Search Results

Author: James Clark Search engines, social media platforms, and browsers don’t see web pages the same way human visitors do. They need additional context to help them fully understand what the content means, what they should do with it, and how they should display it to users. You can provide that context by adding meta tags to your web pages. In this article, you’ll learn what meta tags are, how they can maximize your SEO and social media impact, and how to manage them on your website. Table of contents: What are meta tags? How meta tags are structured Where to add your meta tags How to check your meta tags Are all meta tags tags? Meta tags for SEO ‘Meta title’ (title tag) Meta description Meta robots Meta rating Meta tags for social Open Graph tags X Cards How to validate your social meta tags Meta tags for verification Meta tags for web design How to add meta tags to your website Add meta tags directly to the page With Wix Meta tags to avoid Audit and implement meta tags for a stronger digital presence What are meta tags? Meta tags are small snippets of HTML code that you can add to your web pages. They are entirely optional, invisible to human visitors, and usually don’t affect how a site looks or behaves.  So, why are they so important for SEO and social media? These tags provide search engines, social media platforms, browsers, and other systems with information about web pages so they can better understand them. This information could be a description of a web page (for search engines and users), whether the page contains adult content, which image to use when someone shares the page on LinkedIn, and so on (I’ll cover them in detail in the following sections). Although search engines and social media platforms aren’t obliged to act on meta tags, they often do so because it helps them deliver a better experience to their own users. To that end, providing meta tags can strongly influence how these platforms present your website content.  This impacts your organic social and search traffic levels, in turn affecting the number of website conversions you generate. In short, meta tags could even determine whether your site achieves its business goals.  Not too bad for something your visitors won’t even see! How meta tags are structured Usually, meta tags consist of: the HTML element an attribute specifying the name of the tag an attribute specifying the content of the tag For example, the meta description  (which search engines often use in search result listings) for classifieds website Craigslist looks like this: Google shows Craigslist’s meta description as part of its search listing. Although the name attribute usually comes before the content attribute, the order of the attributes doesn’t actually matter. Sometimes, though, you’ll see a meta tag with a property attribute rather than a name attribute. That’s the case with Open Graph tags—tags that help social media platforms, such as Facebook, understand and display your content. Take a look at the Open Graph description tag for Craigslist; you can see how similar it is to the meta description (which is its equivalent tag for search engines): Where to add your meta tags You should place your meta tags in the head of the page (rather than body)—in other words, between the opening and closing tags. While the current HTML spec  says that meta tags can  go in the body in certain circumstances (and some search engines and browsers may be able to cope with that), the head of the page is still the safest place to put them. How to check your meta tags The most reliable way to check your meta tags is in the page source—the code that makes up the web page. You don’t need to be able to read code to find your tags, either. Here’s how to do it: In Chrome, right-click and select View page source  (or hit Ctrl+U ).   The page source will open in a new browser tab. Hit Ctrl+F  to bring up the search menu. Enter “< meta ”   to highlight all the meta tags. That opening bracket stops the browser from including any other instances of the word “meta” in the page source. Since meta tags go in the of the page, they should all appear towards the top of the page source. If you aren’t confident navigating your page source, you can use a free SEO tool, such as SEOmator’s Meta Tag Checker , instead. When you enter your page URL, the tool returns a table of meta tags along with their content values: The downside of using a third-party tool is that you can’t be certain it is showing you every tag. For example, the Seomator tool doesn’t list Open Graph tags, perhaps because they are structured slightly differently. Are all meta tags tags? Meta tags use the HTML element. But, as with every good rule, there’s an exception: the title tag . This uses the

Author: Miriam Ellis Business owners and local SEOs  are constantly looking for ways to increase conversions and sales by even a fraction of a percent. Considering that nearly 60% of the U.S. population suffers from a chronic illness, it’s very likely that you’re missing the opportunity to serve huge audiences of health- and safety-conscious customers unless you’ve specifically planned ways to connect with them.  And because smaller local enterprises are frequently operating in highly competitive environments, one of the deepest questions business owners and digital marketers can ask is:   “Am I helping everyone I possibly can?” Take note of the following statistics: Up to 1 in 4  Americans have a disability.  More than 1 in 4 American adults (27.2%) have had multiple chronic conditions .  55.8 million Americans over the age of 65 . 18.6 million children in the US are under the age of 5 . These groups are at the highest risk of serious illness and mortality from COVID, and, as economic policy and societal fatigue declared the pandemic as “over” in the United States (despite continuing contagion and mortality), many individuals in these large statistical demographics have been left behind. Rise to the challenge and expand your customer base (or hold your ground against competitors) by simply helping underserved and vulnerable individuals . By offering and marketing your COVID-conscious services (curbside pick-up, masking policy, telehealth, etc.), you can appeal to a new group of prospective customers, while improving your local SEO for members of this high-intent audience. Table of contents: DE&I for local businesses: Recognizing and serving “invisible” customers Your inclusive, COVID-conscious business plan How to publicize your COVID-friendly offers and services Your Google Business Profile Your business website Social media profiles Offline DE&I for local businesses: Recognizing and serving “invisible” customers I am a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council at Moz, and have learned how important it is for local business owners to apply these principles to the “post-COVID” scenario.  While less consumer-centric (or, simply, less-motivated) competitors may overlook valuable customer service opportunities by dropping safety protocols, your local business (or your clients’) can listen, learn, and act to implement DE&I policies that give you a unique selling proposition—one that not only widens your potential audience, but also showcases your brand’s ethics.  Consider the following social media posts from potential customers when assessing the need and potential impact of your COVID-related offerings: In some sectors, like local beauty services, continuing with your masking policy can enable repeat customers to keep coming to your business (and protect your staff). If you stop supporting their requirements, don’t be surprised when they start supporting your competitors instead. The opposite is true as well: If your competitors stop supporting vulnerable customers, those customers might turn to you if you can accommodate their needs. And, for your repeat customers who might be surprised to see that your COVID policies are no longer in effect, finding out when they step through your door can feel personal—especially if they’ve traveled to visit your business or need to scramble to find an alternative at the last minute. This small smattering of sentiment captures both the pain customers feel at being treated with indifference and the relief they experience when COVID-conscious local businesses make a plan to serve them (not to mention the loyalty that can build).  While the need for COVID-friendly services (curbside pick-up, social distancing, etc.) remains, I’m sure you’ve noticed they are far less common than they were even just a year ago. This gap has customers turning to platforms like Reddit to share tips on locating COVID-conscious hairdressers, dentists, and so on. In this setting, the inclusion principle of DE&I means welcoming as many people as possible to your business with dignity and respect. And, if your local competitors have dropped their safety protocols, your business can be the one that steps up to serve these valued community members. Your inclusive, COVID-conscious business plan By offering some (or all) of the following customer services, you can maximize your ability to accommodate the COVID-conscious members of your community, potentially expanding your customer base and improving both your reputation and loyalty ratings (I’ll discuss where to broadcast these offerings in the next section): Masked shopping hours Least busy hours Masked day of the week Hours for seniors, people with a wide variety of health conditions, and families with children too young to be vaccinated Masked appointments Outdoor appointments Ventilation and filtering for in-person visits Sanitization and hand sanitizer  Delivery Curbside pickup and buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) Teleservices At a minimum, you should ensure that your vulnerable customers are able to access basic necessities as safely as possible. Particularly for businesses that operate in Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)  industries like medicine and finance, which have a responsibility to provide equal access to all. In addition, any truly consumer-centric local business should broadcast its willingness to meet customer expectations: Political grandstanding, economic policy, and non-inclusive advertising have resulted in countless people with long COVID  (a spectrum of disabilities and health conditions), the elderly, and millions of bereaved families  who have lost loved ones feel that they are either forgotten or derided by society—unfairly isolated.  Imagine the difference these customers might feel if your local business offered these expressions of care: 1:1 phone support that acknowledges that a customer cannot risk coming into a physical store, with a caring response like, “We’ll come out to you, with a mask on. Don’t worry! We want you to be safe.” Personalized notes in delivery to customers you’ve come to know well, with statements like, “We really miss seeing you in the shop, but we’re so glad we still have the chance to serve you with this delivery. If you ever need anything, please just ring us. We’re all thinking about you.” Online, radio, local TV, and local news statements of solidarity with at-risk community members, including statements of intent that your business is still here to serve the public in safer ways. Special offers for people requiring greater safety protocols.  Within my own circle, I can easily recall multiple incidents of local brands getting it right and wrong when implementing COVID-conscious DE&I:  One elder I know patronized a pizza restaurant for 30 years and had continued to do so once the pandemic began because they briefly offered masked, curbside pickup. Then they dropped this service, and refused to walk outside to their parking lot to hand them a pizza, despite them writing the owner a personal email explaining their loyalty, age, and pre-existing health conditions.  The business treated them with total indifference, lost a very regular customer, and are undoubtedly seeing profits drop from their thoughtless policy. On the flip-side, a local greengrocer listened to the needs of a customer with an auto-immune condition and arranged for them to drive up, be shown the farm shop’s inventory, purchase it over the phone and placed in the trunk of their car, making a major difference to that family’s access to fresh, seasonal produce and nutrition.  It’s easy to see which of these two scenarios exemplifies the excellent customer service all local SMBs rely on to succeed. How to publicize your COVID-friendly offers and services Once you have a DE&I plan for continuing to serve COVID-conscious customers, you have four main venues for promoting your offers: Your Google Business Profile Your business website Your business’s social media profiles Offline (in-store, etc.) Your Google Business Profile Your local business listing (Google Business Profile)  may be the most visible and important piece of online real estate for your shop, and it offers some flexible features for marketing your safety protocols.  Unfortunately, in keeping with the myth that COVID is over, Google removed the attributes that it formerly offered for addressing safety practices  (thus shifting the burden on to vulnerable audiences), but these fields are still available to help you broadcast your services: Profile description  — Your GBP business description can summarize your ongoing or new safety practices and offerings. There is a 750-character limit for this field, but that should be enough for you to at least tell customers to call you to inquire about COVID-related accommodations. Photos  — Keep taking fresh photos of home delivery, masked service, and amenities like curbside pickup so customers can see that you have not ended your safety policies. Profile updates  — GBP updates (formerly known as GBP Posts ) are excellent for writing mini-blog posts about your COVID safety practices and offerings. Recent dates on these will help COVID-conscious customers choose you. Videos  — The photos section of your GBP also supports video uploads. Upload a brief video with your warmest welcome to your most-vulnerable community members and a demonstration of all the amenities and practices you are offering them. Your business website In terms of your business’s online presence, your website is the only channel that you have complete control over. This means you have the freedom to highlight your COVID-friendly services without character or placement restrictions, and you can even optimize content  to rank for relevant queries (further increasing your website’s ability to turn online visitors into in-person customers). Consider featuring the following elements on your local business’s website: COVID-conscious landing page  — Have a dedicated landing page outlining all of your COVID-conscious offerings and link to it from your homepage, your DE&I policy page (if you have one), and from high up in your navigational structure so that it can be easily found. An example of a COVID safety landing page. Source: Prisma Health. Safety measures  — Put all your safety measures on this page, including your employee health policies, sanitization practices, ventilation and filtration, and masking policy. Least popular times  — List your least popular hours on this page, as this can help vulnerable members who are willing to come inside plan their visit. After hours options  — If you have after-hours options for vulnerable customers, be sure to list those as well. Mission statement  — Create a mission statement of solidarity with your COVID-conscious customers; let them know you haven’t abandoned them. Private appointments  — If you offer 1:1 masked, private appointments, either at your premises or at customers’ homes, explain how that works and include CTAs  for booking appointments. Your business’s social media profiles Your social channels are one of your best vehicles for communicating up-to-date safety information to your customers.  Regularly publish reminders that your business is COVID-aware and still offering services to keep your community informed. Profiles  — Put a statement of COVID-conscious customer service on your social profile bio or description. This way, potential customers know at a glance whether or not to consider your business as an option. Videos  — Film short videos offering your expressions of care for vulnerable customers. This kind of communication can go a long way in making potential customers feel seen, which is critical for first-time customers as well as long-term loyalty. Images  — The same images of your safety practices that you’re (ideally) putting on your Google Business Profile can be shared on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (Twitter).  It’s important to be realistic about the possibility that any expression of support for vulnerable people on social media may bring trolls and hate-mongers out of the woodwork. You are likely to get some ugly comments in response to any DE&I-related action you publish.  Taking the high road isn’t always easy; keep in mind that your goal is to connect with real, local people who need your help, so you are free to ignore the nonsense of random passersby. Offline (in-store, etc.) Some communities don’t have reliable access to the internet, and one recent study found 7% of the US population  doesn’t use it. Fortunately, your relationships with customers, your premise signage, and your public voice can help you get the word out about your COVID-conscious practices in the following ways: Image: Lynn Friedman. Word-of-mouth campaigns  — Chances are good that customers you see in person have loved ones you’re not seeing (because they are indefinitely stuck at home due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic). Train staff to let in-person shoppers know you’ve got a broad menu of service options for vulnerable members. Storefront signage  — COVID-conscious folk are still driving and walking by your store. Make connections with large, visible signage detailing your safer offerings. In-store signage  — At-risk individuals may be under significant stress coming into your store, despite them wearing a mask. In-store signage highlighting home delivery or curbside service can increase their comfort and give them new reasons to be a loyal patron of your business. Local press  — Local business owners have significant power to shape the communities they serve. If you’re interviewed by or featured in local news, articles, or blog posts, take a minute to mention your ongoing safety precautions. Enlist publishers to help you get the word out that vulnerable community members haven’t been forgotten. Bring your business to everyone, equally “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”  — Mahatma Gandhi By embracing an overlooked consumer segment , you are practically guaranteed repeat business. Sixty-three percent of customers who leave reviews do so to show appreciation, and 73% do so to let others know of their experience, according to Moz . Through the reviews  they leave, members of underserved communities can help inform others of your offerings while simultaneously benefitting your local SEO. Combine that with optimized, safety-related content on your website and some offline/in-store messaging and you’ll be driving search visibility and foot traffic to your business—all while doing the right thing. To learn more about making your website accessible, read our resource, “ Website accessibility and SEO: How they’re related and why it matters ,” by Rejoice Ojiaku. Miriam Ellis - Local SEO Subject Matter Expert at Moz   Miriam Ellis is a local SEO columnist and consultant. She has been cited as one of the top five most prolific women writers in the SEO industry. Miriam is also an award-winning fine artist and her work can be seen at MiriamEllis.com . Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Goodness Azubuogu At first, internal linking seems straightforward—simply link to relevant pages with appropriate anchor text when it seems useful for your site visitors. While this is true, it’s a bit of an oversimplification and downplays the importance of internal linking for SEO. Proper internal linking can help you: Guide visitors to the pages you want them to see so they can buy from you. Show search engines your new pages so they can potentially show up in relevant search results. Signal to search engines which pages are your most important. Working together, these elements enable you to rise in the search results, gain more traffic, and increase conversions. Let’s take a look at how internal links work and how you can use them to achieve results for your website. Table of contents What are internal links? Internal links vs. external links Why internal links are important for SEO How can internal links benefit your business? How to get the best results from your internal linking strategy Common internal linking errors to avoid What are internal links? Internal links are hyperlinks that connect one page on a website to another page on the same site. You can add them to your pages to help site visitors and search engines navigate your site and discover more content. The simplest type of internal links are in-text links (as shown in the example image below). While there are other types of internal links (e.g., site navigation, footer links, breadcrumbs, etc.), this article will focus on in-text internal links, since these are the types of links that you can customize from page to page and present the greatest opportunity to improve your SEO. The Wix SEO Learning Hub newsletter disclaimer, with internal links pointing to the terms of use and privacy policy. In the example above, there’s a link from Wix’s terms of use with anchor text that reads “ Wix Terms of Use .” And, for illustrative purposes, below is the HTML associated with that internal link. Wix Terms of Use Internal links vs. external links Internal links and external links (commonly referred to as SEO backlinks ) serve the same purpose, which is to lead users and search engines to more pages. However, internal links point to pages within the same website, whereas external links point away from one website to another. Why are internal links important for SEO? Here are the most important reasons why adding internal links to your web pages is worth your time and effort: Internal links help search engines find your web pages Search engines, like Google, discover content on a website by following links that point to that content. In the SEO industry, this is referred to as “ crawling ,” an action that search engines perform to find new pages so they can potentially show them to users as search results. That means that a good internal linking strategy can play a huge role in ensuring that Google finds your pages. These links are like signposts that guide search engine bots to specific pages, with information (anchor text) that describes what they will find on the linked page. An example diagram showing how bots crawl from link to link. Source: Screaming Frog. So, the more links that point to a page, the higher the chances that Google will find that page. As an example, Google might discover a new Wix SEO webinar page by encountering a link to it from the Wix SEO Learning Hub homepage (as shown below). Next, Google would crawl the page and then follow the links on the page to find more content. This process repeats itself so that search engines can keep up-to-date with site changes, including new pages and updated content. After search engines crawl your pages, those pages are eligible to get “ indexed ,” meaning that the information found during the crawling stage is stored in an “index” for the search engine to retrieve later on so that it can generate relevant search results. However, if Google cannot discover and crawl your pages, then those pages cannot get indexed. If they’re not indexed, those pages cannot rank, which means that internal linking is a vital part of helping each of the pages on your website perform on search. Internal links can help increase your search rankings Internal linking is essential for any site owner that wants to rank their content on the first page of Google search results. This is because Google looks at the quality and quantity of internal links pointing to a given page to help it assess which pages are important on your site. Google monitors your internal links via Google Search Console. This signal (known as “ PageRank ”) assigns a value to each page to indicate its authority. The more quality links a page receives (both internal and external), the higher its PageRank will be. While PageRank is just one of many signals that Google looks at, this means that pages linked to from your most important pages (like your homepage ) will receive link equity which could help them rank better. You can combine strategic internal links with descriptive anchor text to inform visitors what the page is about, which could help them show up higher for relevant searches as search engines also read anchor text for context clues. Internal links improve user experience and conversion rate Internal links are great for delivering a good user experience and ultimately help improve your site’s conversion rate. They also direct visitors to more pages on your site, which keeps visitors engaged for longer. For instance, if you’re an eco-friendly brand, you can attract potential customers via search with a post about “5 Back to School Plastic Alternatives” and add internal links pointing to your online shop to make it easier for them to buy from you. Mananalu’s back-to-school blog post contains recommendations for other brands as well as internal links to its own products. This is why it’s important to understand your target audience—so that you can map their journey and answer their questions by linking to content relevant to them at any stage of their customer journey . How can internal links benefit your website? Strategic internal linking can benefit every website owner in the same way that it benefits SEO: Aiding your brand/site’s online visibility. Proper internal linking between a website’s pages passes link equity (i.e., PageRank). So, the more relevant links there are pointing to a page, the more likely that page is to rank high on Google for relevant searches. Leveraging traffic to drive conversions and revenue. Directing website traffic to specific landing pages can help boost their conversion rates. The more users that visit a website, the more likely that these users will complete a desired action (which can include adding products to cart, making a purchase, filling out a form, or clicking on a link to an important page). Increasing customer engagement and retention. A well-structured website with clear navigation and topic clusters provides a good user experience. A happy customer will likely return to a website if they know they will find relevant content and an easy-to-navigate website. Additionally, internal links help Google find your content and understand its relationship to the rest of your website so as to deliver relevant pages to users when they search for your offerings. How to get the best results from your internal linking strategy Now that you know the importance of internal linking and how it can benefit your website, let’s talk about how to maximize the effectiveness of your internal linking strategy. Incorporate user intent to capture interest at all stages of their journey You can leverage user intent when creating content to anticipate what your customers will need at various stages of the customer journey (shown below) and incorporate internal links to guide them to the appropriate content. For example, a user researching the best new season sneakers might land on a guide from ASOS about all the trendiest new sneakers for women. Source: ASOS. Next, that user might consider purchasing a pair of the sneakers mentioned in the guide—a well-placed internal link (like the one in the example above) helps users move further along their customer journey and find out more so that they can decide whether or not to buy the item. Link between relevant related pages to build topical authority Linking related pages into clusters is a great way to build authority on a topic. The better a website can position its content as an authority on a certain topic , the higher its chance of ranking for searches related to that topic. While internal linking can be straightforward (i.e., just link to relevant pages with relevant anchor text when you think it will be valuable for users), it can also get quite sophisticated when you’re working with topic clusters. You can learn more about this strategy in Jonas Sickler’s article “ How to use topic clusters and pillar pages for SEO .” Source: Terakeet. Furthermore, you can link to unindexed pages from related pages to increase the chances of getting indexed, as this signals to Google (and users) the relationship and importance of the page within the website structure. Link from authoritative pages to signal importance I’ve mentioned PageRank a few times in this guide—this is how you can take advantage of PageRank to potentially give your pages a boost in search results. Internal links pass link equity from authoritative pages on your website to other pages, so by linking to other pages from your most important or popular pages, you can increase their chances of ranking higher in Google search. However, it’s not a good idea to just keep adding internal links to a page with no regard to relevance. That kind of tactic might signal to both visitors and Google that the page is spammy . Write descriptive anchor text Anchor text refers to the clickable text on a hyperlink. Descriptive anchor text on internal links benefits both visitors and search engines. The text gives context to the linked page and tells visitors exactly what they can expect when they click on the link. The anchor text “starts with an audit” links to another SEO Learning Hub article called “Beyond the basics: Conversations for developing customized SEO strategies.” When you use descriptive anchor text (like in the example above), visitors and search engines can clearly see where links lead. On the other hand, this means that “click here” and “read more” are not ideal anchor text because they provide zero context as to where the link might take the visitor. Common internal linking errors to avoid Regularly auditing your website can help you identify internal linking issues that may be affecting your website's performance, but site audits are a separate topic. For the purposes of this guide, let’s focus on familiarizing yourself with internal linking pitfalls so you can avoid them from the start. Broken links Broken links (also known as “dead links”) lead users to pages that no longer exist. This can occur when a page gets deleted or if a page’s URL changes without a proper redirect to the new URL. Source: Figma. Broken links can negatively impact your website’s performance in various ways, including: Bad user experience — Sending users to a page that does not exist can cause frustration. Imagine clicking on a link to a rare item you’ve been looking for only to see a 404 error . That wouldn’t be a positive experience and might even push the visitor toward a competitor’s website to make that purchase. Wasted crawl budget — Search engines will only spend a finite amount of time on any given website to crawl and subsequently index it for search results (a concept known as “crawl budget”). If you lead search engines to pages that don’t exist via your broken links, that’s time that the search engine won’t be able to spend crawling your other pages. For larger sites, this could result in decreased visibility in search results. Nofollow links Nofollow links are hyperlinks that signal to search engines that you do not editorially endorse the linked page. Nofollow links have a rel=“nofollow” tag in their HTML (as where typical “follow” links do not). Example HTML of a typical link: Check out SEO on Wix. Example HTML of a nofollow link: Check out SEO on Wix. Adding the nofollow tag to internal links to important pages can harm their chances of being crawled (and thus indexed and ranked). Empty or generic anchor text Internal links without anchor text provide no details about the target page, which could have a minor effect on how well the page ranks for relevant search queries. This isn’t common with text links (unless you’re using spaces as anchor text for some reason), but generic anchor text can also be detrimental to your SEO. As mentioned earlier, non-descriptive anchor text (e.g., “click here” or “read more”) is a missed opportunity as it provides no context about the target page. So, create relevant and descriptive anchor text to provide more information about the target pages to visitors and Google. Internal links aren’t just low-hanging fruit, they’re SEO fundamentals Connecting all possible relevant pages to one another with internal links and descriptive anchor text can be time consuming, especially if you operate a larger site. But, this task doesn’t simply remove friction for search engines and users—links are absolutely essential to how the internet operates, and so they are just as essential for your site to work well on the internet. To be successful, make sure to add and audit internal links regularly. Prioritize your most valuable pages and leverage those pages to bring visibility to others. If you can do that consistently, you should be able to increase rankings, traffic, and conversions. Goodness Azubuogu - SEO Analyst at Trek Marketing Goodness is an SEO analyst that specializes in technical and on-page SEO for eCommerce brands, helping them improve their organic visibility. She enjoys SEO audits, data analysis, and reading novels. