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

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

Author: Grace Frohlich Trust paves the way for conversion. One of the best ways to earn your target audience’s trust is to be there for them, answering their questions time and time again. For SEOs and site owners, this means creating content. The most effective way to accomplish this task at scale is to map out the topics and potential questions that are relevant for your audience. User journey mapping is a technique that helps businesses visualize their customers’ journey—from the moment they start searching for a solution to the point of conversion. This technique accounts for relevant topics, questions, and even user search intent to help you create a true full-funnel content marketing campaign. In this article, I’ll cover: What is user journey mapping for search? How to build a user journey map Using your user journey map for better SEO Tracking & reporting using user journey stages What is user journey mapping for search? You may have heard of the “buyer/customer journey”—a user journey map is similar. It is a model or visual representation that illustrates the stages a customer goes through, from the moment they start searching for a solution to when they actually become customers. The main difference with user journey mapping is that the touch points exclusively relate to online search. For example, in the SaaS customer engagement industry, a user journey may look something like this: 01. The user starts their search by typing how to improve customer retention into Google. 02. They may then click on a blog post about customer engagement strategies, leading them to a software company’s website. 03. From there, they may browse the website and eventually convert by signing up for a free trial. User journey mapping is a crucial component of full-funnel content marketing , as it helps align website content with user search intent, which I’ll expand on in the next section. How search intent contributes to user journey mapping Search intent refers to the “why” that drives a user to search a given keyword , and it is not always reflected in what they type into the search bar. For example, let's say you’re a B2B SaaS company that sells CRM (customer relationship management) solutions. Along their journey, a user searching for CRM products could make their way through the following search intents (and corresponding search terms): Informational intent (e.g., CRM management tools ) — The user is researching possible CRM solutions on the market. Comparative intent (e.g., best CRM tools ) — The user is comparing different tools to see which one best suits them. Transactional/navigational intent (e.g., [company name] CRM ) — The user is ready to buy the product from your website. By mapping search intent to each stage of your user journey, you can create a strategy so that your brand appears in the right places at the right time, meeting users where they are with relevant content. This not only benefits potential customers, it also helps search engines find and rank your content more effectively. One of the reasons why search intent plays such an important role in this process is because many keywords can have the same intent . For example, the keywords CRM for small business and customer relationship for small business have the same search intent. In fact, Google has claimed that 15% of search terms have never been searched before. And, Google processes trillions of searches every year , which means hundreds of billions of searches are completely new. For SEOs, this means that it’s much more important and efficient to track search intent rather than chasing keywords. This is why understanding the real intent behind searches is essential if you want to target your audience with the right content at the right time, and ultimately, drive conversions. How to build a user journey map The process of building a user journey map starts similarly to a UX customer journey map, except that you will predominantly use Google data. Here are the steps to build a user journey map for search: Step 1: Define your user persona Your audience and their pain points can serve as a clear roadmap for your user journey map to expand upon. For many brands, this means building out personas (if you haven’t already). When defining your user personas, go beyond the demographic and behavioral characteristics associated with search (i.e., users that tend to search on mobile versus desktop) to also include user goals and motivations as they relate to search and your website or industry. Spend time to identify who your target audience is and what their search habits are. Find out what types of problems they face. User surveys, focus groups, and interviews can provide critical insights into what your potential customers want and what they’re looking to avoid. If you don’t have this type of data (as is the case with many small businesses), I have found that there are AI tools, like ChatGPT , that can help generate user motivations and pain points to build a user persona. For example, if you’re a B2B SaaS company looking to generate user motivations for CRM solutions, you could feed ChatGPT a prompt like “List the most common user motivations for searching CRM solutions.” The tool will generate something like this: You can then dig into each line item to find specific pain points. Let’s look at one of the user motivations ChatGPT gave us as an example—“Improve customer retention and loyalty.” To get more granular and identify specific ways to help your audience, you could type in the prompt: “My company is a SaaS customer relation management company. I’m researching my customers’ problems and pain points about customer retention and loyalty. What are the most common pain points for my customers around improving customer retention?” ChatpGPT will generate a list like this: Get your customer’s perspective by asking ChatGPT about their pain points. Repeat this for each line item until you have a comprehensive list. Then clean your list by combining similar items, removing duplicates, or simplifying some items. You will end up with a full list of all user motivations and pain points. Step 2: Create a user journey Next, you need to use your personas to map out the user journey into “stages” and “milestones”: Stages are top-level steps in the user journey. Milestones refer to more specific