Author: Itamar Blauer Running a successful business is all about being able to identify when an opportunity is worth the investment. SEO for your business’s website is no different. For small- to medium-sized businesses operating on tight resources, this calculus is even more crucial. But, understanding what areas of your website you need to keep an eye on (and how to do so) is typically the realm of SEO experts. In this article, I will provide a framework that embraces the 80/20 rule so that you can understand the most valuable sections of your site and how to optimize them to improve your visibility in search results—without spending endless hours researching and optimizing every little detail. Table of contents: Setting realistic goals and prioritizing High impact SEO tasks for evergreen content Keyword research On-page optimization Internal linking E-E-A-T Implementing your evergreen SEO strategy Track progress with automation Keeping up-to-date with SEO trends and opportunities Setting realistic goals and prioritizing Let’s check your expectations right now: Generally speaking, you’re unlikely to rank a newly created page or website overnight. You may have lots of competitors with a stronger SEO presence and more budget, so be realistic about what you can achieve given your niche, competition, and available resources. In terms of objectives, traffic goals are often a good start. However, the reality is that you’re not going to rank all of your web pages, so focus on the most important ones to ensure that your evergreen SEO efforts are actually making the largest possible impact. For an eCommerce site, that might be your best-selling or high-margin products, or your core service pages as a services business. High impact SEO tasks for evergreen content When prioritizing SEO tasks, you have to make informed decisions to ensure you get the most use out of your time and resources—this becomes even more important if SEO isn’t something you focus on day-to-day. Here are some relatively low-effort approaches for high-impact tasks that you can implement to ensure that the content you’re creating is worth the investment. How to find keywords for evergreen content Keyword research helps you identify demand so that you can create a content strategy based on that demand. Although it’s much better to perform keyword research on a regular basis, this is something that in theory can be done once, but sets the scope of your strategy from the offset (provided that your offerings don’t change—if they do, you’ll need to perform additional keyword research). There are relatively fast and free methods to do keyword research, one of which is to leverage Google Search itself: 01. Type your core offering into Google. If you have more than one, you can simply repeat this process for each offering. Review the autosuggest results to see what keywords Google thinks are relevant. This is a great way to find long tail keyword opportunities. Long tail keywords are keywords that carry a more specific intent, which generally means less search volume but a greater conversion rate. Make sure to start/keep a list of potential topics and keywords that you discover during this process. 02. Analyze the top results for these queries. The idea here is to identify commonalities amongst the top-ranking results. As a starting point, consider: What type of keyword intent does Google seem to associate with this search? (In the example below, it is very transactional.) What keywords do the top results use in their titles? How are these keywords used? Are there any special search features in the results? For example, a shopping carousel is a telltale sign that Google thinks the query is transactional, as where a knowledge panel may suggest informational intent. Consistent keyword usage in page titles across your competitors’ content can help inform your own page titles. You can also look into the “More to ask/People also ask” section of the SERP (if it’s present for your keyword) to find additional relevant topic opportunities. Whatever type of content you decide to create, ensure that the search intent aligns with the purpose of the content. As you can often deduce what search intent Google associates with a given query, you can tailor your content to match what Google would likely expect/want to rank for that particular query. The various types of content that are typically associated with different parts of the user journey, which also generally aligns with search intent. That particular type of content (e.g., listicle, blog post, product page, etc.) is also usually aligned with what your potential customers will expect. 03. Take note of the most relevant content (from competitors in the search results). Your content should always be original, but you can still draw inspiration from what’s already out there and find ways to improve on it within your own pages. This is a manual process, but it’s also free. Keyword research tools are helpful to automate certain steps and find opportunities that you might have missed. Note: Wix users have limited free access to Semrush’s keyword research capabilities from within their Wix dashboard. Breaking past the basics: Seasonality The popularity of certain keywords might fluctuate over the course of a year. You can think more sustainably about keyword research by considering how this might affect your audience’s search behavior. For example, if you’re in the golf niche, you might want to target keywords related to equipment maintenance or training programs during the off season, for example. It’s important to remember that seasonality is still evergreen, as seasonal topics represent large, regular opportunities (e.g., Black Friday/Cyber Monday occur every year). “For businesses or websites that hold annual events around awareness days or holidays, keeping a single page live all year round is valuable. This means you don't have to create a new page every year, and you can keep users, and Google, up to date in the off season.” — Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications at Wix On-page optimization The point with on-page optimization is that it supports the content you’re creating. First and foremost, make sure the content is unique, relevant, and helps users fulfill their goals—whether that’s to buy a product, learn about your brand, or seek out other information. Once you have a list of keywords relevant to your most important offerings, it’s time to incorporate them strategically. It’s best to plan how you’ll use your keywords before the page goes live, but there are also a few on-page optimizations you can still make after publishing. Of course, there are nuances to this, but the point of evergreen SEO across this article is to be efficient and set things up well so that they can benefit you over the long term. The main on-page optimization areas involve: The page’s URL slug. A URL slug refers to the final part of the URL, which actually informs you what that specific page is about. The URL slug for this page includes the target keyword “floral wedding dresses.” Continuing from the floral wedding dresses example I started earlier, the URL slug above clearly targets the relevant keyword. It’s easy for users and search engines to understand the purpose of the page based on the URL slug alone, which is what you want to do as well. Try to keep your URL slugs short and to the point, without going overboard by adding as many keywords as you can (because that’s spammy). Title tag. Title tags help search engines understand what the page is about, and Google might also display them to users in the search results. The title tag from this SilkFred’s page is “Floral Wedding Guest Dresses,” which includes the target keyword. Like the URL slug, the title tag can be very straightforward. Notice how the exact same keywords are used for both the URL slug and the title tag. This is significant because the consistency here makes it clearer to search engines that this particular page is specifically targeting floral wedding guest dresses. Meta description. The meta description displays underneath a search result and provides potential visitors with a description of what they can expect to find if they click through to the web page. Meta descriptions can be manually set, but Google can also rewrite these (especially if a meta description hasn’t been set for a page). Meta descriptions aren’t search ranking factors, but they can influence click-through rates. Try to keep these descriptive and enticing for users to incentivize them to click on your result. Header tags. The primary purpose of headers is to help you organize your content for readers, but they also serve that same purpose for search engines as well. To that end, it’s best practice to use your most important keyword in your H1 and supporting keywords in H2s. In the example above, there is a clear H1 that also uses the same keyword as the URL slug and title tag. In addition, there are also H2s that are product names. These are relevant to the floral wedding dress category but also perform double duty as internal links to individual product pages. Images and other relevant media. Uploading optimized images is always a great idea, but it’s an absolute necessity in some industries, like eCommerce. The images above include alternative text (alt text) that describe what the image is about. As an eCommerce website, this is crucial for leveraging product photos that can be found on other places across the web, such as Google Images. And, it’s simply invaluable for many customers to help them make buying decisions. Breaking past the basics: Structured data Schema markup (which is used to communicate structured data) is a type of code that you can add to a web page to provide search engines with more context about that page. For example, you can use it to tell search engines that a certain web page is a recipe, which could make it eligible for rich results. Adding structured data to a recipe can enable search engines to show an enhanced search listing that includes star ratings, preparation time, and caloric information. Rich results are search results that include additional information (beyond the typical URL, page title, and description; as shown above). They generally feature some sort of visual enhancement or interactive features. There is relevant structured data available for many different types of content, from “how-to” articles to FAQs to product and “about” pages. Identify the ones that are likely to make the biggest impression on potential customers and add it to your content creation workflow. Note: By default, Wix site owners have access to a range of structured data markup options, some of which are automatically added when you create a certain page type (Wix Stores product pages, Wix Bookings services pages, Wix Blog posts, Wix Forum posts, and Wix Events pages). Internal linking This is the definition of the 80/20 rule: You’re already creating the content. Next, all you need to do is funnel the SEO equity from the backlinks you’ve already earned across your content. This helps potential customers navigate through the buyer journey and helps Google understand the importance of your different pages and their relationship to one another. The easiest way to approach internal links is by simply linking relevant pages together. For example, an eCommerce category page will link to products within that category. Whatever your most important pages are, try to include them within the navigation bar in your website’s header. That way, they’re constantly accessible to visitors. For eCommerce websites, this might be your highest-selling/margin category pages. For services businesses, this might be your most popular service page(s). Breaking past the basics: Topic clusters When it comes to blog content, link relevant content together and focus on what would be contextually valuable to your site visitors. Topic clusters are a sophisticated, widely accepted strategy that can help you stay organized while improving your topical authority. E-E-A-T Over the last few years, Google has been raving about E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. This is essentially how websites can convince users (and Google) that they’re the real deal. That means you need to think about whether your content displays these traits—not just for Google, but for your target audience. You can convey E-E-A-T on your website by featuring a thorough “About” page that covers how long you’ve been in business and showcases your team. If you have a blog, displaying authors on blog posts and creating author bio pages can also help you show off your credibility. And, you can also provide your contact details to show that you’re a legitimate business. E-E-A-T can happen off of your website too. If you are linked to/mentioned on other websites via quotes, bylines, as well as expert interviews, or podcasts, those sources can provide strong signals to Google about your credibility within your niche. Breaking past the basics: Structured data E-E-A-T can be strengthened with structured data. On blog posts, for example, you can use BlogPosting or Article schema, incorporating an Author field which covers who wrote the piece. Within your structured data, you can provide more context and E-E-A-T signals by using the about tag to link together concepts and topics that your content is about. In the example above, I used structured data to associate the term “SEO” with the Wikipedia page for search engine pptimization. Implementing your evergreen SEO strategy Prioritization is essential for an effective evergreen SEO strategy, otherwise you’ll end up focusing on the wrong things or allocating more resources than you need to. Which tasks and areas of your website you’ll prioritize will vary depending on your industry. While the homepage is typically important for just about every type of website, websites in different industries often have different needs. Here are the most common SEO focuses for some common types of businesses: Local business — Service and location pages, as well as navigation menus Online store — Category and product pages Personal professional page — Portfolio section Blog — Blog posts (prioritize each blog post as that is the crux of your website) These are some of the more common niches, but for other types of sites, identify the main thing that attracts visitors to your site and prioritize those. Remember that the best practices from the high-impact SEO tasks section still apply for these page types. Track progress with automation You’re already investing resources into an SEO strategy, so why not track to see how it’s performing over time? You want to see if your “20%” effort is actually getting you “80%” of the way towards having an optimized website that performs for your business. Many content management systems have their own built-in reporting/automation. Wix site owners have access to traffic data via Wix Analytics, and those that have a GSC account can link their Wix account for additional metrics from Google Search. Keeping up-to-date with SEO trends and opportunities For better or worse, the job’s never finished. SEO evolves frequently and there are always new things you can learn and implement. However, you might not have the time to delve into social media and/or read every new blog or documentation that Google releases. You need to be efficient at identifying what’s changing and how it impacts your website. There are a couple of ways to do this: Set Google Alerts for related terms in your niche. Get Twitter notifications for official Google accounts. Read authoritative publications dedicated to SEO news, such as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Journal—although the content they publish is written for full-time SEO practitioners, their stories can help you better understand the changes Google makes. Evergreen SEO is effective, but eventually you’ll still need to adapt The guidance above can help your pages rank and may even enable you to sustain those rankings for a very long time, depending on your competition. But, nothing lasts forever, so be prepared to revisit this workflow when your industry changes, new competitors enter your market, or you introduce new business offerings. For the best results, take comprehensive notes so that you can iterate on my tips to form your own SEO strategy, which will have the benefit of your experience (as the SEO or business owner) and will already be tailored for your business model. Itamar Blauer - SEO & Growth Marketing Leader Itamar Blauer is an SEO trainer, speaker, author, and host of the "SEO Unplugged" podcast, sharing tips and case studies across various SEO topics. Twitter | Linkedin

