Search Results

Author: Alan Kent You make a change on your eCommerce site. It’s just a little change—the color of a button, to make it consistent with your site’s corporate colors. Job done and off you go with the rest of your day. A week later, you wonder why your sales feel a bit lower. Oh well, there is always next week. The panic does not set in until the end of the month. What happened? Why has your online business lost its mojo? Where have all the sales gone? How do you track down the problem and fix it? The tale above is based on a true story told to me by a real merchant. Someone changed the color of a key call-to-action button and they saw a 30% drop in click-through rate to their best-selling product. However, the real story deviated in one key point—the merchant had analytics in place so they quickly spotted the impact of the change and reverted it. Why did a seemingly minor site change have such a big impact? The new button color no longer stood out from the rest of the page, so shoppers did not notice it and moved on. The moral of this story? It’s the well known adage “ you can’t improve what you don’t measure ” (often attributed to Peter Drucker). But how do you put this adage into practice on your own website? Table of contents: The importance of measuring your eCommerce website performance Selecting the right eCommerce metrics to track Popular tools for eCommerce measurement Using website data to see the impact of site changes Longitudinal testing A/B testing The importance of measuring your eCommerce website performance The first step to protect you from becoming a cautionary tale like the one above is to measure important shopper actions on your site. Do you know how many people visit different pages on your site? If the traffic changed, would you be aware? For eCommerce websites, there are common page flows that shoppers follow, such as: Homepage > category page > product listing page > conversion (checkout) Do you know how many users (as an absolute number or a percentage) go from your homepage to a category page? Or from a category page to a product page? If you made a change, would you know if that change helped or hindered shoppers? You will lose a percentage of traffic at each transition, but if you can identify a particular step in your customer journey where you are losing an unexpected number of users, then you have a chance of fixing the problem. Otherwise, resolving the issue may feel like a wild goose chase, with you investigating numerous potential causes, such as: Maybe one of your pages is confusing shoppers as to how to proceed Technical problems, like broken links or faulty JavaScript Cross-browser compatibility of new JavaScript you added to your site Many sites and SEO experts focus on driving traffic from search engines to their pages, and there are many great tools to help analyze such traffic (like Google Search Console ). Search engine traffic matters, but on eCommerce sites, what shoppers experience after they arrive matters, too. So, other tools (in addition to some standard SEO tools) may be needed to help you effectively diagnose problems. How do you pick what eCommerce metrics to measure and track? While you could try to track everything, that’s probably not the best method as collecting too many metrics via third-party scripts can negatively impact the speed of your site (more on this later), and slower sites generally don’t convert as well. So think about the right metrics to collect so that you can keep bringing in traffic and converting it without sacrificing user experience. Selecting the right eCommerce metrics to track Like most things in life, deciding what to monitor is about compromise. Collecting metrics can negatively impact the performance of your site. And, this data is only worth the compromise in user experience if you actually put it to use to further your business goals. The user experience impact of collecting analytics can be hard to predict as it is influenced by multiple factors, including: Mobile devices generally have lower performance and network bandwidth capacity than laptops or desktops. You should design for lower-end mobile devices, not the latest high-end device. First-time shoppers on your site may have more JavaScript to download. This JavaScript has to be downloaded (competing with other network requests) and parsed by the web browser (consuming CPU and memory). There is more code monitoring for operations shoppers perform on your site, which can slow down how responsive those operations are. Collected metrics data have to be sent to your analytics collection site. User interactions on a web page need to complete in a tenth of a second to feel instantaneous. At one second, interaction delays start to interrupt a shopper’s thought process. The more metrics that are collected, the more JavaScript code needs to execute, which can negatively impact the responsiveness of the website. (Good implementations try to mitigate the impact of metrics collection by backgrounding as much work as possible, but collecting more metrics will always add more overhead.) But the impact of not collecting data can be worse. If your only insight into site issues is a drop in your sales revenue, that may be too late. If you have made multiple changes, how do you decide which ones to roll back? And how are you even sure that it was something on your site that triggered the revenue drop? To that end, here are some common eCommerce site metrics that, when monitored regularly, can help you troubleshoot conversion issues and improve performance: Bounce rate — Are users leaving your web pages as soon as they arrive from a search engine? That may indicate your page needs to be improved, or it is matching the wrong searches. Impressions — What pages on your site are shoppers visiting the most? Do you know which products are gaining interest over time? Which are losing popularity? What about the overall trends of users going from category pages to product pages? Did a site-wide template change impact site traffic? Click-through rate — Are users clicking on the links you want them to, including for special offers and email signups? Are they moving through your site towards checkout, and if not, where do they stop? Order value — Is the average order value of shoppers going up or down? Do some special offers increase the order size more than others? Abandonment rate — How many users get to checkout but do not proceed? Is there a problem without your payment processor causing friction, or were there unexpected charges that shoppers did not realize earlier? There are many more metrics that may be important for you. Before you finalize your list of metrics, review your business objectives. Do you want to increase your number of sales or the average order value? Do you value new or returning customers more? Do you want to know how effective your marketing campaigns are? Once you know your business goals, make sure you are collecting the right metrics to measure your progress. Popular tools for eCommerce measurement There are multiple free and paid tools available to help you collect and visualize metrics. The tools you should consider will depend on what you need to measure. Changes in web traffic can be measured with multiple tools: Built-in analytics (for example, Wix Analytics ) generally offer a quick and easy overview of your traffic from search engines. Google Search Console (GSC) can help you troubleshoot a multitude of potential issues related to getting traffic from Google. Note : Wix users have access to GSC data within Wix Analytics . Third-party SEO tools like Semrush , which can help you select the best keywords to increase traffic from search engines Your platform’s app marketplace may also have some useful enhanced analytic tools (for example, Visitor Analytics and other similar apps are available in the Wix App Market ). Changes in shopper behavior are commonly measured using Google Analytics , but there are many alternatives available with different strengths and price tags. Examples include: Adobe Analytics — Another platform popular with larger customers Amplitude — An analytics platform with built in support for A/B testing Matomo — A popular set of open-source tools (with commercial offerings), with options for you to keep collected metrics local to your site Hotjar — Another platform with tools such as visualization showing which parts of a page visitors view Changes in web performance , like page speed, can be measured with tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights , which leverages real-world data from Chrome browsers and analyzes site pages (without making changes to your site). Using website data to see the impact of site changes So you are collecting metrics for your site. Congratulations! The next step is to start running experiments based on the collected metrics. Longitudinal testing Longitudinal testing is a simple approach for testing site changes that involves looking at your metrics before and after making SEO updates or other site changes. To use this approach, you need to keep track of what site changes you made and when. Make sure you collect enough data over a long enough period of time to be confident in the results, and remember that staying organized is crucial to ensure the integrity of your test (the ability to view your site history , either as a built-in CMS feature or plugin, can be very useful). A general knowledge of statistics is useful to understand how much data you need to be confident in the impact of a change. If your site does not have much traffic, you will need to collect traffic for a longer period of time to have confidence in the results. If you have access to an analytics tool, see if it includes confidence scores for reported data so you know how long you should run the test in order to trust the results. For all its strengths, longitudinal testing also presents challenges: How can you determine which (of multiple) changes impacted your metrics? Could seasonality impact the test results? The popularity of ski gear fluctuates with the weather, so comparing two weeks of data before and after a site change may be misleading if the weather changed during that time. How can you make sure the metrics you collect capture the impact of your site change and not other influences? This is where A/B testing can be helpful. A/B testing A more advanced testing approach is A/B testing . With A/B testing, you show some of your site visitors a new experience and some the old experience. Because you are measuring both experiences at the same time, you don’t encounter many of the problems of longitudinal testing. So, why doesn’t everyone use A/B testing? One reason is that A/B testing is generally harder to implement (Note: Wix site owners can conduct A/B tests by creating a test site ). And as mentioned earlier, another practical problem is it can slow down your site and slower site speed can negatively impact your conversion metrics . So, you need to be careful that running an A/B test is not hurting your site/business/customers during the test. Getting started with eCommerce metrics collection Are you finding it hard to get started on your data insights journey? Consider starting small and expanding over time. Collect some basic site metrics and try to use the metrics to measure the impact of a site change. Even if you fail, you will start to learn what metrics are useful. Next, make it a habit. Add a regular interval on your calendar (such as monthly) to review your metrics. Or when you make a site change, add a calendar reminder for a few weeks later to check your site metrics. If you want to consistently increase revenue from your eCommerce site over time, you will want to put tools in place to measure the impact of site changes. The impact of seemingly minor changes can be significant. Without collected metrics, rolling out site changes is like playing a game of chance, but one where you don’t know if you won or lost until later. So if you are not collecting metrics, make that first step. Your platform probably has some metrics built in. Why not start now? Alan Kent - Technology Leader and Advisor Alan has been involved in search for over 30 years, and eCommerce for over 10 at eBay and Magento. As part of the Google Search Relations team, Alan focused on educating merchants to get the most out of Google Search with documentation and videos. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Atiba de Souza Video content has been fundamental for engagement strategies for years—but, as we look into the future, they’ve also become a cornerstone of visibility strategies for more and more brands. Combined with strong SEO practices, videos are a powerhouse for businesses that want to build stronger connections with their audiences and get seen across digital platforms.  In this article, discover how my agency, Client Attraction Pros, combines video content and SEO strategy to capture audience engagement. From creating captivating stories to understanding the subtleties of search algorithms, this article is your guide to unlocking the true power of video for search. Table of contents: Before you get started: Steer clients away from vanity metrics SGE & video’s evolving role on the SERP How to craft an effective video SEO strategy Stage 1: Video content research Stage 2: Video production Stage 3: Video editing Stage 4: Strategic positioning Keyword research for video SEO is not the same as for blogs Measure your video SEO’s impact on website growth Before you get started: Steer clients away from vanity metrics Before you start planning, let’s deal with a common ‘issue’: clients often prioritize views and other vanity metrics. You must help them understand which metrics actually put dollars into their pockets by educating them on the long-term benefits of SEO-driven video content (beyond immediate views, likes, and shares).  Emphasize the following as key metrics of success for your client(s):  YouTube click-through rates Average percentage viewed Website traffic from YouTube These metrics help you attribute the success of your efforts and provide the client with tangible results.  Search Generative Experience & video’s evolving role on the SERP In the ever-evolving world of SEO, the introduction of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE)  marks a significant shift as it presents direct answers (via artificial intelligence) at the top of search engine results pages ( SERPs ). These AI overviews fundamentally alter user interaction on Google by providing instant, relevant information without requiring a click-through to a website (not unlike featured snippets, except generated by data from potentially numerous websites). As SEOs, some of us break into sweats and panic attacks because ‘Google is stealing our clicks’. When we measure the world by yesterday’s SEO standards, then YES, Google is stealing clicks from websites! But, when we open our minds to the reality that the world of SEO and user experience is changing, we can identify an even greater opportunity now to help our clients grow their brand. Google increasingly features YouTube videos in SGE. Google’s inclusion of video content in AI overviews not only enriches search results, it also directs users to YouTube videos for detailed explanations.  By pinpointing the exact timestamps within videos where answers are addressed, Google facilitates efficient content consumption directly from its platform. Our role as SEOs is always changing, and now it’s time to recognize that getting content to the top of search does not always mean getting web pages or blogs to rank well—a huge proportion of consumers want to start their purchase journey with a video on YouTube. If so much of your target audience wants to watch videos on YouTube, why are you still measuring SEO results in the old ways? Consumers want to watch and then visit a website. It used to be the other way around. How to craft an effective video SEO strategy Videos play a crucial role in modern SEO strategies, particularly on Google Search. The format offers unique benefits that written content alone cannot match, including increased user engagement and higher click-through rates.  Google has prioritized video content since 2012, often showing video features prominently in SERPs. This trend continues as Google seeks to enhance user experience by integrating diverse content formats. Ultimately, this all spells out more opportunities for businesses that embrace video SEO. Agencies can set their clients up for video SEO success via a meticulously planned approach.  These are the four critical stages that agencies must master to deliver impactful video: Video content research Video production Video editing Strategic positioning Stage 1: Video content research The foundation of any successful video SEO strategy begins with comprehensive research. Unlike traditional keyword research for written content (which is more topic-centric), video SEO research delves deep into understanding the client’s target audience, their pain points, and their customer journey (i.e., more user-centric ).  This initial phase sets the stage for crafting content that resonates deeply with viewers and aligns seamlessly with client objectives—I’ll get into more specific details a little later . Stage 2: Video production Video production has evolved significantly, especially in response to challenges like COVID-19. During the pandemic, my company took ALL of our video production virtual by innovating and figuring out how to direct videos from remote locations.  Today, virtual and hybrid video production environments are the norm, and they all require different skills and present different challenges in planning and client management. Here are a few points to consider if you plan to offer virtual or hybrid production: Assist clients in setting up virtual studios and producing high-quality content remotely. Plan to rely on more B-roll in your editing to make the video more dynamic. Double-check your scripts to ensure that they’re clear and error-free, as it may be harder to troubleshoot or make changes on the fly in remote recording environments. Use virtual recording studios. We have used Riverside for three years and love it! Stage 3: Video editing  Video editing goes beyond mere post-production; it involves creating a distinct visual style that embodies the client’s brand identity. Whether handled internally or outsourced to specialized professionals, editing plays a crucial role in maintaining consistency and enhancing viewer engagement.  Visual branding can be simple and effective (e.g., using your brand colors in the lower-thirds). To that end, create a style guide to ensure that every video reflects the client’s unique brand and resonates with their target audience. This also helps you scale and add more editors later on without sacrificing consistency. You can also include your client's logo and contact details in unobtrusive areas of the video. Stage 4: Strategic positioning You can plan the right ‘keywords’ (more on this in the next section) and master production and editing, but if you fail to position your video content well, it will flop.  Consider the following elements when optimizing your video content. Title : Integrate your target keyword within the first 60 characters (oftentimes, this is simply the question that your video seeks to answer for audiences). Craft titles that naturally include relevant keywords and span 60–70 characters. Avoid clickbait or misleading titles. Descriptions : Write keyword-rich descriptions, starting with the target keyword in the first 200 characters. Include links to resources mentioned in the video for natural promotion (e.g., affiliate links). Tags : The jury is out on the effectiveness of tags in your YouTube description. Many marketers say that tags are ineffective, but you can still search for them. Utilize exact and relevant keywords/tags concisely. Avoid misleading tags. Chapters: This is perhaps the least used and most impactful video optimization for ranking in Google. Chapters allow you to define sections of your video with appropriate keyword phrases. Google uses these chapters to take a viewer from a search result to the exact spot in the video that they need. The 'key moments' are chapters of the video. Transcript : Manually uploading your 100% correct transcript ensures that Google ‘reads’ your entire video and interprets it correctly. This can be especially important if your videos include a lot of niche or industry-specific terminology. Thumbnails : Use high-contrast images with bright colors and incorporate close-ups of faces. Maintain consistency with your brand’s fonts, colors, and iconography. Ensure readability across all devices with a 1280x720 JPEG, GIF, or PNG image. Thumbnails do not directly affect a video’s ranking, but they do affect the click-through rate, which affects the ranking. Traditionally, in SEO, most of the above would have been considered metadata and not true ranking factors. In video SEO, they are the ranking factors.  If you have been in the SEO game for more than 15 years, you remember the days when metadata mattered. Video SEO takes us back to those days. Here’s the caveat, though—if you fail to build congruence between your metadata’ and the actual video content, it will rank initially but then fall out of ranking because viewers won’t watch your video.  Keyword research for video SEO is not the same as for blogs Remember, keyword research for video is not the same as keyword research for text-based content. There are several factors at play: In written content, we consider keyword clusters  and internal linking strategies —these don’t exist for video. Videos are standalone entities that must each carry their load. This creates interesting opportunities where you can create multiple videos that rank for the same keyword. Despite videos being standalone, consumers tend to consume them in batches (that’s why binge-worthy content is a thing). When we think about video content strategy, we must think bigger than just the initial ranking and consider how we can entice the viewer to watch the next video. People don’t use keyword searches to find videos—they ask questions . Understand the types of videos you want to rank For marketing purposes, there are two main types of videos. ‘Why’ videos:  These are videos that aim to establish deeper connections with viewers by articulating a brand’s values and philosophies. These videos resonate on a personal and emotional level, fostering trust and credibility. They’re crucial in the initial stages of the buyer’s journey, where establishing rapport and conveying purpose is important. Here’s an example of a ‘why’ video on hormonal imbalance  by VYVE Wellness. ‘How’ videos:  These are videos that provide practical solutions and actionable insights. They cater to viewers seeking specific information or instructions. This allows you to position your client as a go-to source of knowledge. These videos are effective in the consideration stages of the buyer’s journey, where potential customers are evaluating solutions and looking for detailed guidance. Here’s an example of a ‘how’ video on communicating effectively with patients  by Dr. Ariana DeMers Conduct SERP analyses for superior video SEO Where do you want the video to rank, YouTube or Google Search?  For our clients, that answer should always be Google Search. Google is the #1 intent-based search engine in the world—it’s where consumers generally go first.  To truly understand the opportunity/challenge of ranking for any given keyword, conduct a SERP analysis  with an eye on SERP features—the video pack, in particular, can help you identify the right keywords for your client. SEO tools can help you check for video packs at scale. Keyword volume  is a secondary metric for video SEO (relevance being the primary consideration). However, there are times when very relevant question keywords lack good volume. In such cases, you must make an informed decision regarding the video content your clients should produce. In addition, you could also encounter relevant keywords that do not show a video pack. My company has tracked hundreds of question keywords that initially did not show a video pack and have observed that, over time, Google started ranking videos for these keywords. While there isn’t a definitive science to predicting which question keywords will eventually rank videos, our research has led to some interesting observations. Predicting whether videos make it into future keyword rankings involves making strategic bets on: Placement of tabs in Google Search  — The search for [Is HubSpot worth it] returns no SERP features and low volume (according to Dragon Metrics). However, when we search on Google, we find that the second SERP tab is the video tab. Google reorders these tabs to match the type of content it believes the user wants to consume. I’ve found that the placement of the video tab in the search results is a great indicator of the likelihood of videos getting added to the video pack in the future. Although SEO tools make it easy to check SERP features, they are not always correct. Their data may be days or weeks old and Google may have updated the SERP features. Content in the video tab  — If you know your keyword is 100% relevant and an important question for your client to answer, then investigate the current content in the video tab. In doing this, I have observed two things: If the videos listed in the video tab are NOT on YouTube (but rather links to websites with embedded video), then you have a good chance of creating a YouTube-hosted video that outranks all the websites. A word of caution before you proceed—if the sites with embedded video are all high DA sites, I would not expect your video to rank. If the content on the video page is hosted on YouTube, but the quality is poor, then there’s an opportunity for your client to create more useful content.  