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Author: James Clark It’s said that 25%–30% of content on the web is duplicative, meaning that the content is very similar to another piece of existing content. For search engines, like Google, serving all that duplicate content isn’t particularly useful for users. That’s why search engines will choose one of the two (or more) versions to show in search results. Canonicalization can help you tell search engines which version is the original one, which can help your most important pages rank better and improve crawl budget. In this post, I’ll walk you through: What canonicalization means What is a canonical tag?: How to canonicalize URLs Why canonicalization is important Common scenarios that require canonicalization Canonicalization on Wix What is canonicalization? When managing a website, canonicalization is the process by which you declare a web page or URL to be the original (or canonical) version of your content. It allows you to tell search engines which version of the content is the most authoritative, and that anything canonicalized to it is simply another version of that content. This makes canonicalization an important part of both your site management and your content strategy. Without canonicalization, you’d have no control over which URL a search engine chooses to show in relevant search results. Once you add a canonical tag to a URL, you are, in effect, telling search engines that this is the original version of the content and the one that should appear in search results. Search engines can choose to ignore this canonical tag, but generally, canonicalization is considered to be an effective way of managing your duplicate content. Let’s explain this with a working example: You're browsing an eCommerce website looking to buy some shoes. To locate shoes in your desired price range, you use the sorting options to show the most expensive shoes first. As you do this, you notice that the URL of the page changes. It was https://example.com/shoes, but it's now https://example.com/shoes?price=high. Is it the same page as before, or a different page? You could argue it's the same page—the block of text about shoes at the top remains the same, the header and the footer are the same, the filtering options on the side of the page are the same. The page may even show the same shoes, just in a different order. But, to Google and other search engines, it's a different page because the URL is different. So, this website now has two different pages with the same content—or, as it's called in SEO, ‘ duplicate content .’ This poses a problem for the site owner. Google won't want to show both pages in its search results because it’s not very valuable for searchers, so it will choose just one. But, what if the site owner wants the “price=high” page and Google chooses the other page, or vice versa? Here are two different category pages from the same commerce site. Both are sorted by price, but one is low to high, and the other is high to low. Canonicalization is a way of telling Google which version of each page to choose. Enter canonicalization, a grand word for quite a straightforward concept. Where you have duplicate content, it's a way of telling search engines which page is your main or “canonical” version. Google also uses the phrase “ most representative .” There are lots of reasons why a site might have duplicate content, and we’ll look at the most common ones later in this article. Duplicate content doesn’t necessarily mean identical pages: “Minor changes in sorting or filtering of list pages do not make the page unique," Google said—just like our shoe search results example. Here are some other phrases that Google uses to describe duplicate content: “appreciably similar” “largely identical” “similar content” You may well ask, “How similar is ‘appreciably similar’?” Well, that’s up for debate in SEO circles, so use your best judgment. However, if you apply a canonical tag to a URL (more on this below) that search engines deem to be dissimilar, they may ignore the tag. What is a canonical tag?: How to canonicalize URLs The most common way to designate a canonical is to add a meta tag  called the ‘canonical tag.’ The canonical tag looks like this: A canonical tag can point to any URL, either on the same website or on a different website. If it points to a different website, it’s called a ‘cross-domain canonical tag.’ But, in most cases it will point to the current URL, indicating that the current URL is—you guessed it—canonical. This is known as a self-referential canonical tag because the page is referring to itself. Wherever the tag points, Google says the URL should include the domain name. In other words, it should be something like https://mysite.com/page rather than just /page . While Google has strong opinions on canonical tags, it still sometimes ignores them . This might happen if the canonical tag points to a page with significantly different content, or if the page loads so slowly that Google has trouble indexing it, for example. While canonicalization is straightforward from a technical point of view, it isn't always clear why or when you should do it. Let’s look at both of these considerations. Why do you need canonicalization? Now, we know that canonical URLs are important to search engines like Google. But, search engines don't just use them to decide which pages to index and show in their search results—they also use them to decide how often to crawl (visit) a page. This means canonicalization can help you optimize your crawl budget (the number of pages a search engine bot will crawl and index on a given site, within a given time period). If you have a site with thousands of pages (such as an eCommerce site), it might take Google a long time to crawl all of them. You certainly don’t want Google to waste your crawl budget on lots of pages that have the same content and potentially leave out other important pages. By using the canonical tag, you are telling search engines which pages are duplicates so it will crawl those ones less often . This means canonicalization frees up Googlebot to crawl your other pages, finding and indexing new content more quickly. That’s not all: canonicalization can actually help your pages rank higher in Google Search. Although the exact algorithm that Google uses is a secret, we know it's influenced by lots of different factors. These factors include (but aren’t limited to) the content of your page, whether your page is user-friendly, and how quickly it loads on mobile. Links are particularly important: so-called “inbound” links (also known as backlinks) from reputable sites tell Google your page is high quality as well. But, if you have duplicate content, the different versions of a page may have different inbound links. For example, the first version could have five links from various sites, and another version might have only two. Sometimes this happens if you run a marketing campaign that uses a special URL to help with tracking. For example you might run an email newsletter campaign with a URL that looks like this: https://www.mysite.com?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=christmas The parts of the URL after the question mark are called “URL parameters” and, in this case, are just there to help with campaign tracking and reporting. But, other sites might link to this special campaign URL rather than just to https://www.mysite.com . So, the benefit gets diluted across the different versions of the page. Canonicalization helps you address this by consolidating the benefit of those links. With proper canonicalization, the version you want to appear in search results benefits from all the links to all versions of the page. This can potentially give that page a boost in search engine rankings. When do you need canonicalization? Canonicalization is useful in lots of different situations, not all of which are obvious. Here are some common scenarios. 01. Republishing content across sites First, think about canonicalization whenever you publish the same piece of content across multiple sites. Although this may seem like something only larger publishers do, it happens surprisingly often with smaller and local businesses, too. For example, an osteopath writes a useful article about the common causes of back pain and publishes it on the website for their clinic. They then open a new clinic across town and set up a new website specifically for this second location. The article is relevant here as well, so they also publish it on the second site. In this case, the osteopath would be well advised to canonicalize one version of their choosing rather than rely on Google to make the choice for them. (In an ideal world, of course, each site should have its own unique content.) 02. Syndication Another similar scenario is syndication. If you run a blog, you may have chosen to syndicate your content on third-party sites. This is often done using RSS feeds and can be an effective way to reach new or larger audiences. You may want to ask your syndication partners to add a canonical tag to any republished post, specifying your original blog post as the canonical version. You’ll definitely want to include a self-referential canonical tag on the original. Otherwise, you may find that the syndicated version is the one that Google decides to index—and your original blog post doesn’t appear in search results at all. Canonicalization of syndicated copies help the original in Google News as well: “Publishers that allow others to republish content can help ensure that their original versions perform better in Google News by asking those republishing to block or make use of canonical.” But, even with a canonical tag in place, the syndicated copy may outrank your original in search results. This is more likely to happen if “there’s a lot of other content around that page that is completely different,” according to Google’s John Mueller . 03. Parameterized URLs Canonicalization is also important whenever a website has parameterized URLs. Many websites use parameters for: Marketing campaigns, like our Christmas email example above Search filters, as we saw with the shoe results page example Keyword searches on content such as blogs Whatever the reason for them, parameters create a new URL. These versions should have a canonical tag pointing to the original (and the original should have a self-referential canonical tag). 04. URL variants You may have noticed that some web addresses contain “www” and others don't. Similarly, some end in a slash (/) and others don't. And, some are secure (starting in https) and others aren't (starting in http). In a worst case scenario, these three factors give us eight different versions of the same URL: https://www.mysite.com https://www.mysite.com/ https://mysite.com https://mysite.com/ http://www.mysite.com http://www.mysite.com/ http://mysite.com http://mysite.com/ In an ideal world, seven of those variants should automatically redirect the user to the eighth. (There are lots of different types of redirects, but the most appropriate one here would be a permanent 301 redirect .) However, if redirects aren’t in place, a canonical tag could mitigate the problems that these different URL variants cause. Canonicalization on Wix Wix automatically adds a self-referential canonical tag to every page on your site. While parameterized URLs aren’t particularly common on Wix sites, they do appear in a few situations ( collections on Wix Stores make use of parameters, for example). Wix automatically adds the correct canonical tag to these pages so you can be confident you won't have any problems with this type of duplicate content. A canonical tag pointing to the original version of a URL. Notice that, while the URL in the browser’s address bar has parameters appended to it, Wix canonicalizes to the non-parameterized URL. Additionally, Wix URLs follow the format https://www.mysite.com/ . All other variants will automatically 301 redirect to this. This is also the format used in the canonical tag. In most instances this is all you need. But in some very particular situations (for example, if you’ve already published a similar piece of content on an external site), you may want to change that default canonical tag. Instead of being self-referential, it should point to the canonical version of the content. How to customize the canonical tag on a Wix site To customize a page’s canonical tag on Wix , click on Menus & Pages on the left-hand side of the Editor. Next, click the Show More icon next to the relevant page and select SEO Basics , as shown below. Then, go to the Advanced SEO tab and click on canonical under Additional Tags . Click on the Show More icon and select Edit to customize the tag and select Apply to save the change. For vertical pages, such as blog posts, you can customize the canonical tag by navigating to the desired post within the Editor. Next, click on SEO in the left-hand menu and go to the Advanced tab. Similar to the workflow above, the Additional Tags section is where you can customize your canonical tag. If you do delete a custom canonical tag, the page will automatically revert to a self-referential tag. This removes the risk of accidentally having no tag at all. Even though Wix offers the ability to customize your canonical tags, in most cases, you’ll be just fine relying on the self-referential canonical tag that Wix adds for you. Use canonical tags to manage duplicate When used properly, canonical tags allow you to present Google and other search engines with one, canonical, version of each page. Make sure to use them with the best practices outlined above so that search engines and, ultimately, users land on the right page. James Clark - Web Analyst James Clark is a web analyst from London, with a background in the publishing sector. When he isn't helping businesses with their analytics, he's usually writing how-to guides over on his website Technically Product . 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Author: Solomon Thimothy Succeeding as a marketing agency takes work—economic uncertainty, client acquisition and retention, and scaling are some of the biggest challenges you must overcome if you want to stick around. The good news is that these are not totally new challenges in the agency world. Having run agencies for two decades, I can tell you that it’s still very much possible to run a successful one.  However, to survive and remain profitable over the long term, your agency must be agile and adaptable. This means embracing innovation and getting on the automation bandwagon.  No, it’s not a buzzword or just another trend with a limited shelf life. Automation and AI could be the life support you need to make headway in the coming months and years. Let’s take a look at how automation can help pick up the slack so you can focus on impactful, strategic decision making. Table of contents: Agency automation: What it is and why it’s worthwhile The impact of automation on agency growth, success, and profitability How to implement automation for your marketing agency The top 5 marketing agency processes to automate Lead generation Client onboarding, communication, and billing Project management and workflows Social media management Analytics and reporting Agency automation: What it is and why it’s worthwhile Agency automation is when you use technology to streamline and optimize processes within your agency. It may include tasks like client communication, project management, reporting, data analysis, sales prospecting, and so on. The end goal is to increase efficiency, reduce manual labor, and improve overall productivity, allowing agencies to focus more on client success while maintaining or improving revenue. Automation is critical for smaller agencies as it allows you to get more done with fewer resources. It can also dramatically reduce or eliminate laborious but unchallenging tasks from your to-do list. For example, at my agency, as the business grew, tasks began to pile up on my plate. I found myself wasting time on menial tasks, like updating our leads list and client records. Reporting too, can be a time sucker—the time spent creating reports  and explaining them could be better spent executing a new strategy.  By delegating and automating these repetitive tasks, I avoided getting pulled away from crucial decision-making and other high-priority responsibilities. Automation not only helps eliminate human error, but also saves significant time and resources. It allows agency owners and team members to focus on tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and strategic planning—areas where human input is irreplaceable. The impact of automation on agency growth, success, and profitability  Every agency owner’s dream is to run a growing, successful, and profitable agency. But what exactly does that look like? And, how exactly  does automation get you closer to that dream? Let’s examine the top agency performance criteria as well as how automation can bring about the highly desired trifecta of growth, success, and profitability. Enhanced productivity and scalability  — You can deploy solutions to automate some of your daily operations, like updating client data in your CRM. By automating these processes, you free up staff to focus on tasks that require higher levels of problem-solving or creativity. Think about updating a CRM contact record versus coming up with your newest product’s sales pitch—what’s likely going to make you (and the client) happier in the long run? Automation also helps to eliminate human error, which is another way it promotes productivity. After all, this is why banks have bill and coin-counting machines. The other clear benefit of agency automation is that it facilitates scalability. Regardless of what type of agency you run, if you’re growing, payroll is one of your biggest expenses. Automation allows you to do more with a smaller team, even if your client base expands. Streamlined processes, resources, and workflow optimization  — Repeatable processes are key to servicing clients, maintaining quality standards, and scaling your agency. Automation can accelerate just about any of your processes with little to no errors.  Take client onboarding, for example. Need to notify accounting? Need to send that welcome email? How about creating a login for the client? These are just a few examples of typical tasks that you can automate to expedite your overall time to execute and deliver a seamless client experience. Improved client communication and relationship management  — With support automation, you can be there for your clients even beyond your operating hours. You can implement automation at every stage of the customer journey: simplify client onboarding, expedite query resolution, and provide satisfactory service to every client, even at scale. A great example is deploying chatbots that are trained to address frequently asked questions and common customer problems. Your support team can also save time by focusing on truly significant client issues, instead of being consumed by the same daily requests.  Overhead cost reduction, increased profit margins, and efficiency  — Strategic automation saves time, human resources, and budget. These factors affect your bottom line, ensure you work at optimal capacity, and make tangible financial gains.  In fact, research shows marketing automation alone can reduce overhead costs by 12.2% . Not significant enough? Process automation as a whole can save agencies 25–40% in business process costs, according to research from Deloitte . How to implement automation for your marketing agency You can implement automation across all your agency’s departments: sales, marketing, customer service, support—you name it. Every department has tedious tasks that don’t amount to much when it comes to overall impact. However, they’re still critical and someone has to do them. When you add up all these tasks, you’ll be surprised what you can do with that time, talent, and energy.  If you need help finding a place to start, follow this simple roadmap:  Identify automation opportunities Analyze your workflows to pinpoint repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Prioritize processes that, if automated, would significantly impact efficiency and client satisfaction Assess your current systems Evaluate existing tools and workflows for automation compatibility. Determine if upgrades or changes are needed to support automation. Define your automation strategy Identify stakeholders responsible for overseeing the process. Establish an implementation timeline. Set specific, measurable goals for your automation efforts.  Allocate a budget and research solutions  Determine your automation investment budget (this will be spent on tools and implementation). Research cost-effective automation tools that meet your needs and offer scalability. Implement your new automated workflows and train your team Roll out automation changes gradually to minimize disruption. Provide comprehensive training on new tools and processes. Encourage feedback and address concerns to ensure smooth adoption. Remember, team buy-in is essential for successful automation implementation. Whether it’s higher-ups or the actual employees doing the work, understanding the role and benefits of automation are key to a win-win situation.  On the one hand, you need to get buy-in from leadership to invest in automation tools and software. On the other hand, you need to work with the team to identify what processes or tasks are best suited to automate and what new tool or method is most effective. Involve your team in the process, highlight the benefits, and address any concerns they may have about how automation will affect their roles and their growth potential.  