently overlooked. In this blog post, I’ll delve into the nuances of implicit search intent, highlighting its significance for an engaging SEO strategy and detailing how marketers can leverage it to drive traffic, improve user experience, and ultimately, rank higher on search engine results pages. Table of contents: What is search intent in SEO? Understanding implicit search intent Why context is key to search intent Examples of implicit search intent How to use implicit search intent for better SEO What is search intent in SEO? Search intent has been a widely accepted way to approach keyword research for a long time now, and understanding it is essential if you want to produce content that ranks well on search engine results pages and provides users with the information they need to convert. Typically, SEOs group search intent into four categories : Informational Navigational Commercial Transactional Marcus Tober has done an outstanding job of explaining keyword search intent and its four types in his article “ Keyword intent: What you need to know about how customers search .” This is what we call “explicit search intent”—the clear and direct purpose that a user has in mind when searching online. It is precisely what the user is searching for, as expressed directly by the keywords and phrases they use in their search. In fact, the keywords and phrases a user types into a search engine serve as a window into their needs at that given moment. These specific and pointed search terms are not randomly chosen, but purposefully used to retrieve the most relevant and useful information as per the searcher’s requirements. Let me break it down with some examples tied of the four search intent categories: Informational intent : If a user searches how to grow tomatoes indoors , they are explicitly looking for information on indoor tomato cultivation. Their choice of keywords makes it clear that they need a guide, tips, or steps on how to achieve this. Navigational intent : A search term like OpenAI Github repository shows that the user is trying to navigate to a specific web page (in this case, OpenAI’s repository on Github). They’re not looking for information about OpenAI or Github; they want to reach a particular location on the web. Commercial intent : If a user searches best DSLR cameras 2023 , they are looking for comparisons, reviews, or listings of the top DSLR cameras for the year 2023. They may not be ready to buy just yet, but they’re gathering information to make an informed purchase in the future. Transactional intent : When someone searches the phrase order Nike Dunk Low online , their intention to make a purchase is explicitly shown through the keyword order . The user is likely prepared to buy and is looking for a retailer so that they can make the purchase. While there are still numerous ways in which we still use explicit search intent today, such as when we search for experiences (e.g., best Paris food tour ) a sole emphasis on this element can potentially jeopardize the effectiveness of our SEO and go-to-market strategies. In fact, another aspect of search intent is often overlooked— implicit (or underlying) search intent. What is implicit search intent? Implicit search intent refers to the underlying reason behind a user’s search query that may not be explicitly stated in the search query itself. It involves understanding the user’s search behavior, context, and preferences to infer their true intent. It also involves empathy. When a user searches for the best way to track time (for example), we assume they are looking for software or apps to track their time (and probably thousands of companies think the same and see this as a huge opportunity). However, your audience may not be looking for products—people also often search for solutions to their problems and want to feel understood (remember: empathy) . What if the user struggles with time management and wants to find a technique or method to balance their personal and professional life? This is an example of implicit search intent —something the user doesn’t explicitly ask for, but implies through their search query. In the past, users would type precise queries to ask Google for specific information. Today, users “search to optimize their lives. It lets them feel more confident and less anxious.” And over time, Google has become more intelligent and can now serve users customized search results based on their location and search behavior. As a result, a search query is now made up of two parts: the explicit aspect (what the user types into the search bar) and the implicit aspect (the underlying intent or problem the user is trying to solve). For brands and SEOs that prioritize international and multilingual search , implicit search intent takes on even more nuance. This involves understanding the user’s context, the location in which they are searching, and what is happening in that particular place at that moment, which I’ll cover in an upcoming article. Why context is key to search intent In sociology, context refers to the circumstances, conditions, environment , or background information surrounding a particular event, situation, or concept. It provides the framework for understanding and interpreting what is happening and how what is happening influences life/culture/your audience in a specific place. In other words, context is the broader setting that shapes the meaning of something, and it can include factors independent of the user. Considering this, it can be inferred that contextual factors significantly impact our emotions, behaviors, and objectives, ultimately shaping our personal and social circumstances. Imagine attending a live concert of your favorite artist in a large stadium filled with fans. The lights are flashing, the music is loud, and everyone around you cheers and dances. In this social context, you are likely to perceive the performance as highly enjoyable and memorable, as the crowd’s energy and the event’s atmosphere amplify your positive feelings. Now let’s say you’re watching the same artist perform, but you’re streaming the performance from a bus on your way to school or work. Given this context, you may find the performance lackluster or underwhelming. Your environmental context dampens your expectations and impacts how you experience the performance. If we look at this from an SEO and marketing perspective , the concept of context becomes easier to understand. In this case… Context refers to the events, situations, and occurrences that happen in a particular location at a specific moment. These factors can greatly influence the user’s need to search for information about a particular topic. Implicit intent becomes more clear when you consider all of the factors above. Implicit search intent pertains to a user’s unspoken needs or wants they may not even know they have. This type of intent is often influenced by emotional or psychological factors affecting a user’s search behavior. Think about it: When something happens around you (or something affects you), you need to find solutions, answers, and anything that can help you decipher what is happening in order to respond to it efficiently. This imperative translates into a specific way of searching online, both for physical and non-physical items (i.e., digital content, services). This could manifest in search behavior such as emotional shopping, looking up trending terms due to FOMO, and so on. Examples of implicit search intent Different types of implicit search intent can influence a user’s behavior and search queries. On an elementary level, we can identify two big macro-categories of underlying search intent: Emotional intent : This type of intent relates to the user’s emotional state or desires, which may not be explicitly expressed in their search query. For instance, a user searching for comfortable shoes for nurses may be looking for comfortable shoes suitable for a nurse’s job (which requires a lot of standing and walking). However, if we consider the implicit emotional intent of the user, we can extrapolate more information about their underlying feelings and motivations. For example, the user may feel physically exhausted and need relief. Their implicit emotional intent may be to find shoes that provide immediate comfort and relief from their foot pain. Contextual intent : Contextual intent refers to the situation or context motivating the user’s search query. Let’s imagine a user searching for best pizza near me on their mobile device. Based on this search query, it is clear that the user is looking for nearby places that are highly rated and well-reviewed. But if we consider the user’s contextual implicit intent, we can identify more reasons behind this search. For example, if the user is searching for pizza places during lunchtime on a weekday, they may be looking for a quick and convenient option to order and eat within a short timeframe. Alternatively, if the user searches for pizza places just ahead of the Superbowl (in the US), they may be looking for a restaurant that can deliver numerous pizzas for a party on game day. Implicit search intent Description Emotional intent Relates to the user’s emotional state or desires, which may not be explicitly expressed in their search query. Contextual intent Relates to the situation or context motivating the user’s search query. Within the two categories listed above, we can identify more specific subcategories that are harder to spot: FOMO : The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a potent emotional driver that can prompt users to search for information on a specific topic, product, or destination. In the travel industry, when a particular destination gains popularity within a specific country or social group, users may search for information merely to stay up-to-date with the conversation, even if they do not intend to visit that place. Let’s say the Indonesian Tourism Board has planned a massive viral campaign in the UK to promote Bali as a destination. People have started to see advertising everywhere and become curious about the destination. They start searching for information on Bali—not necessarily because they are interested in traveling there, but because they want to be part of the conversation and not miss out on what everyone is talking about. In this case, the users’ search behavior is driven by the fear of missing out and a desire to be part of the context in which Bali has become popular. They may not even want to travel to Bali, but their search behavior is influenced by their need to stay connected and up-to-date with the conversation. Fear : Fear can also drive search behavior, as users may search for solutions, answers, and positive reinforcement when something wrong or scary happens in their environment. Their search behavior may not be driven by fear, but rather by a desire for reassurance and coping mechanisms. For instance, when a recession is looming in a country, users in that specific country may search for information not only on how to recession-proof my finances (explicit intent) but also on topics like learning to cook at home (implicit intent). In this case, the implicit intent may be driven by a fear of not having enough money in the future and a need to learn new skills to better manage their finances. However, the user may not explicitly state their fear in their search query but express it indirectly by looking for related solutions. In Ireland, the search volumes for Tesco Clubcard increased as the cost of fuel and essential items rose. This led people to look for ways to shop and save money while collecting points to redeem at Tesco. Motivation : Motivation can drive search behavior as users seek resources to help them accomplish a goal. Motivation plays a very important role in the health and beauty industry, and understanding users’ real needs and interests is crucial for success. Imagine someone who wants to lose weight and get in shape (we all have this desire, don’t we?). They may search for information about achieving their goals, such as healthy diet plans, exercise routines, and weight loss tips. While practical advice is helpful, this user may also seek content that motivates and inspires them to stay committed or solutions that allow them to stick to their healthy habits without explicitly addressing this need. For example, a user may search for healthy meal delivery services or meal prep ideas . Even though their explicit intent is to find resources to help them manage what they eat, their implicit intent may be driven by a desire for convenience and simplicity, as meal delivery or prepping can make it easier for them to stick to a healthy diet. In this case, the user’s search behavior is driven by their implicit search intent to make healthy eating more accessible and manageable, which will ultimately help them achieve their goal of losing weight. Environment : Environmental factors play a crucial role in shaping users’ implicit search intent, as their specific surroundings or situation can prompt them to search for information relevant to their needs. For instance, a Spanish user planning a trip to Thailand and searching for elephant sanctuaries in Thailand may have an underlying desire to understand more about the ethical and humane treatment of the animals in these places. In this example, the user’s implicit search intent is driven by their concern for animal welfare and a desire to have an ethical and responsible travel experience. They may not explicitly state their concern for animal welfare in their search query, but it is an essential factor driving their search behavior. Biases : Biases are commonly viewed as negative, but they can be crucial in driving users’ implicit search intent by helping them identify and meet their specific needs/preferences. This is particularly evident in luxury products, where owning certain high-end items in specific markets is often associated with a high social status. For instance, a user may search for most expensive designer handbags or luxury watches for men not necessarily to purchase these items, but to reinforce their behavior of displaying social status through luxury products they already own. In this case, the user’s implicit search intent is driven by their desire to showcase their social status and reinforce their behavior of wearing high-end products and keeping up with trends. Subcategories of implicit search intent Description FOMO Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) drives users to search for information to stay up-to-date or be part of a popular conversation, even if they don’t intend to engage directly. Fear ​Fear-driven intent leads users to search for solutions, answers, and reassurance when they encounter something wrong or scary in their environment. Motivation Motivation-driven intent prompts users to search for resources and information that will help them accomplish a particular goal. Environment ​Environment-driven intent arises from specific surroundings or situations that prompt users to search for relevant information. Biases ​Bias-driven intent involves users searching for information that aligns with their specific needs, preferences, or desire to reinforce certain behaviors. How to use implicit search intent for better SEO Unraveling the implicit intent behind a user’s search query can be a complex process, demanding more effort than recognizing explicit search intent. To truly comprehend your target market, it is essential to have an understanding of the socio-cultural environment they live in. This might include grasping the socio-political climate, the dominant cultural attitudes (e.g., individualistic vs. collectivistic ), and the balance between their online and offline experiences, among other things. Conducting market research is imperative and accounting for these elements can help unveil the rationale behind a query, offering a wealth of opportunities to enhance your SEO efforts. In fact, while implicit intent may not be as apparent as explicit intent, it provides valuable insights into a user’s requirements and aspirations. Harnessing this effectively can substantially improve your SEO strategy. Here are a few ways to leverage this: Content innovation : Recognizing the implicit intent of your audience enables you to develop personalized content that meets their distinct needs. This knowledge could make you a pioneer, generating content for niche areas that users may not anticipate finding in search engines. Take again, for example, the query comfortable shoes for nurses . Not only can we create content around the shoes, but we could also consider addressing the emotional aspects of nursing, providing a more comprehensive approach to engaging this specific audience. User experience (UX) enhancement : Implicit search intent can provide valuable insights for improving your site’s UX. If users exit your site quickly (indicating a high bounce rate), this could signal that they struggle to find what they need. For instance, if users from the UK search for Bali due to the Indonesian Tourism Board campaign (see example above ), they likely expect to find specific pages discussing the campaign’s highlights. If users struggle to find this information and leave your site, it’s a possible indicator that you need to make improvements. Better use of long-tail keywords : Although identifying implicit intent might be challenging, it can guide you towards better performing long tail keywords . These more specific keyword phrases cater to the precise needs of users, attracting more targeted, high-quality traffic. For example, given the scenario of learning to cook at home and the spike in Tesco Clubcard searches , targeting long tail keywords related to affordable, healthy Tesco products or ingredients for easy-to-prepare, cost-effective dishes could be an effective tactic. It’s worth noting that implicit search intent often leads to low or zero-volume keywords with high ranking potential and strong conversion power. Incorporating these three components can be a transformative shift for your SEO approach. By prioritizing highly targeted content, you stand a chance to not only emerge as an industry leader but, more importantly, make headway with your audience. This strategy can greatly diminish the distance between your brand and your users, fostering engagement and a stronger connection. Deciphering implicit search intent is your key to brand success Traditional SEO methods—focusing on elements such as keywords and backlinks—have served us well, but today’s digital landscape demands a more nuanced approach. The rise of personalized user experiences has changed the game, and to stay ahead, we need to evolve our tactics. Integrating explicit and implicit search intent is the foundation of this evolution. Embracing this dual approach of catering to both explicit and implicit intent can set your brand apart from the rest. It provides an opportunity to lead your industry by delivering highly targeted content that truly resonates with your audience. But, the benefits don’t stop at industry recognition. The real advantage lies in building meaningful connections with your users. By truly understanding their search intent, you’re able to reduce the gap between your brand and its patrons, fostering stronger relationships and driving higher engagement. Moreover, this strategy is not merely about improving your search ranking (though that is a definite perk). It’s about enriching the user’s journey from the moment they initiate a search to the moment they find what they’re looking for on your site. It’s about transforming their experience from a transactional interaction to a meaningful connection. By capitalizing on this shift, you can redefine the way users interact with your brand to propel growth. This approach is not just about keeping pace with the constant change of the digital landscape, but most of all about enriching user experiences and forging meaningful connections—setting the stage for continued success and evolution. Veruska Anconitano - International & Multilingual SEO Consultant Veruska is an SEO consultant that works at the intersection of SEO and localization to help companies enter non-English-speaking markets. She follows a culturalized approach to SEO and localization, leveraging cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and data. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Veruska Anconitano Understanding implicit search intent is crucial in SEO (and, arguably, for overall digital marketing as well). But, it becomes even more critical in international SEO  because it is closely linked to knowledge of the market and its unique characteristics, as well as the target audience and their particular needs/challenges .  As a consequence, implicit search intent should inform the multilingual marketing strategies you create. I’ve already written about implicit search intent  in great detail, but let’s take a look at why it takes on an even more central role when marketing to international audiences, and what you can do to identify implicit intent for a competitive advantage that maximizes conversions, not just rankings. Table of contents: Explicit vs. Implicit search intent What is implicit search intent? Why is implicit search intent important in multilingual SEO? Understand what’s happening in the regions you’re marketing in Understand each market’s unique characteristics Understand regional differences How to identify implicit search intent for multilingual SEO Conduct country-based user research Perform cross-data analysis Monitor user behavior for trends and changes Delve into local cultural and social factors Tips for securing buy-in from stakeholders Explicit vs. Implicit search intent If you want to produce content that achieves high rankings in search results and provides users with the information they need, then you need to understand explicit search intent .  In the SEO industry, we generally categorize search intent into four categories :  Informational Navigational Commercial Transactional  I refer to this as “explicit” search intent because the search query directly reflects the purpose the user has in mind when they conduct the search. For example, the query [Buy Samsung Galaxy S22 online in the UK] has the following explicit intent: — Action ( Buy ): The user wants to make a purchase. — Product ( Samsung Galaxy S22 ): The specific item the user wants to buy is clearly stated. — Location and method ( online in the UK ): The user specifies both the method (online) and the location (UK) for the purchase.]  However, another crucial aspect of search intent—particularly with regards to nuanced audiences, like you’ll find with multilingual SEO —is often overlooked: implicit (or underlying) search intent. What is implicit search intent? Implicit search intent  refers to the underlying motivations and circumstances behind a user’s search query that aren’t explicitly expressed in the search query itself. I’ve already written an article  that explores implicit search intent in great detail, so I’ll keep this explanation more concise. When a user searches for [the best way to lose weight], it’s generally assumed they’re seeking advice and suggestions—a notion seemingly shared by Google, as evidenced by the search engine results page ( SERP ). However, this might be a scenario where searchers are seeking proactive solutions, rather than mere advice for weight loss. Consider this: losing weight is a challenging endeavor for many. Establishing and adhering to a routine demands significant commitment and dedication.  What if the audience is searching for a practical solution, like a product/program/personal trainer to actively assist in their weight loss journey, rather than just advice?  This could exemplify “implicit search intent,” where the user’s query subtly suggests a desire for a solution, even though it’s not directly requested. In years past, search users would enter more literal search queries (e.g., [rent kayak lake tahoe] to find the results they were looking for, giving rise to “keyword-ese”—something of a search engine hack born from the limitations of the technology at the time. Over time, Google’s systems improved to serve users more nuanced results based on their location and search behavior.  Consequently, you can now look at a search query based on its two constituent parts: the explicit aspect (what the user types into the search bar) and the implicit aspect (the underlying intent or problem the user is trying to solve). I’ve already mentioned the four explicit search intents above. For the sake of brevity, I’ll recap two the main implicit search intent categories: Implicit search intent Description Emotional intent Relates to the user’s emotional state or desires, which may not be explicitly expressed in their search query. Examples of emotional search intent include: FOMO, fear, motivation, biases, etc. Contextual intent Relates to the situation or context motivating the user’s search query. Examples of contextual search intent include: Environment, current events, cultural context, time sensitivity, etc. For international businesses pursuing multilingual SEO, these concepts become even more crucial as the audience’s circumstances, environment, and even current events can dictate your campaign’s success.  Let’s take a look at some examples of how this might play out and what you need to understand to make implicit search intent work for your brand. Why is implicit search intent important in multilingual SEO? Understanding the market(s) you’re running campaigns in will help you see beyond what users are searching for, enabling you to create content and messaging that is not only brand safe , but also resonates with your target audience to maximize conversions. 01. Understand what’s happening in the countries/regions you’re marketing in By identifying the underlying emotional motivations and intent behind a user’s search, you can provide more relevant and personalized content to your audience while avoiding the mistake of targeting keywords that don't convert.   Let’s say, for example, you’re targeting American consumers looking for information on mobile phones and want to expand into the Italian market. You notice that the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a monthly search volume  of over 130,000 and is marked as a transactional keyword. Your initial reaction may be to translate your existing content about the product into Italian  to capture users’ interest and increase your chance of a conversion .   However, the new market you want to expand to may be very different from the one(s) you’re already operating in. Italy has one of the lowest salaries in Europe , and consumers face high inflation rates, further eroding their purchasing power.  The implicit search intent behind the high-volume keyword [iphone 15 pro max] may differ from what you initially thought. For instance, users may be looking for a cheaper alternative based on the phone’s specs or searching for a reason to prioritize buying this phone over spending money on something more substantial.   Thus, translating your existing content 1:1 and keeping the same angle may not be appropriate in this context . It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t localize that page for Italian users. But, if you do, you must find a different angle for your content that addresses your Italian audience’s underlying emotional motivations and intent. Even the Italian word for “inflation,” which is “inflazione,” is experiencing a surge in search popularity. This is something a brand should take into consideration: when a term like this rises in popularity, it means something is going on, and the effects can be felt across various segments, niches, and platforms. 02. Understand each market/audience’s unique characteristics Let’s say a company targets Spanish-speaking users in Mexico for a new line of running shoes. The company’s keyword research in Mexico shows that [tenis para correr] (English: running shoes) has high search volume and is marked as a transactional keyword. The company creates content around the shoe’s performance and features to target users’ explicit search intent.   However, the company may be missing out on an opportunity to address the implicit search intent of Mexican users, who may be searching for durable running shoes that can withstand Mexico’s harsh terrain and climate conditions.  By understanding this implicit search intent, the company could optimize its content to highlight the shoe’s durability and reliability in challenging environments, which would better resonate with Mexican audiences and improve engagement rates. Keywords that reflect this strategy (often long tail ) may not have the same search volume, but the converting power would undoubtedly be higher. 03. Understand regional differences Imagine your company is marketing to French-speaking users in France and Canada for a new line of winter jackets. Your keyword research shows that [manteau d’hiver] (English: winter coat) has high search volume and is designated as a transactional keyword in both countries. So, you pursue your users’ explicit search intent and create content and pages around the jackets’ features and performance. However, by analyzing regional differences in implicit search intent, you may discover that French users in Canada are more interested in jackets that can withstand extremely cold temperatures, as Canada experiences harsher winter weather than France.   On the other hand, French users in France may be more interested in fashionable jackets, as temperatures are significantly higher in France than in Canada during winter. How to identify implicit search intent for multilingual SEO I’ve shown (above) that tapping into implicit search intent requires a deep understanding of the user’s behavior and motivations, as well as practical knowledge about the country the user lives in, their social surroundings, and current events that might influence their online behavior.  But, how can you learn all of these details to make tactical, informed decisions about your campaigns? There are several ways to approach this: Conduct country-based user research Surveys, focus groups, and other research methods  can help businesses learn their target audience’s preferences, behaviors, and pain points. Analyze the responses/results of your research to better understand the underlying motivations and needs that drive your audience’s search queries.  For example, a business targeting runners in India may conduct a survey to gain insights into their target audience’s running shoe preferences . The survey could ask questions about:   The most popular running shoe brands in India The features that runners look for in a running shoe The biggest challenges faced by Indian runners when it comes to finding the right shoe etc. By analyzing the responses to this survey, the business might discover that Indian runners are looking for lightweight and breathable shoes, as the weather in India can be hot and humid—a requirement that’s unlikely to be reflected in the search terms this target audience uses (and thus, not addressed via explicit search intent categorization). Armed with this knowledge, the business could better tailor their content to address its audience’s requirements, starting with keyword research and improving its engagement rates and sales in the Indian market.  The bottom line:  Work with your business intelligence team to get the most out of the research. Perform cross-data analysis Cross-data user behavior analysis helps you identify patterns and trends that can speak to your audience’s implicit search intent(s). This analysis may involve examining various user data sources, including: Search queries Website analytics Social media engagement Etc.  Let’s take Japan and the query [moisturizers] as an example: While this query may seem straightforward, a cross-data analysis could reveal that Japanese users are particularly interested in products that provide intense hydration (rather than just a basic moisturizer).  This could inform a business’s content in the Japanese market, as they may want to emphasize the hydrating properties of their products to better appeal to this audience. Additionally, the analysis may reveal that Japanese users are more likely to engage with content featuring user reviews , indicating that businesses should focus on creating this content to improve engagement rates. The bottom line:  Do not assume that if something works in one market, it can work worldwide. Cross-reference data and study your target market’s unique characteristics. Monitor user behavior for trends and changes It’s essential to monitor trends and changes in user behavior to identify emerging implicit search intent.  For example, your company sells home decor products and you notice a trend of users in Germany searching for [minimalist decor ideas] or [minimalist home design] in your website analytics .  By digging into this trend a bit further, you discover that users are not only looking for design inspiration, but also searching for ways to simplify their lives and reduce clutter, as evidenced by:   Behavior patterns in which users navigate from product pages to blog posts or articles about minimalist lifestyles/decluttering. High engagement on content related to lifestyle simplification (guides, blog posts, etc). Google Analytics or Search Console showing searches that often co-occur with terms that suggest this implicit search intent, such as [how to declutter], [minimalist lifestyle benefits], or [simplifying home life]. The implicit search intent behind these queries may be to create a more organized and calming living space. Knowing that, you can start experimenting with a new type of content, providing tips and tricks for decluttering and simplifying one’s home to address your audience’s implicit needs and motivations.  The bottom line:   Trends shape user search behavior , so it’s crucial to keep an eye on trends in countries you’re marketing in to gain insights for your SEO (and overall SEM) strategy. Delve into local cultural and social factors To truly understand implicit search intent, you must delve into the cultural, social, and legal factors that shape it. A country’s unique characteristics and policies can significantly influence its people’s interests and needs, and businesses need to pay attention to these nuances to create content that resonates and converts.  This means checking relevant local sources (news, regulating bodies, user-first research , etc.) and using them in your SEO strategy.  For instance, in Finland, winter tires are a seasonal need for driving in snowy conditions—as well as a legal requirement. Therefore, Finnish users searching for [winter tires] may have different implicit search intent than users in other countries (it’s not just about surviving the snow, it’s also about local laws). Understanding this can help businesses tailor their content and advertising to meet the unique demands of their Finnish audience. The bottom line:  Collaborate with local people(s) to understand the specific circumstances and conditions that can affect your tactics and strategy. Integrate implicit search intent into your business’s wider objectives for better implementation and impact For implicit search intent to make an impact on your international campaigns, it’s not just you and your team that needs to embrace it—your stakeholders must understand and support it as well if you want to keep bringing results over the long run. To secure stakeholder buy-in:  Start by presenting data-driven insights  that illustrate the tangible benefits of this approach, such as increased engagement and customer satisfaction.  Highlight the long-term benefits  and sustainable growth potential of an ethical approach in new markets, emphasizing the enhanced customer experience and loyalty it fosters.  Show the competitive edge  this strategy offers by providing examples of successful implementations by competitors and contrast this with the risks of not adapting, including potential damage to the company’s reputation.  Suggest initiating a pilot project to demonstrate the strategy’s effectiveness  in a controlled setting while stressing the importance of cross-departmental collaboration involving SEO, marketing, and content teams to address the target audience’s emotional and psychological needs comprehensively.  Encourage continuous learning  through workshops or training sessions for stakeholders. Set realistic expectations , clarifying that while results may take time, they lead to more sustainable and ethically sound outcomes.  Lastly, emphasize the need for ongoing feedback and adaptation  to ensure the strategy remains effective and relevant, thereby securing necessary stakeholder support into the future. By communicating these points effectively, you can weave a narrative that emphasizes implicit search intent’s importance and connects it with your organization’s wider objectives and principles, paving the way for successful implementation and market impact. Veruska Anconitano - International & Multilingual SEO Consultant   Veruska is an SEO consultant  that works at the intersection of SEO and localization to help companies enter non-English-speaking markets. She follows a culturalized approach to SEO and localization, leveraging cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and data. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Jamie Indigo Before May 2020, your site’s performance depended on who you asked. Different tools, platforms, and services all offered their own version of what “fast” was and how it was defined. This led to a number of problematic “performance-enhancing” solutions. Page taking too long to achieve DOMContentLoaded? Why not punch out a bunch of holes and load content in later! It’s not like actual humans will be stuck with the terrible headache that comes when a page suddenly wedges itself between a header and a footer. Actually, it is like that. When workarounds to subvert technical definitions of performance make the experience worse for actual humans, it fundamentally undermines the entire endeavor. So we needed a unified, human-centric definition of performance. Enter Core Web Vitals. Table of contents: What are Core Web Vitals? Real User Monitoring data vs. Lab data Real User Monitoring data Lab Data Origin-level data vs. URL-level data vs. Platform-level data Core Web Vitals metrics explained Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) First Input Delay (FID) Interaction to Next Paint (INP) The differences between RUM and Lab metrics A practical SEO workflow for optimizing Core Web Vitals What are Core Web Vitals? Core Web Vitals were originally announced by the Chromium team in May 2020. Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project that powers major browsers like Chrome, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. It also powers the web rendering services used by Google Search and Bing Search, respectively. The Chromium team studied business key performance indicators and how they relate to various performance metrics. The data pointed to a couple of key takeaways: Users have an incredibly short attention span. If a user can’t tell a page is loading, they leave. If tapping a button doesn’t seem to work, the user leaves. If a user accidentally taps the wrong button because everything suddenly shifted, they leave and never come back. This led the team to craft the first iteration of the unified human-centric metrics we now refer to as Core Web Vitals (CWV). 01. Is it loading? — Largest Contentful Paint 02. Can I interact? — First Input Delay 03. Is it visually stable? — Cumulative Layout Shift For more details on these specific metrics, jump ahead to the metrics defined section . These changes became part of Google’s ranking systems as the Page Experience signal (more on this below). Core Web Vitals: Real User Monitoring data vs. Lab data As alluded to above, there are two types of data we can use to improve site performance and SEO outcomes (real user data that comes from the field and lab data). Before I explain the nuances of each, let’s look at why there needs to be two types of data in the first place. In order to troubleshoot effectively, you need detailed data. In order to maintain user privacy, you need to limit the amount of detailed data you collect. It’s a balancing act. Each page load has a unique set of circumstances. A user trying to buy a new umbrella on their smartphone while waiting at a rainy metro station will have a much different experience than the dev sitting in the office telling you, “It works on my machine.” The balance between protecting real user data and providing insights means that Core Web Vitals has two modes: Limited metrics available for Real User Monitoring (RUM) data and the detailed metrics available as Lab data . Real User Monitoring and Lab data are both types of CWV—the differences come from how they are gathered and used. Real User Monitoring data Source: The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) , which provides metrics for how real-world Chrome users experience page loads for a URL. Aliases: Field data, CrUX data Used in: Search Console's Page Experience Report, CrUX Dashboards CrUX data is collected by Chrome and published on the second Tuesday of every month in a publicly accessible dataset in BigQuery , Google’s platform for managing and analyzing data at scale. In order for a user’s page load metrics to be included in CrUX data, the user must: Enable usage statistic reporting Sync their browser history Not have a sync passphrase set (so that Google can read your Chrome data) Use a supported platform including desktop versions of Chrome (i.e., Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Linux operating systems) or Android versions of Chrome (such as native apps using Custom Tabs and WebAPKs ). This means that not all Chrome page loads are included. Some notable page loads left out of CrUX are: Chrome on iOS Native Android apps using WebView Other Chromium browsers (like Microsoft Edge, for example) In order for a page to appear in the dataset, it must: Be indexable Not be part of a Single Page Application Have a minimum number of visitors to anonymize user data (Google has not disclosed the exact number)* *CrUX strips easily recognized fragments and parameters like UTMs from URLs and groups them together. If your site uses parameters to differentiate pages (i.e., ?productID=101) instead of unique URLs, this can result in the URLs being grouped together. The benefits of Real User Monitoring Data As with any methodology, RUM data has its strengths and potential weaknesses. Some of its more compelling advantages include: Inclusion in the Helpful Content Update — The Page Experience Ranking Signal was folded into the Helpful Content update in April 2023. Captures true real-world user experience — You test your site using Lighthouse in your browser or a technical SEO crawler and everything looks great! But then the latest batch of Crux data comes out and it says your site is a dumpster fire. Testing from your office can’t emulate all the variables (viewport, device processing capacity, network connectivity) experienced by real users. Enables correlation to business key performance indicators — The key to getting both stakeholder and developer buy-in is showing the results of your work. As you prioritize improvements, tie them to a quantifiable KPI and share the results! The potential drawbacks of Real User Monitoring data For all its advantages, RUM data isn’t perfect. Its drawbacks come primarily in the form of limitations: RUM data may not be available for every page —If a page doesn't meet a minimum number of page loads, it’s omitted for user privacy. Only a restricted set of metrics is available — Three metrics can only get you so far. CWVs are a simplified representation of your rendering strategy. Limited debugging capabilities — In order to resolve a poor CWV score, you'll need to get under the hood. The big three metrics give you a place to start. RUM data availability Real User Monitoring data pulled from the BigQuery dataset is available in multiple locations. These include: Google Search Console — Aggregates sitewide performance, groups issues together based on behavior patterns, and provides example URLs. CrUX API — Allows you to query URL-level data for the most recent month’s dataset. CrUX History API — Allows you to query the previous six months of historical CrUX trends. PageSpeed Insights — Provides URL-level and origin summary data along with Lab data for the test page load. As an extra bonus, the CWV assessment for the URL is shareable via a link! PageSpeed Insights API — Allows you to bulk query URL-level RUM data. You can also collect Core Web Vitals for every real user page load by running Google’s web-vitals library on your site. This tiny modular library enables measurement for all the Web Vitals metrics on real users in a way that accurately matches how they’re measured by Chrome and reported to other Google tools. Note: Wix site owners can view real user data via the Site Speed Dashboard , which shows your website’s Core Web Vitals as well as a performance estimation from Google’s PageSpeed Insights, even if your site doesn't meet GSC’s traffic thresholds. What should I do if RUM data isn’t available for a URL? Not all pages will have enough data to be available in the CrUX data set. If you test a page and see “The Chrome User Experience Report does not have sufficient real-world speed data for this page,” don’t fret. You have two options: 01. Test other URLs that use the same template/resources as the unavailable URL. 02. Use Lab data instead. Lab Data Source: Lighthouse , Google’s automated, open-source tool for improving web performance. Aliases: Lighthouse data, Synthetic data Used in: Debugging, QA The benefits of Lab data When you discover an issue affecting Real User Metrics, Lab data allows you additional deep dive insights. Lab data: Is helpful for debugging performance issues — RUM data’s three high-level metrics can only get you so far. With lab data, you can dig deeper into key technical moments that affect the big picture. Allows for end-to-end and deep visibility into the UX — Lighthouse allows you to test user flows . It utilizes Puppeteer to script page loads and trigger synthetic user interactions, capturing key insights during those interactions. This means that performance can be measured during page load and during interactions with the page. Offers a reproducible testing and debugging environment — We can’t fix what we can't see. Lab data allows you to recreate issues affecting real users in a way that allows engineers to replicate and isolate the variables. The potential drawbacks of Lab data If you've ever raised an issue only to hear “it works on my machine,” then you’ve experienced the drawbacks of Lab data—it exists in a digital petri dish. Might not capture real-world bottlenecks — The conditions of a local environment can’t emulate all the variables impacting real users (such as device usage or network connection). Cannot correlate against real-world page KPIs — Each business has its own unique goals. Lab data alone can’t help improve ROI or be matched 1:1 with KPIs. Can show tests passing on that one dev’s machine — No one likes their ticket being marked “will not do.” A lot of the variability in your overall Performance score and metric values is not due to Lighthouse. Browser extensions, antivirus, and A/B tests are just some of the reasons Lab data can fluctuate. Additional metrics available in Lab data In addition to the metrics comprising Core Web Vitals, Lab data also provides metrics helpful for diagnosing underperforming CWVs! These include: Time to First Byte (TTFB) — How long it takes your server to respond to a request for the page. Slow server response times are one possible cause for long page loads. First Contentful Paint (FCP) — How long it takes the browser to render the first piece of DOM content after a user navigates to your page. Images, non-white elements, and SVGs on your page are considered DOM content; anything inside an iframe isn’t included. Speed Index — Is a calculated metric that shows how quickly the contents of a page are visibly populated. Lab data availability Lighthouse powers auditing tools across the internet, including: PageSpeed Insights — As mentioned earlier, this tool allows you to query a single page. PageSpeed Insights API — Also mentioned above, this API allows you to pull Lab data in bulk. Chrome DevTools — Built into Chrome, this panel allows you to audit a single page at a time. Node CLI — Allows you to programmatically audit pages using a headless version of Chrome. Core Web Vitals: Origin vs. URL vs. Platform CWV is available for individual URLs, origins, and for platforms. Each level of data is uniquely suited for different purposes: URL-level data is used for the Page Experience ranking signal. Use URL-level data when optimizing for rankings. Origin-level data is an aggregate for all URLs on a given domain across both http:// and https:// connections. An origin could be www.example.com or subdomain.example.com. If your site resolves without www, then it could use example.com. Origin-level data is typically used for high-level monitoring (via the CrUX Dashboard ) or competitive research (via the Chrome UX Report Compare Tool) . Technology-level data represents the aggregate metrics across sites using a specific technology platform. If you’re considering re-platforming your site and want to consider which of the major technologies could give you a competitive edge, HTTP Archive’s Core Web Vitals Technology Report looks at aggregated performance across 2,000 technologies. Core Web Vitals metrics defined Below are the CWV metrics that present-day SEOs are concerned with, but know that these metrics are designed to evolve. Core Web Vitals actively announces new experimental metrics and solicits feedback before making changes. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Represents: Is the page loading? Goal: LCP < 2.5 seconds Available as: RUM and Lab Data Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the time from when the page started loading until the render of the largest image or text block is visible within the initial viewport. For a good score, LCP must be 2.5 seconds or less . The node [read as: element on page] representing the Largest Contentful Paint tends to follow a page template. For example, you have an eCommerce site that uses the same template for all product detail pages. The product image is the largest visual element in the template. If you use a standard template for your product pages and the product image is the largest visual element in the initial viewport, then all optimizations for the product image load will benefit most of your product pages. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Represents: Is the page visually stable? Goal: CLS < 0.10 Available as: RUM and Lab Data Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the total of all individual, unexpected layout shifts that occur during the page’s entire loading phase. An unexpected layout shift occurs any time a visible element changes its position without user interaction. For a good score, CLS must be 0.1 or less . Cumulative Layout Shift tends to follow a specific element. If you’re having trouble reproducing CLS issues for your site, it’s probably your cookie banner or a promotional prompt pushing content down the screen. If you’d like to learn more about the metrics, Wix’s Support Center offers additional details and insights. First Input Delay (FID) Represents: Can I interact with the page? Goal: FID < 100ms Available as: RUM Ineffective on: Single Page Applications (SPAs) Deprecation date: March 2024, to be replaced by Interaction to Next Paint (below) First Input Delay (FID) measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page (e.g., by clicking on a link or button) until the browser is actually able to process that interaction. For a good score, FID must be 100 milliseconds or less . One of the most common causes of slow First Input Delay is JavaScript keeping the browser’s main thread busy. It can’t respond to a user interaction because it’s too busy running scripts called by the page. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) Represents: Can I interact with the page? v2.0 Goal: INP < 200ms Available as: RUM Promotion date: March 2024, to replace First Input Delay Within a year of CWV’s launch, the need for a better responsiveness metric was clear. First Input Delay's accuracy past the initial page load for single page applications is dubious. INP measures the visual feedback that accompanies user input (think tapping a thumbnail to see a product image, typing information into a form, or clicking an “Add to Cart” button). The metric reported is the longest latency encountered. For a good score, INP must be 200ms or less . Interactivity is primarily powered by JavaScript though can sometimes be controlled by CSS. The optimization concepts used for FID JavaScript optimization will remain relevant with this new replacement metric. The differences between RUM and Lab metrics The metrics comprising Core Web Vitals differ slightly depending on whether you’re using RUM or Lab data. First Input Delay requires user interaction for measurement. At this time, Lab data can’t accurately replicate a user’s interactions. Instead, Lab data uses Total Blocking Time. This metric has slightly different thresholds. Metric RUM Data Lab Data Largest Contentful Paint X X First Input Delay X ​ Interaction to Next Paint X ​ Total Blocking Time ​ X Cumulative Layout Shift X X A practical SEO workflow for optimizing Core Web Vitals It’s important to remember that optimizing for CWVs affects all your users—every medium, channel, and device will benefit. If you’re looking for where to start, here’s a quick framework as a jumping-off point: 01. Start with Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals Report. You should always start with RUM data since we know that’s impacting real users. Google Search Console groups together pages with similar issues. As you click through the mobile or desktop reports and into a specific metric, you’ll be able to see a count of pages along with sample URLs and RUM data for them (if available). 02. Run PageSpeed Insights to join Lab data to the RUM data. Comparing Lab data with RUM data side by side provides a more detailed look at the mechanics causing the underperforming metric. Scroll down the page. Just below the render screenshots, you’ll find a helpful selector that lets you see which Opportunities and Diagnostics are relevant for the metric you’re targeting. Performance matters because it matters to humans The same audience you’re trying to reach is constantly being bombarded by companies wanting the same thing from them. All these calls to action are taxing. Providing an experience that delivers what it says on the tin, in an easy-to-use format, is key to keeping your users engaged and coming back. As you work on Core Web Vitals, remember that these efforts benefit every user—regardless of the traffic’s referrer or channel. Jamie Indigo - 100% Human Technical SEO Jamie Indigo isn’t a robot but speaks bot. As a technical SEO, they study how search engines crawl, render, and index. They love to tame wild JavaScript and optimize rendering strategies. When not working, Jamie likes horror movies, graphic novels, and D&D. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Ryan Jones Your potential customers are constantly putting your website to the test. They’re evaluating your brand based on relevance, content quality, user experience, and so on. They’re also comparing your site to your competitors’ to see where they should spend their money. Diving into your web analytics can help you get a snapshot of your performance, but it doesn’t always help you understand which of your optimizations are moving the needle, or how well your content could perform in organic search. For that, you’ll need to conduct SEO testing. In this blog post, I’ll help you get started with your own SEO testing by covering: What SEO testing refers to Why SEO testing matters Getting started with SEO testing Tools for SEO testing An example of SEO testing (with free tools) SEO tests to try on your own site Single page Group A/B and split testing Analyzing your SEO test results What is SEO testing? SEO testing is the process of optimizing elements of your website in order to obtain data or a particular outcome in your reporting . You can test to optimize traffic, keyword rankings , or on-page metrics, like bounce rate. You can also test as a way to correlate your SEO recommendations/implementations to business revenue, or simply to identify potential website issues. SEO testing allows digital marketers and business owners to find and improve features and content on their website in a systematic way, enabling them to navigate Google algorithm updates by consistently improving content , and achieving long-term success away from the general spiel of writing new content, building backlinks , and maintaining technical SEO health. Why SEO testing is crucial for online businesses Any brand that relies on its online presence as a revenue driver and competes against other brands in the search results can benefit from SEO testing. SEO testing becomes even more indispensable the more your business relies on organic traffic and the greater your competition becomes. Conducting SEO tests allows marketers and business owners to monitor changes on their website to see what has the biggest impact so they can close the gap on competitors and get buy-in for larger projects. While regular SEO testing can be very advantageous for all businesses, it is crucial for businesses in an agency or enterprise setting, perhaps even more so than for small businesses. Having a strategy-defined SEO testing plan can allow you to: Create a data-informed strategy and help you stick to it Learn what you can change on your website to have the most impact on the SERPs Determine which tactics get you closer to your website’s goals, so you can put more time and budget into these activities Verify what works and what does not, so you can take those lessons into future SEO campaigns (or client accounts, if you work in an agency setting) When I talk about a “strategy-defined SEO testing plan,” I’m referring to making changes (testing) as aligned with your strategy, which should be defined by your company goals. For example, if one of your goals as a company is to grow organic traffic by 20%, you may test meta titles and meta descriptions in order to directly bring more traffic in. If one of your goals is to improve the on-page time from 50 seconds to 1 minute and 40 seconds, then you might make changes to page copy or improve CTAs . A strategy-defined SEO testing plan is not about making changes for the sake of change—it is about planning and testing in order to move closer to your company goals. Getting started with SEO testing: The fundamentals It’s one thing to change an element on your website and track the result of that change. This—in the most simple terms—is SEO testing. But, you can go further. In this section, I will guide you through how to start SEO testing from scratch to move your website forward. Formulate an objective to keep yourself on track First and foremost, it’s critical that you identify your objectives and corresponding metrics. Are you looking to: Increase organic search traffic to your website? Keep visitors on your site for longer? Improve your conversion rate? Correlate a new page layout with a change in average order value? Etc. Knowing what you want to influence with your optimizations and tests helps you stay on track and work in lockstep with your business (as opposed to operating in a silo). There is a belief in some SEO circles that traffic and ranking are the main goals— that is incorrect. The main goal should be making your business more money. This means that SEO testing does not necessarily need to use search KPIs, you can use business metrics, too. This is especially true for smaller businesses. You could think about tracking form conversion rates, page load times (for better user experience), and so on. Whatever KPIs and objectives you set, make sure to record them within your strategy document. This will help ensure the people in charge of your SEO testing know exactly what the test is measuring when they come to track, analyze, and report on the results. If you’re looking to uncover opportunities for testing (or simply find the highest-value area to start with), you could conduct a content audit and form some testable hypotheses based on it. For example, is there a blog post on your website from 2017? Could it benefit from being refreshed ? This is a good idea to test out so you can have some idea of the ROI on a wide scale content refresh campaign. Track data carefully so you can better interpret results You’ll likely monitor the impact of your tests over a variety of metrics. For example, let’s say you plan to refresh a blog post on your website and let the test run for six weeks (to collect data). To truly measure the outcome of your efforts, you’ll need: Data on the performance of the content during the test Historical data on the performance of the content during a corresponding time period before the test Comparing these two data sets is how you’ll determine whether the test was considered a success or simply provided you with useful data. The data you’ll need to collect is based on the KPIs you’ve designated for the test. If you want to test to see if the content refresh improves search traffic to the page, you need these numbers (from your analytics tool of choice). If you want to experiment with UX metrics like bounce rate, then you need to record this data, too. Once you have all your data, visualize it with graphs and charts to compare the period before the test to the period during and after the test to find out how your performance changed. At this point, I need to mention that tests that do not yield a positive result are not failures. Every test is a learning opportunity. If you have a test that has not yielded a positive result, go back and find out why. Have you missed certain information in the blog post? Is the URL not SEO friendly? There could be several reasons. The main outcome you need after processing an SEO test is a lesson. You can take these lessons into all future SEO tests. Tools for SEO testing There are several tools you can use when you start SEO testing. Each tool has its particular strengths and weaknesses, making it better (or worse) for certain types of businesses/use cases. In this section, I will go through some of the main SEO testing tools (including a free option), their advantages, and how you can use them. SEOTesting SEOTesting is a popular SEO testing tool that allows users to complete a wide array of SEO tests, including: Single-page SEO tests Group SEO tests A/B tests and split tests URL redirect tests This comprehensive range of test types makes SEOTesting suitable for all business sizes and marketers of all skill levels. However, it’s worth noting that SEOTesting does not allow you to make website changes within the tool itself. You will need to make these changes manually through your CMS or via your development team before logging it as a test in SEOTesting. So, if you are working with a client and find it takes a long time to get basic website changes approved and implemented, this might not be the right testing tool for you. SEOTesting is competitively priced and intuitive to use, making it a great option for small businesses and agencies looking to complete regular SEO tests. SearchPilot SearchPilot (formerly DistilledODN) is an enterprise SEO testing tool that focuses specifically on A/B testing for SEO. SearchPilot has some features that SEOTesting does not have, which might make it a better fit for larger businesses that wish to deploy SEO testing in a systematic fashion across websites (e.g., large agencies). SearchPilot allows you to make changes within the tool itself, meaning you do not need to create the pages independently from the tool, which can be a big timesaver. It also uses a neural network algorithm to analyze changes for you, letting you know whether a test has been successful or not directly within the tool with no outside input. This is an enterprise-focused tool, which might not make it the right choice for smaller businesses or individuals who do not have a large budget to dedicate to SEO testing. Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and built-in reporting You do not need paid tools to start SEO testing. You can start by simply using your CMS’ built-in reporting capabilities and Google’s suite of tools, like Search Console and Google Analytics . SEO testing, in its purest form, is making a change to your website and analyzing the results. When we think of it like this, we have all been doing SEO testing for a while. If you do not have the budget for paid SEO testing tools like SEOTesting and SearchPilot, you probably do not need to use them. Simply hypothesize a change you wish to make and how long you want the test to run for, take the data for the time before the test, make the change on your website, and let the test run. You should be able to get a good, actionable feel for how performance changed based on the data within these tools and the guidance in this blog post. To illustrate my point, let’s take a look at an example of SEO testing using nothing but Google Search Console. An example of SEO testing (with free tools) Let’s take a look at what this process might involve, step-by-step. For this example, we will use a meta description change as our test. For ease (and because you may have access to a tool like SEOTesting or SearchPilot), I will explain how to conduct the test manually. 01. Start by exporting the raw data from Google Search Console for the period before the test. You can do this by heading to the appropriate Search Console report, adding a filter for the page you wish to test, and clicking the “Export” button in the top-right corner. 02. Once you have all the desired data downloaded into a spreadsheet, implement the change you wish to test and submit the page for re-indexing . Once this has been done, let the test run. The duration of the test depends on your website. If you are testing a page that does not gather a large number of clicks per day, you should leave this test to run longer to ensure statistical significance. A shorter test will likely work fine for other pages with more clicks per day. For most tests, I recommend leaving it to run for at least 14 days. 03. After the testing period ends, repeat the first step by downloading all the raw data from Search Console for the test period. This will include (but is not limited to): Clicks per day Impressions Click-through rate Now, you can open both spreadsheets (or merge the data into one) and compare the “control” period to the “test” period to evaluate whether the test was a success. This is a very manual process, but it is one just about anyone can follow. You do not need to use any external tools other than Search Console to start SEO testing for your business. SEO tests to try on your own website Now that you know more about what SEO testing is, why it is important, and how to do it, all that’s left is some inspiration. Here are some potential tests to try out for yourself as you integrate SEO testing into your workflow. Single-page SEO testing As you might have assumed from its name, single-page SEO testing is great for small-scale tests on single pages. The page type does not matter. You could test your website’s homepage one minute and an eCommerce product listing page the next. Great examples of single-page SEO tests include: Title tag testing Meta description changes Changes to text within a single-page template This is a very useful test type for a variety of scenarios, but especially if you work at an SEO agency and are looking to get buy-in from clients for larger-scale work. For example, you could conduct a content refresh of a page, show the client the increase in clicks and ranking, and get more buy-in for more content refreshes. In other words, more work for your business. Group SEO testing Group SEO testing is similar to single-page SEO testing, but allows you to test a single group of pages. For example, your blog pages as a group or a particular topic cluster . Some common examples of group SEO tests include: Template changes to blog posts Changes to specific sub-folders You can also apply the experiments listed within the single-page SEO testing section as a group test. The only difference is that these test types run across multiple pages at once. As an example, let’s say I want to change the layout of my blog posts to include a smaller hero image. I could download the data for all of my blog posts as a group, make the change, and then review the data after. I’ll be able to easily see if the test was successful. A/B and split testing First off, an important note: A/B and split testing are often used interchangeably, but there is a slight difference: A/B testing refers to two web pages competing against each other. Split testing ensures traffic is equally split between the control variant and the test variant. That being said, A/B and split testing often work for similar experiments, so I am including them here. A/B (or split) testing is effective when you want to decide which direction to go down for a particular group of pages or are trying to get buy-in for larger projects. Examples of this include: Changing layouts of product listing pages or product detail pages Mass changes to large areas of your website Mass image optimization Improving page speed You can see the theme here: A/B and split tests are great for assessing the impact of large-scale changes before implementing the change site-wide. Analyzing your SEO test results If you take nothing else from this article, understand this: SEO testing is useless if you do not fully analyze the result. The main takeaway is that you learn from every single test—not necessarily that the particular test was successful. The first step is to analyze the results against your pre-test KPIs. Were you running an SEO test to increase clicks to a page? Did clicks to the page increase across the test period? If not, it’s time to figure out why. It’s also important to look at data from multiple angles. Continuing with the example above, did you find that your test did not improve clicks? It would be easy to look at this and consider it a failed test, but that might not be the case. Did your overall ranking improve for the page? If so, you could still consider this a successful test. It might have been a case in which the search volume for your queries reduced over the test period. Were there any outside factors that may have impacted the test? Was there a public holiday? Look at the whole test and its surrounding context, not just your KPIs. Once you obtain all the data and have analyzed it from multiple angles, it’s time to start making decisions. Do you consider the test result successful? Have all stakeholders been notified? If so, you can push the change live across the rest of your site (if this was the goal behind the test). Don’t need to make a decision right away? For example, if you ran a single-page test and updated a meta description, you could simply save the data, as it may be useful when writing meta descriptions in the future. Saving data is massively important. It will help you optimize your SEO testing process over the long term. You can see what works and what does not work for your site, apply this to future tests, and become more successful over time. Today’s SEO tests may be tomorrow’s key to success Most SEOs and site owners know about the importance of: Content quality Brilliant backlinks Amazing technical SEO But, what happens when all of that seems to be the best it can be? What do you do next? Planning and executing a comprehensive SEO testing strategy for your business or your clients’ sites might just be the path forward you need. It can allow you to overtake competitors, get a better understanding of how the search algorithm works for your chosen keywords and topics, and make better decisions for future clients or your own brand. Ryan Jones - Marketing Manager at SEOTesting Approaching a decade in marketing, Ryan has worked in-house and agency side. From scaling an eCommerce business from £400K to over £1.4M in annual revenue to increasing conversion rates for small, family businesses, Ryan loves making marketing work for the masses. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Lidia Infante In the world of SEO , ranking on Google is not just a matter of having great content, some backlinks, and good technical optimization. There is limited space on the search engine results page (SERP) and not everyone can make it to the top. You’re not ranking in a vacuum. As the word suggests, “ranking” involves comparing content against other content and ordering them by how likely it is that a given page satisfies the user’s intent. This means that “ranking” is actually about outranking your search competitors . When you think about it this way, an awareness of the context in which you’re trying to rank is absolutely essential. That’s where an SEO gap analysis comes in. In this guide, I’ll explain what an SEO gap analysis is, how it can help you outrank your competitors, and how to conduct your analysis across three essential areas of SEO: content, technical SEO, and backlinks. Table of contents: Why conduct an SEO gap analysis? An overview of the 3 pillars of SEO Step 1: Identify your competitors Step 2: Benchmark your SEO performance Benchmarking content Benchmarking backlinks Benchmarking technical SEO Step 3: Identify your weakest pillar Analyzing your weakest SEO pillar Why conduct an SEO gap analysis? An SEO gap analysis helps you identify areas where you’re falling behind your competitors and gives you actionable insights to improve your SEO strategy. By identifying gaps in your SEO efforts and opportunities to improve, you can get ahead of your competitors and rank higher on SERPs . Through an SEO gap analysis, I aim to understand how my brand is performing against competitors. I like to divide my analysis into three categories: Content Technical SEO Backlinks Segmenting my competitor analysis this way helps me identify my weakest area so that I can create a strategy to improve it. The idea behind this approach is that there is a ceiling to how much optimizing one aspect of your SEO can improve your rankings. Be it content, technical SEO, or links, the returns on your SEO activities diminish as you become better and better at one particular area. So, if you have the best content but it’s still not ranking, improving it further is probably not going to make a substantial impact, and it would be best to explore optimizing your technical SEO setup or building some links . The 3 pillars of SEO Content, technical SEO, and backlinks: I intentionally divide my SEO gap analyses this way because they’re what’s referred to as the “three pillars of SEO”—the three primary subdisciplines of SEO that must come together if you want to show up for relevant searches. Let’s briefly explore the three pillars of SEO so that you can apply it to benchmarking your site. Content Content is at the core of what we do, because it’s what will satisfy the user’s intent . Through content, we help users get the job done, whether that means helping them buy a product, decide on a holiday destination, or simply reach the Amazon homepage. Technical SEO There are two sides to technical SEO: Ensuring that search engines can find, understand, and index the right content Allowing users to enjoy that content Technical SEO includes activities like crawl budget optimization, faceted navigation (especially for eCommerce stores), web performance