Measure your video SEO’s impact on website growth User behavior is changing, so our approach to driving traffic to websites must change as well. For decades, the focus has been on ranking web pages and blogs on page one. However, in this post-COVID era, where users are increasingly consuming video content, the importance of a web page’s ranking has diminished significantly. The landscape has indeed shifted. As you strive to give your clients a competitive edge, it may be time to embrace driving traffic to YouTube, which can subsequently redirect traffic to their websites. This shift also implies a change in what you measure. While measuring success in SEO  tends to be a tricky subject, video actually helps us simplify it. In order to get there, we have to emphasize the importance of aligning video metrics with client objectives and understanding the nuances of viewer engagement. Below are some of my best practices that can help you get started. Distinguish between ‘views’ and ‘ideal customer views’: Delineating between mere views and views from your ideal customers is crucial. Instead of focusing solely on maximizing view counts or channel monetization, your goal should be to drive growth in high-value sales. This mindset shift ensures that every view is aligned with the target audience’s interests and needs. Align metrics with the client’s goals: By aligning video performance metrics with client objectives, such as lead generation  or brand engagement, you can ensure that each video serves a strategic purpose. Set clear expectations and KPIs:  I started this conversation with three key KPIs that we track for our clients. Understanding and analyzing these KPIs are paramount to driving relevant traffic that converts to sales. YouTube click-through rates — YouTube CTR reflects how well your thumbnail and title resonate with viewers. When analyzing this metric, note that YouTube breaks down CTR based on where engagement occurs on the platform (search, suggested, etc). Additionally, there is no way to measure CTR from Google Search. Target a CTR of 6% or higher (may vary based on your industry). Average percentage views (APV) — APV is the most crucial stat that describes whether people want to consume your content. I have seen videos with CTR above 10% but APV below 10%. For my clients, the minimum acceptable APV is 30% (although educational content tends to have a much lower APV). One tactic I like to use is aggressively tracking APV and inserting Call To Action Branded Commercials in the videos before the APV percentage (these are the brand’s own commercials placed within their videos). Website traffic from YouTube — Every link in the description of a YouTube video should use UTM parameters. Building UTM parameters into every link gives your client complete visibility into which videos and links drive the most traffic. In SEO, attribution is generally a dirty word, but links with UTM parameters help us prove attribution. The bottom line is understanding the relationship between these three metrics (and the sub-metrics that affect them) allows you to effectively manage your clients’ video strategy. Video isn’t just about the ‘now’—it’s about future-proofing your brand By aligning video strategies with client objectives and dispelling fears around video adoption, agencies can not only drive growth for their clients, but also differentiate themselves in a competitive market. Embracing video isn’t just about staying relevant—it’s about future-proofing client engagements and paving the way for innovation in digital marketing strategies. Those who fail to embrace these strategies risk becoming obsolete in a landscape where video content increasingly dominates consumer attention and search engine results. Atiba de Souza - CEO at Client Attraction Pros Atiba de Souza is a prominent figure in the digital marketing industry, known for his expertise in video content marketing and search engine optimization. He is the founder and CEO of Client Attraction Pros , a video marketing agency based in Rockville, Maryland. Linkedin

Author: Maeva Cifuentes SEO sales were easier for my agency in 2020, when SaaS companies were lighting money on fire and I only had to speak to a content manager . Today, I sell to the CFO and to a marketer who is terrified that any bad decision will cost their job. I can’t close a deal without showing them what I think the impact of our work together will be. I can’t get an idea across the line without showing how it might tie into results. It’s better that way—I am more accountable. Ultimately, this means creating an SEO forecast for prospective clients. The somewhat tricky part is that there are many ways to do this, and (as with any forecasting) the projections will be an educated estimate. But the more information you have, the more accurately you can forecast, and the safer you can make your client feel.  In this article, I’ll show you how I forecast as an agency for my clients, both for sales conversations  and for getting buy-in for ideas for existing clients. Table of contents: Define unique success metrics for each client Build a data-driven foundation for accurate forecasting Use total addressable market to inform your forecasts Build your forecast in Google Sheets Advanced methods for SEO forecasting Balance quantitative and qualitative insights for greater accuracy Use SEO forecasting to drive sales and retention Define unique success metrics for each client It’s easy to say that every client only has one goal: more revenue. While ultimately, this is true, it’s also reductive.  Your clients’ goals will differ based on their industry, growth stage, target audience, specific market challenges, as well as their leaderships’ visions and pressures. Understanding and addressing these specific factors helps you land (or renew) the potential client . Metrics that are unique to that client will highlight your success towards their goals. To that end: Understand the client’s goals Identify the POC’s goals Address client expectations and data consistency Understand the client business’s goals Broader company goals can serve as starting points for how you want to think about the ‘story’ of forecasting. These include: Growing revenue Improving customer acquisition cost Building an audience Etc. Remember, ROI  models alone don’t make a business case. A business case is a story that connects an executive’s priority to a unique solution you provide. To that end, Nate Nasralla, co-founder of Fluint.io , says that there should be a specific, named initiative that what you’re selling is rolled into—otherwise, it will most likely get deprioritized. For example, Nasralla mentioned that Jim Franklin (former CEO of Sendgrid) shared his phrase: “Make the Mail Move.” It’s a phrase executives repeat over and over. In this case, “whether you were working on user acquisition, deliverability, or a new product feature, it all tied back to email volume. More accounts, successfully sending more emails.” If you can find out things like what the exec team says is an internal priority at the all-hands, what the top-down OKRs are, etc. you’ll better understand how to frame your forecasts with regard to their top concerns. Identify the personal goals of your contact person Your point of contact (on the client side) is bound to have their own personal goals. Most of the time this will align with company goals, but sometimes they differ and it’s your job to find out what they are. They might care deeply about the quality and even the level of humor in the content you’re creating—but, this might not affect the top-level company goals at all.  If this is the case, you can emphasize forecasting metrics tied to organic traffic growth from high-quality content.  This not only reassures them, it also aligns your forecast with what they value most, building trust and increasing buy-in. To satisfy stakeholders at every level, build a forecast and pitch that bridges both the company goals and your contact’s personal goals. Address client expectations and data consistency Clients all want slightly differing things. However, as their SEO agency, you’ll have standard leading and lagging metrics that you need to track for your own understanding of whether the project is moving in the right direction. And you want to set clear expectations with the client. There are a few things I always need to figure out at the start of a new client engagement. You’d be surprised to know that sometimes clients don’t even have the answers to these questions: What are your department and company OKRs this quarter, and how should SEO contribute to that? How accurately is your CRM pulling data from GA4  and vice versa? Will I see the same number of leads if I look in one or the other? What is your current conversion rate from organic search, and what counts as a conversion? Are there internal blockers (e.g., lack of resources, slow approval processes) that might affect how quickly we can execute the SEO strategy ? Most clients would love it if you could forecast demos, revenue, or pipeline. And while I want to say that SEO can contribute to these metrics, you’d be pulling these numbers out of thin air if the client:  a) Doesn’t have an accurate way to measure these metrics internally, and b) Doesn’t have one to two years of historical data on how SEO contributed to the metrics In the following sections, I outline methods to forecast traffic growth. After creating those forecasts, I make assumptions based on the client’s existing conversion rates and customer value to forecast revenue metrics. When it comes to SEO for sales-led orgs, most revenue-related forecasts are informed assumptions—not quite a finger in the air, but it wouldn’t pass a peer review, either. The safest type of SEO forecasting is a traffic forecast supported by a strategy showing how the traffic will be the ‘right’ kind of traffic. You’ll want to agree with the client on whether traffic refers to clicks, users/new users, or sessions, as well as the time frame (e.g., 28 days, 30 days, exactly the days within the month). Build a data-driven foundation for accurate forecasting Most forecasts are built based on benchmarking (both industry-wide as well as historical performance). While clients value that SEO agencies have broad industry data, it's also crucial to analyze trends specific to their website to improve forecast accuracy. For example, I recently made the mistake of forecasting a client’s growth based on where they were starting from (their DR, current traffic, backlinks , and investment) without considering past trends. An example of how overlooking past trends, such as a 2% MoM decline over seven months, can lead to inaccurate forecasting. It's essential to account for patterns before setting expectations for SEO growth. So while I based my forecasts on their resources and my experience from past clients, I did not account for the fact that they were on a downward trend—not an upward one. I’d have to close the leak before we can start growing again, adding several months to my actual forecast. You can see in the graph above there was another month or two of decline before we addressed it and the client started growing again. The most logical and mathematically accurate way to create forecasts is to launch a multivariate regression analysis. However, this requires coding skills and a professional data analyst, which most SEO agencies (including mine) don’t have.  From what I’ve seen, though, more complex and mathematical forecasts aren’t necessarily more accurate than simpler ones (more on that below). Now, that doesn’t mean your forecast should be back-of-napkin math, but I’ve done 100% of my forecasting with Google Search Console  or Ahrefs exports, benchmarking, and Google Sheets formulas.  I’ll get into the specifics of various methods shortly, but first, let’s look at how you should contextualize your potential client’s historical data for more accurate forecasting. Reflect seasonal trends Seasonality  is probably the easiest part of historical forecasting to account for since you don’t need other data, like how much the client was publishing or building backlinks . Identifying seasonal trends is crucial for accurate SEO forecasting. For example, in the above graph, you can see that every July to November there is an average 20% drop in traffic that then slightly recovers (although not fully—there is still a downward trend here that I’ll discuss below). The screenshot above is organic traffic for one of my client’s competitors. As we looked at other competitors, we saw the same trend across all of them: Like the client's data, the competitor's traffic follows a cynical trend of increases in July followed by drops, reinforcing the importance of recognizing these seasonal shifts in SEO forecasting. All of the competitors follow this trend. For everyone in the industry, traffic went up until July and then it dropped until November, where it started the cycle again.  Reflecting cycles like this in your forecasting shows the potential client that you have insight into their industry and can plan around seasonal peaks. Account for historical downward trends A downward trend can often be seasonal (as shown in the section above), but sometimes it’s just a sign that something has been going wrong. It’s especially important to identify this at the sales stage of your client intake process because otherwise, you’ll oversell and underdeliver. I personally try to avoid doing too deep of an unpaid SEO audit , but some agencies do a lot of unpaid work as a part of the sales process. Without making it overly complex, you can use basic Google Sheets skills* to create a growth model  based on estimated impacts: Historical baseline  — Use the last six months of declining traffic to establish the baseline. Initial dip or stagnation  — Assume that traffic may continue to decline for the first few months of your SEO work (since it takes time to reverse trends). Gradual increase  — Project traffic growth based on benchmarks and conservative growth rates (e.g., 5–10% MoM increase after the initial decline). You can also use Ahrefs or similar tools to estimate traffic growth from recovering lost keywords or acquiring backlinks . Adjust for budget  — If the client has a larger budget, you may forecast a more aggressive recovery based on greater resource allocation to content production or link-building campaigns . *I walk through how I use Google Sheets to forecast in a later section. Look at previous clients or public case studies where similar traffic drops were reversed . You can use this data to project: The average timeline for stabilization after a decline The percentage traffic increase that is typical for the client’s level of resource investment Then, in your forecast, you can set different scenarios: Scenario SEO Forecast Worst-case If no corrective actions are taken or if initial SEO efforts don’t immediately make an impact, client traffic could continue to decline or remain stagnant. Consider the possibility that more severe issues (e.g., technical errors , penalties) might be contributing to the performance decline. Moderate With consistent SEO work and investment, traffic stabilizes after six to nine months. Here, you assume that the decline was mostly due to a lack of SEO effort or falling behind competitors. Best-case If the drop in traffic is due to fixable issues, like outdated content  or easy wins with backlink building, SEO efforts could start showing positive signs within three to six months, with gradual improvements afterward. Use total addressable market (TAM) to inform your forecasts TAM is one of my favorite ways to forecast because it provides my agency with what feels like the most data-driven approach to forecasting, especially when I’m data poor (as I often am during a sales conversation). In this approach, I’ll examine the prospective client’s top and closest* competitors. *In some cases, clients will consider a company a competitor even though they are way  out of their league SEO-wise.  Mailchimp generated over 4.9 million in monlthly traffic, nearly 7 times more than Constant Contact and 290 times more than Marketo, skewing the realistic total addressable market (TAM). If I were forecasting TAM for Constant Contact, for example, I’d remove Mailchimp from the equation, since nearly one million of its monthly visitors come from branded searches, and they also rank highly for crazy high-volume and intent-vague keywords like [content marketing] (position 1, 171K search volume ) and [roi] (position one, 64K search volume). Focusing on competitors like ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo provides a more accurate basis for forecasting. After I remove the outliers, then I compare traffic per page: Domain Monthly traffic Pages Visits per page constantcontact.com 681,149 171,965 3.9 activecampaign.com 368,952 9,518 38.7 klaviyo.com 322,208 13,120 24.5 getresponse.com 243,739 8,152 29.8 omnisend.com 134,784 1,894 71 The average visits per page in this industry is 28. You can also see that Constant Contact is highly inefficient per page of content. That brings us to a true traffic per page of 115, which is highly efficient. Let’s say you have a solution to improve content efficiency. Based on the benchmarks above, you can project between 5–71 visits per page. If you add 120 pages in a year (or 10 pages a month), the lower-end assumption for new traffic would be 600 visits  (assuming 5 visits per page) and the higher-end assumption would be 8,520 visits  (assuming 71 visits per page).  If we started from 681,149 (Constant Contact’s current traffic), that’s a year-end forecast of either 681,749 monthly traffic or 689,669 monthly traffic. Or, otherwise said, a 0.08% YoY increase or a 1.2% YoY increase in Constant Contacts total website traffic.  This tells us two things. We can either: Count only traffic growth from the blog as a success metric rather than the website as a whole; or Increase the investment to make a larger impact on growth The higher end assumes you implement a plan to improve content efficiency (e.g., through better content , higher volume keywords, more internal linking  or linkbuilding). Keep in mind that this method makes SEO growth seem linear (and we know that it isn’t), but again, it can give you a ballpark estimate which I have found to be about 85% accurate.  Build your forecast in Google Sheets I like the above method because it gives you an understanding of deliverables in, outcome out. But sometimes, you’re doing a lot more than just publishing new pages. Your client could invest in reoptimizing existing pages, building backlinks, improving technical performance , and  creating new content. So, sometimes a per-page forecast won’t work well for you, but you aren’t quite yet ready to use machine learning or advanced methods for forecasting. There are a few ready-made Sheets templates you can use for this: Search Engine Land’s forecasting worksheet (by Adam Tanguay) Flying Cat SEO ROI calculator Moz’s forecasting template My SEO forecasting template (shown above) is based on benchmark data based on size of investment and current monthly traffic. There aren’t all the multiple variables in it and it doesn’t account for how well you will do the actual work, but we do SEO really well and have found this forecast to be 85% accurate, which is pretty good for an SEO forecast. Advanced methods for SEO forecasting I'm no mathematician and I prefer simpler forecasting models, but there are ways to make your SEO forecasting even more data-driven. (In sales conversations, I don’t know if these complex, time-consuming and expensive models are better, though.) These advanced methods are particularly useful when dealing with large datasets, long-term forecasting needs, or when a high degree of accuracy is critical for decision-making. I'll give a high-level overview of some options, but you’ll probably need a programmer or data analyst to really get going with these techniques. Here are some advanced methods to consider: Time series analysis  for understanding past traffic trends and making predictions based on historical patterns Machine learning regression models  to predict traffic or ranking based on various SEO factors Natural language processing (NLP)  to analyze keyword trends and predict emerging topics Time series analysis Time series analysis tracks historical SEO data like organic traffic, conversions, or keyword rankings  to forecast future performance. This method allows you to identify upward or downward trends over a specific period and forecast whether that pattern will continue. It can also help you predict the impact of specific SEO changes. For example, let’s say you’ve been steadily publishing blog posts over the last year and see a clear pattern that, after each post, there’s a temporary traffic spike followed by a gradual decline. Using time series analysis, you can predict the potential impact of publishing a series of similar blog posts over the next six months. You would analyze the historical data on how past blog posts performed and use it to estimate how much traffic you might gain by maintaining the same publishing frequency. You can learn more about this from SEO analyst Jess Peck  and Patrick Stox on the Ahrefs blog . You’ll need to learn how to use ARIMA and Python for these methods. Machine learning regression models Regression models take forecasting to a deeper level by analyzing the relationship between multiple SEO factors and predicting future outcomes based on historical data.  Specifically, regression models help you understand how changes in one factor (like backlinks or keyword ranking) impact another (like traffic or conversions). Here’s how it works: you input data like keyword rankings, domain authority, content length, and backlink profiles into a model. The model then analyzes how each of these factors contributed to past traffic growth.  Based on that analysis, it predicts how changes in those factors will impact traffic going forward.  For example, if you plan to acquire 100 new backlinks, the model can forecast how much traffic increase you might expect, based on the impact backlinks had on traffic in the past. This method is very useful when planning SEO strategies  or setting expectations for client results. While you’ll need to study machine learning to really learn how to do this, you can learn more about using linear regression for SEO from this Thatware article  and a tutorial on simple linear regressions on this Github .  Natural language processing for keyword forecasting NLP can analyze large datasets of search queries to predict which keywords or topics will become more popular in the future. By understanding trends in search behavior, NLP can help you forecast future keyword opportunities that may not even be on your radar yet. For instance, NLP tools like Google’s Natural Language API can comb through massive amounts of search data, looking for emerging topics that are gaining traction. Imagine identifying a new trend in your industry six months before it goes mainstream—NLP can help you get ahead of the curve. You can learn more about this in Ida Silfverskiöld’s insightful article about predicting trends with NLP . Balance quantitative and qualitative insights for greater accuracy Now once you have your forecasting graphs, whether fancy or simple, you need to put a story together for it to land with your potential clients. I like to engage with clients and try to understand what factors might affect the pace of implementation. For example, do they have the time and resources to dedicate to this? I’ve set up a forecast before where the point of contact was actually not responsible for SEO and had no time to dedicate to the project.  I wasn’t able to publish on time, the project failed and obviously did not align with the forecast. There are also other factors. If the client does other work that supports SEO, those efforts may drive branded traffic and ultimately influence your projections. These activities include: Social media campaigns PR campaigns Marketing collaborations with other brands SDR outreach Any other brand awareness motions In parallel, if the client plans to do nothing and rely only on SEO, that will make the forecast more challenging as well. Use SEO forecasting to drive sales and retention Most SEO sales conversations today require some kind of answer to the question, “What am I going to get out of this investment, and how long is it going to take?” And while many SEO agencies refuse to commit to some kind of number or forecast, it’s one of the few things that can give you a leading edge against competitor agencies.  Our clients—marketing leaders—know better than anyone that they’re constantly on the chopping block at work in today’s economy. They are more afraid to mess up than to miss out. When working with professionals who are excited about doing the right thing but terrified of doing the wrong thing, providing a forecast (even if you’re clear it’s just an estimate) is a big step in helping them feel they’re making the right decision. This also goes beyond the sales conversation. Most clients that switched to my agency from another agency tell me that it’s because they didn’t know the ‘why’ behind what their previous agencies were doing. They say it feels opportunistic, like the agency is plucking keywords out of air. When you explain what you’re trying to build and back it with what you think it’s going to bring them, the decisions feel clearer and you’re less likely to get client pushback. Plus, it makes them look good in front of their bosses—like they are also making data-driven decisions because you’ve shown them that you are. SEO forecasting is a cornerstone of long-term organic success SEO forecasting is not just about making educated guesses or providing your clients with the numbers they want to hear. It’s about building trust, ensuring accountability, and setting realistic expectations based on solid data and trends. By incorporating historical performance, understanding seasonal fluctuations, and using tools like regression models or NLP for keyword forecasting, you can provide clients with a roadmap that gives them confidence in their decision to work with your agency. Remember, SEO is a long-term game, and while forecasts might not always be precise, they help guide the strategy, allowing for adjustments along the way.  The key is to balance transparency with expertise, ensuring that your clients understand both the potential and the challenges.  In the end, a well-communicated forecast strengthens your client relationships and sets the stage for sustainable SEO growth. Maeva Cifuentes - CEO & Founder, Flying Cat Maeva is the founder and CEO of Flying Cat Marketing , an SEO and content agency driving growth with a holistic, revenue-based SEO approach for B2B SaaS companies in HR tech, martech, and salestech. Maeva is also a fractional CMO, marketing advisor, and certified confidence coach. Linkedin