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Ann Smarty Businesses of all sizes invest in content creation and optimization these days. But, more often than not, the primary focus is on creating new content and discovering new keyword opportunities . And yet, your existing content is a goldmine that you can tap into and build upon. Over its lifetime, it may have acquired valuable backlinks or rank for relevant keywords. What’s more, you’ve already invested in creating it. While adding new content is, of course, important, looking back at your existing content and updating it regularly can help you keep that fire going, instead of simply letting it go out slowly and starting a new one. In this article, I’ll explain what you need to know to effectively refresh your existing content for renewed value, including: Why update your old content? How to prioritize content to update Ways to refresh existing content 01. Analyze competing URLs 02. Identify new rich snippet opportunities 03. Find new, relevant keywords to expand content 04. Update or add new screenshots and videos 05. Update old, time-sensitive data (stats, dates, etc.) 06. Update your forms and CTAs 07. Republish with a new date to highlight your refreshed article How often should you refresh your content? Why update your old content? There can be any number of reasons why old content should (or needs to be) updated, and some of those reasons are very niche or industry-specific. Below, I’ll discuss the three most universal reasons why it’s important to refresh old content when it stops performing for your site. For better user experience As content gets older, it becomes less useful and, sometimes, even harmful. Even evergreen content is going to eventually have this problem. Consider content within the SEO niche, for example: Outdated SEO advice is commonplace and, in many cases, following that obsolete advice can actually get your site in trouble with Google. In other niches, especially those in Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sectors (i.e. sites about topics that can directly impact a person’s happiness, health, safety, or financial stability ), providing outdated information or advice can be even more detrimental. On top of that, old content may also interrupt users’ browsing journeys as they run into broken links, outdated CTAs, and broken web forms. To revive lost rankings As you add new content, your existing content starts moving away from the homepage, thus there are fewer and less powerful internal links pointing to it. This can result in a gradual loss of rankings and organic traffic as those pages go deeper into a blog’s archive. Plus, for certain queries (particularly news or trending topics), Google looks for fresher content, so older articles may be perceived as less relevant and ranked lower, even if they have more backlinks . To improve click-through rate When you search Google, you often see publication dates included in search snippets: Dated search snippets are very common, and users may be more likely to click search results with fresher dates. I am not aware of any click-through study that quantifies the impact dates have on organic CTR , but I personally tend to scan through search results to find something more recent to click on—I am sure a lot of searchers do the same. How to prioritize content to update Now that we’ve reviewed the major reasons to update your content, let’s discuss how to strategically approach refreshing your content. Content that is losing organic traffic Organic traffic loss is the first signal that your page may be outdated. It is not the only possible cause for declining traffic, but it is a very common one. The easiest and fastest way to identify pages that are losing organic traffic is via Google Search Console (GSC). Assuming you have already set up and verified your GSC account: Login to your Search Console Under the Performance section (within the left-hand navigation panel), select Search results Select the Date filter (as shown below) Select the Compare tab to designate your desired date range From there, click Apply , select the Pages tab (in the table below the main chart), and click on Click Difference twice to sort the table by pages with the biggest loss in organic search clicks (as shown below). You can export the list of URLs, check when each was published, and evaluate whether any of those pages need a refresh. Clicking any of the individual URLs within the report and then going to the Queries tab will reveal a list of all the search queries that URL ranks for. Similar to what I showed you above, the Clicks Difference column will help you identify the search queries that are sending less traffic than they used to: Pages with solid ranking potential Some of your existing pages have a higher potential to generate organic search traffic than others. Just how high that potential is can be determined by: Current rankings : Pages that currently rank between 6 and 15 have a good chance of ranking higher if content is improved and more internal links pointing to those pages are added. Backlink profile : Pages that have managed to build a powerful (and natural) backlink profile but do not bring in any traffic are worth a look. In most cases, the problem is that there’s no searchable keyword these pages target, so identifying one (or a few of them) and using them on those pages will likely help them generate organic clicks. Search Console can help you identify both of these groups of pages. Use the Top linked pages report (accessible in the Links section of the left-hand menu) to see your pages sorted by most backlinks. Then, proceed to the Performance section to reference the organic traffic of each corresponding page. It’s a good idea to refer to your rank tracking platform to identify rankings that could be improved. SE Ranking offers a solid solution that also captures daily search engine results pages (SERPs) for all your tracked keywords. It also offers handy filters allowing you to quickly find the top positions that could be improved. Seasonal content When a new season approaches, you have much higher chances to rank for relevant search queries if you update your existing seasonal content (as opposed to creating new pages for that season). This is because your existing URLs may have already accumulated external backlinks, so you can tap into that existing link equity by refreshing it and bringing it back on top of your blog’s homepage. Your competitors’ updates Keep an eye on when your competitors’ pages get updated, especially for your most valuable keywords. This will help you take quick action and potentially prevent ranking losses because Google may push updated URLs higher in SERPs (even if temporarily), so your page can end up losing organic traffic. For my most important pages (i.e., those that drive a lot of clicks that convert well), I usually monitor the top three competing pages. I am interested in just about any change that was introduced to those pages, including links, headings, the date on the page, content edits, etc. Any of these changes (even minor ones) can result in their rankings improving, so I need to be aware. You can use a tool like Visualping to keep an eye on your key competitors and their most important pages. Visualping offers page monitoring tools, and you can create multiple alerts to monitor lots of pages. Monitoring your competitors’ content refreshing strategy may also help you create yours, so this may present a solid learning path allowing you to uncover new tactics to follow (or avoid). Ways to refresh existing content One of the most common mistakes is simply republishing content with a new date (to push it back to the top of the blog homepage) without actually updating the content itself. Google unambiguously frowns upon this tactic: If an article has been substantially changed, it can make sense to give it a fresh date and time. However, it’s against our guidelines to artificially freshen a story when the publisher didn’t add significant information… It’s also against our guidelines to create a very slightly updated story from a previously published one, then delete the old story and redirect to the new one. — Google So what is a “substantial” change that would warrant a fresh date? There’s no clear percentage of content that needs to be changed, but here’s what you can do: 01. Analyze competing URLs Since your content has been losing organic traffic and positions, there are other (potentially fresher) pages that have replaced yours in Google SERPs. So, the first step is identifying why they’ve been gaining rankings that you have been losing. Analyze what’s currently ranking higher and see where your content is missing. This free SEO comparison tool lets you easily compare two (or more) pages’: Title tags Most common keywords used within the content HTML subheadings ( H2 and H3 tags that structure content) Overall word count Just grab a few URLs that are currently ranking for your target keyword and run them through this tool alongside your page: This is a good tool to help you quickly identify whether your content needs to be expanded (or narrowed down to focus more on the target topic) and how to better optimize it. 02. Identify new rich snippet opportunities Your content may be losing organic traffic without any significant rankings loss. This can happen when Google adds more SERP features (like image and video carousels) that push organic listings further down the page. Another reason for diminished organic clicks may be lower click-through rate because your competitors have rich snippets . Look for rich snippet opportunities that didn't exist before (e.g., add an FAQ section and FAQ schema to generate FAQ rich snippets ). 03. Find new, relevant keywords to expand content Keyword research is not just about targeting new ranking opportunities—it is also about finding inspiration. Discovering related keywords will help you uncover new topics that can make your content refresh more effective. This process involves identifying related concepts, entities , and questions to cover in your article. Text Optimizer is a great tool to analyze your old content and discover ways to make it more focused on the target topic. Simply run your URL through the tool and it will suggest related topics or concepts that may be missing from your content. If you want to learn a bit more about refining your keyword strategy using your existing content, you can check out this article from Kia Ora Digital. Google’s “People also ask” boxes can be another great source of content that should be added to your existing pages. Simply search Google for your target keyword and you may find a few ideas for which questions to answer in your old article: 04. Update or add new screenshots and videos It is generally a good idea to refresh the important visual assets embedded on your page. Images and videos are often dated (in their URLs, for example). Video publication date may also be a signal of content freshness. In fact, video rich snippets include the date when the video was uploaded: So, both images and videos may be sending signals to users and Google that your content may be outdated. To that end, you can create new videos and images to add to your old content. This benefit here is not limited to SEO: You can use the same visual assets to promote your updated article across multiple social media media channels to build brand recognition (which, in turn, improves on-page engagement and conversions). 05. Update old, time-sensitive data (stats, dates, etc.) This is self-explanatory but I’d still like to include this step as it is often overlooked. Update your links to more recent studies, find fresher stats, link to more recent official statements. It is a good idea to refresh links to resources as well, as those may have become outdated, too. One way to do this is to use Google’s search tools to filter search results based on how recently they were published and finding more recent studies on your topic. In some niches (especially health and wellness), it is also useful to limit your search to .gov resources because these sites publish official and trusted data. Here’s an example of a search that limits results to those published within a year on official .gov sites: 06. Update your forms and CTAs When updating your article, don’t forget to refresh your contextual calls to action (CTAs). To that end, you’ll want to make sure your free downloads (i.e., lead magnets ) are also all up to date. To ensure visitors aren’t dropping off at various points of your customer journey , test your CTAs and buttons to ensure they are all working. Consider adding more ways for users to convert when reading your refreshed article (within reason, of course—an overemphasis on CTAs can make you seem too salesy). In other words, align your old article to your new conversion and lead generation tactics . HubSpot does a great job crafting contextual CTAs that fit every article: 07. Republish with a new date to highlight your refreshed article Once your article is adequately updated, you can go ahead and change the date on it to push it back to the top of your blog archive and signal freshness to potential visitors. Some platforms allow site owners to update the date without pushing an article to the blog’s homepage, so in some cases, that may be an appropriate option as well. How often should you refresh your content? There’s no single answer here as it depends on many factors, including: How old your site is and how much old content it has How frequently you publish (how much new content you add) How quickly your niche changes Generally, the 25% rule is good to follow (e.g., if you add four new articles a month, one of them could be an update of existing content). This is a good rule to keep yourself organized. Refreshing isn’t about old content, it’s about new value Refreshing content is one of the smartest (and potentially most effective) marketing tactics that leverages assets you’ve already invested in, which may make it budget-friendly as well. By updating your content on a regular basis, you can improve your on-site experience for your users, keep competitors from encroaching on your rankings and traffic, and also optimize your site more efficiently by making the most of ranking signals that you’ve already earned. Good luck! Ann Smarty - SEO Analyst at Internet Marketing Ninjas Ann Smarty is an SEO analyst at Internet Marketing Ninjas and founder of Viral Content Bee. Ann's SEO career began in 2010. She is the former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal and a writer for prominent blogs, including Moz and Mashable. Twitter | Linkedin

October 25, 2022 Find out how to make your location landing pages unique, competitive, and optimized for top local SEO SERP features. Join Amanda Jordan, Director of Digital Strategy at Rickety Roo as she shares valuable insights for your site, including how to leverage multiple data sources and user generated content to create local landing pages that stand out to local customers. Check out the webinar's deck Read the Transcript In this webinar we'll cover: How valuable local landing pages are to your business Common issues with local SEO landing pages Leveraging local landing pages to capture local customers Meet your hosts: 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 Amanda Jordan, Director of Digital Strategy, Rickety Roo Amanda is the Director of Digital Strategy at RicketyRoo. She has worked in local SEO since 2011. Her background in local legal and enterprise SEO means she’s a pro at tackling complex problems for clients. When she's not creating local SEO strategies, she's playing with her son and dogs. Twitter Transcript: How to create local landing pages for SEO 00:00 Crystal: I am Crystal and I am the head of SEO communications at Wix. And I am joined today by one of my favorite SEOs in the world, Amanda Jordan. Who is the Director of Digital Strategy at Ricketyroo. She is a fantastic local SEO. I remember seeing her speak at SMX a few years ago and she gave some fantastic advice, which I took to heart immediately and saw some fantastic results immediately. So do pay attention when Amanda Jordan is speaking, because she knows her stuff. And she also knows how to scale the stuff that she knows, which is something that is incredibly, incredibly valuable when you're doing your SEO work. So just a couple of housekeeping notes. We are going to be recording this session. So this session will be recorded for you and it will be shared on YouTube after the event and it will also be shared/sent to you via email the next day. And if you don't see the email, if you get lost, the same place where you registered for the event, which is on our Wix SEO learn webinars web page, you'll be able to see the recording there as well. If you have any questions for Amanda, if we mention an acronym that you don't know, or if you want to dig into that a little bit deeper–please feel free to ask questions in the Q&A panel which is at the bottom of the screen. And we will have people answering questions there and we'll also be answering some of the questions at the end of the webinar. And if you want to keep up with our next webinars go to Wix SEO or wix.com/SEO/learn/webinars and you'll be able to see our next webinar–we have them every month. We are so pleased to have Amanda joining us for this one. So I'm going to pass it over to her and let her share. Are you ready to share?" 2:04 Amanda: Yes, I am. 2:05 Crystal: Okay. Okay, so I'm going to stop sharing and I will pass it over to you, Amanda, and you can get into this fantastic webinar all about location pages. 2:18 Amanda: All right. So today we're talking about how to build location pages that work. So why should you listen to me... that's how I like to start with that because there's going to be a lot of advice you can get on what to do, how to do it, why to do it. I am someone who's very passionate about local SEO and I like sharing knowledge a lot. And I would like to say that I'm pretty great at getting results. So I work with small businesses; anything from a one location plumber, all the way to franchises, multi-location businesses, credit unions, so businesses of all sizes in lots of different industries that need to rank in a lot of different geographical areas. So where people may use different terms to search for things or they may have different services that are only available in some locations and not others. So dealing with a lot of complex issues. So this is something that I'm really passionate about. I love doing location pages, it's one of my favorite topics because I see it as an opportunity for so many businesses where they're missing out on doing some things that are very actionable, very simple, but will actually get you a lot of great results; as far as conversions and rankings and traffic so it hits everything and it helps the business make more money–so why not? Okay, so what are location landing pages? These are pages that focus on bringing in traffic and conversions to your website, and it's about a specific location. So if you have a location in Houston, you have a location in Dallas, you have a location in Grand Prairie, each of those cities should have a location page so that you can focus on your primary product slash services in that city. So if you are a housekeeping service, you don't want to have one housekeeping service page trying to rank for all of Texas because you have a lot of competitors in each of those markets that you're trying to compete in. And their website, if they have one location, their entire website is focused on San Diego, right so if their entire websites focus on San Diego all their content is about San Diego, all of their efforts are being focused on San Diego. So it'd be a lot easier for them to outperform you if you're not focusing or putting at least some intention behind those specific cities you'd like to rank in. These are the pages that rank for searches that include like the city or the county or near me. So these are the pages that are most likely to show up. Sometimes some businesses have their homepage show up for those types of searches. But ideally, if you have multiple locations, you should have a city that is personalized for people from that specific area that they would land on that gives some information about your hours of operation, phone number and everything that is specific to that location. So the impact, so local location pages can impact virtually every part of your SEO campaign, especially if you are a multi-location business. They're pretty topical authority, so they help Google understand the geographical impact of where you want to rank, why you want to rank, or you provide services and things like that. Your location pages can help you rank organically and in Google Maps. So having that local factor into that page and well integrated in your content can help that page rank extremely well for non-branded keywords. So if you're a plumbing business, you would put "Tampa plumber", that's probably one of your biggest keywords. So you want a page dedicated to people who are looking for a plumber in Tampa, specifically. And that will help you write that page in Tampa for unrelated keywords. If you just had a Florida plumber page, it would be very difficult, or your homepage, it would be very difficult to kind of pinpoint where you're trying to rank or what city you want to rank in for Google. Because Florida is a big state, there's a lot of competition there and there's a lot of people there–so it's hard for Google to understand really what geographical area you're trying to service–if you don't have any pages that show a clear and local intent. Location pages impact your ability to convert. If you do your location pages well, there are opportunities for people to decide that they want to do business with you without going to any other page on your website. They can just go to that page. They see what they need to make a choice and then they decide to call and fill out the form without visiting any other page on your site. That is the goal for me for a good location page. If it doesn't do that, then I would not consider that a great location page. It also should increase personalization to local customers. So you want people to feel like you understand them as your customer base. It's not just that this is the same content that's on all of my other location pages, but it has another city added to it; like I understand your specific needs, I understand what's important to you as a customer, I'm involved in your local community. You want to give people as many reasons as to why they want to reach out to you over any other business that's in that same service area. So how would you know if you need a location page or location pages? If you have more than one location, and those locations are not very, very close, like within 20 miles of each other you need location pages more than likely. Because you want to make sure that you're specifying what city what service area you have on your location pages. And the more you're trying to encapsulate in one page, the less you're showing a specific intention for a specific area. And like I mentioned before, if you're in a highly competitive city, and you have no content that is dedicated to that specific city and your competitors, their entire website is about that city, then you think Google's gonna choose the website that has no specific content about that city or the website that has all of its content related to their city? They're going to choose the website that has all of its content targeted towards that city. So having good location pages is important and extremely imperative if you're in very competitive markets. If you have a lot of competitors in that area where you want to rank the better your location page is the better chance you have of outperforming them despite them having a ton of content or their entire website dedicated to the city. It can be as simple as sending out a Google form and having a survey for them to fill out and their answers is just what gets sent on the page. Services that are available at that specific location. If you have locations that don't provide all of the same services or their services are slightly different. You can mention those differences to give you a little bit more unique content and then testimonials and reviews from clients and customers that are actually in that area. So not just giving reviews and ratings from any location but that are specific to that location if we include those specifically. Not only do we build trust with customers because they can say okay, this is what people near me who have had experience with this exact business have said but it also allows you to have more unique content. And then don't forget the basics. Of course, your phone number, address, hours of operation, all of those things should also be on your location landing page. You wouldn't be surprised by how many businesses forget those things. And of course, if those numbers change, that address changes, those hours change. Make sure that they're updated on your Google Business Profile as well as on your website. FAQs: so FAQs are another great thing to add to your location landing pages because they provide more unique content or if it's not exactly unique, say it applies to every location, it actually provides useful content for your users because you're based off of questions that you know that they're asking. There are a lot of tools that will help you find the questions that people are already asking. Also Asked, Semrush, Answer the Public, Ahrefs, a lot of these tools will have a section where they'll give you questions that relate, that come up in search results as well. And you can look at the search volume from those questions to determine what questions you want to add to your pages related to your services or product. Then it gives you more content. It gives you useful content–is likely something that your competitors are not focusing on so it gives you something to diversify yourself with and allow you to actually bring in more traffic because if your competitors aren't doing it and it means that they're not ranking for the keywords related to those FAQs and gives you an upper hand as well. Here's some examples that I put together as far as good FAQs. These are the types of FAQs that my clients use on their location pages just to add some additional helpful content there. Your location pages also should have conversion opportunities. So if someone goes to your page, they read everything on the page, they decide that they want to do business with you, but there is nowhere where they can easily see a phone number and there's no form to fill out. What do you think you're going to do? They're not gonna go digging. They're gonna leave and go to some other website or go back to search results and look at the local pack for someone else instead. Make it as easy as possible for people to complete that final, final goal that you have for them on that page. That means having conversions that are easily and readily available, easy to see. We actually had a client recently that changed their landing page and added more buttons and phone numbers to it and they saw an 85% drop in revenue from that page just because they made it very busy and hard to navigate. So these things are really important on your location pages. Make sure that you don't overdo it, and you don't crowd the page with conversion opportunities but you pepper them in. There should probably be one near the top of the page. There should probably be one near the bottom of the page. Your number should be easily found and read on the page so that they can contact you on mobile, they should be able to click to call so they can easily call you from there. And if there's a long page in the middle of the page too–there's probably another spot for a conversion opportunity. And these don't have to be like giant sections of content or anything like that. It could be just a, "call for a free consultation", it could be "get an estimate now", it can be anything like that and a button or a form that they can fill or a button to call or form that they can fill out where they're sending you information to show that they're interested and that they can be a potential lead for you. Next, you want to build trust. So building trust is one of the things I also see businesses miss the mark a bit. They get very focused on the conversion opportunity part, they're like, "oh yeah, I need to make sure people know that they can give me their money". Well, your potential customers are aware that's what you want. It's your goal to tell them why they want to. It’s your goal to make them want to choose you over your competitors–give them the reason why you're the best choice. And some of the ways to do that is to be very obvious about what you offer as a company as far as guarantees and things like that. Be very clear and transparent about your reputation. Include reviews and testimonials and feedback that you receive from other clients. All of those things go a long way as to getting people to trust you and want to work with you or your competitors. If you're not sure where to start. For a lot of these tips. You can go look at your competitor pages but in the keywords that you want to rank for and density–look at what your competitors are doing on their pages and I guarantee you will see a lot of these elements on the people who are ranking extremely well. You will see a lot of these elements that we're talking about on their pages and find out what they're doing and find out what you can improve on. So we don't want to copy our competitors. We want to do what they're doing even better than they're doing because we want to be ahead of them. We don't want to be where they are. We want to be hard to catch up with and one of the ways to do that. is making sure that your reputation is very clear through your location landing pages throughout your website really in general. So Amanda, you just told me a lot of stuff that I need to work on my website and I don't even know where to start. I didn't even know what a location landing page was before this presentation. What am I supposed to do? What I would focus on first…is content. You're not going to show up in search results without content. So focusing on the other things is not going to do any good if no one is finding your page in the first place. So focus on unique content and local content. Unique content being what can I do to differentiate this location page from the other pages on my website? And what can a different view to differentiate this location page from my competitors location pages as well? That's what I would focus on first, making sure you have accurate local content on there as well. Like making sure you mentioned the city mentioned the service area around that city. mention anything that is specific to that location that would be important for users to know about. And then after you have a content, a page that can actually rank, let's focus on conversion opportunities and building trust. Because now that we can get people to come to this page, we have an action that we want them to do and that is to call or to fill out a form. So let's find those places where we want to add those forms onto the website or those ‘click to call’ buttons. And