The top 5 marketing agency processes to automate The best tasks or processes to automate are those that are highly repetitive, manual, and time consuming. Below are the most common processes that you can automate for your agency:  Lead generation Client onboarding, communication, and billing Project management and workflows Social media management Analytics and reporting Lead generation  Generating new leads is always critical as every agency needs a consistent pipeline. Artificial intelligence and machine learning advancements now enable tools to significantly automate lead generation  to identify, nurture, and convert prospects into paying customers. You can automate parts of the process or all of it, depending on your immediate goals.  There are plenty of options for automating lead generation, including email campaigns, social ads, lead magnets, pop-ups, forms, and more. At Clickx , we’ve been successful at scaling our prospecting efforts using lead generation tools, like Instantly , that make it easy to send prospect emails and follow-ups at scale.  However, if you have not used tools for lead generation before, here are some tips before you get started: Start small — Begin by automating one aspect of your lead generation process, such as email campaigns or social media ads. This allows you to learn and adjust without overwhelming your team. Utilize lead scoring — Implement an automated lead scoring system to prioritize your leads based on their likelihood to convert. This helps your sales team focus on the most promising prospects. Test and iterate — Regularly analyze the performance of your automated lead generation efforts and make adjustments as needed. What works for one agency might not work for another, so be prepared to fine-tune your approach. For prospecting and appointment setting, I recommend (and co-founded) Clickx , an AI-driven tool for automating lead generation and increasing sales. It can do everything from appointment scheduling to client servicing and email marketing. It’s easy to use and ideal for agencies gearing up for rapid growth and revenue generation.  The Clickx leads dashboard. Client onboarding, communication, and billing  Post-sales processes are crucial to developing long-term customer relationships. After all, the promptness of your response shows your dedication to your clients, and they will surely appreciate your commitment.  At our agency, we know that the first few days or weeks of a new client are critical for a long-term relationship. Below are some tremendously useful automation methods to ensure on-time delivery and a smooth onboarding process.  Zapier This is a dedicated workflow automation solution for small- to medium-sized businesses. You can integrate third-party apps into a host of other SaaS solutions (as shown below). You can also choose to automate certain parts of your client onboarding workflows or the entire process, per your needs.  An example of setting up a Zap when a session is booked via Wix Bookings. You can use Zapier to do things like integrate your email marketing tool with an existing system by creating a ‘zap’ to connect them. Need to send notifications when a lead comes in? Easy, create a zap that connects to your CRM or sends an email notification. It’s that simple. Choose Zapier  if you’re new to automation and want a flexible option to scale implementation in the future. There’s even a Zapier app for Wix  that offers over 50 trigger events for Wix’s most popular apps. A ‘zap’ that creates a monday.com item whenever a user fills out a form on your Wix website. Wix Automations A feature of the popular website builder Wix, you can use Wix Automations  for email campaigns, workflows, lead nurturing, and more. By sending a ‘next steps’ email when a visitor submits a form or an email notification when an invoice is overdue, Wix Automations enables you to be proactive with your clients without relying on to-do lists and reminders. Custom APIs Rope in a developer to create custom APIs to integrate automation apps specific to your requirements. While custom APIs are expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions, they offer complete control over your automation processes. For instance, some agencies develop custom APIs that integrate their CRM, project management tools, and billing systems. This allows for a seamless workflow where client information is automatically populated across all systems, tasks are created based on the client’s package, and invoices are generated and sent without manual intervention.  At our agency, we have used the open APIs of major tools like Google Ads, Meta Ads , LinkedIn Ads, and others to simplify reporting, provide better data, and ultimately create our own multi-faceted marketing reporting app.  While working with APIs can present a significant upfront investment, it often pays off in terms of time saved and reduced errors. Stripe This SaaS solution centralizes and automates your billing operations. You can integrate Stripe with your existing databases for billing records, invoicing, and payment processing. It’s great for businesses operating globally and looking to scale.  An example of a statement on Stripe. Source: Stripe. As a bonus, using Stripe means you don’t have to invest in additional security tools because this payment gateway uses high-level encryption and industry-leading safety protocols to ensure your client’s safety. Project management and workflows  Creating new tasks, task allocation, follow-ups, and submissions—project management automation tools can help you effortlessly organize, manage, and maintain even the most complex workflows. This will help you stay at the top of your game, especially if you work with multiple clients with tight deadlines.  Automating project management can be a game-changer. Some have reported reducing their project kickoff time by 50% and virtually eliminating missed deadlines. It also literally takes the project out of the black box—everyone is aware of the steps, the deliverables, and the timelines, making it easy for everyone to stay on task.  For agencies just starting with project management automation, look into popular tools like Asana or Monday.com . These platforms offer pre-built automation recipes that are easy to implement and can significantly streamline your workflows. Social media management  Social media management is an integral offering of any marketing agency worth its salt. You can leverage these platforms for ads, leads, revenue generation, reputation management, etc. Using dedicated tools to automate scheduling, ad campaigns, sentiment analysis, and the like, ensures you work smarter, not harder. Tools like Buffer  for scheduling posts across multiple platforms and Hootsuite  for social listening and sentiment analysis have allowed agencies to manage social media for more clients without proportionally increasing team size. For agencies looking to automate their social media management, starting with a tool like Sprout Social  or Later  could be beneficial. These platforms offer comprehensive features that can grow with your agency’s needs. Analytics and reporting Automating analytics and reporting has obvious advantages—it’s always up-to-date, eliminates human error, and makes data visualization easy. While you could likely use your existing analytics platforms’ reporting features , a centralized dashboard facilitates greater and more frequent use of data because anyone can access it anytime.  Many agencies found success developing custom dashboards that pull data from various sources ( Google Analytics , social media platforms, ad platforms, etc.) and present it in an easy-to-understand format. This approach can save teams countless hours and improve client communications by providing real-time updates and facilitating data-driven decisions . For agencies looking to automate their reporting, tools like Databox  or Supermetrics  are popular starting points. These platforms integrate with a wide range of data sources and allow you to create customized, automated reports. Automation: The best and only option for competitive marketing agencies Agency automation is not simply ‘nice to have’ anymore. You need to implement it if you want to match or exceed your competitors’ efficiency and capabilities (especially on a budget).  So, whether you’re a startup or a big marketing agency with teams across geographies, find ways to use automation across every department and role. It’s the key enabler you need to continue doing what you do: providing the best possible services for your clients.  Solomon Thimothy - Co-founder at Clickx Solomon Thimothy is a digital marketing expert with 17+ years of experience helping businesses scale through SEO and growth strategies. As the founder of Clickx, he’s worked with companies to drive organic traffic and dominate search results. Learn more at Clickx.io . Linkedin

Author: Ross Simmonds Businesses that rely on social media marketing know that there’s rarely enough hours in the week to research your audience, plan content, publish and promote it, and subsequently engage with your followers about it. Generative artificial intelligence has the potential to change that. But for all AI’s capabilities, it’s still too risky for brands to let it run your social media presence without active human guidance. Over the last three years, I’ve worked closely with some of the top brands in the world to understand how AI can support their workflows and processes. I’ve spoken at conferences around the world on the power of AI and how marketers can use it to drive better business outcomes—outcomes that include:  More efficient and productive teams More agile creative processes More velocity for content production Better return on investment on social media And in this essay, my goal is to share all of that with you.  Let’s get into it:  Should you use AI for social media? Strengths and weaknesses Prompt engineering: Tap into the full potential of AI for social media AI for customer engagement on social media: Proceed at your own risk AI for social content production and distribution Wix AI tools for social media Add AI to your social media workflows: Considerations and suggestions Should you use AI for social media? Strengths and weaknesses Social media and artificial intelligence have a long relationship. After all, AI and machine learning power the algorithms that determine what content shows up on your customers’ feeds. As digital marketers, it only seems logical to consider AI within our own workflows and systems for creating social media content. But, how do you do that? What are AI’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to social media? And, more importantly, how do you match its strengths to your brand’s marketing needs? The first thing I want to specify is: AI’s efficacy depends on the particular use case. Your success with AI for social media depends on how well you can blend its strengths with your own, as the human expert, marketer, or business owner. I’ll also add that in a few years, it’s very possible that everything I’m saying you shouldn’t use AI for today will be 100% feasible to use AI for at that point (but, I’ll probably have updated this content by then).  However as it stands right now, I avoid using AI for the following social media tasks and advise that others avoid it for these use cases a well: Audience research Strategy development Social account management Unedited long-form social content Unsupervised customer service Why?  ChatGPT and most LLMs currently do not have the capability to research audiences, conduct keyword analysis, analyze communities , or dive into the qualitative and quantitative data associated with your email list and use that to figure out a plan. These are still tasks that require human intuition, experience, and common sense (remember, ChatGPT  is just putting words together based on relationships with other words—it doesn’t actually do any ‘thinking’). It’s also quickly becoming obvious to customers when a brand creates and distributes AI-generated content . The best brands include a human layer in the process before publishing to ensure that the content is actually what human customers might want to see. Not to get redundant, but remember, AI does not shop for products or services so it’s really unlikely to generate the best (unedited) content for those purposes. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid AI at all costs when running your social media presence.  AI can be effective for… Because… Creating first drafts Short social content Brainstorming ideas Short Q&A responses Repurposing content AI handles a variety of lightweight tasks (e.g., short Q&A responses, brainstorming ideas) quite well. It can also perform well as part of a workflow (rather than to simply generate content that users will see) because of the human oversight inherent in bigger tasks/projects. So, how can you do these things? Let’s dive in. Prompt engineering: Tap into the full potential of AI for social media What’s the best way to create content for social media? It’s the combination of great prompt engineering and creativity.  You’re probably familiar with striving for creative excellence, but prompt engineering might be a newer concept for you. Here’s how it works: Prompt engineering  is the process of crafting and refining the instruction or query you feed to a generative AI tool to improve its output. Prompt engineering probably won’t get you ‘perfect’ results, but it can vastly improve your starting point.  When you’re creating content for social media, it’s not enough to write a simple (or ambiguous) prompt like:  Create a LinkedIn update promoting my brand.  You need to optimize your prompts for the content you’re looking to generate. Here are the four most important things to remember when crafting AI prompts for social media assets to use in your marketing material:  Define your goal or objective: Your prompt must clearly define what the AI should produce (e.g., the desired format, target audience, tone of the content). Set the context:  Provide relevant background information to help the AI model grasp your expectations, leading to more accurate and pertinent responses. Offer examples and guidance:  Include examples in your prompts to give the AI a clear template to follow, especially when you want it to adhere to specific structures or guidelines. Continuously iterate and refine your prompts: Just like any solid communication strategy, prompt engineering is iterative. Test different variations, evaluate the results, and refine your prompts to align them with your evolving objectives. Here’s an example of how to create a great prompt using the techniques I mentioned above:  The prompt above excels at providing the AI with: The role it needs to play (i.e., copywriter) Which creators to take inspiration from (i.e., Ann Handley and Seth Godin) A clear framework to use (i.e., AIDA) A series of examples to use for inspiration And then at the end of the prompt, it tells the AI exactly what it wants:  The results?  Social media posts that attract attention, align with the ideal voice, and ( with some editing ) can be scheduled to go live immediately to drive some engagement and buzz.  AI for customer engagement on social media: Proceed at your own risk Replying to customers, fans, and followers is one of the most common AI use cases on social media. When I first started in digital marketing, I worked in ‘social media newsrooms,’ where social media specialists monitored Twitter (now X) for posts about companies and replied to these posts in seconds. Today, AI is tackling this task on behalf of some of the largest companies in the world. Rather than outsourcing this type of work to a call center or social media communications firm, many organizations use AI-generated agents to manage replies, responses, and criticism.  Does it always work? Not a chance.  There’s a lot of examples and press about AI-generated responses  that miss the point of the customer's (sometimes even influencers) original social media posts.  This is why it’s important to be careful with how far you go in deploying this technology. Can it help you write replies faster? 100%.  But, should it be 100% automated? That’s a risk and you have to decide whether you’re willing to take it or not.  AI for social content production and distribution As technology advances, so does its impact on industries and professions. Do not overlook the ways in which generative AI influences how designers, writers, videographers, editors, etc. do their jobs.  In recent years, there’s a growing trend of using AI tools to assist in content production tasks, such as writing, designing, animation, editing, and even recording video (as I’ll show you later). For example, Midjourney (shown above) is an independent research lab that provides AI-generated images based on text prompts, similar to other AI image generators, like OpenAI’s DALL-E.  As you can see from the image below, the text doesn’t always come out perfect (which is incredibly common with AI-generated images at this point in the technology’s maturity) but the output looks pretty good:  One of the use cases I’ve experimented with quite a bit on social media is using generative AI to create video content. Here’s an example of a video of me (kind of) and me:  I used HeyGen , one of my favorite AI tools for this. Can you tell which is human and which is AI-generated?  I’ve also used AI tools for content distribution , turning blog posts into tweets and crafting social media posts to promote podcasts. Tools like Distribution.ai (which is my own)  make it possible for me to upload audio files from my podcast, Create Like The Greats , and then create LinkedIn posts and X content from that audio file in a matter of seconds.  This is what works for me and my business at this point, and while I recommend these tools, I encourage you to test and take advantage of free trials and demos to figure out what’s feasible (and just as importantly, sustainable) for your social media marketing goals. Wix AI tools for social media Starting with what you already have access to (or can access for free) is a great, low-risk way to experiment with AI. Wix website owners can access a range of AI-powered features  to expand their online presence. The AI image creator  is a great example: You can even use the Photo Studio feature to upscale resolution, erase an object, extend the image, remove the background, etc. Additionally, one of the most common AI uses for digital marketers is generating copy for social media posts. AI tools , like ChatGPT, now give social media managers the ability to create this copy 10x faster.  As an example of this in action, instead of me thinking for an extra 10 minutes about this blog post’s title tags  and meta descriptions , AI can do the heavy lifting. Wix’s AI meta tag creator  makes it easy for me to generate this content in seconds. While this feature is typically used for web content, you can set your og:description (social description) and og:title (social title) to mirror your title tag and meta description so that the AI takes care of even more for you. Of course, you should still review the outputs and seize any opportunities to further optimize it (with a CTA , for example) before publishing. Add AI to your social media workflows: Considerations and suggestions The opportunities to incorporate AI into your workflows as a social media marketer are significant. It can be a go-to for so many parts of your job, including your research, creation, and optimization processes. But, here’s one area that most people overlook: AI as a brainstorming tool.  One of the best ways to avoid writer ’ s block is to treat AI like a creative partner. Start a dialog directly with your favorite LLM tool to discuss some of the things that you’re thinking about as it relates to possible content ideas. One way of doing this is to find a social media idea that works in one industry and then ask your favorite AI tool to use that for inspiration in creating new ideas.  Let’s use the HVAC company again as an example. I could take a post from Semrush (the SEO rank tracking  tool) which talks about a marketers ‘dream 24 hours’ and ask ChatGPT to use it for inspiration on a ‘dream 24 hours’ post for an HVAC professional:  And in a matter of seconds, it responded: “Why do we love working in HVAC? Sure, there are the technical skills, the challenging repairs, and the customer satisfaction... but let’s be real, we’re here for the good stuff: comfort and efficiency! The dream 24 hours of any HVAC pro: 09:00  - Kicking off the day with a successful repair, leaving a customer’s home warm and cozy. 10:00  - Learning new energy-saving tips to share with clients. 11:00  - Installing a high-efficiency system that cuts energy bills in half. 12:00  - Getting a 5-star review  from a happy homeowner. 14:00  - Diagnosing issues in record time with the latest HVAC tools. 16:00  - Wrapping up a commercial project ahead of schedule. 18:00  - Celebrating the day’s wins over coffee with the team. 🔥 BONUS : All service calls booked today get a 20% discount! 👉 Watch out : This offer is only valid for the next 24 hours! Not bad eh? While you’re probably excited about the potential of AI for your social media strategy, it’s very important to take a step back and assess your current social media plans.  Before you start signing up for tools, you need to understand:  How much time you can actively invest on this channel  Your potential budget for AI tools The tasks that stand out to you as the most worthwhile/relevant for utilizing generative AI That having been said, one recommendation I like to make (that almost every creator and business can benefit from) is to use an AI tool that schedules content to publish at optimal times. A lot of the social networks offer scheduling directly on their platforms, but tools like Hootsuite provide a depth of features that go above and beyond the scheduling functionality built into LinkedIn, Facebook, X, or any other network.  AI isn’t about perfect outputs—it’s about incremental efficiency gains for your social media workflows “AI will do 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today.” — Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI That’s quite a bold statement, especially from my position as a marketer.  