Author: Manick Bhan It can be challenging to prioritize SEO, especially if you’re a small business owner (or just working on limited marketing resources). Fortunately, many common marketing tasks are becoming less time- and resource-intensive because there are now tools that can help you automate them. While SEO automation hasn’t developed to the point where it’s completely automatic (and it likely never will), you can still automate specific duties, allowing you to also focus on other aspects of your business while still giving your search visibility the attention it deserves. In this article, I’ll show you how SEO automation can save you time and money. But, keep in mind that these automations don’t do the job for you—they simply augment your capabilities. You’ll still need to apply your own business acumen and critical thinking to ensure that the automations you adopt actually increase your website traffic. With that said, let’s dive into how automation can help you streamline your SEO workflow. Table of contents: What is SEO automation? Why you should automate SEO What tools do I need to automate SEO? 5 SEO tasks you can automate right now 01. Keyword research and clustering 02. SEO prioritization 03. Topic generation and content briefs 04. Site auditing and issue tracking 05. Content optimization and updates What is SEO automation? SEO automation is the process of using software tools to increase the speed, efficiency, and impact of everyday SEO tasks. In today’s digital landscape, leveraging SEO software and automating the more time-intensive aspects of the work is increasingly important in order to keep up with competitors—especially when you’re working with fewer resources. It is likely that your top competitors in the search results are already leveraging these tools to increase their organic visibility and website traffic. If you want your small business to keep pace, getting to know these tools (and how to use them effectively) is an essential step for your marketing team. Why you should automate SEO Many SEO tasks, like content creation and link building , can be time-consuming and require the attention of multiple marketing team members. This presents a big problem for small businesses that have fewer hands-on-deck or smaller marketing budgets. And although many marketers have a general understanding of SEO, it is one of the more technical digital marketing strategies. Less familiarity with search algorithms, web development, or ranking factors can easily cause small business owners to put SEO on the backburner. But by automating their most important SEO tasks, small businesses can get around these common challenges. SEO automation can help you: Save your business money , as enterprise SEO software can alleviate the need to hire more employees or outsource time-consuming tasks to marketing agencies Save your business time and energy that would otherwise be devoted to manually optimizing each page and post on your website Keep your website up-to-date with the latest SEO trends and strategies Help your team set up the necessary workflows and processes to execute successful SEO strategies on a consistent basis Altogether, these benefits of automation free up small business owners to focus on other aspects of their business—with the confidence that they will still see the benefits of SEO, like increased keyword rankings and organic traffic. What tools do I need to automate SEO? There are many SEO tools available to help you automate your SEO workflow. Ideally, you will want to find a software platform that can help you automate most of your SEO tasks. Enterprise SEO software suites like Semrush , Conductor , or the one I created, SearchAtlas , combine multiple tools into a single platform so you can easily access and manage projects from the same dashboard. But if you don’t need to automate all of the tasks listed below, there are tools available that are tailored specifically for each task. Taking tools for a test drive is usually the best way to discover which is the right choice for your business. 5 SEO tasks you can automate right now Here are some common SEO tasks that you automate right now with the help of software tools: 01. Keyword research and clustering Keyword research helps you understand the type of search terms that your target audience actively uses in search engines. Every landing page on your website should target a different cluster of keywords. That means you should perform keyword research every time you publish a new piece of content. Traditionally, keyword research has been something of a manual process, involving compiling keywords into spreadsheets in order to cluster together relevant terms. An example of manual keyword research and clustering in spreadsheets. Keyword research also involves strategically pairing keywords together that have the most advantageous combination of metrics (e.g., search volume , cost-per-click, keyword difficulty). Choosing the right keywords to target is the foundation of successful SEO, but finding relevant keywords with search volume and realistic keyword difficulty for your content (i.e., not so competitive that only major brands rank for that term) can be a very resource-intensive task! How to automate keyword research You can speed up your keyword research with the help of software. Generally speaking, most keyword research tools work in a similar fashion: Start by entering a keyword that is related to your products/services and you’ll get a list of relevant keywords that users are typing into search engines (along with the aforementioned search volume and keyword difficulty data). For example, when I search the keyword coffee shops in denver using Ubersuggest , the tool provided me with a list of relevant keywords along with their key metrics. Keyword metrics for “coffee shops in denver” as seen in keyword tool Ubersuggest. Using software, I can easily create keyword lists for each piece of content I create. And if you need to share your keyword data or analyze it further, most keyword research tools have the option to export your lists as spreadsheets. From here, you can simply filter by the appropriate keyword difficulty, search volume, etc. to narrow down your options. How to automate keyword clustering Some SEO software platforms can automatically create keyword clusters for you. The way this works is that software algorithms will make recommendations based on your website, which could even enable you to maintain a strong presence in search engines without having to outsource this task to an agency or freelancer. For example, let’s say that your small business sells golf attire. To automatically cluster your keywords, you could use a tool like: Content Planner in SearchAtlas Keyword Clustering Tool from NeuralText Keyword Grouper by SE Ranking After typing women’s golf clothes into the tool, the software identified hundreds of potential keyword clusters that I can add to my content strategy. An example of suggested keyword clusters from the input “women’s golf clothes” generated in the SearchAtlas content planner. You can filter these clusters by search volume, traffic potential, and more. The above keyword clusters are paired together because they have a “Very Easy” ranking potential, which is important for newer websites that have not yet built up their topical authority . Here’s a closer look at a keyword cluster: The software paired keywords together based on their search volume, competitive landscape, total potential traffic, and relevance. Keyword research tools like the ones mentioned above can eliminate hours of manual work. With more keywords on hand, your team can move on to creating more content faster. 02. SEO prioritization SEO often involves a combination of strategies (like content marketing, web development, public relations, and more). So, one of the biggest challenges that small businesses face when improving their SEO performance is simply a lack of knowledge—after all, if you’re not an experienced SEO practitioner, it can be difficult to understand what you need to prioritize. But with the help of artificial intelligence , there are now software tools that can make SEO recommendations tailored to your website and create an easy-to-follow roadmap of which tasks to complete first. If you take advantage of these tools properly (factoring in your own business and its goals), that ultimately means less second-guessing and better search visibility. How to automate your SEO prioritization Tools like OTTO (by SearchAtlas) and Grow Flow (by Surfer) leverage artificial intelligence to make tailored SEO recommendations for your website. Simply provide your domain and your Google Search Console account, and these tools will provide a list of tasks for your marketing team to complete. Recommended SEO tasks from OTTO. Within these tools, you can track and manage your tasks or assign them out to team members. With new tasks generated every two to three weeks, you’ll always have a roadmap to follow to keep your SEO strategy moving forward. An example of the SEO Tasks list from Grow Flow by Surfer. Keep in mind that with automation tools, you don’t want to put all of your strategic work on autopilot. A human touch is still critical to ensure that your SEO implementation aligns with your business goals. Although the above tools are generally very accurate and great for recommending SEO tasks, there may occasionally be moments when recommendations—such as keyword suggestions or content ideas—are not a perfect fit for your business’s niche. Simply dismiss that particular task and focus on those that are in your topic areas and clearly relevant to your products or services! 03. Topic generation and content briefs Once you identify the keywords your target audience is using, you have to create high-quality content that matches the search intent of that keyword and has strong ranking potential. Creating high-quality, helpful content that provides a satisfying experience for users is arguably the most time-intensive part of SEO. And if you want that content to rank towards the top of results, it will need to meet Google’s search rater quality standards , including: People-first content (as opposed to spammy content meant to manipulate search engines) Displaying first-hand expertise or depth of knowledge Providing answers to users’ common questions Covering a topic (and relevant subtopics) in-depth Providing the user with a “satisfying” experience Creating rank-worthy content also requires you to optimize page titles , meta descriptions , and headings of landing pages, as well as ensuring page experience and load times perform well for users. When you do content creation right, you can also find ways to showcase your small business’s products, services, brand voice, and areas of expertise while providing a positive experience for your potential customer/site visitor. How to automate content ideation Automating content ideation can be incredibly time-saving for your marketing team. You can also use software to help you generate article or blog post ideas that have the potential to rank for your target keywords. The wide use of generative AI (like ChatGPT , for example) in marketing applications now means that almost any content marketing platform has some version of a blog topics generator . Simply enter one of the keywords from your cluster and these tools will generate multiple titles or topic ideas for your content. An example from Copy.ai’s Blog Ideas Generator for the keyword “womens golf clothes.” Although you should never use auto-generated content word-for-word, tools like Copy.ai can really help you avoid writer’s block. They help you keep the flow of new content ideas going so your SEO editorial calendar is always populated. Since tools like these are also available to your competitors, you’ll need to add your own unique spin and brand voice to the topic for the content to work for your business. Remember, if you’re creating content about the same topics as others (which is almost inevitable), you need to find a way to make your content superior if you want potential customers to choose you in the search results. How to automate content briefs Instead of manually putting together a content brief, you can utilize software to help you generate them faster. Content briefs include all of the information that freelance content writers or in-house writers need to create search engine-optimized content (e.g., target keywords, optimized metadata, headers/content structure, target word count, readability level, etc). For example, tools like Dashword can help you generate briefs based on an article title and a short description. Other tools allow you to easily export your content briefs to Google Docs and hand them off to content writers. A content brief from SearchAtlas exported to Google Docs. Creating content and publishing new blog posts will help your SEO by increasing the total number of keywords that your website can rank for. You’ll also be signaling to potential visitors (and search engines) that your site is “alive” by publishing new content regularly. That means more real eyes on your products/services. 04. Site auditing and issue tracking Site auditing is the process of reviewing the technical elements of your website to identify any issues that may prevent higher rankings. With regular site audits, you can ensure that Google has no problems finding and indexing your new pages, understands the hierarchy of your website, and knows how your web pages interrelate. As you add new content, pages may be moved, links can break, and so on (this is especially true if multiple people work on your website). Note: Wix automatically creates 301 redirects when you change the URL of a published page. Some technical SEO issues that websites commonly face include: Broken external links Slow page speed and load times Orphan pages Improper use of meta robots Duplicate content All of these issues can have detrimental effects on SEO, which is why regular site audits are a must. However, some marketing agencies charge a very high price for audits, which might be tougher on small business budgets. Outsourcing the auditing process to software instead can be a major money saver for your business. How to automate site auditing Using site auditing software is as simple as inputting your domain and allowing the tool to get to work. Site auditing tools like ContentKing , Screaming Frog , and SearchAtlas will crawl your website in search of SEO errors. Then, these tools will automatically notify you of the issues it discovered and on which pages those issues are occurring. The SEO Issues Report in site auditing tool ContentKing. With detailed resources and guides , you can resolve the issues yourself. But in most situations, you will hand off your site audit report to a web developer so that they can address the more technical issues. An example of the SearchAtlas site auditor explaining to the user how to fix a broken external link. Most tools can send you automated email alerts to let you know any time an issue is detected on your website. This can help you resolve technical SEO problems quickly before they have a negative impact on your SEO performance. Note: Wix site owners can use the Wix Site Inspection tool to audit their site’s technical health, mobile usability, rich result eligibility, and more, without having to pull data manually or leave the Wix dashboard. 05. Content optimization and updates Over time, your target keywords may grow more competitive. Or, new research or information on your topic may come to light. Although creating “evergreen” content is essential to increase the longevity of your content, you will inevitably need to update your pages with the most accurate information available. This is particularly true for small eCommerce businesses that may have seasonal products or periods of time when products go out-of-stock. If searchers click through to your website and see the product they’re looking for is unavailable, that doesn’t make for a great user experience (you could update the page by adding relevant links or CTAs that direct visitors to a similar, available product, for example). As a result, the content on our websites often requires updating , adjusting, or rewriting in order to keep providing value for visitors and to keep up with the competition. How to automate content optimization When it comes to keeping your content fresh and up-to-date, content optimization tools make recommendations based on the top-ranking content that is currently ranking for your target keywords. These tools highlight changes that can improve your content and any new subtopics or questions people are asking in relation to the target keyword. Tools like Clearscope , Surfer , and LinkGraph’s SEO Content Assistant show you exactly what needs updating and how to thoroughly optimize your content. Enter your web page URL and a target keyword, and they will highlight what to add to the content to improve its quality and relevance. A screenshot of Clearscope content tool showing a list of recommended terms to include on a page. The more you include the software’s recommended terms and topics in your own content, the higher your content score will be, which theoretically translates to greater ranking potential for your landing pages. SEO automation that works for your business—not the other way around There has never been a better time to start embracing SEO in your digital marketing strategy. Many of the tools and platforms mentioned above offer free trials, allowing you to test out the tools for yourself to see how easy it is to automate your daily SEO tasks. Automating SEO will bring a variety of benefits to your online visibility and growth, so think about where your small business might be able to start leveraging these tools right now. You may not be ready to set up more complex automation like website auditing, but generating keyword clusters and blog ideas is as simple as one click. To get started, all you need is one keyword that is relevant to your products or services. But remember, your competitors are likely leveraging these tools already to automate their workflows and maximize their results. Waiting too long to leverage automation, or to perform more complex, high-impact tasks like resolving technical recommendations from a site auditor, can put you even further behind. It’s easy to get intimidated by software tools that have many features and functionalities and instead stick to basic fixes. You can repair broken links on your website all day, but that won’t have the same impact as consistently publishing high-quality content that targets the keywords your audience is actively using. Many of the tools and platforms listed in this article come with a wealth of resources, tutorials, and content that details how to use these tools effectively. Plus, software engineers like myself have worked very hard to create user-friendly tools that are intuitive to both beginners and experts. You may be surprised at how quickly you become an SEO software super-user. Manick Bhan - Founder/CTO at LinkGraph Manick Bhan is the founder/CTO of LinkGraph , a full-service SEO agency. He is also the creator of the enterprise SEO software platform SearchAtlas. With 10+ years of SEO experience, he has grown LinkGraph into an award-winning agency that works with 200+ brands across sectors. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Chima Mmeje AI is great, but it creates a problem of ‘sameness.’ Anyone can hit a button and publish 100 blog posts daily, adding to the echo chamber of poor-quality content.  To bypass the noise, folks are turning to thought leaders they trust for information, making it essential to have a personal brand as a vehicle for your thought leadership. In this article, I’ll share my quantifiable and reproducible step-by-step process for building a personal brand that positions you as a thought leader and helps you stand out. Table of contents: 8 steps to build your personal brand for thought leadership Step 1: Define your personal branding goals Step 2: Find your unique voice Step 3: Identify your core topics Step 4: Find your target audience Step 5: Choose your content vehicles Step 6: Create content that establishes authority Step 7: Repurpose your content Step 8: Distribute forever My 8-step process to build a personal brand for thought leadership This is the process that worked for me, but I encourage you to make it your own and experiment with new ideas or tweak this list in a way that works for you.  Also, the results are not immediate as it took me a year to get steady traction, so approach personal branding as a long-term effort. Define your personal branding goals Find your unique voice Identify your core topics Find your target audience Choose your content vehicles Create content that establishes authority Repurpose your content Distribute forever Step 1: Define your personal branding goals One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is thinking they can ‘wing it’ with their personal brand. If you go in without a plan, you’re far more likely to quit before reaching your brand’s full potential. At an overarching level, my goals for personal branding include: Being top-of-mind for relevant audiences before they even start their search journey Becoming the authoritative source of truth for ONE thing Monetizing my brand These are lofty goals, so I broke them down into smaller, quantifiable goals to enable me to track progress and stay accountable.  For example, here are some quantifiable goals I started with and how I applied them strategically: Quantifiable goal Execution Grow LinkedIn followers by 32% in 90 days Create a mix of helpful content (that positions me as an authority) and personal content (that shows my humanity and relatability). Do this every day without fail. Generate 10 organic leads within a month Identify a problem many content marketers struggle with and explain my process for solving this problem. Attach screenshots showing results as social proof.  Boost referral traffic by 30% via guest blogging Identify websites getting at least 100K monthly traffic in the SEO/digital marketing niche and pitch a relevant topic they haven’t covered. Step 2: Find your unique voice You’ll get lost in the crowd if you model your personal brand after someone else’s. There is no personal brand without YOU, which requires you to show people your authentic self. For example, I like to think that I am funny, casual, edgy, and entertaining. I swear a lot, I like to educate, and I am not afraid to go against the grain. My content mirrors my unique voice and attracts like-minded folks. Dedicate some time to reflect on your personal traits and tone. Consider asking ChatGPT  to read samples of your work and tell you what tone of voice it’s picked up on. I encourage you to embrace your quirks, whether you use humor to connect with your audience or share bold opinions. Step 3: Identify your core topics I’ve had multiple viral posts on LinkedIn, with one post getting over a thousand engagements.  