then we want to build trust. We want to give them the reasons why they want to, they’re going to this page now, they can find us now, we need to give them the reasons why they want to fill out that form or click to call. So that's working on your reputation. That’s working on trying out different lead formats to get people to convert on the page as well. And then after that, after we were seeing where we are like okay, I made this page. We're able to be found on Google now. We're starting to get some leads to come in, but we're not growing as much as we want to. Then it's time to work on improving the content and the location page as a whole. And the way to do that would be adding those relevant photos to break up some of that content, to add some more personalization to the page, and adding those FAQs which also adds personalization, and adds more useful content to page your site visitors and also can help you increase the number of keywords you're ranking for on that location page. And then these are some things that you just don't forget because I see businesses often forget some of these things that are the foundational things to location pages that are really foundational for any page that you really want to rank. Some of the top ones; create page titles and descriptions. You want to make sure that your page title mentions the service area or the city that you want to rank in. You want to make sure that your h1 tags into your headers mentioned the cities or service area. You want to make sure that it is mentioned in the content itself that it's not the only place that people can find it. You want to make sure that you actually link to your Google Business Profile from your location page and then you want to track your results. I think that's another thing that people often struggle with is Google Analytics, Google Business Profile and Google Search Console are all free tools that are ready for you to use. For you to track how your location pages are performing. And you'll be able to tell are these pages doing what I want them to do? Or are they not performing well? And does that mean I need to change something about what I'm doing on the page? And is it that I am getting traffic and they're not converting? Which means am I not building enough press? Do I not have the right conversion opportunities on the page? Is there something on the page itself that's turning people away? or am I not ranking in the first place? So is there an issue with the content on the page? Is there some technical issue with the page if something else is causing people not to find this page in the first place? and if you use that data, you'll be able to refine your location pages and make a process for it that actually works. And if you open up a new location, use the same process you'll be starting with a much better footing than you would if you were starting from zero and trying to build lots of location pages all over again or are trying to figure out from scratch what you should do for each new location. So this is a if you're not if you don't have location pages now this is a good way to start. to start building up that knowledge of whether your pages can perform in rankings and conversions. And then once you have a page built and you can see how it's performing, you can use that information to determine what needs to be fixed and what needs to be changed to get even better results out of that page. Then SEO for new locations, you kind of duplicate that template and apply it to all the new locations as well so that each location has its best opportunity, at least foundationally and ranking well. Some locations will be different. If you're in a highly competitive city, you may need to do more than the basics. You may need to look really closely at what your competitors are doing and find out where they're outperforming you and determine what you need to do to catch up with them. And that's what I would do if you already have location pages now and you're not getting the results you want out of them. Try to find out what your competitors are doing that you're not doing so that you can improve those pages and see the results that you expect to see from your location pages. And how do you optimize? This is from Wix's article about optimizing your site's content for SEO. So read the article that's really the best thing you can do. Add keywords but focus on being original and helpful. That's kind of reiterating something that I already mentioned. Think about the customer's perspective, the customer's experience and that is going to be the most important thing. That's really what Google's chasing anyway so if you're focusing on the customer, whether you really think it's popping the way it should now or not, it is going to get there. Use proper headings to break up sections on your website. So make sure you use those headers throughout the content. Your H1 or H2s, H3’s if you need them. and break out what types of content you have on a page. So you may want to have an H1 that's “roof repair in Atlanta, Georgia”. You may want to have an H2 that’s “why would you choose us for roof repair” or “our roof repair services are…”. And then next you want to use the data from your site search bar. That is a great tip because that is something that a lot of businesses don't look at and there's a lot of valuable information there. Because that's what people are searching for within your website. So they've already gotten to your website and they feel like they're not seeing or being navigated to what they're looking for soon enough so they're using another search within your website to find that information. Add photos to breakup content sections and make sure to check your site on mobile so like I said, editing photos to bring up the content section. I think I just mentioned that in a couple slides ago. And those photos are going to become more important as Google uses image and multisearch even more. And then you want to make sure that your site looks great on mobile as well. So make sure you check your site on mobile and make sure that everything is showing up correctly on mobile. All right, so that's like the beginner's guide to location landing pages. There's so much more to them than that. So if you have any questions, of course, I'd love to hear them. Yeah, one thing that I love doing so I'm happy to take questions now. 27:19 Crystal: We have loads and loads of questions. And thank you to everyone who's been so patient in the chat. We are trying to answer your questions as quickly as possible and we're going to and we've been taking a note of them so there's a lot of questions that Amanda is really, really well placed just to answer so we've been taking a note of them. One of the things that always comes up. So a couple of things first, when we say location pages, we mean pages that are about a location. So Amanda mentioned sort of a plumber for instance, in Houston or in Puerto Rico. And for instance, that’s if you look at a page, a page on your website, which might be different from your homepage, it might be different from a different place, or different pages on your website, and it's just a page of any kind, that is dedicated to that location. So you've optimized it for that particular location. And Amanda shared some amazing insights there. A lot of people asked about some technical things that you can do on Wix. So Amanda mentioned things like FAQs and things like buttons and things like CTAs. We had a webinar recently about homepage optimization and that page has lots of links to the technical implementation for some of those elements. And then the location page can act a little bit similar to a homepage but we cover lots of the different elements of different features there that are specific to Wix, so I highly recommend that you visit the Wix SEO Learning Hub and we'll have information there as well. So to get into some of the questions that we've had around this, we had a lot of questions and I've been on a few webinars with Amanda and this always comes up, but what if you don't have an actual shop? How do you optimize your location pages? Your Google Business Profile? If you don't have an actual shop, some people in the chat were saying you know, I'm a service provider for the whole country or someone said I have an Etsy profile or I work remotely. How do you optimize for location if you don't have a location? 29:19 Amanda: Yeah, so if you're nationwide, I wouldn't really focus on locations that much unless there are big differentiators and the services for each of those like for each state or something like that. Because that can be really difficult to do and really time consuming as far as trying to create content for every state or every county or every region at one time. So I would focus on understanding what terms people are searching for nationally related to your services and building content towards that and building up your homepage to rank extremely well nationally for those keywords and making sure that especially your trend right nationally, I think your blog will be even more important than having supportive content throughout your website. So that Google understands that this isn't just like a one pager written about this topic or this type of business. It's an entire website that means that you focus on all the elements of that because of business hype or that product or service. So I wouldn't focus on that unless you have a Google My Business listing if you have a listing, but you can't have a service area listing. So Google understands that for some business types, you don't work in an office or you go to your customers at their location, you don't have people come to your business. So you don't need a physical location. That's perfectly fine. You can have a service area listing and they have, from a ranking perspective, they're not worse off than having a brick and mortar location. You can still rank extremely well and perform well with a service area listing instead of a brick and mortar with a street address listing. Some things that you might find issues with might be a little bit harder to get that locality as a factor without using location as a major factor in the way you optimize your website. I think if you have a service area listing, making sure your website has location pages, especially if your service area is St. Pete, Florida, but you want to include Clearwater, you want to include Largo and some other areas,you probably want to have individual location pages for each of those cities on your website, and have that service area listing as well as your Google Business Profile listing. That's such a weird name, Google Business Profile. I wanted to say Google Maps listing because that makes a lot more sense. “Google Profile” could be so many different things that have nothing to do with local SEO. 32:10 Crystal: I don't think it's as strange as Looker. Looker, I'm not so… they changed from Big Data Studio to Looker, and I don't understand why I don't like that. But yeah, no, that's a great answer. And I think you covered a lot of this sort of nuanced questions that we have there as well. Someone else also asked if you are a single location business. So let's say you only have one sandwich shop, for instance, do you also think that it's worth having multiple location pages, or do you think it's worth concentrating on a single single location? 32:46 Amanda: Yeah, if you only have one location, and you're not a business that serves other areas–so like if you're in a city center, but you serve all these little towns outside and those little towns you have a lot of competition, you may want to have some service area pages or location pages. But if you're just one location and you're focused on that one city, you don't need location pages. Just make your entire website really the most targeted towards those customers or searchers as you can. 33:20 Crystal: This is the question from me. So you mentioned content. So you just talked about making your website really focused on that. Are there particular types of content that you find work really well to help Google show or to help Google understand that you're really serving a particular location? Like do you find that blogs perform better or do you find FAQs or like galleries or reviews or something like that? Do you find that there's one particular type of content that really, really helps with location information? 33:53 Amanda: Not overall, it seems to be kind of based on what your competition is doing and the type of business. So for photography clients, we actually see that galleries with no content can outperform someone who actually has content on their page. So yeah, like there's so many different things that are going on that sometimes the things that make sense for another type of business do not perform well for another. So yeah, so like and then like a plumber or roofer do they really need a blog? Is there that much to say, like, and other than being involved in community and having something locally happen? I don't think it's always necessary. I think it's, but it depends on how you use those features too. Like if your blog is about your local community, and you're linking back to your pages, using it for internal linking, say all of your blog posts are about roof repair, roof replacement, somehow. Somehow you were able to write 500 blog posts about it, as long as they're linking back to your core service pages and things like that then they're a benefit. But writing that content just because you're like, “if I have a lot of content, I'll rank extremely well.” That's not the case. You want to be very specific with your intent. And for those businesses FAQ seems to perform better. Having increasing your service pages, so understanding the nuances between one type of service and another and being able to create more content about like… well I have a client who is a plumber and they have a tankless water heater versus tank water heater as a page, even though they have a water heater page, and they have a tankless water heater page, because that's a completely different intent. That's an informational intent. But they don't need a blog for those types of content, necessarily, they just need to explain it and have an informational page about it. So it really depends, I think, from my perspective on what your competitors are doing, and what type of content you need to show up. And I think that all comes down to the intent of the user. So if there's a lot of informational intent, then blogs might be the best way to go. If people are very based, very focused on commercial or transactional intent, like oh, I just want to buy something or oh, I just want to hire someone, then including more service pages or pages that are focused on the service or product itself would likely be the better way to go. Just based on what people are looking for in your competition. 36:28 Crystal: Um, yeah, I think that's obviously I'd like that. Yeah. Or not, obviously, but I think I agree. I think that it depends on the kinds of searches that people are expecting and the kinds of content that people are needing. And I think someone's saying that blogs can be useful to develop expertise, and I think that that's true as well. But I think sometimes with contractors, like plumbers or people who are working in the trade, sometimes it can be tricky to keep that up. So a page like you're talking about where you're comparing a particular methodology or comparing a product or comparing, you know, a service or that that's something that lives on your page can be really, really helpful. And then we also had someone who was saying that they have a franchise. They have lots of you know, they're the same–like let's say I own a Subway sandwich–that’s something that has a lot of franchises. How would you recommend differentiating content for franchise pages? 37:30 Amanda: Yeah. So this is something that I’ve worked on a lot and it makes me very happy to talk about because I worked with a client where they were a home senior care franchise. And, of course, they offer the same services at every location, it doesn't change. So what we focused on was having unique content from the people who work at that location. So having the franchise owner point out some things that they wanted to say about why they got into that industry, why they did what, what they liked about being in that industry, things like that, and also finding things that are specific to that city. So if you are in a city where there’s…ooh! I just thought of a good one for Subway–like most most popular sandwiches and for that location are most popular sandwiches in that city. 38:27 Crystal: Oh, yeah! 38:29 Amanda: Yeah, like finding ways to differentiate using your own data, especially for your franchise and you can collect your own data. That's a much easier thing to do, is using your own information to find interesting data points. Orkin, the pest control company does a very good job at this on their website. For each location, they had the most common pests in that area. That's not completely unique, because I imagine in the southeastern United States, we all, like in this area, all of my neighbors here have the same issues–but it's unique enough where not every single location that Oregon has has the exact same content. 39:08 Crystal: Do you know what, I'll tell you right now, I live in Ohio and they have orange ladybirds, like the orange ladybugs that show up–which I never saw in California when I lived in California. So like that, I can see how that would work. And I think and I just wanted to just remind people a couple of housekeeping points. Again, location landing features are not a special kind of page. You don't need a special template to make a location plan to make a location landing page. It's more of a content differentiation and a content focus, which is why we've been talking about content and about the sort of unique ways that you can pivot your content and focus your content so that people can see what's going on there. Additionally, I would also say if people are asking if there's going to be a replay there's definitely going to be a replay and there's definitely going to be an opportunity to see some of that. When we think about good examples of location pages you've mentioned, Orkin, for instance, has good location pages. I think some other ones that I've seen are when people include unique information around, like what you're saying, like specific content. And also, can you think of any other ways that people can add unique content to their location pages? 40:32 Amanda: Yeah, yeah. So I mentioned that an FAQ is another one where you can look at what are the questions or especially if you're in larger cities, um, you can look at what questions people are asking near you about those specific topics. So you can look at the most common questions related to a topic and make it specific to your business, or specific to that location. You can collect reviews and testimonials that are specific to that location and put them in there and the better the review is as in, the more information that person gives, the more free content you just got from that person. So someone says like Bob came to my house on Thursday because we had a broken pipe in the kitchen. He was great and courteous. If I ever have any emergency plumbing issues, I will call x again. Like they just put your business name, the service and the issue all in their review–and those are keywords that you want on your page. So anytime someone gives you a testimonial review with that extra information in it, that's another opportunity. And also, like I said, if you want it to be relatively unique, you don't need it to be 100% unique on each page. You can rank in a competitive city with common content. It's just much harder to do than if you had unique content. So what I would focus on is making the page mostly unique. There shouldn't be any like word for word match for several sentences. The biggest issue is that you don't want someone to be able to copy and paste that sentence into Google and find a bunch of different websites with the same or a bunch of different pages on your website with the exact same content. You wouldn't be different enough that if your teacher was looking at it, they wouldn't think you've copied off another kid's paper that's really what it is like. But someone else came up with these thoughts and that it's not just someone else's thoughts written slightly differently. 42:42 Crystal: Yeah. People have asked about URLs and things. What would you recommend having, would you recommend keeping your location pages in an individual folder? Like let's say it was Amanda's guitar lessons, I'm looking at your wall, so guitar lessons and let's say you were doing it in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc. Would you recommend giving them a folder that was in that location? So AmandasGuitarLessons.com/locations and then an individual peach then? Or would you recommend another URL configuration? 43:25 Amanda: That’s exactly what I would recommend. So it'd be my website website.com/location/“whatever that city is” and you can add more details. So you can say my website.com/location/tampa plumbing service and then Tampa heating service and then Tampa AC service. So how far you want to go it will depend on really how many location pages you feel like you need for a specific location, not to make things more complicated, but if you have a lot of high interest, highly competitive services for each location, you may want to have more than one location page and dedicate a location page for each one of those services. So you may want to have, okay, this is my page that is dedicated to boxing classes. This is my page dedicated to the yoga studio. This is my page dedicated to the regular part of the gym. You may want to separate them based on how heavy your competition is. I will say how heavy your competition is is how many spots that are your competitors ahead of you. So if your competitors are like, if you're on the fourth page, you may want to consider having more than one location page and focus on this specific service for each location page. If you're like, not even the first 20 on Google Maps, you may want to consider that but if you're already kind of close to being on the first page, it sounds like you just need to add a location page or maybe optimize the one that you already have. 45:04 Crystal: Okay, fantastic. And someone was saying, Do you ever see… because there's some places where we're in a city that might have a combination of languages, for instance, I know certainly, growing up in California, there's a lot of people who speak Spanish, we've been talking about Spanish speaking, so have you seen location pages where they vary by language as well as by geography? 45:32 Amanda: Yeah, if you're going to the point where you have different languages as well. I would recommend having a second language version of your site completely, including location landing pages just because it gives you the best opportunity to rank and make sure that you have of course your wrestling text setup so that you can specify what that secondary language is on each of the pages so Google understands. You can have a sub folder for that. You can do it at a country level domain if it's in another country, but in most cases, a sub folder on your website. So you might want to do location/ and for English/, the name of this, whatever the URL is for that page, or you might want to do “es” for Spanish. So using the build language code for that to make it a sub folder would be a good idea. 46:31 Crystal: Fantastic. And I think someone else has said, Peter, who's asked who has asked a few times. So we got your question, Peter. So he was asking, he said that they have two main services that they do, but they have 300 landing pages on their website–three location landing pages for the individual locations that they provide services for. And he's asking you if he's gone overboard with regard to those landing pages. What would you say? 49:59 Amanda: This one of my favorite topics, actually. Okay. And it's how do you determine what cities you need a location page for? If that city is competitive? You need a location page. If there is no one, there's only like two or three people who are actually in that city that's ranking, then you don't need a location page. One of the things I like to look at as a factor is the population of a city. And usually if there's under 10,000 people, I will not create a location page because that's not that's not a ton of people. What is Amanda's website? That's a very good question. You can find me at RicketyRoo.com And honestly, I'm perfectly fine if anyone has any questions, but they want to email me. It was my email address was on the on the slides but it's Amanda@RicketyRoo.com 47:52 Crystal: And we will share the slides after the event as well. 47:57 Amanda: So yeah, you'll have those slides if you didn't catch that. But yeah, that's something that I think about a lot and I often go by population. How many people in that area are actually searching for your services? So you want to look at the search volume in the population for that area. And you will be able to tell if you should have one there or not, and if you have like 300? You likely went overboard. 300 is a lot. Unless you're like Verizon or McDonald's or someone huge. I would say there should be very, very few. I was probably say less than 10 for most businesses. 48:39 Crystal: And I'm thinking that it also may be a question, you mentioned, two services there. It might be a question of filtering down some of the services because chances are like I think if you were like, say you're a guitar teacher, whatever it might be that you have Spanish guitar, or jazz guitar or rock guitar or something. So that's actually a few services. 48:59 Amanda: Yeah, that is true. Yeah. I think if it's that's the case, you can likely combine them all into one location page, just because if you look at the search volume for any of those types of services, if you break down your services more granularly you'll see that there's likely not a ton of search volume in your area for this individual services. So that means that you could combine them into one page, because there's not a lot of people searching for it. If you don't have a ton of competition for it, you will be able to perform extremely well without putting a ton of effort into it. My goal would always be to get you the most impact with the least amount of effort possible. So if it is like if you can get away with only having five location pages, then that's that will be the goal. And if we can either have 20 location pages and do very duplicative content or five and have them be very unique and special, then we're gonna go with the five pages. Yeah, and that's why we can mention the other cities in those pages. So if there's other cities nearby, that big hub, say New York City, like if we're focusing in New York City, or there's other areas that we want to focus on that are close enough to it, we can bundle them into the New York City page and mention them on that page instead of creating a separate page for each nearby area that we want to focus on or each borough or anything like that. 50:24 Crystal: And one last question. I think this is a really good one. How often should you update the content on your location page? And how valuable is the content freshness for ranking for location pages? 50:40 Amanda: It is not a huge factor for location pages specifically, but I would say at least every six months. Just keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. And if you're not in a very competitive market every six months is fine like you because if your competitors aren't very focused on SEO, if you look at their content and their website and you're like, they're not doing those things, they're not something that you need to focus on too much. Another thing is if your traffic or if your traffic changes or your ranking changes, that's another time–that's a prompt to look at it, especially on those specific location landing pages. It's like if something changes, that's a sign that either your competitors are doing something different, or Google's looking at your page differently, and that's a sign that you should pay attention to what's going on and review them. And especially for local businesses to do competitive analysis because you don't have to be the best in the country. You just have to be better than the guy that is closest to you because proximity is a huge factor. So you don't have to be the best ever. You don't have to be the number one law firm on SEO in the entire world. You just have to be better than the guy within 10 miles of you. That's often not very difficult and if you take a close look at what they're doing their website 51:56 Crystal: Absolutely. I guess if I can sneak in one more for myself. Is that cheeky? How much are you guided when you're thinking about keywords and things for your…? Someone said, “how do we sign up for the Amanda Jordan fan club? Amanda’s on Twitter, and she's on LinkedIn, and she's genuinely fantastic. I mean, I'm the president of the Amanda Jordan fanclub. But I think one of the things I was gonna say is Google Business Profile, it gives you lots of ideas with regards to the kinds of services and the kinds of things that they're interested in. Do you use that to guide the kinds of content that you include on local location pages? 52:34 Amanda: Yeah, there's a lot of like, if the way that I look at Google Business Profile is that Google is telling us exactly what they want to see from local businesses because they're making it part of their platform, right. So that is a good place to start, is this stuff on my Google Business Profile reflected on my location landing page? Do I mention that like Google allows you to take business categories, does the content on your website relate to those business categories? Because that's going to be one of the epic things. Does the address match what Google sees? Does the business name match what Google sees? All that information is going to be important. And Google really likes serving your Google Business Profile over your website because then you stay on Google if they show you the Google Business Profile on their website. So making sure that your Google Business Profile is set up correctly and optimized is extremely important. That could be a completely different webinar, because there's so much going on with Google Business Profiles from so many different angles that that impacts your ability to convert, that affects your ability to be found on Google. You can be highly successful and get a ton of leads from Google Maps without ranking well, or, your website ranking well at all. So there's a lot there as well as to what can impact your ability to to show up. So I would say yeah, Google Business Profile is a good place to look as to, does my website match the information that I expect to see, that Google is looking for for their Google Business Profile? 54:08 Crystal: Absolutely. Fantastic. Thank you to everyone who joined us and and thank you to everyone. I highly recommend that you visit the Wix SEO Learning Hub, which has lots of information about Google Business Profile, and about local SEO including reviews including citations, including a guide to local SEO from one of Amanda’s colleagues, as well. We will be sharing this recording, we will also be sharing Amanda's deck and you can find lots of information there. We will be having our next webinar in November. Where we will be talking about content distribution. And Amanda, if you can just give us one more shout out to all of your details. Thank you so, so, so much for joining us today. And yeah, just let them know where they can find you. 54:57 Amanda: And yeah, if you have any questions like I love answering questions, it's fun to me. I know what I'm setting myself up for by saying that. But Amanda@ricketyroo.com. Feel free to reach out. You can find out more about local SEO in general and my agency at ricketyroo.com. And you can find me on Twitter at Amanda T Jordan. 55:22 Crystal: Good. Thank you so much. for joining us today. And thank you and thank you Amanda. And again, visit the Wix SEO Learning Hub, which is wix.com/SEO/learn where there's lots of webinars, lots of resources and lots of great stuff about Wix SEO and SEO in general. And I hope to see you again soon and thank you so much to everyone for joining us. Thank you!