So, here’s my take: I’m not sure how close we are to a superintelligence that can do all the things we do. But, I do know that some of the tasks we focus on today will eventually be completely irrelevant thanks to generative AI. That’s not a prediction—it’s a fact.  My suggestion to social media marketers and managers is simply to experiment with the technology and look for advantages and opportunities. Look for ways to do more with less and see how AI can facilitate your workflows to be more efficient, but just as creative and human. Ross Simmonds - CEO of Foundation Marketing Ross Simmonds is the founder of Foundation Marketing, a B2B SaaS Marketing agency that works with some of the worlds most successful brands. He's also the author of Create Once. Distribute Forever: How Great Creators Spread Their Ideas and How You Can Too . Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Ray Martinez Early in my SEO career, I would stare at a Raven Tools or Google Analytics report as if staring at an unsolved math problem. There were so many metrics measuring so many things. I struggled because I didn’t understand how each metric contributed to the overarching story of digital marketing performance.  At that time, I didn’t understand a simple but powerful concept…  Value is added by the story we tell using data—not on data alone.  In this article, I’ll walk you through why data-driven storytelling matters for digital marketers, with examples from my own experiences, and how it adds value for your stakeholders.  Table of contents: What is data storytelling? Step 1: Define clear goals and choose KPIs that tell the story Step 2: Collect diverse data points for a comprehensive story Step 3: Analyze patterns to highlight key insights Step 4: Use your key insights to build a narrative arc Step 5: Create visualizations that make your data accessible Step 6: Showcase ROI in real-world terms What is data storytelling? Data storytelling uses channels, segments, dimensions, and metrics to build a compelling narrative  that can guide strategic decisions. Simply put, it connects real-world actions to online performance by using data to tell a story. For example, a former client (a D-I university that won a national football title) would see spikes in impressions, clicks, and users during game days throughout the season. There was also a rise in ‘direct’ traffic.  When I asked the client if they had done anything else to advertise, they said they had little banners with their domain printed across the stadium. Those banners appeared on nationally televised games, resulting in millions of impressions and weekly traffic spikes, which skewed data and obscured progress.  Understanding these real-world spikes helped me measure my partner’s ad’s effectiveness (by measuring branded traffic via organic search and user spikes for the ‘Direct’ default channel group). That additional information provided a complete picture, which helped me better understand and position gains and losses for the client.  Having that context also helped me do something else important—it helped me avoid looking foolish by wrongly taking credit for other channels’ and team’s efforts.  So, how do you craft an effective data story? The following steps discuss the critical components of creating a compelling narrative: Define clear goals and choose KPIs that tell the story Collect diverse data points for a comprehensive story Analyze patterns to highlight key insights Use your key insights to build a narrative arc Create visualizations that make your data accessible Showcase ROI in real-world terms Step 1: Define clear goals and choose KPIs that tell the story Do you know what you’re measuring and why you’re measuring it?  Early in my tenure at Archer Education , the SEO team and I spent much of our time educating partners on why ranking improvements, impression and click growth, and earned links  should matter to them.  Simply put, we weren’t discussing what mattered to our partners.  What did matter to our partners? As a team, we often asked ourselves this question. We had different partners with different needs. Some partners focused on application volume, others on enrollments, and some on leads. Some metrics were consistent across all clients, while others were more niche. Adjusting to client needs is not only a best practice, but also a must for practitioners who work across various industries with varying objectives and goals.  Pro Tip:  Take the time to learn what success looks like from your client’s perspective. At Archer, we schedule in-depth discovery calls to align with stakeholders on their goals. My thought process around this is simple—ask what success looks like in your stakeholder’s role and the larger organizational goals. If they meet monthly with the board, create a report that gives them key points or an executive summary to highlight value. That type of added value goes a long way in retaining clients.  Step 2: Collect diverse data points for a comprehensive story As digital marketers, we have a wide array of metrics to review. So, we mapped our key metrics according to what our partners cared about. Looking at metrics across various platforms, we tried to align each metric with a ‘why’ statement (e.g., why should the client pay attention to this metric?). It looked something like the table below: Metric Definition Why it matters to clients Example goal Impressions The total number of times an ad or content is displayed to users. Indicates brand visibility and the reach of marketing efforts. Achieve 100,000 impressions per quarter for program ads. Clicks The number of times users clicked on an ad, email, or content link. Measures user interest in programs and marketing content. Increase clicks by 20% on organic program pages. Total users (GA4) The total number of unique users that interacted with the site within a given timeframe. Reflects the overall reach and ability to drive traffic to the website. Grow total users by 15% YoY for specific program pages. Engagement rate (GA4) The percentage of engaged sessions (active interactions lasting 10+ seconds, with a conversion or 2+ pageviews). Demonstrates the quality of user interactions and relevance of site content. Maintain an engagement rate of 60% for core program pages. Leads (GA4 or CRM) The total number of users that completed a desired action (e.g.,filling out an inquiry form). Highlights initial interest and potential for future enrollments. Generate 500 leads per quarter through inquiry forms. Applications (CRM) The total number of completed applications submitted by prospective students. Measures intent and indicates a lead’s transition to a more serious prospect. Receive 200 completed applications per program each quarter. Enrolls (CRM) The total number of students who enroll in a program. The ultimate success metric is tied to revenue and program growth. Enroll 15 students per program in each cohort. When selecting your metrics, consider what you need to build your story. Including too many metrics and data points creates a convoluted message. Refer back to the goals you agreed upon with the client to determine the necessary metrics. If you’re looking at lead-based goals, you’ll want to understand traffic and conversion  (versus an awareness-based goal, where you might want to look at metrics like impressions or page views).  You should also look at other data points outside the various reporting platforms. At Archer, Admissions and Retention teams guide prospective students through enrollment. The Admissions team’s role is similar to that of a sales team—their metrics help dissect lead quality. This level of granular conversion data helps us understand what our prospective students (customers) need.  Think about what your process looks like: If you’re a lead generator, do you have regular feedback and down-funnel performance tracking on lead quality? If you’re in eCommerce, did you see an uptick in traffic or cart abandonment?  Knowing your process will lead you toward your richest sources of data.  Step 3: Analyze patterns to highlight key insights Now that you’re armed with metrics, you want to benchmark your metrics and measure against that as a baseline. For some clients, you might look at year-over-year data, quarter-over-quarter, month-over-month, or all of the above.  In higher education, universities will see seasonality -related traffic lulls from June until mid-August and mid-November until late January. These periods are breaks for many industries, while the busiest time of year has anomalous traffic and conversion spikes for others.  Do you see drops or gains in traffic for a page or channel? How was conversion impacted? How did your competitors fare? Asking the right questions leads you from reading metrics to gathering insight. Pro Tip:  Ask your partner about other efforts they’re working on. This can help you gain deeper insight into what’s happening from a site traffic standpoint. For example, I’ve witnessed partners that ran out of “Yellow Ribbon” funding (a government-funded program designed to enroll veterans) see their branded search volume and clicks halved overnight. What looked like a major loss in traffic was anticipated by the partner.  Step 4: Use your key insights to build a narrative arc Now that you’ve gone from metrics to critical insights that can guide your data story, see how they fit into the overall picture. In higher education, we look at the student journey. Degrees are an extended sales cycle product. Prospective students often interact with multiple channels on their journey. At Archer, we achieved stakeholder buy-in once we could highlight the impact of cost per acquisition via organic efforts. Sharing these metrics with our internal paid team created efficiencies that spread across channels. For example, if our SEO efforts drive higher enrollments for a particular program, our paid team can pull back on spending. This especially matters when transactional keywords have a high CPC or CPL.  Look at your metrics and what they tell you about your users. Learning about their age or location indicates lifestyle, interests, and other pertinent information that tells your story. Where did the conversion points happen? How many touchpoints did they hit along that path?  Another great indicator of the narrative arc is content. An omnichannel approach  to content translates to varied content types along your customer journey. For example, users landing on a paid landing page are conversion-oriented traffic, whereas users landing on a blog post will be spread across the various stages of a conversion funnel. In higher education, prospective students that don’t convert on paid ads translate to branded search. They’ll interact with Meta Ads , Google Ads, blogs, faculty profiles, and social media posts. Each channel plays its part in moving the prospective student towards applying.  Step 5: Create visualizations that make your data accessible Now that we’ve discussed gathering your data and translating it into a narrative arc, how do we illustrate that value? I’ve seen performance decks fall flat with unclear or cluttered charts that added little to the conversation.  Anything that doesn’t add value is a distraction. Always remember what you’re trying to convey when creating a data visualization. What is the information pertinent to your narrative?  I created a table below to highlight different types of visualizations and when they are applicable. These are canned, but create an organized picture of the purpose and use case. (The table itself is meta because it’s an effective example of visualizing data clearly.) Visualization type When to use it Purpose Examples Bar chart Comparing discrete categories or tracking changes over time. Highlight differences or trends in performance. Compare engagement rates across campaigns or leads generated by channel. Line chart Showing trends or performance over a continuous period. Identify patterns or seasonality. Track monthly impressions or click-through rates trends. Pie chart Representing proportional data to show composition. Understand the percentage breakdown. Show the share of traffic from different channels or device types. Stacked car chart Comparing parts of a whole across multiple categories. Compare contributions to a total. Visualize contributions of social media platforms to total conversions. Scatter plot Identifying relationships or correlations between two variables. Explore relationships between data points. Correlate ad spend and conversions or analyze user engagement vs. session time. Heat map Visualizing data density, intensity, or performance variations across multiple categories. Spot patterns or high-performing areas for design, conversion, and user experience. Analyze click performance across a webpage or traffic. Create compelling visualizations that establish visual focal points for each step along your user/customer journey. I often liken data visualizations to storyboards from the golden age of advertising—a good storyboard sold clients on the big idea.  “Truly great images make all the other millions of images you look at unimportant. You gotta look at an image and understand it in a nanosecond.”  — George Lois Step 6: Showcase ROI in real-world terms Now, it’s finally time to illustrate value to your client. Showcasing ROI corresponds with step one of this process . What’s your goal and track to get there? Did organic conversions go up? Do you have access to backend analytics from a CRM or eCommerce platform? Returning to my earlier example, my team and I discovered that our old reporting format wasn’t showcasing the success we brought to our clients—we were shouting into the void about traffic, while our partners were interested in enrollments.  SEO Manager Sean Taylor, Vice President of Analytics Cherie D’Souza, and I took on the task of working with our clients to better understand their requirements. The reality was that every partner had overlapping needs with various levels of customization. It’s a process we’re still refining and working on.  In our efforts, we had regular discussions with clients around lead mapping, goals, and sources to learn their requirements. This is valuable because it creates a framework for what stakeholders/clients prioritize. This exercise requires and encourages collaboration across client and internal teams. It shouldn’t be a conversation that only occurs once—it should be an ever-evolving dialogue around conversion and business goals.  Review and refine your data story for maximum impact and client retention After you've crafted your story, it's time to practice and present it. Focus on showcasing the value you bring to your client at every step. As you deliver your narrative, leave room for questions and discussion. Clients often provide valuable data or insights during these conversations, which can help refine and strengthen your reporting to better reflect your value and encourage client retention down the line. Ray Martinez - VP, SEO at Archer Education Ray Martinez is the VP of SEO at Archer Education, where he leads a dedicated team comprised of senior analysts, specialists, and project managers. Together, they craft, implement, oversee, and evaluate SEO strategies for prestigious higher education institutions across the globe. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Krystal Taing The digital landscape has long been dominated by a handful of tech giants whose influence over search, social media, and eCommerce has grown seemingly unchecked. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA)  has begun (and will continue) to change that dynamic. By targeting the monopolistic activities of ‘gatekeepers’ like Google, Meta, and Apple, the DMA aims to foster a fairer, more competitive digital ecosystem. This legislation isn’t just another regulation to be aware of—it’s a game changer. For agencies, understanding the DMA is crucial to help their small business clients navigate these changes and capitalize on new possibilities. Enterprises are in a similar situation, but with the added challenge of executing at scale.  From changes in search engine operations to shifts in marketing strategies , the DMA introduces both challenges and opportunities that you must prepare for. Let’s get started. Table of contents: Why the European Union introduced the Digital Markets Act Key elements of the Digital Markets Act The DMA era: Strategic adjustments for agencies Prepare your agency to navigate changes from the DMA Why the European Union introduced the Digital Markets Act The digital economy has grown exponentially over the past two decades, with much of this growth driven by a few dominant players. Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta (formerly Facebook), and companies like them have become gatekeepers , controlling access to essential services like search engines, app stores, and social media.  This dominance leads to several problems: Limited competition — Smaller businesses struggle to compete against these giants that can prioritize their own services and stifle innovation. Data moats — Gatekeepers collect vast amounts of user data, giving them an outsized advantage in targeted advertising and user behavior analysis. Limited consumer choice — Gatekeepers often lock consumers into specific ecosystems with limited alternatives. To address these issues, the European Union developed the Digital Markets Act, which came into effect in May 2023. Its primary goal is to create a level playing field where small businesses and new entrants can compete fairly.  The DMA sets clear rules for gatekeepers, aiming to: Prevent self-preferencing, where gatekeepers prioritize their own products or services. Ensure interoperability and data portability, allowing users to switch platforms easily. Foster innovation by giving smaller players a fair shot at reaching their audiences. For agencies, understanding the DMA isn’t just about compliance; it’s about staying ahead of industry shifts and leveraging new opportunities for clients. Key elements of the Digital Markets Act To guide your stakeholders, you’ll first need to learn the following elements of the DMA: What is a ‘gatekeeper’? Changes in search engine operations What is a ‘gatekeeper’? Source: European Commission A gatekeeper is a large digital platform that meets specific criteria outlined by the DMA. These include: Annual revenue: Companies with an annual EU revenue of at least €7.5 billion in the last three years or a market valuation of at least €75 billion. User base: Platforms with more than 45 million monthly active end users and at least 10,000 yearly active business users in the EU. Core platform services: Companies that offer essential services, such as search engines, social media platforms, messaging apps, or online marketplaces. Examples of gatekeepers include Google (Search and YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Apple (App Store), and Amazon (eCommerce and AWS). To curb anti-competitive practices, the DMA imposes several regulations on gatekeepers: No self-preferencing — Gatekeepers cannot rank their own products or services more favorably in search results. For instance, Google may no longer prioritize Google Shopping over competitors. Data sharing and portability — Users must be able to move their data between platforms. This includes transferring playlists, contacts, or messages from one service to another. Interoperability — Messaging services, like WhatsApp and iMessage, may need to work seamlessly with smaller competitors, allowing users to communicate across platforms. Transparency in advertising — Gatekeepers must provide advertisers with more detailed performance data, offering insights into how their ads perform relative to competitors’ ads. These changes aim to dismantle gatekeepers’ stranglehold on digital markets, opening up opportunities for smaller players. Changes in search engine operations The default search choice screen that appears to Android users in the EU. Source: Google. Search engines (particularly Google) face significant changes under the DMA. As a gatekeeper, Google is required to adjust its algorithms  and operations to comply with the new rules. Immediate changes (already in effect) Anticipated changes Choice screens  for Search and Maps: Google introduced a ‘choice screen’ in Europe, prompting users to select their preferred search engine and map service. This move gives smaller competitors, like Bing or DuckDuckGo, a fighting chance. Neutral search results: The DMA mandates that search engines provide unbiased search results. For example, when users search for products, Google must present third-party shopping platforms on equal footing with Google Shopping. Algorithmic transparency: Google and other search engines may need to disclose more about how their algorithms work, particularly if they affect the ranking of competing services. Local search impact: Agencies should expect changes in how Google displays local search results. Google Maps may no longer dominate local searches, creating space for competitors. These changes will alter how agencies approach SEO and paid search strategies. The DMA era: Strategic adjustments for agencies Whenever gatekeepers change how they operate (or the government forces them to do so), you’ll need to pivot your plans accordingly. On a high level, that means you’ll need to: Adapt SEO strategies Adjust paid search strategies Comply and innovate Leverage the right technology Anticipate future changes Adapt SEO strategies Under the DMA, traditional SEO practices  may require significant adjustments. Agencies should consider the following strategies: Focus on content quality — As search engines emphasize neutrality, content relevance and quality  will play an even larger role in ranking. Agencies must prioritize creating high-quality, user-focused content . Diversify keywords and platforms — With potential shifts in search algorithms, relying solely on Google could be risky. Agencies should explore optimizing for alternative search engines, like Bing. Leverage structured data — Schema markup