Guess how many leads these posts generated? Zero, zilch, nada! It’s easy to lose sight of priorities and give into the temptation to create content solely for relevance or engagement. But I’ve learned that, while it may provide some validation and dopamine, engagement without meaningful results doesn’t get you where you want to go and, worse yet, can skew your sense of progress. The best way to stay on track is to identify your core topics and use the 80/20 principle for social content. For example, my core topic is content marketing . Hence, 80% of my social content is about content marketing​​  ​​and 20% features my other interests, such as the FCDC , social justice, and humor. Here’s what I want you to do: Brainstorm a list of topics you want to be known for  — What do you want people to associate you with? For example, when I think of Anu Adegbola , PPC comes to mind, and when I think of Lily Ray , Google algorithms are the first thing that pop up. Break down topics into clusters to create a cohesive brand narrative  — There’s a lot going on under my core topics that make them seem vague and intangible. It becomes easier to see my expertise when I divide my core topics into clusters. For example, under content marketing, I talk about: Topic clusters Content writing Webinar/podcast strategy Content distribution and repurposing Product-led content audits Etc. The most important thing is to drill down to the ONE thing you want people to think about when they hear your name and consistently create content around it to reinforce your authority. Step 4: Find your target audience Content that isn’t seen doesn’t exist. Knowing your audience lets you identify where they spend time and create platform-specific content (which will better help you engage the right folks). For example, my target audience includes: Hiring managers  — Directors of content, heads of content/SEO/marketing, digital marketing agencies Peers  — Content marketing managers , copywriters, email marketers, SEO and conversion specialists Verticals  — Product marketers, web designers/developers, growth marketers, and demand generation managers Founders  — Bootstrapped SaaS founders about to launch a product (or those who run a lean team), founders of digital marketing agencies that work with freelancers to execute large-scale projects If you have trouble identifying your target audience, consider the following people: Folks who would hire you if you were applying for a freelance or in-house role People with a similar job title to yours or those you would work with in the same department but with a different job title Verticals that work closely with your team to execute cross-functional projects Outsourced agencies that work with freelancers in your industry C-suite executives in your industry Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can connect with them on LinkedIn. I’ve noticed that LinkedIn offers a one-month free premium subscription every other year.  You can use a free trial of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator  to filter potential connections by job title, industry, company headcount, and location. I usually aim for folks with at least 1,000 connections who have been active on LinkedIn in the last 30 days, as they’re more likely to see my content. The goal of sending targeted requests is to populate your network with a niche audience rather than connecting with everyone. Do not send a DM or spam your new connections with promotional offers because they don’t want to be sold to. Instead, create helpful content that encourages your connections to engage with your content and spend some time interacting with their content to nurture the relationship. Step 5: Choose your content vehicles The right platforms amplify your message for maximum impact. They also allow you to create channel-specific content that will more effectively engage the right audiences. Here are a few options to explore: LinkedIn Public speaking Webinars Podcasts Website/blog LinkedIn LinkedIn fast-tracks the timeline for building topical authority  and establishing a personal brand. That’s why I started with LinkedIn in 2019, when I first decided to invest in my personal brand.  I advise you to spend a few months observing content creators to understand content that gets high vs. low engagement and how to strike a balance.  If you need more guidance, this article  has tips to help you optimize your LinkedIn profile. Public speaking As you build a presence on LinkedIn, look for digital conferences that accept first-time speakers. It’s a good starting point because online conferences don’t generally have a live audience, and you can use the video as a sample when you apply for in-person conference speaking sessions.  When you’re ready to speak at live conferences, I recommend starting with smaller, local meetups to practice your speaking skills and then pitching to larger conferences when you’re more experienced/confident. Webinars Right now, webinars  are one of the strongest ways to build authority . Pitch a topic to your employer, a relevant agency, or a professional community to attract more advanced professionals, as they will likely include the decision-makers you want to build your brand amongst.  I run the Practical Marketer Webinar series at Moz , and most people attending our monthly webinars are decision-makers looking for practical tips to make their work easier.  The goal here is to make your session practical enough that your expertise comes through, and that the decision-makers watching the webinar will want to hire you to implement the solutions you discussed. Podcasts The SERP’s Up podcast features expert guests regularly. While there are many podcasts out there, it can be very rewarding to join one with a highly engaged audience.  For example, a podcast appearance resulted in a lead with a $20K project spend. The trick is to cover a topic everyone cares about from a unique angle so people have that ‘aha!’ moment of learning something new.  Website/blog In my experience, folks find me through social media, engage with my content, click through to my website, browse a few pages, and convert on my contact form.  If you don’t have a website, you can easily build one with Wix Studio . I also encourage you to publish thought leadership content (typically via your professional blog) to reinforce trust with your audience. Step 6: Create content that establishes authority If you’ve made it this far, congrats. You’ve laid the groundwork and it’s time for the fun part.  Content is the lifeblood of your personal brand. It’s how you get in front of your audience, build connections with the people who matter, and create ‘stickiness’ that ensures they remember your name when looking for a solution. However, understanding storytelling is key to writing engaging social content.  Here’s a clear structure that might help you: Grab attention with a hook — People read the first two lines, and you want them to stop mindless scrolling and read the rest of your content. Follow up with a strong statement explaining why the problem is important. Show value with the solution — This is where you showcase your expertise and how you solved the problem. It should be practical enough for anyone to implement. End with a call to action  — Tell the reader what you want them to do next (e.g., follow you for more tips, get in touch if they need a specialist). Types of content to prioritize include: Advanced how-to guides with practical tips to solve a relevant problem Case studies showcasing real results and detailing the path from conflict to resolution Opinion pieces on trending topics backed by data and logical argument Original frameworks you created for solving a problem Research reports based on topics with sustained interest Step 7: Repurpose your content It is exhausting to create fresh content every time. Repurposing  helps you squeeze the most juice from your content without being repetitive; it also reinforces your brand and authority. For example, here’s how I repurposed a presentation on personal branding: Created a quick-fire version for Search London Expanded on it for BrightonSEO Made it super detailed and practical for MozCon with a fresh angle Shared different variations at six more conferences Presented parts of it as a podcast and webinar Turned it into a blog post (that you’re now reading on Wix) Another example is the webinars I host at Moz. I turned the episode with Mike King into four unique blog posts targeting different keywords.  I also created bite-sized videos to promote the content on social media. The webinar recording and accompanying blog were some of our most viewed content in 2024. People engage with your content in different ways. Whether they prefer social content, blog posts, short clips, or longer videos, repurposing content ensures you meet a variety of preferences. It’s also a great way to create stickiness and reinforce your messaging until you rank in the user’s mind for that topic. Step 8: Distribute forever Content distribution  ensures maximum reach and longevity for your personal brand. An excellent distribution strategy ensures that you show up with relevant content at the right place and time. I’ve explored some options, and here’s what works for me: Emails convert at the highest rate Feature other experts to get more shares and views Use social to stay top-of-mind Emails convert at the highest rate While building a targeted email list takes time, the ROI can be massive and worth the effort. The trick is personalizing your emails so they feel like you’re speaking to one person. If you’re using email for thought leadership, focus on providing value—not selling. The best newsletters I follow have a few things in common: Strong opinions on divisive issues Vulnerability when sharing about professional or personal experiences Excellent storytelling Promotional content designed to be helpful and solve a problem I’m currently facing Feature other experts to get more shares and views If you’re writing blog posts, consider featuring subject matter experts . This is great for E-E-A-T  and encourages your collaborators to amplify your content to their audiences.  To incentivize them, create a graphic for each contributor (as shown in the example above). I noticed that our content got more shares when I sent personalized graphics to each contributor, so this is definitely something to test out for yourself. Use social to stay top-of-mind When used correctly, social media is a great channel for content distribution . Sadly, many folks make the mistake of writing one or two lines of text and assuming it’s enough to drive engagement. Instead, try this: Think of the biggest problem your content addresses and identify the pain behind the problem. Use this as your opening sentence. Highlight a statistic or quote an SME who has talked about this problem as a way to reinforce why it’s important and get people to care. Break down the impact of not addressing this problem and tap into the emotions people have when this problem arises. Introduce your content and how it solves the pain point. End with an open-ended question that encourages discussion in the comments section. Include a screenshot or graphic to help people visualize the problem and stop them from mindlessly scrolling past your content. Plug the link in the comment section (for LinkedIn and Facebook). Here’s example of what this looks like: Building your personal brand: Have fun with it— otherwise it feels like work To avoid feeling overwhelmed, start by defining your goals and commit to small, consistent actions. If you struggle with consistency, block one hour in your calendar every day to maintain discipline. Avoid the temptation to copy others, as that leads to sameness and dilutes your brand. Most importantly, have fun. If it stops being fun, you’ll dread content creation and give up before you hit your stride. Chima Mmeje - Senior Content Marketing Manager, Moz Chima Mmeje is a content marketer and strategist at Moz, where she positions the company as the authoritative source of truth in the SEO industry. She's also the founder of The Freelance Coalition for Developing Countries , a UK nonprofit providing free resources and training for marketers of color. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Tomás Nápoles As a local business owner, you’re probably familiar with varying levels of customer demand throughout the year. In the same way your business experiences seasonal changes, your potential customers’ online search habits also shift.  Understanding these seasonal search habits and using them to boost your business’s visibility is known as seasonal SEO, and it can make a significant difference in how your business cashes in on seasonal demand.  In this guide, I’ll share my favorite methods for identifying seasonal trends and keywords for your local business, optimizing your website for seasonal SEO, and measuring the success of your efforts.  Table of contents: What is seasonal SEO? How seasonality should influence your SEO strategy 4 ways to identify seasonal keywords Check Google Trends Monitor weather predictions Analyze seasonal search volume Research season-specific keywords How to optimize for seasonal SEO: Best practices Create a seasonal content calendar Match your content to user search intent Build seasonal landing pages Optimize your seasonal content Add seasonal visuals Plan to publish in advance Use evergreen URLs Update old content Measure and analyze seasonal SEO campaigns for iterative gains year after year Organic website traffic Conversion rates Year-over-year comparisons Google Business Profile visibility Business revenue What is seasonal SEO? Many industries experience seasonal demand surges. Landscaping services, shown above, generally peaks in Google search interest during April or May. Seasonal SEO is a strategic approach that focuses on adapting your online content and tactics to take advantage of changes in customer search behavior throughout the year. These changes often occur around holidays, events, changes in season, school schedules, or industry-specific cycles. For local businesses, seasonal SEO allows you to align your digital marketing campaigns with the times when potential customers are most likely to search for your products or services—be it Black Friday, school graduation, Pride Month, or any other occasion. This leads to potentially greater visibility in search results, increased website traffic and, most importantly, more customers. How seasonality should influence your SEO strategy Seasonal SEO is about putting your budget where it’s most likely to have an impact. For local businesses (which typically have smaller digital marketing budgets), this can make a huge difference in their return on investment . Imagine you run a pumpkin patch in Illinois. During fall, people in the area will start searching for things like [pumpkin picking near me] or [kids Halloween activities], and you want to make sure your business is front and center for these searches—how do you do that? Seasonal SEO. Ranking at the top of search results for [pumpkin picking near me] or [kids halloween activities] during October likely means that many more customers will see your brand than at any other time of the year. Even if your business isn’t obviously seasonal, seasonal keyword trends can significantly improve your local SEO  strategy. For example, a local bakery might notice a spike in searches for [pumpkin pie delivery] in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, highlighting an opportunity for a new seasonal offering they know is in demand. 4 ways to identify seasonal keywords Sold on the idea of seasonal SEO and how it can help your local business? Here are my favorite methods (and tools) to find valuable seasonal keyword trends within your industry: Google Trends Weather forecasts Seasonal search volume analysis Season-specific keyword research Check Google Trends Google Trends  is a free tool for identifying search trends based on how often a search term is entered on Google over a given period of time. This highlights the periods throughout the year when you should see a spike in searches for that topic, enabling you to plan your SEO strategy in advance and gauge customer demand during peak periods. It’s probably no surprise that searches for [pumpkin pie] peak around Thanksgiving in the United States. You can search by category to identify seasonal trends that influence your customers’ purchase decisions, or search for a broad keyword related to your industry and review related topics and queries to discover new terms. Monitor weather predictions Weather can significantly impact search trends as it often influences the products we want to buy and activities we’re looking to do. If you’re a local hardware store, this means you will likely find more demand for items like [gardening tools] in spring, [grills and outdoor furniture] in summer, [leaf blowers] in fall, and [snow shovels] in winter.  With this approach, you should also consider unexpected weather changes. For example, a local HVAC company should expect to see increased searches for [AC repair] during a heatwave, and optimizing their urgent/emergency air conditioning repair landing pages in advance should bring in a lot of new leads until things cool down. Analyze seasonal search volume Keyword research tools provide a huge amount of insight into seasonal search volume for your target search terms. For example, if you search for [AC repair] in Wincher’s Keyword Explorer , you can see that every year the search volume starts to increase as we approach summer, with a peak in June.  Wix website owners can even research keywords (including analyzing search volume, intent, keyword difficulty , and seasonal trends) from within their site dashboard by installing Wincher Keyword Research from the Wix AppMarket . There’s no shortage of keyword research tools available, including Semrush and Ahrefs as well (although their data for seasonal search volume may not be as detailed). Use these tools to identify when searches start to increase and how long the increased interest lasts after the peak. This allows you to plan when you’re going to optimize your content and how long you can expect to see an increase in business from this effort.  Research season-specific keywords If you’re unsure about what seasonal keywords to target, this method might be the best to start with because you’re using your insider knowledge as the business owner, website manager, or as an SEO agency  working closely with the client. List all of the seasons, holidays, and events relevant to your business. The example below is for a local bakery. Seasons Holidays Events Spring Summer Fall Winter Valentine’s Day Easter Thanksgiving Wedding season Local festivals Next, fire up your keyword research tool and search the terms you’ve listed (along with your location and/or your industry, as shown below). In this example, searching for [Thanksgiving in Texas] revealed keywords like [Thanksgiving events in Texas],and [Thanksgiving turkey in Texas]. As you would expect, these terms increase in searches as Thanksgiving approaches, highlighting an opportunity for businesses with relevant offerings to optimize their landing pages and content to capture this interest. This list also includes some searches specific to the city of Fredericksburg. Depending on the level of competition and the area your business covers, niching down your search terms  for neighborhoods or towns allows you to target customers in a very specific area and reduces your competition. How to optimize for seasonal SEO: Best practices Now that you’ve identified your seasonal keywords, you can start planning to integrate them into your website to target these searches. You’ll need to: Create a seasonal content calendar Match your content to user search intent Build seasonal landing pages Add seasonal visuals Plan to publish in advance Use evergreen URLs Update old content Create a seasonal content calendar Rather than reacting to upcoming seasons, events, or industry-specific peaks and rushing to publish or optimize content to target them, create a seasonal content calendar. This works best when combined with your keyword research, so you’re identifying seasonal keywords and trends and then adding them to your content calendar straight away. You can re-use this seasonal content calendar each year if you find the peaks in your business are cyclical, just make sure you take the time to review seasonal keywords each year to identify any emerging trends  and adapt your strategy to suit. Match your content to user search intent Make sure your content matches what people are looking for when they use these search terms. This is known as matching the search intent  behind the keywords, and if you don’t do so, the traffic you gain from seasonal keywords will go to waste (or you won’t even rank in search engines).  For example, if you’re a local HVAC company and you want to attract people searching for [AC repair], optimizing your air conditioning installation page will not convert as many customers as having a dedicated air conditioning repair page.  To properly match intent, you’ll need to conduct a search engine results page (SERP) analysis . In the search example below (for [furnace cleaning]), you can see that there are local service ads, sponsored listings, a Yelp page full of local businesses, informational content, and a local pack. Crucially, what you do not see in this example is local furnace cleaning businesses ranking directly in the top results—the ones that do appear are paid ads. This means that a local furnace cleaning business might get more visibility by optimizing their Google Business Profile (GBP)  and informational content than if they created a landing page for this service. Build seasonal landing pages Unless your business only operates during specific seasons (e.g., ski resorts, water parks, Spirit Halloween stores), you want to ride the waves of seasonal keywords while maintaining a strong presence year-round. One of the best ways to do this is to create landing pages to target seasonal keywords without impacting your year-round landing pages. As an example, a local flower shop might create a [Mother’s Day Bouquets in (Your City)] landing page while maintaining a [Bouquets in (Your City)] landing page for year-round traffic. Optimize your seasonal content As with any SEO effort, you’ll need to optimize your on-page content  to rank for the seasonal keywords you’ve chosen. This should be no problem for experienced digital marketers, but if you’re more of a novice or a business owner who isn’t a full-time marketer, you can leverage on-page optimization tools. Wix website owners can enter their keyword into the Wix SEO Assistant  for guidance on how to optimize their title tag , meta description , headings  and, if required, structured data markup  to target rich results . The Wix SEO Assistant helps you optimize on-page content for your chosen keyword. Add seasonal visuals Update your content or landing pages’ images and videos to reflect the current season. Ideally, this should happen across your main pages, like your homepage, and any seasonal landing pages you create. Going back to the local hardware store example, changing the products featured on landing pages (so they’re seasonally relevant) not only helps boost the visibility of the page, but also helps increase conversions for in-demand products.  Plan to publish in advance Aim to publish your optimized content prior to the peak in interest for your seasonal target keywords.  Search engines typically don’t pick up on your website changes immediately, so you need to allow them time to discover, crawl, and index  new pages. This process can take several weeks or even longer, depending on how many pages you publish and how well your website currently ranks for related terms. Use evergreen URLs Even if your page content changes seasonally or annually, keep your URLs consistent.  Use URLs like yourwebsite.com/holiday-specials  instead of yourwebsite.com/holiday-specials-2024  to maintain the SEO value of that URL year after year, rather than losing all your hard work every time you replace it. This is because your page is already in Google’s index and may have earned valuable backlinks  over the years, which helps to improve rankings. If you need to change existing URLs to evergreen URLs, set up  301 redirects  to pass on authority to your new URLs and retain any existing traffic they might receive.  Update old content Continuing with the logic of evergreen URLs, you should also avoid creating new landing pages each year. Instead, update old content to reflect your offerings for the current year or season.  For example, if you have Black Friday promotions every year, create a Black Friday landing page and update it every year with your current offerings (rather than creating a new page from scratch each year). Best Buy uses the same URL for its annual Black Friday sales. This prevents search engines from incorrectly showing your landing pages from previous years, which will confuse your customers and likely result in lost sales opportunities.  Measure and analyze seasonal SEO campaigns for iterative gains year after year Measuring the success of your seasonal SEO campaigns is one of the most important steps in your strategy, allowing you to refine your approach each year so you’re maximizing its impact on your business.  Depending on your website’s goals (i.e., sales, leads , traffic, etc.), these are the metrics you should review for your campaigns: Organic website traffic Conversion rates YoY comparisons GBP visibility Business revenue Organic website traffic Monitor the organic traffic figures for all your seasonal landing pages leading up to and during peak periods using tools like Google Analytics  and Google Search Console . If you researched the search volume of your seasonal keywords, you should notice your traffic figures increasing at the same rate the search volume increases during peak periods. Conversion rates Measure how many of your seasonal page visitors convert into sales or leads. After all, there’s no point in attracting traffic if it’s not the right kind of traffic (i.e., traffic that converts). Google Analytics is a reliable tool for this, providing you have set up tracking events from your website . Year-over-year comparisons Even if you haven’t implemented seasonal SEO in previous years, year-over-year comparisons allow you to review your website’s performance during seasonal peaks against the same period in previous years.  Wix website owners can use Wix Analytics for YoY comparisons. This gives you a clear picture of your progress and qualifies whether your hard work optimizing for seasonal trends has paid off in increased traffic, conversions, revenue, etc. Google Business Profile visibility For local businesses, your GBP allows you to see how many times you’ve appeared in the local pack in search results (i.e., the map results) during different time periods. You can compare interactions, such as calls made from your GBP, to gauge your seasonal SEO efforts’ impact on business KPIs. Similar to organic website traffic, if you notice an increase in visibility and interactions during peak seasonal periods, this indicates that your SEO strategy is paying off. Business revenue Ultimately, the goal is to increase your bottom line. Regardless of all the other metrics above, the best way to track your seasonal SEO efforts is to correlate them with increases in revenue for seasonal offerings. This metric can be crucial—especially if you don’t own the business you’re optimizing for. Showing revenue increases can justify greater investment in your SEO recommendations , which also means more opportunities and growth if you’re a career digital marketer. There’s always next Black Friday, back-to-school, spring cleaning, etc. As you compose and execute your seasonal strategy, keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process and what works one year might need tweaking the next.  Similarly, if you don’t notice the peaks in revenue you were expecting, this doesn’t mean you should ditch your seasonal SEO approach. Instead, use this as a baseline to improve the next time the season rolls around and don’t be afraid to experiment with new approaches. Tomás Nápoles - SaaS Growth and Digital Marketing Consultant With over eight years of experience, Tomás Nápoles works with different brands to drive their growth by generating inbound leads via strategic content marketing and optimizing sales and partner processes to enhance engagement and revenue. Linkedin