Author: Celeste Gonzalez Whether you’re just learning about local SEO or planning your entire strategy, citations on prominent industry publications, directories, and regional sites can be essential to your success. In this article, we’ll discuss how they help you grow your online visibility while serving potential customers the information they’re looking for. Specifically, we’ll address: What local citations are Why citations are important for local businesses How to choose the right citations to pursue for your business How to manage your citations What is a local citation? A local citation is an online mention of your business’s information. This includes your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP), as well as other information like hours of operation, website, etc. A citation can be a listing in a business directory like Yelp or can be as simple as a social media profile. While online listings may not seem like they can bring much value, it’s important to approach citations from the mind of a user. These mentions can help build your business’s online presence and (depending on where the citation is) enable visitors to leave reviews that act as social proof for potential customers. In short, citations can help build awareness for your business and help convince people to give it a try. Why citations are important for local businesses Local citations can help you reach potential customers on the directories and search engines they’re already using to find service providers or other local businesses. The business information they find there enables them to decide whether you're what they’re actually looking for. And, creating the right citations for your business is a simple way to start your local SEO strategy. Directories usually rank higher in the SERPs If a customer were to search for a nail technician, they would probably like to see reviews, photos, and the pricing list before booking an appointment. Different audiences may prefer different platforms, so you can’t always count on just having a Google Business Profile, for example, to provide new customers with the details they’re looking for. In this case, a customer might instead visit a directory, like Yelp, or a social media platform, like Instagram, to find this information. By listing your business on these platforms, you make the customer’s next step of finding you that much easier. Additionally, these directories are often at the top of the search results for any type of local service queries. It’s a simple way to benefit based on the directory’s authoritativeness in the search engine results page (SERP), without having to put in all the work to compete against those same directories for the top spot. Add to your business’s online visibility Although not officially confirmed by Google, citations are also important because they are considered a local SEO ranking factor, which means they help your business rank higher for relevant queries. Citations are the fourth most important local ranking factor, according to a survey of 50 SEO experts conducted by BrightLocal. While citations are unlikely to revolutionize your SEO, they are one of the elements that you, the local business owner, have some degree of control over, which you can use to make it easier for users to find you online. Build your business’s E-A-T profile E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness , and it’s an important concept online as well as in the real world. Although E-A-T is not a ranking factor, the general consensus among SEOs is that making decisions based on Google’s guidelines surrounding E-A-T helps your site do better in search results. In short, E-A-T refers to demonstrating your business or brand as an expert on whatever it is that you offer, showing that you are a reliable source of information, and can be trusted on matters related to your industry. Having relevant citations can help build your business’s authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It also gives customers the chance to leave reviews on multiple different sites. The more positive reviews, the more people are likely to see you as a reliable service provider, and the more Google is likely to trust your site as a legitimate business to place in the SERPs. This also helps build your business’s backlink profile, which can also add to your trustworthiness among customers and search engines. How to choose the right local citations to pursue for your business Despite everything that was just mentioned about how great citations are for your business, you should not list yours in every directory available. Quality over quantity matters most. Instead, focus on listing your business only in relevant directories. The best way to approach picking the right citations for your business is by thinking of the directories that you visit for your own needs. Ask yourself the following questions: What directories have I looked at in the past? Are my potential customers using this directory to search for businesses like mine? Where do I go to leave reviews after patronizing a business? Are there any local non-profits or organizations my business can partner with? Does my business have any certifications or is it a member of any organizations? For example, if you are a licensed home renovations contractor in Massachusetts, you would want to list your business on general directories like Yelp, but also on specialized directories like Angi, which is specifically for home services providers. It’s also a good idea to ensure that you appear on the state of Massachusetts’ list of licensed lead-safe renovation contractors , for example. You might even partner with a local non-profit that will mention and link to your business on their site. Use Google to find citation opportunities Search for your business’s services on Google to find which directories show up in the results. This will give you more ideas of places your business should be listed. As an example, let’s complete a search for “electrician near me.” In the search results, we get four different directories ranking near the top: Thumbtack, Three Best Rated, Home Advisor, and Angi. If you were a plumber in the Fontana area, it would be worthwhile to list your business on these directories. Here are some other example keywords you can search to find citation opportunities: chamber of commerce city — The search results for this type of query will show you the chamber of commerce website for your city or nearby cities, where you can likely obtain a business directory listing. “Our sponsors” city — The search results for this type of query may show you organizations or events you can sponsor to generate more citations. “Our donors” city — The search results for this type of query may show you local sports teams, schools, community centers, and events that you can donate to, which can lead to a citation on a donors page. “Our members” profession directory — The search results for this type of query may show profession-specific organizations that you can join to obtain more business listings. General citation recommendations The following are general recommendations for citations that virtually any local business can (and should) list itself in: Apple Maps Google Business Profile Bing Places YellowPages Yelp BBB Facebook Instagram NextDoor How to manage your local citations Once you’ve picked out your citations, it’s time to submit your business listing and ensure that all the information is correct. There are two ways to go about submitting your citations: Submit manually Use a citation-building service Manual listing creation and management If you are going to submit them manually, you should first search for your business on the relevant directories you identified earlier. If there is already a profile for your business, you’ll want to claim it in order to customize the page. Once you’ve claimed your business profile, you can correct any mistakes and add any other information you’d like potential customers to know. If a business profile doesn’t already exist, sign up for an account and create one, but be aware that there may be a verification process, depending on the platform. If you decide to go this route, you’ll also need to manually monitor your citations. Your business hours, phone number, or address may change if you decide to move or add another location, for example. If that happens, you’ll need to update your business’s information on each and every citation. You also should monitor your citations on a regular basis to ensure that any changes you’ve made to your business profiles are updated and accurate. Automated citation services It can be very time-consuming to create and update citations manually, one by one. Fortunately, there are services available that you can pay a one-time fee to check all your listings and correct errors. You can also use a citation-building service to create and manage them for you. Companies like Whitespark and BrightLocal, for example, offer citation creation and management packages. Local citations help business owners and customers alike Overall, citations can be an important part of your business’s local SEO strategy. They help you bring your business to a new audience on other platforms, can help your business rank higher in the SERPs, and can demonstrate that you are a trusted provider in your industry. At the end of the day, you are helping people in your city easily obtain the information they need to decide if they want your services. Everything that you can add to your citations, including business hours and services, and even having reviews on those listings help the user. These small things can be enough to persuade them to choose your business over others and even deter unqualified leads. This leaves you with more time to prioritize the right leads instead of needing to answer basic questions that your local citations can handle for you. Celeste Gonzalez - Director of RooLabs at RicketyRoo Celeste Gonzalez leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Mordy Oberstein There is a revolution occurring: The relatively new widespread availability of AI content has sparked renewed conversations around content quality, and it’s not an understatement to say that it is reshaping everything we know about web content and SEO .  The mere notion of AI-written content (let alone the various “ scandals ” surrounding large brands that have implemented it) has led more users to scrutinize the quality of the content search engines are sending them to. This conversation (ironically one that is very often without words) is redefining what our audiences expect from the content we’re creating. It’s one of the least discussed aspects of the “AI wars” and it comes at a time when content consumption trends are already on the move.  So, let’s have this conversation and take a hard look at how web content is changing and how the greatest source of web traffic on earth, Google, has already been adjusting and will continue to adjust.  Buckle up.  Table of contents: The accelerated future of web content: How we got here The future of content creation: How to align The future of content on the Google SERP The human touch and its role in content The accelerated future of web content: How we got here For years, SEOs have been talking about the need to double down on web content. I trace the height of this conversation all the way back to Google’s Medic Update (AKA the August 2018 Core Update). This update was the first time the “modern-day” conversation around Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sites really came to the forefront (in the context of what was then Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness [E-A-T, now E-E-A-T ]).  To me, this is because there was a marked shift in what Google was able to do in terms of distinguishing quality content from the chaff of the web. It was a qualitative leap forward for Google’s ability to parse content quality.  Was it perfect? Not at all. But, it was the beginning of a very slow burn towards raising the standard on what could and could not rank well on Google’s SERP . Expectations outpaced Google’s ability to identify quality content  In fact, it was such a slow burn that public perception began to outpace Google’s technological abilities. I would say circa 2021 publications started to release articles calling out the quality of Google’s results. The perception that Google’s search results have declined isn’t limited to journalists. I have meticulously tracked the outcomes of Google’s algorithm updates for the better part of 10 years. The notion that the results were getting worse is almost nonsensical (this is a different question from “Are the results good enough?”). Personally, I (as well as others such as Lily Ray and Glenn Gabe ) have seen Google do some amazing things with regard to its understanding of content quality.  Improving the technology behind the algorithm, as I mentioned, is a slow burn. What I think happened, and it’s something former Googler (and also former CEO of Yahoo!) Marissa Mayer alluded to , is that our expectations outpaced what Google was able to do from a technological standpoint. As the number of allegations against big tech companies increased (often resulting in them appearing before Congress), so too did the skepticism around the content we were consuming on the web. In other words, the content incentive cycle at this point had hinged almost entirely on the search engine’s quality thresholds. If Google was able to parse out quality content to the N th  degree, then content creators and SEOs produced content to match that degree of quality. If Google could parse out quality to X th  degree, then we shifted and slowly started to create content that met the new quality threshold. But, very rarely did “we” think about the ultimate needs of the user and their demands. The algorithm became the North Star.  This inertia was disrupted by an outside voice—namely people becoming far more skeptical about the content they were consuming as more and more CEOs showed up to explain themselves in front of Congress. Generative AI adds fuel to the fire It’s safe to say that generative AI  has exacerbated this issue. The ease with which volumes of content can be generated (and the questionable accuracy of that content ) has taken people’s skepticism and injected it into their veins like Barry Bonds juicing up to hit another home run (for the record, it has not been proven that Barry Bonds took steroids).  What AI did to the great content conversation amounts to throwing a propane tank onto what was already a house on fire (i.e., web content). The net result is the emergence of new content trends—the most notable of which has been this consensus that audiences want content from actual people, not brands or corporations.  There are all sorts of studies and surveys showing that the “young folks” prefer TikTok  to more “traditional” mediums, such as search. Even SEOs have gotten on this bandwagon and have begun talking about TikTok as a source of content ideation .  “‘BookTok,’ ‘cottagecore,’ ‘hair theory’—the list goes on. None of these terms existed before TikTok emerged, but they now have a huge impact on how people search across platforms.” — Abby Gleason , SEO Product Manager This trend obviously didn’t arise in a vacuum. Nor is it all about “AI”—again there was a serious buildup to this moment that, in my opinion, has been brewing for years (the very “formative” years of the web’s younger users).  What I am saying is that the shift in content consumption trends is very real and it will continue to get increasingly “real,” real fast as we’re not anywhere close to the end of the “AI content conversation” (again, it’s less a conversation and more Thanksgiving dinner with your dysfunctional family).  Now that we know where we are and how we got here (a very underestimated facet of dealing with the web and its future), what does that mean for content generation? The future of content creation: How to align  I want to offer some concrete content strategies that I think will become more prominent going forward. I feel that a lot of the dialogue I see out there around “content by people, for people” is oversimplified (which is usually the trend with these sorts of things).  Instead of identifying the demand and abstracting out from there to develop concrete tactics, we (as digital marketers) tend to get very “linear” with things. We focus more on a tactic than on the underlying principle we can then apply in a variety of ways.  In our case, there’s been a heap of talk about “influencer content” as again, people want content from people, not corporations. To me, that is akin to not being able to see the forest for the trees. Aside from the superficiality, the content format simply doesn’t apply to half the content out there. What are you going to do? Ask Kim Kardashian to record a video for every landing page on your site? Let’s instead focus on the underlying concept: People don’t want to be spoken at; they are looking to engage on a more personal level, as this fosters a sense of trust, security, and overall quality.  It’s entirely possible to meet this need without leveraging some form of influencer marketing. Below are two ways that come to mind. Situational writing: The value for users and SEO I want to challenge the idea of “creating a personal connection” between the content and its audience.  Yes, the most obvious way to make that connection is with content from actual people speaking directly to your audience (much the way a TikTok video could). However, if the North Star conceptually is not a media format, but instead simply creating content that directly and substantially engages with  the audience, then the possibilities are, in a way, endless.  In other words, you need content that makes a connection. One very powerful, yet hardly discussed way to show you are thinking about the reader and their pain points is to predict their needs. Predicting the needs of your readers (and being quite explicit about it within your content) is, however subtly, having a conversation with your audience.  A fabulous way to do this is with what I call “situational content.” It’s not very complicated but I think it’s very powerful.  Imagine I’m writing an article about how to get your kids to bed (a pain point for me, no doubt) and in this article, I offer five ways to get your kids to bed quickly. They might be good tips but I’m not conversing with you. I’m speaking at you or (at best) to you.  Now imagine I write the same post but for each tip, I run through the scenario that the tip doesn’t work under and then offer you a follow-up recommendation. Lo and behold, we are having an implicit conversation. I offer the tip. I assume you say it didn’t work and then reply back to you with another follow-up tip. There’s an implied conversation going on. A latent back and forth.  Situational writing assumes an implicit reaction on the reader’s part and latently incorporates that dialogue into the content itself. This way, I’m communicating with you by assuming your response. The net result is conversational content. From an SEO perspective, it’s not fundamentally possible to create situational content without either having first-hand knowledge and experience related to the topic or a high level of expertise. Thus, situational content is rooted in strong E-E-A-T and (all other things being equal) would align with the signals Google uses to synthetically align with strong E-E-A-T. The case for taking a conversational tone with your content What about your typical landing page? How do you connect to your audience and have a conversation with them via content like your run-of-the-mill landing page?  Again, you’re not going to embed some influencer’s video short  onto all your landing pages. I mean you could, but folks are going to see right through that. This is especially true as time goes on and readers become inundated with influencers here, there, and everywhere.  To me, this really highlights the fundamental problem in a lot of the advice around “the future of content.” Yes, people want to hear from actual people and not brands, but as a brand you can just stick influencers into everything you do. But, most of the pages on the web probably don’t align with that very generic advice.  Now, you can do things like feature customer reviews  and social proof  on a page to build trust. But trust isn’t necessarily conversation. If the goal is conversation, then this won’t work.  What to do, what to do?  The first thing I think to do is to accept the reality that you cannot have a substantial level of conversation with every asset or every web page you create. That’s just not how the internet works.  Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to be as conversational as possible. And I’ll tell you the hard truth: We all want to have whatever influencer pitch our product for us, but we don’t want to take our foot off the acquisition gas pedal in any way, shape, or form. However, this is precisely what I’m advocating for.  If our audiences want to receive more conversational content, then we as content creators and contributors should offer them a more conversational tone.  Content is going to become increasingly conversational. You know those old used car commercials you see in movies from the 1970s? That’s what a lot of our content—particularly acquisitional content—is going to sound like in a few years from now. It will sound like an overly overt sales pitch because it is  fundamentally an overly overt sales pitch.  Marketing catchphrases, buzzwords, and subliminal overselling are going to stand out, but not in a good way. It will feel (if it doesn’t already) like the content is talking at you and not even to you—let alone with you.  Again, part of the demand for conversational content is the skepticism behind our current state of content. Pages that don’t align are going to be treated with mass skepticism by the target audience. As counterintuitive as it may sound, take your foot off the acquisitional gas pedal and give your audience some breathing room by taking a more explanatory (and therefore conversational) tone with your content that aims to sell.  Sometimes you can have an actual conversation with your audience and sometimes the best you can do is create a situation where the audience is willing to hear you. As time goes on, taking a more conversational tone with your acquisitional content will enable your audience to lay their guard down so that they can assimilate what you are trying to convey. The future of content on the Google SERP  So, how does web content rapidly changing (for the reasons I outlined above) play out on the SERP? I predict that: Google will meet the demand for experience-based content Language profiles and parsing are the future of search—not SGE Google will meet the demand for experience-based content  It’s not a matter of “if,” it’s just a matter of “how” and “when” (and really how effectively). It’s really not a complicated equation: If Google doesn’t meet user demands, users will go somewhere else.  You can argue that Google has already begun exploring these waters. From adding an additional “E” for “experience” to E-E-A-T  to the role of first-hand experience in the Product Review updates , Google now leans heavily into a focus on first-person knowledge.  This trend is all the more obvious when you look at some of Google’s more recent tests and announcements. Just to mention a few:  Google began testing “Notes”  in 2023. Regardless of how effective you think the feature may be (I’m a little skeptical myself) it’s a clear sign that Google wants real voices on the SERP. In mid-November of 2023, Google talked about notifications for topics you are following . What does this have to do with a more “personal” take on the SERP? I speculate that the sort of content found on forums and microblogs would be a perfect fit. Speaking of forums, Google said they are looking to make algorithmic changes to better “surface hidden gems.”  This is basically Google looking to reward actual human perspectives and experiences from social media and from forums (and the like) on the SERP. Continuing with forums, Google also announced it would support structured data markup  that would result in rich results for content pulled from “social media platforms, forums, and other communities” meant to propagate first-person knowledge and perspectives. Google’s “Perspectives” section shows content that people have shared on forums, Q&A sites, and social media platforms. Google’s ability to do all of this effectively is a legitimate question. As I said above, for me it’s just a matter of “when” Google will get it right—not “if.” It has no choice but to get it right. The demand for first-person content is only going to increase. Google understands how the AI conversation  is a driving force behind this and is looking to balance out the SERP accordingly. If it doesn’t get this right, users (particularly younger users) will flock to platforms like TikTok. The future of forums and the SERP Yes, the above is an H4 —it’s that kind of post. I want to address “forums.” For SEOs, the second we hear the word “forum,” all we think about is spam and ranking manipulation.  I want to challenge our a-priori notions here just a tad. We associate “forums” and “SEO” with all sorts of spammy and less-than-legitimate practices . I would be very cautious of thinking about forums based on our experiences of the past so as not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I don’t believe I am being controversial by saying “social media is not what it used to be.” Online communities have been seeking refuge in a host of platforms like Slack, WhatsApp groups, etc. as social media (to an extent) has lost a bit of its perceived luster.  What happens as Google starts to rank content from communities more regularly and (as Wix’s own Kobi Gamliel  pointed out) when online community organizations realize they can use their own ecosystem and not someone else’s?  The incentive cycle on the web over the past 20 years has revolved around what Google shows on the SERP. If Google presents more forums, it will spark people to start forums.  This doesn’t mean that what a forum was 20 years ago will be what a forum is today vis-a-vis the SERP. Creating genuine E-E-A-T with a forum, or a microblog, or whatever else is going to come into focus and become more of a part of a website’s organic strategy. Language profiles and parsing are the future of search—not SGE Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). There, I said it.  The future of the SERP is not SGE (Search Generative Experience). I am not saying that SGE won’t be a part of the future of the SERP , but I see it more as a facilitator than anything (I’ll elaborate on that in just a bit).  The future of SERP at any point is dictated by two factors:  The desires and behaviors of users  The technological ability to meet those desires We’ve already talked a lot about user desires and demands. Now, we need to talk about Google’s ability to meet them—SGE is not that.  SGE, if I can be a bit brash, was a response to Bing’s AI chat  beating Google to the punch. A punch that did not have much “oomph” to it, at least not for Bing as it did not increase the company’s market share . Don’t think for a minute Google did not take notice of that little fact.  Let’s go back to the root of users’ demands. Because of various developments, including the proliferation of “AI this” and “AI that,” users are far more skeptical about the content they see on the web. They also want to be in greater contact with personal experience via their content consumption, which aligns with the need for trust in an ocean of skepticism. Think of it like the B side of a record (and… I just lost my audience under the age of 30).  Which one of those problems does SGE solve, exactly? Neither.  Let’s discuss two actual solutions.  How Google fundamentally rewards experience on the SERP  Let’s start with experience on the SERP. Aside from pulling in more content from social media or forums, etc., how can Google adequately reward “experience” within the core search results?  