and structured data  can improve how search engines understand and display content, boosting visibility. Adjust paid search strategies Paid search campaigns will also face new dynamics. To that end: Explore alternative ad platforms — As Google’s ad dominance is challenged, consider diversifying ad spend across emerging platforms. Monitor campaign performance closely — With increased transparency requirements, agencies will gain more insights into ad performance. Use this data to refine targeting and bidding strategies. Comply and innovate Staying compliant with DMA regulations doesn’t mean sacrificing creativity. Agencies can: Audit client practices — Ensure all marketing practices align with DMA requirements, particularly in data usage and reporting. Experiment with new formats — Interactive content (like quizzes or live streams) can boost engagement and stand out in search results. Leverage the right technology Adopting the appropriate tools is crucial for staying competitive in a DMA-regulated environment: SEO tools  — Platforms like Semrush  or Ahrefs can help monitor rankings and keyword performance changes. Local marketing tools — Tools such as Uberall or Moz Local can help you optimize local business listings  across multiple platforms, ensuring maximum visibility. Anticipate future changes The DMA is just the beginning. As digital markets evolve, more regulations may emerge, potentially influencing: Privacy practices — Stricter data protection laws could impact targeted advertising. AI and automation — Future regulations might address the use of AI in search algorithms and content creation. Organizations must remain agile, investing in ongoing education and staying ahead of regulatory trends so that they can hit the ground running when new laws go into effect. Prepare your agency to navigate changes from the DMA The Digital Markets Act marks a turning point in how the digital economy operates, and agencies need to be both strategic and tactical in their response. Here’s a summary of the most impactful steps your agency can take to help clients thrive in this new era: Conduct a DMA compliance audit Diversify digital strategies Revisit local search optimization Leverage new transparency in paid advertising Focus on high-quality, DMA-compliant content Adopt advanced tools and tech Educate your clients Conduct a DMA compliance audit Evaluate your current strategies to ensure they align with the DMA’s regulations. Focus on practices related to SEO, paid advertising, and data usage. This ensures that both your agency and your clients avoid penalties while staying competitive in a compliant marketplace. For example: Determine if your client/business utilizes services from any of the designated gatekeepers, which include Alphabet (Google, YouTube), Amazon, Apple, Booking.com , ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), and Microsoft (LinkedIn) Ensure that personal data collection aligns with the DMA’s consent requirements, which state that consent must be… Freely Given — Users should have a genuine choice without any form of coercion. Specific — Consent should be obtained for distinct purposes. Informed — Users must be provided with clear information about data collection and its intended use. Unambiguous — Consent should be indicated through a clear affirmative action. Review and document how personal data is utilized, ensuring it is only used for the purposes for which consent was obtained. Avoid combining personal data from different sources without explicit user consent, as prohibited under the DMA. Verify that gatekeepers allow the use of third-party applications on their operating systems without undue restrictions. Ensure that clients can access data generated on the core platform services and that gatekeepers do not favor their own services over those of third parties. Confirm that users have the ability to uninstall pre-installed applications and change default settings on operating systems or browsers that favor gatekeepers' products and services. Ensure that users can easily withdraw consent and that this process is as straightforward as giving consent. Ensure that gatekeepers provide advertisers and publishers with information about advertisements placed, including remuneration, fees, and performance metrics, free of charge. Verify that the business is allowed to offer their products and services on third-party platforms or their own platforms at the same price as on the gatekeepers’ platforms. Maintain thorough records of data processing activities, consent records, and compliance measures. Regularly audit data practices to ensure ongoing adherence to DMA requirements. Diversify digital strategies Reducing reliance on a single platform minimizes risks and opens new opportunities for audience engagement. Expand beyond Google by optimizing for alternative search engines (like Bing) or LLMs (like ChatGPT ). If there are emerging players/smaller platforms in your industry, you may be able to secure favorable terms and grow alongside them. You can also target underserved niches—smaller search engines or platforms may cater to specific audiences, providing you opportunities for niche marketing. Revisit local search optimization Local search remains critical for small businesses, so ensure visibility across all relevant platforms to drive foot traffic and conversions. An example of a local business listing in Apple Maps. Update local business profiles across multiple platforms , not just Google My Business. Incorporate strategies for platforms like Apple Maps  and other location-based services. Leverage new transparency in paid advertising Greater insights allow you to optimize campaigns more effectively, improving ROI for your clients. Use the additional ad performance data required by the DMA to fine-tune targeting, bidding, and creative strategies. Focus on high-quality, DMA-compliant content Invest in creating diverse, high-quality content, such as blog posts, videos, and infographics that align with evolving search algorithms . Quality content will remain a cornerstone of visibility, particularly as regulating bodies demand more neutrality and transparency. Adopt advanced tools and technology Implement tools that help track rankings , local visibility, and ad performance across multiple platforms. Platforms like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Uberall are great starting points. These tools will help you stay agile, making data-driven adjustments as search shifts under the DMA’s influence. Educate your clients Empowering your clients with knowledge strengthens trust and positions your agency as a forward-thinking partner. Host webinars , workshops, or provide one-on-one consultations to explain the DMA’s impact and the steps you’re taking to adapt. Stay agile and future-focused to thrive in the midst of new regulations As technology and consumer preferences develop, regulatory agencies will continue to step in to protect competition. It’s a cycle you can almost set your watch to. Whether it’s the DMA or any other new legislation, dedicate time to R&D for new tactics and technologies. Set up systems to track regulatory updates and emerging market trends.  Digital regulations will continue to evolve, and agencies that stay ahead of these changes can maintain a competitive edge for themselves and their clients. Krystal Taing - Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions, Uberall Krystal Taing is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall. She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU. She helps brands at managing hybrid customer experiences. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Michelle Goodall   Communities were foundational to the nascent web. Long before social media, groups of people and clusters of communities serving a multitude of interests gathered in spaces like bulletin boards and forums. They made the early internet a truly collaborative, connective global space full of possibilities.    In the enterprise setting, ‘community’ has largely been a separate discipline from marketing. In fact, many community specialists sit in customer success or customer experience, and have actively kept marketers at arms length (and often with good reason).   But in recent years, many of the largest brands have invested in digital communities, with global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company even calling community “the big idea in marketing for this decade.” Community-based marketing can turn your users into brand advocates, provide a wealth of ideas for content and product development, serve as a potential pipeline for leads, foster customer loyalty, and simply make your audience feel like they belong—all powerful advantages for any brand that needs to distinguish itself from the competition. In this article, I’ll walk you through: What community-based marketing (CBM) is The business case for community-based marketing CBM & SEO: A powerful partnership for search visibility How CBM drives every part of the digital marketing funnel Examples: How brands leverage CBM for better SEO, leads, and product development Success factors for community-based marketing 01. Ensure organizational alignment, clear objectives, and the right KPIs 02. Provide a clear value proposition and ‘why?’ for prospective members 03. Big isn’t always best 04. Build and maintain a trusted, inclusive space 05. Hire professional community managers to represent your brand and nurture growth 06. Don’t treat your community as a broadcast channel 07. Create culture through community rituals 08. Choose the right community platform What is community-based marketing (CBM)? Also known as ‘community-led growth,’ Ashley Friedlein and I defined community-based marketing (CBM) in 2020 as:  “Bringing people together around a shared practice, purpose, place, product or set of circumstances to create insights and closer, more valuable relationships with prospects, customers and other stakeholders to deliver organizational value.” — Ashley Friedlein & Michelle Goodall Simply put, it’s the intentional strategy of developing and managing a community space (or spaces) to support marketing objectives (i.e., to identify, anticipate, and satisfy customer requirements profitably). Today, I’d add that the definition should extend to identifying community spaces that already exist and building those into your marketing strategy (but more on that coming up later ). Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, your community must align to your organizational strategy and help you deliver marketing fundamentals (i.e., brand messaging, customer support, etc.) well, no matter the shape and size of your target audience.   To that end, I’ve developed a categorization called ‘The 5 Ps and 1C of community.’ The 5 Ps of community are: Communities of Play  — These are typically communities where members come together because they enjoy a shared hobby, sport, or pastime. Communities of Product  — These are communities where members seek customer support and are given advice, help, and tips around a product or platform. Examples of such communities could include Jeep Wrangler owners, digital marketing agencies that build on Wix, etc. Communities of Practice  — These are communities where members share a job function, specific skills, or a common discipline (e.g., law, medicine, marketing, public relations, etc). Communities of Place  — These communities are bound together by a love of, origin from, or identification with a country, region, city, or venue. Communities of Purpose  — These communities tend to have a higher social purpose that brings members together to take action, such as eradication of single-use plastics or ending child hunger. And the 1C of community is: Communities of Circumstance  — These are communities where members are driven by a set of circumstances and life experiences, such as people living with the impact of Parkinson’s Disease. The business case for community-based marketing Many well known brands have gained their consumer awareness during a golden era of mass media advertising and reach, and then built on that momentum with personalization for marketing effectiveness. But, digital channels have become more costly, saturated, and noisy. One increasingly popular way marketers and brands are getting around this (and in front of target audiences) while supporting their marketing funnel is by exploring communities. Source: McKinsey & Company. We are now in the third era of brand marketing, which is ‘community for influence’ (shown above) according to McKinsey & Company’s article “ A better way to build a brand: The community flywheel .” This means that the fastest growing brands are reaching consumers in the communities they are a part of and helping them express community membership by participating in their brand. For example, IKEA identifies and invites people who wish to live more sustainably to join its Live Lagom community . The company supports the community with specific IKEA products that are conducive to sustainable living, in-store workshops, and community-driven advice. By applying community ‘we vs. I’ principles, brands ensure that prospects and customers have a much more “emotional resonance” with the brand, as McKinsey describes it. McKinsey’s article also emphasizes the importance of developing a “community flywheel” (shown below)—a fast, actionable feedback cycle for brands to power their comms/campaigns, positioning, products, and services. Source: McKinsey & Company. In addition, businesses are also reacting to fundamental shifts in consumer behavior accelerated by the pandemic and a gradual decline of trust in traditional establishments, such as political parties and the media.  The pandemic accelerated the number of people gathering in smaller, digital, localized communities or identity-based communities to find ‘people like themselves.’  Source: Edelman. Edelman’s Trust Barometer , an annual study that measures and analyzes trust in institutions around the world, has highlighted this shift in behavior for 20+ years. The popularity of community and creator/ influencer marketing  are visible manifestations of a societal shift away from trusting traditional figures of authority to ‘people like me.’ But it’s not just societal changes and the pursuit of more cost-effective marketing that pushes brands towards CBM. More business leaders now understand the benefits of community on their bottom line: Supports demand generation Supports lead generation Extends value of content marketing and events Improves customer retention and reduces customer churn Increases customer lifetime value Provides marketing, customer, and audience data and insights at scale Provides inspiration for content, campaigns, and events  Mobilizes brand advocates and ambassadors Supports recurring revenue models (i.e., subscriptions) Potential for new recurring revenue models Co-creation of products, content, etc. Now that you’re aware of both the push and pull factors that bring us into this era of community-based marketing, let’s take a look at how it complements your organic search efforts. Community-based marketing & SEO: A powerful partnership for search visibility Content marketers  and SEO specialists increasingly understand that embracing community means they can access market, customer, and audience insights that their competitors may not have firsthand access to. In his brilliant article on the future of web content , Mordy Oberstein explains the concept and importance of ‘situational’ and ‘conversational’ content.  “Situational writing assumes an implicit reaction on the reader’s part and latently incorporates that dialogue into the content itself. This way, I’m communicating with you by assuming your response. The net result is conversational content.From an SEO perspective, it’s not fundamentally possible to create situational content without either having first-hand knowledge and experience related to the topic or a high level of expertise. Thus, situational content is rooted in strong E-E-A-T  and (all other things being equal) would align with the signals Google uses to synthetically align with strong E-E-A-T.”  — Mordy Oberstein , Head of SEO Branding at Wix My take is that this means simply creating content that your audiences, prospects, and customers actually want to read, that they genuinely value , and that is crafted in a way that feels human and connective . And what better way to deeply understand what people want from you than using traditional sources of search and intent data available to all, but layering over actual qualitative and conversational data as well  as clues from your communities? Now, imagine that data is only available to you  in your private, branded communities!  In the same article, Obserstein highlights changes to Google’s SERPs  and the impact of forums and how “Google now leans heavily into a focus on first-person knowledge” from online community spaces that can be indexed (e.g., Reddit ).  He explains how Google rewards first-person, human perspectives and experiences from forums on the SERP. To see this in action, look at the communities and forums that appear in your own search results.  Two communities (Reddit and JL Wrangler Forums) are amongst the top three traditional results (three YouTube videos were the top results). Community channels, like forums, are a source of real customer perspectives, making them also potentially a source of information gain for search engines . This adds more entities to Google’s knowledge graph, which helps the search engine better understand new queries, but can also enable you to avoid AI overviews (which primarily show when there is consensus over a topic). Source: Bernard Huang. MozCon 2024. While I’ll get into detailed examples later, I want to briefly showcase the SEO gains that CBM can provide: GiffGaff (now one of the UK’s most popular mobile telephone service providers) was a challenger brand that entered a saturated telecoms market with a community-led approach in 2009.  Its customer community  not only provides near-real-time help and support, but fills the SERPs with useful content, reviews, and advice about migrating from competitor networks, tariffs, and phone choices.  The GiffGaff community is second in the traditional Google search results (GiffGaff’s help pages power the first result). Community-based marketing drives every part of the digital marketing funnel To summarize the potential impact of community-based marketing on the stages of the digital marketing funnel, I created the model below.  The model also shows optimal actions based on whether the community is owned by your brand or if it exists in a brand ecosystem (i.e., communities that are not owned or managed by you, but where your product, service, brand, and competitors are discussed). Sometimes this is called ‘Community Everywhere,’ but I prefer the term ‘ Community Ecosystems .’ Although CBM is applicable to all stages of the marketing funnel, it does play hardest at the middle and bottom. Being top-of-mind as a brand in a community when people are ready to buy is one way to create a surefire competitive advantage in a crowded market.  Examples: How brands leverage community-based marketing for better SEO, leads, and product development I’ve explained the theoretical benefits of community-based marketing, but let’s take a look at the real-life results that two  brands achieved and how they approached their community strategies: The Happiness Index (B2B) LEGO (B2C) The Happiness Index: Leads and retention driven by the community flywheel The Happiness Index  is a B2B SaaS brand that measures employee engagement and happiness; their target audiences include senior HR professionals and business leaders. They epitomize one of the most important elements for CBM success—you need to have enlightened leaders that believe in community as a long-term lever for growth and good. Co-founder Matt Phelan is one of those business leaders. What started as a group of senior HR professionals and influencers going for   “a few drinks and conversations in a pub” became an informal WhatsApp group called HR Punks, which evolved into Happiness & Humans , a growing community where HR challenges are shared, solved and friends are made. As the community grew, the team invested in online community technology and a community manager to ensure that the space flourished and created mutual value for its members and the business. Since then, the company has also launched a community for its investors as well as a community for sustainable businesses. Phelan shared the business impact of community in a CBM webinar I hosted in 2023, explaining that The Happiness Index’s communities were fully attributable in their lead generation. He shared that >20% of new customers come through the brand’s communities. Whilst he didn’t share figures, Phelan also mentioned that the communities made a positive impact on customer retention—an area where his industry traditionally focuses its efforts. As a business leader, Phelan fully subscribes to the community flywheel principles and its unique ability to generate insights at scale. Pain points and challenges shared by community members are incorporated into The Happiness Index’s content marketing, inbound, and event themes. Additional community benefits include enhanced first-party data and feedback for product/service development. LEGO: Content and products inspired by owned communities At the start of the 2000s, LEGO was on the brink of collapse, but a new CEO stripped the business back and drove a new approach to creating radical relationships with its customers and fans. LEGO is a CBM success story. It has a small, global team managing brand communities and connections with an external community ecosystem of global fans (LEGO Ambassadors). There are many owned LEGO communities that deliver on all the business benefits I mentioned earlier, but here are a handful of them: LEGO Ideas — A community for fan product suggestions and upvoting. An average of four new LEGO sets per year hit the market thanks to this community of creative fans. LEGO Insiders — A customer loyalty community where members can earn rewards, buy LEGO, receive personalized offers and content, and access customer service. LEGO Education — A community for global educators and teachers who use LEGO to support classroom activities and learning.  