optimization, and managing indexation. Enriching your web pages with structured data might also fall under this SEO pillar as well. Backlinks Backlinks vouch for your content. In the very early days of its ranking algorithm, Google extrapolated the way that the world of academia uses citations (the more cited a study is, the more one can trust it). Then, it started using links in a similar way. The way Google evaluates and uses links has evolved over time, but their role continues to be the same: to crowdsource content evaluation to the masses. Step 1: Identify your competitors There are many different approaches you can take to figure out who your SEO competitors are—the most rudimentary being a simple SERP analysis for relevant keywords . You can also use an SEO tool to identify which brands mainly rank for your keywords. You can even develop a workflow that includes a combination of both methods. I have covered this extensively in my guide to finding your real SEO competitors . Step 2: Benchmark your SEO performance Now, let’s review your SEO performance so that you have something to compare against your competitors later on. My favorite way to do this is using a spreadsheet, so I’ve provided an empty template of my gap analysis for anyone to use. Just access this file , make a copy, and follow along with this guide. It’s best to use an SEO tool to get most of this data. I recommend that you use the same tool for every metric so that your numbers stay consistent across the board. Personally, I like to use Semrush because of how easy it is to find link and traffic metrics without having to download them into a separate spreadsheet. Other tools that you can use for this analysis include Ahrefs, Moz, and Sistrix. Benchmarking content Evaluating content performance is more of an art rather than an exact science, but it can be a very informative, revealing exercise. Here are some basic metrics to get an overview of your competitors content performance (and your own, for that matter). ​Estimated monthly traffic In most SEO tools, you can find this data in the overview section for the site. Editorial URLs Explore your competitor’s site and find where they’re hosting their editorial content. This will likely be in a subdirectory named “blog,” “articles,” or “resources.” If your competitor is on Wix, their blog posts will most likely be in /posts/. Number of keywords Look at the total number of keywords that your competitors rank for and then take a deeper dive by position. You can expect to see most of the keywords your competitors are targeting by looking at the number of keywords ranking at positions 1–30. Their winning keywords will be in positions 1–3. Now that you have an overview of the content landscape across competitors, you can take it a step further and look at what kind of traffic they are focusing on to develop your own content strategy. Branded traffic — On your chosen SEO tool, filter your competitor’s ranking keywords to the ones containing their brand name (and variations). Write down the traffic estimated for these keywords in your spreadsheet. Editorial traffic — Look at the estimated traffic that your competitors are receiving on their editorial URLs (as explained above) and note it down. Editorial efficiency — You can divide the estimated editorial traffic by the number or editorial URLs to gain an understanding of how effective your competitors are at getting search traffic through their content. Product traffic — Traffic that does not fall into the editorial or branded categories is likely to fall under the product umbrella. This might not be the case for you, so make sure you check what your competitors’ site looks like. Each vertical will also likely have some specific traffic types to look at. eCommerce businesses, for example, might also want to analyze category traffic. A SaaS business, on the other hand, might want to look at the performance of their documentation or partner pages. If you find that you’re significantly underperforming in content compared to your competitors, you might want to execute a content gap analysis , too. Benchmarking backlinks The next area to focus on is backlinks. Here’s what you should look for when analyzing your competitors’ links: Link gap analysis Look at the number of links and referring domains that point to your competitors. You can do some simple math to estimate the difference, but you’ll also need to take notes about the quality/relevance of the referring domains to get a fuller picture. Link growth ​Analyze how many links your competitors had 6 or 12 months ago and calculate the percentage of growth. This will give you insights into how aggressive your competitors are when it comes to link building and help you understand how fast a competitor can potentially catch up with your link profile. ​Link quality ​You can take a look at the distribution of authority across your competitors link profile (as well as your own). Using branded authority metrics like DA, DR, or AS, you can add a column to your spreadsheet focused on the gap at a certain level of authority. At this point of the benchmark, I like to get an idea of how popular my competitor’s brand is by looking at: Branded search — Check how many people are looking for your competitors' brands to understand your level of brand awareness compared to theirs. Branded traffic — Take a look at your branded traffic and how it relates to your brand search volume. If you’re on the lower end of the benchmark for branded traffic, but on the higher end for branded searches, this might indicate that your customers are not able to find answers about your brand within your site and are getting this information elsewhere. If this is the case, you should consider building out content that answers these questions. They tend to be around the topic of pricing, reviews, promotional codes, or how reliable your services are. They can also include support questions about your product(s) that could be answered with support content or documentation. Benchmarking technical SEO Finally, the third area to focus on is technical SEO, which can be really difficult to assess. I can provide a few ideas of what to look at, but each industry and tech stack has its own challenges. The metrics below can give you an idea of how much your competitors are investing in technical SEO. Site audit scores ​Most SEO tools offer some form of site auditing and give you an overall score for the site. Website owners often neglect little things like redirect chains or 404 errors that drive these scores down. A website with a healthy score is a giveaway that their owners are investing in its SEO. ​ Core Web Vitals (CWV) scores I approach this by using the Chrome UX (CrUX) report in Google Looker Studio to extract my competitor’s CWV numbers. To make it easier to analyze, I like to note down their number of “good” URLs for each score and calculate an average. Page speed Analyze your PageSeed Insights scores for mobile and desktop to get an easy idea of how much your competitors are investing in web performance optimization (WPO) on their key pages. Manual checks Look at your competitors robots.txt file , the sitemap, and how canonicalization is managed to identify any issues that need to be addressed. If you’re in eCommerce, it’s especially important to explore how your competitors are managing their faceted navigation. Step 3: Identify your weakest pillar Now that you have all of your competitors’ performance data in a nice spreadsheet, it’s time to draw some insights. If you have been using my SEO gap analysis template , this will be straightforward, as the conditional formatting that comes built in will point out your weakest pillar (in red or dark orange). Take a look at the numbers and identify the areas where you are below average or average compared to your competitors. Ideally, you would work on the weakest pillar, but this decision can get a little bit more complex. If you’re lacking in technical SEO, but your web development department is overwhelmed, you might want to start working on your second-weakest pillar. If you are new at a company and you see that working on links is your biggest opportunity, but you don’t have your stakeholders’ trust yet to lead a project like that, start with the next pillar. Now that you’ve selected the right pillar to focus on, it’s worth your time to look a little bit deeper into the numbers to understand what the right strategies for your brand are. Analyzing your weakest SEO pillar If your chosen pillar is content , you can: Perform a content gap analysis and target the keywords that are performing well for your competitors. Evaluate how you’re highlighting the expertise of your authors. Audit your on-page optimizations for existing content. Run a workshop for other content creators in your organization about the importance of search in content discovery. If your chosen pillar is backlinks , you can: Perform a link gap analysis to find valuable links that your competitors have and that you’re lacking. Analyze your competitor’s link profile to find what types of content are most popular in your industry. Use a tool (like Buzzsumo, for example) to research the types of content that get the most links and engagement by topic. Find out if your competitors are leveraging their internal experts to provide commentary to journalists and content creators. If your chosen pillar is technical SEO , you can: Perform a technical audit on your site. Meet with your developers to evaluate potential WPO opportunities. Research opportunities to get more content indexed by surfacing categories and filters. Understand the opportunities and limitations within your current tech stack. Next steps: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail Congratulations, you have completed an SEO gap analysis! While this is a huge milestone in itself, all of the data and knowledge that you’ve gathered will yield you no results unless it sparks some action. That means it’s time to make an implementation plan. Use your competitor’s performance to set some SMART goals and work backwards from them to create a list of actions to perform on your end. Make a plan that covers the next three to six months, and then reevaluate your chosen pillar. Competitor data can be very useful for you to show your leadership how you’re bridging the gap (or creating a larger one in your favor) and bringing value to the business, so make sure you share your results with relevant stakeholders! Lidia Infante - SEO Consultant Lidia has been working in SEO for almost a decade, helping businesses in SaaS, media and eCommerce grow online. She has a BSC in Psychology and a Master in Digital Business, and is a regular speaker at international SEO events such as MozCon, BrightonSEO, and WTSFest. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: James Clark Updated: January 8, 2024 If you want your website to succeed on Google, you need to understand how visitors make their way to your content. That means you need to learn: How Google “sees” your content The keywords people search on Google that lead them to your web pages This information is the foundation for successful SEO, whether you’re working on an enterprise-level website or a personal blog. And, there’s one resource you can use to learn both: Google Search Console (GSC) . The data that Search Console gives you access to (along with some complementary web analytics ) can help you create well-informed strategies, capitalize on emerging trends, fix technical issues, and so much more—making it the quintessential tool for SEO. In this guide, we’ll look at: What Google Search Console is How to get started with GSC GSC features overview Main dashboard overview Performance reports Search Results report Discover report News report URL Inspection Page indexing report Experience reports Page Experience Core Web Vitals Mobile Usability and HTTPS Enhancements Links report Crawl Stats report Pro tips: Getting the most from GSC Connecting Search Console with Google Analytics 4 Using Search Console data in Looker Studio Using the Search Console APIs Wix’s Google Search Console integration Site Inspection tool SEO Dashboard Wix Analytics GSC reports What is Google Search Console? Search Console is a free tool from Google that, in the search engine’s own words , enables you to “monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.” In a nutshell, it helps you understand how Google sees your site and fix issues it may have found. Third-party SEO tools have developed ranking scores (such as Moz’s “ domain authority ,” for example) to estimate how Google sees particular sites. Google Search Console (GSC), on the other hand, gives you direct access to information that Google has about your site. What does Google Search Console do? GSC is a reporting platform, but it’s capable of much more than that. It also allows for two-way communication with Google: you can use it to tell the search engine about your site and request that it takes particular actions (whether Google acts on those requests is a different matter). The reporting side of GSC The action side of GSC GSC will give you information on:​ The queries you’re ranking for in Google Search results The pages on your site that Google has (or hasn’t) crawled and indexed The quality of your user experience You can use GSC to: Submit a sitemap so Google can easily find your latest content Request that Google re-index a page (or remove it from search results entirely) Tell Google you fixed an issue that it discovered—like unavailable (404) pages, for example We'll look at each of these reports and capabilities (and more) in detail as part of this guide. Who uses Search Console and why? GSC is available to anyone who owns or manages a website and completes the verification process (more about this in the next section ). Once you verify your site, you can then invite other users to that property. Using Search Console is entirely optional and you don’t need to use it for your site to appear in organic (that is, non-paid) search results. That said, if organic traffic is at all important to your business model, then it would make sense for you to use Search Console. On a practical level, GSC can tell you if there are any problems that might be holding back your performance in Google’s organic search. When it discovers specific issues, it will flag these by email or through alerts in Search Console itself: And even if GSC discovers no issues, it can still help you refine your content strategy and grow your organic traffic. This means GSC is relevant to everyone from a small business owner with a single site looking to get leads from organic traffic, through to large agencies managing a number of sites on behalf of clients. How is GSC different from GA4? Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) are both free tools from Google that give you invaluable insight into your site’s performance and help you make website/business decisions. It’s no surprise that people might confuse the two—especially as it is possible to link the tools together and see Search Console-powered reports directly within GA4. We’ll look at that in our pro tips section later . That said, these tools are very different both in terms of the data they provide and the questions that data can help answer. Put simply, GSC is an SEO tool that tells you how Google sees your site —it’s focused on organic search performance. On the other hand, GA4 is an analytics platform that tells you what people do on your site —it’s focused on user activity. Google Search Console (GSC) Google Analytics (GA4) GSC focuses on organic search performance, and can help you answer questions such as: Has Google discovered my content? Why hasn’t Google indexed a particular page? Am I ranking in Google for a particular search query? ​GA4 focuses on user activity, and can help you answer questions such as: Where is my traffic coming from? What content are my visitors engaging with? What is driving conversions ? However, there is some crossover—both tools can give you insight into the amount of traffic you receive from Google organic search. But, be careful when making direct comparisons as the tools use different metrics: the number of search clicks (GSC) almost certainly won’t equal the number of new users (GA4) acquired from organic search. A user may click more than once, or perhaps the click is registered in Search Console but your analytics tracking code doesn’t fire, for example. Also, remember that Google isn’t the only search engine or the only source of organic search traffic. Many other search engines have their own equivalent of Search Console—for example, Bing offers Bing Webmaster Tools . But, as Google accounts for over 90% of the global search engine market share worldwide, it probably makes sense to start with Search Console. How to get started with GSC In order to use Search Console, you must first verify your site to prove that you own or manage it. This is to prevent other people from accessing business-sensitive data about your website, and potentially even making changes that will affect its presence in Google search. Google provides a number of methods to complete verification. The method you choose will depend on your technical skills and the level of access you have to your website. You will also need a free Google account —if you have a Gmail account, then you probably have one of these already. To begin the process: 01. Go to https://search.google.com/search-console . 02. Click on the blue Start now button. 03. Log in to your Google account (or create an account) when prompted. 