Updated: May 24, 2023 Author: Crystal Carter Website security is important for search engine optimization and search rankings because “Google's core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience” and because security optimizations can have a holistic impact on your SEO performance. Improvements in this area tend to provide domain-wide SEO gains (rather than page by page), and can support your overall SEO efforts in five important ways: 01. Better site-wide alignment with Google’s ranking systems 02. Improved connection time between websites 03. Improved connection time across your site’s network 04. Building and maintaining backlink value 05. Improved trust signals for users What is website security in SEO? Speaking broadly, website security can cover many specialisms, including server configuration and managing hacking attacks. For the purposes of SEO, one should focus on website security elements that impact the connections to a website, the links within a website, and transactions taking place on a website. Taking this approach helps keep users safe and sends signals to Google that can influence rankings. How proper website security can improve SEO In addition to keeping your site’s data secure, robust website security can benefit your search engine visibility in the following ways: 01. Better alignment with Google ranking systems In 2014, Google announced that it wanted to bring in “HTTPS Everywhere” to help users access the internet safely via more trustworthy websites. In line with that, it also introduced security as a search ranking factor. Google then incorporated site security into its overall Page Experience ranking system and created the HTTPs Report in Google Search Console to help users monitor performance. Secure websites are part of the Helpful Content Ranking System In 2023, Google updated its guidance, designating security as a consideration for the Helpful Content Ranking System. Within its Page Experience guidance, Google explains that secure websites “generally align with success in search ranking“ and those creating and maintaining websites should ask if “pages [are] served in a secure fashion”. When it comes to ranking on Bing, a poor level of security on your website may even block your site from being crawled and thus eligible for indexing. The Bing webmaster guidelines explain that “Bingbot has stopped crawling sites that only support RC4 cipher suites since Autumn 2015, as it has multiple vulnerabilities and [sic] deemed insecure.” So, when you make an improvement to your website security, you are adding signals that may be beneficial for ranking for every single page on your website. If you have a site with significant security issues, then improvements here may fall into the category of “quick wins” in that you may see some ranking improvements almost immediately after the updates have been made. 02. Faster connection time between websites Top websites have top security. Teams at Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other high-profile websites have adopted and prioritized website security frameworks that help them reduce data transfer latency and vulnerability across their infrastructure. Using modern website security protocols like TLS 1.3, QUIC, and HTTP/3 allows them to deliver safe, secure experiences for their users. If a user clicks a link on a high-security site to navigate to another site, when the servers make the connection, they will first try to do so via the same, high level of security. If this is not possible, they will try to connect via the next best option, and so on until they find the best connection. This means that if you have better security then connections can be made more quickly with more websites. This speed advantage can contribute to shorter page loading times between websites for organic traffic, social, and PPC as part of well-balanced digital marketing activity. For instance, I have observed that (for an average website) clicks from Facebook ads can load two to six times slower than the site average. This can be a real challenge for people who are trying to use Facebook as an advertising method or as a regular stream of traffic to their site and can have a knock-on effect for brand visibility and, thus, organic growth as well. 03. Faster connection time across your site’s network Modern websites very rarely exist on a single domain. Although people generally talk in terms of single websites, in actuality, what users often see is a patchwork collection of content coming from an assortment of websites, applications, iframes, widgets, and embeds, rendered on a single URL. For instance, a typical blog post on a site could potentially include content written on the blog itself, images served via a CDN, and embedded content from third-party platforms like YouTube or Twitter. Domain-wide, this network could include subdomains, ticketing apps, CRMs, social media feeds, live chat, review widgets and more. Looking in the Chrome DevTools Network panel, you can see a sample of the security protocols and configurations that different elements present on a single page. Each of the component parts of the website will have its own security setup. And, every time a user loads a page containing these elements, servers will need to make fresh, secure connections. When the level of security is more consistent, users experience fewer delays during loading and using the full mix of elements across a site. Since site speed is part of Google’s Page Experience ranking system, efforts here can contribute to better SEO outcomes for the site overall (particularly if you’re in a highly competitive niche). 04. Build and maintain link value with HTTPS links If a site has a valid SSL certificate, then connections to the site should always be made via the https:// link and not via http:// link. With regard to the overall security of the site, this is beneficial because “data is encrypted in transit in both directions: going to and coming from the origin server” which can reduce vulnerability to cyber attacks. HTTPS consistency has additional SEO benefits in terms of crawlability and backlink value. HTTPS internal link hygiene improves crawling Managing this does not need to involve sophisticated SEO tools, but maintaining good internal link hygiene can benefit SEO by: Reducing risky, unsafe connections to your site Reducing unnecessary redirects from the server that cause measurable page load delays and make crawling less efficient To review your internal links, you can run a simple site crawl using a tool, like Screaming Frog, and then update any links that are not https:// links. HTTPS backlinks add more value Ensuring that all your backlinks are pointing directly to the https:// URLs on your site can help increase the value of backlinks to your site by: Giving you more actionable data for SEO reporting because links are attributed to the appropriate channels, rather than being designated as “direct” in Google Analytics Concentrating the value of backlinks on the https:// link rather than splitting the value with a redirected link. To reduce the number of http:// backlinks to your site, I recommend that focus initially on the links in your immediate control. It is not uncommon for websites that have been around for 10 years or more to have old http:// backlinks around the web. While you may wish to take steps to contact external site owners to update these links, in my experience, the process can be highly time intensive. To save time, I generally start with all of the social media profiles, directories, citations, and the Google Business Profiles that our brand maintains, and ensure that each of them is pointing to the secure link. It’s also a good idea to ensure that the teams that are actively distributing content (via PR or social media, for example) are doing so using the correct https:// link. 05. Improve trust signals for users Users may not even be able to access sites with poor security because they are blocked or discouraged by search engines, social media, and cloud hosting providers. If users are getting these warnings for your site, then security is critical to your SEO success and to the value of your brand overall. Websites with these issues should be working to improve security as a matter of urgency. Which security optimizations impact SEO? Many believe that if you add an SSL to your site, you are fully secured—this is not the case. Though SSL is an important step, there are many more website security improvements that can affect SEO, such as: Improving the quality of your SSL certificate chain to reduce verification delays Enabling HTTP3 protocols Reducing access to unsecured http connections Upgrading to TLS 1.3 All this to say that security should be a core consideration when you are maintaining or building a website. Depending on the website configuration, site managers and SEOs can work with certificate authorities, server teams, hosting providers and developers to implement a suite of changes to improve security. Alternatively, when selecting a managed CMS partner, SEOs should choose a website provider that offers best-in-class website security with ongoing maintenance maintenance and support. Web security at Wix In Wix’s case, all users are supported by a dedicated security team made of industry-leading experts. These experts regularly test site infrastructure with external, independent researchers through initiatives, such as the Bug Bounty Program, and are constantly monitoring and optimizing our security solutions. Wix users can get insights into their security framework by accessing the Uptime & Security Report. However you choose to host your site, prioritizing security can have real benefits to your overall SEO activity. Beyond search visibility, it also helps to protect your users’ data, which can serve to build trust and turn those users into customers. Crystal Carter - Head of SEO Communications, Wix Crystal is an SEO & digital marketing professional with over 15 years of experience. Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds, and Tomy. An avid SEO communicator, her work has been featured at Google Search Central, Brighton SEO, Moz, DeepCrawl, Semrush, and more. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Matthew L. Kaminsky Why do you want a website? ‘Just because’ can’t be an answer here. One of the most important steps of setting up a website is to think about the end goal. If creating a website is a journey, you’re likely to end up going nowhere at all if you don't also focus on the destination. Considering your business goals and objectives will help you make better decisions when it comes to building and running your website. This process may seem challenging at first, but if you start with your company goal, the path becomes clear. From there, you can figure out your digital marketing goals and, more specifically, your website goals. What are your business goals? Having a website is a business move. For it to make sense, it needs to be tied into your business objectives. In other words, your website strategy needs to be linked to your overarching business goals. Defining your unique company goals Before jumping right into your website goals, it’s important to consider what your company is trying to achieve. Your company goals are the broader, desired outcomes that you want to accomplish at some point in the future. By definition, company goals are company-specific and mean different things for different businesses. Some examples of company goals are: to increase revenue. improve customer interaction. become an industry leader. Whatever your goals are, write them down. Moving forward, every marketing decision, strategy and objective should connect back to these goals, including your website goals. Once you’ve set your overall goal, you can think about your marketing efforts and how they contribute to that goal. Each organization has different needs. You need to brainstorm how you can use marketing to achieve your company’s headline goal. Then, you can set your marketing goals. Your marketing goals differ depending on the nature of the work you do, your resources and the maturity of your company. If your business is relatively new, you might want to start by improving brand awareness. If your business is already up and running, you’ll probably want to increase sales or generate more leads. More established businesses might have more specific goals, such as expanding to new markets, reaching new audience segments or launching new products. Setting your website goals Think of your website goals as a way to reach your business goals. Website goals are the actions you want users to take on your website before they leave. To set these goals, figure out what you would want your site visitors to do to help you achieve your business goals. For example, if you want to improve your brand awareness, your website goal could be to improve engagement with brand content. If you want to generate more leads, your website goal could be to increase contact form submissions. While only you can determine the appropriate goals for your website, keep in mind that your goals need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely). Who is your target audience? After developing your website goals, consider your ideal visitor. Why? Your business caters to a specific set of people and, in the same sense, your website isn’t meant for every demographic. In fact, you could have the best site with the greatest product or service, but if your target audience isn’t discovering your site, it won’t meet the goals you have set. This means that your website and its content need to appeal to your target audience—to attract the right audience, you need to start by understanding and defining who they are in the first place. Building a profile of your target audience is important, but how do you actually do it? It’s all about asking the right questions: What are your users interested in? What motivates them? How do they search the web? What are their challenges? Once you put these key pieces of information together, you can build on that to provide content and services that are relevant to them, address their needs and ultimately provide value. Start by researching and compiling data about your potential (or existing) customers. Your research should focus on these five elements: Goals and values Sources of information Demographic information Challenges and pain points Browsing habits Goals and values Your users’ needs and motivations should be the main focus. If you are offering a product or service, it’s because it brings something of value to your customers and fulfills their wants and needs. To identify their goals and values, ask yourself, “What is my customer trying to accomplish (goals)?” and “What is most crucial to them (values)?” Make a list of the answers you come up with and identify the ones that are relevant for your business. This information helps you understand what to communicate to your audience. Let’s say you own a protein shake business and one of your target customers is Jane, the gym enthusiast. You want to know Jane’s motivations and interests in order to understand how your company can help them. Based on your research, Jane's goals and values are as follows: By tying these pieces of information together, it’s safe to assume that Jane will probably be interested in hearing about the special offer on your new line of vegan protein shakes, for example. Sources of information Creating an audience profile isn’t just about asking the right questions, it’s also about looking in the places (both online and in-person) where your customers get their information. To determine the “where” of your customers, think about: Where to find them Where do they like to gather? Is it at a forum, a fair, a club, a conference? Are they members of a Facebook group, a professional association? Can you think of any special events that they attend? What online content they read Are there any particular blogs that they enjoy reading? What is their go-to media outlet? Are they subscribed to any online publications or magazines? Which influencers they follow Who do they look up to in the industry? Who do they consider thought leaders? On which social media platforms are these influencers most active? Identifying where you are most likely to find your ideal customer will help you know exactly where and how to communicate. For example, Jane, our gym enthusiast, might be an avid follower of yoga communities on Instagram, have a subscription to Shape and attend a local gym twice a week. This could give you ideas on where to place your ads. Demographic information Figuring out your ideal customers’ demographic information can give them an identity and shape them into actual, relatable people. How much information you want to take into consideration is up to you. Some of the usual facts to consider include: Name Age Gender Location Marital status Income Occupation Putting some flesh on the bones of your persona not only helps you craft content that truly resonates with your audience, it also steers your marketing efforts in the right direction. Take the location of your ideal customers, for example: Are you talking to a local crowd or an international one? The answer to that question will determine how you build your website to cater to the needs of your different audiences. Nothing stops you from diving deeper into your persona’s DNA. If you want to be creative, think about notable quotes, psychological traits, everyday activities or any detail about their background (personal and professional) that defines them. Take Jane, the gym enthusiast—after some research you might describe them like this: Jane is 30 years old, unmarried and has no children. They live in Oakland, CA with their dog. After earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, they are now a PR manager for a tech company. With 5 years of work experience under their belt, they make close to $80,000 per year. They are health-conscious but too lazy to cook. They live a busy life, are often on-the-go and manage their stress with trips to the gym. They get inspiration for their fitness routines from Instagram and post their achievements there, too. Challenges and pain points What keeps your persona up at night? What are they struggling with? Just like everybody else, your persona encounters challenges in life that they want to overcome. Identifying their frustrations and problems allows you to understand how you can help them with your products or services. Our example persona's main challenges and pain points might look a bit like this: Once you have listed all of your personas’ issues, you can directly address them with your messaging and explain how you can help solve them. Browsing behavior What devices do your customers have access to? In which context do they browse the web: from their office, at home or on their commute? How often do they go on the Internet? These questions help to understand device and internet usage, which, in turn, helps to determine where your customers see your content. In our scenario, Jane’s environment could be their office, mostly on their desktop but also on their smartphone when commuting to work. For you, this means that you need to make sure the mobile version of your site provides a seamless experience. Once you have created detailed profiles of your ideal visitors and brought them to life with a name and a personality of their own, it’s time to align your site with their needs and present them with relevant content. By establishing a realistic list of goals and measurable objectives, as well as always keeping your ideal visitor in mind, you’ll greatly increase your chances of online success. Matthew Kaminsky - Wix SEO expert and online instructor Matthew is responsible for SEO education initiatives at Wix, helping people increase their sites’ visibility on search engines with SEO. Twitter | Linkedin

Carly Ellis | 2 min This post was last updated on May 03, 2023. Video Transcript How to choose the right domain Having the right domain name helps visitors find you online, adds credibility to your brand and makes your site look more professional. There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing your domain name. I’m Carly and that’s what we’re going to talk about in this video. First things first, make it memorable. Look for domain names that are short….easy to remember, spell and pronounce. This is key for word-of-mouth marketing so visitors can find your site when searching for it. Second, pick a domain name that includes your brand or something close to it - this will help strengthen your brand identity. Third - You want to avoid domain names that are ‘keyword-rich’ or simply too long. Take ‘Best-Plant-Shop-Miami Dot Com.’ In the past, this may have been considered good practice, but today people and search engines view these types of domain names negatively. Instead keep it short, catchy and brandable. Fourth, avoid acronyms, numbers and hyphens. Search engines don’t like them and frankly it makes it difficult for people to spell. Fifth - you’ll want to check to make sure your domain name doesn’t infringe on any competitors before purchasing. Research copyright databases and competitor domain names to be sure you aren’t using a similar name, even indirectly. This can cause customer confusion and in some cases, can escalate to lawsuits. (and we don’t want that happening.) Last but not least, choose the right suffix or extension for your domain. .com is the most common but there are plenty others like .org or .net. Adding a local extension like .fr is a great way to boost local SEO. But if you’re targeting an international audience, stick to a widely used extension like .com Use these guidelines to choose a professional domain name that can evolve and grow with you. Once you connect your domain, you’ll be able to instantly get your site listed on Google search results. That’s all for today. Again, I’m Carly - thanks for tuning in and...We’ll see you next time.