And, when we look at the brand’s community approach through the lens of SEO, you can see that it captures market, customer, and audience insight and intelligence at scale and translates it into content, campaigns, and even product development. The comments on the fan prototype designs in the LEGO Ideas community help support consumer messaging and positioning for the sets that make it to development and launch. Content searches and ‘help’ queries in LEGO’s owned customer loyalty and success communities (LEGO Insiders) help the company identify, anticipate, and meet the needs of its audiences. Upvoted products in the LEGO Ideas community give a clear indication of consumer trends as well as buying and intent signals that can be met through new products and content.  Success factors for community-based marketing  You now have an understanding of the business case for community-based marketing, you can see where it sits in the marketing funnel, and you have examples of B2C and B2B brands doing it well. Before you get started with CBM, here are some of the elements you need to get right in order to successfully adopt a community-led strategy for your brand(s):  Ensure organizational alignment, clear objectives, and the right KPIs Provide a clear value proposition and ‘why?’ for prospective members Big isn’t always best Build and maintain a trusted, inclusive space Hire professional community managers to represent your brand and nurture growth Don’t treat your community as a broadcast channel Create culture through community rituals Choose the right community platform 01. Ensure organizational alignment, clear objectives, and that the right KPIs are in place Be clear about the business objectives behind community investment, how community aligns to other areas of your business (not solely marketing), and the metrics you need to measure to ensure you’re delivering value. The common metrics for communities are member growth and engagement. Whilst these are helpful indicators of community health, they lack direct connection to business outcomes. So ensure that your community aligns to what really matters for your organization (which is typically growth, efficiency, and impact).  There are many specific, tactical, metrics around community, but broader business objectives and measures should always be your ‘north star.’ Remember, what might be a vanity metric for a SaaS business lead generation community (e.g., average session length), may be more meaningful for a non-profit or a knowledge base community, where content engagement time might connect to behavior change or successful learning outcomes.  The community platforms that you may use will have their own dashboards and metrics that can be incredibly useful. but generally need further analysis to gain value from them. A rule of thumb is to avoid measuring and reporting on:  Metrics that you can’t act upon in any meaningful way Metrics that nobody in the business cares or values, regardless of whether they improve or decline It is okay to use exploratory metrics, such as ‘average engagement rate per post’ or  seasonal engagement rate variances’ to inform community strategy and support any adjustments you might make. But, business-critical profit, impact, or efficiency metrics such as ‘number (and quality) of marketing and community-qualified leads’ or ‘number of telephone support deflections’ will ensure continued community budgets and senior stakeholder support. 02. Provide a clear value proposition and ‘why?’ for prospective members Be clear about what your community is, who it is for, and the benefits of joining—and, communicate those points well.  The Salesforce Trailblazer Community has a clear value proposition for potential members and excellent ‘why?’ Branding, the community name, and a nice logo are all important, but prospective members of your community need to know exactly why they should join and they need to understand that in a matter of seconds. State and test this value proposition before launch and remember you need to have an internal proposition and clear ‘why?’ too. 03. Big isn’t always best I’m constantly asked, “What is the optimal size of a community?”  There is no correct answer to this. Your community type/purpose and addressable target audience will dictate the optimal size. Micro communities (of 100s or even 10s of members) can be optimal, especially for communities of practice, where very senior professionals may only feel comfortable joining and engaging if they are surrounded by their peers. The flip side of this is fan communities (categorized as communities of play in the 5Ps), where the addressable audience can include millions, members have much looser ties, and the community is much more commerce-oriented. In this case, big is almost always best. Sephora’s Beauty Insider Community , with its over 3.5 million members, is an example of a big  community that is populated with prospective buyers and genuine fans. But, you don’t always need to chase big community numbers to show success. In some business cases, community member value is more important than community member volume. 04. Build and maintain a trusted, inclusive space It can be a challenge to manage the dual demands of a business that wants a community to succeed, and community members that want a business to meet their needs. Community building is a genuine skill and a delicate balance. Trust is critical for your community to thrive. Members need to feel safe to participate and constantly view your community as a valued space for them. Like brand reputation, community trust is earned over time and it can quickly be lost. Well planned member onboarding and community guidelines will set the tone and expectations around inclusion and expected behaviors. A community manager (or team of them) and moderators should enforce these guidelines.  At the very least, to ensure that you build a safe and inclusive community, create the following: Community guidelines Code of conduct Moderation process Crisis and issues management process Member onboarding process Inclusive rituals (create opportunities for all member to contribute/engage) And if you need help with any of those, seek assistance from an experienced community expert like myself! Remember, if you set up communities, you can’t just expect members to feel included, valued, and safe. Act with integrity, speak with authenticity, protect your community, and do so consistently over time. 05. Hire a professional community manager to represent your brand and nurture growth Very few businesses invest in community specialists unless their entire business proposition revolves around customer success, recurring revenue, members, subscribers, and community. But the value and expertise that expert community managers bring cannot be overstated. A frequent mistake businesses make is resourcing communities with staff that lack experience, reputational antennae, and the people skills to run a community well. Branded community managers that represent your organization are an important touchpoint and are the guardians of valuable insight and intelligence. You wouldn’t let an unprepared, untrained intern or junior team member loose on your corporate social media accounts or put them in a customer support role without training, yet many organizations think that they can do this in community spaces.  Community management skills can and should be taught. In my experience and opinion, the best community managers have brilliant communication skills, they are ‘people-people’ who can connect ideas, concepts, and individuals quickly and successfully. But they also need to be strategic about governance, data, measuring and reporting, crisis management and more.  06. Don’t treat your community as a broadcast channel I repeat: Your community is not  a broadcast channel! The most successful communities feel like they are ‘owned’ by the community itself. If your community is a broadcast/one-way communications channel or a dumping ground for your content and events, members will leave and it will fail. It’s important to engage and lead by example, especially in the early days of your community. The goal is to cultivate a peer-to-peer environment with the right people, where community members organically post and volunteer their own ideas, content, information, questions, and advice. There is a time and there are  techniques for when you do need to broadcast. For example, some community platforms will allow you to push important messages or @ mention the entire community or a channel. Other techniques include setting up specific channels for push/branded notifications. Consider which category of community you are developing and what the appropriate level of brand/host-led posting vs. community-led posting should be. For this, you might want to draw benchmarks from other communities that feel healthy, vibrant, and valuable for members.  07. Create culture through community rituals The most powerful aspects of a community—a sense of belonging, trust, reciprocity, stored knowledge, and valuable connections—take time and consistency to build. It can take a while for your community to form and perform (or ‘open up’) but you can facilitate this by being consistent, creating regular rituals, and not giving up after a few short months. I’ve written about the importance of community rituals  and how they help build trust and connections: Rituals can include simple tactics, such as a weekly or monthly community round up or newsletter.  They can be something that evolves naturally from the community itself and represent our most human need for regular connection. For example, GiffGaff’s community has a weekly thread where members share what they are cooking/eating during the week. Use member challenges, spotlights, and weekly topics of discussion to emphasize engagement and community culture. 08. Choose the right community platform  ​​Technology should be one of the last considerations in your community strategy. Some brand communities exist on ancient technology, some on email lists, some communities do not have digital homes and only exist in-person.  There are pros and cons to the hundreds of community platforms out there, including those never intended for community building, like Slack, Facebook, or WhatsApp. Like any technology choice, consider the capabilities that are important to your brand:  How critical is access to data?  Do you need APIs and integrations?  What type of branding, user experience, searchability, and privacy do you need for your community?  Do you need automations?  Should your community be fully or partially indexable for search engines?  These are just a few of the questions that you need to consider before choosing a platform. As for social media platforms, they have reach and mass adoption, but they have minimal features, scant data, and can change owners, change algorithms, shutter features, or even close down free community ‘groups’—if they do so, you risk losing the communities and value you’ve built over the years. The right community platform for you and your members will depend very much on what your members prefer and what’s logistically feasible for your business, but the technology comes after the strategy. Like brand building, community-based marketing takes time, but it can distinguish your business Bevy bought CMX, Stripe acquired Indie Hackers, HubSpot bought The Hustle—there are many more examples of this, and there is a good reason why technology and SaaS brands went on a spending spree a few years ago and snapped up the most active, healthiest communities in their spaces.  They understood that building successful communities, like brand building and getting all the elements of your SEO activity working in tandem, takes effort and time. But, it is also one of the most important ‘economic moats’ available to a business. If you have senior buy-in, a clear value proposition, and everything in place to make your communities a success, then the one thing you must ask stakeholders for is time  to show ROI.  Show small wins and evidence of the value that you are creating, but also recognize that you are playing a long game. Don’t give up after a few short weeks or months.  You wouldn’t with your SEO or your brand building strategy, after all.  Michelle Goodall - Community and Marketing Expert A recognized global expert, Michelle Goodall  works with B2B and B2C brands that place community at the heart of their growth. She trains, coaches, and consults, sharing insights and learnings publicly, and is the host of ‘Meet the Community Builders.’ Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Jack Treseler Odds are this isn’t the first time you’ve heard of ChatGPT. In fact, 100 million people signed up to use ChatGPT within two months of its launch. And with the introduction of GPT-4, it seems like every SEO is wondering whether it can help them become more efficient, scale strategies, or if it’s even safe for brands to begin with. In this article, we’ll examine all those factors so that you can determine whether generative AI is actually the blessing to SEO that some have touted it to. Table of contents: What is ChatGPT and how did we get here? How does ChatGPT work? Is ChatGPT safe to use? The basics of using ChatGPT for SEO What SEOs shouldn't use ChatGPT for How SEO professionals can use ChatGPT at scale How industries are responding to ChatGPT What is ChatGPT and how did we get here? ChatGPT originated from OpenAI’s development of a technology called “Generative Pre-training Transformers” (GPT for short) back in 2018. Basically, the company wants to create an AI that can better interact with humans and help people become more efficient . GPT is designed to generate human-like text by predicting the next word in a sentence based on what the previous words were. Programmers have been using GPT in chatbots, virtual assistants, and content generation tools since OpenAI released its first iteration called “GPT-1” (super original name, right?). OpenAI used human trainers to improve GPT-1’s performance, ultimately creating two more versions (GPT-2 and GPT-3, respectively) before launching ChatGPT (and as of March 2023, GPT-4 ). We’ll dive into how to use GPT a little later, but first, you need to be aware of the potential tradeoffs. Inherent bias in ChatGPT ChatGPT sounds like an incredible technology that SEOs can leverage to programmatically scale their work. But, there’s also a big risk—inherent bias. And to its credit, OpenAI is aware there’s bias in ChatGPT’s outputs and even acknowledged as much: “The model can have various biases in its outputs—we have made progress on these but there’s still more to do. Per our recent blog post , we aim to make AI systems we build have reasonable default behaviors that reflect a wide swathe of users’ values, allow those systems to be customized within broad bounds, and get public input on what those bounds should be.” — OpenAI Be that as it may, there’s a very big risk that the ongoing lack of diversity (in both thought and life experience among the leadership and engineers) could cause ChatGPT to continue a culture of racism, sexism, and confirmation bias already present in today’s top search engines . Data collected from publicly available information on Linkedin and may not reflect the complete breakdown of employees at Open AI. For SEOs, this goes beyond perpetuating negative stereotypes. Biases can also affect ChatGPT’s ability to provide accurate or compliant content for highly regulated industries like fintech or alternative health. Remember: ChatGPT is about predicting the next phrase in a string of content, not about verifying claims and facts. SEOs will still need to perform their own research, analysis, and revisions. Because of this, there’s a very real risk that ChatGPT can generate misinformation or simply false information (more on this later). Who is integrating ChatGPT into their platforms? The biggest names integrating ChatGPT include Microsoft and its search engine Bing. Microsoft purchased an exclusive license to the underlying technology behind GPT-3 in 2020 after investing $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019. Some of the biggest brands that integrated ChatGPT. Google has its own competing product called “Bard.” Some of the biggest brands across several noteworthy industries have already integrated ChatGPT into their systems. Most notorious among them is Bing. The mass integration of chatbots into search engines and operating systems has to do with how users interact with content on the web. Users want to consume information in the most expeditious manner possible, and asking questions the same way they would in everyday speech may be the easiest learning curve. In essence, ChatGPT has already become intertwined with: Search engines Web browsers Dating sites Mobile games Data infrastructure Marketing And as marketers, it’s probably best we figure out how to most effectively (and safely) use this technology. How does ChatGPT work? At its core, ChatGPT uses massive amounts of data and machine learning algorithms to understand how we talk and what we mean when we communicate. Then it uses generative AI to provide high-quality responses that SEOs can use to save time and increase productivity, freeing you up to focus on more strategy-intensive work. Generative content in a nutshell Generative AI platforms (like ChatGPT) take commands from users and create human-like content as the output. That might be as simple as asking it to suggest pizza restaurants in your area: You.com’s AI-powered chat feature having a conversation with a user looking for pizza restaurant recommendations in New York City. But, it’s also capable of incorporating data that you feed it, opening up a whole universe of potential applications. Generally, that data includes text and images, but it could also include other media. At this point, a user would feed the generative AI model a prompt or question. The model then uses the data it’s been trained on to create brand new, original content to answer the prompt. Below is an example of how ChatGPT can work for users: The prompt I fed ChatGPT + the output The data it used to create the content You can use ChatGPT to create blog articles, guides, and even code. What algorithm does ChatGPT use? ChatGPT is built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-4 family of large language models and has been fine-tuned using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. Basically, ChatGPT is capable of processing image and text inputs and producing text outputs . Supervised learning is what it sounds like: engineers train the machine learning model with data that has labels and examples. They’re essentially holding its hand as it figures out what content to generate. Reinforcement learning is when the machine learning model learns to take actions to maximize a reward model: If you look at the ChatGPT results, you’ll see a little thumbs up icon and a thumbs down icon (shown in the screenshot below). Reinforcement learning means ChatGPT wants as many thumbs up as possible, and as few thumbs down as possible. To translate: ChatGPT got a lot of training and feedback to get to where it is today. And with each new prompt, it wants to get better for you, so if you like the output, give it a thumbs up. Where does ChatGPT get its information? ChatGPT gets its information from a huge set of data consisting of books, articles, academic papers, websites, Wikipedia (and Wikimedia), and other publicly available information. The content in that data includes topics around science, technology, history, literature, and more. While ChatGPT can access a ton of information, there is one important caveat: The output isn’t based on the veracity of that information—it only looks for statistical patterns and produces the next most likely output. ChatGPT is a language model, it’s not looking at what’s true or not. In fact, the creators of ChatGPT said the same thing: “GPT-4 has similar limitations as earlier GPT models. Most importantly, it still is not fully reliable (it ‘hallucinates’ facts and makes reasoning errors). Great care should be taken when using language model outputs, particularly in high-stakes contexts [...] or avoid high-stakes uses altogether.” — OpenAI Is ChatGPT safe to use? Honestly, it’s a mixed bag. Below are some concerns people have expressed. ​ Concern Legit? ​ Popular consensus ​ How SEOs can work around this ChatGPT lies to you. Yes. ​ChatGPT can be a fountain of misinformation if not carefully monitored. In fact, the latest source of information comes from 2021 . That means ChatGPT isn’t privy to any more-recent developments. ​Feed ChatGPT the background information it needs to accurately create content. By “training” the model on specific information, your output will be much more accurate, and take less time to edit. ChatGPT’s responses are too robotic and unnatural. ​Yes and no. ​ChatGPT is a language model, and profiling language constructs is very much within Google's wheelhouse (it’s been using n-grams and lexical parity for a while). Tools already exist to identify AI written content . ​The quality of your output depends on your input. Try adding conditions around tone of voice, writing personas, and audience to get a more natural output. Then make sure to edit the results. There’s a mobile app. Yes. ChatGPT didn’t launch with a mobile app, but there’s now an iOS app available. The basics of using ChatGPT for SEO When using ChatGPT (or any generative AI model) to create content, you’ll want to review the content to make sure it doesn’t miss the mark, or worse yet, potentially get you into legal trouble. It’s especially important for SEOs to have a heavy editing hand when it comes to the output ChatGPT gives you. Even more so if you’re in a highly regulated industry like fintech marketing, where Google is more critical of content you publish (commonly called “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) content ). Below is a breakdown of potential generative AI use-cases and their associated issues, organized by business type. ​ Business type ​ Common Problem(s) How ChatGPT can help Enterprises ($100m+) ​Efficiency and getting things across the finish line Quickly generate articles, FAQs, or other content that has search demand. Use this for lead generation. ​Mid-sized startups ​Limited resources, budget, and bandwidth ​Provide prompts and let ChatGPT create unique content at scale. Then review the content and map to your target keywords. ​Franchises ​Creating unique, localized content for each location Provide prompts and create flexible page templates and localized content. ​Local SMBs ​No time to create content ​Use ChatGPT to quickly answer common questions customers have in minutes. eCommerce Brands ​Creating unique content for category and product pages ​Quickly generate unique content and FAQs, and even implement chatbot functionality to help shoppers. ​Highly regulated markets ​Create compliant content that drives sales ​Quickly scale the creation of content, knowledge centers, and dynamic widgets for better customer experiences. Be sure to have an expert review all output. While ChatGPT is limited, it provides enough capability for SEOs to get creative. Some SEOs have used it for a range of tasks, including: Localizing content by country , region, and local idioms Rewrite .htaccess rules for domain migrations and 301 redirects Generate dynamic XML sitemaps by category Create link building emails and subject lines Keep in mind: As mentioned before, if you’re using ChatGPT to create content, Google can tell. Does Google care? Not really, it cares more about the quality and accuracy of the content. If you’re using ChatGPT to produce or translate content, don’t trust its output. Have an editor or translator give it a read first before publishing. What SEOs shouldn't use ChatGPT for Ethical usage of ChatGPT is absolutely critical—not just for your SEO, but also to ensure that you’re not inadvertently spreading misinformation. 