We don’t really need to look into a crystal ball for this: Google has already been rewarding experience with the Reviews update (where it calls for first-hand experience) and it is my belief the search engine has been doing the same within the core updates, the Helpful Content Updates (HCU), and so on.  The question is: How?  It’s not very far-fetched when you get into it. Machine learning is essentially built to profile language and language structure. I always go back to a statement John Mueller made  back in 2019: “It is something where, if you have an overview of the whole web or kind of a large part of the web, and you see which type of content is reasonable for individual topics then that is something where you could potentially infer from that.” — John Mueller, Senior Search Analyst at Google Countless tests, experiments, and breakthroughs in using machine learning to dissect language patterns  have been published over the past few years. It’s what machine learning was built to do.  In terms of ranking experience-based content, how does this play out on the SERP?  Let’s use a product review example in line with the Reviews update. For argument's sake, assume we’re reviewing a vacuum cleaner.  By default, I might lean on some relatively generic language, such as “It was a great vacuum cleaner but didn’t do well on carpet.”  Conversely, if I am relatively good at communicating my experience to others (in this case, about using the vacuum), I would be more apt to use language such as “Great on carpet but I had a difficult time sucking up cat hair.”   The language structures here are worlds apart. The level of modification and even the first-person language easily sets the latter expression apart from the “generic” content I created. It is not far-fetched to imagine that Google can implement machine learning to better score the likelihood that the content’s language structure indicates firsthand experience.  Language structures and profiles are (and will be) an increasingly important component of what Google does to decipher overall quality and include firsthand experience within the content it shows on the SERP.  This is perhaps best expressed by Pandu Nayak, Google’s VP of Search, who (at Google’s antitrust trial) was quoted as saying :  “DeepRank not only gives significant relevance gains, but also ties ranking more tightly to the broader field of language understanding.” — Pandu Nayak, VP of Search at Google For SEOs, it all brings what our mothers have been telling us for years to the forefront: watch your language.  I think this is true across the board for all emerging content trends Google looks to align with. The only real tools it has at its disposal are profiles—both language profiles and user behavior profiles. The combination of the two can be very powerful.  To highlight this, I’ll offer you an overly-simplistic example: Let’s assume that the trend for more creator voices within content continues to the point where content creators are utilizing more first-person language. Now let’s assume some of this content ranks.  Accordingly, we have content that does include the creator’s voice and the content of yesteryear that generally does not.  Now, assume that when users click on a page and see the typically stoic content, they bounce back the SERP in favor of content that does  include the creator’s voice (read: first-hand experience). Machine learning systems, like RankBrain and DeepRank, could (in theory) identify this type of first-hand language and create a new profile for that subset of topics. Namely, a profile that indicates “creator voice” must be part of the language structure.  This is, in a sense, what has been happening on the SERP since about 2015. We’ve only seen this process expand its reach and impact, and we are only going to see what I think are huge advancements here.  How Google can handle skepticism around content There’s a lot more to addressing user skepticism (and downright cynicism) than just firsthand knowledge and experience.  Fundamentally, it boils down to offering a quality content experience to the user (again, firsthand knowledge being a part of that when necessary). The question is, how do we parse “a quality experience” in the context of increased skepticism around web content?  We parse it with parsing.  Users need to know that Google is offering them  results—not just presenting a spattering of content for them to wade through. Users then need to feel that the content itself speaks to them  and their specific needs.  To put it more concretely, if I feel like I am presented with content that has my specific needs in mind or if I am presented with an ecosystem (such as the Google SERP) that has my specific needs in mind, then I am more inclined to trust what I am consuming.  To that end, specificity is key. The need for specificity speaks to my point about SGE being somewhat of a distraction in a way (and in other ways, not, which I’ll elaborate on shortly).  In 2021, Google introduced us to MUM  (Multitask Unified Model). A big focus around the “MUM conversation” has been its ability to unify content mediums. For example, MUM enables you to take a picture with Google Lens and add a text input  as well (so you can, for example, take a picture of a pattern you like and ask Google to find socks with that matching pattern). A demonstration of MUM’s capabilities at Google’s Search On event in 2021. Source: Google. When Google demoed MUM for the first time, it also showed us how MUM could theoretically handle a search query. The example query Google used was “I’ve hiked Mt. Adams, and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall, what should I do differently to prepare?” Of course, SEOs were awed by MUM’s ability to parse the various aspects of this complex query. What struck me, however, was how MUM dealt with the very simple phrase “to prepare.” To quote Google, MUM “could also understand that, in the context of hiking, to ‘prepare’ could include things like fitness training as well as finding the right gear.” Topical parsing is how you bring specificity to the SERP. It takes a mundane query like “go to yankees game” and morphs the results from a bunch of links to buy tickets to content around transportation to the game, what the game experience is like and what to expect, what costs are involved with going to a game, etc. Unlike the SERP of yesteryear, SGE is already parsing the topic. In order to deliver a targeted experience to users, you have to be able to parse the topic. And while MUM is not terribly integrated into the algorithm in this regard (as of yet), it and other machine learning technologies offer Google a tremendous amount of potential.  Elements like MUM, to me, should be the focus of the SERP and the focus for SEOs and content creators, not an SGE box. Content portals: How SGE can help Based on the need for stronger topical parsing, the future of the SERP, to me, lies in content portals (i.e., the ability of the SERP to facilitate the deep exploration of the various aspects subsumed under a given topic).  A portal-like experience would enable me to go down the rabbit hole and come back out just so I can go down a new one. Continuing with Google’s “hiking” example, I could explore the training regiments I would need to “prepare” with a wide variety of media and resources, and then explore “preparing” vis-a-vis equipment needed in the same way, without friction.  This is where SGE can effectively come into play. SGE as the end product doesn’t entice me. I don’t think it fundamentally aligns with the core needs of the users with regard to where content (as a commodity) is heading. What it does provide is a nice starting point accented by more entry points.  SGE, as a facilitator, is extremely interesting to me. What I think SGE can do very well is present the user with a quick, contextual look at the topic and then facilitate the portal-like exploration I’m staunchly advocating for.  If I search for [I’ve hiked Mt. Adams, and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall, what should I do differently to prepare?], SGE could provide some basic content about the various types of hiking each mountain requires, etc., and then present cards that would enable me to explore various facets, such as the numerous ways to prepare for the hike.  In fact, when you look at SGE’s initial phase, we can see the early signs of this. Initially, SGE had a secondary section that broke down the initial summary into its smaller parts, thereby parsing the overall topic with accentual link-cards.  An early preview of SGE from Google I/O 2023. As SGE has evolved, you essentially have the same result via the link attribution format that allows for the revealing URL cards within specific sections of the generated copy.  This acts like a very lightweight entry point to the various subsets of topics covered within SGE’s synopsis. While this is a long way away from being an actual portal that allows for genuine exploration, it has potential. More so, it points to what I think is the proper way to leverage SGE on the SERP.  Where I think you really see this concept shine through is in Google Gemini. In a demo , Google shows that it: A) Creates custom layouts tailored to best fit the results so that they align with the query’s intent B) Allows for users to ask follow-up questions related to a specific piece of information provided within the initial response Both of these characteristics align with the notion I am proposing. A result layout customized to fit the intent of the user is entirely about putting topical exploration at the forefront of the overall experience. Being able to follow up on information (parenthetically, this is another positive of SGE in general) is again, facilitating a tailored exploration experience. The net result is more user engagement as well as less content apprehension (read: skepticism). There’s no doubt in my mind that Gemini will be an ever-increasing factor on the SERP  and it has real potential to engage with users and web content and not to simply “replace” it.  The bottom line is : a generative AI experience has a place on the SERP and (should it facilitate parsing topics and user exploration) it has the potential to tackle some of the more substantial latent user concerns. The human touch and its role in content Existential and psychological factors play a far greater role in content consumption than we typically give credit for. Imagine I wrote a piece of content and by some great cosmic coincidence, AI wrote the same exact piece of content. Now imagine I told you that you had to choose which one to read. Would you choose the piece written by AI or the one I wrote?  I’ve asked this question to a dozen people over the past few weeks and, every time, the answer is that they would read my version of the content. I don’t think these people were trying to placate me. I think they were alluding to fundamental reality—we want to feel a human connection. So, yes, if you read the AI version of the content in this wild scenario, you would not miss anything in terms of content, but you would not feel any connection to the source of the information.  There is an underlying and quite legitimate need to touch the source of the information we consume. It is fundamentally why we care to know if something was or wasn’t written by AI. We don’t care so much because of the quality but because of the connectivity. Does the content have a source that I can see? That I can somehow connect with even in a very sublime way?  This very basic but powerful human need is at the core of the content trends I’ve discussed here. It’s also why there is (in my mind) no chance that AI-written content will pervasively replace human-generated content . In a way, the improper use of AI to write content undermines this need.  The future of web content isn’t some new direction or technology. It’s quite old, if not as old as time itself. The future of web content, now more than ever, is in its ability to bring parties into contact and connection with each other. 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: Joshua George Selling products online starts with getting those products in front of your potential customers. If you want to use Google to do that, then you need to ensure that your products and content are discoverable. This is where technical SEO comes in. By pairing your critical thinking with the best practices I’ll explain in this guide, you can maximize the odds of getting your products to show on Google as well as improve user experience by speeding up load times and prioritizing usability.  Let’s learn how to approach technical SEO for eCommerce websites for better rankings and even better revenue. Table of contents: Why online stores need technical SEO Technical SEO for online stores: Get started step-by-step Establish a baseline by benchmarking your shop’s SEO performance Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit Secure your site for customers Optimize website architecture and URL structures Ensure important pages are crawled and indexed Identify and address 4xx pages Identify and assess 3xx pages Manage and canonicalize duplicate content Implement breadcrumb navigation Speed up site pages Compress images Set up a responsive, mobile-friendly design for your store Add structured data markup Why online stores need technical SEO Technical SEO helps ensure that search engines can crawl and index  your online shop’s web pages by optimizing your site’s: User experience (load times, functionality, etc.) Security Architecture Structured data Etc. When properly optimized (as I’ll show you in the following sections), these elements tell search engines about the relationship between your pages while encouraging users to peruse your offerings and, ideally, make a purchase. While technical SEO will never be more important than relevance for Google (or for your audiences), the search engine has said that your page experience (which depends on your technical SEO) can be a tie-breaker , making it potentially even more important for store owners in highly competitive sectors. Technical SEO for online stores: Get started step-by-step Now that you know why technical SEO is a foundation for pretty much every successful eCommerce site, let’s delve into specific practices that can help search engines find your site pages faster and more efficiently: Establish a baseline by benchmarking your shop’s SEO performance Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit Secure your site for customers Optimize website architecture and URL structures Ensure important pages are crawled and indexed Identify and address 4xx pages Identify and assess 3xx pages Manage and canonicalize duplicate content Implement breadcrumb navigation Speed up site pages Compress images Set up a responsive, mobile-friendly design for your store Add structured data markup 01. Establish a baseline by benchmarking your shop’s SEO performance To better understand the current state of your online shop’s SEO, you must establish metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor. These can include: Organic traffic  — The number of visitors coming to your site from unpaid search engine results. Keyword rankings  — The positions your website holds in search engine results pages for targeted keywords. Clicks  —   The number of users who click on your site’s listings in search engine results pages ( SERPs ). Impressions — The number of times your pages appear in SERPs. Bounce rate — The percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. This data can also give you clues to identify potential issues hindering your site’s organic visibility. For example, if you’ve properly mapped your keywords  to your store pages, then Google Search Console  (GSC) not only tells you about how pages perform for those keywords, but it can also tell you about duplicate content, redirect errors, and other issues that impact your SEO. To get started, use a rank tracking  tool to monitor the keywords you’re optimizing for (you need to do this for your own domain but it can also be enlightening to track your competitors keyword rankings as well). A third-party tool like SE Ranking  can help you get the job done—just enter the keywords you want to track to receive daily updates on your pages’ ranking positions. If you connect SE Ranking with your GSC account, you can add the search terms you’re getting impressions from on Google Search as well. If you want data directly from Google Search (and for free), use GSC to check out which queries Google shows your site pages for and their average positions. Unlike third-party rank tracking tools, this tool shows you your site’s organic traffic or its pages based on the queries they’re ranking for. In GSC, select Performance > Search results  from the left-hand navigation menu to see your eCommerce site’s traffic overview. You can see your site’s traffic trend over time (as far as 16 months ago) and assess whether your SEO efforts have improved its traffic. Scroll down to see the Queries tab, which shows a table with the number of users who see your pages for particular keywords (impressions) and how many are clicking on them (clicks). If you want to analyze page-level traffic, select the Pages tab, choose the desired page from the table (you can even sort by clicks or impressions), and then click the Queries tab to see the keywords that specific page ranks for (and receives traffic from). The data from these tools help you evaluate your store’s SEO to see whether your strategies and tactics are ultimately helping out your revenue. It allows you to see patterns and trends in your site’s performance in search results, which can uncover potential issues to resolve before diving further into technical SEO improvements or as a way of identifying them in the future. 02. Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit Once you finish your initial SEO analysis, conduct a technical SEO audit of your store. This allows you to look deeper into the problems holding back your site from ranking higher.  Instead of scrutinizing keyword optimization and content quality, an SEO audit  focuses on factors that affect the crawlability and indexability of your eCommerce website.  In other words, a poorly constructed website makes finding its pages more difficult for search engines. As a result, they may not show up on SERPs for their respective keywords. If this is your first time conducting this type of analysis, I recommend Ahrefs Webmaster Tools  (sign up for free). The only requirement is that you need to connect your GSC account to verify site ownership. After verifying with your GSC account, you can run the SEO audit (which could take hours depending on the size of your site). If you have a lot of URLs and files, expect the audit to take longer. Once the tool is done auditing your site, you will get a ‘Health Score’—the higher the score, the more technically sound your site is. To help you make sense of the score, the results also show you the issues your site suffers from and recommendations to address these problems. In addition to a tool-based SEO audit, it’s also a good idea to: Use the inurl:-https Google search operator to find URLs indexed by the search engine without an SSL certificate . This issue (called ‘mixed content’), happens primarily due to faulty site migrations . Check for site pages written for a specific year using the intitle:[PreviousYear] search operator. This lets you find pages you need to update and optimize for the current year. Add (or remove) a trailing slash to a page URL (e.g., https://example.com/fish to https://example.com/fish/) and see what happens. Some sites would redirect to the previous URL, while others would show a different page altogether (or point to a 404 page). If the latter happens, it’s best to investigate further why this is happening. Browse the site for an hour and explore its pages and features (like an actual visitor would). This will help you spot issues that no other tool can ever find, like usability, lackluster CTAs, and more. Moving forward, you can use the information from your audit to determine factors affecting your site’s technical SEO, which I will further discuss below. 03. Secure your site for customers For online stores, strengthening website security is a top priority  because it protects both your customers and your business. From an SEO standpoint, making your site as safe and well-protected as possible can help increase search rankings . More importantly, website security allows you to gain trust with potential customers, paving the way for them to purchase on your site without putting their personal information at risk. The best and easiest way to secure your eCommerce site is to install a SSL certificate on your domain to enable HTTPS. This encrypts almost all the information between the client or visitor and the site, preventing unauthorized access and ensuring confidentiality.  This means that every time visitors enter their credit card information, an HTTPS site obfuscates the details they entered so hackers won’t be able to see them and steal the information. HTTPS is automatically enabled on your site when using Wix as your eCommerce platform, among other security measures . 04. Optimize website architecture and URL structures When structuring your eCommerce site, aim to make the site as flat as possible. This means all your site pages should take three or fewer clicks to access from the homepage. By making your click depth as shallow as possible (which is a good thing), you not only make the pages more accessible to visitors and help them find what they’re looking for, but you also help search engines crawl and index these pages much more easily. Some online shops ignore the value click depth brings to their SEO. Not linking their pages closer to the homepage forces search engines to work harder to dig deeper into your site and find the pages. And because search engine bots have a limit on crawling your site (AKA ‘crawl budget’), this greatly reduces the chances that they’ll show your pages properly in search results (if at all). Crawling and indexing becomes even more difficult for search engines if you have orphan pages (i.e., pages with no internal links  pointing to them). Since Google relies on links and your sitemap to discover your pages, if your page has no links pointing to it (and isn’t included in your sitemap), then it probably won’t show up in search results. Avoid these issues by planning your website architecture before building your site pages (if your site is already live, then you can plan this out for your next website overhaul). Plot out how the pages will not only link from the homepage but to each other as well. Ensure all pages have at least one link each to eliminate orphan pages. Building content silos, which are groups of related pages interlinked with one another, is a good approach to site structure. Each silo has a pillar page (or a product page, in the case of eCommerce sites) and supporting articles that link to the page. There are many ways you can interlink these pages with each other to form a silo; Kyle Roof’s approach is one of the better ones, especially if you also have a comprehensive article that works as a pillar page. You can even combine related silos with product and article pages as pillar pages, like in the diagram below. Source: Kyle Roof. Building silos this way helps you inform search engines of the relationship among the pages on your site. By grouping related pages closely together, Google can better assess your authority on the topic, potentially helping your content and products  on the SERPs. 05. Ensure important pages are crawled and indexed Even if you optimize your site architecture, search engines won’t show your pages in search results if you inadvertently set them to noindex . You can refer to Google Search Console to double-check unindexed pages on your site. In the left-hand menu, go to Indexing > Pages to see the pages that have been indexed and deindexed over time. The report also shares reasons why some pages aren’t indexed so you can make the necessary changes. For pages that are crawled and currently not indexed, you can try submitting requests to index the page (as shown below).  If you want a non-indexed page to be indexed, inspect your URL on Google Search Console and request it for indexing. If important pages aren’t getting crawled, check your robots.txt file  to ensure that you haven’t disallowed search engines from crawling those pages. You can also facilitate crawlability by setting up a sitemap  that includes these pages. Search engines use sitemaps to identify the pages on your site that are available to crawl. After configuring your sitemap, submit its URL to your Google Search Console (go to Indexing > Sitemap). 06. Identify and address 4xx pages 4xx status codes  refer to pages that can’t be found. When visitors land on these pages (perhaps via a mistyped URL within an internal link ), they encounter an error page instead of the page they were looking for, disrupting their user experience. If left unaddressed, 4xx pages can leave a bad impression on your users and may cause them to abandon your website. For the same reason, this may cause your site to drop in search rankings as well. To check for 404 status codes in GSC, go to the Page Indexing report (Pages > Indexing) and select “Not found (404)” or “Soft 404” in the table beneath the chart. If your site has pages with 404 status codes, either recover the page and restore them to their 200 response code state or redirect their URLs to a relevant page. Other 4xx status codes, like Unauthorized (401) and Forbidden (403), may appear properly to users but be difficult to crawl for search engines. In this case, you need to find the right solutions for each issue, including clearing your browser cache, modifying your file permissions, and restoring your .htaccess file. 07. Identify and assess 3xx pages In the section above, I mentioned redirecting non-existent URLs to relevant ones on your site to fix 4xx errors. However, redirection (or 3xx status codes) may also pose issues for your online shop. Not all are necessarily problems, but they can become problems if you don’t address the potential issues they could be causing. For instance, you redirect a URL on your site that no longer exists to a different page, but some of your pages still link to the non-existent page. While the link automatically redirects users to the new page, loading this page takes longer due to the redirection rule. Ideally, instead of keeping the old links in place, you would update them by linking directly to the new page instead. If you’re using Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools to audit, then the Audit Report should reveal these issues under the Redirects section (as shown below). You can also go to the Page Indexing report in GSC and review the “Page with redirect” section. You need to analyze the pages individually to see whether you need to take action.  Here’s a scenario: You unknowingly used a 302 redirect instead of a 301 redirect . The former (302) indicates that the redirect rule is temporary, meaning the original page retains its link equity and search engine rankings. The latter (301) is when you want to permanently transfer the authority of the redirected page to the new one. In this case, you want to change the 302 redirect to a 301 if you removed the old URL or it no longer exists. This enables you to help search engines show the correct page on SERPs. 