Author: Grace Frohlich Trust paves the way for conversion. One of the best ways to earn your target audience’s trust is to be there for them, answering their questions time and time again. For SEOs and site owners, this means creating content. The most effective way to accomplish this task at scale is to map out the topics and potential questions that are relevant for your audience. User journey mapping is a technique that helps businesses visualize their customers’ journey—from the moment they start searching for a solution to the point of conversion. This technique accounts for relevant topics, questions, and even user search intent to help you create a true full-funnel content marketing campaign. In this article, I’ll cover: What is user journey mapping for search? How to build a user journey map Using your user journey map for better SEO Tracking & reporting using user journey stages What is user journey mapping for search? You may have heard of the “buyer/customer journey”—a user journey map is similar. It is a model or visual representation that illustrates the stages a customer goes through, from the moment they start searching for a solution to when they actually become customers. The main difference with user journey mapping is that the touch points exclusively relate to online search. For example, in the SaaS customer engagement industry, a user journey may look something like this: 01. The user starts their search by typing how to improve customer retention into Google. 02. They may then click on a blog post about customer engagement strategies, leading them to a software company’s website. 03. From there, they may browse the website and eventually convert by signing up for a free trial. User journey mapping is a crucial component of full-funnel content marketing , as it helps align website content with user search intent, which I’ll expand on in the next section. How search intent contributes to user journey mapping Search intent refers to the “why” that drives a user to search a given keyword , and it is not always reflected in what they type into the search bar. For example, let's say you’re a B2B SaaS company that sells CRM (customer relationship management) solutions. Along their journey, a user searching for CRM products could make their way through the following search intents (and corresponding search terms): Informational intent (e.g., CRM management tools ) — The user is researching possible CRM solutions on the market. Comparative intent (e.g., best CRM tools ) — The user is comparing different tools to see which one best suits them. Transactional/navigational intent (e.g., [company name] CRM ) — The user is ready to buy the product from your website. By mapping search intent to each stage of your user journey, you can create a strategy so that your brand appears in the right places at the right time, meeting users where they are with relevant content. This not only benefits potential customers, it also helps search engines find and rank your content more effectively. One of the reasons why search intent plays such an important role in this process is because many keywords can have the same intent . For example, the keywords CRM for small business and customer relationship for small business have the same search intent. In fact, Google has claimed that 15% of search terms have never been searched before. And, Google processes trillions of searches every year , which means hundreds of billions of searches are completely new. For SEOs, this means that it’s much more important and efficient to track search intent rather than chasing keywords. This is why understanding the real intent behind searches is essential if you want to target your audience with the right content at the right time, and ultimately, drive conversions. How to build a user journey map The process of building a user journey map starts similarly to a UX customer journey map, except that you will predominantly use Google data. Here are the steps to build a user journey map for search: Step 1: Define your user persona Your audience and their pain points can serve as a clear roadmap for your user journey map to expand upon. For many brands, this means building out personas (if you haven’t already). When defining your user personas, go beyond the demographic and behavioral characteristics associated with search (i.e., users that tend to search on mobile versus desktop) to also include user goals and motivations as they relate to search and your website or industry. Spend time to identify who your target audience is and what their search habits are. Find out what types of problems they face. User surveys, focus groups, and interviews can provide critical insights into what your potential customers want and what they’re looking to avoid. If you don’t have this type of data (as is the case with many small businesses), I have found that there are AI tools, like ChatGPT , that can help generate user motivations and pain points to build a user persona. For example, if you’re a B2B SaaS company looking to generate user motivations for CRM solutions, you could feed ChatGPT a prompt like “List the most common user motivations for searching CRM solutions.” The tool will generate something like this: You can then dig into each line item to find specific pain points. Let’s look at one of the user motivations ChatGPT gave us as an example—“Improve customer retention and loyalty.” To get more granular and identify specific ways to help your audience, you could type in the prompt: “My company is a SaaS customer relation management company. I’m researching my customers’ problems and pain points about customer retention and loyalty. What are the most common pain points for my customers around improving customer retention?” ChatpGPT will generate a list like this: Get your customer’s perspective by asking ChatGPT about their pain points. Repeat this for each line item until you have a comprehensive list. Then clean your list by combining similar items, removing duplicates, or simplifying some items. You will end up with a full list of all user motivations and pain points. Step 2: Create a user journey Next, you need to use your personas to map out the user journey into “stages” and “milestones”: Stages are top-level steps in the user journey. Milestones refer to more specific steps that fall under a specific stage. I will demonstrate this process using the example for “improving customer retention and loyalty,” using the user motivations output from ChatGPT as our stages. (Note: While I am listing out the user journey in chronological order to help us visualize it, the reality is that user search behavior is non-linear and is more like “ the messy middle. ”) Start by arranging your list of motivations and pain points chronologically. Next, copy and paste the pain points (your own list or the ones ChatGPT provided) into a spreadsheet. Pro tip: It helps to categorize each item with stages in the marketing funnel : awareness, consideration, and conversion. Then split the list into two columns where the colon is. The first column will be your milestones, while the second column is a brief explanation. Tweak the wording for milestones so that they are action phrases. Now, you have specific steps in your user journey. Repeat this process for all of your stages until you have a full user journey. Again, you can assign marketing funnel stages if that helps visually (as shown in the example below). Step 3: Build a keyword list Now that you have your user journey, it’s time to get to the “mapping” part. You’ll need to compile a comprehensive keyword list to feed into the user search journey. Your list should include currently ranking keywords and aspirational keywords (terms that you would like to rank for and that make sense for your product/service). This will help you formulate business goals and uncover gaps in the user journey. To start, export ranking keywords from Google Search Console (GSC) . You can supplement this list with a keyword research tool, like Ahrefs or Semrush. If you don’t have a third-party tool, you can use Google Keyword Planner to find keyword ideas . Next, pull competitor keywords and add them to the list. Again, you can use Ahrefs or other third-party tools to get competitor keywords. Otherwise, it may be a more manual process. You can either use tools that offer free trials (although many have usage limits) or you can even leverage ChatGPT to expand on your keyword list. This article shows you AI prompts for how to do this. Step 4: Assign milestones to keywords Once you have a full keyword list, assign each keyword to a milestone in your user journey. For example, below I have listed keywords to place into each milestone for improving customer retention. improve customer service for retention how to keep customers engaged through communication customer service tips for retention customer retention through personalization tactics increase value for customer retention value-based customer retention tactics customer communication strategies for retention personalize customer experiences for retention improve product quality for customer retention customer retention strategies for better products Categorize each keyword into the most relevant milestone. I’ve formatted as above to show a visual representation, however it’s much more efficient to format your data following the example below. This will help you filter, sort, and organize your data down the line. Pro tip: It also helps to assign milestone code numbers as a quick reference. Step 5: Categorize keywords into search intent and topics The last step is to categorize keywords by search intent and topic groups. This gives you a high-level view of topics per journey stage, and helps you spot content opportunities. This can be a time-consuming process, but using an AI tool like ChatGPT can significantly speed it up. I have detailed one method below: First, enter your list of keywords into ChatGPT’s text input field and specify what type of intent or topic you want to categorize the keywords under. For search intent, you could input the prompt: “Categorize these keywords into one of these search intents: Informational, Transactional, Comparative, Navigational” If you want to categorize keywords by topic cluster , you could enter a prompt such as "Categorize these keywords by topic related to customer retention." ChatGPT will then generate a list of topic clusters and suggested search intents based on the keywords you provided. You must review the suggestions and group the keywords accordingly. Repeat this process until all of the keywords are categorized into their relevant topics and intents. Once this is done, you’ll be able to identify common themes and topics that are important to your audience at different stages of the customer journey. This can help you create highly relevant, valuable content for your target audience, which can ultimately lead to better site performance. How to use your user journey map for better SEO Now that you have your user journey map, I will explain some key insights that you can get from it. You can monitor stages and milestones to pinpoint areas that need improvement. The example below shows average monthly ranking by user journey milestone. This helps you identify specific milestones that consistently underperform and create a plan to further optimize them. Another key benefit is better site content alignment: In the previous section, you mapped your user journey according to journey stages, search intents, and topics. Take it one step further and map specific pages on your site to each keyword and intent. Let’s say you notice certain pages have been underperforming over the past few months. Look at which user journey milestones those pages are mapped to, as well as target keywords. Check if the pages satisfy the search intent. If the intent is informational but it’s mapped to a transactional page, you will have to either map to a different page or create a new page. If your pages rank well for each of the mapped keywords and stages, it means that you’re on the right track. This insight can help you determine if your targeted content resonates with customers at each stage of the journey and help you identify pages that need retargeting or optimizing. What if you don’t have a page that ranks for keywords you want to target? That’s an opportunity to investigate more or even create new content. You can then create targeted content to fill these gaps, ensuring that your brand is relevant and valuable no matter what pain points the user might currently be trying to resolve. User journey mapping also provides an easier way to track content. By mapping specific pages on the website to stages, you can see performance by site sections or groups. In the next section, I’ll explain tracking and reporting in more detail. Tracking and reporting with user journey stages You’ll need to track and report on your website’s performance to evaluate how well your user journey map is working. But, tracking keywords to measure performance is (or will soon be) outdated. Google’s MUM update aims to reduce the number of searches needed to satisfy user intent, which means we need to change the way we track and measure traffic to our websites. Instead of focusing on individual keywords, monitor user journey stages and topic groups to better understand the performance of your content in relation to user intent. Instead of tracking keywords individually, monitor user journey stages and topic groups to better understand the performance of your content in relation to user intent. I highly recommend using a keyword tracking tool for this (I use STAT Search Analytics ). When you upload your keyword list into the platform, you can tag each keyword with the user journey stage, milestone, and code. This way, you can track performance by sections. You can filter your data by user journey stage, milestone, or topic group and drill down on the data. For example, the ranking data in the image below was filtered by one specific milestone. We can then investigate keyword performance within that milestone. If you spot certain keywords that have not been ranking well, reevaluate the search intent for these terms. Check the keywords in the SERP to see if you can switch them out for other terms that better satisfy intent. You can filter data in STAT rankings to show one user journey stage or milestone. The screenshot below is an example of a user journey in STAT. You can see keyword performance by milestone, which makes it easier to make optimizations in batches, which in turn helps you work more efficiently. STAT makes it easy to view data by user journey stage and milestone (i.e., “tag name”). As your content grows, so too will your user journey map User journey mapping is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring and refinement. As you update and add new content to your website, it’s important to regularly review and adjust your user journey map to ensure that it remains aligned with user intent and behavior. I recommend doing this user journey mapping exercise annually to keep your data up-to-date. The initial research and set up will take time, but the reward is an invaluable resource that you will continue to use and adapt. Plus, you will find deeper insights about your current and potential customers. So, start mapping out your user journey today and take your SEO strategy to the next level! Grace Frohlich - SEO Consultant at Brainlabs Grace is a consultant at Brainlabs SEO (formerly Distilled), and has extensive knowledge and experience in SEO fundamentals. She enjoys sharing strategic processes and insights, and has spoken at BrightonSEO and SearchLove. Linkedin

Author: Eyal Aftabi Despite all the changes in digital marketing and organic search over the last few years, how well your business ranks is still the number one factor determining how much organic traffic and, in turn, customers you get—whether that’s from Google Search, Amazon, YouTube, etc. In other words, ranking highly for relevant keywords can allow you to bring in a consistent flow of new customers and revenue for your business. But, how do you know your strategy and actions are taking you towards that goal? This is why SEOs track keyword rankings : to measure performance and adapt accordingly. This philosophy doesn’t just apply to your websites, though. It also goes for your other valuable content, like video assets (on YouTube) or product pages (on Amazon). After all, your business probably operates across multiple platforms, making multi-channel rank tracking crucial for iteration and improvement. In this article, I’ll walk you through multi-channel rank tracking and how to do it on Wix with Rankix. Table of contents: Multi-channel rank tracking: What it is & why it matters 4 ways to get started with multi-channel rank tracking Google & Bing Google Business Profile YouTube Amazon Report on your rankings with Rankix Automated reporting Notifications Multi-channel rank tracking: What it is & why it matters Multi-channel rank tracking refers to monitoring how well your most important online assets rank in various platforms, like Google, Bing, YouTube, and even Amazon. Multi-channel rank tracking is the practice of keeping ALL your ranking data in ONE place. This allows you to get a holistic view of how your business performs across the internet. Over time, this data can show you whether your content, SEO, social, and/or local strategy is working—or, just as crucially, it can indicate that your strategy isn’t working, so that you can pivot and improve instead of staying the course to nowhere.  You can (and should) compare your multi-channel rankings with real business metrics (revenue, form completions, phone calls, etc.) to get an idea of your digital strategy’s return on investment. RankiX  is a rank tracking app made specifically for Wix website owners and managers. When you use RankiX as your multi-channel rank tracker, you’re able to: Track your web pages’, blog posts’, YouTube videos’, and Amazon product listings’ rankings directly from your Wix dashboard. Use your ranking trends data to guide your digital marketing strategy for more business growth. Save money by using a single tool, instead of paying for separate tools for each channel. Multi-channel rank tracking with RankiX: 4 ways to get started So, how do you easily track your rankings from your Wix account? Small businesses struggle enough to square away their SEO (on top of all of their other daily tasks), but that doesn’t have to be the case. RankiX  is a rank tracking app made for Wix users. To get started, you’ll proceed through the same first steps, regardless of the channel you want to track your rankings for. First, add your URLs and keywords. Just input your URL and keywords in the “Add to Track” section (shown above). As a starting point, you can add keywords you’re already ranking for. To see these keywords, check the Search Results report in your Google Search Console . Next, let’s take a deeper look at how you’ll use RankiX to track your visibility on: Google & Bing Google Business Profile YouTube Amazon Rank tracking on Google & Bing RankiX supports rank tracking on Google and Bing—for businesses that want to increase website traffic, these search engines are the most important to track.  After you’ve added your keyword (as discussed above), you’ll need to specify the following tracking settings: Desktop or mobile results (your website ranks differently for different devices) The country of the search engine (e.g., Google.com , Google.co.kr , Bing.com , Bing.cz ) Location Google Business Profile tracking (more on this in the next section) Note: For Bing, only desktop rank tracking is available. By tracking rankings on Google and Bing, you can: Identify the keywords and topic clusters  that earn you the most traffic and optimize your content to improve visibility/rankings further. Identify whether rank changes are Google-specific (i.e., a Google algorithm update ) or whether your content quality is improving/degrading compared to your competitors across both search engines. Compare performance across search engines. Rank tracking for your Google Business Profile Your Google Business Profile (GBP)  is at the heart of attracting customers to your brick-and-mortar location. It’s how local businesses rank in the top-three GBP results on the first page of Google. How your GBP ranks determines whether you’ll appear in the local pack, shown here. RankiX can track where your GBP ranks for high-intent local searches.  You can also use RankiX to see how your GBP rankings change after you perform optimizations. So, if you recently got a new backlink  or more Google reviews , you’ll be able to see how that impacts your GBP rankings. Then, you can invest in whichever tactic is more effective at increasing your rankings and business outcomes. Rank tracking for YouTube RankiX supports rank tracking for YouTube, allowing you to monitor your video rankings in the same way you monitor your Google rankings. This is useful whether you have an active YouTube business channel or are sponsoring another influencer/channel . To track your YouTube video’s rankings, add the video ID (the section of the video’s URL after “v=”) and the relevant keywords. Rank tracking for your Amazon listings Tracking your Amazon product listings’ rankings allows you to: Make changes to your product page  in response to ranking fluctuations. Collect data on which products get the most interest, helping you guide future product development (e.g., a new phone release may cause more interest in cases for that phone). RankiX supports Amazon product rank tracking for eCommerce businesses  that don’t want to pay for multiple tools just to track their performance on Amazon. To get started, select “Amazon” and input your Amazon ASINs and the keywords you’re interested in tracking. Report on your rankings with Rankix Tracking your rankings is only half the job—the other half is keeping up with them and understanding them. This is where reporting comes in . RankiX generates different types of reports and notifications to make managing your visibility easier and faster. The data in your reports will serve as the backbone for future strategic changes. Let’s go through a few types of reports available on RankiX. Automated reporting First, you can generate daily, weekly, or monthly reports that are automatically sent to your email. Go to the “Reports & Notifications” tab and click “Add new.” Select the “Scheduled Report” option, then fill out the details you want included in the report. This is also where you tell RankiX who to send the reports to. Just input the desired email address and your reports will be delivered directly to your inbox (or your client’s inbox). Notifications Notifications are a secondary, but invaluable, type of reporting. Unlike scheduled reports, which automatically send on preset intervals, notifications are triggered by certain predetermined events. For example, you might set up a triggered notification any time one of your rankings drops by more than two spots. This drastically reduces your reaction time, enabling you to implement fixes much faster when things start to go wrong. RankiX also supports live link reports, which are continuously updated web pages that contain all the ranking information you choose to include. Sharing this link with others allows them to check on updated rankings without accessing your Wix or RankiX dashboards. You can also protect this link with a password to help keep your ranking data secure. Monitor multi-channel rankings to show up everywhere your customers look for you Rank tracking is non-negotiable for businesses that rely on their online presence to attract customers. With RankiX, you can perform multi-channel rank tracking to monitor the channels and platforms that matter the most while getting an overview of your overall brand footprint online. The RankiX app  is available now on the Wix App Market, with a free version that lets you check five searches daily. Get started today to start building up your trends data for better search visibility. Eyal Aftabi - Founder and CEO of Pro Rank Tracker Eyal Aftabi is the founder & CEO of Pro Rank Tracker , a specialized rank tracking and reporting solution for SEO agencies and in-house teams that recently launched RankiX for Wix.