01. Retrieving sources for claims Why someone might want to: You would think—based on all the info ChatGPT has at its disposal—it’d be able to just give you the sources of information and save you some time. Why you really shouldn’t: The sources are absolute garbage (i.e., they don’t exist). Remember, ChatGPT is a language model. It’s not looking at whether something is true or not. It’s looking at what the next likely text is given your input. Need proof? Talk to Alan Wolk, co-founder of TVRev. Here’s his experience: “ChatGPT can be a fountain of misinformation. To wit: I asked it to provide me with some articles about FASTs. It came back with this seemingly legit list. The reporters are real (I even know some of them IRL) and work/have worked for the publications mentioned and these are topics they and the publications might write about. But.. none of these are real. Repeat: none of the articles in this list exist. The links turn up dead pages and a Google search indicates they've never existed-- ChatGPT made them up from whole cloth.” — Alan Wolk, co-founder of TVRev Here is the output that ChatGPT gave Alan: Note: Alan used ChatGPT’s GPT-3-powered version. However, GPT-4 still runs into similar issues regarding fake sources. This may not be the case indefinitely, though: Bing’s chatbot “ Prometheus ” can integrate citations into sentences in the chat answer so that users can click to access those sources and verify the information. Jasper AI also cites its sources in its chat product. 02. Plagiarism Why someone might want to: Look, we’re all strapped for time. And if someone wrote a great piece that’s already ranking well on Google, why not just use ChatGPT to change the way it’s written, so “your new content” appears unique to search engines? This has been a very common SEO hack that has been around for some time, so why not leverage ChatGPT to do so at scale? Why you really shouldn’t: You’ll get caught. There are tell-tale signs content came from generative AI, and as said before, Google can use natural language processing to determine low quality, machine-generated content from high quality, unique content . Without human oversight, you’ll get busted. 03. Scraping Google search results. It’s tempting to take something more complex (that developers generally have to do for you), and just have ChatGPT take care of it. This is especially tempting if you want to pair the top search results you scrape with ChatGPT’s ability to write content and build high quality, optimized content. However, remember Alan’s experience —the results ChatGPT gives you are not real. They are just content created to look like the output you ask for. I asked ChatGPT to create a list of topics family law attorneys could write content about, but when asked to find the top three ranked URL for those topics, each URL shown did not actually exist. How SEO professionals can use ChatGPT at scale ChatGPT can be a massive boon to SEO if used properly. Outside of content creation, generative AI can help analyze large swaths of data and find trends human eyes can miss. 01. Use ChatGPT to identify Google entities and subtopics Why: Entity analysis and competitor analysis can take an SEO between one to four hours, depending on how much they need to learn about the topic before they can begin analyzing the content. With ChatGPT, it can take minutes. Example prompt: You are a search engine optimization specialist whose job it is to figure out the most common entities and subtopics featured in the following urls. An explanation for entities can be found here: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/entity-seo/277231/ The URLs you are to analyze are: https://www.g2.com/categories/medical-billing/small-business https://www.capterra.com/medical-billing-software/s/small-businesses/ https://www.getapp.com/healthcare-pharmaceuticals-software/medical-billing/org/small-business/ Example output: Pro tip: Share this with your PPC team (if you have one). You can also feed the keywords your PPC team is bidding to ChatGPT and ask it to create content topics for you based on that data. 02. Use ChatGPT to create comprehensive content briefs at scale Why: Although ChatGPT can write the content, it’s best to have experienced writers that know the subject matter create the content. The language structures humans tend to use are drastically different from the language structures ChatGPT uses. For industries where “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” ( E-E-A-T ) content is needed to rank well, human writers are still worth their weight in gold. But to save time, have ChatGPT put together comprehensive briefs for them to get started. In the example below, I’ve divided the task into two prompts, with the second building on the first. Example prompt 1: You are a search engine optimization specialist tasked with creating engaging content for your audience. Your audience are independent, small family law firms looking to improve their customer retention. Create 10 blog post topics that will catch their eye Example output 1: Example prompt 2: Of the topics generated above, create an outline that summarizes the main message of the article, what subtopics a writer should include, and keywords that should be integrated into the blog post Example output 2: You will still need to take the briefs and match them to target keywords , but this strategy can still remove roughly 70% of the time it takes to produce this kind of detailed direction for your writing team. Industries are responding to ChatGPT People everywhere are navigating the potential impact of easily accessible generative AI. Here are a few of the changes (and potential changes) that are occurring: Search algorithm updates: Google’s already addressed how it handles AI-generated content . You can expect search engines to become more and more advanced in how they detect and rank content that uses generative AI. Social media algorithm updates (eventually): If history tells us anything, it will take years for social media platforms to adjust and successfully moderate AI-generated content. Odds are, the algorithms will reward marketers that can identify content frameworks that generate shares, clicks, and traffic, and scale those frameworks with generative AI. Expect echo chambers and repetitive blog post templates until platforms find ways to deal with the influx. General content trends: Content development will multiply. Blog posts are super easy to mass produce now. But, will this efficiency lead to echo chambers? Probably. Will quality, unique content ultimately outperform these echo chambers? I hope so. General market trends: Lower-priced general marketing services may get commoditized. Companies and marketers that can layer data and nuance on top of generative AI will have a huge advantage. Ethical AI use is proper AI use Generative AI is here to stay. There’s no putting this genie back in the bottle. And let’s be honest: We marketers have a history of abusing new technology to further our business needs, and often we don’t look at the potential consequences—like racist and predatory ad targeting practices , algorithmically created echo chambers, and invasive ad strategies . So, as we use ChatGPT, let’s remember we marketers have a greater responsibility, now more than ever, to use this technology responsibly and educate consumers who will undoubtedly be the targets of this new tech. Jack Treseler - CEO at Crescendo Consulting Jack has over a decade's worth of experience in SEO. He's CEO of Crescendo Consulting , which specializes in marketing early and mid-stage startups in highly regulated industries (think Fintech and CBD startups). He's a fan of pineapples on pizza and Star Wars Episode I. Twitter | Linkedin

Watch the replay of the March 2025 webinar Google's Helpful Content Update (HCU) was an algorithm update that demanded a new approach to content creation. In this webinar, you'll learn how to develop a long-term SEO content strategy that prioritizes user intent, unique perspectives, and genuine value in response to these content requirements. Learn ways to work smarter, not harder, by optimizing existing content, identifying high-potential topics, and building authority in your niche.  Hosted by Ashley Segura, head of content at ContentYum, alongside Wix Studio’s Crystal Carter and George Nguyen, the session offers practical tips and recommendations. So whether you're a professional marketer juggling multiple clients or a small business owner with limited time and resources, this webinar will equip you with the knowledge and skills to achieve lasting SEO results. Learn sustainable SEO strategies for your content Join this webinar to learn about: The role of E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) within a content strategy. How to showcase expertise and experience to build brand authority and trustworthiness. Why having a unique angle can make or break your content’s rankings. Meet your hosts: Ashley Segura - Head of Content, ContentYum With 15+ years in content marketing, Ashley Segura is a Top 100 Content Marketing Influencer and host of the "Content in the Kitchen" podcast. She’s launched four marketing agencies and led global marketing teams, driving growth through impactful content strategies. X   | Linkedin Crystal Carter Head of SEO Communications, Wix Crystal Carter is an SEO and digital marketing professional with over 15 years of experience. Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds and Tomy. An avid SEO communicator, her work has been featured at Google Search Central, BrightonSEO, Moz, Lumar, Semrush and more. X  | LinkedIn George Nguyen   Director of SEO Editorial, Wix George Nguyen is the Director of SEO Editorial at Wix. He creates content to help users and marketers better understand how search works and how to use Wix SEO tools. He was formerly a search news journalist and is known to speak at the occasional industry event. X  | LinkedIn

Author: Tamara Sykes For eCommerce brands, hitting the ‘publish’ button at the right time can mean the difference between getting strong conversions and hearing crickets. In our everyday lives, for example, it’s the difference between a successful Cyber Monday sale and your products sitting in inventory while competitors cash in. Whether you’re an agency SEO or part of an in-house eCommerce team, content timing is non-negotiable because understanding when  to publish content can be as important as the content itself. Here’s what you need to know: Publishing practices vary for eCommerce content types When to publish your eCommerce content: Key considerations Notable industry and calendar events Seasonal trends Product launch timelines Trending topics and cultural moments Customer lifecycle timing Evergreen content Data-driven publishing for eCommerce Publishing practices vary for eCommerce content types Before we start mapping out your publishing schedule and content calendar, let’s clarify what ‘content’ refers to. While blog posts are important—key to your brand authority  and content strategy—in the eCommerce world, content isn’t limited to blog posts. eCommerce content also includes: Buying guides  — These are a great trust-building tactic for your target shoppers; they can inform audiences of other relevant products you sell. Ikea has an entire buying guide library, covering every product category that’s important for the furniture company. Category pages  — Your store will have regular category pages for your main product types, but you can also create seasonal or promotional categories as well (e.g., Cyber Monday, back-to-school). Landing pages  — These pages focus on specific products and campaigns. Product descriptions  — This text is crucial for every product on your site, but especially new products in particular. Each content type has its own purpose, which influences when you should publish it. Sure, it may seem obvious: It makes sense that a category page for holiday gift ideas needs to go live before people start their holiday shopping season. But when exactly  are consumers making this type of shopping decision? More specifically, when is your target shopper thinking about what to buy for holiday gifts? These types of considerations are the next step that should always guide your eCommerce publishing strategy. When to publish your eCommerce content: Key considerations Timing your content for the most performance comes down to understanding your audience, your products, and search intent .  That said, here are some key factors to keep in mind: Notable industry and calendar events Seasonal trends Product launch timelines Trending topics and cultural moments Customer lifecycle Evergreen content Notable industry and calendar events Make note of key dates that matter to your business or industry. If you’re unsure about those key dates, do your market research . Tools like National Today  or Meta Business Suite’s Planner also offer a convenient way to discover notable events in your industry. For example, if your eCommerce brand focuses on school supplies, it would be wise to publish your category or landing pages prior to back-to-school season (typically in August) so you can capture eager shoppers during a critical buying period. Or, how about this more specific use case? If your eCommerce brand is:  Located in Columbus, OH Has a loyal local consumer base  Will launch a back-to-school collection  Then publishing your category and landing pages before the annual sales tax holiday  would be crucial.  In 2024, this holiday occurred between July 30 and August 8 . That would’ve meant you should have these pages published before the July 30 start date because if you’d waited until the generic August back-to-school season anecdote, you would’ve missed the boat. Seasonal trends Always think about when your customers will begin shopping. Publish seasonal content  well before the season actually starts.  The back-to-school season example above applies here, but let’s analyze two different seasons for more practice. If your brand plans to launch a Christmas collection , keep in mind that your audience will probably start searching for gift ideas in late October or early November. I know it seems crazy, but this is why your favorite retailers stock their shelves with holiday items so early. They aren’t reacting to the calendar timing—they’re planning for their customers’ behavior. If you sell travel accessories and you’re preparing for the summer travel season , you should know that: (a) People may start looking for vacation products as early as April because the weather is usually getting warmer, and (b) Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer. That tells you that you should publish blog posts, buying guides, etc., within the April to mid-May timeframe for stronger conversions. Ultimately, customer and market research will be crucial for your timing here. If you’re not able to conduct your own market research, keep an eye on your competitors and when they launch new pages, products, or campaigns. Product launch timelines New product releases require a layered content approach. This is a valuable lesson from the public relations industry that’s widely applicable, especially when prioritizing timing. You need to build momentum. You need to prime your customers. To do that: Create teasers and share announcements before your launch. Follow it up with promotional landing pages and educational blog posts closer to the release date. Let’s use the summer travel example again—this could apply to a travel product or package launch, or sale.  Since your ideal window is April to mid-May, you can ‘content drip’ (i.e., signal the upcoming product launch, campaign, or sale) on your website with banners or ‘coming soon’ images. As the official summer travel season draws nearer, you could write blog posts discussing travel industry trends and share listicles about must-have items for that year’s travel season. Each of these offers you a way to build buzz around your product. The first is an indirect, top-of-funnel approach, and the second is more promotional. Trending topics and cultural moments Relevant trends can be a content gold mine. Find ways to capitalize on cultural moments or trending topics , and most importantly, make sure that they align with your brand.  For example, if the term [sustainable shopping] is trending, publishing a blog post about your eco-friendly product line or creating a dedicated landing page can resonate with consumers in that moment. Or, if ‘ Mocha Mousse’ is the color of the year , publishing a product page with all your mousse-colored items in January or early February (at the latest) will help you tap into a unique opportunity. Test out content related to trending topics and measure the ROI—if you see an uplift, it may be worth reserving some extra bandwidth monthly (or space in your publishing calendar) to maximize your ability to obtain the first-mover advantage when a relevant trend emerges. Customer lifecycle timing A gentle reminder: Different customers are at different stages of their buying journey.  These stages include: Awareness  — When shoppers first learn about or discover your brand and products Interest/Consideration — When shoppers like or trust you enough to start evaluating what you offer and how it compares to competitors Decision  —When shoppers commit to a purchase or specific action Make sure you create content that addresses each of these stages. Here’s a quick guide: Awareness  — Publish educational blogs or guides. Interest/Consideration  — Focus on comparison content or product demos. Decision  — Ensure your product and category pages are optimized and live. As for the timing, you must base this decision on your ideal customer. For example, divorce lawyers know that divorces spike in January, right after the holiday season, so their decision stage content (mostly CTAs  and testimonials) should be up-to-date and ready for their potential clients. As a member of an in-house eCommerce team or an agency SEO working with eCommerce brands, you’ll want to think along those lines. Evergreen content Last but not least, while time-sensitive content is important, evergreen content  may be the foundation of your strategy.  Why? This content type is reliable and essential to your business’ SERP  visibility. Basically, without it, your target audience can’t find you. Publish this type of content during quieter seasons. Refresh and optimize your evergreen content regularly to keep it relevant and maintain performance. Data-driven publishing for eCommerce In addition to timelines, calendar events, and the customer lifecycle, publishing content for eCommerce isn’t just about guessing when people might be interested.  Remove the guesswork and use data to guide your decisions. Here are three tried-and-true places to start: Website analytics : Review your traffic patterns to identify when your audience is most active. This enables you to gather timing insight that includes the best days and times to capture shoppers’ attention. Search trends : Tools like Google Trends  or Exploding Topics  can help you understand when people are searching for specific products or topics. Even reviewing Google News can be eye-opening. Content gaps : Perform a competitor analysis  to identify what your competitors are ranking for as well as opportunities they don’t rank for. Then, create and publish content to fill those gaps. Again, make sure they align with your audience; or, as I love to say, don’t copy their strategy—adapt it to your brand. Publish with purpose for maximum ROI For eCommerce content, it’s not just about creating great content; it’s about delivering it at the right moment to capture your audience’s attention and drive conversions. By planning around key events, trends, and customer behaviors—and using data to back up your decisions—you’ll set your eCommerce brand up for success. So, put what you’ve learned here into action. Whether you’re an agency SEO or in-house eCommerce team member, take five minutes to evaluate your content calendar for the next month and make sure you’re not just publishing content, but publishing it with purpose. Tamara Sykes - Head of Client Content Strategy, Stacker Tamara Sykes is a Caribbean-born PR pro who shapes brands through impactful content and communication strategies. With 10+ years of experience, she is a brand consultant and the head of client content strategy at Stacker.  Linkedin