08. Manage and canonicalize duplicate content Duplicate content  refers to when two or more pages on your site contain the same content. This can happen when you copy the same generic product descriptions provided by the product manufacturer and have different URLs for variations (size and color) but have the same content across all those variants’ URLs. As powerful as search engines are, they only provide limited resources for crawling your site (i.e., ‘crawl budget’). In this case, duplicate content becomes an SEO issue by allowing search engines to crawl multiple versions of the same URL. This can cause your site to exceed its crawl budget, preventing search engines from indexing all the pages you want people to find in organic search. To optimize your crawl budget, review duplicate content issues in your site audit report. This typically shows you pages with the same text, title, meta description , and header tags . Ahrefs Webmaster Tools shows duplicate content distribution across your site, from title tags to page content. This technical SEO issue can result from keyword cannibalization . It’s possible you ran an ad campaign for a page with URL parameters (to track its performance) only for Google to index these URLs as unique. You can fix this by establishing the rel=”canonical”  version of the page. When enabled, search engines are directed to ignore the URL variations with parameters and only index the page with the canonical tag. 09. Implement breadcrumb navigation Breadcrumbs are links (generally on top of the page, just below the header) showing your site’s page hierarchy. They help search engines (and users) understand the site’s structure and allow them to crawl the pages on these navigational links easily. For Wix store owners, setting up breadcrumbs on your eCommerce site  is easy. You only need to enable the Dev Mode  to add breadcrumbs from the Menu & Anchor  elements. 10. Speed up site pages Website speed is a ranking factor because it can affect visitors’ user experience. The longer your site pages take to load, the greater the chances visitors will leave your site and seek out alternatives instead.  To avoid this, choose a lightweight theme or design for your website. After deciding on a theme (or if your site is already live), run your site on Google PageSpeed Insights  to see how fast and efficiently your site loads. Run your URL on Google PageSpeed Insights to learn how fast and efficiently your site loads. PageSpeed Insights shows your site’s overall score across various factors as well as ways to improve the score under the Diagnostics section. Triage these issues and take them to your dev team to see how they can help. Bear in mind that you may need to secure buy-in from additional stakeholders to get your technical SEO recommendations implemented . 11. Compress images Image file sizes are another factor that affects site speed. This is crucial for eCommerce sites due to the volume of high-quality images used for product pages. If your website’s CMS doesn’t automatically optimize your image file sizes ( Wix does ), then you’ll need to use bulk image compression software to reach a middle ground between image quality and user experience. 12. Set up a responsive, mobile-friendly design for your store Google uses mobile-first indexing , in which the search engine prioritizes your site’s mobile version for the purposes of indexing and ranking. If your site still uses an outdated, unresponsive design that doesn’t adapt to the visitor’s screen size, don’t expect your site to appear at the top of SERPs (or even rank at all, for that matter). For Wix store owners, mobile-friendly versions of your site are created from your desktop site.  13. Add structured data markup To help increase your click-through rates, provide search engines with more context about your page via schema markup. This provides structured data  that communicates what your page is about.  More importantly, search engines can show the structured data as rich snippets  in search results (as shown below). Check your site audit report for structured data issues. Auditing tools will identify pages with schema.org   validation errors . View the issue for each affected page so you know what pages search engines have problems reading your schema markup on. Wix Store pages come with pre-formatted structured data, but if you don’t have structured data on your pages, you can create markup using the Schema Markup Generator by   TechnicalSEO.com. Choose the markup you wish to create and fill in the blanks with the page information. After you generate the code, implement it on your web page  and repeat the process for all relevant pages. Once you’ve done this on all your eCommerce site pages, run another SEO audit report to see if there are issues with the newly created markup or if the codes you tried fixing still have ideas. Combine technical SEO, content, and backlinks for superior eCommerce SEO Remember, just because search engines can easily find your online store doesn’t automatically mean your pages will appear at the top of Google Search. Technical SEO is just one extension of your SEO strategy. You also need to cover your store’s on-page SEO  by optimizing for the appropriate keywords that give you the best chances of getting in front of potential customers. And, you may even want to launch an off-page SEO campaign for building backlinks  on authoritative sites, which might involve outreach campaigns or taking on an agency partner. By ensuring that your SEO strategy is firing on all cylinders, starting with technical SEO, your eCommerce website is well on the way to generating the traffic it deserves! Joshua George - Founder of ClickSlice   Joshua is the founder of ClickSlice , a results driven SEO agency in London. He has almost a decade of experience as an SEO consultant and has provided SEO training for the British government. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Adriana Stein When OpenAI launched ChatGTP in November 2022, it unleashed an AI tidal wave. It’s been all over the news—for better or worse. It’s flooded my LinkedIn feed to the point where I’ve honestly had to take a break. Everywhere you turn, AI seems to be gaining popularity. This makes it inevitable that AI will eventually make an even bigger splash in eCommerce marketing tools, content creation, and especially SEO. So, regardless of whether you’re for or against AI, it’s here to stay because of one crucial element: Perceived efficiency. Why? Many people perceive AI as improving the efficiency of tasks that humans currently perform manually (whether that’s actually true still remains to be seen). Ironically, AI isn’t all that new. Ever wondered how Facebook seems to read your thoughts? Or maybe you use a voice powered assistant like Alexa at home? These are powered by AI and we’ve long used them to make certain tasks and processes more efficient. Because AI involves processing how humans communicate in order to create more natural speech patterns and AI-human interactions, the wide array of use cases is hard to ignore. All of these factors have tremendous implications for eCommerce businesses and their marketing and SEO strategies. This leaves us with some important questions: Just because we can use AI, does it mean we should? Is AI as efficient as some people claim? Can we truly use AI to complement our eCommerce marketing efforts or will we begin to rely on it to the point where there’s no human creativity and everything sounds the same? Here, I’ll explore both sides of the argument and consider what that might mean for the future of eCommerce marketing and SEO. Table of contents: How AI has already changed eCommerce AI for eCommerce: Competition or collaboration? Accuracy issues are still common in AI-generated content The technical basics: Differentiating AI vs. Human writing Algorithmically detecting AI content Google doesn’t care whether you use human or AI writers How to create unique, human-centric eCommerce content using AI Examples of various eCommerce content generated by ChatGTP Product description Blog article Instagram post Facebook ad Landing page Nurturing email eCommerce SEOs can use AI to enhance—not replace—their work The past is prologue: How AI has already changed eCommerce One of the best frame of references to think about how AI can be used in eCommerce in the future is to examine the ways in which it’s already being used. Some of the most popular uses of AI in eCommerce today include: Fraud prevention: AI can analyze transactions and uncover suspicious behavior. This is extremely difficult for people to do in real time, especially as businesses grow in size. Product recommendations: AI can start to recognize patterns in shopping behavior based on demographics, which could help with more targeted product recommendations over time. It’s also able to recognize IP addresses in order to create a more personalized experience based on previous purchases and browsing history. Dynamic pricing: AI can analyze market trends and look at competitors to give you a better understanding of the current price point for your products and services. Virtual shopping assistants: AI-powered chatbots have been around for a while but they’re getting increasingly more intelligent/responsive. Teaching AI how to interact with customers can create a stronger user experience. This allows for 24/7 responses to consumers around the world. With all of these existing applications, are SEOs’ new found fear of AI truly unprecedented? Jumping into the unknown always seems a little scary, but AI has already proven to be pretty helpful. So, how do we as eCommerce marketers and SEO strategists move forward? From my perspective, it’s all about how AI is used. AI for eCommerce: Competition or collaboration? Widespread use of AI is just beginning to break into the world of eCommerce content creation and SEO. Although there are already several different AI tools available that can help with content creation, they haven’t been discussed to anywhere near the level of ChatGTP. ChatGTP is said to have revolutionized AI technology . It’s being used for everything from business plans and press releases, to content creation and eCommerce marketing strategies. So, how will this change the playing field moving forward? In the past, content has been primarily written entirely by human content writers and marketing specialists . Now, with the introduction of various AI platforms gaining popularity in 2023 , people are wondering whether AI-generated content is going to take over and replace content writers altogether. Accuracy issues are still common in AI-generated content However, there are some major concerns about the factual accuracy of some of these tools. Since AI generates information that’s taken from a wide variety of sources, it’s difficult to confirm their reliability. The sources they pull information from may not have been fact-checked, causing the AI to put out content that is questionable to say the least. In fact, ChatGPT even warns users about the risk of misinformation when you first create an account: With that being said, AI doesn’t seem like it’s anywhere near ready to take over the role of human writers. We still need to make sure that things are accurate, reliable, and unique in order for content to carry any weight online. The technical basics: Differentiating AI vs. Human writing To ensure that eCommerce content and SEO strategies are held at a high standard—and to reduce the chance of penalties/issues based on AI-driven SERP manipulation —it’s helpful to understand how search engines perceive and detect AI. Google and other major search engines want to make sure that SERPs are filled with valuable websites, not spammy content. Google has long striven to incorporate ways to remove low-quality spam content and AI is no exception . So, how would Google do that? Natural language processing (NLP) was created to understand and mimic human writing, but it can lack human-level originality. This is problematic for the SEO world because without differentiation , AI-generated content would quickly fill up the SERPs with repetitive, generic pages that might not even help users find what they’re looking for. Algorithmically detecting AI content Several tools have been created to check whether content was created by AI. These tools are based on an understanding of how language modeling works and one of the most effective ones is the Giant Language model Test Room ( GLTR ), created by MIT-IBM Watson AI lab and Harvard NLP. GLTR analyzed the machine-generated demo text below based on word variety and placement. Green highlights indicate the most frequently used terms, while purple indicates less frequently used terms. GLTR defines this text as machine-generated because the words lack variety and are too predictable. You can see another demo of a human-written excerpt here. Notice that the text contains more purple words, indicating that there is a higher level of word variety. Comparing these two analyses, the differences are slight and nearly indiscernible for the human reader. Although GLTR has access to the GTP-2 language model and ChatGTP has now progressed to GTP-4 , the foundations for AI detection are likely to remain similar. Google doesn’t care whether you use human or AI writers Currently, Google is not against AI-generated content, nor does it technically violate guidelines. As long as AI content isn’t used for spam or to manipulate rankings and provides quality, helpful information , Google seems largely on board with it. Google’s guidance emphasizes originality, quality, and E-E-A-T, regardless of whether humans or AI generated the content. Despite the rosy approach from Google, this comes with major implications for eCommerce SEO and content generation: Relying solely on AI-generated outputs is highly likely to get redundant. And the more businesses do that over time, the harder it will be for audiences to differentiate brands—which is incredibly harmful when it comes to providing a good customer experience. The bottom line is that it’s incredibly important to manually review all AI-generated content and improve its uniqueness. How to create unique, human-centric eCommerce content using AI I strongly believe AI will become a typical part of the eCommerce marketing tech stack, whether we want it to be or not. So, the most productive way eCommerce marketers can respond to these changes is to learn to harness its power for your advantage. Here are my top suggestions for doing that: 01. Be as specific as possible with your prompt: Providing generic questions or requests will lead to generic outputs. Instead, include within your prompt: The marketing channel the content will be written for Word count Target audience Messaging Intent You should also consider building an outline first (which could also be done with AI), then entering the outline in subsequent prompts to ensure the generated content is consistent. This is one of the areas where input from human strategists is still heavily required . 02. Adapt AI outputs for the specific channel, best practices, purchase intent level, and general readability: A lot of the content that’s spun from AI is redundant and reads at a very low level. This is another area where input from human strategists needs to be prioritized. AI doesn’t differentiate well between an eCommerce product description, blog article, and landing page. That’s where you (as the strategist) need to ensure content is structured for success. 03. Don’t copy and paste exactly what the AI generates: Doing so will defeat the whole purpose of your content creation, as you’ll start sounding exactly like everyone else. Not to mention the content could include misinformation and incorrect product data. 04. Meticulously fact-check everything the AI generates: While this might seem like an obvious step, there are some sites that have used AI to write articles without any fact checking involved. They then published said articles as is, without seemingly reading them first, leading to PR nightmares like The Washington Post’s article about CNET entitled “ A news site used AI to write articles. It was a journalistic disaster .” If you want customers to buy from you, they need to trust your reliability, so don’t be the brand spreading misinformation—take the time to thoroughly fact check. 05. Add the human element through real-life experience and real-world examples: Center your content around a technical subject matter expert, real customers, quotes, relevant product information based on how someone actually uses it, and factual sources that can help your target audience better understand how a product or service can address their pain points. ToFu -style generic content has come to an end—that, AI can certainly already produce. eCommerce marketers and SEOs now need to up their game with content personalization. Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix sums it up perfectly: Examples of eCommerce content generated by ChatGTP To give you a better understanding of how you can utilize eCommerce content generated by AI, I’ll use some examples based on the company Glowforge . I’ve chosen a rather technical eCommerce product with a unique target audience to test ChatGTP in a real and complex scenario. Glowforge is a company that sells 3D laser printers that allow users to create various items at the push of a button. It can score, engrave, and cut different materials, allowing for a variety of potential applications. Notably, its target audience is stay-at-home moms in the US who are looking for creative ways to grow their own business and work from home. Product description AI contains the fundamentals necessary to generate eCommerce product descriptions , though the outputs are rather basic and need to be edited by an SEO Strategist. In order to use AI for writing product descriptions, you just need to enter a prompt that directs the AI on what to do. It seems like some descriptions might be better curated with the use of an outline prompt, but in the example below, I used the following prompt: Write a 300 word production description for the keyword “3D Laser Printer” to target moms who want to build at home businesses by making custom items with a 3D Laser Printer An experienced eCommerce marketer would see that this is a terrible product description because it lacks the majority of elements eCommerce SEO product descriptions need, including keyword optimization in headings, ease of readability through the proper content structure, and generally vague messaging in relation to the brand. So, herein lies the importance of my above advice: Provide a detailed prompt that’s more suitable for the channel Consider creating an outline first, editing that, then using that as a new prompt for the full product description Edit the full product description for SEO and content optimization best practices The big lesson here: Effectively using AI for eCommerce SEO is not a simple copy/paste job. You still need to know how SEO functions and how to use prompts to generate useful outputs for specific content types. SEO-focused blog article You can also enter a prompt for AI to generate an entire SEO-focused blog or article. In the example below, I used the following as a prompt (with a bit more detail than the product description example above). Write a 1000 word blog article targeting the keyword “how to use laser engraving machine” with “how to” information to target moms who want to build at home businesses by making custom items with a 3D Laser Printer. The post should focus on the story of other similar customers who used the product and had success gaining financial independence and building a business around their passion. Click to expand. This blog article output is better because I told it to focus on “how-to” content (the intent here is informational because the reader is trying to learn and not yet ready to buy). Nevertheless, it could be better with some help from a human SEO strategist: Create an outline prompt first, then generate a full draft based on that for a stronger output The big text blocks are way too formulaic to be human-written, are difficult to read, and need to be broken up (these are clear indicators of AI-generated content) Typical content optimization best practices need to be applied There are no real customer stories, so it massively lacks personalization Internal links to conversion landing pages and external links for citations need to be added Well, AI still has a long way to go before it replaces human SEOs! Organic Instagram post I also wanted to test AI’s capability for non-SEO eCommerce content. Here, I entered the following prompt into ChatGPT: Write an organic instagram post with “how to” information that targets moms who want to build at-home businesses by making custom items with a 3D Laser Printer. The post should focus on the story of Lisa, who recently did the same. This is definitely the strongest output so far; however, it still needs a human review to: Add the actual steps Lisa took, including what product she bought, what she created with it, and how she sold it. It’s completely lacking concrete detail. Edit the formatting for Instagram. More good news for eCommerce content marketers, AI can get close but no cigar! Facebook ad Let’s now test AI with a Facebook ad. I used the following prompt: Write a Facebook ad creating curiosity around moms and how they can stop their unfulfilling full-time job and build the at-home business of their dreams by making custom items with a 3D Laser Printer. The ad should focus on the story of Lisa, who recently did the same. Although this was actually the most passable content AI generated so far, it can still be better. I would improve this by: Telling the story directly using Lisa’s words rather than just including one quote. Again, there just needs to be more concrete detail about Lisa’s story. Adjust format slightly for readability and Facebook standards so there's only one sentence per line. What I can tell at this point is that AI is better at short-form content rather than long-form content. So depending on how well AI outputs work for your products, there may be other ways to integrate AI than with a full SEO blog article. Landing page Let’s now assess how AI does with a conversion landing page. This was my prompt: Write a 500-word conversion landing page selling the “3D Laser Printer” to target moms who want to build at-home businesses by making custom items with a 3D Laser Printer. The post should focus on the story of Lisa, who recently did the same. As you can see, this one fell entirely short. However, I think that’s likely because the prompt was a little vague. And it’s clear that ChatGTP doesn’t understand what a conversion landing page is. This needs a heavy hand from a marketing strategist to improve elements like: Using conversion copy headlines Generally adjusting all of the content structure for conversion landing page best practices Placing relevant CTAs throughout the text This is a content type that needs some true testing to determine whether it’s actually efficient to use AI (as opposed to just building your own page outline and working with a knowledgeable conversion copywriter). From this low-quality example, I’d suggest sticking with a copywriter. Nurturing email Lastly, let’s give an eCommerce product nurturing email a try. I used the following prompt: Write a 200-word nurturing email selling the “3D Laser Printer” to target moms who want to build at-home businesses by making custom items with a 3D Laser Printer. The “heart” of good nurturing conversion copy is certainly absent here. An experienced eCommerce content strategist still needs to improve on this copy by: Removing the P.S. portion (or any other repetitive parts), as they seem out of place and too salesly Adjusting the formatting for email by breaking up text blocks, adding CTAs, and links. Adding real customer stories and personalization The trend I’ve seen across all these outputs is the lack of structure and personalization. AI is nowhere near ready to generate any kind of content at ready-to-publish levels. Even with AI, you still have your work cut out for you. eCommerce SEOs can use AI to enhance—not replace—their work The best way to use AI is to enhance, rather than replace. Think of AI-generated content as a rough, rough draft. Instead of copy/paste, make strategic enhancements to structure and integrate real-world, user-first personalization . These elements are absolutely essential if you want to prevent your content from getting lost in the heap. AI professionals even say so themselves: Whether we use it or not, AI has already grown deep roots in eCommerce marketing. It seems to offer efficiency (or at least perceived efficiency from a business perspective), so we’re probably going to see a lot more of it in the future. This means that as an eCommerce SEO, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon and adapt, or be replaced by someone who has. Adriana Stein - CEO and Founder at AS Marketing Originally from the US and now living in Germany, Adriana Stein is the CEO and founder of the marketing agency AS Marketing . She leads a team of multi-language SEO experts who develop holistic international marketing strategies for global companies. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Veruska Anconitano Visitors from various countries may come to your website because they want to buy something, interact with your content, or avail of something you offer. The more intuitively they interact with your pages, the faster they see the benefits you offer and start trusting your brand. Naturally, your business will benefit from more leads and/or conversions, too. If they can see the content in their language, the experience will undoubtedly be more rewarding and fulfilling. For this reason, going international is a smart, prudent move for many companies (not necessarily for everyone, though). And through SEO, those businesses can boost reach, revenue, and brand awareness to gain a competitive advantage. Going international without a solid strategy in place may be a waste of resources or even detrimental to your brand. And, a solid global SEO strategy doesn’t only mean minding every technical detail and translating bits and bobs to start seeing an ROI. It takes effort and time to become a fully international company and ensure that your product and content can be consumed across multiple countries in multiple languages. In this article, I won't discuss international SEO strategies and “must-do’s” per se, but I will introduce you to the concept of cultural relevance in international SEO, which can be make-or-break for your visibility and your conversions. This includes: The importance of cultural identities and relevance in international SEO Cultural relevance in action for better international SEO Why cultural relevance is crucial for international SEO Why international SEO is more than keywords How to incorporate cultural awareness and relevance in your SEO strategy Before we dive in, here are a few statistics to put things into perspective: There are nearly 8 billion people in the world. There are 7,151 living languages . Of that, just 23 languages account for more than half the world’s population. English is spoken by 1.5 billion people worldwide if we count both native and non-native speakers in 67 countries (146 countries if we include the places where it's not an official language). Chinese is used by 1.3 billion people and is spoken in 38 countries. Approximately 548 million people speak Spanish in 21 countries. There are roughly 274 million French speakers in 29 countries. None of these countries speak the same exact version of English, French, Spanish, Chinese, or any other language. Interaction and search habits also vary by country. And so do expectations and needs. This is where cultural relevance comes into play. The importance of cultural identities in international SEO Cultural identity is the sense of belonging to a particular culture or group, and it’s based on various categories, including nationality, ethnicity, language, race, social behaviors, art, literature, cuisine, and much more. Cultural identity is formed through our interactions with others and is strongly connected to the social, cultural, and political contexts in which we live. To simplify: I was born in southern Italy, and like most Italians from the south, I grew up thinking that Sunday lunch was sacred. To this day, and despite where I live now and all the experiences that have brought me far from Italy, it immediately brings back memories when I see something related to a Sunday family lunch. Image: Mudita Consultancy As another example, take a look at the image above. When Pampers entered Japan in the seventies, it used the image of a stork delivering babies, not knowing that in Japan, babies are said to come from a giant peach floating down a river. Not being able to identify with the image, Japanese people completely overlooked Pampers. Cultural identities are shaped on a personal and a community level by constantly absorbing, interpreting, adapting, or even rejecting the beliefs, values, social behaviors, language, and norms of their communities. Cultural identity is a changing process because of different social, cultural, historical, and personal experiences, and every time it changes, it alters the way we perceive things around us. The reason behind this is simple: identifying with a particular culture provides people with a sense of belonging and security, and makes them feel somehow in control of their world. Image: Otakukart. Have you ever heard of ARMY (the BTS fans)? They created a specific cultural identity, something to belong to and share: they have their language and slang, their colors, their logos, and their own lingo. To win them over, companies have started to create products that appeal to this demographic and market existing products using references that strongly speak to this cultural identity. Image: Otakukart. Cultural identities play a big part in how people interact online at every stage of the sales and marketing funnel . These identities manifest in many different ways when we search online, including (but not limited to): Using singular vs. plural search terms Using infinitive vs. present tense (plural or singular) Searching for a specific type of content (e.g., reviews) or a generic head term Familiarity with a brand Searching for brand vs. non-brand content Searching for time-sensitive content or only for evergreen content Searching for images or text based on the context Using split and compound versions of nouns Cultural identities also manifest in how different people from different parts of the world engage and consume online content. Oversimplifying the matter: Germans may be known for being among the most demanding in assessing quality and value. They also research in-depth information and evaluate pricing, competitors, features, and reviews. French people trust the word of mouth and the referral system. Also, according to Salsify Consumer Research , 44% of consumers abandon their shopping cart if they cannot find relevant product information. Italians tend to prefer products and services that are “Made in Italy.” Sustainability and care for the environment influences 4 out of 10 Spanish consumers in at least 60% of their purchasing decisions, according to the Jealsa Consumption and Sustainability Observatory . Japanese people tend to prefer quality over mass consumption and are attracted to products imported from countries perceived as "specialized," such as Swiss watches and French wines. But, why should we be concerned about cultural identities in international SEO? When we go international and want to reach users organically, we must focus on targeting their interests, values, and expectations . If people belonging to a group of any kind are not convinced by what you sell and, most of all, how you sell it, they’re unlikely to click on your content, or if they do so, they may soon bounce. Cultural identities go hand in hand with cultural relevance, and both shape the way international SEO should be done (and, consequently, they influence your results as well). The importance of cultural relevance in international SEO Every online business’s goal should be to reach and engage with people in a way that is consistent with their cultural identities as well as the context and values of their communities. To simplify, this means making them feel at home. It starts with the theory of recall and recognition used in psychology (and widely accepted in UX ). Recognition is our ability to “recognize” a piece of information as familiar, while recall refers to retrieving details about specific events from our memory. For example, when we see someone we know on the street or at an event, we can recognize this person, but if we haven't seen them for a while, we may not recall their name. Image: Web Design Review. Think of your memory as a big container divided into compartments: Each compartment talks to the others to ensure that information is retrievable and accessible. For example, when we recognize a ladder, we are reminded of how to use it. The more we use a compartment, the more specific information surfaces quickly. The more a compartment is associated with a positive or negative feeling, the easier a piece of information will surface by association (have you ever heard of the Madeleine Effect ?). How easily information can be retrieved from our memory depends on how often we’ve interacted with that information, how recently we’ve used it, and how relevant it is to what we’re experiencing in real-time. This is as simple as it sounds: the more you listen to a song, the more you get used to it. The same is true for every experience, both in real life and online. The more you see a brand popping up everywhere, the more acquainted you get and the more prone you become to buying or interacting with the brand. This happens because recognition is more manageable than recall, and it doesn’t require a significant effort to retrieve information essential to complete an action: the more we see a brand, the more we recognize it, and the easier we can process the information we get from the brand if it aligns with our values or needs. Image: Aaker, "Brand Awareness," 63. In International SEO, we can call this principle “cultural relevance.” People want to engage with companies and businesses that feed them with elements they recognize and can easily associate with a feeling, an emotion, a memory, or simply the resolution (or the cause) of a problem. What users can quickly process and understand without too much effort is culturally relevant to them. And, they want to do it from the very first moment they search for something. As an example, try searching for “football” in the UK and “football” in the US and look at the differences : culturally speaking, football for British people is what soccer is for Americans, and on the flip side, football is just American football. Can you imagine how British users might respond if a page title used the term “football” with the American meaning for football in the British sense? Image: Business Insider. The goal of international SEO should be to offer users that speak a different language, adhere to different values, and use the web differently with an easy way to interact with a product or brand, making them feel included and, most of all, “seen.” That involves, for example: Market-based keyword research Correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation References to culturally recognizable elements Sensible use of images Appropriate use of sensitive terms (for example, avoiding terms that are considered discriminatory) Contextual use of slang, idioms, and cultural references Avoiding stereotypes and clichés Taking seasonality, celebrations, and anniversaries (and the customs associated with them) into consideration If you think cultural relevance and sensitivity have no influence over SEO, think twice: The SEO strategy you adopt is strongly connected to the overall business approach to internationalization . If a business wants to go international by simply translating elements into another language—without trying to achieve the so-called product-market fit —your SEO strategy will be affected (and potentially useless). Cultural relevance in SEO: A practical example Let’s say we need to optimize a travel booking search engine. One of the categories of the website is “villas.” The business wants to go international and optimize this category page in Italian, so keyword research and on-page optimization are required. In English, a villa is “a large and luxurious house” or “a country estate.” This is one type of villa: Image: Booking.com. If we opt for a 1:1 translation, we can easily use “villa” (and its plural, “ville”) in Italian since this term has the same meaning as the English one, and search volumes are pretty good. On top of this, some of our competitors are using it, and the market seems aware of this term. Here are the associated search volumes (data from Semrush): As you can see, the term villa has a relatively large search volume, but is it relevant for our audience? Things are never so easy when it comes to language: The first thing that comes to mind to Italians when hearing the word “villa” is probably a property surrounded by well-tended gardens and ample space. Hence, it is perceived as luxurious and culturally linked to an opulent way of living and traveling—at a certain point, that can be much more than a potential user is searching for in a vacation rental and could throw them off. “Villa” is also used to describe big, ancient mansions (like the palaces you can visit in the Veneto region , for example); hence the search intent for the term “villa” may simply be unclear and too broad for a category page. A native knows that “villa” in Italian can be at least four things: Villa (English: villa) Villino (English: cottage) Casa di campagna (English: country house) Casa vacanze (English: holiday home) Now, let’s analyze our fictional example website a bit more in-depth: The properties offered on our website range from luxurious to average to accommodate our audience’s needs. Furthermore, the target audience is far larger than just luxury travelers To perfectly capture this target audience and their needs in Italian, it would be better to target terms with smaller search volumes and higher CTRs (such as “villino” and “casa di campagna,” as shown below). Those are the terms that an Italian looking for a place to stay for a holiday would use during the discovery phase: At first glance, these four keywords (as you can see, plural and singular have different search volumes in Italian) have sensibly lower volumes compared with our initial keyword, “villa.” But, they correspond to higher-intent audiences and capture both the company’s offer and the market’s needs . On top of this, they are appropriate for the market we want to enter. By making this choice, SEO brings real value to the business, allowing it to consciously and effectively break into the market. The key takeaway is that before moving into proper research , we need to study our offerings, the market, and the cultural background of the country we’re looking to compete in if we’re to be successful with international SEO. In this case, any native would agree that the term “villa” only partially captures the spirit of the page, and by implementing adjacent and more relevant keywords, our business will appeal to the right users and their search intents, which should allow for more conversions. Prioritizing relevance over search volume is crucial for businesses seeking to grow internationally, and showing cultural sensitivity makes users feel included. Why cultural relevance is crucial in international SEO Cultural relevance and sensitivity are essential to succeed in the “ glocalization phase ” and beyond. When a website is optimized to include culturally relevant elements from the user’s first interaction to their last, it can help them decide whether to engage with the brand. Here are some of the user benefits of incorporating cultural relevance into your international SEO strategy: Being hyperlocal helps cross-cultural awareness and can improve your understanding of the user’s perspective on information and what’s important to them. This, in turn, improves user satisfaction, brand affinity, loyalty and overall conversions. It’s an opportunity to guide users through their journey. Since how individuals process information can differ according to culture, the more you’re able to meet users’ expectations along their journeys, the easier it will be for you to guide their decision-making process. It helps your business meet local users’ needs and potentially create more demand. Cultural relevance is also beneficial to your business. In fact: It can increase CTR. It can lower bounce rate. It gives you a competitive advantage when it comes to analyzing your users’ behaviors. It allows you to hone in on what users want, potentially opening up more business opportunities. Thanks to hyperlocal and relevant content, the brand can show customers (and prospects) they cater to their specific needs at every point of their journey. Amazon takes this seriously, developing content for specific countries. In Italy, for example, you can browse and buy products from the “Made in Italy” section ; in France, you can browse and buy “ Produits Fabriqués en France ” (Made in France). More interestingly, you can also buy Made in Italy products on Amazon Germany : search volumes, geographical proximity, and cultural relevance made this section the perfect candidate for cross-optimization. International SEO is more than keywords If we move from considering international SEO as a way to simply be visible in a given market and instead think of it as one of the main drivers of awareness and revenue, we can conclude that (when working in an international environment) keywords are just a part of something bigger. Images, buttons, colors, and the position of the elements on a page all play a big part in how a website will rank, how it will be seen by locals, and, of course, how it will convert. Once again, this seems utterly unrelated to SEO, doesn’t it? Well, once again, it is very relevant . Let’s say you brought some to your landing page with a captivating title and exciting topic. As soon as they enter the page, they leave. What benefits did SEO bring to the business? A million site visitors isn’t very valuable if none of them convert due to a lack of proper localization. We are facing a new era in search. Every element on a page is a potential conversion factor because today, more than ever, companies expanding internationally don't just compete against other companies, but also against the best experiences people have had with a similar product or service. Suppose a customer had an excellent experience with a website or a company. In that case, this experience will be stored in their unconscious mind and become the minimum expectation they want everywhere. In other words, companies need to create a long-lasting experience to win consumers over . It's like when we go to a Michelin star restaurant: the food is only a part of the adventure, and if the entire experience is as satisfying as the meal, the place will remain in our minds, and it could become our personal benchmark for all the other starred restaurants we visit. This may not be on your radar if you’re marketing in your home country, but it's strategically essential in international SEO. Users have different expectations across countries, and understanding customer priorities in a given market can help companies identify opportunities for differentiation and growth. How to incorporate cultural relevance in your SEO strategy We always assume that if a formula works for the primary market (or any market), it can (and should) be easily replicated in every other market. In international SEO, this is impossible because of the cultural implications we’ve reviewed so far. Instead, we can and should incorporate cultural relevance in our strategy by following a few rules. Do not translate keywords Translating keywords from source to target language is one of the greatest sins you can commit. This approach rarely works, not even for countries close to each other that potentially share some cultural values. Imagine your Australian website has a page about natural disasters that needs to be optimized for two international markets: the Philippines and Germany. If you decide to replicate the information on the source page for these two markets by translating the keywords from Australian English to Standard German and Tagalog, you will waste resources and an opportunity: natural disasters in the Philippines differ from those in Australia, and both differ from those in Germany. In addition, people have different sensitivity to catastrophes, and what can be seen as an extraordinary event in one country may not be seen as such in another. This means you may need to not only review your content but also its tone of voice. Localize instead of translating content As with keywords, content should never be translated word-for-word. Instead, it should be transcreated and localized to ensure that it fits local audiences’ needs and customs. For example, Austrians do not share Oktoberfest with Germans. They have their own celebration called the Wiener Wiesn. What use would a page about Oktoberfest translated from German be when the audience is likely looking for a specific page about the Wiener Wiesn and its traditions? During the research phase, you will end up with URLs that may not have a local equivalent in all languages, and this is 100% fine: if something doesn't make sense in a particular country, it shouldn't exist on that country’s version of the website. Optimize for conversions We tend to think that conversion rate optimization is something SEOs deal with only sporadically and only when it comes to CTAs . This couldn’t be more wrong in an international environment. The way potential customers interact with a company is shaped from the first interaction (usually via search engines), especially if the company is entering the market and needs to be visible. Hence, it is crucial for everyone engaging in international SEO to optimize their title tags and meta descriptions for optimal conversions. In the example above, the Skyscanner Spain team uses a clearly conversion-oriented key phrase, best offers ( mejores ofertas ), to attract people looking to book a flight. In doing so, they also invite users to do something actively (“encuentra,” Spanish for “find”) rather than serving them with pre-selected choices. Cultural relevance pairs perfectly with conversions: The more local you go, the better it is. If your tone of voice allows it, you can also use slang, conversational words, acronyms, and trendy elements that your target group will easily recognize and potentially identify with. Use data to assess the situation No need to be a data scientist or a Python master to take advantage of the data. Grab some information from Google Analytics and Search Console and start shaping your next move. CTR and bounce rate are two of the most critical indicators for international SEO: if a user lands on a page and immediately leaves, it means something is wrong. If you get traffic but no conversions, it means something is wrong. During your analysis, you may discover that it’s not a problem you can solve from an SEO standpoint, and you will have to pass the ball to other teams. But before doing so, make sure you sit down and consider everything that is within your control. If it’s not a technical SEO issue, it may be happening because of cultural irrelevance: a Finnish user doesn’t need the same information as a Portuguese user, and a Portuguese user doesn’t need the same information as a Spaniard, and so on. If information is irrelevant, the data will reflect that and help you make informed decisions. Optimize per country, not per language When we optimize per language, we start from the assumption that since a language is spoken in multiple places, our content would be digested the same way in all those places. The truth is that not only can the language slightly vary, but users’ needs will also vary from country to country, and content in one language won’t be enough to address all the users you want to reach. This is a common issue when it comes to Spanish-speaking countries . Using one variant of Spanish to address all users in Spain and Latin America is one of the biggest mistakes a company looking to go international can make. Every language reflects a society’s cultural, political, and economic elements ; on top of this, the marketing and users’ needs differ based on their location, even if they all speak Spanish. Imagine feeding Spanish users with content written in Mexican Spanish: they can understand more or less everything, but there will always be a reluctance in moving from stage one (interaction) to the final stage (conversion). And, many of them won’t even start a conversation with your business if your page title shows in Mexican Spanish on Google.es. Avoid publishing irrelevant content and pages You may be tempted to translate everything from source to target to capitalize on the resources spent to create the articles in the first place. If the content you’re about to localize doesn’t resonate with the audience of your local website, you may severely hurt your local website by filling it up with irrelevant and useless content. In this scenario, we’re referring to content that a local user won’t ever see or search for and can be easily considered low-quality content: this type of content will waste crawling time and resources, add noise, and send search engines the wrong signal. You can hide content by unlinking it from the language switcher, like Hubspot . Don’t overlook low-volume keywords In international SEO, keywords with the highest search volumes don’t always work within the context of your content. A targeted, local keyword may have a significantly lower search volume but can perform better, be more appropriate given the context, and work well to attract local, high-intent users. Use a translation management system, not Google Translate Machine translation is not necessarily the culprit when it comes to many international websites’ problems. By leveraging AI, machine translation can actually simplify the job of local translators and writers. Implement a translation management system (TMS) to streamline the SEO localization process and ensure that native speakers revise every piece of content for context. Smartling and Phrase are two popular platforms that can be integrated to manage international content. Create an SEO glossary matching volumes, search intent, and cultural relevancy into your TMS so that every time a specific term comes up, it gets translated in the same way. Key takeaways When a business chooses to go international, the first thing to be mindful of is the market they’re entering, search habits, users’ habits, common perceptions, stereotypes to avoid, standard customs, sensitive events/holidays, and anniversaries. Being culturally relevant and keen to adapt is vital to succeeding in international SEO. In fact: A person’s (or group’s) culture influences online processes and behaviors. Getting hyperlocal is the key to breaking the barriers to enter a new market. Cultural relevance helps a company engage with users, making them feel included and creating a strong foundation for brand loyalty. Users don’t want to spend too much time deciphering information (which is likely to occur on a poorly localized site). When this happens, they just move on. We now know that cultural biases affect people’s expectations when searching for something. That’s why, nowadays, if you want to go international, you need to plan a customized SEO strategy for each market, considering cultural identities, cultural relevance, and cultural sensitivity. By aligning your values to the community you want to serve, you will realize the potential of SEO in generating awareness and revenue for your brand. And most importantly, you will help users find what they are looking for and expect to see. Veruska Anconitano - International & Multilingual SEO Consultant Veruska is an SEO consultant that works at the intersection of SEO and localization to help companies enter non-English-speaking markets. She follows a culturalized approach to SEO and localization, leveraging cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and data. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Anastasia Kotsiubynska So you’ve nailed down the technical aspects of SEO, targeted the appropriate keywords, and optimized the right pages for them—but you’re still not ranking. The problem could be your website authority.  