Author: Ola King SEO can attract potential customers to your website, but what will get them to buy from you once they’ve arrived? Many brands focus on content, but so do their competitors, and it would be very easy to read an article on one brand’s blog, but buy from another. That’s why user experience (UX) is so crucial, especially in highly competitive industries, where a minor advantage in site speed, mobile usability, or accessibility can make the difference between converting the visitor or forfeiting the sale. In this article, I’ll teach you how to implement on-page optimizations that enhance your content for your potential customers while making forward leaps with your search visibility. Let’s get started. Table of contents: What’s UX in SEO? Do UX designers need to learn SEO? Do SEOs need to learn UX design? How UX and on-page SEO work together UX & SEO in tandem: How to implement site design that also improves visibility Make your content engaging Prioritize responsive design Improve site speed Design intuitive website navigation Use easily understood, user-friendly URLs Improve your information scent with meta tags Ensure accessibility for your audiences Guide users with clear calls-to-action Instill trust with a secure website Analytics and user feedback for continuous improvement Download my UX for SEO checklist to help you throughout the process. What’s UX in SEO? User experience (UX) refers to how seamlessly users interact with and use a product, service, or website. For our purpose, it encompasses elements like site design, navigation, content accessibility, and overall ease of use. A positive UX ensures that visitors find your site intuitive, enjoyable, and valuable. Here’s one of my favorite case studies on the impact UX can have, by a former member of Google’s Maps design team: While website owners often view UX and SEO as separate entities, they are deeply interconnected. A website that provides an excellent user experience is more likely to rank well on search engines, and a site that ranks well is more likely to attract users. So, the best approach is to integrate UX and SEO into a cohesive on-page strategy. Basically, SEO gets potential customers to your website, but good UX keeps them there.  Not only is this crucial from a conversion standpoint, it increases dwell time, which may also help with your search visibility.  Note: In UX, people are referred to as ‘users’, while SEOs say ‘searchers’ and ‘audience’ interchangeably to refer to the same group. So for the rest of this guide, wherever you see any of these words, assume they mean the exact same thing. Do UX designers need to learn SEO? Since one of the main goals of UX is to make your product or service accessible, it’s a good idea to learn the basics of SEO (as SEO helps ensure that when users look for something related to what your business does, your website, blog, or content shows up).  You don’t need to be an expert, but you should learn SEO fundamentals . Do SEOs need to learn UX design? The fact of the matter is that modern, user-centered approaches to SEO involve a combination of UX research and design (in addition to the many existing SEO techniques and activities).  I know, it sounds like a lot of work. The good news is that someone doing SEO doesn’t need to learn every aspect of UX research or design. They just need to be knowledgeable about the methods and best practices useful for creating content. In fact, a lot of the current SEO best practices already overlap with this.  In this guide we’ll primarily focus on the activities related to improving on-page SEO  (although I will also discuss technical essentials like HTTPS and responsive site design). How UX and on-page SEO work together Content quality and relevance are the most important factors in SEO, and they’re at the heart of UX as well. Visitors come to your site for information, and search engines rank your pages based on content relevance and quality. So, creating content that satisfies your users and optimizing it for search engines is essential. Just like Airbnb is happy to promote hosts with beautiful homes and delightful pictures, search engines want to show off high-quality, informative, and relevant content. Whether it’s Google or Airbnb, platforms want to showcase their most relevant results/listings to satisfy users, turning them into repeat customers with brand loyalty and higher customer lifetime value. User-centric design Both UX and SEO aim to satisfy user intent. UX focuses on delivering a seamless, enjoyable experience, while SEO helps the right audience discover the content in the first place. Together, they prioritize the user journey from discovery to conversion. This ensures that content is discoverable, meaningful, and engaging for the target audience. Tactically, this means focusing on content that answers user questions, provides solutions, and guides users effectively. Data-driven decision making UX relies on behavioral data like click patterns and session duration to optimize web design, while SEO uses metrics like search rankings, CTR, and bounce rates . By sharing insights, teams can make informed decisions that benefit both areas. Accessibility Accessibility  benefits both UX and SEO. Making a site inclusive expands its reach, improves usability, and ensures compliance with search engine guidelines. Accessible design enhances both user trust and search engine recognition, creating a win-win situation for discoverability and experience. Authority and trust UX builds trust through design elements like secure connections, intuitive navigation, and transparency. While SEO establishes authority through high-quality, optimized content, backlinks , and trusted experts . Continuous collaboration & adaptation Search engines may prioritize UX signals and engagement metrics in their ranking algorithms. UX and SEO teams must work together to meet these evolving standards. A proactive approach helps your website remain competitive, regardless of any algorithm updates . UX and SEO teams must collaborate continuously. Regular meetings, shared KPIs, and integrated workflows ensure both disciplines contribute to a unified goal. UX & SEO in tandem: How to implement site design that also improves visibility The success of your content rides primarily on a single factor: how well it satisfies your users’ particular needs (i.e., their user intent ). Understanding why users search for specific queries  lets you speak their ‘language’, which you can then use to create content that better meets their needs by accounting for their circumstances. So, how do you create this high-quality content that satisfies user intent for your specific audience? Make your content engaging Prioritize responsive design Improve site speed Use easily understood, user-friendly URLs Improve your information scent with meta tags Ensure accessibility for your audience Guide users with clear calls-to-action Secure and reliable website Make your content engaging High-quality, engaging content is the cornerstone of a positive user experience. Ensure your content is informative, relevant, and tailored to your target audience. It should also be easy to read and skimmable, with clear headings , bullet points, and short paragraphs. While writing for users is paramount, you must also optimize your content for search engines. This involves using relevant keywords, writing meta descriptions , implementing structured data , and so on to help search engines understand your content. Below are some best practices for improving user engagement. Align with Google’s guidelines on creating people-first content :  Offer valuable, goal-oriented insights that satisfy user expectations, and avoid practices like automation-driven mass content production or misleading updates aimed at gaming search engines. Regularly self-assess your content using criteria such as originality, depth, and trustworthiness. Ensure your content demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness ( E-E-A-T ) by clearly identifying authors, providing well-sourced and accurate information, and transparently sharing how the content was created. Talk to your audience:  You’re not your audience—get out of your head and interact with them. Reach out to your customer support team to understand the trends they’re noticing, talk to your UX team to understand the struggles people have with your product, etc. You can supplement these with more research, surveys and interviews, as needed. Use storytelling techniques: We are naturally inclined to understand and connect through narratives. Where appropriate, use storytelling techniques like the hero’s journey  to create engaging narratives that resonate with your audience. Relatable characters and clear conflicts and resolutions help convey information in a memorable and emotionally compelling way, fostering deeper connections, trust, and sustained interest that inspires action. Include multimedia:  Enhance content with images, videos, and infographics to make it more engaging (which also helps with content distribution ). Optimize all multimedia for quick loading and accessibility (e.g., subtitles). Include videos, images, infographics, etc. to enhance UX for your site visitors. Help the user satisfy their intent—answer these questions:   Do the experiences I design fulfill my users’ needs? How relevant is a particular piece of information for users? How can I offer more capabilities to users? How can I make an experience more entertaining, efficient, or impactful? Implement structured data:  Add structured data  (schema markup) to help search engines better understand your content better. This can enhance your site’s visibility through rich results  in SERPs. When it comes time to research keywords, use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Semrush , Moz, etc. to find relevant keywords (that reflect user intent) with a good balance of search volume  and competition .  When it comes to keyword placement, naturally incorporate keywords into your content (including the title, headings, and throughout the body). Avoid keyword stuffing, as it harms both UX and SEO. Break content into digestible chunks and use a font size and style that is easy to read on all devices. Evaluating what your content looks like on desktop and mobile can make a big difference here. In addition to the tips above, I encourage you to read these two books that I've personally found helpful. Everybody Writes  by Ann Handley emphasizes clear, compelling, and audience-centric writing strategies, essential for producing high-quality content that resonates with readers. Don’t Make Me Think  by Steve Krug offers timeless and practical insights on user-friendly design and usability—critical for maintaining user engagement and satisfaction. Prioritize responsive design Responsive web design  is a cornerstone of both UX and SEO. In a world where users switch between phones, tablets, and desktops, your website must seamlessly adapt to any screen size. Google’s mobile-first indexing  means that the mobile version of your site is now the primary reference for ranking, making mobile-friendliness an SEO essential. On the other hand, a non-responsive site can lead to poor user experience, higher bounce rates , and lower search rankings. Flexible layouts:  Use flexible grids and layouts that adapt to different screen sizes. This ensures an aesthetically pleasing and functional design on all devices. Touch-friendly navigation:  Ensure that buttons and links are easily clickable on smaller screens. Avoid hover-only navigation, as it may not translate well on touch and mobile devices. This can be a point of frustration for users. Optimized images:  Compress images without sacrificing quality and use responsive image techniques like   srcset  to load images according to the user’s device size. This reduces load times, improving user experience. Improve site speed Usability (an important aspect of UX) measures how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily. Like responsive design, site speed also impacts usability. Nobody likes a slow website. A slow website frustrates your potential customers, causing them to leave before exploring your content, and potentially leading to Google recommending your content less. In SEO metrics, this usually plays out as higher bounce rates and lower conversions. This point is especially important for competitive niches, where content quality may be very similar across top-ranking websites. That said, having a fast site with low-quality content is like running to nowhere. Content quality is still more important. Minimize HTTP requests:  Reduce the number of elements on a page, such as scripts, images, and CSS files, to decrease load times. Combine files where possible. Compress files and images:  Huge files slow your site down. Use tools, like TinyPNG, Gzip, or Brotli compression, to reduce the size of your images, files, and code. Leverage caching:  Server-side and browser caching speed up subsequent page loads by keeping static resources like pictures, CSS, and JavaScript files in the cache. Lazy load content below the fold:  Load only the images and videos that are immediately visible on the user’s screen. As they scroll, additional content can load in the background. This makes your page feel light and fast to users. Use a content delivery network (CDN):  A CDN is a network of servers around the world that deliver your site’s content to users from the server closest to them. This helps to drastically improve page speed. Maintain only essential plug-ins:‍  Too many plug-ins can make your site feel bloated and slow. If you’re a Wix site owner or manager, you already benefit from many of these optimizations, including automatic image compression, lazy loading, server caching, and a world-class CDN. Design intuitive website navigation User-centered navigation is fundamental to UX. Because searchers may enter your website via different pages, they need to be able to get from one page to another using your site navigation. In UX, this is referred to as ‘discoverability’—this means a piece of information is easy to discover without a user actively looking for it. The AI-powered visual sitemap feature allows Wix Studio users to generate custom sitemaps and wireframes. Your site should have a clear structure that’s intuitive, guiding users to the pages they seek with minimal effort. Poor navigation leads to user frustration and higher exit rates.  You may also miss opportunities to direct users to relevant pages, which is why a well-organized site structure is not only beneficial for users but also for search engines. Clear, logical navigation helps search engines understand your site’s hierarchy and content, leading to better indexing  and potentially higher ranking. Use a logical menu structure:  Use a simple, hierarchical menu structure that groups related content. For simplicity and optimal user experience, limit categories pages to the bare minimum pages you need. If you need more granularity, then consider using sub-categories. Show breadcrumbs to help users orient themselves:  Implement breadcrumb navigation to help users understand their location on the site and easily navigate back to previous pages. Breadcrumbs also provide additional internal links for SEO. Use clear and descriptive labels for menu items:  Avoid jargon and ensure that users have a good idea of the content behind each link. Use internal links  to connect related content:  This helps users discover more of your site’s content and improves SEO by distributing link equity across pages. Verify links:  Leading users to broken links/ 404 pages  can damage UX, so verify the pages you link to. Use easily understood, user-friendly URLs User-friendly URLs contribute to a positive user experience by providing clear and concise information about the page’s content, framing what your audience can expect if they click through. A well-structured URL is not only easier for users to read and understand, it also helps search engines grasp the context of your content. Clear URLs improve navigation, user experience, and SEO. Good URL example Poor URL example www.example.com/best-ux-seo-practices www.example.com/blogpage1 Use descriptive terms in your URLs:  Create concise, descriptive, URLs that reflect the content of the page. Avoid unnecessary parameters and numbers. Use hyphens instead of underscores:  Use hyphens to separate words in your URLs. Search engines treat hyphens as word separators/spaces, whereas underscores are ignored. Hyphens are also easier to read and understand. Implement canonical tags when appropriate:  If multiple versions of a page exist, use canonical tags  to specify the preferred version to avoid duplicate content issues . This tells search engines which version of a page is the primary one, helping to ensure that link equity is not diluted and providing a smooth experience for your audience wherever your content is indexed. Improve your information scent with meta tags No, there’s no digital cologne you can spray on your website to attract people (although that would be pretty cool). Information scent  simply refers to how users evaluate options on a website to find information. It’s a user’s ability to predict what they will find if they follow a link or pursue a path on a website. This is where meta tags come into play—they help inform your users’ expectations of what they will find from your content. Meta tags , such as title tags and meta descriptions, are crucial for both SEO and UX. They are often the first thing users see on search engine results pages ( SERPs ) and influence whether they click through to your site. Well-crafted meta tags improve click-through rates and tell search engines about your content. Craft compelling title tags:  Think of your audience like a customer walking through a bookstore. Books with titles that stand out and are relevant to the customer’s intent are the ones that will get picked. Likewise, write unique, compelling title tags for each page that include the primary keyword. Keep your title tags under 60 characters to ensure it displays fully on mobile SERPs. Write engaging meta descriptions:  Your meta descriptions should summarize the page content and include a call-to-action . Keep them under 160 characters and incorporate relevant keywords. Avoid duplicate meta tags:  Each of your pages should serve a unique purpose, so ensure that each page has unique title tags and meta descriptions to avoid confusion for both users and search engines. Keyword relevance:  While meta tags should include keywords, you should also write naturally and appeal to human readers. Be honest with your meta tags:  Disappointing or misleading users will eventually lead audiences to stop using your website. Avoid jargon:  Steer clear of buzzwords or industry jargon that your audience may not understand. This is why understanding your audience through UX is important—this allows you to communicate using the exact language they’re already familiar with. Ensure accessibility for your audiences A well-designed and accessible website ensures that all people, regardless of their physical abilities, can use it. Accessibility is not only a legal requirement in many countries, but also enhances user experience and broadens your potential audience. The alt text field in the Wix Studio Editor. Rejoice Ojiaku  wrote an in-depth guide on  website accessibility  that covers this topic in much greater detail—check that out to learn more. In the meantime, here are some quick tips: Provide alt text:  Write descriptive alt text for all images. This helps visually impaired users understand the content and improves image SEO. Support keyboard navigation:  Ensure that all interactive elements, such as forms and menus, are accessible via keyboard. This is essential for users who cannot use a mouse. Enhance readability with color contrast:  Use sufficient color contrast between text and background to make content readable for users with visual impairments. Improve navigation on screen readers with ARIA landmarks:  Use ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) landmarks to define page structure, which could be crucial for site visitors that rely on screen readers to experience your website. Support text resizing:  Ensure that text can be resized up to 200% without losing content or functionality. This also improves readability for users with visual impairments. Guide users with clear calls-to-action (CTAs) UX design’s goal of satisfying users’ needs means it plays a role in assisting them as they navigate your website.  Clear and compelling CTAs  guide users towards the desired actions, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. Ultimately, this improves the user journey and contributes to higher conversion rates. While CTAs are primarily a UX consideration, they also indirectly impact SEO. High engagement and conversion rates may signal to search engines that your site is valuable and relevant, potentially increasing visibility. Use action-oriented language:  Use action-oriented wording in your CTAs (e.g., “Download Now” or “Get Started”) to create a sense of urgency and encourage users to take action. Highlight your CTAs for visibility:  Prominently place your CTAs and ensure they stand out visually from the rest of the content. Use contrasting colors and large, legible fonts. Make sure your CTAs are clear and unambiguous:  Users should immediately understand what action they are being asked to take and what benefits they will receive. Each page should only have one main CTA. Test and refine for iterative gains:  Regularly A/B test  different CTA designs, placements, and wording to determine what resonates best with your audience. Then use the data to refine your approach and maximize conversions. To learn more about maximizing the impact of this technique, check out Lazarina Stoy’s excellent  beginner’s guide to CTAs . Instill trust with a secure website A secure website is essential for both user trust and SEO. Google prioritizes secure sites (i.e., sites that use HTTPS ) in its rankings, and users are more likely to engage with a site they trust (and don’t get browser warnings when visiting). Lack of security can lead to data breaches, poor user experience, and lower search rankings—all of which are totally avoidable. Ensure that your website is secured with HTTPS:  This encrypts data exchanged between the user’s browser and your server, protecting sensitive information. Obtain and install an SSL certificate to secure your website:  Regularly renew the certificate to maintain the security certification. Keep your CMS, plugins, and other software up-to-date to protect against security vulnerabilities:  Regular updates help prevent hacks and data breaches. Implement regular backup solutions to protect your data:  In the event of a security breach or data loss, backups allow you to restore your site (and business) quickly. Analytics and user feedback for continuous improvement UX and SEO aren’t ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ processes. You need to regularly check on how your site is doing and adjust strategy. Continuous iteration is key to maintaining a high-performing website. Regularly monitor your site’s UX and SEO metrics to identify areas for improvement and update your strategies accordingly. Use Google Analytics  to track user behavior:  This includes page views, bounce rates, conversion rates, etc. Analyze this data to understand how users interact with your site. Implement heatmap tools to visualize user interactions on your site:  Software like Microsoft Clarity , Hotjar, or Crazy Egg can show where users click, scroll, and spend the most time, helping you optimize layout and content. The Microsoft Clarity integration within Wix. Collect feedback from users through surveys, feedback forms, and user testing:  Direct feedback generally provides valuable insights into user preferences and pain points. Conduct A/B tests to compare different versions of pages, content, or elements to see which performs better:  Use the results to make data-driven decisions that enhance UX and SEO. Regularly update and perform SEO audits on your content:  You can use tools like Semrush, Moz, Screaming Frog, etc. to identify technical issues, content gaps, and optimization opportunities. A note about third-party tools : There are so many on-page analysis tools, content optimization tools, site crawlers, analytics tools, and so on that can provide you with useful insights. Many of these satisfy the quantitative aspect of UX research, but ensure that you’re not applying suggestions thoughtlessly (without regard to purpose, impact, or audience), as that could lead to unintended consequences. The marriage of UX and SEO is here to stay In today’s competitive digital environment, integrating UX and SEO is essential for creating a successful website. By following these best practices, you can design a site that not only ranks well on search engines. but also provides a seamless, enjoyable experience for users, thereby attracting more visitors, engaging them, and ultimately driving more conversions. Ola King, UX & SEO Consultant Ola King is a UX & SEO consultant using design-thinking to make digital information simple and accessible. He’s worked for Moz, created the Notion SEO Growth Kit, and presented at MozCon, BrightonSEO, and more. Twitter | Linkedin