Author: Ashley Segura A lot has happened since Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU) back in 2022, causing publishers and brands to rethink how they approach content. Some websites lost so much traffic they closed their digital doors. While other brands, like Reddit, saw huge traffic increases.  And for the rest of us? It’s been a rollercoaster of algorithm updates , strategy pivots, and endless debates over what helpful content  really is. Here’s a quick look at how HCU has evolved since its official launch: With each update, specific industries, like gaming, product reviews, and travel took hit after hit. Many brands saw their traffic nosedive and others pivoted, changing their content strategies in an attempt to bring back traffic.  For some, the answer was clear—Google had finally cracked down on thin, keyword-stuffed, and/or AI-spun content. But for others, the question remained: What exactly does Google consider helpful?  Now that we’re three years in, we can more concretely define what helpful content means to improve visibility on Google and genuinely help potential customers.  Table of contents: The true definition of ‘helpful’ content How to optimize content after the HCU Create content for users Identify topics based on your audience, not volume Guide users with internal links Optimize your author bios Prioritize updating content over producing volume Go beyond keywords: It’s all about unique takes The true definition of ‘helpful’ content  Google was kind enough to provide a self-assessment  full of questions to help you determine whether your content is helpful.  Google’s self-assessment for helpful content (truncated). Source: Google. Some argue the true benefit of this assessment, but it does highlight a clear standard for content that performs well. It’s content that: Truly addresses the intent behind a search Offers a unique take on the subject Is written by someone who has the expertise and authority to contribute to the conversation That’s where E-E-A-T  (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) comes into play and is the defining characteristic of helpful content in 2025. Expertise Helpful content is written by someone with subject matter expertise. For example, a food blogger that specializes in creating baked goods recipes should probably stay away from creating a new recipe about unrelated types of cuisine, like salmon skin hand rolls.  Instead, focus on creating pillar pieces of content  around your subject matter expertise (in the case of our food blogger, that might be artisan breads and pastries).  What if you’re an expert in multiple subject areas? You can still create helpful content that successfully demonstrates your expertise. The key is to niche down and create dedicated content for each topic, while reinforcing your multiple expertises through your author bio (more on this later), social media presence, and guest posts on websites relevant to each niche.  This is where a well-planned strategy that encompasses pillar content around topics that represent your specific knowledge across multiple niches comes into play.  Experience It’s difficult to showcase your expertise on a subject without sharing your experience. You don’t need decades of experience for Google to recognize your credibility. What matters is how you share your first-hand experience and apply it to the content you create.  Lean into real-world examples when creating content . Share those personal insights and hands-on experiences instead of only sharing generic facts and data.  Tell a story that includes:  Your personal experiences How you resolved the issue What others can learn from your experiences to demonstrate your firsthand knowledge Authoritativeness To cultivate brand authority , it’s incredibly helpful to have the reputation to back your expertise. As part of your marketing strategy, prioritize securing brand mentions on:  Relevant websites Guest spots on webinars and podcasts Speaking opportunities at events If your palms are sweating just by reading that, then there are other ways to establish credibility without getting on camera or on stage. You can dust off those link building skills  and secure links on relevant,  trusted websites.  Head to forums like Reddit  and Quora and start responding to comments. Avoid only dropping an emoji (that might come off as salesy or spammy) and instead add an informative comment to a conversation, actually contributing to the topic/thread. Between this, securing relevant backlinks  within your niche, and collaborating with relevant brands, you can gradually build authority—helping your content stand out and rank higher. Trustworthiness Lastly (and perhaps most importantly), include honest and well-researched information in your content. If I started this article off by telling you the HCU rolled out in January 2020 (years before it actually did), I would likely have lost your trust moving forward.  If you have a technical subject matter or worse, a controversial one, include sources with any facts or data you provide. Do your due diligence to vet each source, ensuring they have the credibility to produce such data.  Trust isn’t only about sharing accurate information—it’s also about creating a smooth, user-friendly experience . If intrusive pop-ups keep interrupting as I try to read your content, it doesn’t just feel frustrating—it makes your brand seem pushy and less trustworthy.  Before we move on, it’s worth emphasizing that each aspect of E-E-A-T complements one another. If you put effort towards establishing your authority within a niche, you’re naturally going to share your expertise and experience while establishing trust. How to optimize content after the HCU From the HCU, we’ve learned that prioritizing E-E-A-T in your overall content strategy is more likely to produce content that is genuinely valuable and helpful. Yet, there’s still some confusion about how to optimize this helpful content to ensure it’s not seen as spam.   So, let’s break down some of the best ways to optimize your content post-HCU: Create content for users Identify topics based on your audience, not volume Guide users with internal links Optimize your author bios Prioritize content updates over content volume Create content for   users The HCU has helped us break away from traditional (and sometimes spammy) optimization tactics, like keyword stuffing and over-optimizing content. Instead, the aftereffects of the HCU encouraged us (now more than ever) to put the user at the forefront of our content and understand keyword intent .  To do this, you first need to understand why a user is searching for something.  User intent Description Informational Researching a topic (oftentimes before making a purchase) Commercial Looking for a specific product or service Transactional Trying to complete an action (e.g., newsletter signup or purchase) Navigational Searching for a specific brand Before you create a new piece of content or prepare to update an existing piece, ask yourself what a user wants out of this topic . Why are they searching in the first place? The answers will help guide your content optimizations and ensure you’re providing exactly what the user is searching for.  This results in a better user experience and a much more natural way of making your content helpful.  Identify topics based on your audience, not volume While we’re on the subject of users, let’s rewind a bit and identify topics that they are interested in. Instead of focusing your entire content strategy on keyword research, let’s identify topics that users actually want to learn. If you have a sales and/or customer success team, connect with them to identify questions that potential and existing customers are asking . These make great new topic ideas!  You can also perform a content gap analysis  to identify new topics that your demographic is actively searching for. These are great topic ideas that are more likely to generate traffic because the demand is there, and the competition isn’t delivering exactly what the user wants out of the topic.  Take these new topic ideas and go into forums and Facebook groups to see what the real conversation behind the topics looks like. What kinds of questions are people asking, what is the sentiment, and what do they really want to know?  While you’re listening to the conversation, consider what kind of content medium will best deliver the message the user is looking for. A 3,000-word blog post might be too long when the user just wants to know why your SaaS product is better than Joe’s SaaS product.  Instead, package that information into something easily digestible, like a 30-second video that shouts exactly what makes your product unique. Add a short, 750-word blog post with a table chart that highlights the differences between the products. This article  explaining Jasper.ai’s features and benefits does a great job of showing and telling in a format that fits a user evaluating AI tools.  When you think of how to optimize your content, making it easy for the user to get exactly what they want should be your top priority.  Guide users with internal links You can’t talk about optimizing helpful content without talking about internal links. These link opportunities tell a story and guide users to their next logical step on the customer journey, while also addressing primary and secondary user intent.  Provide links on pillar content (primary intent) to supporting posts (secondary intent) to keep users engaged and help further establish your authority on a topic.  Having secondary topics that you can link to (in the case of our baking example from earlier, brownie toppings and the best brownie pans) helps strengthen your site’s topical authority  and reinforces its E-E-A-T. Here’s an entire guide  on how to improve your internal linking.  Optimize your author bios So many bio pages don’t explain the full story of who the author is and why they contribute to the conversation. Flex your expertise and authority with well-optimized author bio pages for everyone who authors content on your website. An example of an author bio on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. To create an authoritative author bio page, include things like: Relevant certifications Any honors or recognitions  Number of years of professional experience with the subject Links to industry contributions and published work Hands-on experience (e.g., “Tested over 10 coffee brownie recipes” or “Baking for 4 years”) If it’s a bit difficult for you to talk about yourself and highlight all that greatness, put the above information in bullet format and drop it into ChatGPT.  Give ChatGPT  a very specific prompt, like this: “I need to put together a bio for my author bio page. I want to emphasize how I’m an expert baker and have personal experience creating baked goods recipes. Act like a professional copywriter and write an author bio in my tone using fun and catchy phrases and lots of imagery that a baker would use. Here is the information I want to highlight [paste bullets]. Write at least 500 words and let me know if you need any additional information about me to create a well-rounded, optimized author bio that showcases my expertise as a baker.” Once you have copy you’re proud to publish, make sure it’s accessible site-wide, connected to each blog post you publish, and on the About page or Team page.  Prioritize updating content over producing volume Instead of churning out a ton of new content, go back to the drawing board and analyze which pieces of content could use a refresh . I have a 60/40 rule that I like to stick by and recommend to most brands.  You should focus 60% of your time and resources on updating and optimizing your existing content, and the remaining 40% should be spent creating new helpful content. To figure out which pieces of content to update, I like to start with a mini content audit. Here’s my process: Crawl the site and collect data  — I use Screaming Frog  and Google Search Console  to extract all content-related and organic performance data from a client’s website. Analyze social engagement  — After understanding content from an SEO perspective, I want to know how content is performing on social media. For this, I’ll grab social media performance data using BuzzSumo . Sort and identify Opportunities  — Once I have the data, I sort the content from highest- to lowest-performing and focus on the middle-tier pieces (i.e., those that have potential but aren’t ranking as well as they could). These are typically articles with good search volume , meaning people are actively looking for information on the topic, but the content itself is buried on pages 2-5  of search results. Now that you’ve identified the pieces of content to update, it’s time to make some changes. Here’s how:  Use tools like Answer the Public , Semrush’s Topic Research Tool , or Google’s People Also Ask  to find new, related questions your audience is currently searching for. You can add the questions to the content as new headings, FAQs, or additional information within paragraphs.  Semrush’s Topic Research tool showcasing the top ten current ranking article headlines and the most common questions asked about the keyword. Update the content with your latest personal experiences on the subject matter. If the topic falls within a specific period (e.g., The Top Gluten-Free Brownie Recipes of 2024), make sure to update any relevant content to today. This includes updating all data and sources with the most up-to-date facts. Check current search results  to see what kind of content Google shows. Is it long-form, primarily videos, etc.? Is it shorter articles, videos, or something else? Use that info to adjust your content format and give users what they’re gravitating toward. By strategically updating mid-performing content, you’re not only optimizing it, but also making it more helpful by adding new, relevant information. There’s even more you can do, though, to optimize your helpful content and connect with potential customers… Go beyond keywords: It’s all about unique takes Traditional content optimization meant sprinkling keywords in every other paragraph and the icing on the cake was stuffing the headings . Let’s take the apron off and not do that anymore.  Instead, focus on optimizing your content by offering unique perspectives. If you’re truly an expert in your field, you should be able to offer a fresh perspective or a new angle to drive traffic to a helpful piece of content. Let’s take that baked goods food blogger and consider how we can create new content for a traditional brownie recipe. Brownie recipes are a pretty saturated topic. A lot of people are searching for it, and there are even more published recipes out there. So, how can you stand out and publish a  helpful brownie recipe that drives traffic? Try adding a variation! Semrush’s Keyword Strategy Builder tool  is a great way to come up with variation ideas for a specific keyword and  sub-topics to create secondary content around. Instead of creating yet another general brownie recipe, our baker friend—who loves coffee-flavored baked goods—can develop a unique twist: an instant coffee brownie recipe. To build on this even further (and deepen their authority as a baker), they can create secondary content that supports the instant coffee brown recipe, such as: A blog post on the best brownie toppings A brownie cake recipe featuring FAQs, like: The best pan for baking a brownie cake How to reheat a brownie cake Best ways to store a brownie cake By internally linking these posts between each other, our baker friend is able to: Expand on a popular topic with a fresh angle, giving users something unique. Establish expertise within their niche by publishing secondary topics. Increase opportunities to attract organic traffic. If you don’t have Semrush or an SEO tool , you can do this by Googling the primary keyword (or topic) you want to create a new piece of content for. Take a look at the search results and ask yourself, how can you add to this conversation in a unique way?  For example, the search results for [braised chicken] feature a variety of ways to cook braised chicken, from drumstick recipes to garlic and ginger, and even mojo sauce—each of the top three results offer a unique take on the recipe.  Originality beats repetition when it comes to a saturated topic like braised chicken, and it will do so for your saturated niche topics as well.  Moving forward: What you can learn from the Helpful Content Update The HCU has shaped how content strategies are created in 2025. To be helpful, we need to truly understand why users are searching and then create content that demonstrates our expertise, showcases real experience, establishes authority, and builds trust—all while providing genuine value. To ensure you’re creating helpful content (and optimizing it correctly), your content strategies should look a bit like: Conduct topic ideation  — Identify unique topics based on search demand and content gaps rather than just volume. Define the user intent — Take a moment to understand the primary and secondary intents behind the topic. Pick the right content format — Match the content medium (blog post, video, infographic, interactive tool, etc.) to the user's intent. Showcase E-E-A-T — Share real-world experience and unique insights. Back claims with credible sources and data. And, optimize your author bios to highlight expertise and authority. Add internal links —  Connect related posts to build topical authority and guide users to discover other relevant content. Optimize for engagement & readability — Your content should be easily digested, scannable, well-structured, and free of annoying, intrusive ads. Build trust & authority with digital PR  — Get brand mentions, contribute guest posts, and build high-quality backlinks from relevant websites. Regularly audit and update content  — Pinpoint and update those mid-performing pieces with new insights, secondary intent optimization, and a better structure. As long as your content strategy follows the practices above, you can sleep easy knowing that what you publish really is helpful, optimized, and provides value to users.  Ashley Segura - Head of Content at ContentYum With 15+ years of experience, Ashley Segura is a Top 100 Content Marketing Influencer and host of the Content in the Kitchen podcast. Currently the Head of Content at ContentYum , she has launched four agencies, leading global marketing teams and driving growth through impactful content strategies. Twitter  | Linkedin