steps that fall under a specific stage. I will demonstrate this process using the example for “improving customer retention and loyalty,” using the user motivations output from ChatGPT as our stages. (Note: While I am listing out the user journey in chronological order to help us visualize it, the reality is that user search behavior is non-linear and is more like “ the messy middle. ”) Start by arranging your list of motivations and pain points chronologically. Next, copy and paste the pain points (your own list or the ones ChatGPT provided) into a spreadsheet. Pro tip: It helps to categorize each item with stages in the marketing funnel : awareness, consideration, and conversion. Then split the list into two columns where the colon is. The first column will be your milestones, while the second column is a brief explanation. Tweak the wording for milestones so that they are action phrases. Now, you have specific steps in your user journey. Repeat this process for all of your stages until you have a full user journey. Again, you can assign marketing funnel stages if that helps visually (as shown in the example below). Step 3: Build a keyword list Now that you have your user journey, it’s time to get to the “mapping” part. You’ll need to compile a comprehensive keyword list to feed into the user search journey. Your list should include currently ranking keywords and aspirational keywords (terms that you would like to rank for and that make sense for your product/service). This will help you formulate business goals and uncover gaps in the user journey. To start, export ranking keywords from Google Search Console (GSC) . You can supplement this list with a keyword research tool, like Ahrefs or Semrush. If you don’t have a third-party tool, you can use Google Keyword Planner to find keyword ideas . Next, pull competitor keywords and add them to the list. Again, you can use Ahrefs or other third-party tools to get competitor keywords. Otherwise, it may be a more manual process. You can either use tools that offer free trials (although many have usage limits) or you can even leverage ChatGPT to expand on your keyword list. This article shows you AI prompts for how to do this. Step 4: Assign milestones to keywords Once you have a full keyword list, assign each keyword to a milestone in your user journey. For example, below I have listed keywords to place into each milestone for improving customer retention. improve customer service for retention how to keep customers engaged through communication customer service tips for retention customer retention through personalization tactics increase value for customer retention value-based customer retention tactics customer communication strategies for retention personalize customer experiences for retention improve product quality for customer retention customer retention strategies for better products Categorize each keyword into the most relevant milestone. I’ve formatted as above to show a visual representation, however it’s much more efficient to format your data following the example below. This will help you filter, sort, and organize your data down the line. Pro tip: It also helps to assign milestone code numbers as a quick reference. Step 5: Categorize keywords into search intent and topics The last step is to categorize keywords by search intent and topic groups. This gives you a high-level view of topics per journey stage, and helps you spot content opportunities. This can be a time-consuming process, but using an AI tool like ChatGPT can significantly speed it up. I have detailed one method below: First, enter your list of keywords into ChatGPT’s text input field and specify what type of intent or topic you want to categorize the keywords under. For search intent, you could input the prompt: “Categorize these keywords into one of these search intents: Informational, Transactional, Comparative, Navigational” If you want to categorize keywords by topic cluster , you could enter a prompt such as "Categorize these keywords by topic related to customer retention." ChatGPT will then generate a list of topic clusters and suggested search intents based on the keywords you provided. You must review the suggestions and group the keywords accordingly. Repeat this process until all of the keywords are categorized into their relevant topics and intents. Once this is done, you’ll be able to identify common themes and topics that are important to your audience at different stages of the customer journey. This can help you create highly relevant, valuable content for your target audience, which can ultimately lead to better site performance. How to use your user journey map for better SEO Now that you have your user journey map, I will explain some key insights that you can get from it. You can monitor stages and milestones to pinpoint areas that need improvement. The example below shows average monthly ranking by user journey milestone. This helps you identify specific milestones that consistently underperform and create a plan to further optimize them. Another key benefit is better site content alignment: In the previous section, you mapped your user journey according to journey stages, search intents, and topics. Take it one step further and map specific pages on your site to each keyword and intent. Let’s say you notice certain pages have been underperforming over the past few months. Look at which user journey milestones those pages are mapped to, as well as target keywords. Check if the pages satisfy the search intent. If the intent is informational but it’s mapped to a transactional page, you will have to either map to a different page or create a new page. If your pages rank well for each of the mapped keywords and stages, it means that you’re on the right track. This insight can help you determine if your targeted content resonates with customers at each stage of the journey and help you identify pages that need retargeting or optimizing. What if you don’t have a page that ranks for keywords you want to target? That’s an opportunity to investigate more or even create new content. You can then create targeted content to fill these gaps, ensuring that your brand is relevant and valuable no matter what pain points the user might currently be trying to resolve. User journey mapping also provides an easier way to track content. By mapping specific pages on the website to stages, you can see performance by site