Author: Miriam Ellis It used to be that a simple Google search would typically deliver a wide enough array of results to help you find what you were looking for. This was a passive experience on the part of the searcher—enter a keyword phrase and you’d have the world at your feet.  This is no longer the case for two reasons: We use the internet for so many more activities than we did 20 years ago. Multiple sources indicate that Google’s search result quality has worsened in recent years. Gut-check my statements by thinking about your own phone and laptop use. Do you spend most of your screen time searching, or doing something else these days? Are you satisfied with Google’s top organic results, or do you have to dig deeper to find what you want?  When you look at your own usage and realize that many of your potential customers are likely hanging out somewhere other than the search results, what you’ve learned must become central to your digital marketing strategy. The days of your top goal being a spot in Google’s top 10 results are fading fast. As internet users become more active in their habits, your brand must catch up with them.  Let’s take a look at how you can adapt your marketing to support the active search journeys your potential customers are actually embarking on.  Table of contents: The decline of passive search Why passive Google search is broken Active search: How users actually use Google today How to embrace active search Support your audience’s active search journey: Best practices Do not mistake other platforms for Google Structure your team to reflect your audience’s active search journey Monitor brand mentions and distribute content The decline of passive search Passive search is the act of typing your keyword(s) into a search engine and being adequately satisfied with whatever ranks (or appears high up on the search results page).  While passive search is a good fit for basic functions (like checking a weather forecast, the time in another country, or converting US dollars into Euros), it has significant limitations for modern day users—limitations that other platforms are actively looking to fill. In some ways, recent Google’s algorithm updates  even discourage passive searches by forcing users to dig deeper on other platforms, which I’ll discuss more in the next sections.  Why passive Google search is broken In the past, the public was largely satisfied with the assets Google ranked highly for more complex search terms. Now, hardly a week goes by without new studies , surveys, and articles expressing and explaining why so many people no longer find the Google Search experience acceptable. There are almost as many theories for the cause of this dissatisfaction as there are Google users. Here are three factors to keep in mind: Google is losing the quality battle  — Google has allowed content from big brands (presumably created by content farms) to take up too much space in its index, according to Greg Sterling , co-founder of Near Media. When authoritative domains publish large volumes of low-quality content that have little or nothing to do with the brand’s recognized fields of expertise, searchers are unlikely to be well-served. All too often, weaknesses in Google’s algorithm  are simply allowing large players with the ability/budget to produce encyclopedic content to outrank smaller publishers with genuine authority. “I am no fan of Forbes and am often dismayed by what it ranks for, but one could argue that its strategy and choices are an entirely a rational response to Google’s algorithmic biases.” — Greg Sterling, Co-Founder at Near Media Google’s UX has become too cluttered  — Recently, I was talking to a fellow SEO who was so befuddled by Google’s current search experience that they suddenly realized they had been unintentionally clicking on ads . Not only are paid advertisements difficult for both novice and adept searchers to distinguish from the organic results, but the plethora of SERP features  has resulted in a mess. Commercial-intent searches, such as [organic fair trade coffee beans], are now met with a wall of product grids and shopping features that make finding a simple website link like wandering through a house of mirrors. Not long ago, the UX was so much simpler than this, and Google’s index served as a table of contents for real businesses that real people could understand and use with little trouble. Above the fold, there are more filters, tabs, and ads than there are organic search results for this query. Google has forgotten it’s a part of the search journey, not the destination — With the exception of easily answered searches that fall into the [what’s the weather like] category, Google-controlled assets do not satisfy most search intents . The problem is, Google has decided that it wants to be the end point for too many queries (in order to keep users on Google and increase its revenue potential). In the past, the SERPs acted as stepping stones on your journey to relevant content—the thing the user was searching for, be it a product, a local business, an informational resource, or anything in between. By contrast, the results nowadays increasingly feel like the only thing Google wants you to discover is…Google. Earlier this year, a US District Court ruled that Google violated antitrust law  and acted as a monopoly at the expense of competitors. As we can see, it has also been at the expense of users, like your potential customers, who want to find you and not just another self-preferenced Google asset. Active search: How users actually use Google today Active search refers to when the user has to dig deeper than a search engine’s top-ranked results or transition to a completely different platform to satisfy their search intent.  Here are three examples of how users must now search actively to find what they’re looking for: 01. A searcher is looking for [how to restring an acoustic guitar].  Google’s top results feature an AI overview scraped from sources of unknown quality, followed by a long list of low-quality sites that are riddled with ads and popups. The dissatisfied searcher either keeps digging or finds the nearest link to transition out of the SERPs to YouTube, where a video from a genuine expert will walk them through the process, step-by-step.  Google’s AI overviews have rolled out to a mixed reception due to questionable quality and integrity. This example recommends drinking urine to help pass a kidney stone. Source: Search Engine Roundtable. 02.   A searcher is looking for [organic linen drawstring capri pants],  but none of the shopping results Google features on its first page (or even within the top 50 results) match all aspects of this user’s long-tail query . The searcher abandons Google and goes to Instagram to find a product that exactly matches their specific preferences, perhaps from a boutique seller. 03.   A searcher queries [why did JRR Tolkien dislike tape recorders].  There may be some relevant content returned in Google’s top-ranked results, but the searcher will not feel fully satisfied unless they can interact one-on-one with real people who have a track record of demonstrating authority in this genre of fiction. They head to Reddit  and either jump into an existing discussion or start their own.  In all three cases, the searcher has made a significant transition from being spoon-fed by Google’s results (i.e., passive search) to becoming an active seeker of the specialized solution that uniquely satisfies them. This is the transformation we are witnessing today that requires a major marketing adjustment on the part of businesses, organizations, and publishers. How to embrace active search While the rise of active search is specific to the era we are currently marketing in, the potential solution may be a familiar one for veteran marketers, and it requires you to determine where your brand’s ‘home’ is (in addition to your brand’s domain/homepage). To that end, Rand Fishkin, co-founder at SparkToro, urges brands to market like it’s 1964:  “What I’m suggesting to you is that digital marketing in 2024 is a lot like marketing in 1964. It is getting the right message that appeals to the right people in the right places and at the right time to the right audience.” — Rand Fishkin , Co-founder at SparkToro He’s specifically referencing how difficult attribution has become in a zero-click dynamic, but a top takeaway that’s applicable to nearly every scenario is this: in 1964, marketing depended on being wherever your customer was.  It meant constructing your futuristic supermarket in the most densely-populated neighborhood in town. It meant getting your holiday catalog into households before anyone started shopping. And, it also meant going to business lunches, sponsoring local sports teams, and socializing within your community so that you became known (and liked) by the people you wanted to serve.  The task ahead of you is to translate mid-century marketing to the web, actively engaging with (and establishing a presence in) your potential community.  For local businesses , all the old-school, offline community involvement remains smart, but whether local or virtual, organizations should start spending a little less time worrying about ordinal organic rank and a lot more time hanging out with their customers.  If what Fishkin is saying (and what I’m suggesting) sounds like radical change, you’re right—keep reading! Support your audience’s active search journey: Best practices Your audience’s active search journey can look very different from that of other audiences (even those shopping for similar products or services). So, you’ll need to build up your own rules of engagement for your audience/business.  Here are some of my best practices to get you started: Do not mistake other platforms for Google Structure your team to reflect your audience’s active search journey Monitor brand mentions and distribute content Do not mistake other platforms for Google I’m not suggesting that search engine rankings are unimportant—they still matter. For local businesses, your Google Business Profile  is still critical. But, how you think about where your business fits is rapidly changing.  You can’t be one of ten blue links in Google’s SERPs anymore and call it a day. Instead, bring the maximum creativity your entire team can muster to figure out whether the best fit for your business exists on one of the following platforms, where you can socialize one-on-one with your potential customers: TikTok Reddit Discord Patreon Substack YouTube Instagram Facebook X/Twitter If your organization already knows that there is a better match for you on a platform not listed above, you’re ahead of the game, but most enterprises are struggling to find the right home-away-from-home page. In most cases, the right platform is waiting for you somewhere in my short list. But there’s a twist to all this. If we look back at the past two decades in SEO and marketing, you can see that we developed a habit of throwing everything at Google to see what would happen. Some of the content we threw in there was not good, and a lot of it didn’t deserve to see the light of day in the SERPs. This is not an approach you can take with the social platforms where you need to establish yourself.  Experimentation is definitely necessary, but if you annoy the public with low-quality marketing tactics, you risk being blocked by other members and even banned from communities . You’ll still put on your SEO hat to look at rank tracking reports  and the like, but you’ve got to find a different hat for joining the party at Reddit or Substack. In those environments, audiences will judge you by how well you socialize, and in some of them, behaving like a salesperson will get you booted. The secret ingredient to succeeding is being deeply passionate about whatever the topic is that you have in common with a particular community —rather than being there to sell, you are there to participate in a shared interest. The shared interest could be a physical town or city if your business is local, or if virtual, your passion might be the music associated with the instruments you sell. Maybe it’s the homes that can be beautified by the lamps you manufacture, or the photography that can be captured by your specialized lenses.  And here’s my most radical advice of all: if you do not genuinely feel passion for what your business offers, you need to employ people who do. This may sound ironic, given that developments in AI are causing major enterprises to lay off staff on the notion that having fewer employees will make a more attractive picture for shareholders. Be wary of this trend, because in order to sustain profits, focus belongs on how appealing your brand looks to customers (not shareholders). If the emerging social aspects of doing 21st-century business like it’s 1964 are outside your comfort zone as a business owner, find and hold onto staff who are willing to hang out, help out, and build relationships.Treat each environment with respect, because social spaces are akin to other people’s homes.  Embrace the zeal of posting images and videos. Engage in the comments section and comment on other people’s work. Give away free advice. Be there for others and demonstrate your expertise, authenticity, and trustworthiness.  It must happen every day on Nextdoor that someone hires a house painter who shares their interest in making Halloween costumes for cats, just like it used to be common for mid-century people to hire a contractor because they attended the same bridge club. Structure your team to reflect your audience’s active search journey Once you’ve established where you’ll be socializing with your community, organize your staff to build and maintain a presence.  In this scenario, your social media managers will likely take on a more emphatic role. Duties will include: Social media monitoring and participation Social content ideation and creation Social content distribution Social media analysis and reporting If your brand develops its own social hub (like a Discord server), you’ll need all of the above, plus additional roles like: Community moderators Account managers Technical support staff Monitor brand mentions and distribute content The more complex your business model is, the more likely it is that you’ll need tools to scale both monitoring your social channels and distributing content to them. Whether you have multiple business locations to promote  or multiple social channels to manage, software can help you: Monitor mentions of your brand on topics that are relevant to it. Organize and format content appropriately for each channel. Popular software choices include Sparktoro, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite. Future-proof your digital marketing with more humanity and authenticity I’m not pleased with what’s happened to Google’s SERPs and I hope it can improve, but I confess to being open to any trend that helps businesses be more real with more people. If you can see the positives in this change from passive to active use of search and the web, you’ve got some real opportunities ahead of you. 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: Veruska Anconitano Google’s algorithm updates  can throw even the most well-optimized businesses into chaos, leading to sudden drops in rankings, traffic, and revenue. For companies that rely heavily on SEO, these changes can feel like moving goalposts, making it difficult to maintain consistent visibility.  While you can’t outsmart every update, you can lessen the impact by turning to a powerful tool: market research. When you deeply understand your audience and diversify your digital strategy across multiple channels, you reduce the risk of algorithm changes taking a toll on your business. In this article, I’ll show you how integrating market research into your strategy can help stabilize your performance, minimize dependency on SEO, and build a more adaptable, future-proof business. Table of contents: Market research 101 How to conduct market research for your business and audience Omnichannel marketing: Sustain growth without relying on SEO How to integrate market research into your digital strategy 01. Define clear research objectives 02. Gather data from multiple sources 03. Create feedback loops across departments 04. Analyze and prioritize insights 05. Implement findings in an agile framework 06. Channel-specific implementation 07. Create a regular research schedule 08. Integrate tools and technology for real-time insights 09. Align research with KPIs and business objectives Market research 101: What it is & why it’s essential Market research is more than just data collection; it’s a practice rooted in social science that seeks to understand human behavior, preferences, and needs. Drawing from fields like psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics, market research helps explain why customers make certain choices and how they interact with products and services. Understanding your audience, their target market, and the socioeconomic conditions they navigate is crucial to your success. Brands that excel at knowing their target audience—its needs, pain points, and underlying motivations —are the ones that thrive over the long run, while those that overlook this fundamental process usually struggle to gain traction.  Studies have shown that businesses that prioritize customer-centric strategies  outperform those that don’t, with  one report by Deloitte  indicating that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that aren’t. By using   qualitative research methods , such as interviews or focus groups, you can gain deep insights into customer motivations and emotional triggers.  This is particularly useful for uncovering the underlying reasons why people feel a certain way about a product or service. For example, focus groups often reveal emotional drivers, like the need for belonging or status, which may not be immediately evident from quantitative data alone. On the other hand, quantitative methods , such as surveys or data analytics, focus on gathering measurable data that you can use to identify trends across larger populations.  Quantitative research is essential for confirming patterns observed during qualitative research and allows businesses to make strategic adjustments based on clear, objective feedback. For instance, statistical analysis may reveal  that customers who engage with a particular feature of a product are more likely to become repeat buyers, guiding future product development and marketing strategies. By combining both qualitative and quantitative research, you’re able to gain a more complete understanding of your target audience, which helps your team make informed decisions that align with customer preferences. In the face of Google’s frequent algorithm updates, market research provides a clear understanding of what your audience needs, helping you build strategies that are less affected by search algorithm  changes.  After all, even if you please the search engines and chase rankings, Google, Bing, or whatever generative AI  engine will never be your customers—it’s your human audience that you actually need to convince. The benefits of effective market research Effective market research delivers actionable insights that influence every aspect of your business, from content strategy to product development. Thoroughly comprehending your audience’s needs and preferences means more informed business decisions that lead to:  Improved content Enhanced user experiences Stronger product-market fit Together, these elements contribute to sustainable business growth and adaptability. Let’s dive a bit deeper into exactly how this should play out. Improved content strategy When you create content with audience insights in mind , that content is more likely to perform well across channels and less likely to be negatively affected by changes in Google’s algorithm updates.  For example, if your research indicates that your audience values sustainability, you can focus your content on eco-friendly products, positioning yourself as a brand that aligns with their values. From an SEO perspective, this represents a long-tail strategy  that appeals to high-intent customers while minimizing competition for more generic terms that are less relevant to your product/services. And, by understanding where your audience consumes content, you can distribute it across multiple channels (e.g., social media, email, PPC) rather than relying solely on SEO for visibility. This ensures your message reaches your audience on platforms they frequently engage with, reducing dependency on search engine traffic alone. Better user experience Market research directly informs user experience (UX) design by identifying how your audience interacts with your website and digital products. This allows for more intuitive design choices that enhance engagement and  leads . For example, if research shows that your target audience prefers simplified navigation and quick access to information, you can design your website accordingly, leading to lower bounce rates  and higher conversion rates. Microsoft Clarity (available for Wix) can record user interactions and generate heat maps to help you improve UX. Source: Microsoft. Improved user experience also indirectly benefits SEO . Search engines may prioritize websites that deliver positive user experiences, as measured by metrics such as time on page, click-through rates, and bounce rates. When you design your website to meet the needs of your audience, these engagement metrics improve, potentially strengthening your search rankings. Enhanced product-market fit Beyond content and SEO, market research helps businesses refine their product offerings by identifying unmet customer needs . For example, by surveying your audience, you might uncover demand for a feature you hadn’t considered, allowing you to tailor your product to meet market demands. Once you’ve gathered insights, you can  adjust your product or service  to align more closely with what your target audience values. Whether this involves changing a product feature, adjusting pricing strategies, or altering your brand messaging , market research ensures that your offerings stay relevant to your customers’ evolving needs. How to conduct market research for your business and audience As you’ve probably gathered, actionable market research can leverage both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gain a comprehensive understanding of your audience. While market research can get more complex in execution, it’s conceptually straightforward: Select the right approach(es) Gather and analyze data Phase 1: Select the right research approach(es) The most appropriate approach depends on what you’re looking to learn about your potential customers. Market research method Description Example techniques Example use case Qualitative This approach involves gathering in-depth insights into customer behaviors and motivations. Interviews Focus groups Ethnography Interviews with target customers can reveal emotional drivers behind purchase decisions, giving a deeper understanding of why certain products resonate more than others. Quantitative This method involves collecting numerical data to measure and analyze at scale. Surveys  Website analytics Data mining Analyzing survey data could help you identify trends, such as the growing popularity of specific product features or the influence of price points on purchasing decisions. While qualitative and quantitative research often complement each other, there are cases where you can apply them independently.  