Author: Mordy Oberstein While analyzing the overall impact of a core update can be valuable, not enough attention is given to case-based analysis of content that is both negatively and positively impacted by an update. In this post, I’ll go through just a few of the many pages and keywords I analyzed after Google’s May 2022 core update finished rolling out. I’ll explore how the content and formatting of various pages may have impacted their rankings in Google Search. As a result, perhaps we can get a glimpse into some of the things Google looks at when ranking pages after an algorithm update. Case analysis of Google’s May 2022 core update Before we dive in, I want to state something clearly from the outset: What’s to come isn’t a judgment of any page or site. Every page has its strengths and weaknesses. All I’m aiming to do is showcase some of the ways Google might be interpreting what is (or isn’t) on a page. Secondly, the analysis to come is my best understanding of the content-related causality behind a page gaining or losing rank. I’m not Google and can’t say that the analysis is the absolute reason why a page performed the way it did as a consequence of the May update. Further, there can be many issues that impact a page’s ranking (not just one). As GSQi founder Glenn Gabe often mentions, it pays to take a “kitchen sink” approach with a core update and attempt to improve the page in as many ways as possible—you never really know what will move the needle. Lastly, I want to thank Semrush for giving me access to their data so that I could dive into the ranking changes seen during the update. Shall we begin? 01. A little context goes a long way Keyword: "Electronic check deposit" Improved rank: WellBy Financial Lost rank: Chase Top site: Wells Fargo Striking a balance between commercially oriented copy and informational copy on a landing page is hard. There’s a natural urge and, I would say, anxiety about ensuring the page converts. After all, it’s a landing page, that’s why the page exists. However, balancing the amount of content that urges conversion with context (i.e., informational content) is becoming increasingly more important for a variety of reasons. Especially in the context of Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics, which this particular keyword falls under. What we have here (with the ranking trends for this keyword) is what I believe to be a classic example of getting the balance right between informational copy and commercial copy on a YMYL page. Let’s start with the Wells Fargo page, which began to rank consistently at the #1 position on the SERP with the May update. It’s not a very dynamic page, it’s not a very complex page, and it’s not even a very wordy page. However, what it does do well—even with its relatively light content (which just goes to show you it’s not the number of words per se but what you do with them that matters)—is offer users the information they need, even within the commercial copy itself. Take the example below. The page uses marketing language like “It’s handy,” but then directly supplements that copy with informational content: In my opinion, not only does this make the marketing copy more potent (as you’re not just making claims but backing them up), it also helps the user understand the process of making deposits via this app. That’s important context right there. It’s context that is then reinforced by a series of tabs that walks the user through the process of making an electronic deposit. This is done via the use of purely informational text along with supporting images. The content here helps align expectations and potentially alleviates user pain points around the uncertainty that comes from making a deposit via an app. Again, it’s not complicated, it’s just effective. Compare this to the page that lost rank positions from Chase. The Chase page formats itself similar to the Wells Fargo page and begins with some marketing points atop of what aims to be informational copy: The devil is in the details here. While the format matches the Well Fargo page, the copy doesn’t. The Wells Fargo page told you about a lack of fees, immediate confirmation, and so on. In contrast, the informational copy on the Chase page doesn’t really provide much context at all here. The same holds true for the “How to get started” section: Again, there’s a very similar structure to the Wells Fargo page but without the level of detail needed to support it. The Wells Fargo page presented images to help the user understand how the app works and used text to offer a level of detail that addresses potential pain points: for example, the page lets users know they will get an on-screen confirmation when making a deposit via the app. The Chase page doesn’t offer the same level of context and support. That contextualization is really important because, again, this is a YMYL topic and it should clearly explain what the user is walking into. Now, let’s take the page from WellBy Financial that gained ranking via the update. To me, this page falls right between the Wells Fargo and Chase pages. It offers a bit more context than the Chase page and is wordier than the Wells Fargo page but the level of contextualization falls a bit short. Like the Wells Fargo pages, the marketing copy provides detailed information. Below, you can see that the WellBy Financial page gives specific information on when a deposit will be made available. At the same time, I felt the page could have done better at showing how the process actually works (the way the Wells Fargo page does): While the page does include an embedded video, both the video and the step-by-step content on the page itself aren't very explicit about showing how the process actually works. So again, this page, to me at least, falls somewhere between the Wells Fargo and Chase pages—which is literally where it ranks. The lesson: You don’t need to do a lot to offer informational content that explicitly contextualizes the product or service that you’re offering. Even a small amount of content can go a long way towards offering the user a more helpful experience. For YMYL content especially, that information can pay off when trying to rank a page. 02. Content accuracy is key Keyword: “Mild bipolar disorder” Improved rank: National Institute of Mental Health Lost rank: VeryWell Mind Top sites: Mayo Clinic, WebMD, Cleveland Clinic When it comes to such an important query as the one represented here, details matter and they matter a lot. Nuance is always important but even more so for a very sensitive health topic. I think what we have here is a case where Google discovered a page that didn’t handle the nuance for a sensitive YMYL query well enough and removed it from page one of the SERP. To start, there is a commonality in how the top pages (all of which show no changes in rank position during the recorded period) deal with the topic of “mild bipolar disorder.” Specifically, they don’t take a hardline stance on whether cyclothymia is a mild form of bipolar disorder. The Cleveland Clinic indicates that cyclothymia is “often considered a milder form” of the disorder, but does not conclusively define it as such: The Mayo Clinic refers to it as a “related disorder”: WebMD qualifies the relationship between bipolar disorder and cyclothymia by indicating that “many experts” (but not all) consider the latter to be a mild form of the disorder: Now, compare that to how VeryWell Mind, a page that no longer ranks on page one of the SERP following the update, speaks to the same topic: What the page essentially did here is claim that cyclothymia and bipolar disorder are equivalent in that cyclothymia is a milder form of the disorder. Whereas the top-ranking pages point to the possible distinction between bipolar disorder and cyclothymia, the VeryWell Mind page seems to equate them. That’s a very big problem from an accuracy point of view on what is already a very complex and sensitive topic. It could be that the VeryWell Mind page is trying to use the words “known as” in order to make a distinction between the two disorders, but that’s not how it comes off, and even if so, the distinction should be clearer. That may be especially true because the subheading of the page refers to cyclothymia as “The Condition Commonly Called Bipolar III.” None of the top-ranking pages mentioned above refer to cyclothymia as bipolar III. In fact, on a page dedicated to the bipolar spectrum, WebMD clearly indicates that this categorization is very much unofficial: So, what is very much unofficial labeling is treated by the VeryWell Mind page as official. While you could make the argument that the language differences here are very subtle, the gap left by the lack of nuance is huge. For this kind of query, the level of nuance has to be entirely accurate and it would seem Google thinks it’s not on the VeryWell Mind page. There’s another issue with the page here and that’s how it deals with the symptoms of cyclothymia. See how it just rattles them off: The danger here is that, without any context, it’s very easy for a person to look at this list and make their own diagnosis. How many of us are at times very irritable or feel tired and worn out? There needs to be context here. That’s why I think the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) page saw a ranking boost relative to the loss seen by the VeryWell Mind page. The NIMH doesn’t do the greatest job of distinguishing between bipolar disease and cyclothymia being an official type of the disorder. However, the page is excellent at giving the associated symptoms of the disorder some context (which is why I think it ranks higher than the VeryWell Mind page but lower than the other sites despite the NIMH being a .gov site). First and foremost, the NIMH page tells you that the associated symptoms are very different than what the average person experiences: As you can see above, the page also tries to somewhat define the symptoms so they are not totally abstract. The NIMH page then qualifies and further explains how the symptoms play out in the copy that follows the table above: This is in very sharp contrast to the listing of the symptoms shown on the VeryWell Mind page and I think Google was quite aware of this difference. The lesson: The margin for error goes way down when you start dealing with highly sensitive health queries. Google wants all of the I’s dotted and T’s crossed—this case being a great example. This applies even to an incredibly strong and generally very comprehensive site like VeryWell Mind. 03. Go beyond the surface of search intent Keyword: “Nerve pain in lower leg” Improved rank: Penn Medicine Lost rank: Lone Star Neurology This is an interesting case because you have that classic inverse relationship between the two pages, as if one page replaced the other in their respective positions on the SERP. Let me start by saying that I think both of the pages here have issues (as well as strengths, of course) that prevent them from ranking in the top five on the SERP. While there are a lot of things to focus on with these particular pages (a reminder that it’s very often not “one thing” when it comes to rank loss/gains), I’d like to specifically examine an important point of contrast: how one page makes the health content accessible to all and the other doesn’t—this is especially crucial in verticals like, but not limited to, health. For sensitive topics such as health, ensuring that your content is eye-level is really important for users and search engines. The query here, around nerve pain in the lower leg, naturally and easily segues into complex terminology around the human nervous system. As a matter of targeting intent (in that the query here is probably not looking for a medical journal), it’s important not to get lost in medical jargon. Look at how the page that went up in rank (University of Pennsylvania) considers this by starting its content with a definition: The author knows they are going to have to address the diagnosis, sciatica, but puts every user on equal ground by starting off with a definition. The page from Lone Star Neurology similarly starts off speaking at eye-level: It addresses the fact that the nervous system is complex and is written in a very accessible manner. However, the rest of the page takes a more formal turn when discussing the various causes of nerve pain in one’s leg. When discussing radiculopathy the page describes it as an issue with “nerve roots of the lumbar or sacral spine.” I personally have no idea what the nerve roots of the lumbar or sacral spine actually are. This, I think, is part of the problem here. Again, both pages have some real strengths and flaws but if I had to define the fundamental difference between the two, it’s how they are able (or not able) to speak to users in a digestible manner. The lesson: Intent is more than serving the right kind of content. It’s more than giving the user an informational page when an informational page is needed. Intent deals with how usable a piece of content is to a given type of user. In this case, the content may be quite accurate or scientific but it is not usable to the average person in the same way as content that ranks further up the SERP. 04. Include relevant topics Keyword: “Impingement of shoulder” Improved rank: MercyHealth Lost rank: Pinnacle Orthopaedics Top site: OrthoInfo (Note, this site is represented both by the green and brown lines as Google replaced the URL with a trailing slash with the same URL without the trailing slash) For a long time, I’ve talked about the notion that including certain topics or subtopics on a page enables the content to rank as it aligns with how Google profiles the topic. That is, if Google is to think of a page as both comprehensive and relevant, then it may need to address specific topics. In this case, I think the page from Pinnacle Orthopaedics would have done well if it had addressed the symptoms of shoulder impingement. In many ways, the Pinnacle Orthopedics page is higher quality than the one on the MercyHealth site that saw a rank increase (on May 26th this page began to rank among the top 20 as shown by the orange line in the graph above). As you can see below, the Pinnacle Orthopaedics page starts off providing context around the injury, as any health page should (at least, in my opinion): The content is eye-level, it’s very well written, and it makes for a high-quality page. Why then did the page lose rank for the keyword? One of the issues I see with this page when compared to other content that ranks on the SERP is that it simply doesn’t address a very important component of the topic: symptoms. While the page goes into really strong detail around how the injury can come about, it simply doesn’t talk about the symptoms of shoulder impingement. Unfortunately for this page, this means that it might be viewed as less relevant to the keyword in the eyes of Google. Conversely, the MercyHealth page, which (in my opinion) is not as strong of a page as the one from Pinnacle Orthopaedics, does cover symptoms. I’m not saying that the MercyHealth page is not good; it does a very nice job of explaining what shoulder impingement is: However, it simply lacks the level of detail and nuance seen on the Pinnacle Orthopaedics page. Just compare how the two pages handle the causality of shoulder impingement. Above, I showed how the Pinnacle Orthopaedics page went into great detail around the various types of sports movements that can cause the injury, even listing the specific names of swimming strokes that produce shoulder problems. Compare that to how the MercyHealth page discusses the same thing; it's clear that Pinnacle Orthopedic’s content is better: This leads me to think that the reason (or one of the reasons) why the MercyHealth page saw ranking gains during the update is that it is more complete from a topic perspective (in that it includes copy around symptoms). With that, the page from OrthoInfo, which has been consistently ranking at the top of the SERP, offers the best of both words and then some. Like the Pinnacle Orthopaedics page, the content from OrthoInfo starts by giving the users context around the injury, including anatomy: Like the MercyHealth page, symptoms are covered here just with a bit more detail: What differentiates the page (to me), is that OrthoInfo gives a 360-degree view of the topic from a user-centric point of view. The content here walks users through factual information (as the other pages do) but also gives you a lot more about the treatment of the injury. Take a look at how the page explains the doctor’s examination, including the imaging tests that come along with it: From a user’s point of view, you really get a more holistic understanding of the injury and of how the injury relates to your individual experience (as in, what treatment is going to entail for you). It makes sense that this content would rank at the top of the SERP consistently when you compare it to the other pages discussed above. The lesson: Sometimes, it can be really important to ensure you have the appropriate topical coverage on the page. As seen here, covering a topic comprehensively and then some can, to a degree, outperform content that might be more detailed but lacks the right topical inclusions. The real lesson with Google’s core updates The little things do matter. When it comes to meeting the right user intent, the details can play a big role. In fact, the details are often what separate a page that merely ranks from one that serves as a cornerstone for a site’s traffic (and perhaps conversions). I hope you’ve seen here that putting in the extra effort and going the extra mile can be the difference between ranking above the fold on page one of the SERP and not even appearing on the first page. When it comes to content, most definitely sweat the details. Mordy Oberstein - Head of SEO Branding, Wix Mordy is the Head of SEO Branding at Wix. Concurrently he also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is one of the organizers of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Maddy Osman This post was last updated on April 28, 2023. Content marketing is powerful. Over the years, it has become an increasingly effective way to drive traffic to your website and add prospects to your sales funnel. But, it’s not enough to randomly write blog articles without a strategy. Approaching content marketing without a plan will ultimately lead to wasted time. The good news? With just a little planning and some resources, you can create blogs that help your brand reach its intended audience. In this guide, we’ll walk you through each of the steps necessary for success, including: Setting content marketing goals Creating a system for measuring goals Defining your user persona Creating an editorial calendar Creating detailed briefs Doing keyword research Creating content Publishing and promoting content Updating content 01. Set content marketing goals You don’t want to start running without a destination in mind. That's why it’s a good idea to kick off your content marketing strategy by taking the time to set goals. Specifically, this involves answering questions like, “What do we want users to do after reading our content?” Most business owners want conversions or sales as a direct result of their marketing and SEO efforts. But content marketing should address users at every stage of the buyer’s journey: Awareness Consideration Decision Ideally, you should have content aimed at each stage. But, you can also look at these stages to figure out where you can add content to best serve your website. Content marketing can also address needs beyond the traditional sales funnel, such as: Establishing branding Showcasing expertise on a topic Addressing customer questions Telling your brand story Increasing your online presence Figure out how you want your content to help your business and create a plan around that purpose. Plus, you can supplement that goal with calls to action that influence users to: Book a sales call/meeting Get in touch through a contact form Sign up for an email newsletter Make a purchase 02. Create a system to measure goals Once you’ve defined the most important goals for your content marketing strategy, it’s time to determine how to measure your progress. Start by first determining the specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that show progress towards your SEO goals. These may include search engine performance metrics such as : Organic traffic Bounce rate Conversion rate Click-through rate The best way to measure these goals is to install Google Analytics and/or GA4. Google Analytics is an entirely free analytics tool that you can add to your Wix website. It will help you measure each of these content marketing KPIs and so much more. If you want to get the most out of it, check out the free certification program at Google Analytics Academy. 03. Define your target audience If you’re an established brand, you should already have some target audience information in your brand documentation. If not, it’s something you’ll need to figure out to define your content strategy. Without goals and a clear audience, you’re wasting your time on content marketing because your efforts are not exact enough to make a difference. Before moving forward with specific topics, you need to be able to answer the questions, “What do we want to happen after visitors interact with our content?” and, on a related note, “Who is our ideal visitor?” If you have Google Analytics or GA4 up and running, the dashboard is a great place to start your target audience research. Wix users can also use Wix Analytics reports for details about the users currently accessing your website. 