Updated: February 28, 2025 Author: Crystal Carter Structured data markup can influence how your pages appear in search results, enabling Google to showcase your products or content within a dedicated search feature that often appears above the traditional listings. In addition to potentially enhanced visibility in Google Search, structured data can also impact how well search engines (and other technologies, like generative AI) understand your content. Since you’re already creating content, tagging that content with the appropriate structured data will help you get more value from it and further bolster your technical SEO .  Let’s take a look at what you need to know to get started with structured data for superior SEO. Table of contents: What is structured data? Structured data vs. Schema markup: What’s the difference? Why structured data is important in SEO The benefits of structured data for SEO Rich results eligibility Entities in generative search Better search data Does all structured data qualify for rich results? Should you add structured data that doesn’t yield rich results? What is structured data? When SEO experts talk about structured data (AKA Schema markup), they are referencing a type of script tag that you can add to your website’s HTML. Implementing structured data helps web crawlers quickly understand the most important content on your webpage (using predefined categories and definitions).  Used strategically across a website, structure data can: Make your site eligible for rich results . Illustrate a network of relationships between pages, authors, and named semantic entities . Structured data vs. Schema markup: What’s the difference? “Schema markup” is the common name for the structured data framework and vocabulary maintained by Schema.org . Developed in conjunction with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex, Schema.org ’s structured data classification documentation is constantly growing and includes over 1000 properties and types to define unique semantic entities and content types.  Many data science and tech-related fields use the phrase “structured data”   to describe any method for organizing data . And when you use on-page SEO HTML attributes, like heading tags  and bullet-pointed lists, or even open graph on your site, you are technically using a type of structured data. But typically, when SEO professionals discuss “Schema,” “Schema markup,” “structured data,” or “structured data markup,” they are talking about the structured data markup (usually in JSON-LD format) as outlined by Schema.org and endorsed by Google. Why structured data is important in SEO Structured data for SEO helps make content more standardized across the web because it applies the same guidelines across websites of various platforms and configurations. This enables Google to choose different elements from each web page and generate unique, enhanced SERP (search engine results page) features  called “rich results.” These enhanced results are much more eye-catching, more mobile friendly, and provide more information than a standard search listing. That’s why having your content show up in a rich result can improve your click-through rate (CTR) and drive more visitors to your site. Each piece of structured data you add to a page will tell Google and other search engines about the most important parts of a page. For example, there is structured data that tells Google that it’s looking at a(n):  Recipe  Product FAQ Job posting Event The benefits of structured data for SEO Structured data tells search engines what the information on your page means—not just what it says. Clearly defining the content on your site with structured data can yield a competitive advantage in SEO, allowing you to: Make your content eligible for rich results Better define your website entities for semantic and AI-powered generative search Access more search results data via Google Search Console Rich results eligibility Though structured data is not a Google ranking factor, rich results for collections of certain types of content (e.g., events or recipes) can show at the top of the SERP, before the traditional text results.  Consequently, sites that earn a spot in these features can drastically improve CTR and potentially outperform the “number one” listing at the top of the text results.  This means that configuring your site with structured data that makes you eligible for rich results can make your site more competitive.  Entities in generative search Beyond rich results, structured data also makes your content easier for machines to read, which has implications for today’s AI-powered search engine algorithms  and generative  search tools like ChatGPT ’s SearchGPT.  Does structured data matter in generative search optimization? Large Language Models (LLMs) like these use entities to discern the relationships between words and what they actually mean. When you clearly define semantic entities , they will be more accurately reflected by generative AI tools. The statements that you declare in your schema should always be reflected in your on-page copy, so in this way, the definitions and relationships between entities that are outlined in schema.org offer guidance that can inform semantic on-page copy optimization. Does structured data directly influence LLM responses?  This depends on the type of LLM. Search-enabled LLM models, like Google’s Gemini, use search results to ‘ground’ their responses and therefore can be influenced by rankings and data from SERPs with rich results. For example in the query below for [how do I make a vegan cake?], a Google search yields nine rich result recipe cards. For the same question in Perplexity and SearchGPT, we see many of the same schema-enhanced websites shown in the results. For Perplexity, seven (of eight) of the sources match Google’s rich results. And for SearchGPT, two of five sources align. This suggests that structured data markup that influences rankings on Google and Bing’s search engines and the knowledge graph may impact responses in generative search tools, like SearchGPT, CoPilot, Perplexity, and Gemini.  And though, at the time of writing, structured data markup is not parsed during LLM pretraining (for static LLMs that do not use search grounding), optimizing high-value pages for rich results with structured data and entity-informed, on-page copy should contribute to your LLM search optimization and visibility  over time. Better search data Many of the structured data types that are eligible for rich results also receive dedicated Enhancements reports in Google Search Console . These reports tell you which pages have valid markup and can provide valuable insights to help you find out why structured data markup is invalid. For instance, if you are implementing image structured data, you can include a property for Creator  to specify the person or organization that created the image. In the example below, I have done this by modifying the Wix’s built-in blog article markup. For this project, all of the images were created by “Wix,” so rather than using a variable, I used a static value. Within about a week, I was able to see the Image Metadata report in my Google Search Console Enhancement reports. Since this report shows images that have been crawled and valid structured data, I can use this data in my SEO reporting  to illustrate technical SEO implementation progress to my team. Does all structured data qualify for rich results? There are hundreds of different Schema types, but not every Schema type is eligible for a Google rich result. However, since all structured data helps search engines understand your content, implementing it is still beneficial to your site as a whole. From a strategic perspective, including schema markup that is not currently supported by Google’s rich results can help future-proof your site. Google adds new rich results all the time, so if your Schema is already in place, then you’ll get a head start on your competitors.  Product structured data can enable your products to show in Google merchant listing experiences. For example, in 2022, Google announced updates to product rich results to display multiple images alongside the primary image. For Wix users, who had this structured data built into their Wix SEO  configuration, there was no need to make updates as they were already optimized. Should you add structured data that doesn’t yield rich results? Yes. Valid structured data helps to organize your content and make it more accessible to search engines and other programs (like ChatGPT).  When Google announced that it was significantly reducing visibility for FAQ rich results in 2023, some SEOs suggested that it wasn’t worth using this markup anymore. I would argue, though, that where FAQs are genuinely helpful for users, you should include markup to support them because: Structured data helps to prioritize high-value content for search engine crawling. Structured data can help you draw connections between entities across your site and the wider web. Google embraces structured data—so should you As Google continues the trend of showing more information directly on the search results page, it’ll keep relying on structured data to populate its SERP, which means the role structured data plays for your business/website will keep growing from here.  Don’t miss out on all the opportunities structured data offers—after all, if you’re going to create content for users, you might as well get the most value from it by making sure it’s eligible for rich results and easy for search engines to understand.  Crystal Carter - Head of SEO Communications, Wix   Crystal is an SEO & digital marketing professional with over 15 years of experience. Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds, and Tomy. An avid SEO communicator, her work has been featured at Google Search Central, Brighton SEO, Moz, DeepCrawl, Semrush, and more. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Amanda Milligan Authority is a fundamental component of search engine optimization. Because searchers (and thus potential customers) are constantly seeking trustworthy sources to satisfy their queries, it is search engines’ main objective to provide the most authoritative answers to those queries. Authority is even covered at length in Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines as a component of trust: So, brands must prioritize building their authority in the eyes of both readers and Google in order to rank well and garner high-quality site traffic. In addition to the search visibility benefits, building authority also helps potential customers feel more comfortable interacting and transacting with your brand. Without authority, it’s an uphill battle to convince someone to trust you—you need to earn people’s attention (through search) and their trust. So, the question is: How? Let’s look at a few methods that have proven successful for brands of all sizes, whether you’re working with practically no resources or the budget of a Fortune 500 company, so that you can improve your brand’s authority and, over time, fuel your organic growth. Table of contents: Building authority with little time and/or money Building authority with some time but still no money Scaling your brand authority with access to budget Building authority with little time and/or money If you’re a bootstrapped entrepreneur who needed authority yesterday, here are a few strategies you can take advantage of in the short-term to give yourself a boost. Tap into well-known industry directories Respected directories, like G2 and Clutch, can help elevate your brand awareness and authority because they allow customers and clients to leave objective reviews, which others can read before working with you or buying your products/services. If you’re a relatively new business, it may take some time before customers start leaving reviews. In the meantime, you can at least establish a profile in these directories to build out your branded search results. Some of these directory sites consistently rank near the top of Google’s results for branded queries, meaning the search engine result page ( SERP ) for your brand can feature these authority signals. As an example, I work for Stacker Studio, and our Clutch profile is the second organic result when you search our brand. The five gold stars in the result help instill confidence that we know what we’re doing—you can leverage this tactic for your own brand without spending a cent. While establishing a presence on relevant directory sites is already advantageous, there’s more you can do to make the most of the opportunity and build out your authority: Manage your reviews — Respond to reviews left for you (if possible), whether they’re positive or negative shows that you’re attentive, that you’re listening to your clients/customers, and that you’re always striving to improve. Transparency always helps build authority. Share your ratings/reviews — Oftentimes review sites provide widgets or images that showcase your reviews; add these widgets to your website so prospective customers won’t have to dig around to find these authority signals. Publish testimonials/case studies If you already have an existing customer base, you can ask your customers (or clients) for testimonials. A couple of sentences strategically placed on your marketing materials and landing pages can translate to more conversions , more customers/clients, and more revenue. Successful testimonials tend to highlight the following elements: What you accomplished for them What they enjoyed most about your product/service Why they’d recommend your brand to others If you have a bit more time and you’re a services-based business, create case studies that showcase how you helped your client. Your case studies should include: The problem or challenge your customer/client was facing How you helped them surmount that problem/challenge Data to back up the claims you’re making Ideally a quote from the client to provide their direct perspective And, if your business sells directly to consumers, you can build out the review sections of your site and also monitor third-party review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, and so on. Managing your presence and responding to reviews across these platforms requires dedication, but it’s an excellent way to shape your reputation and convey authority when you’re working on a tight budget. Building authority with some time but still no money Have more time to invest in building authority but working with a limited budget? In this case, a few more options are available to you. Build trust with your current customers/clients This suggestion may seem a bit odd, but it’s advice I’ve read time and time again , and I wholeheartedly agree: Shadow your customer service or client experience teams. This powerful tactic provides you with direct access to your audience’s complaints and challenges, allowing you to create content that better serves them (as well as prospective clients/customers) and thus has a higher chance of ranking well for relevant queries. It’s also worth noting that high-quality customer service can be a huge authority builder in and of itself. It’s not enough to get people to trust you just long enough to give you money; you have to maintain their trust so they remain a client or become a repeat customer. To that end, here are a few types of content you can create to foster more authority and supplement your customer service team’s efforts: Troubleshooting documents Frequently asked questions Expert blog posts on topics related to your offering If your customers/clients have these questions, others are likely to have them as well. Answer the product- or service-specific questions, but don’t be afraid to tackle ones that are a little more tangential but still helpful . Earn digital PR so others “vouch” for you Digital PR is an excellent strategy for simultaneously building authority and awareness if you’re newer to the industry or are up against powerhouse, ubiquitous brands. However, it’s not easy to execute well. Only pursue this option if you accept that earned media is just that—earned. While digital PR can come with some incredible benefits when done correctly (such as backlinks and/or exposure via trusted publications), it takes a lot of time and effort to do well. If you’re up to the task, start by identifying who at your organization will serve as the expert. If this poses a challenge, seek out people who enjoy personal brand building and sharing their knowledge. When you have at least one person who’s willing and able to speak on behalf of the brand: Pitch them to be a guest on relevant industry podcasts that your audience listens to. Tools like SparkToro are useful in identifying these podcasts. Ask if they’re willing to be a source for news articles. Sign up for HARO and reply to relevant queries with expert quotes. If they’re very enthusiastic, pitch them to speak at industry conferences and events or have them write guest posts you can pitch to industry publications. As an example, I pitched to speak at SearchLove in 2022, got accepted, and spoke at both their San Diego and Philadelphia conferences on behalf of Stacker Studio. Not only did I earn authority for myself and my brand by speaking at a respected event, but also through promoting my acceptance, because other marketers know my pitch had to be vetted in order to be invited to speak. It’s a lot of effort, but the reward is getting your expertise featured on a third-party site, which automatically adds credibility to your brand. Plus, there are amazing SEO benefits, like earning backlinks and brand mentions, which are signals Google may use to assess your domain’s authority. Co-market to align with like-minded brands Partnering with a well-respected brand that complements what you’re doing can immediately elevate your reputation among their audience (who hopefully are good candidates to be your audience, too). To create this sort of co-marketing campaign, though, you have to have something to offer the other brand. If your plan is to leverage their community and clout, then you’ll probably need to do the heavy-lifting of putting the campaign together. They’ll be more likely to sign onto something that’s little work for them, but provides value to their audience. For example, since my company is newer in the industry, I wanted to partner with brands that are respected and complement our service offering. I reached out to Verblio, MarketMuse, and Seer Interactive about creating a piece of content together that spoke to each of our strengths and would help us drive leads. Together, we created an epic 3,000+ word guide about how to scale your SEO efforts, and it’s something that benefits all of us. Ask yourself: Which brands do you want to be “friends” with? What value can you provide them in order to work together? Scaling your brand authority with access to budget If you have more resources to work with, you can add fuel to the fire. Almost every one of the techniques I’ve already talked about can be amplified to have a greater impact. But, let’s focus on the approaches I think can most significantly move the needle. Partner with a trusted influencer There’s a reason influencer marketing was such a hot topic in the 2010s. Articles like this one from Adweek were saying that influencers had a major impact on purchasing decisions. When done right, it makes sense: As buyers, we often know influencers are paid to talk about a product or service, but we also hope they’ve vetted these options and picked out the ones they actually like. After all, they’re only considered influencers because they’ve already earned their audience’s trust. Seeing folks online whom we trust talk about a product or service favorably not only impacts buying decisions, but can very positively impact your authority. The more invested an influencer is in what you’re offering, the more organic their promotion feels because they genuinely do support what they’re promoting. I took this into consideration when sponsoring a podcast on behalf of my company. As someone in the industry who’s respected SEO consultant Dan Shure for a while, I knew he was generally regarded as an expert in the field. So, I reached out with intent to sponsor his podcast, and we had conversations about what our company was and answered any questions he had. Now, he talks about our brand authentically on the show despite us being a sponsor; he truly likes what we do. The more it’s set up like a paid partnership rather than a one-and-done ad, the more it’ll improve your brand’s authority. Invest in content marketing “Content marketing” is a behemoth term, because it refers to any content that your brand creates for any marketing goal . That could be brand awareness, organic traffic, customer retention, and, of course, authority building. There’s often a lot of goal overlap, but when focusing on authority building, ranking in the SERPs goes a long way. This has a direct overlap with SEO efforts to increase organic traffic, but consider the authority building ramifications, too. If someone searches for something, and your site is the first result, that signals to the user that Google identified your page as the best resource to help. It reinforces that you know what you’re talking about. But, the content itself can also communicate authority. When you take the time to sit down and write genuinely useful content , and you invest in adding useful graphics and promoting the article so it reaches the right audiences, and that article starts to rank, people will read your piece and (hopefully) remember that you helped them out. Ahrefs is great at this. It has built a ton of authority thanks to its comprehensive blog posts that either dive into data or offer a ton of context to help users perform SEO ( like the example below ). Content is the best way to show your expertise (rather than merely talk about it). You can say you’re an expert in anything, but without having the content to back it up, how can potential customers be sure? Level-up your digital PR After you’ve pitched podcasts, conferences, guest posts, and so on, it’s time to think about how to scale this effort and build even more trust with the widest possible audience. Earned media is excellent in this regard. When a respected publication or blog chooses to cover your content or brand, that sends a significant trust signal to readers. Sometimes, when a press release for a significant update about your company/product/service goes out, you can get some good coverage. But usually, when things are business-as-usual, you have to offer value to a writer’s story in order to earn that coverage. I mentioned HARO previously, and that works here, as well. But if you want to be more proactive (rather than reactive) in order to earn media consistently, you need to create newsworthy content. There are many elements of newsworthiness to use for brainstorming, including timeliness, proximity, and significance. Obviously, as digital marketers, we can’t exactly dive into the world of breaking news. So, we have to either create or complement it . The best way to do this is with data. Why? Because when you’re the first to analyze or illustrate data in a certain way, it often reveals new, interesting insights that haven’t been published or talked about yet. That makes it much easier to pitch your content/report/study/survey to publishers and get their attention! If you have internal data that you can make publicly available and that would be insightful for readers, this is a great way to start. Look, for example, at how GasBuddy tracks gas prices and receives media coverage since it’s so relevant for readers on the local level. If you don’t have internal data, there are a ton of free, publicly available datasets out there. Government sites are a great place to start, like the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics . It’s a lot of work to put a data report together, but you can get some of the most high-quality media coverage possible using this method, and that builds significant credibility. Building authority means building a foundation for all your marketing efforts SEO (and any sort of marketing) involves crucial decisions about what to prioritize. Authority is one of those elements that uplifts all other efforts, so it should be high up on your priority list. No matter how much time and money you have available, building authority will help you move the needle and set up a good foundation for your other efforts, like going international or launching a new line of products for a new audience. Amanda Milligan - Head of Marketing at Stacker Amanda Milligan is an inbound marketing expert with more than a decade of experience in content, growth, and brand. Her knowledge has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, TechCrunch, and more, as well as conferences like SMX, MozCon, SearchLove, and Pubcon. Twitter | Linkedin