Website authority isn't a concrete metric, but rather a concept that estimates how credible and trustworthy a website is from the perspective of search engines. To increase your website authority, you need to build authoritative links to your site. This process can also improve your E-E-A-T , which contributes to SEO performance. You can find some link building opportunities on your own as you browse the web or build relationships with other website owners. To do it in bulk, analyze the backlink profiles of your successful competitors. This guide will explain what competitor backlink analysis is and share beginner-friendly techniques for executing it. What is a competitor backlink analysis? + why it’s essential Competitor analysis is a necessity in digital marketing  and SEO. In marketing, part of success comes from knowing best practices and part from experimenting. Being a trailblazer can be expensive, as it means spending a portion of your marketing budget on strategies that may not produce results. Analyzing what your competitors do saves resources because you can learn from other people’s mistakes and successes. It also allows you to get a better understanding of smaller details. Articles and webinars can describe the techniques in general terms. Looking at how others successfully implement them in real-world cases provides more information. Backlink competitor analysis lets you see what websites link to your competition, how authoritative those websites are, and the context of the links. This data will help you understand how link building is done in your industry and gather hundreds of sites to reach out to. The most important thing in competitor backlink analysis is not to blindly copy whatever backlink strategy they use. Instead, analyze it and understand what you can borrow. Identify your competitors  Before you examine the competition, find websites you compete with. You’re looking for competitors who: Rank for the keywords you target Target a similar audience Offer similar types of products or services The easiest way to assess your competition is to Google your brand name. If your brand is well-known, your competitors may place ads for branded keywords. Then, Google your main keyword to see who competes for it. In some cases, you may see articles with lists of your competitors in the SERP. Sometimes, especially if you’re doing backlink analysis in the eCommerce niche, you’ll see large marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy in the search results. You can disregard those, as they’re not your direct competitors. Their backlink strategy isn’t going to be useful to you. You might also find a list of competing companies in the knowledge panel. To complement this, search for informational keywords related to your industry. Ranking blog pages may belong to your competitors. You can search for competitors with AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. To simplify your competitive analysis process, consider using a tool like SE Ranking  for Wix, which provides actionable insights directly within your website dashboard. This tool yields a list of competitors based on the keywords your site competes with others. SE Ranking shows organic competitors SE Ranking also has a suite of other instruments, including a backlink checker tool . We’ll use it to showcase research techniques. How to do a competitor backlink analysis Once you have a list of competitors, sift through them one by one. There are five major techniques for backlink competitive analysis. Examine competitor link building strategies Analyze link quality Leverage common and uncommon link sources Conduct a backlink gap analysis Monitor competitor's new and lost backlinks 01. Examine competitor link building strategies The first step is getting a general overview of your competitors’ link building strategies by putting their sites through a competitor backlink analysis tool, like the one mentioned above. It will return a long list of backlinks. Pay close attention to common patterns. Check how many backlinks and referring domains your competitor has. In this case, we’re starting with a major competitor, so it has a lot. Backlink overview via SE Ranking The next step is to view referring domains and analyze how they link to your competitor. You may want to filter domains by domain authority and traffic. You’ll sometimes see spammy links from domains with zero traffic, like this one. A low-quality link Many spammy websites link to reputable ones. Some steal content and forget to delete internal links, while others place these links to pursue a shady SEO goal. These websites are irrelevant to link building efforts. To avoid them cluttering your view, filter the list of domains by setting the minimum website traffic to 3-5K. This is around the median number of sessions  for an average website, and filtering for it will show you websites with an audience. Now, inspect each backlink closely to understand how your competitors received that link. Look at the page that links to them, the page linked, and the anchor text. You can also visit the page that links to your competitor and look at the context the link is placed in. Let’s look at some examples. Backlink from a listicle The above link is from a listicle that describes a collection of tools. This competitor is pretty popular, so it might have received the link naturally. You can reach out to editors or the authors of articles like these and offer to review and add your tool to the list if it fits. Tap into your PR team’s resources if you have one at your company. Backlink to a resource page The above backlink is from a blog post and leads to a resource page on a competitor’s site. The anchor text is not straightforward, so it’s best to look at the page to see the context. Context of a link placement It’s clear that the author is talking about remote work and links to a competitor’s page that lists companies that hire remote workers. This link is likely not due to active outreach efforts but rather a helpful page attracts visitors, and people link to it naturally. You can emulate this by creating resource pages—statistics, research, templates, checklists, or any other helpful material to people in your industry. Promote the page, and you’ll start getting links to it. This resource page has attracted over 200 backlinks. A likely guest post link If a competitor is a well-known brand or has a lot of helpful resource pages, people will naturally link to its site, and you’ll see multiple links from a single domain. When you see a single link from a domain and the anchor text contains a keyword, it’s likely the result of guest posting efforts by a competitor. Save these domains to reach out to them with an article idea. You can find more sites like these by exploring links with the same anchor text. Don’t just explore keyword-rich anchors, as informational ones can also be the result of guest posting efforts. Link from a review website Some links will come from review websites. This website has three articles centered around reviews of a competitor. At times, these sites will pick up your brand on their own. If they don’t have reviews on your brand, you can reach out and suggest your website for consideration. Directory links A portion of backlinks come from directory websites. These sites act as large catalogues of businesses, sometimes constricted to a single industry or location. You can get a profile there and list your site, typically for a small annual fee. Press release link Articles announcing internal news about a competitor are most likely press releases. You can save the sites that post those press releases and publish your own. It typically involves a fee. News website link A rarer type of backlink you’ll see is from news websites, like the above. You can get those by pitching industry news to journalists or by answering journalists’ requests on digital PR platforms. It may take a long time to get one, though. Some good links are irrelevant for your link building efforts. For instance, links from business partners or job websites. If you want to rank a page for a particular keyword, you can quickly view pages in SERP and the number of backlinks they have by running a keyword analysis in SE Ranking and looking at the SERP Overview. SERP Overview shows domain metrics and backlinks As you go through your list, analyze competitors’ backlinks and note patterns in the links. Which types of links do they get? Which type dominates the backlink profile? What pages do these sites link to? What sites link to them? If a website links to your competitor, it might also link to you, so save those websites to reach out to them. You can find similar sites that don’t link to your competitors and build links that they don’t have. Don’t copy their strategy, though. For instance, if your competitors have links from press release websites that cost a lot to post, don’t rush to spend on PR. Instead, try working with news websites to get backlinks or create a resource page that can earn hundreds of links. 02. Analyze link quality Outreach takes time and resources, so you should work with websites that can provide a lot of SEO value. Once you have a list of websites that link to your competitors, analyze their quality, and only reach out to the ones you think are good. Here’s how to do competitor backlink analysis. Pay attention to these areas: Relevance to your business niche High number of backlinks Low number of spammy, low-quality backlinks Decent traffic numbers Good traffic dynamics You can judge relevance by visiting the site and checking what it does and what its blog is about. It doesn’t need to match perfectly; it just needs to make sense. If an automotive blog links to an email marketing tool, it isn’t relevant. If it links to a car insurance website, it is. For simplicity, many SEO tools use these factors to produce a relative website authority metric. In the case of SE Ranking, it’s called Domain Trust (DT). Domain Trust calculates the number and quality of backlinks a site has to estimate how likely it is to rank high in Google. It ranges from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the better a backlink from it would be. The same metric is calculated for each page, called Page Trust (PT). To simplify link quality analysis, filter your list of websites by DT, setting it at a minimum of 30 or 40, depending on your industry. If your industry isn’t invested in SEO, most sites won’t have as many backlinks, so a lower DT rating is normal. Set the traffic volume at a minimum of 3-5K to filter out websites with little to no traffic. If you want to determine whether a site is good for outreach efforts, look at each factor more closely. First, inspect the backlink profile of this site. Preferably, you want to see a lot of backlinks and referring domains. If backlinks outnumber referring domains, this might mean one site links to it hundreds of times, which can mean they were using shady SEO practices. Check the list of sites that link to it and look for reputable domains. If you see high-quality links, it’s a good sign. Now, how do you check competitors’ backlinks for spam? You can run a toxic backlink check to find out how many shady links this site has. A few poor backlinks are normal, but if you see a lot of them, it means this site might be bad for you. Backlink toxicity score You can also perform a search for spammy content on the site. Use the search operator “site:” with this website to only see results from it, and type in a keyword associated with shady industries, like “site:example.com casino.” If you see multiple pages centered around a shady topic, the site is probably selling links, and its link might hurt your SEO. The next big area to check is traffic. You want to see traffic on the site; the more, the better. If traffic is declining like this, it might mean the site was hit with a Google penalty or was using poor SEO practices that stopped working and resulted in a drop in ranking across the site. Especially if it’s a sharp decline. Traffic decline over time One problem isn’t enough to prevent you from getting a link from a site. If you see multiple issues with it, it’s best to avoid it. If you’re still in doubt, run a quality check on the site. Browse it for ten minutes and note whether it has a good UX, covers topics from different angles instead of producing generic content, and publishes content regularly. All of these are signs of a good backlink opportunity. Not in the least because it may grow in popularity in the future since its content quality is high. 03. Leverage common and uncommon link resources When you’re starting with link building, it’s best to go for low-hanging fruit. Building links that are easy to get helps you create a strong foundation so you can start improving your ranking. To do this, concentrate on the sites that link to multiple competitors by running a backlink gap analysis with multiple competitors and selecting ones that link to all. Another method is to search a website you want to build a link from with the “site:” operator and include brand names of your competitors. For instance, “site:example.com Zapier.” Those websites will have a higher probability of linking to your site. Those are directory sites, review sites, or websites that accept guest posts. Check that these websites are authoritative and reach out. The other avenue is pursuing websites that rarely link to your competitors. Those links are harder to get, so it’s best to save your efforts and only reach out to the best. The upside is that few competing websites will have those high-quality links. Most likely, you’ll see news links and links from blogs that don’t accept guest posts. Many SEO specialists will avoid working with a website if it doesn’t have a content submission policy. However, you’ll find that if you find the site’s editor and reach out with a good enough pitch, you may get a backlink. 04. Conduct a backlink gap analysis If you've been doing link building for a while and have created links, run a backlink gap analysis to get competitor backlinks. It will show you a list of sites that link to your competitors but don’t link to you. Backlink gap analysis Some will likely be unattainable. For instance, links from other businesses that your competitor partnered with. Many others present a viable backlink opportunity. Analyze them to ensure they fit your link building goals and reach out to them. Conducting an SEO gap analysis  is a great idea in general, not just for backlink analytics. It can highlight your differences with the competition and help you improve your site’s SEO. 05. Monitor competitor's new and lost backlinks A handy way to keep track of competitor link building efforts is to track their new and lost backlinks. You can view links added to your competitor's site in the last month in SE Ranking. Some are spam links that appear from time to time, but seeing a lot of new links can indicate active, ongoing link building campaign. New and lost backlinks report This competitor consistently adds more links than it loses. Looking at those links closely shows you how your competitor does off-page SEO now and helps you inform your strategy with current practices. New link report in SE Ranking You can either find new techniques and websites to reach out to or conclude that your competitor is engaging in outdated SEO practices and that you can outrank them easily. Plan your outreach After performing competitor backlink analysis, learn the strategies your competition uses, and have a list of websites that might link back to you. Then, it’s time to reach out. You can get directory links by filling out company profiles. To earn links to resource pages or infographics , come up with helpful content ideas. For many other links, like guest posts and listicle placements, you’ll have to reach out to an editor with a relevant idea. That takes a planned approach. First, you’ll want to go through the list and group those sites into similar categories. Separate them by the link building strategy being used, like guest posting or reaching out to get included into listicles. This makes it easier to scale the outreach while keeping it somewhat personalized. You’re sure to find outliers, whether websites with high authority that aren’t likely to link to you easily or that require more effort to reach out to. Put them in a separate category and create a personalized approach to each. Create email templates for each category. The first email in the sequence should include: A brief introduction The reason you’re reaching out The reasoning as to why it’s worth it for them In the introduction, don’t talk about your company and what it does. For an editor, it’s irrelevant. They would prefer to know about who you are as an author and what your expertise is. For listicles, explain why your company is good enough to be included in the list. Provide the number of users you have, or branded keyword search volume—both these factors show that online users would be interested in reading a brief description of your company. For guest post articles, explain how your topic benefits their audience. Don’t stop at just one email. People’s inboxes are full of unread emails, and it might take several follow-ups to have your email read. According to an informal survey, following up can bring in 40% more links . Reaching out to the right person is just as important as following the best practices of email marketing . Here’s how you can find them. Search “site:example.com write for us” or “site:example.com contribute.” This will give you the company’s designated content outreach email if they have one. Search the site’s team page for the editor’s contact information. Search Linkedin for their editor. Use an email finder tool to find their editor’s LinkedIn or email address. If all else fails, contact them via a generic website email address or contact form. In large companies, contact the editor. Smaller ones may not have one, so you’ll be looking for their Head of Content, Head of Marketing, or a person with a similar title. Once you’ve contacted a person responsible for their content and gotten a link, foster a working relationship  with them. You both can help each other out with content if needed and exchange backlink opportunities. If you’re working on acquiring a guest post, publish it under your name as a contributor writer. Having your name mentioned on multiple sites builds up your authority and improves E-E-A-T. This means Google’s algorithms learn you’re an expert in the field, and articles on your site will be more likely to rank well. Anastasia Kotsiubynska , Head of SEO at SE Ranking Anastasia Kotsiubynska is the Head of SEO at SE Ranking. She is passionate about online marketing, analytics, and the technical aspects of SEO. Linkedin

Author: Constance Chen As AI continues to change the way users engage with information, the introduction of Model Context Protocol will further accelerate this evolving relationship. With many AI companies such as OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Cursor already adopting Anthropic's MCP framework, a number of LLMs now have capabilities that go beyond what we’ve seen with generative AI. This new framework not only changes how developers design and build applications; it can also unlock agentic capabilities to power up and transform your marketing workflows. Let’s take a deeper look at MCP servers and how we can harness their power in our marketing stack. What is Model Context Protocol? Model Context Protocol, also known as MCP, is an open protocol framework first developed and introduced by Anthropic in November 2024. This protocol acts like a USB connector, allowing AI systems to standardize how information is shared with an LLM and how an LLM can take actions. By connecting to an MCP server, an LLM is able to leverage external tools and data straight from a source and can use it to perform actions, including triggering automated workflows. For example, if Nike created its own MCP server containing information about its newest running shoe (with specs, pricing, variants, costs, SKUs, and the like), a user who is prompting an LLM like ChatGPT would be able to connect to this MCP server and ask about Nike’s latest shoe.  The user could ask a personalized question, such as “is this new running shoe available in blue and in a woman’s size 8?” and the LLM would be able to provide the information based on real-time product details from the Nike MCP server. The user could then ask the LLM to purchase the shoes for them. And if the MCP server has a “buy shoes” functionality, the LLM could make the purchase directly. The Wix MCP Server How MCP Servers Expand an LLM’s Capabilities By connecting to an MCP server, an LLM can potentially increase its ability to call tools and functions, which opens up new possibilities for automation. Imagine the capabilities you get when you combine ChatGPT with your Google Analytics 4  data. Through an MCP server, LLMs can easily access performance metrics within a platform like Google Analytics 4 and perform actions such as creating new conversion goals. Instead of manually exporting your data from Google Analytics 4 and uploading it to an LLM for analysis, you could “plug in” ChatGPT to your GA4 account through an MCP server, and create a month-over-month performance report with a simple prompt.   One robust example is Zapier’s MCP server, which expands the possibilities of how this connection can go beyond an LLM’s generative text capabilities. Illustration by Constance Chen How to Use an MCP Server for Marketing Zapier has an MCP server that gives a client access to its entire library of app integrations, including Salesforce, Gmail, Google Ads, Slack, Mailchimp, and Wix Studio. (Read more about how to automate your digital marketing funnel with Wix Studio & Zapier .) LLMs are already quite impressive as a standalone tool, but with these added integrations, you can upgrade an LLM’s ability to perform tasks such as managing data, sending emails, adjusting ad campaigns, and updating CRM records. Explore the following use cases for integrating MCP servers into your marketing flows.  01. Get Instant Data and Create Reports with Google Analytics 4  By connecting ChatGPT to Google Analytics 4 through the Zapier MCP, creating performance reports will be much easier as you can use conversational prompts to pull traffic data. You can: Tell ChatGPT to pull last month’s session data and check which pages received the most pageviews Ask ChatGPT to analyze the top performing pages and provide key insights from the data Prompt ChatGPT to provide a few takeaways based on last month’s conversion metrics and engagement rate 02. Automate Your Keyword Rankings Report One of the biggest advantages of using an MCP server is the ability to connect a single LLM to multiple tools simultaneously. This means that you can connect to as many MCP servers as you’d like and have the MCP client decide which tools to use to execute the task at hand. With Zapier’s MCP and numerous app integrations, you can tell an LLM to connect with the SE Ranking, Google Sheets, Gmail, and Asana integrations to create an entire workflow around monitoring SEO keyword performance and automate weekly reporting.    With these added tools, you can then: Tell your LLM to export the week’s keyword performance data from SE Ranking, then organize the rankings data in a new Google Sheets spreadsheet Have the LLM to create a weekly task in Asana to review the Google Sheets tab Each week, prompt the LLM to create a short summary of the keyword ranking performance Then, instruct your chosen MCP client to email the weekly keyword ranking report to your recipients This is just one of many agentic workflows made possible with an MCP server. 03. Improve Your Content with Hubspot’s MCP Server  Hubspot also has its own MCP server where LLMs can interact with marketing data stored in an account. By connecting to the Hubspot server, you can prompt the LLM to: Pull keyword rankings data, and get insights and recommendations to refine your content marketing strategy Import your blog drafts from HubSpot and receive recommendations to further align with Google’s E-E-A-T  and Helpful Content guidelines Review keyword data to optimize on-page content  and generate new title tags and meta descriptions  Apply your brand voice to both new and existing content to maintain brand consistency Repurpose well-performing content into new content across different channels More Ways to Use MCP Servers in Your Marketing Stack Your marketing automations can go beyond the SEO channel! MCP servers can build faster, smarter, and more powerful workflows to make your entire marketing stack more efficient. Here are other ways to apply them in your marketing channels. 04. Update Your Website with Wix’s MCP Server Wix recently announced their own MCP server, which gives users a variety of ways they can update their websites, making website management more efficient and easy. Here are just some of the possibilities with the Wix MCP server : Prompt your LLM to create an entirely new website or a new page for your website Generate copy for a collection page, product detail page , or product descriptions for your eCommerce shop Create buttons for your customers to book or reschedule appointments on your service website Customize and update your menu and its items for your restaurant’s website Set up more ways for customers to process payments on your website The Wix MCP Server 05. Improve Your Google Ads Campaigns through Hubspot Improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns by connecting your LLM to Hubspot’s MCP server. Through Hubspot’s integration with Google Ads, you can:  Build an automated process that helps you create an ad audience whenever you get a new batch of contacts in Hubspot Have the LLM set up a new ad campaign under your Google Ads account Generate new headlines and ad copy in your brand voice Get insights and recommendations to evaluate, refine, and improve your ad campaign over time Use the LLM to evaluate engagement metrics and suggest content variations for different ad audiences  06. Create a Marketing Plan on Notion and Add Tasks to Jira By connecting to MCP servers from Notion and Jira, you can tackle your team’s project management tasks and scale for efficiency. For example, if you need to create a new marketing strategy, you can: Use Notion to draft an initial 3-stage plan for your marketing strategy. Then, prompt your chosen LLM to fill in the gaps with detailed objectives, action steps, and deadlines. Prompt the LLM to map out a timeline on your Notion calendar for each goal in your marketing strategy. Using Jira’s MCP Server, have the LLM review the strategy’s goals and deadlines, then convert each item into tasks with due dates in the designated Jira project board. 07. Add New Leads to Google Ads Audience List Integrate with Salesforce through Zapier’s MCP server, and with the help of an LLM, you can grow and refine your Google Ads audience list. This type of setup will allow the MCP client to access your Salesforce CRM data, segment your contacts, and improve your Google Ads audience list. Start by: Prompting the LLM to automate adding new contacts from Salesforce into your Google Ads audience list Instructing the LLM to refine audience lists by reviewing the engagement metrics to filter out unqualified leads based on activity levels Get the LLM to analyze and review your Salesforce and Google Ads data to further optimize campaign performance to improve conversion rates over time 08. Design Your Email Framework with Figma For eCommerce brands looking to design a spring email campaign, you can now use Figma’s MCP server to design your email template with the help of an LLM. Start by: Prompting the LLM to generate attention-grabbing subject lines, headlines, body copy, and calls-to-action for the email Describe to the LLM the desired visual layout and brand design features to include in the email template Have the LLM collaborate with Figma to design a template that matches your concept Tweak and adjust the look of the template and continue to build on your design 09. Design True-to-Brand Social Posts with Figma  Connect to Figma’s MCP server and design new social media posts from start to finish. From design ideation to execution, the LLM can help you create social posts that are fully aligned with your brand voice and identity:   Use the LLM to generate titles, copy, captions, and content ideas in your brand voice.   Submit examples of designs that represent your brand identity to the LLM, and have it generate a visual layout design through Figma for your social post.  Instruct the LLM to collaborate with Figma to automate creating new designs for your social posts that express your brand identity. Make adjustments to the designs through your prompts. How to Set Up an MCP Server To set up an MCP server, you’ll first need to know what MCP client you want to connect to. Whether you choose Claude, ChatGPT, or another MCP-enabled client, you can connect with as many MCP servers as you’d like. However, note that the process for each MCP client and MCP server may be different, so be sure to review documentation. In the two examples below, learn how to set up Claude with Wix’s MCP server, and ChatGPT with the Zapier MCP server. In this first example, I’ll show you how to set up the Wix MCP server to connect to Claude. Before you set up Wix’s MCP server, you’ll need to install Claude desktop . For the Wix MCP Server, you'll also need to have the latest version of Node.js  installed. How to Set Up Wix’s MCP Server First, copy the code below. (You'll also find it on the website for Wix MCP Server .) { "mcpServers": { "wix-mcp-remote": { "command": "npx", "args": [ "-y", "@wix/mcp-remote", "https://mcp.wix.com/sse" ] } } } Open your Claude Desktop App, and open “Settings.” Click on Developer. Next, click "Edit Config." Open the config file called “claude_desktop_config.json.” Paste the code from the Wix page, and save the file. After saving the file, quit Claude desktop, and restart it. Go back to Claude's settings, and click Developer again. If done correctly, the Wix MCP server should show up in your dashboard. Once the connection is created, you can now prompt Claude and see what it can do! How to Set Up Zapier MCP Server In this second example, I’ll show you how to set up your Zapier MCP Server to connect to OpenAI. First, visit the website for Zapier’s MCP Server . Log into your Zapier account and you should see an empty dashboard. Click “New MCP server” Select your MCP client from the dropdown list. For this example, I chose OpenAI. Name your MCP Server. For this example, I named this one, "OpenAI Server." Copy the MCP Server API Key Once the MCP server is created, go to the top and click “Connect.”  Find the API Key that is generated and copy the API key. Connect to OpenAI MCP Client Visit OpenAI’s Developer Platform  and log in to your account. In the upper right hand corner, click Playground. Then, in Tools, click the dropdown and select “MCP Server.” Then, in the window, select Zapier. Add the API Key copied from your Zapier MCP Server and click “Connect." Configure Your Functions and Tools In the Zapier MCP server dashboard, configure what your server can do by selecting the integrations and tools you'd like to add. Select the tools and functions you'd like to add. Once you’ve selected and added the tools, test the connection by writing a prompt in the Open AI playground. If connected correctly, OpenAI will call your Zapier MCP server, which executes the action and returns a response. In this example, I prompted the LLM to “create a new spreadsheet called “May 2025 data” Check the results, and adjust the prompt if needed. It looks like it was a success! Continue to add more integrations to expand what OpenAI can do through your MCP server. Extend your AI workflows with Wix’s MCP Server Generate code to build and manage Wix-based projects directly from supported LLMs, like Claude AI and Cursor. Learn more about the Wix MCP Server . Constance Chen - Director of Search Marketing at Moving Traffic Media Constance specializes in marketing strategy, building Gen AI-driven marketing systems, technical SEO, and content strategy. She studies and explores AI developments and machine learning, writing about industry advancements and providing insights on emerging innovations.