04. Create a content calendar A content calendar is a great way to set expectations, develop a workflow, and track progress towards content goals. Plus, it helps you plan holiday and evergreen content, so you’re not scrambling at the last minute. Try to focus on what’s realistic in terms of producing content versus your absolute ideal situation. What can you and your team handle in a given month? When are drafts due? When will you publish content? Be honest with yourself as you answer these questions so you can develop a regular schedule. Consistency is one of the most critical elements of a content strategy. Your content calendar will look different depending on your goals and how your team works best. You can create a content calendar with a system you’re already using for project and task management. But, don’t go out of your way to use a new tool if you can avoid it, especially if you’re just getting started. If you don’t have a system you can adapt to creating a content calendar, here are some simple but effective suggestions: Create a Google Sheet coding different types of content with different colored backgrounds, using tabs organized by month. HubSpot has an example content calendar you can use for free. Use Google Calendar to set due dates and reminders for planned content. Choose a third-party tool to plan content marketing efforts if you’re looking for a more robust solution. Whatever tool you pick, make sure to set specific due dates for each step of the process, and hold yourself and your team members accountable. Remember: Content isn’t necessarily just blogs—think about complementary social media posts, emails, and additional content assets that may suit your goals and audience, this can include white papers, e-books, podcasts, and webinars. 05. Create detailed briefs for each topic To coordinate each post and set yourself up for success, you should create a blog template with key areas to define: Topic name Category Keywords to target Word count Resources to reference Stage of the buyer’s journey These sections create parameters for you (or your content writer) to follow and help keep the content organized. When you define the stage of the buyer’s journey, you create a purpose for your content. You’ll write a post intended to increase awareness about a product or service differently than content aimed at the decision to buy. These templates also make it easy to outsource content creation to your team members or freelancers, if you don’t have time to do it yourself. 06. Research keywords Keyword research is one of the best ways to make sure your content has the opportunity to rank and be visible in search results. You can write the best blog post on a particular subject, but if it doesn’t target that topic effectively, then your audience may never see it. Your content will benefit from the time you take to do keyword research and identify the words and phrases your audience is using. Many tools can help you find vital keyword and SEO metrics. Some of the most relevant include: Keyword difficulty Monthly search volume Cost per click Familiarize yourself with these concepts, and make sure you use them to your advantage. If something has a high search volume, it might seem like the right choice. But, it also means you’ll be competing with several other publications to rank for the same keyword. Consider user search intent and the stage of the buyer’s journey when choosing keywords. Search intent can include: Informational Navigational Transactional Commercial Investigation You want your content to coincide with what the user needs. If they want to learn more about the product you’re selling, then rank for informational keywords instead of transactional. You can also use Google to find related and relevant keywords. Type your keyword into the search bar and look at the People Also Ask and Related Searches sections. Also, go over the Google autocomplete suggestions to get insight into what people are searching for. All of this can help you narrow down the focus of your content. Instead of a general topic, you can zero in on the issues your audience searches for and wants to know more about, and that will help drive traffic to your website. 07. Create content Creating content for the web doesn’t have to be intimidating—it’s an achievable skill and, what’s more, it’s likely to come in handy in other areas of your business. Try breaking down content creation into four steps. Do your research Start by gathering the resources and information you need to write your content. Do research on both the topic you’re writing about and your target audience. Save links to everything you want to include so you can reference them later when you’re writing your outline and draft. Create an outline An outline plots out the overall structure of the piece. Work off of your brief and use your main topic points as scaffolding to start crafting your post. Make sure that your outline lays out the article in a way that will make sense to the reader. Create headings that include your keywords wherever possible, and underneath, add bullet points of information you’ll put in the draft. Write a draft Use the content from your outline and flesh out the piece until it’s mostly finished. Since this isn’t the final stage of the process, there’s no need to focus on perfection. You can tweak and improve in the next step. Edit your content Once you finish your draft, it should go through multiple edits for content, grammar, and flow. It’s beneficial to have content reviewed by someone besides the writer. Hiring an editor or using a grammar-loving employee at your company can help catch any clunky writing or errors that might make your business look unprofessional. 08. Publish and promote content Once you’ve polished your content, the next step is to upload it to your content management system (CMS). Depending on what’s more manageable, you can work in a separate document for writing or write and edit your content directly within the CMS. Before you press that Publish button, ensure your page is properly optimized. This includes the URL slug, title on search engines (or title tag) and post description (or meta description), etc. Check your content calendar for social media posts to correspond with each blog and start promoting your content. Create a promotion checklist so that you don’t forget any crucial avenues that are relevant for your business, like: Republish on Medium and LinkedIn and consider syndicating content on other platforms Share in your email newsletter Tweet at or mention brands and sources used in your content 09. Create a process for updating content Just like any other part of your business, you need to keep content fresh. Make a plan to periodically review your content and strategy, perhaps monthly or quarterly. You can use a tool such as Google Calendar to set reminders. Also, plan to track your keywords. There are some great tracking tools that let you see keyword rankings in real-time. If your rankings decrease, this is an indication that you should update your content. Content and SEO are processes—make each step count Content is a beneficial way to market your company, provide value to your customers and build your brand. To be successful with your content strategy, start with your goals and how you’ll measure them. Define your target audience, find the right keywords, and create a brief for each post. Build a content calendar to manage when you post and how you’ll promote content. Aim for consistency and make a plan for how you’ll update your content. Then sit back and reap the rewards of a thorough content strategy. Maddy Osman - Founder, the blogsmith Maddy Osman is the bestselling author of Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style, and one of Semrush and BuzzSumo's Top 100 Content Marketers. She's also a digital native with a decade-long devotion to creating engaging content and the founder of The Blogsmith content agency. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Jamar Ramos As a business owner, you can only handle so many responsibilities. As your business expands, you’ll eventually need to delegate duties if you want to keep growing—this may include your SEO and digital marketing efforts. To ensure your digital marketing continues to fuel your business, you have two choices: Build an internal marketing department Hire an external SEO and/or digital marketing agency to handle the work Both have their advantages and disadvantages. In this article we’ll focus on how to choose between an in-house SEO team or outsourcing, and what to do if you decide to hire an SEO agency. Table of contents: When should you hire a marketing agency? The benefits of hiring an SEO agency How to choose the right SEO agency Single-channel SEO agencies Multi-channel marketing agencies Contract length Account management The standard process for hiring an SEO agency Common mistakes to avoid when hiring an SEO agency What to expect when partnering with an SEO agency When to hire an SEO agency The best time to hire an SEO agency is before you need one. However, that usually doesn't happen—clients tend to hire help when they’re overwhelmed and well past needing assistance. That’s okay, too. That’s still a great time to hire an SEO agency. While an urgent need for SEO help is common, it’s not the only reason you might look externally for support. Tory Gray, CEO of The Gray Dot Company, says this about when to hire an agency: “My favorite use case for brands leveraging agency support is for ‘deep’ expertise—those highly technical or specialized services that brands desire but don’t need full-time. While some brands need to staff a technical SEO, for example, many others only need periodic support.” — Tory Gray, The Gray Dot Company According to Gray, some of the most common use cases for this include: JavaScript SEO audits New social media channel exploration Data dashboarding/storytelling Custom link building asset creation (calculators and similar tools) GA4 setup “Whether it's monthly support or yearly, get the right people for the right jobs—in the right amounts!” Gray said, highlighting the flexibility of working with an external SEO agency. It’s also common to hire an SEO agency when: You’re not ranking well or getting enough traffic — If your website is not receiving enough traffic, then an SEO agency can help you identify the reasons why and create a strategy to increase traffic. You don’t have the time or resources to manage SEO — SEO can be a time-consuming process. If you don't have the resources or expertise to manage it in-house, you can gain access to both by enlisting the help of an agency. You need to stay ahead of your competition — If your competitors are investing in SEO and you’re not, then you could be losing out on potential traffic and customers. An agency can help you stay ahead of SEO industry trends, new best practices, and your competitors. The benefits of hiring an SEO agency I’ve already touched on a few benefits of hiring an SEO agency (above), but there are more reasons why doing so might be the right choice for your situation. Time-to-hire can be quicker with an SEO agency If you’re in immediate need of help, hiring an internal team member (or the entire team) might take too long. There are many things you need to do to hire an internal employee: 01. Create the job description 02. Publish the listing to job boards/websites 03. Collect resumes 04. Conduct interviews 05. Select a potential hire 06. Send the candidate an offer letter 07. Onboard the new team member to your company After all of those steps (a process that will likely take months), they can start working for you. Hiring an agency is a bit easier because you don’t have to go through all of the above steps. However, just because hiring an SEO agency can be relatively quick doesn’t mean you’ll see results quickly—SEO itself can take months before results start manifesting. If you need faster results, consider hiring an agency that also specializes in PPC services as well. PPC may not have the long-term return on investment (ROI) of SEO, but it can jumpstart your online visibility while you continue to focus on your organic efforts. SEO agencies have specialized knowledge and experience SEO agencies typically have a team of experts who specialize in various aspects of search engine optimization. They have extensive knowledge of the latest trends, techniques, and tools, and can apply them to help your website rank higher, bring in more traffic, and convert more customers. There are also a number of specialized tasks that agencies handle, including site migrations, conversion rate optimization, and A/B testing. Not only can an agency partner help free up some of your time that might otherwise be spent performing these tasks (and learning how to perform them), they’ll probably be more efficient at them due to their breadth of experience (i.e., unlikely to make novice mistakes). Beyond their SEO industry knowledge, agencies may also have experience working with other businesses in your vertical. Some agencies cater to a single vertical, whether that be SaaS, hospitality, cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, eCommerce, or others. Hiring one of these agencies ensures you have a partner that is not only focused on strategy, but also knows how to speak your vertical’s unique language. This means your strategies will be aligned with your vertical’s benchmarks, buying cycle lengths, and use cases. Outsourcing can help you free up resources What successful business owner wishes they were busier? Practically none. SEO can take time to both learn and execute, and hiring an agency can spare you (and your team) that time investment. For example, an agency can handle all the technical details of your site’s online visibility, freeing you to focus on running your business. Hiring an SEO agency may also free up monetary resources as well. While hiring an SEO agency may seem like an added expense, it can actually be cost-effective in the long run. An agency’s monthly retainer can be lower than what you’d pay an internal SEO team to do the same tasks. With the savings, you can make hires elsewhere in your company or purchase additional equipment. Consistently investing in SEO can be a competitive advantage Working on your SEO is better than not working on it, and working on it consistently is even better. Some businesses start and stop SEO work, while others ignore it altogether. Because SEO takes time, fixes may not start to yield results until months later, and websites that only sporadically tend to these issues will likely have more of a backlog to resolve. Ultimately, this can mean more time spent fixing problems than actually growing the business’s online presence. If a business within your vertical fails to take SEO seriously, you can gain a competitive advantage over them when you consistently invest in SEO. Your website is in a better position to rank higher than your competitors, making it easier for potential customers to find you instead of them. How to choose the right SEO agency To figure out which type of SEO agency is best for you, you have to understand what your particular needs are—from marketing channels to contract length and even communication with your account manager. Single-channel SEO agencies If you know you only need help with your organic search marketing channel, it’s best to find an agency that caters to only that channel. That way, you’re likely to get a focused agency with experience in what you need. In addition, working with a dedicated SEO agency might help to keep you away from additional services and upsells (in other marketing channels) that you previously may not have been interested in at all. Multi-channel marketing agencies Multi-channel digital marketing agencies offer various services to their clients, including: SEO PPC Email marketing Social media marketing Web development Content creation/marketing If you know you’ll need an agency that can handle more than one channel for you, or if you believe you’ll grow into needing multiple channels managed, this is the type of agency you should work with. Enlisting one agency partner to handle multiple aspects of your marketing can be beneficial because the agency gets a more holistic view of your business and can leverage insights from one channel for another. Contract length Some SEO agencies ask their clients to sign long-term contracts (six or more months). Some have month-to-month contracts. Others offer both. Let’s weigh out the benefits of each option. Long-term contracts Long-term contracts are good if your revenue is steady and you want to engage an SEO agency for 6–12 months (or more). This longer partnership allows an agency more time to understand your business, gather statistically significant data on your customized strategies, and maintain or pivot those strategies based on the data. This can be especially true for SEO and content marketing strategies, which can take a while to build momentum and show positive trends. Retaining an agency that knows what they’re doing and can grow your strategies isn’t just valuable for now—it can be even more valuable the longer you work with them. Month-to-month contracts Month-to-month contracts are a good option if: Your revenue is unsteady, You want to test out your agency of choice, Or, you only need marketing help for a limited amount of time. One potential drawback of month-to-month contracts is the possibility of cutting an agency too early. As stated before, channels like SEO and content can take a little longer to show statistically significant progress. It can be easy to get impatient and fire an agency when it looks like its strategies aren’t progressing as quickly as you had initially expected. After you’ve decided what type of contract best suits your situation, it’s time to think about your account manager. Account management It is important to get to know the account manager who will be working with you on your SEO. The account manager should be your main point of contact. They’re responsible for: Understanding your business goals Assisting in developing SEO strategies to meet those goals Overseeing the execution of those strategies Communicating progress to you (the client) By getting to know the account manager, you can determine if they have the skills, expertise, and experience necessary to help achieve your goals. The SMB can ask questions about the account manager’s experience, their approach to developing a strategy, and their communication style to determine if they are the right fit. If you don’t get along with the account manager, feel uncomfortable communicating with them, or don’t trust their expertise, it can lead to miscommunication, misunderstandings, and ultimately, an unsuccessful partnership. Meeting your potential account manager while you shop for agencies can help determine whether you can work with the team and trust them to achieve your business goals. The standard process for hiring an SEO agency With the landscape of decision factors now laid out for you, let’s turn our discussion to the actual steps you’ll likely have to take when you approach an SEO agency. 01. Fill out a lead form Most agencies have a call-to-action button on their website that takes you to a lead form. Fill out the form and someone from the agency should contact you shortly to schedule a discovery call. 02. Meet the agency at the discovery/pitch call Depending on how much information the agency collects on their form, they’ll reach out to you to schedule a discovery call or a pitch call. What’s the difference between the two? Discovery call Some SEO agencies will ask for a limited amount of information on their form—just enough to understand the channels that are most important to you, your company’s website, and a contact email so they can schedule a discovery call. This call allows you and the agency to get to know each other and for the agency to learn more about your company. Pitch call After your discovery call (or after the agency collects the requisite information through their online form), they’ll schedule a pitch call with you. During this call, the agency will present a customized SEO strategy based on your company’s goals and also present the price and terms of their services to you. 03. Choose your agency After you’ve heard pitches from different agencies, it’s time to choose the one you want to work with. After you’ve chosen your agency, they’ll send you a contract that outlines: The services you’ll receive, The monthly retainer you’ll pay, And the length of time for the relationship. Common mistakes to avoid when hiring an SEO agency Your particular needs and goals will heavily influence what SEO agency you partner with, but even so, it’s important to steer clear of some potential pitfalls that can negatively affect your success. Looking for a bargain The more you save on costs, the less an agency can offer you. At a certain point, the bargain isn’t worth the sacrifice. When you hire an SEO or digital marketing agency, you’re hiring multiple people with numerous years in the industry. Due to their collective experience and success with prior clients, services will likely run you a couple of thousand dollars a month. Not only are you paying for the hours your agency works with your company, but you’re also paying for the tech stack, the data reporting stack, and any proprietary technology the agency uses to enhance and automate its services. Having unclear goals for the partnership Before you hire an SEO agency, make sure you know what you want from the partnership. Ask yourself: What channels do you want the agency to manage? What responsibilities within those channels do you want the SEO agency to handle? Who will be their point of contact? How do you want them to present their reports? How often do you want the agency to send you reports? How often do you want to meet with the agency? These are all things you should have answers to before you start your SEO agency search since defining them can help you control the relationship. When you don’t know what you want or can’t clearly communicate what you want, it’s harder to cultivate a successful relationship. No matter how good an agency is, only you and your internal team know the intricacies of your business. To that end, be explicit with your goals and needs, so your agency can devise strategies to achieve them. With regard to this point, Amalia Fowler of Good AF Consulting, an agency that works with local services businesses, had this to say: “It isn’t only goals for the partnership you want to look for, but also someone who understands how to track the actual online goals you have in Google Analytics. Having a marketing partner who sticks to their channels and never looks at outside data to verify success can be a red flag.” — Amalia Fowler, Good AF Consulting Having an unclear budget for ads If you’re hiring an SEO agency, it’s common for them to bundle PPC alongside their services. If you ask them to run your paid ads (or enlist a dedicated PPC agency), you should have an established monthly budget in mind when engaging in a partnership. A consistent budget helps your agency in several ways: Effective campaign planning A well-defined budget allows your digital marketing agency to plan and execute effective campaigns that align with your business goals. By understanding the amount of money available for paid advertising, your agency can determine the best platforms, ad types, and targeting options to use for your campaigns. Avoid overspending With a clear budget in place, your digital marketing agency can ensure that they don't overspend on your campaigns. Overspending can result in wasted ad spend, inefficient targeting, and a negative ROI. Maximize ROI A clear paid ad budget allows your digital marketing agency to optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI. They can adjust bids, targeting, and ad creative to ensure that your ad spend is used effectively and efficiently. Hiring an SEO agency without checking their experience and references Just like hiring a full-time employee, you should check the references of any marketing agency you want to hire. Here are a few reasons why: Ensure the agency can deliver results You’re hiring an SEO agency to improve your company’s online presence and increase revenue. Therefore, it’s crucial to check references to ensure the agency has a track record of delivering results. The references should provide insight into the agency’s ability to achieve your goals. “However, you don’t want to work with someone who promises the moon,” Fowler said. “When it comes to ads and channel management, there are too many external factors for someone to be able to promise specific results. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Assess service quality Another factor to ask for references about is the quality of service the SEO agency offers. The references should give you an idea of how the agency interacts with its clients, its level of professionalism, and its overall approach to delivering services. If an agency can deliver results but is unprofessional and difficult to work with, you might choose to work with another agency. Gauge their industry knowledge SEO is constantly evolving, and you need to work with an agency that keeps up with the latest trends, technologies, and updates. References can help you assess the agency’s industry knowledge and its ability to stay up-to-date. This information is vital as it ensures the agency can provide innovative solutions to help your business achieve its goals. Verify their credibility Working with an SEO agency requires a significant investment, both in terms of time and money. So, ensure you are working with a reputable agency by asking for and checking references to verify the agency’s credibility and determine whether they are trustworthy and reliable. Hiring an agency because they are local If your company is a small brick-and-mortar business with a couple of locations in the same city, it might make sense to hire a local marketing agency. Otherwise, you can hire an agency from anywhere—generally speaking, there is no inherent advantage to hiring an SEO agency that is local to you. As a matter of fact, looking more widely may yield more SEO agencies that are potentially suitable for your budget/goals. What to expect when partnering with an SEO agency Once you’re ready to hire an agency, knowing what you can expect from them can help the first weeks run smoothly. Let’s dig into a couple of the first steps you can expect the agency to take. Onboarding questionnaire Most agencies will have some onboarding forms for you to fill out. The forms are used to gather: Additional information about your company Your current digital marketing campaigns and channels Updates on products or services you offer Any other data the SEO agency might need to add to the strategies they presented during the pitch call Analytics and reporting Your historical data can help inform the additional strategies your SEO agency develops for you during the onboarding phase (to go with the ones they formulated for the pitch meeting). The agency also needs to see up-to-date data to gauge the effectiveness of the SEO efforts you’re running together and to provide regular reports highlighting key performance indicators and their progress. These reports provide insights into how impactful the strategies have been toward achieving your business goals and if any changes need to be made. You should also talk to your agency about how you want them to report to you. Most agencies build PowerPoint or Google Sheets presentations, but you should work with them to customize the layout of those decks to highlight the most important metrics. Additional strategy development Once the agency can access your internal data, it can develop a more comprehensive strategy for your business. The strategy it presents during the pitch call is usually based on the limited information you can give them before a contract and NDAs are signed. Examples of these additional strategies can include: Conversion rate optimization Once an agency has a deeper look into your analytics, including your conversion data, they can offer recommendations to optimize the process. This can include refreshing the content on your transaction pages, ensuring that pages have internal links pointing to them from other pages on your site, and making transaction buttons more visible and easier to access. UX/UI design User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design are important components of website design and development. Again, once an SEO agency has access to your analytics, they can see which of your pages are seen the most, which should be seen the most, and offer optimizations. These optimizations can help ensure that your website is easy to use and navigate, and that the design is visually appealing and consistent with your brand identity—ultimately, these elements work together to improve your user engagement and conversions. Ongoing execution The initial strategies are just to get started. Every quarter, based on data they’ve collected and your business goals, your agency should present a couple of new strategies they want to execute in addition to the successful ones they want to continue. Everyone needs a helping hand from time to time Hiring an SEO agency can seem daunting, but if you make sure you’re ready for their help, know what service(s) you want them to manage, verify their references, and get to know them during the discovery or pitch calls, it’ll be easier to make the right choice. After that, it’s up to the agency to provide the strategies and execution to achieve your business goals. Jamar Ramos - Content Marketer Jamar Ramos is a 10-year digital marketing veteran with SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing experience. He enjoys writing, playing volleyball, and fighting back against anyone who claims that Shakespeare isn't the greatest writer to ever put pen to paper. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Marcus Tober If someone on the street asked you “where is the nearest coffee shop?” you’d have a pretty good idea of what they were looking for out of that exchange. If they were more specific and asked for a branded coffee shop, their intent would be even clearer and you might give them a different answer to help them out. The fact that most people now turn to search engines for these kinds of questions gives you an idea of how important that intent is online as well. To get in front of these potential customers, who may be planning a future purchase or looking to convert immediately, marketers must optimize their content to point them in the right direction. There are numerous ways in which people search to discover, explore, and buy products and services online, so we’re taking a look at the key motivators behind those searches to help you refocus your content and SEO strategy—and, give prospective customers more of what they’re looking for, and less of what they’re not. In this article, we'll discuss: What keyword intent is Why keyword intent is important for SEO How to use keyword intent in your content strategy Using keyword intent to identify optimization opportunities Applying keyword intent to your own strategy What is keyword intent? Keyword intent (also sometimes referred to as “search intent” or “user intent”) is a notion of the type of result people expect to find when they use search engines. Their chosen search terms can indicate the nature of the content they want to see in the search results and are traditionally grouped into four distinct categories: Informational, Navigational, Commercial, and Transactional. Here’s how they’re defined. Why is keyword intent important? These categorizations help site owners and SEOs structure their content strategies so they can better serve users up and down the buying funnel (shown below). If someone uses an informational term, for instance, they are more likely to be at the “awareness” end of the funnel, whereas a transactional term may indicate they are ready to convert. Navigational and commercial terms (also referred to as “purchase research” in the image above) might mean that they are somewhere in the middle. A deeper understanding of user intentions can make for a more robust plan to appeal to those intentions. Building your content strategy around this allows you to plan the most appropriate formats accordingly, from how-to guides to product comparisons, and use them to drive people down the funnel and closer to conversion. How to use keyword intent in your content strategy Understanding intent is a great way to learn about your existing and prospective audiences, and it gives you invaluable insight into their needs, so you can appeal to them with content that addresses those needs. Whether a keyword is informational or not, for example, is determined by the type of content shown in the search results, the presence of certain search result features, or certain words in the search term itself. Let’s look at how you can read the search engine results pages (SERPs) to determine the intent attributed to different types of search terms. Informational intent When people are looking for information, they often use question words, such as “how,” “what,” and “why,” in their search terms. You can spot SERP features like knowledge panels, featured snippets, and the “People also ask” box in the SERPs when Google thinks that the searcher is looking for information. These kinds of keywords might not immediately generate conversions for you, but they can indicate the types of answers your prospective customers are looking for. Top-of-the-funnel content that caters to informational searches is valuable because it allows you to develop authority in your industry by providing answers early on in the customer’s journey (which could make your brand a familiar name to them by the end of their journey). You can also use informational keywords to search for content your competitors have published. This may help you identify content gaps you can fill as an expert in your industry. Navigational intent Search terms that show a customer is looking for specific information in relation to a brand, product, or location are known as navigational keywords. They are common for well-known businesses, places, things, and people, and can provide a stream of organic traffic for well-known brands. You can spot that Google has interpreted a search term as navigational when it shows main domain names or features like maps and local knowledge panels in the search results. Analyze the SERPs for your own brand name to evaluate how easily potential customers performing a navigational search will find you. Marking up your content with structured data is one way to help search engines learn more about and contextualize your business, which may lead to better search visibility for navigational keywords. For local businesses in particular, ensuring that your citations are consistent can help customers physically navigate to your business. Commercial intent When a searcher includes a product name (or type of product) in their search term, it’s likely that they’re considering a purchase, so a search like home coffee roaster would be a good example of a keyword with commercial intent. The SERP features displayed for that term include reviews, product carousels, and comparison articles, which shows that Google is serving content that aligns with the commercial and transactional ends of the customer journey. Evaluate the landscape of the SERP for products or services you sell (or those that you’re competing against): Are there customer reviews on the product pages? Is the information about the product or service clear and comprehensive? Are there how-to videos showing you how to use them? Answers to these types of questions can help potential customers move from the commercial phase to the transactional phase. Transactional intent People who are ready to take an action, such as making a purchase, use transactional keywords. These can include words or phrases like buy or for sale and signal the strongest intent to convert. Google’s search results tend to contain ads, product listings, and customer reviews for such terms. Usually, these searchers have already carried out their informational queries at the top of the funnel and, to an extent, know what they want. At this stage, search engines want to serve timely results that help users complete their intended action. So, ensure that your pages that are ranking for transactional terms are well-written and conversion-focused (customers can easily complete their desired action)—after all, this is the point of the funnel that all your efforts have been leading up to. Keywords with multiple possible intents Where there are multiple possible intents behind a search term, there are multiple opportunities to create different kinds of content to appeal to them. Take the search term Italian dark roast coffee, for instance—it can have both informational and transactional intent behind it. One searcher might want to read about its history, while another might want to go straight to an online shop to buy some. So, a long-form article about the history of Italian roast coffee might be just as fitting for your content plan as a product page that contains reviews and brewing instructions. Sites like eBay are good examples of how non-transactional content can attract people at the top of the buying funnel: As a marketplace, eBay doesn’t solely focus on its product pages. It also provides buying guides and lifestyle ideas in the form of articles and social ads. Factoring segmented keyword intent into your content strategy can help you create targeted content in the right areas and in the right formats to reach customers at multiple stages of their journey. You can save some time with this part of the content creation process by automating it—tools like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool can help identify the intent behind search terms, which can be especially helpful if you’re looking to segment keywords at scale. Use keyword intent to identify optimization opportunities Filtering your keywords by intent can help you track your progress against your KPIs and competitors. Start by running a basic audit of your target keywords and those of your chosen competitors—all major SEO tools like Semrush, for instance, allow you to run a keyword gap analysis to pull the most important search terms into a list. Analyze this list and apply your own tags according to keyword intent. Next, use the list to manually review your competitors’ performance in the search results for each keyword. From this, you can determine what the landscape looks like according to keyword intent and how your top pages stack up in terms of ranking positions. Be sure to dig deeper into your own traffic for those pages, too, using Google Analytics and Google Search Console to determine the levels of engagement your content is receiving. If, for example, you’re getting good traffic and engagement via navigational keywords, but visitors who find you via informational keywords are bouncing straight away or spending no time at all on your site, you might need to look at the breadth and depth of your content. Do bear in mind, though, that levels of engagement typically vary according to keyword intent—informational keywords tend to have lower engagement metrics than transactional ones, but their search volumes are higher and SERPs are less crowded with ads by comparison. As you improve your site, maintain and update this list with regular audits of competitor keywords and assess evolving keyword intents to monitor your progress against them. Remember, there’s nuance required within your keyword list, too—your transactional pages might be competing against Amazon, eBay or Walmart, for instance, while your informational pages might be competing against other authoritative blogs and news sites, so segmenting your top pages is crucial to effectively track each area. Applying keyword intent to your own strategy It’s all too easy to get distracted by straightforward search volume when you’re crafting your content strategy, but high numbers rarely translate to immediate success. Ask yourself if you’re attracting the right kind of traffic with the content you’re creating. Delve into the detail on individual keywords and their respective intent to determine whether or not you’ve got a diverse spread of content that can cater to all types of searchers. Think about what the user is searching for at every phase of the customer journey and create holistic content so that you can capture the user at each stage. Avoid tunnel vision. Outdo the competition with your various user-centric content pieces by conducting regular audits. Search behaviors change all the time, so the way you adapt to them should, too. Marcus Tober - Head of Enterprise, Semrush Marcus Tober is a leading global SEO specialist and speaker, named a top-8 Online Influencer in Digital Marketing and EU Search Personality of the Year 2016. He previously founded and led Searchmetrics, a global search experience platform, and joined Semrush as Head of Enterprise in 2022. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Yana Arad Raduzky Cybersecurity is a competitive industry, and with 12.4% annual growth (swelling up to $150 billion in worldwide spending in 2021), that competition is only going to heat up. Marketing in this field is complex and constantly evolving, mostly because the buying personas for cybersecurity products are often sophisticated decision makers who require a high level of trust and credibility from the companies they do business with. As such, it’s essential for cybersecurity companies to implement SEO strategies that build visibility, credibility, and authority in order to reach and convert their target audience. With 10 years of SEO experience under my belt, I joined a cybersecurity startup in 2020 to establish its SEO department. To my surprise, there was a lot of nuance to learn and relearn in order to succeed! This industry is unique and best practices are not widely discussed online. In this article, I’ll empower others going on a similar journey. With the help of the talented Roey Libfeld, head of marketing at Apono, here are the insights you need to bring search visibility to your cybersecurity firm and build trust with potential customers. Table of contents: Why is SEO important for cybersecurity companies? Cybersecurity SEO: Get into the right mindset Start your research with personas Planning your content Amplifying your visibility with off-site SEO Why is SEO important for cybersecurity companies? First, the cybersecurity market is highly competitive, which can make pay-per-click advertising expensive and risky (due to shifts in industry trends and buzzwords, which can translate to volatile ROI). Ranking organically via SEO can help cybersecurity companies reach their goals without breaking the bank. Additionally, SEO enables remarketing for cybersecurity companies, helping them reach and convert their target audience over time. Finally (and perhaps most importantly), buyer personas are generally sophisticated, heavily scrutinizing the credibility of the companies they may do business with. By creating tailored, value-driven content, cybersecurity companies can demonstrate their understanding of their audience’s needs and establish the trust needed to advance the relationship. What distinguishes cybersecurity SEO from other verticals? Cybersecurity SEO is unique in that it involves creating content for both hands-on and decision maker personas. Additionally, the industry is heavily affected by trends, such as research from organizations like Gartner and news of attacks and breaches. Some of the key challenges of cybersecurity SEO include the long buyer’s journey and low conversion rates that are common in the B2B space, the difficulty of attributing success to SEO efforts, ever-growing competition due to new players constantly entering the industry, the need to consider multiple decision makers, and the complex requirements and pain points of hands-on personas. Additionally, cybersecurity SEO often involves category creation, in which new demand is created through PR efforts and traffic is then attracted through targeted content. To establish your company as an authority in the industry, you must: Create trustworthy content for each pain point, at each stage of the funnel Pursue thought leadership activities (such as publishing on major industry publications and conducting webinars) Engage in editorial PR (like getting industry publications to write about you and mention your products) Additionally, you’ll need to stay up-to-date on industry trends so that you can be proactive in addressing your potential customers’ concerns and requirements. This enables you to build trust and credibility