04. You’ll now see the “Welcome to Google Search Console” splash screen. (If you’re already logged in to your Google account, you’ll skip the second and third steps.) Google Search Console site verification methods On the “Welcome to Google Search Console” screen, you first choose the property type you want to verify: Domain or URL prefix . This determines the verification method(s) available to you. Out of these two property types, Domain is more powerful as it will show you how Google sees your URLs across your different subdomains and protocols ( HTTP or HTTPS ). For example, if you verify the domain example.com, you’ll be able to access Search Console data for http://example.com , https://example.com , and https://subdomain.example.com pages. On the other hand, URL prefix limits you to a single domain and protocol. If you verify the https://example.com prefix, you won’t be able to access data on URLs beginning with http://example.com or https://subdomain.example.com . However, there’s nothing stopping you from verifying multiple URL prefix properties. ( Pro tip: This could also be a useful way to manage access if you have colleagues or partners who are working on a specific subdomain.) The downside of the more powerful Domain approach is that it only gives you one verification method: DNS verification. This involves adding a record to your DNS configuration. Depending on your setup, you may need to do this through your domain name provider such as GoDaddy, or your website builder such as Wix . In many organizations, the person responsible for SEO may not be the one responsible for (or even have access to) DNS configuration—in which case, the URL prefix approach could be easier. Here, you have a choice of verification methods (in addition to the DNS approach): Uploading an HTML file to your website (Google’s recommended approach) Adding a meta tag to your website’s homepage Using your Google Analytics account Using your Google Tag Manager account Perhaps you aren’t sure how to upload an HTML file or add a meta tag (a small piece of information about your site, almost like a label). If so, it’s worth checking whether your platform, CMS, or site builder offers any tools to make this process easier. For example, Wix has a site verification manager where you can paste in the meta tag and it will automatically be added to your site. Whatever verification method you choose, remember that you will need to leave it in place even after verification. For example, if you upload a meta tag, removing that tag at a later date will cause you to lose access to that property in Search Console. For that reason, it’s sensible to verify your site with more than one method (if you can). Search Console metrics definitions Once you’ve verified your site, it can take some time (perhaps a day or two) for data to become available in Search Console. So, if you can’t see anything useful straight away, that’s nothing to worry about. And, if your site itself is new, there may be no performance data at all to start with—but, this will rectify itself over time as you create more content for Google to crawl and the search engine learns more about your site. While you’re waiting, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the most common metrics you’ll see in GSC. Total impressions: The number of times a page from your site has appeared in Google’s organic (non-paid) search results. Total clicks: The number of clicks through to your page from a Google search results page. Average CTR: Your average click-through rate , calculated as clicks / impressions x 100 (e.g., if you get one click from 100 impressions, your CTR is 1%.) Average position: Your average position in Google organic search results, with “1” indicating the first or top result. The lower the number, the better. Search Console will also tell you about the status of individual pages (URLs) on your site. There are three main steps your pages will go through: 01. Discovered: Google is aware of your page, perhaps through a sitemap or via a link from another page. 02. Crawled : Google’s bot has accessed the page and attempted to read its content. 03. Indexed : Google has added the page to its index, which means it may choose to display it as part of a search result. It may be that certain URLs are discovered but not crawled, or crawled but not indexed. One of GSC’s main uses is to identify when this is happening and why. Data freshness in Search Console Before we dive into any specific Search Console reports, let’s talk for a moment about data freshness: how up-to-date the data in GSC is. For all the GSC reports we’ll look at, data is typically available after two to three days. So if you visit GSC on a Wednesday, the freshest (most recent) data available to you may well be Monday’s. And that freshest data is also likely to be provisional and subject to a small amount of change. You can tell if this is the case by hovering over a data point in a graph. You may see a message saying, “Fresh data - usually replaced with final data within a few days.” GSC features overview When it comes to finding your way around GSC, familiarity with other Google tools definitely helps. Search Console, like GA4 or Google Ad Manager, consists of a number of reports all accessible through a vertical menu along the left-hand side of the screen. The key GSC reports are grouped into four sections: Performance Indexing Experience Enhancements Some reports only become available once your site meets certain conditions. So don’t be alarmed if your GSC doesn’t have exactly the same reports as someone else’s, or if the reports you do have are in a slightly different order. At the top of the main menu is a drop-down showing your currently selected property. If you have more than one property in Search Console, you can use this dropdown to switch between them. There’s also an option to “Add property” if you want to go through the verification process for another domain or URL prefix. In this section I’ll go over the main reports and tools within Search Console, explaining what data they contain and how they can help you as an SEO or website manager. Main dashboard overview When you open Search Console, you’ll land on the Overview report. This gives you top-level metrics for GSC’s four key reporting sections ( Performance , Indexing , Experience , and Enhancements ). The Performance part of the Overview , for example, shows you the number of clicks from organic search—while Indexing shows you the number of pages indexed (and just as importantly, not indexed). In addition to the headline figures, each part of the Overview contains one or more graphs showing how your site has performed over the previous three months. The idea here is that you can quickly identify any unexpected performance changes and then click through to the relevant reporting section in Search Console to investigate further. Wix site owners that have verified their sites can view GSC data from directly within the SEO Dashboard . Performance reports One Search Console quirk is that perhaps the single most important section is Performance , yet you may not see this section in your GSC menu at all. Two of the reports in this section, namely Discover and Google News , only appear “ if your property has reached a minimum number of impressions ” in those Google services. And if you don’t have access to either of these reports, GSC moves (and renames!) the third report, the one that covers your performance in Search. This means you might find the Performance report for Search in the menu immediately after the Overview (and simply called “Performance” ); alternatively, you might find it in a dedicated Performance section where it will be called “Search Results.” Search Results report The Performance report for Search (no matter what it is called in your GSC) gives you the data you need to understand how your content is performing on Google and how you might optimize it. It shows a table of all the search queries your website is ranking for—in other words, the keywords and phrases that users type into Google for which your site appears in the search results. By default, two of the four key metrics (total clicks and total impressions) are selected—but you can click on the other two (average CTR and average position) to add them to both the table and graph on this page. The tabs immediately above the table let you swap from a list of your top search queries to a list of your top pages (with the same metrics—clicks, impressions, and so on). But what if you want to see the search queries for one particular page? 01. Click on the PAGES tab. 02. Click on the page you are interested in. 03. Now click back to the QUERIES tab. When you do this, GSC will add a filter to the report restricting results to just the page you selected. If you want to remove or edit this filter, look for it at the very top of the report (above the chart). In this same section, there’s also a filter to change the search type—so if you want to know how your site is performing in Google Images or Google News, this is the place to go. Wix site owners who have verified their site with Search Console can view their Google search performance over time, top search queries on Google, and top pages in Google search results directly from their Wix Dashboard . Comparing time periods in GSC By default, the Search Results report (and indeed the other main reports in GSC) only shows data from the last three months—the same as the Overview . However, you can change this using the date range filter, or use the Compare option to compare one period against another. This can be very useful if your business is seasonal. For example, a retailer selling Christmas trees would expect relevant search phrases to have high volumes in Q4, but low volumes in Q1. You can see this for yourself using a tool such as Google Trends , which shows relative interest in different search terms over time: For this sort of business, it makes little sense to compare Q4 to Q1. Instead, it would be much more accurate to compare performance in Q4 this year to Q4 the previous year. Be careful though, because Search Console only retains data for the past 16 months . This means it isn’t possible to compare the most recent full year against the previous one in any of GSC’s reports (as this would require at least 24 months of data). Reviewing your search data If you want to review your search data systematically, you can export it to Google Sheets or download it as an Excel or zipped CSV file. You can do this by clicking on the EXPORT button to the top-right of the report and selecting your preferred option. This will give you up to a thousand rows of spreadsheet data, which you can sort and filter exactly as you wish, and potentially integrate into your keyword research plan or an SEO report . For example, you might want to look at pages that have an average position of around 11 or 12 for an important, relevant search query. That average position means you are probably appearing towards the top of the “second page” of Google search results (though Google is rolling out scrolling search results pages, starting in the US). Tweaking your content here could bump you up a few positions and see you appearing in the top 10 results, which may significantly increase the impressions and clicks you receive for that query. Discover report Alongside the Search Results report, you may also have access to the Discover report. This follows exactly the same format but is entirely focused on your performance in Google Discover —a personalized content feed available in the Google mobile app. Traffic from Google Discover is notoriously “spiky”—it’s not uncommon for publishers to suddenly receive thousands of visits to a single article appearing in Discover. This often appears in analytics tools as “direct” traffic and can be hard to identify. The Discover report in GSC is the place to go to see whether your sudden traffic surge has come from Discover. News report The third and final report you might see in the Performance section relates to Google News—though it doesn’t cover all news traffic. Instead, it focuses solely on traffic from news.google.com and the Google News app on Android and iOS. If you want to see traffic from the “News” tab in Google Search (which is what people often mean when they talk about “news” traffic), you’ll find this in the main Performance report for Search by adding the filter Search Type = News . Interestingly, you can still access the Google Discover and News reports in GSC even if they don’t appear in your menu. Go to: https://search.google.com/search-console/performance/discover https://search.google.com/search-console/performance/google-news Then, choose a property from the dropdown if prompted to do so. URL Inspection Let’s say you have concerns about one particular page on your site: has it been discovered, crawled, and indexed? You could search for it in the Indexing reports, but a much better approach is to use GSC’s URL Inspection tool . To do this, paste your URL into the search box at the top of the page. (There’s also a menu item for URL inspection , but it just highlights the corresponding search box.) Once Google has retrieved the data about your page from its index, click on the Page indexing section to expand it and see all the details. Perhaps you’ve spotted some URLs in GSC reports that you feel shouldn’t be there. Just pop one into the URL Inspection tool and you will be able to see how Google discovered the page (usually through an XML sitemap or a link from another page). That should be enough information for you to tackle the problem or at least investigate further. Another key piece of information is the date on which Google last crawled the page. If the page is new or recently updated, and you are keen to get your changes reflected in Google search results as soon as possible, use the option up at the top to REQUEST INDEXING : Bear in mind, though, that this is just a request. Google tries hard to manage expectations in its search documentation: “Requesting a crawl does not guarantee that inclusion in search results will happen instantly or even at all. Our systems prioritize the fast inclusion of high quality, useful content.” — Google Finally, the TEST LIVE URL option enables you to see the page as Google sees it (either as HTML or as a live screengrab). This can be useful for identifying any parts of the page that Google can’t (or won’t) crawl. One question that comes up in SEO circles occasionally is whether Google can “see” content rendered by JavaScript: the short answer is yes , but this tool is a good way to put your mind at rest if you have any concerns. As part of the live test, you can also see if Google was unable (or decided not) to load any page resources. In the following example, Google hasn’t loaded the analytics or advertising code for the site. Neither of these would be needed by Googlebot, so there are no concerns here: URL Inspection Mini Case Study Recently I had an issue where Google Search Console’s Page Indexing report was reporting some mysterious partial URLs that weren’t actual pages on my site. For example, for the page: https://www.technicallyproduct.co.uk/analytics/renaming-fields-in-google-data-studio-useful-but-confusing Google was reporting both that URL and the partial URL: https://www.technicallyproduct.co.uk/analytics/renaming-fields-in-google-dat . So, where was Google picking those partial URLs up from? I used the URL Inspection tool to inspect one, and it turned out that Google had discovered it via a referral from the article itself (rather than, say, an XML sitemap): Inspecting the source of the referring article, I discovered the culprit was some ad code I’d added to my site that included part of the URL for targeting purposes. I was then able to tweak this so it didn’t look like a relative URL, dissuading Google from “discovering” it in future. But if it hadn’t been for the URL Inspection tool, it would have been much more difficult to work out where Google was picking this “URL” up from in the first place. For the full case study, read my article “ Why is Google Search Console detecting partial URLs on my website site? ” Page indexing report While the URL Inspection tool is useful for troubleshooting problems on individual pages, it won’t tell you about issues that affect groups of pages or even your entire site. That’s where the Page indexing report (under Indexing > Pages ) comes in. (It used to be called the “Index Coverage” report, an appropriate name as it tells you how much coverage your site has in Google’s index.) The top graph shows the number of pages on your site that are (and aren’t) indexed, much as we’ve already seen on the Overview . But underneath that is a breakdown of the reasons why pages haven’t been indexed—and the number of pages affected by each reason: Under the “Source” column, you’ll see that some of the reasons will be marked “Google systems,” indicating that they relate to Google’s behavior; while others will be marked “Website,” indicating that “you should fix the issue if it makes sense to do so.” (Hover over the question mark icon at the top of the “Source” column to see Google’s explanation of this.) That disclaimer, and the fact that Google uses the word “reason” rather than “problem,” both indicate that—in many cases—it’s fine for URLs not to be indexed. For example, the following “reasons” aren’t usually cause for concern: Page with redirect ​This might relate to redirects you’ve added (or that your platform or site builder has added for you automatically; for example, when you delete a page or change its URL). It’s nothing to worry about, although you may want to check that the pages you are redirecting to are indexed correctly. ​ Discovered—currently not indexed Google has found your page but hasn’t crawled it yet. Unless you have a huge site (such as an established eCommerce site) with thousands of uncrawled pages, this isn’t anything to worry about either. Excluded by “noindex” tag The noindex tag is a small tag added to a page to tell Google (and other search engines) not to index it. This isn’t a technical problem, but do check to make sure you haven’t mistakenly noindexed a page you want to appear in search results. You might, for example, have added the tag when you were working on a new page (and it wasn’t ready for Google), but then forgotten to remove it. And, here are a few “reasons” that may require some attention/action on your part: Not found (404) An error indicating that the page couldn’t be found on the server. If you deleted that page from your website, you should put a redirect in place. If you haven’t deleted it, there might be a technical issue with your site. ​ Duplicate without user-selected canonical ​Google sees this page as a duplicate of another page, and is showing the other page rather than this one in search results. You can delete one of the duplicate pages or add a canonical tag to indicate to search engines which one is the main version. Redirect error ​This can happen when you have a long chain of redirects, or perhaps two pages that are both redirecting to each other, creating a “redirect loop.” To fix this, you’ll need to either break that loop or reduce the size of the chain. For example, you might have page A redirecting to B, B to C, and C to D. You could remove all of these redirects and instead redirect pages A, B, and C all directly to page D. Bookmark Search Console Help for a more comprehensive list of non-indexing reasons . Investigating errors Even when the Page Indexing report does indicate problems with the site itself, bear in mind that this report isn’t “real time.” It lists issues that Google found when it tried to crawl your content—not necessarily errors that affect your site right now. To put it another way, the report could well include problems that have already been resolved by the time you came to look at it. As a result, it’s really worth digging into each issue to see whether it still needs to be addressed. Click into any of the listed reasons for non-indexing to see: A graph of the number of pages affected over the past 90 days Some examples of the affected pages You might immediately see a pattern: perhaps those 404s all relate to blog posts, or to tag pages. Here, for example, all of the affected pages are “feed” pages for specific categories: Once you know which section of your site is affected and when the problem started (or at least was detected by GSC), it will be much easier to investigate, see whether it’s still an issue, identify the cause, and then fix it. If you’re sure an issue has been resolved, the next step would be to ask Google to VALIDATE FIX . Sitemaps report Also in the Indexing section of GSC is the Sitemaps report. Actually, this is both a tool and a report, because it lets you submit an XML sitemap and then monitor its status. But what is an XML sitemap ? It’s a document that lists your website’s pages (or at least the ones you want search engines to crawl and hopefully index). Without a sitemap, search engines will still attempt to find your pages by following internal and external links (links on your site and on other sites)—but a sitemap can help them with that discovery process. XML sitemaps shouldn’t be confused with HTML sitemaps, which are mainly intended for users of your site rather than search engines. So how do you get an XML sitemap? It’s likely that your website platform or builder will be able to generate one for you, either as part of its core functionality or through a plugin or extension. Once you have it, enter its URL into GSC’s sitemap tool and click “Submit.” You can submit more than one sitemap if, for example, you are using domain verification and each subdomain has its own sitemap. The report will list: All submitted sitemaps When Google last read each sitemap The number of pages Google discovered Whether Google encountered any problems If you find that Google is not discovering a lot of your URLs, a first step would be to check that there are no issues with your sitemap. Sitemaps mini case study I noticed that Google was slow to discover (and then crawl and index) my latest blog posts, and suspected a problem with my XML sitemap. So, I visited the Sitemaps report in Google Search Console to see it was reporting one error: Clicking on the error gave me this detail: “Sitemap is HTML. Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.” What could be causing this? I tried to view the sitemap using the OPEN SITEMAP link in GSC, only to be redirected to the homepage—my sitemap no longer existed, which was why GSC was hitting an HTML webpage instead. My next step was to check the health of the software generating my sitemap, an SEO plugin added to the open-source platform my website was built on. In the back office of my site, I could see that the plugin was disabled—I’d done that myself during routine maintenance a week or two prior and had forgotten to re-enable it. So I re-enabled the plugin, causing the XML sitemap to reappear. But as GSC had encountered problems reading the sitemap, it might not try again for a number of days. And there’s no option in GSC to nudge it to do so. The solution? Remove the sitemap from GSC entirely (via Sitemap details > More options ) and re-submit it. Once I’d done this and refreshed my browser, I could immediately see a success message—Google had read the fixed and resubmitted sitemap within seconds: Experience reports The Experience reports within GSC provide a summary of your site’s user experience as Google sees it. This isn’t just about user experience, though—it’s also key to good SEO: “Google evaluates page experience metrics for individual URLs on your site and will use them as a ranking signal for a URL in Google Search results.” — Google As Google doesn’t always explicitly say what is and isn’t a ranking factor, this is unusually clear guidance and not something you should ignore. We’ll now dive into two of the individual Experience reports— Page Experience and Core Web Vitals . Page Experience The Page Experienc e report shows what proportion of your URLs are “good”—that is, offer a good user experience based on Core Web Vitals and mobile usability (the two more detailed reports in the Experience section). If a page passes both Core Web Vitals and mobile usability, and is served using HTTPS (rather than HTTP), Google considers it “good.” Like the other GSC reports, the Page Experience report gives you a 90-day view so you can easily see whether your recent improvements have been picked up by Google or spot any concerning changes. In a sense, it’s an overview report, but specifically for page experience. Core Web Vitals Core Web Vitals are a set of factors that Google believes are particularly important to user experience. They measure “real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page” and break down as follows: Loading performance is measured with a metric called Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). Simply put, this is how long it takes for the page’s main content to load. Interactivity is currently measured with First Input Delay (FID) . This is how long the user has to wait between first interacting with a page (clicking a button, for example) and the browser responding to that interaction. In March 2024, Google will replace FID with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) . Visual stability is the most interesting factor (although not necessarily more important to your SEO). Have you ever been on a web page and you go to click on something, when suddenly something loads on the page? Then, the whole page shifts around and you end up clicking on entirely the wrong thing (usually an ad)? That’s what Google means by visual stability, and it’s measured with a metric called Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) . The less shift, the better. The Core Web Vitals report in GSC shows the number of URLs that are “good,” “need improvement,” or “poor” according to these three metrics. Are some of your URLs failing to hit the “good” rating? Click on the OPEN REPORT link alongside either the Mobile or Desktop section to see the reasons why. For example, this site has an issue with LCP on every page: That suggests the problem isn’t with individual pieces of content, but with how the site (as a whole) loads. It may be worth looking at the page templates, or considering caching to improve site performance. For more ideas, check out our webinar on how to optimize your site for Core Web Vitals . Mobile Usability and HTTPS You may or may not see two further reports in the Experience section: Mobile Usability — This shows you how many (and which) pages on your site are not mobile-friendly. Google is due to retire this report in December 2023 , so if you want to evaluate your mobile usability from that point forward, you can use Google Lighthouse , among other tools and resources. HTTPS report — This shows you how many of your indexed URLs are HTTPS and how many are HTTP. The HTTPS protocol is better both for your users’ security and for your site’s SEO (Google has confirmed it is a ranking factor ), so if you have HTTP pages showing up here, it’s definitely worth diving into this report to find out why. It could be something as simple as an invalid certificate, or perhaps you’re missing redirects from HTTP to HTTPS. The HTTPS report is relatively new and has not yet rolled out to all properties, so don’t worry if you can’t see it. Enhancements The last major section in GSC is Enhancements , which refers to features on your site that use structured data (e.g., breadcrumbs and videos). But, what is structured data? Google defines it as “a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content.” For example, structured data for videos can contain information about the video’s: Upload date Expiry date Duration Contents (through a description or even a transcript) This is all information that Google wouldn’t otherwise be able to get by crawling a page with an embedded video on it. So, you can see how structured data can help Google and other search engines understand a page in much greater detail. This, in turn, can make you eligible to be shown in enhanced search results (also known as “ rich results ”). Sticking with our video example, Google might add a “LIVE” badge to a video to show that it was live-streamed, or choose to highlight “key moments” in your video based on the structured data you provided: Structured data may sound fairly technical, but there’s good news: Your platform or site builder—or even well-written third-party plugins—may add it to your pages automatically. And, GSC’s Enhancements reports are the place to see whether this is happening. You’ll have access to a different report for each enhancement that Google has detected on your site. (On the other hand, if you don’t have any enhancements, you won’t see the section in GSC at all.) Wix implements default structured data markup on blog posts, product pages, bookings pages, forum posts, and event pages. So, you may see these rich results in your GSC Enhancements  section (even if you didn’t add the markup yourself). GSC will also flag up any errors it has found in your structured data implementation . For example, this site was missing the “description” field from its video structured data: You can see this now affects zero items, suggesting that the problem was fixed (and that Google noticed the fix). If your structured data does need a fix, this may be something you can tackle yourself—or it may be something you need to raise with a plugin developer via a support request, for example. Google also provides a Rich Results Test tool that lets you inspect any page to see all the structured data it found and whether it’s eligible for rich results. Unlike Google Search Console, you can use this to inspect any page—whether it belongs to a site you manage or not. Links report GSC’s Links report doesn’t get any coverage in the Overview and doesn’t have its own section in the menu—it just sits awkwardly between Legacy tools and reports and Settings , so it’s easy to miss. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. It shows you: External links — Your pages with the most links from other sites (otherwise known as “backlinks” or “inbound links” ). Internal links — Your pages with the most links from other pages on your site (i.e., the same domain). If a page doesn’t have any internal links, it won’t be listed here—even if it is indexed by Google. Top linking sites — The sites that are linking to you the most. Top linking text — The most commonly used anchor text in backlinks to your site. For each of these sections, click on MORE to see a full list of pages, link metrics, export options, and search filters. These reports are limited in that they don’t show historic data or changes over time: you can’t tell whether you are gaining new links, or when Google first detected a link. Remember, links aren’t all equally valuable. A link from an authoritative site, such as www.bbc.co.uk, will help you much more from an SEO standpoint than one from a smaller or less trustworthy site. But, GSC won’t give you any insight into how it values your various external links. To do that you’ll need to use a different tool that estimates how authoritative different sites are, like Link Explorer from Moz , for example. Crawl Stats report Even more hidden than the Links report is the Crawl Stats report (which is only available in root-level properties)—this one isn’t listed on the left-hand navigation menu at all. To get to it: 01. Click on Settings in the main menu. 02. Scroll down to the Crawling section. 03. Click on OPEN REPORT. The Crawl Stats report shows Google’s crawling history on your website: the number of crawl requests it has made, the average response time from your server, the server responses it has received, and so on. Google has hidden this report because it’s aimed at advanced users with larger sites. The Search Console Help site says : “If you have a site with fewer than a thousand pages, you should not need to use this report or worry about this level of crawling detail.” The reason for this is that only owners of large sites really need to think about their crawl budget —the number of pages that Google will crawl on their site on any given day. If they have more pages than their crawl budget allows for, it could take Google a long time to detect any changes (i.e., SEO improvements may not generate results as quickly). The Crawl Stats report is designed to help site owners identify whether crawl budget is a concern—and if so, take steps to optimize it. For example, there might be an issue with crawl health: if Googlebot encounters lots of server errors or slow response times from a site, it will crawl that site less frequently. Pro tips: Getting the most from GSC We’ve seen that Search Console provides detailed information about your site’s performance in organic search—but that’s only one strand of your marketing activity. To make the most of your GSC data, it helps to see it in a broader context. Here are three ways you can do this. How to connect Search Console with Google Analytics 4 By connecting GSC with GA4 , you’ll be able to unlock new reports in GA4—and see GSC metrics (such as search impressions) alongside GA4 metrics (like conversions ). You may be familiar with connecting GSC to Universal Analytics (the previous version of Google Analytics), but the process when it comes to GA4 is slightly different: Not only do you have to link the two tools as usual, you also have to “publish” the Search Console reports in GA4 in order to see and use them. To connect your GSC property to your GA4 web data stream, follow the steps outlined in Analytics Help . Then, publish the Search Console reports in GA4: 01. Click on Reports. 02. Click on Library. 03. In the “Collections” section, find the collection called Search Console. 04. Click on the menu icon (three dots) for this collection. 05. Select Publish. After a few seconds, a new section called Search Console will appear in your GA4 reports menu. If you expand this, you will see two new reports— Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic . The good news is that these reports will show data straight away (going back to when you verified the site in Search Console or created your GA4 web data stream, whichever happened more recently). Here’s what the two new reports give you: Queries — This shows your organic search queries, along with number of clicks, impressions, CTR, and average search position—the four key metrics we saw in the GSC Search Results report. The report lets you wrangle the data in slightly different ways than GSC: for example, you can produce a graph of organic search clicks over time, broken down by device category (desktop, mobile, or tablet)—whereas GSC will just give you the headline figures for that in the form of a table. Google Organic Search Traffic — This report shows your landing pages along with key GSC metrics and some GA4-specific metrics (e.g., average engagement time, event count, and number of conversions). Having this data side by side is highly insightful: after all, what is the benefit of a particular page performing well in search if it isn’t generating any engagement or conversions? If you use a different analytics tool than GA4, your tool may also integrate with Search Console. Piwik Pro and Plausible Analytics , for example, are two GA4 alternatives that offer that capability. Using Search Console data in Looker Studio GA4 is great for showing your organic search data alongside other website data, but what if you want to take an even more holistic approach and bring in other data sources, such as business revenue or marketing spend? You could use Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio), Google’s free data visualization tool. Looker Studio lets you pull in data from various sources using “connectors.” There are free connectors for pretty much every Google product, including Google Analytics, Google Ads—and Google Search Console. You can even pull in your non-website data via Google Sheets. To get started, follow the instructions on Looker Studio Help . Once you connect your data, you can put together your report by selecting different visualizations (e.g., line charts, heat maps, data tables, etc). Or, if you don’t want to build everything from scratch, Google has a Looker Studio Template Gallery containing a predefined Search Console report. Using the Search Console APIs For more advanced users, GSC offers an API (a way for other pieces of software to request data from, and send data to, Search Console). Strictly speaking, it offers four APIs, each with a different function: Sites (for managing properties in a GSC account) Search Analytics (for querying traffic data) Sitemaps URL Inspection So instead of logging into GSC and inspecting a particular URL, for example, you could write a piece of code that uses the URL Inspection API to do it for you—perhaps on a set schedule. But, you don’t have to be super technical to benefit from Search Console’s API. Other tools can (with your permission) use the API to provide you with Search Console data about your site. Wix’s Google Search Console integration Wix has integrated Google Search Console data into various aspects of your dashboard, making these insights more accessible and actionable from within the Wix platform.  To get started, verify your site by obtaining your meta tag from GSC and adding it to your Wix site, as described in this Help Center page . In addition to verifying your site, Wix’s GSC integration also enables instant homepage indexation and automatically submits your sitemap to Google. Wix’s Site Inspection tool Leveraging the above mentioned URL Inspection API, Wix’s Wix’s Site Inspection tool  enables site owners to monitor the status of their pages in Google’s index from within their Wix dashboard (in the left-hand navigation panel, Marketing & SEO > SEO > Site Inspection ). This is the section to head to if you want to learn about: The proportion of your pages that Google has indexed and excluded The most common status details associated with your pages An overview of your site’s usability on mobile devices The index status, status details, mobile usability, and rich results eligibility for each of your URLs The Wix SEO Dashboard View your GSC performance data (clicks and impressions) by page or query via the Wix SEO Dashboard   (in the left-hand navigation panel of the Wix dashboard, Marketing & SEO > SEO ). You can easily sort to see the greatest changes in clicks or impressions, which can help you prioritize optimizations for your most important pages. Wix Analytics Google Search Console reports GSC’s reporting capabilities are essential for every serious SEO and website owner. To put those capabilities and insights at your fingertips, Wix Analytics features the following reports, with data from GSC: Google Search Performance over Time Top Search Queries on Google Top Pages in Google Search Results Average Position in Google over Time You can visualize the data to fit your needs by viewing it as a line chart or as a table. Tap into GSC’s reporting features from Wix Analytics by going to Analytics & Reports > Reports > SEO  in your Wix dashboard. Google Search Console is your roadmap to better SEO I’ve shown you that GSC is an SEO tool unlike any other. You don’t need it for your content to rank in search and for your site to get organic traffic from Google. But if you don’t use it, you are (to an extent) driving without direction: there’s no better way to get an overview of how Google sees your site and what issues might be holding you back. Even if you don’t use Search Console for its reporting capabilities, it’s still hugely valuable as a way to communicate with Google. Need to submit a sitemap or request a re-index? GSC is your go-to. What’s more, GSC is entirely free and available to anyone who owns or manages a website. If you’re just beginning your SEO journey, Search Console is a great place to start; if you’re an SEO professional with years of experience, getting familiar with its interface and capabilities can dramatically increase your efficiency. James Clark - Web Analyst James Clark is a web analyst from London, with a background in the publishing sector. When he isn't helping businesses with their analytics, he's usually writing how-to guides over on his website Technically Product . Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Sophie Brannon Whether you work at an SEO agency or in an in-house setting, it’s vital to understand how to accurately measure the success of the work you’ve put in. Doing so can help you build trust with stakeholders, get buy-in for your proposals, and even lead to upsells and cross-sells when metrics are reported on well. Getting more granular with your analytics and basing them on specific keywords (or groups of keywords) can help you plan the campaign in greater detail—even when you’re simply tracking for internal purposes. To help you determine the specific metrics that work best for measuring your SEO success and conveying that story to stakeholders, I will explain and contextualize some fundamental keyword metrics you can use to track and measure your website’s performance. Table of contents: Organic traffic by keyword In GSC In GA4 In Wix Impressions Click-through rate Conversion and event tracking by keyword Keyword rankings Average position Keyword visibility Backlink metrics Should you report month-over-month or year-over-year? Year-over-year reporting Month-over-month reporting Free template : Download our SEO keyword performance tracker to track branded queries, see how your keywords are doing in specific positions, assess your CTR, and more. Organic traffic by keyword Organic traffic refers to the number of website visitors that found your site via a search engine (such as Google or Bing), but have not clicked on a paid ad. You may already be monitoring your site’s organic traffic as a whole, but tracking it by keyword allows you to identify which pages are actually working to attract visitors, so you can make the right strategic decisions moving forward. Takeaway : Use tools like Search Console and GA4 (more on this below) to gain detailed insights into specific search queries and the terms that drive traffic most effectively. Doing so can help you see which groups of pages and terms are performing (or underperforming), allowing you to strategize accordingly. This is particularly useful for small business owners whose SEO objective may be to be visible for a specific term or group of terms. How to check organic traffic by keyword in GSC You can evaluate your site’s organic traffic via impression and click metrics, which can be found in Google Search Console ’s Performance report. By default, the report is filtered by query, but you can also use the various filters to narrow down the report (i.e., exclude or include only specific queries that you want to drill into). Clicks and average position are a more significant metric to look at in Search Console to get an understanding of the traffic levels the site is driving. How to check organic traffic by keyword in GA4 To see organic traffic in Google Analytics 4 , you can go to the Traffic acquisition report under Life cycle > Acquisition . Google Analytics 4 offers great visualization charts and easy-to-consume data for reporting purposes, and the Traffic acquisition report is no different. The data is broken down more granularly into the following metrics: Users, sessions, engaged sessions, average engagement time per session, and engaged sessions per user. To view keyword data in Google Analytics 4, you must first connect your Search Console account (GA4 restricts the ability to see keyword data due to privacy, and this is instead replaced with “[not provided]”). By integrating Google Search Console, you will be able to access two new reports: Google Organic Search Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic (shown above). Once your Search Console integration is complete, you will need to go to Library (shown below) and publish these two new reports. Once complete, you will see a Search Console section in the left-hand navigation panel. Data may take 24–48 hours to appear. The Google Organic Search Queries report shows the queries that generated organic impressions. While this does not show a specific keyword ranking, this will give you an understanding of the amount of traffic (and therefore visibility) your site has for specific key terms and groups of terms. How to check organic traffic by keyword in Wix Wix site owners can view the Top Search Queries on Google report within Wix Analytics to identify which pages are their top performers. As you can see from the screenshot above, the report is sortable by clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position, and the data can be compared to the previous period. Impressions Impressions are triggered in Google Search Console when a user searches a query and your site is viewed anywhere in the search engine results page (SERP) for that query. This means your content can appear on page 1 or page 10 and an impression will still occur. While they do not represent organic traffic visiting your site, impressions are still a very valuable metric to monitor. Impressions offer a good understanding of your brand’s reach, how often Google displays your site in SERPs, and search demand for specific queries. You can compare datasets to gain insights into seasonality or visibility growth. You can also use impression data to identify new opportunities to improve your site’s online presence and pursue better average position for high-demand terms. Click-through rate (CTR) Click-through rate (CTR) refers to the percentage of people who’ve seen your search listing and click on it. This ratio can help you better understand how your content is performing and whether you need to improve it. CTR is an interesting metric to measure because it can be influenced by a number of factors: Average position Search demand Intent matching Title link and meta description Naturally, the higher a page ranks for a given search term, the more likely it is that the CTR will also be higher. Organic CTR for position one (on desktop search results) ranges from 47-19% , depending on the presence of rich results and other SERP features (such as images, featured snippets, etc). Tracking and optimizing your click-through rate over time (e.g., through micro conversions) can influence larger conversions on your site. Ultimately, the higher the percentage of people that visit your site from search results, the more likely you are to convert them—if they are able to find what they’re looking for. You can check your average click-through rate in Google Search Console’s Performance report. For a more granular analysis, you can view specific queries and compare associated metrics, such as clicks, impressions, and average position, to determine which pages and queries perform best and which areas you need to focus your efforts for improvement. Conversion and event tracking by keyword If your business objective is to increase online sales or leads, conversion tracking is one of the best ways to determine a campaign’s success. In Google Analytics, you can create or identify an event that is important to you and measure its growth over time. There are two different types of conversions to consider: Macro conversions — These are conversions that meet the main objectives of your website. For example, if you are managing an eCommerce site, the macro conversions are likely to be transactions and revenue. For a lead-generation site, this may be form fills, demos booked, or signups. Micro conversions — These are smaller steps that users may complete throughout their journey to convert. Examples of micro conversions include newsletter signups, viewing a set number of web pages in one session, etc. Tracking both macro and micro conversions can allow you to better understand your user journey and help you optimize it moving forward. In GA4, you can filter the Traffic acquisition report by organic, then add the “Session manual term” to sort the report and show conversions by keyword (as shown below). Alternatively, you can use Google’s Looker Studio (formerly known as Data Studio) to blend data from GA4 and GSC, pulling in your top landing pages, keyword clusters that belong to that landing page, and conversion metrics. This helps you understand which landing pages perform best from a traffic, ranking, and conversion perspective, and get a detailed view of which specific key terms are driving performance. Takeaway : Get granular with your conversion tracking to understand your user journey and how users are engaging with your content. Use this data to continuously optimize the site to improve the journey from initial visit to conversion. Don’t overcomplicate the conversion reporting when reporting to stakeholders. Focus on their core business objectives and what they want to achieve from the campaign. Keyword rankings There are many reasons why rank tracking is important for SEO . But, how much does this really determine your SEO success? Keyword rankings must be contextualized. It can be incredibly exciting to rank in position one for a core keyword, but if that term isn’t driving valuable traffic, how worthwhile is it? For example, if you’re ranking in position one for the keyword [dress], but your eCommerce site specifically sells [wedding dresses], you may attract a huge amount of irrelevant traffic (i.e., people looking for summer dresses and casual dresses, which are more common to shop for than wedding dresses). Of course, Google is very good at understanding keyword intent and ranking relevant websites, but there are always sites that slip through the algorithm. Be aware : In many cases—particularly working with small businesses—clients can be preoccupied with “being position one” for keywords that they think are the most relevant to their business. This usually comes from misinformation or a lack of understanding about the bigger picture in SEO. Nevertheless, this can end up being a challenge that agencies and freelance SEOs have to face when reporting to clients. So, how might you work around this? Here are two potential ways: Look at average position instead – Keyword ranking tools are not always accurate due to Google’s increased SERP personalization (i.e., differences in devices, location, and other variables). Looking at average position provides you with a clearer understanding where you rank, despite this personalization. This gives you a broader view of where the majority of individuals are seeing your site on search, and therefore how visible you are for certain terms. Don’t report on rankings at all — You can keep this data internally to help you benchmark performance, but focus your reporting efforts on more business-oriented metrics (like conversions, for example) as opposed to vanity metrics around ranking for a particular keyword. Average position Google’s John Mueller stated that the search engine calculates average position using real data (actual search results). This makes average position more reliable, as Google aggregates all of the different positions your content appears in to give you a more realistic description of how visible you are in SERPs. You can hear more from John Mueller on this topic in the AskGooglebot video series. Takeaway : Rankings are important to monitor as they influence the traffic a site receives and how much of the market you capture. However, if you can keep this information internally, it could help you sidestep potential friction with clients that are only interested in a vanity keyword position—this is particularly true for those who have limited understanding of SEO. If your client prefers to show keyword data, use average position data from Google Search Console for a more accurate representation. Keyword visibility Keyword visibility allows you to track how much of the market share you’ve captured based on your overall number of ranking keywords. Depending on the tool you’re using, this can be broken down by: Top three positions “Page one” positions (the first ten organic results) “Page two” positions (positions 11–20) Etc. You can monitor your keyword visibility via a variety of third-party tools, including Semrush, Ahrefs, SEOmonitor, SE Ranking, and many more. For your reference, here’s an example of a keyword visibility graph: Monitoring your keyword visibility can help inform your SEO strategy. For example, if you’re ranking for strong head terms relevant to your industry and site on page two of the SERP, then you may want to focus your efforts on optimizing that content so it can break into the top 10 results. Note : Similar to tracking individual keyword rankings, keyword visibility is not always 100% accurate—however, it does give a broader view of performance over time. Takeaway : Keyword visibility can give stakeholders a broad view of how their site is performing in search. It can be a valuable part of your strategic planning—if there are notable drops (such as from algorithm updates or website changes), keyword visibility can help you understand how your site was impacted. Backlink metrics Many SEO strategies involve earning backlinks . In order to determine the quality of a link, there are a variety of metrics available. The most popular ones are third-party, tool-based authority metrics, such as Domain Rating (DR) from Ahrefs, Domain Authority (DA) from Moz, and Authority Score (AS) from Semrush. This already causes a potential conflict if your agency uses a certain metric to measure link authority but your clients use something completely different. When reporting on your SEO success, agree with the client how link metrics should be reported in order to stay consistent before you even produce the first report. Whether this is digital PR or alternative forms of link building , reporting on links is important to justify budget spent in this area. Link metrics can help to show the value of the links gained. Some of the ways you can measure link success includes: Volume of links gained An authority metric (such as DA/DR/AS) Relevance Link type (follow or nofollow ) Placement type (i.e., whether the content is syndicated or exclusive) Your link acquisition can directly affect keyword visibility. Closely review your anchor text to identify the proportion of exact-match anchor text compared to anchor text that uses natural variations of keywords. This can help determine which type of anchor text is more effective for your site. While there are arguments for and against the use of exact-match anchors , there may be some correlation between movement for specific terms and the links and anchors chosen. Tracking this closely can help you understand the impact of your link acquisition on your campaign and on specific pages and key terms the links are targeting. Takeaway : If you can agree on a defined authority metric with the client, then reporting on this can be useful to maintain buy-in for this SEO channel. There are arguments for and against link metrics as a measurement (for example, DA can be manipulated and isn’t always a true measurement of quality), however it’s a necessary evil to quantify the success of a link building campaign. When it comes to Digital PR, more often than not, clients are looking at the publications they are gaining coverage in and less on the metrics around them. Should you report month-over-month or year-over-year? One of the most difficult decisions to make is whether to report month-over-month (MoM) or year-over-year (YoY) performance. Here, I’ll break down the pros and cons of both reporting options. Year-over-year reporting Pros Cons Facilitates more accurate comparisons because seasonal search behavior is essentially accounted for. SEO is a long-term strategy and YoY comparisons are more likely to show improvements that are a direct result of your work. Companies often set annual marketing budgets. YoY comparisons can help you lobby for a bigger budget. ​If you are working with a startup or a company that does not have historical data, it will take at least 12 months to have data to compare against. The scope is broad so it may be difficult to draw comparisons about specific SEO improvements. Month-over-month reporting Pros Cons You can report on the impact of your work over the short term, which enables you to showcase ROI sooner. You can dive into data more granularly month-to-month. ​Seasonal fluctuations can impact data accuracy—it can potentially make your performance look worse than it is. Takeaway : Discuss with the client which reporting frequency they would prefer during the initial stages and stay consistent with this reporting. Don’t be tempted to manipulate data in reports to make the numbers look better—for example, if you decide on MoM, don’t switch this to YoY when you have a low-performing month. Instead, be completely transparent with the client, convey what went wrong, and strategize on how to resolve this to improve performance the following month. Personally, I prefer YoY reporting for more accurate comparisons that mitigate fluctuations caused by seasonality. As with everything in SEO, the devil is in the details Remember that tracking and reporting are only part of your role—the other part is to create and execute a strategy based on keyword performance trends. To that end, narrowing the focus of your SEO reporting (whether internally or externally) by measuring individual keyword performance can help you to more granularly optimize a campaign. I recommend that you closely review the following metrics as part of your campaign strategy: Organic traffic by keyword Organic click-through rate by search query Overall keyword visibility Organic conversions by keyword Using these as benchmarks can help you report effectively and show growth quickly. Whether or not you actually show this data to the client will depend on their business objectives. As specific keywords can fluctuate quite dramatically, it’s important to also report on the bigger picture to ensure that your overall efforts are moving your brand in the right direction. Sophie Brannon - SEO Specialist Sophie is an SEO specialist with 7 years of agency experience. She's led strategy, implementation, and communication for local campaigns through to multi-language international campaigns. She's also an industry speaker and led the Web Almanac 2022 SEO chapter. Twitter | Linkedin