For instance, you might exclusively use quantitative research when a business needs to gather broad statistical data about customer behavior at scale, such as analyzing website traffic or purchase trends. On the other hand, qualitative research might be your sole focus when you’re exploring the emotional drivers behind customer loyalty through in-depth interviews or focus groups. Phase 2: Gather and analyze data To generate actionable insights, you must effectively gather and interpret data. Data collection techniques:  There are many ways to collect data, including surveys, social media monitoring, and analyzing customer relationship management (CRM) systems. For example, social media monitoring allows you to track customer sentiment in real-time , helping you adapt quickly to changing preferences and behaviors. Interpreting results : Once you’ve collected the data, you need to interpret it to surface trends and actionable insights—this step is critical to translating raw data into business strategies. For example, by analyzing web analytics, you might notice a trend of increasing mobile traffic, signaling the need to prioritize mobile-first design in future content creation and product development. Platforms like Wix Analytics (shown above) and Google Analytics 4 can show you data trends over time, like sessions by device, time on page, etc. Omnichannel marketing: Sustain growth without relying on SEO Today, even though SEO is a foundational marketing strategy, relying solely on it can expose your business to risk. By adopting an omnichannel marketing strategy that distributes content across multiple platforms, you can reduce your vulnerability. Market research plays a key role here, guiding the creation of content and strategies tailored for multiple channels. This ensures that you can maintain consistent traffic and engagement regardless of search algorithm shifts. When thoughtfully executed, you can expect to: Reduce your dependence on SEO  — Instead of relying solely on SEO to drive traffic, brands should develop a more well-rounded digital presence by leveraging various platforms. Channels like social media, email marketing, paid campaigns, and direct customer engagement can act as alternative traffic/revenue streams, providing stability during inevitable search algorithm fluctuations. Zalando , the European online fashion retailer, is a prime example of this approach.  While Zalando benefits from strong SEO, the company heavily invested in its mobile app, social media channels, and personalized email campaigns to ensure it reaches customers wherever they are. This brand’s app allows users to shop seamlessly, offering exclusive features that incentivize engagement outside of traditional search, including an exclusive shopping club called “Lounge” (shown below).  Improve and adapt your SEO strategy —   With a deep understanding of your audience, you’re not only insulated from search reliance, you’re also better positioned to adapt to algorithm updates proactively. Instead of reacting to a drop in rankings, businesses can adjust their SEO strategies in anticipation of customer behavior shifts and search intent. BuzzFeed  is an excellent example of a company that pivoted its strategy to meet its audience’s increasing video content consumption. As research began to show that audiences were spending more time engaging with video, BuzzFeed adapted its content production accordingly.  By shifting to video-based SEO , BuzzFeed maintained strong visibility and engagement despite Google algorithm changes. This pivot helped the company capture a broader audience and ensured that it stayed ahead of SEO trends . Position your brand for better recognition  — Another key advantage of market research is the ability to  refine your brand’s positioning , making it more memorable (and less dependent on search algorithms for visibility). One company that exemplifies this approach is  Oatly . Initially, Oatly needed more clear differentiation in the oat milk market. Through in-depth market research, the company discovered that consumers were drawn to their mission of creating a sustainable, healthier alternative to traditional dairy. By aligning its messaging with this mission, Oatly successfully repositioned itself as a brand dedicated to environmental and personal well-being. This new brand identity resonated deeply with consumers (particularly those interested in plant-based diets). As a result, Oatly’s recognition grew, allowing it to thrive across various channels and minimizing its reliance on SEO. Today, Oatly is viewed as a leading brand in the plant-based movement, a status that shields it from the fluctuations of search engine rankings. Promote sustainable growth  — Businesses that prioritize diversified strategies have the best shot at steady growth and predictable revenue, regardless of the latest search trends. Patagonia , the outdoor clothing brand known for its commitment to sustainability and social activism, is a great example of this approach. It has effectively used market research to understand its target audience’s values and behaviors, enabling the company to build strong customer loyalty across platforms. The brand actively engages its audience through social media campaigns, purpose-driven email marketing, community-building initiatives, and partnerships with environmental organizations. For instance, Patagonia’s ongoing environmental campaigns  resonate deeply with their eco-conscious audience, driving engagement across social media and other channels. Its strategy also includes producing high-quality content that aligns with its brand’s values, such as documentary films about environmental issues, which it promotes through various platforms outside of traditional SEO.  Improve product development with a customer feedback loop — A multi-channel approach also facilitates faster feedback loops, allowing businesses to gather real-time data from customers across platforms. For example, by monitoring customer reviews , social media interactions, and direct email feedback, you can continuously refine your product offerings. This real-time engagement helps you stay aligned with customer needs, making it easier to adapt quickly to market changes and improve product-market fit. A great example of this is  Glossier , a beauty brand that built its success by engaging with its community through social media and customer reviews, using this feedback to inform new product development. For instance, its popular  Milky Jelly Cleanser  was developed based on insights gathered from customer feedback about their skincare needs. This constant interaction with its audience allows Glossier to stay closely aligned with customer preferences, refine their offerings, and continuously innovate while maintaining a loyal customer base. How to integrate market research into your digital strategy Now that you know the basics, it’s time to gain some firsthand experience by actually applying this concept within your strategy.  Assigning clear responsibilities to each team is essential. This ensures that research insights are correctly implemented and drive decision-making across all departments.  Follow these steps as part of an ongoing process: Define clear research objectives Gather data from multiple sources Create feedback loops across departments Analyze and prioritize insights Implement findings in an agile framework Channel-specific implementation Create a regular research schedule Integrate tools and technology for real-time insights Align research with KPIs and business objectives 01. Define clear research objectives Responsibility: Marketing leadership The marketing leadership team (in collaboration with department heads and stakeholders) should establish the specific goals of your market research. Determine what insights the business needs regarding audience, competitors, and market trends. For instance, are you trying to understand customer pain points, explore new market opportunities, or optimize content for better engagement? Setting clear objectives will guide the entire research process. 02. Gather data from multiple sources Responsibility: Market research team The market research team collects data through qualitative and quantitative methods. To gather qualitative insights, conduct customer surveys, focus groups, and social media listening. Quantitative data will come from analytics tools , CRM systems, and third-party reports. The research team should also work closely with the analytics team to ensure a comprehensive data-gathering approach. 03. Create feedback loops across departments Responsibility: Cross-departmental collaboration (marketing, product development, customer service) Marketing, product development, and customer service teams should establish regular feedback loops with the research team.  Marketing can share engagement metrics. Product development can share user data. Customer service can report on customer queries and issues.  This collaborative process ensures that research findings continuously influence decisions across departments. 04. Analyze and prioritize insights Responsibility: Market research and data analytics teams With support from the data analytics team, the market research team should analyze the findings to identify actionable insights.  Prioritize insights based on relevance to business objectives and potential impact. Communicate high-priority insights to relevant teams (e.g., content, product development) for immediate action. 05. Implement findings in an agile framework Responsibility: Marketing and product development teams The marketing and product development teams should implement the findings in an agile framework, setting up pilot projects, A/B tests , or experimental campaigns to apply research-driven strategies. For instance, test new content or product ideas across digital channels, measure results, and adjust strategies based on performance data. 06. Channel-specific implementation a. SEO Responsibility: SEO team The SEO team should use market research insights to refine keyword strategies  and optimize content based on search intent. This includes creating content that addresses the needs and questions identified during research . b. Social media Responsibility: Social media team The social media team should tailor content to align with the platforms your audience frequents (based on research). They should create visually engaging posts and interactive content using real-time feedback from social media monitoring tools. c. Email marketing Responsibility: Email marketing team The email marketing team is responsible for segmenting email lists and personalizing campaigns based on research findings. They should ensure that email content speaks directly to the interests and needs identified for different customer segments. d. Paid advertising Responsibility: Paid media/advertising team The paid advertising team should leverage insights to create targeted ad campaigns on platforms like Google and Meta Ads . They should optimize ad copy, visuals, and targeting settings to align with customer preferences discovered through research. e. Content marketing Responsibility: Content marketing team The content marketing team should develop content assets like blog posts, videos, and infographics that align with audience needs and trends identified through market research. They should regularly evaluate content performance and adjust strategy accordingly. 07. Create a regular research schedule Responsibility: Market research team The market research team should schedule regular research intervals (quarterly, biannually, or annually) depending on business needs and market dynamics. This ensures continuous insight gathering and helps the business adapt to market changes in real time. 08. Integrate tools and technology for real-time insights Responsibility: Analytics and IT teams The analytics and IT teams should implement and maintain the technology to track and report key data points . They should ensure that platforms like Google Analytics and CRM systems are integrated with the market research process to provide automated, real-time insights to relevant teams. 09. Align research with KPIs and business objectives Responsibility: Marketing leadership and business development teams Marketing leadership should coordinate with business development teams to ensure that outcomes (from your marketing research implementation) align with broader business goals and KPIs. Hold regular review meetings to assess the integration of research insights into the overall business strategy. Market research: Let customers tell you how you should adapt your digital strategy Market research isn’t just a tool for reacting to changes; it’s a proactive approach that you should integrate into your digital strategy to drive continuous improvement. Focusing on audience insights enables you to create content that stays relevant and resonates no matter how algorithms change. This forward-thinking use of market research enables you to diversify traffic sources, reduce reliance on SEO, and develop strategies that evolve with your audience’s needs. To maximize its impact, ensure that market research informs all channels—SEO, social media, email marketing, and paid ads. This multi-channel approach enhances customer engagement and strengthens relationships while refining your product-market fit through real-time feedback. By incorporating regular research, agile testing, and cross-department collaboration into your process, your business can stay adaptable and future-ready. Investing in market research lays the groundwork for long-term growth and stability, driving success across all areas of your digital strategy. 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: Krystal Taing Service area businesses (SABs) are one of the most common types of local business, but unlike traditional brick-and-mortar locations, they don’t have a physical storefront to help them increase awareness. So, they rely on local SEO  to help get them in front of potential customers. When it comes to optimizing search visibility for SABs, there’s a lot of nuance to master (compared to brick-and-mortar businesses). In this blog post, I’ll walk you through that nuance, how to leverage third-party platforms to extend your local SEO, as well as advanced tactics. Table of contents: The fundamentals of local SEO for SABs Navigating Google, Facebook, and Apple guidelines for SABs Advanced local SEO tactics for SABs Measuring your local SEO success Additional resources for SABs Local SEO: Service area businesses vs. brick and mortar stores Service area businesses provide their services at the customer’s location, which could range from residential homes to commercial establishments. Examples include plumbing services, home repair, and cleaning services.  The broad geographical area SABs cover, coupled with the lack of a physical storefront, pose specific SEO challenges—the most prominent challenge being how to effectively target and reach potential customers scattered across different locales. The absence of a physical store location is what makes local SEO for SABs so important. It ensures that these businesses appear in search results when potential customers in their service areas look for relevant services. This targeted visibility is essential to driving inquiries and leads, and securing business. While local SEO for both brick and mortar businesses as well as SABs is essentially the same discipline, SABs will have a more specific set of considerations to optimize for (in addition to following established local SEO best practices ). The fundamentals of local SEO for SABs Local SEO for SABs revolves around several key factors:  Relevance (i.e., how well your business reflects the searcher’s intent) Distance (i.e., physical proximity to the searcher) Prominence (i.e., the popularity of your business) These factors help search engines determine which businesses to show in local search results.  Furthermore, setting up and optimizing a Google Business Profile (GBP)  is vital for SABs. It allows businesses to specify their service areas and ensures they appear in Google searches from those regions.  Hiding your business address in Google Business Profile. In addition to GBP, SABs must manage their listings on platforms that allow them to hide their business addresses (while still showing the area they serve), such as certain local business directories (e.g., your local Chamber of Commerce  and Manta Business Directory ). Use platforms to promote your SAB: Google, Facebook, and other local listing guidelines Each platform has its own guidelines for how SABs should represent themselves. Typically, if the platform supports search-based functions, it will also support listings or profiles for SABs. However, some platforms that are more focused on maps and driving directions, such as Apple Maps, will have different guidelines or may be unable to support SABs.  Here are some platform guidelines that every SAB owner should know: Google Business Profile An example of a service area for an SAB. Source: Google. Google Business Profile provides specific functionality and guidance for service area businesses . Most notably:  SABs can only create one profile for the metropolitan area that they serve. SAB owners can specify their service areas by city, postal code, or another type of area. Each listing can serve up to 20 service areas. The boundaries of your overall service area should not exceed about two hours of driving time from where your business is based. Avoid listing virtual offices unless they are staffed during business hours. An example of a prototypical SAB that fits the criteria above could be a cleaning service that operates from a central office and serves a specific area. This listing should have one profile for the office, clearly stating the service area. Hybrid businesses  (i.e., businesses with a physical location that also provide on-site services, like an auto repair shop with a garage and roadside assistance), on the other hand, can designate a storefront address as well as a service area.  Google will show searchers your address as well as highlight your service areas on your profile (as shown below). Google uses your business details and other sources to decide how to show your address. These sources can include additional content found on the web about your business and areas it serves, as well as customer feedback directly from Maps. For individual SABs (not multi-location), this is pretty straightforward to understand and manage because your business is represented by (and limited to) one service-area business profile. For businesses with multiple different locations  (i.e., chain businesses/franchises; like a chain of pest control service branches with separate offices in different cities), you can have one profile per location. As is the case with an individual SAB, the service area for each profile shouldn’t extend more than two hours’ driving time from your base (though some businesses might need larger areas).  If you run your business from home  (like a plumber might), make sure to hide your home address on your GBP. When you hide your address, Google will display an outline on the map showing your service area. The ‘directions’ action button will also be removed from your profile.  Facebook Facebook also supports service area businesses. The platform only provides very light guidance to users managing their business pages, stating:  “If you don’t have a location where people can visit your business, edit your Page info to hide your street address on computers and mobile devices.” — Facebook Once you configure this setting, you will see only the city and state displayed on your business’s Facebook page.  Additional sites and platforms One of the challenges facing service area businesses is that many sites require an address in order to list your business. This means if you have an address that you do not want customers potentially showing up at (such as a residential address), then you are limited in terms of the sites and platforms you can use to represent your business.  SAB-friendly platforms include: Yelp Angi Nextdoor Yellow Pages CitySquares DexKnows Avvo Thumbtack Unfortunately, even though iPhones account for a massive share of mobile devices, Apple Maps currently only supports businesses with a published address , so only storefronts or hybrid businesses can publish their business listings here.  Recently, however, Apple introduced some support for SABs . Now, these businesses can register with Apple Business Connect , a platform that allows them to manage their brand visibility on iPhones and other iOS devices. Through Apple Business Connect, SABs can display and customize their business name, logo, and other branding elements in Apple applications, such as Mail, Phone, and Tap to Pay. Advanced local SEO tactics for SABs To further enhance local SEO, SABs should focus on the following tactics: Build local citations  — Getting listed in industry-specific directories boosts SEO and places your business in front of potential customers looking for specific services (meaning those customers may be more likely to convert). Based on your industry, you can build citations on sites like Yelp , Avvo , and Thumbtack . Look at your website referral traffic (in Google Analytics 4  or your analytics platform of choice) for a helpful indicator of where customers are already discovering you. This can help you prioritize which sites to focus on first.  In this example, a landscaper in San Diego might prioritize Yelp and Houzz over other local business platforms. Build up and manage your customer reviews  — Customer reviews  build trust, influence rankings, and are crucial to your local SEO success. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and respond promptly to any feedback. Businesses that provide services to their customers (as opposed to a product), cannot overlook the impact and importance of consistent and positive reviews. Creating and optimizing local pages —   This is crucial for enhancing visibility and customer engagement for service area businesses, especially if you operate multiple locations in different regions. In order to build local service area pages that rank and convert, you should: Create unique local pages for each service your business offers (e.g., a catering service might create pages for each of the types of events they cater). Highlight local-specific information that resonates with the audience, including details about local landmarks, events, and community involvement. Add unique photos that are relevant to that location and its services. Encourage customer reviews and testimonials specific to each location. An example of a local landing page for a multi-location service area business. Measure your local SEO for continued success The only way to know that your optimizations are paying off is to measure your efforts. Focus on KPIs such as: Local SEO metrics Metrics that SABS should also focus on Search rankings Local search traffic Conversion rates Website calls and chats Scheduled appointments Online form submissions Service area businesses typically want to drive new customers or bookings, so in addition to ranking, track and optimize how many inquiries you are driving. Even as an SAB, you can utilize common SEO tools to monitor your performance: Google Analytics — Track and analyze website traffic from local search queries, helping to understand how users find and interact with your site. Google Search Console  — Monitor and report on local search visibility, keyword rankings, and issues affecting performance in local search results. Google Business Profile Insights  — Measure customer interactions, such as calls, direction requests, and views on Google Maps and Search. GBP Insights show you how many calls originate from your GBP listing. Interpreting the data from these tools is essential. Regularly review metrics to identify trends and areas for improvement. Use this data to refine your strategies, ensuring continued SEO success. By consistently analyzing these KPIs and using the right tools, you can optimize your local SEO efforts effectively, leading to improved visibility and customer engagement. Unlock local SEO potential for your SAB As is the case with traditional SEO, you’ll need to adapt best practices for your particular business and niche. There’s always an element of trial and error involved, but you can maximize your efforts by familiarizing yourself with tips and guidance from local SEO experts. For further reading, here are some additional resources that can help your service area business increase its organic search visibility:  Google Local Service Ads Understand how your address impacts ranking for your SAB Should SABs show or hide their address? Krystal Taing - Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions, Uberall Krystal Taing is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall. She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU. She helps brands at managing hybrid customer experiences. Twitter  | Linkedin