that can eventually help audiences feel more confident transacting with your business. Cybersecurity SEO: Get into the right mindset Keeping in mind the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the industry (discussed above), the keys to success with cybersecurity SEO are: 01. Prioritizing low volume keywords and long tail keywords in the form of questions (e.g., How does passwordless login work?, etc.) 02. Generating better (higher intent) traffic rather than simply more traffic 03. Considering the point of view of the audience rather than that of the company (i.e., the decision makers and practitioners, although the company’s vertical does contextualize their needs) 04. Be open-minded about where organic traffic may lead (for example, consider the value of sending traffic to discussions on platforms like Quora and Reddit) The points listed above will contextualize your goals and implementation. Now, let’s take a look at what that strategic implementation may look like. Start your research with personas The first step in the research process for cybersecurity SEO is to identify your target personas and map the decision makers. This will likely involve determining whether the personas are business or technical decision makers. For business personas, it can be helpful to identify industry trends and pains that the company’s product addresses, and to translate this information into terminology that business stakeholders will understand. For example, one of the personas may be the CISO, managing IT and cyber risks. It is this person’s job to prevent IT security breaches. This may involve managing multiple security technologies and ensuring they work together. Their main concern is adhering to security standards and ensuring compatibility with the existing technology stack. Instead of emphasizing the business value, you should instead create content that underscores that your product meets best practices and standards set by regulatory bodies. For technical personas, it may be more effective to focus on creating detailed documentation and technical guides that address knowledge gaps and help the audience understand and implement the company’s product. Topic research While keyword research mechanics for the cybersecurity sector is similar to what you’d encounter in other industries, there are important distinctions: Search engines interpret many queries as primarily informational, so it can be a challenge to rank conversion-oriented product pages. Many relevant queries have low search volume. SEOs working in cybersecurity must become comfortable with best practices and industry lingo/jargon, as it’s very easy to inadvertently publish inaccurate content. Since expertise and trustworthiness are key staples in this niche, these mistakes could have serious repercussions. To discover the target audience’s top pains and concerns as well as to identify trends and subjects of discussion within the industry, explore relevant professional online communities and forums (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, etc). Additionally, talking to customers, target audience members, and customer-facing teams (such as support, customer service, and sales) can provide valuable insights. Planning your content It is important to tailor your approach to the needs and concerns of the specific target persona. Targeting business personas For business personas, this may involve creating educational content, answering high-level questions from executive stakeholders, and providing honest and unbiased reviews of the company’s product (against those of your competitors). Here are a few examples of content that may be suitable for these decision makers: 01. A wiki and/or glossary for industry terms and concepts 02. FAQs for executive stakeholders 03. Product reviews and comparisons featuring competitor offerings (example) Targeting technical personas For technical personas, it may be more effective to focus on technical how-tos and actionable guides that help solve specific issues, as well as emphasizing product features that lower barriers to adoption and make it easier for practitioners to implement solutions. Here are some examples of content that may be valuable for this audience: 01. A developer wiki for technical terms and concepts 02. Technical how-to’s with actionable solutions 03. List of product features that lower barriers to entry (ease of use, deployment time, integrations, etc.) 04. Useful resources and free tools (example) As you would in any other sector, add internal links pointing to strategic pages from the many PDFs and other downloadables you produce. Oftentimes, white papers, infographics, e-books, and so on are overlooked in this aspect, and that’s a shame since PDFs are crawled and indexed by Google, so those links count. All of these efforts need to be underpinned by credibility in order for them to move the needle for your business. To establish E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) with Google and prospective customers, publish content written by credible industry professionals (not generalist content writers or AI-generated content). This will help your company establish itself as a helpful industry resource. Amplify your visibility with off-site SEO It is important for cybersecurity companies to focus on building backlinks and earning referral traffic. This can be achieved through a variety of tactics, including guest blogging, participating in online communities and forums, and leveraging PR and thought leadership activities such as webinars. Remember, SEO is about organic visibility and conversions—not just about getting traffic to the company’s website. If a user wants to read reviews or compare similar products, you need to make sure that your product is featured in the leading websites providing reviews and comparison. An additional outcome of this presence will be valuable backlinks. Opportunities not to miss when doing SEO for B2B (in general, but especially for cybersecurity) companies include: 01. Platforms and marketplaces (such as AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace, etc.) will have a page for each company they work with, but not always link to the correct page or to the website in general. All it takes to add a link is to request it politely. 02. Add your company page to review sites like G2, etc. 03. Work with experts and influencers who publish on Medium, Forbes, etc. For example, you can suggest that they use an infographic (that your company created) related to an article they’ve published—if they agree, you can politely request a link to your site. 04. Perform surveys and create infographics and research papers to surface unique information others may find useful. This will help you earn mentions and backlinks. 05. Very often, potential buyers will encounter Wikipedia articles during their research stage. Cybersecurity is a relatively new, rapidly evolving field, so many of the Wikipedia pages around terminology, technical concepts, and methodologies are thin and lacking. This gap provides an interesting opportunity for SEOs to add value and potentially get links. You can find a vendor with experience contributing to Wikipedia. They can contribute to articles relevant to your audiences, with a link to additional information on your site. If you try to add the edits yourself, the Wiki community will very likely delete the changes. This can help you build your company’s authority and lead to referral traffic. The vendor can also help you create an official Wiki entry for your company, which will likely appear in knowledge panels for branded queries. Note: While this tactic does not technically violate Wikipedia’s guidelines, it is strongly discouraged by the Wiki community and there is no guarantee that the content will not be deleted by other editors. You can’t have cybersecurity without trust Now you have a framework for reaching potential cybersecurity clients or working in-house for a cybersecurity company and influencing both technical and business decision makers. Remember, though, that success in this sector depends on establishing trust with your audience by demonstrating expertise. To do so, you’ll need to consistently stay up-to-date with industry advancements and trends, and updating your content to reflect those new developments. Yana Arad Raduzky - Senior SEO Expert at Wix Yana Raduzky is an SEO expert at Wix, setting up a robust SEO infrastructure and built-in solutions. Previously, she led organic growth for eCommerce, media & tech companies and educated teams on SEO best practices. Yana enjoys long walks, furniture assembly and SEO audits. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Vinnie Wong Your position in search engine results pages (SERPs) greatly influences your online visibility, which is why SEOs and site owners commonly track their rankings. But, the goal with SEO is not necessarily to optimize your pages for the top position—it’s to attract and convert an audience in order to propel your business forward. Like many other SEO metrics, rankings are a snapshot of how your content is performing—it’s not the entire story. Contextualizing your rankings will allow you to get a wider view of how your brand is actually performing in the search results, enabling you to make better strategic decisions. In this article, I’ll guide you through how to approach rank tracking, tactical tips for better rank tracking, tool recommendations, and more. Table of contents: Why rank tracking is important Why rankings aren’t everything Search volume is no replacement for search intent Tactical tips for tracking your search rankings Track SERP features Be deliberate about which keywords you track Monitor multiple search engines Track local and global rankings Rank tracking mistakes to avoid Tools for rank tracking Google Search Console Ahrefs Semrush Rank tracker alternatives Why rank tracking is important for your SEO Effective SEO and content marketing are more than just publishing content and hoping for the best. Be it qualitative or quantitative, data drives strategies and success when it comes to online visibility. Rank tracking gives you a window into how relevant search engines consider your content to be for certain queries, which can be a proxy for what your target audience is looking for. Besides evaluating strategy success and guiding optimizations, tracking your site’s rankings provides numerous advantages, such as: 01. Identifying opportunities for greater visibility: Simply put, the more often your site ranks at the top of search results, the more organic traffic you receive. Over 99% of people will only visit a site on the first search results page, according to Backlinko, highlighting how important it is for your site to rank higher for your target keywords. By tracking your ranking trends for specific keywords, you can assess the effectiveness of your SEO strategy and identify areas for improvement. 02. Stakeholder buy-in: While SEO is a long game, building a number of minor wins will lead to compounding growth. It can be difficult to explain why your team should pursue a certain direction with content or SEO (or why you should get budget/buy-in for your recommendations), but by tracking your rankings, you can show the ROI of your SEO efforts to stakeholders by tying them back to business-critical metrics like conversions or revenue. 03. Competitive analysis: Tracking your rankings alongside those of your competitors enables you to gauge your position in the market and identify any competitors who are catching up or surpassing your brand. By keeping a close eye on your competition, you can adjust your strategy, maintain a competitive edge, or even use their online growth to make a case for more internal resources to regain diminished rankings. 04. Data for more informed decision-making: Rank tracking provides valuable data that can inform your overall business strategy. For example, by analyzing which content pieces or campaigns have led to significant ranking improvements, you can make data-backed decisions on where to focus your efforts and allocate resources. Identifying “striking-distance” keywords (keywords ranking just outside the top positions, usually 11-20, in search results) is also a common way to use rank tracking data to identify low-hanging fruit. You would never need to track your rankings if they didn’t change, but they do—even for older content. Search engine rankings constantly evolve, causing your website’s SERP positions to fluctuate. Let’s dive into the key factors behind these shifts and how they can guide your SEO and keyword tracking decisions. Why rankings change Your content’s search rankings can move up or down due to a variety of factors. Some you can control, others not so much. To make the right moves with your website optimization and keyword tracking, let’s look at the main factors behind ranking shifts: Algorithm updates: Google and other search engines are constantly refining their algorithms to deliver relevant results to users. When they introduce new updates or tweak existing ranking factors, your pages’ positions can change significantly. Competitor activity: It’s frustrating when your competitor leapfrogs your site for high-value keywords. Perhaps they optimized their site, updated their content, or earned more backlinks to those pages. As they improve their own SEO, their rankings may adjust to reflect that, nudging yours up or down in response. New content and indexation: Search engines crawl and index fresh and older content non-stop. This means the SERPs are always changing as new pages join the fray and old ones bow out. If a top-performing piece targeting the same keywords as yours hits the scene, your rankings might take a hit. Seasonality and trends: Some keywords see shifts in search volume and rankings because of seasonal fluctuations or current events. As user behavior evolves, search engines adjust their algorithms, which can impact your position. Technical issues: Website problems like slow page load times, broken links, or indexation issues can drag your rankings down. Keeping an eye on your site’s technical health and fixing any problems is key to keeping your rankings steady. While we’ve highlighted the importance of rank tracking, it’s important to know that rankings aren’t the be-all and end-all of your SEO success. They play a significant role in driving traffic, but other factors like search volume and intent are just as crucial in determining the overall performance of your website. Why rankings aren’t everything You might celebrate high rankings for your target keywords, but don’t let that be your only measure of success. The real magic happens when you turn that traffic into tangible results—think leads, sales, and engaged users. Top rankings alone can’t guarantee an amazing user experience, which plays a huge role in keeping visitors around and driving conversions. Picture this as an example—a page ranks high, but: Takes forever to load, It’s hard to navigate, And visuals are an eyesore. It’s no surprise that visitors won’t convert. On the flip side, a site with slightly lower rankings but fantastic user experience could see much better conversion rates. So, while it’s great to see those rankings climb, remember there’s more to the story (and any number of scenarios in which high rankings don’t equate to business success). Two things to consider when thinking about which keywords to track include search volume and searcher intent. Search volume is no replacement for search intent While search rankings and search volume are different concepts, they’re deeply intertwined by competition: Keywords that have a high search volume are usually more difficult to rank for, since more websites will likely want to get their content in front of those searchers. Search volume refers to the number of times a specific keyword is searched for within a given time frame (typically monthly). Targeting high search volume keywords can lead to increased visibility and traffic, but it’s essential not to overlook the importance of intent and its impact on conversion rate. After all, driving traffic to your website is only half the battle—you also need to turn those visitors into customers. Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. A high conversion rate shows that your website is effectively addressing your audience’s search intent (be it informational, commercial, or transactional), which can be very influential in convincing them to complete the desired action, leading to increased revenue and business growth. When selecting keywords to target, it’s crucial to balance search volume and search intent if you want visitors to convert. While it’s tempting to go after high-volume keywords, established players in your industry might already dominate the results for those search terms. It’ll take a lot of effort and potentially a larger budget to make your way into those results. In this case, it’s probably a better use of your time to go after long tail keywords—more specific, less competitive phrases. These typically have lower search volume but often yield higher conversion rates. These keywords are more aligned with the searcher’s intent, making it more likely that visitors will click through and convert. “There once was a time when nobody really knew what the Walmart Marketplace was. That’s when my former team decided to create a blog series around the Walmart Marketplace because it was relevant to our product. Even though Semrush said there was zero search volume, we rolled with it—and sure enough, those articles were some of our greatest hits. We had some of the earliest ranking content around the topic, and received lots of leads from that series.” — Allison Lee, editor-in-chief at Wix To make the most of your SEO efforts, focus on targeting a mix of high search volume keywords and long tail keywords with strong conversion potential. Remember, the goal of your SEO strategy is to grow your business—not just to achieve high search rankings. Tactical tips for tracking your search rankings It’s challenging to know where to start or which tools to use if you’re new to the world of SEO. Here are some tips to help you track your progress, identify opportunities for improvement, and make informed decisions for optimizing your website. Track SERP features Optimizing certain pages for “zero-click” queries (searches that don’t typically result in the user clicking through to a website, usually because the query was answered directly on the SERP) can boost traffic by way of featured snippets, local packs, knowledge panels, or other SERP features. Yes, that does make the term “zero-click” somewhat misleading, as a study by Ahrefs showed that featured snippets can “steal” nearly one-third of clicks from the top result. Remember, search engines like Google are trying to provide the best user experience as quickly as possible. While this answer (in the example above) might satisfy a search query, a user may still click on the result to learn more considering their dog’s skin condition, for example. However, some zero-click queries actually live up to their name and are far less likely to result in a click-through to a website. This can happen when users are looking for things like the weather, stock prices, definitions, or similar at-a-glance information. In addition, the presence of new SERP features could affect your page’s performance. Rank tracking tools may not immediately reflect this, so if you notice a sudden change in key metrics (like traffic or CTR, for example) that’s not accompanied by a dip in rankings, then the next place to check is the SERP for that keyword. Be deliberate about which keywords you track A common mistake that many new SEOs and site owners make is tracking every keyword that might be relevant to their business. This approach can actually be counterproductive as it can lead to a significant amount of time (and potentially resources) spent optimizing for keywords that don’t drive conversions or revenue. Think of your keyword strategy as fishing. Instead of trying to catch every fish in the sea while fishing at peak hours and sitting next to people who have bigger boats than you, focus on fishing in quieter waters where you know you’ll get a catch. In other words, track keywords that have a high potential to rank and are relevant to your audience. This is why long tail keywords are often a good place to start, as they tend to be less competitive and more specific to a particular niche or audience. Additionally, long tail keywords are typically more aligned with the searcher’s intent, which makes them more likely to generate conversions. Monitor multiple search engines While Google accounts for the lion’s share of the worldwide search engine market (93% as of March 2023), tracking your rankings on other search engines like Bing and Yahoo! could provide new opportunities for traffic and conversions. While your website may rank well on Google, it’s possible that your competitors are outperforming you on other search engines. This is especially relevant for sites with international audiences, as the popularity (and even existence) of any given search engine can vary by country. By tracking your rankings across multiple search engines, you can identify areas where you may need to improve your optimization efforts to stay ahead of the competition. Another reason to track your performance across multiple search engines is to gain a better understanding of how different search engines interpret and display your content. Search engines have different algorithms and ranking factors, which can result in not only different search results, but also different search features or capabilities for the same query. Track local and global rankings If you have a physical store or primarily serve customers within a specific geographic region, tracking your local rankings is crucial. Local SEO refers to the practice of optimizing content for searches that are specific to a particular location, such as best restaurants in Los Angeles or plumbers near me. These results are often displayed in local packs or map listings, making it easier for users to find businesses in their area. Even if you don’t have a physical store, tracking your local rankings is still valuable for home or professional services providers that serve a specific geographic region (i.e., landscapers, home inspectors, etc.). If your business operates primarily online, tracking your global rankings is more important. These rankings are especially important for eCommerce businesses that sell products worldwide or offer services that can be accessed remotely. Rank tracking mistakes to avoid When it comes to rank tracking, there are some common mistakes that can actually hurt your SEO efforts in the long run. Here are a few key “don’ts” to keep in mind: Focusing on low-value keywords As mentioned above, you shouldn’t track every keyword that is possibly relevant. The ones you do track should be for pages that have some sort of strategic value for your business. Prioritizing those keywords simply provides you with more useful, actionable data. For example, if you operated a local gym, a 10-position dip in rankings for your location and sign-up pages would need to be addressed much more urgently than the same rankings nosedive for your “member of the week” page. Focusing solely on rankings While tracking your rankings is an important part of an effective SEO strategy, focusing solely on this metric can be a mistake. Rankings alone don’t provide the full picture of how your website performs in search results or how users interact with it. It’s important to also monitor metrics like click-through rate, bounce rate, time on site, and conversion rate, for example, to understand your website’s overall performance. External factors, like seasonality, should also be considered—an umbrella brand might rank number one year-round, but it's probably converting much less frequently during dry seasons; that is not an insight that rankings alone would show you. Prioritizing only high search volume keywords While high search volume keywords can drive significant impressions and/or traffic to your website, it can be a mistake to overemphasize these keywords in your strategic decision making. High-volume keywords are often highly competitive, making it difficult for smaller businesses to rank for them. Instead, consider targeting long tail keywords that are more specific and less competitive, which can drive more targeted traffic to your site and improve your chances of ranking higher. “Volume doesn't always equal value—keep an eye on zero-volume keywords for niche industries (especially B2B), emerging trends, and recurring events (like the Oscars, for example). Don't underestimate the power of high CPC keywords, as they often indicate competitive and profitable markets even if they are considered to be zero-volume by some tools.” — Myriam Jessier, digital strategist and SEO trainer at PRAGM Tools for rank tracking There’s a large selection of rank tracker tools available, some more comprehensive than others. Depending on your budget, you might not need the most expensive one or you may not require a paid tool at all. So you can decide which tool best fits your situation, we’ll explore a few of the most common options and share why many SEOs consider them to be the best for tracking keyword rankings. Google Search Console Every site owner can access Google Search Console (GSC) for free, all you need to do is verify your site (note: Wix site owners can use the built-in GSC integration to verify their site). GSC provides the most accurate raw data for Google search results and offers a wealth of data about your site’s search performance, including keyword rankings, impressions, clicks, and click-through rate (CTR). It also helps identify and fix technical issues that could be affecting your site’s performance. The downside to GSC is there is no automated way to track keyword rankings. You’ll need to manually go in and check each time you want to know the positions of your target keywords. Identifying “striking-distance” keywords with GSC One way to use GSC’s keyword tracking is to identify low-hanging fruit to go after. To do so, select the Performance report and you’ll see a chart showing clicks and impressions (the default setting). Next, toggle the chart’s Average CTR and Position filters. This gives you an overall idea of how often users clicked on your listing when they searched for a specific keyword. To find potentially under-optimized pages, export your site’s data by clicking on the top-right Export button. You’ll have three options to choose from; Google Sheets, Excel, or CSV. Whichever format you choose, you can create a filter showing keywords that you rank for from positions eight and beyond. Click on the Position filter icon at the top-right of the table. Comb through the lower ranked results, as you can click into each keyword to see which pages these keywords are ranking for. If you haven’t updated those pages in a while, adding or refreshing content could be an easy win to bump your articles higher. Note: Wix site owners can also access GSC data, including average position, impressions, clicks, and CTR, from directly within the Wix dashboard’s Top Search Queries on Google report. Ahrefs If you explore paid rank tracking tools, you'll find more features that can be helpful for SEO professionals at agencies or those managing multiple domains. Subscribing to any of Ahrefs’ paid plans, starting from $99 per month, gives you access to its Rank Tracker. If you have several domains, you can add each of them as separate projects to track multiple keywords associated with each domain. Clicking into one of the projects will bring you to this dashboard where you’ll see which pages are ranking for certain keywords. To track keywords, just click on the orange button in the top-right corner. Add each keyword line by line or search for published articles by URL to track them. From the dashboard, you can toggle specific views by clicking on the corresponding box (the default view is “Share of Voice”) to get quick insights. Under tracked URLs, you can see performance over time through a graph or check what the SERPs currently look like, which can be useful for identifying new SERP features that don’t affect your rankings but may affect traffic (e.g., direct answers). Semrush Semrush subscribers can monitor their rankings using its “Position Tracking” tool. Once you’ve set up your project and added your keywords, you can customize your tracking settings. For example, you can choose to track your rankings on a daily or weekly basis, and you can set up email alerts to notify you of any significant changes in your rankings. You can also use Semrush to uncover underperforming keywords. To do this, navigate to the Organic Research section (in the left-hand menu), enter your domain, and click on the Positions tab. This will show you a list of all the keywords your website is ranking for, along with their search volume, position, and other metrics. Similar to how you might with GSC, you can sort the list by position to find keywords that are ranking below the first page of search results. You can also use Semrush’s “Keyword Gap” tool to compare your keyword rankings to those of your competitors and identify areas where you may be falling behind. The tool even has an “On-Page SEO Checker” feature that can analyze your content and provide recommendations on how to improve it for better rankings. Rank tracker alternatives Most SEOs use either Ahrefs or Semrush. Both are equally robust, and much of the time it comes down to personal preference and how easy each person finds the tool to use. For tracking keywords in particular, there are several cheaper alternatives that deserve a shoutout if you’re on a tighter budget. Agency Analytics: A powerful all-in-one SEO tool with a comprehensive rank tracking feature, customizable white-label reports, and integrations with third-party tools. AccuRanker: A high-precision rank tracker that provides real-time and historical data, competitor analysis, and a user-friendly interface. SERPWatcher: A rank tracking tool that focuses on tracking daily changes in keyword rankings, providing insights into search visibility, and monitoring local and mobile rankings. Rank Ranger: A comprehensive SEO and digital marketing platform that offers advanced rank tracking, in-depth keyword research, and comprehensive reporting capabilities. Keeping track of the goal, not just keyword rankings Regardless of which tool you decide to use, rank tracking should be used to identify the best keywords as part of your overall SEO strategy. But, remember that it’s primarily a means to an end. The goal is to improve your business and raise its bottom line. Keep this top-of-mind when you create, track, and optimize content so you can make more profitable decisions. Rank tracking for its own sake won’t get you very far if you obsess about the numbers; it’s about honing in on what type of content brings the most value to your audience and improves your business. Vinnie Wong - Founder and Chief Strategist at Content Cartography Vinnie is a content expert with over 5 years of SEO and content marketing experience. He's worked with Ahrefs, Empire Flippers, and is committed to crafting exceptional content and educating others on the symbiotic relationship between content creation and effective link building. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Sophie Brannon Whether you’re working agency-side, in-house, or as a freelancer, reporting back to your stakeholders is important for getting buy-in and highlighting your achievements. Even if you’re the only employee of your own business, regularly creating reports can help ensure your SEO strategy is on track. Often, the SEO report provides a justification for the budget that the company is spending on this area of marketing. The problem is, most SEO reports are not easy to understand for people who don’t already know SEO. Here, we’re taking a look at SEO reporting specifically for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). In this article, we’ll cover: What an SEO report is What should be included in your SEO report The depth of reporting Matching data to business goals Essentials to report on Examples of common reporting scenarios Free tools that you can use to build your reports What is SEO reporting? SEO reporting offers insights into the performance of an SEO campaign. It should provide a summary of the key metrics and tell stakeholders (the decision makers that you’re reporting to, which could include yourself) what is working and highlight further opportunities for growth. Effective SEO reporting can help you to make smarter marketing and business decisions. An SEO report can come in different formats, but will generally offer an overview of works completed, key metrics, and justification for why the work was carried out. In most cases, an SEO report is the only tangible thing a client, stakeholder, or the wider team will see—meaning it is the most valuable way to show the work that you have been doing and the impact it’s having. Demonstrating the value of SEO can be difficult—unlike with other channels (such as paid advertising, for example), it’s not always clear what the return on investment is, particularly in the early stages of a campaign. This is why quality SEO reporting is crucial. What to include in SEO reports If you’re working within an SMB and you’re managing the SEO for one or more websites, understanding how to report back to key stakeholders can help you showcase the value of the work you’re doing. But, how do you structure these SEO reports? Define the depth of reporting First, you need to define the depth of the report you’re putting together so that stakeholders understand the business impacts and have all the information they need to make informed marketing decisions. The granularity of your reports will be determined by the people you are delivering the reports to. Whether you’re working in-house or agency-side with SMBs, there are two groups of people your report is likely to be going to: marketing managers and business directors. Marketing managers: This group will at least have a high-level understanding of what SEO is and may be interested in deeper metrics. Depending on the seniority of the marketing manager, they may already have access to Google Analytics or other reporting dashboards and are likely more interested in deeper insights and strategic decision-making. They may want to know how the SEO that you’re leading ties into the greater marketing strategy and other channels that they are managing. Your report should connect the dots and provide insights that they are not able to source for themselves. Business directors: If you’re delivering a report to the director (or a board of directors) of a business, then different metrics are likely to be important to them. They will typically have a lesser understanding of SEO than a marketing manager will. The director of a business will likely be more interested in what impacts the bottom line. Metrics like revenue and transactions (for an eCommerce site, for example) or goal completions (such as form fills and leads) will be more valuable to them than metrics like search visibility. The report itself should be less complex than a report for a marketing manager and should clearly show the most valuable, relevant metrics. Insights and recommendations should be provided as well as an outline of the changes you have made and their impacts. A director of a business is unlikely to know what a log file analysis or an alt attribute is but they will want to know what the return on their budget is. Match data to business goals Show the data that matters most to the business in your SEO reports. In a study of 1200 small business owners and decision makers, 83% of respondents stated that SEO providers should be able to help them “access new customers,” according to Backlinko . Just over 60% of business owners cited that “increasing brand awareness” was also important to them. Specifying what these key metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are right at the start of the campaign can help you to better structure your reporting later and contextualize results. This can also help you properly benchmark your performance and monitor campaign success. KPIs set at the start of the campaign will define the stakeholder’s idea of “success.” You may consider setting up multiple reporting dashboards: One for you (as the SEO measuring relevant site metrics) but also metrics that feed into these that you deem important. Another more streamlined report that highlights the core business-related metrics for the stakeholder. Essentials to report on So, what are the “must-haves” in an SEO report for SMBs? Traffic (filtered by “organic”) — Show how many people are visiting the site via the search results Goal completions (filtered by “organic”) — This could be revenue, transactions, form fills, etc. Branded vs. non-branded traffic growth Detailed insights (more on this below) Detailed recommendations (more on this below) A clear year-over-year comparison (rather than month-over-month, as this does not account for seasonality or trends) Your SEO report should tell a story. It should have an outline of what your objectives are , what you’ve done to meet these objectives, and the impact of this work. It should include any key learnings or strategies/processes that have been put in place (whether they’ve worked out or not). It should provide detailed insights, looking not just at your changes, but also at the wider market: What are competitors doing? Has there been an algorithm update that possibly influenced performance? And, has there been a significant shift in buyer trends? All of these factors can be included in an “insights” section. The insights should explain why the data says what it says . Your recommendations should explain what you are going to do about it (or what the business should). It is also important that your insights explain any barriers that you are facing. Example of common reporting scenarios Below are a few scenarios that may help you to structure your insights and recommendations. 01. Traffic, revenue, and goal completions have all increased The data shows that traffic is up and revenue and goal completions have also risen. Insight ( What has caused the data to look like that ): An increase in keyword positions Growth in overall keyword visibility Growth in top 3 or page 1 positioning Keyword improvements, specifically on conversion-focused keywords Peak seasonality for the business Other marketing campaigns (such as email marketing or PPC) have contributed to the uplift in organic traffic Growth in brand visibility A combination of the above Recommendation ( What are you going to do about it? ): Replicate the success of the keyword improvements with other terms (you’ll likely need to explain how you’re going to do this as well) Maintain the uplift in keyword positions (and how you’re going to do this) Capitalize on the seasonality by focusing on the main target terms Continuing to maintain visibility in other marketing channels so that they can all work as an integrated strategy (this may require collaborating with other teams) Improve non-branded visibility alongside the increase in brand visibility Focus on the company’s Google Business Profile to improve brand visibility in local searches Improve positioning for all areas of the funnel The report should explain that the campaign is going well (data) , why it’s going well (insights) , and what your team is going to do to make it better (recommendation) . 02. Traffic, revenue, and goal completions have all decreased The data shows that traffic, revenue, and goal completions have all dropped. Insight ( What has caused the data to look like that? ): Seasonality (the industry as a whole has seen a decline) Brand demand has fallen (this can be seen on Google Trends) Impact from a Google algorithm update Major website changes (such as migration or content removal) Manual action Your recommendations have not been implemented Volatility (check if keyword positions for main terms have been moving around frequently) Decreased demand (i.e., search volume reduction, decreased impressions). In this case, you’ll need to identify and report on whether it was a particular keyword, group of keywords, or page that has led to the impressions drop, as well as the cause. Recommendation ( What are you going to do about it? ): Identify opportunities for quick growth (i.e., create new content, re-optimize an important page that has dropped dramatically, etc.) Assess algorithm update , industry impact, and restrategize (i.e., has Google changed its understanding of intent ) Explain how you’re going to get your recommendations implemented (this is especially important if performance is suffering because your previous recommendations weren’t implemented) For a demand drop, identify whether there are other areas of growth that can be focused on and restrategize The report should explain that the campaign is not performing as expected (data) , why it’s not going well (insights) , and how you’re going to make it better (recommendation) . 03. Traffic is down, but revenue and goal completions are up The data shows that traffic has decreased, but revenue and goal completions have grown. Insight ( What has caused the data to look like that? ): Some of the pages that aren’t critical for conversions (such as blog posts) may have lost traffic. This could be seasonal (e.g., guides that do well in winter but lose traffic from spring), or it could be Google updating its understanding of intent for the terms that page is targeting. Conversion-based pages may still be performing well. Other versions of the site may not be performing as well as they were previously e.g., alternative language versions that are being tracked on the same analytics account, but aren’t optimized for search). In this case, focus on the main version(s) of the site, if that’s what you’re tracking. Visibility drop or keyword drop, but branded traffic is still driving conversions. Visibility dropped overall, but main conversion-driving keywords are still performing well. Recommendation ( What are you going to do about it? ) : A content audit might help your team get a better understanding of what has gone wrong in the blog and what you can do to improve it. This could help build a new content strategy as well. Recommend investing budget into other (international) versions of the site. Review the specific keywords that have dropped. Can a page be re-optimized for these terms? Has Google changed the intent and, therefore, do you need to reframe the content that was ranking for this term? Do you need to direct more links towards these pages if it’s a primary term that dropped? The report should explain that the campaign is going well (data) , where it can be improved and why (insights) , and how you’re going to make it better (recommendation) . 04. Traffic is up, but revenue and goal completions are down The data shows that, while traffic is on the rise, revenue and goal completions have declined. Insight ( What has caused the data to look like that? ) : This could be a result of seasonality, where we see a higher number of inquiries than direct sales through the website, even though traffic is still visiting the site. This could be because more traffic is visiting inner pages, such as the blog or the contact page, and not converting at the same rate. This could be informational-based traffic rather than conversion-based traffic as a result of long tail keyword content driving keyword rankings. This could be due to increased branded traffic from customers who may have previously converted and are now returning site visitors. A higher proportion of new visitors have landed on the site. Historically, the average conversion time for this site is X number of visits through different channels before converting, so this traffic is likely to convert at a later date. Measuring macro vs. micro conversions (e.g., they may not have purchased on the site, but we’ve seen an increase in email sign-ups). Recommendation ( What are you going to do about it? ) : Make sure exit intent (an offer or promo code that can appear, usually in the form of a pop-up, as the user is trying to leave the site) and other customer-nurturing strategies are implemented on the site. Make the most of other channels (such as email marketing) to convert users at a later date. Focus on conversion-based keywords if a lot of the traffic is being driven by informational content. If this is becoming a regular pattern, then perhaps the user experience needs to be reviewed and tweaked. The report should state that the campaign is going well (data) , how it can be improved and why (insight) , and how you’re going to improve it (recommendation) . Since your insights and recommendations are based on your performance data, let’s briefly discuss some industry-standard tools that you’ll likely be using to collect that data, as well as other options for your reporting needs. Free tools to track SEO performance Large enterprises and agencies are likely to have several advanced tools at their disposal. With an SMB, the budget may not be available for this. But, that doesn’t mean your reporting has to be any less detailed. Some of the most beneficial tools for SEO reporting are free. Google Analytics Google Analytics has always been an important data platform for understanding how users are arriving at and interacting with your site. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s analytical platform and offers a variety of predefined reports that you can use for your SEO reporting. By default, you can view the following reports: Acquisition – Where your traffic originates from Engagement – Events and conversion events triggered by the user Monetization – Revenue generated Retention – How frequently users visit and for how long Demographics – The type of users visiting by age, location, language, and gender Tech – The technology your visitors are using You can then proceed to drill down further into this data, adjusting the date range and channel. Google Analytics 4 can allow you to develop a combination of reporting based on your needs. You can view built-in dashboards for more basic reports on the metrics outlined above. For more complex reporting however, you can dive into Google’s reporting APIs , which offer more advanced segmentation. Simply put, Google Analytics 4 offers an invaluable data source which can help to automate both simple and more complex reporting tasks, no matter the type of online business you’re reporting on. Google Search Console Gathering data straight from what the search engine can see is another important part of the equation and can also help you monitor your site’s technical health — Google Search Console is the platform that can do this. ​​The reporting options available in Google Search Console include: Clicks Impressions Position Click-through rate (CTR) Crawl errors Page experience / Core Web Vitals / mobile usability Enhancements ( rich results ) Indexed pages / video pages / sitemaps / removals Security issues and manual actions Backlinks Individual URL inspection Bing also offers Bing Webmaster Tools , which can provide similar data but specific to Bing as a search engine. Google accounts for over 90% of the market share globally (at the time of publication) so while Bing should not be discredited and can be a valuable data resource, Search Console may be more relevant for your SEO reporting. Your content management system Some content management platforms offer data insights directly within their dashboards, such as the Wix Analytics reports . Wix offers pre-built, editable reporting split into a Traffic Overview , Behavior Overview and Marketing & SEO reports. While this data is particularly useful for quick insights and can form the basis of automated reporting (perhaps on a weekly or monthly basis), you’ll have more freedom to get granular with the data on more detailed analytics platforms such as Google Analytics or similar. Keyword positions One thing we haven’t mentioned throughout this guide is keyword positions: Keyword positions are generally an old-school reporting tactic. Google’s advancements mean that different keywords can appear in different positions based on device, location, user behavior and more. This makes tracking individual keywords difficult—especially without the use of paid SEO tools. It can also lead to warped views of SEO performance as those with little to no SEO knowledge may hyper-fixate on specific keyword positions (as opposed to bigger-picture metrics like traffic or conversions). Generally, business-aligned metrics offer a more valuable performance measurement. Unless directly specified by the stakeholder as something to track, avoid reporting on keyword positions unless you have access to tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking or similar that can automate this tracking for you. Generally, combining multiple reporting and data platforms can provide you with a well-rounded view of your SEO performance. With multiple metrics to consider, measure these against the business objectives that you are looking to meet to determine what to include within your reporting. Communicate your needs, recommendations, and success with SEO reports Remember, reports are the core channel of communication to showcase SEO’s value and return on investment. As such, they can make or break a relationship with a stakeholder. When managing SEO for an SMB, there are some key fundamentals to remember to help with your SEO reporting: 01. Define the metrics you should report on at the start of the campaign, and get direction from the key decision maker on what these metrics should be. 02. Tailor the report based on who is receiving it and their level of knowledge. 03. Keep your report only as detailed as it needs to be and avoid excess data. 04. Provide actionable insights and recommendations based on the data. 05. Make sure your report tells a story. 06. Connect all areas of your report to the main business goals and KPIs. The better your SEO reporting, the more buy-in you will receive from the stakeholders that manage budgets, enabling you to make an impact on the company’s success—not to mention your own professional success as well. 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

Author: Myriam Jessier Let me tell you about George. George’s last search was for a good vacuum for his house. Potential customers like George are looking for the best, the quietest, the most affordable vacuum out there. Throughout their journey to identify the right vacuum for their needs, they'll conduct informational searches, comparative searches, and visit numerous brand and comparison sites. With a house full of dogs and cats, George needs the best vacuum for pet hair. But, other customers may want to find the best vacuum for their car or tile floors. Each one of these searches presents an opportunity for eCommerce businesses to get in front of customers so that when it's finally time to buy, they'll be in the running. But, you only stand a chance if you're able to address your target customer's specific challenges. This is where long tail keywords come in. Table of contents: An introduction to long tail keywords for eCommerce Breaking down a long tail eCommerce search query How to build a long tail keyword matrix for your online store Long tail keyword matrix example Figure it out with the TOP framework How to pick the right long tail keywords for your pages Homepage Category pages Product pages Sale pages Blog posts Long tail for SEO, big money for eCommerce Long tail keywords are search terms that are highly specific to what the user is looking for and generally contain three or more words. The full definition is a bit more nuanced than that, check out “ The long tail: A short history beyond keywords ” for a more detailed overview. These keywords mean big money for eCommerce brands. Uncovering them can help your store target customers that are looking for a specific product. Consequently, attracting customers who are almost ready to buy makes them more likely to buy from you. Using these keywords will contribute to increasing your sales. One of the biggest myths about long tail keywords is that they are easy to rank for—this is not necessarily true, either: They are easier to rank for. However, their key benefit is that they are higher intent queries, queries that lead to conversions more often than head terms. To help you visualize what this might look like in execution, here are some examples of the long tail for eCommerce SEO: For an online shoe retailer, instead of optimizing for the head term shoes , it would likely use the longtail keyword men’s white leather shoes , or women’s skate shoes , etc. A jewelry store might use the head term jewelry , but also use long tail keywords like necklaces , bracelets , and rings . However, these categories could also be considered too generic (or “head”) as they are very hard to rank for and very vague in terms of searcher intent . Getting back to our earlier example (featuring George), we can use vacuum as a head term and best vacuum for pet hair as a long tail keyword. If you want to go even deeper, here is an even more specific query: best vacuum for pet hair and hardwood floors . Breaking down a long tail eCommerce search query Now that we have gone over the theory, let’s dive into what an eCommerce long tail keyword looks like in real life—let’s deconstruct the anatomy of a long tail eCommerce search query. When someone searches for black men’s ripped jeans size 32 , they aren’t looking for just any old jeans. This person has provided qualifiers: Jeans — The core product Black — Color criteria Ripped — Style criteria Men’s — Clothing category type Size 32 —Size criteria If any one of the expressed criteria aren’t met, then the searcher is not satisfied and would not necessarily consider buying a product that is the wrong color, wrong size, for the wrong type of customer, the wrong style, or simply the wrong product (i.e., not jeans). This is why it’s important to consider the anatomy of a search query to truly understand what folks are looking for and how they express those needs via long tail keywords. How to build a long tail keyword matrix for your online store You may have noticed that the only thing distinguishing some long tail keywords from their head term variants is a few additional characteristics (e.g., embroidered leather blacksmith’s apron vs. apron ). Creating a keyword matrix can help you identify potential long tail keywords based on the combination of various characteristics. With a matrix, you will be able to find keywords that have a high volume (because people seek out the products) and zero volume keywords. Keywords with zero search volume can be high intent long tail queries for things you sell that SEO tools cannot provide data for. If an SEO keyword research tool has no information on a product’s search history because it’s too new or just starting to trend again, you could miss opportunities. A keyword matrix can also help you overcome not having a subscription to a traditional paid SEO tool or not having data for specific products. Start by listing general and specific characteristics for your store’s product categories, products, collections, etc. Once the list is complete, create a matrix that shows how those characteristics are related to each other. To help you get started with your own matrix, let’s walk through an example for a gluten-free bakery. General characteristics: bakery, bread Specific characteristics for your categories : cookies, bread, etc. Product characteristics (size, color, type, brand, model, etc.): gluten-free Target audience (for women, men, children, girls, boys, retirees, new moms, etc.): Gluten-sensitive individuals Location : Canada, Québec, Québec City Below, I’ve added an example of a keyword matrix based on this bakery example. Before we use that for our other pages, let’s look at what the bakery’s homepage’s H1 could be, according to some of the characteristics above: 01. BRAND NAME, online gluten-free bakery in beautiful Québec city 02. BRAND NAME, Québec’s very own gluten-free bakery. 03. BRAND NAME, order gluten-free bread, pizza dough and more online Out of these options, which H1 is the best? It depends on your business. In this bakery’s case, they are very focused on delivering throughout the province of Québec, not just Québec City. This means that the first option is not optimal. The second option is great because it says what the company is (bakery) and where it operates (Québec). The third option is also viable because it goes into detail about the product categories and emphasizes the online aspect. We could go further and even create a Frankenstein of an H1: BRAND NAME bakery: order gluten-free bread online This is how most optimizations happen SEO-wise. You keep iterating until you find something that feels just right for your store. Long tail keyword matrix example You can create a long tail keyword matrix for any type of website. Let’s do this for our gluten-free bakery. You can start with a matrix and do a more refined analysis for specific products or collections as you go. Type of bread Type of flour Ingredient Other criteria (trends) Bread Whole grain Potato Sprouted Baguette French Banana Dairy-free Pizza dough Amaranth flour Pumpkin White bread Breadrumbs Almond flour Corn Low-carb Pita Arrowroot flour Zucchini Diabetic-friendly People tend to search for longer, more specific phrases in order to find what they are looking for. The best way to find these long tail keywords is by conducting keyword research. You can do this by using tools like AnswerThePublic.com, Marmalead for Etsy, or any premium SEO tools such as SERPstat, Mangools, or Semrush . These tools can provide you with insights and statistical data you can use to create your long tail keyword matrix. You can also elect to go the free route by asking folks online, checking Etsy pages, Google autocomplete, Pinterest , and monitoring what your competitors are optimizing for. Figure it out with the TOP framework If you’re having difficulty coming up with potential long tail keywords for the pages that represent your business and its products and services, try approaching it using the TOP framework, a method developed by eCommerce SEO expert Kristina Azarenko . This framework is a great way to help you think about your products from an SEO perspective. TOP stands for target, occasions, and product attributes: Target audience — Who are your products for? Include the people who would buy these products for themselves and those who would buy it as a gift. Occasions — When are your products relevant? Graduation, divorce, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, hockey match, Bastille Day, etc. Product attributes — Qualities like color, size, trend, etc. Be specific, carmine and oxblood are both red but they’re better long tail opportunities than simply labeling a product as red . How to pick the right long tail keywords for your pages The long tail is an important part of SEO because it allows you to rank for your niche instead of competing with all other sites for the same term or topic. You can rank for something specific and get traffic from people who have that exact need. There are many different page types you can optimize for the long tail: Homepage Category/collection pages Product pages Sale pages Blog posts In the following sections, we’ll look at more specific guidance on applying the long tail to each of these page types. Finding your homepage’s long tail keyword You need to describe your store in unambiguous terms. For example, a customer looking for a gluten-free bakery that delivers would probably look for one they can find and order from online. As such, you could use online gluten-free bakery if you run a gluten-free eCommerce store. But, let’s take it a step further by leveraging your brand name and your location. Tell audiences who you are (your brand name), what you offer (the nature of your store) and where you offer it (online but also the country or city you operate from). Once you have your main keyword, you need to apply rule number one of eCommerce SEO: always optimize the H1 . The best place to explain who you are, what you do, and where your business operates is in the big bold title on your homepage. Very often, that main title is the H1 (as it should be). Think of it as a big bold announcement to bots and humans. This is where you let everyone know about your store in a few words. How to find long tail keywords for your category pages Rule number two of eCommerce SEO: prioritize category page H1 titles. This is because category pages usually tend to get more traffic than individual product pages. The key objective to keep in mind for category pages is ensuring that they are not too generic. This also applies to product pages as well. Each category can be an opportunity to engage potential customers based on their intent. For example, if we create a matrix for “stud earrings,” we can see that there are many different search intents tied to that category. People are looking for colored stud earrings, where to buy stud earrings, different shapes, materials, etc. Here’s another form a keyword matrix can take—a mind map. For some, a mind map might help them visualize the strategy more easily than a standard matrix chart. Taking advantage of the way shoppers search, you could create category pages or ensure that certain filter pages are optimized for search. An example of a filter page would be when someone uses a color filter to pick out blue, black, red, or white stud earrings. In that case, the category page would be Colored stud earrings for women . You could also optimize the “gold stud earrings” category page or the “bar stud earrings” page. So, why are some keywords preferable for category pages? Because when folks look for something, they aren’t necessarily looking for a specific product—they may want to browse options. If we are shopping for “black stud earrings,” we have a need but not a desire for a specific product. As such, Google will tend to present pages that offer variety, as opposed to pages that showcase a singular product. This is why prioritizing category page optimizations makes sense if you are an online store. Finding keywords for your product pages Some keywords are incredibly specific: they 100% describe a specific product in your store. Any long tail keyword that sounds like it describes a single product available in your store should be that product page’s main keyword. It should be used in the H1 of the page. An example of this would be: Gold and Black Art Déco Statement Necklace. The difference between product and category pages (and when potential customers use them) is the main thing to keep in mind here. Again, someone looking for women’s stud earrings would want to see multiple options (i.e., a category page), whereas someone looking for Canadian designer black bar stud earrings would probably be looking for a specific product. So, ensure you’re using the right keywords to appeal to potential customers at the right time. Sale pages can also harness the long tail Creating a sales page is an SEO boon. Focus on long tail keywords there as well. When creating a sale page for SEO purposes, it is important to keep long tail keywords in mind from the start (if possible). These keywords should reflect two distinct search intents: Customer is looking for a specific brand’s sale Customer is looking for discounted products By using long tail keywords that are tailored to these two search intents, you can maximize the likelihood that your sale page shows up in relevant search results and helps attract more customers that are more likely to convert. Keywords such as “discounts on apparel” or “Black Friday sale” target customers that are generally looking for discounted items with no specific brand in mind. This way, you can ensure that your sale pages are receiving the maximum amount of qualified organic traffic from search engines. If you do not have active sales going on, you can use that page to tell people when your next sales are. Offer them a form to sign up for sales notifications. That way, you will be able to capture price-sensitive customers that can be more easily nudged towards buying your products. Blog posts can capture long tail search intent, too What do you do when the keywords clearly point to a search intent that does not belong on a category page? First, determine if it is something that describes a specific product you sell. An example of this would be the term black triangle stud earrings for women . Is the searcher looking for the best place to buy stud earrings? Or, could they be searching for the best earring shape for a specific hairstyle? In cases such as these, you are higher up in the customer funnel. Your customer is still on a journey to find the perfect product for them. You should produce content in your blog or resource center to help them find the right product, thus moving them closer to conversion while potentially ranking for those types of queries. Product pages have a transactional nature and cannot satisfy this type of long tail query. You need to provide useful information to help folks make a choice in their online shopping journey. Long tail keywords: Low volume, big opportunity The key to harnessing long tail keywords for an online store is to figure out what type of keywords belong to what type of page. After reading this article, you should be able to figure out what type of keyword belongs in a category page, in a product page, or in inspirational content like a blog article. Any store or site owner can build a keyword matrix, all you need to do is ask yourself and your customers the right questions to map things out. It can be a challenge for brands to show up in Google search results, particularly for their ideal keywords. While they may not be the highest volume queries, long tail keywords offer businesses of all sizes a way to optimize their content for more specific keywords that more than make up the difference with higher conversion rates. Myriam Jessier - SEO Trainer at PRAGM Myriam Jessier is an SEO consultant and trainer with 15+ years of experience. She loves to share her knowledge because it helps everyone make the web a bit more human and bot-friendly. Twitter | Linkedin