sections or groups. In the next section, I’ll explain tracking and reporting in more detail. Tracking and reporting with user journey stages You’ll need to track and report on your website’s performance to evaluate how well your user journey map is working. But, tracking keywords to measure performance is (or will soon be) outdated. Google’s MUM update aims to reduce the number of searches needed to satisfy user intent, which means we need to change the way we track and measure traffic to our websites. Instead of focusing on individual keywords, monitor user journey stages and topic groups to better understand the performance of your content in relation to user intent. Instead of tracking keywords individually, monitor user journey stages and topic groups to better understand the performance of your content in relation to user intent. I highly recommend using a keyword tracking tool for this (I use STAT Search Analytics ). When you upload your keyword list into the platform, you can tag each keyword with the user journey stage, milestone, and code. This way, you can track performance by sections. You can filter your data by user journey stage, milestone, or topic group and drill down on the data. For example, the ranking data in the image below was filtered by one specific milestone. We can then investigate keyword performance within that milestone. If you spot certain keywords that have not been ranking well, reevaluate the search intent for these terms. Check the keywords in the SERP to see if you can switch them out for other terms that better satisfy intent. You can filter data in STAT rankings to show one user journey stage or milestone. The screenshot below is an example of a user journey in STAT. You can see keyword performance by milestone, which makes it easier to make optimizations in batches, which in turn helps you work more efficiently. STAT makes it easy to view data by user journey stage and milestone (i.e., “tag name”). As your content grows, so too will your user journey map User journey mapping is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring and refinement. As you update and add new content to your website, it’s important to regularly review and adjust your user journey map to ensure that it remains aligned with user intent and behavior. I recommend doing this user journey mapping exercise annually to keep your data up-to-date. The initial research and set up will take time, but the reward is an invaluable resource that you will continue to use and adapt. Plus, you will find deeper insights about your current and potential customers. So, start mapping out your user journey today and take your SEO strategy to the next level! Grace Frohlich - SEO Consultant at Brainlabs Grace is a consultant at Brainlabs SEO (formerly Distilled), and has extensive knowledge and experience in SEO fundamentals. She enjoys sharing strategic processes and insights, and has spoken at BrightonSEO and SearchLove. 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Author: Eyal Aftabi Despite all the changes in digital marketing and organic search over the last few years, how well your business ranks is still the number one factor determining how much organic traffic and, in turn, customers you get—whether that’s from Google Search, Amazon, YouTube, etc. In other words, ranking highly for relevant keywords can allow you to bring in a consistent flow of new customers and revenue for your business. But, how do you know your strategy and actions are taking you towards that goal? This is why SEOs track keyword rankings : to measure performance and adapt accordingly. This philosophy doesn’t just apply to your websites, though. It also goes for your other valuable content, like video assets (on YouTube) or product pages (on Amazon). After all, your business probably operates across multiple platforms, making multi-channel rank tracking crucial for iteration and improvement. In this article, I’ll walk you through multi-channel rank tracking and how to do it on Wix with Rankix. Table of contents: Multi-channel rank tracking: What it is & why it matters 4 ways to get started with multi-channel rank tracking Google & Bing Google Business Profile YouTube Amazon Report on your rankings with Rankix Automated reporting Notifications Multi-channel rank tracking: What it is & why it matters Multi-channel rank tracking refers to monitoring how well your most important online assets rank in various platforms, like Google, Bing, YouTube, and even Amazon. Multi-channel rank tracking is the practice of keeping ALL your ranking data in ONE place. This allows you to get a holistic view of how your business performs across the internet. Over time, this data can show you whether your content, SEO, social, and/or local strategy is working—or, just as crucially, it can indicate that your strategy isn’t working, so that you can pivot and improve instead of staying the course to nowhere.  You can (and should) compare your multi-channel rankings with real business metrics (revenue, form completions, phone calls, etc.) to get an idea of your digital strategy’s return on investment. RankiX  is a rank tracking app made specifically for Wix website owners and managers. When you use RankiX as your multi-channel rank tracker, you’re able to: Track your web pages’, blog posts’, YouTube videos’, and Amazon product listings’ rankings directly from your Wix dashboard. Use your ranking trends data to guide your digital marketing strategy for more business growth. Save money by using a single tool, instead of paying for separate tools for each channel. Multi-channel rank tracking with RankiX: 4 ways to get started So, how do you easily track your rankings from your Wix account? Small businesses struggle enough to square away their SEO (on top of all of their other daily tasks), but that doesn’t have to be the case. RankiX  is a rank tracking app made for Wix users. To get started, you’ll proceed through the same first steps, regardless of the channel you want to track your rankings for. First, add your URLs and keywords. Just input your URL and keywords in the “Add to Track” section (shown above). As a starting point, you can add keywords you’re already ranking for. To see these keywords, check the Search Results report in your Google Search Console . Next, let’s take a deeper look at how you’ll use RankiX to track your visibility on: Google & Bing Google Business Profile YouTube Amazon Rank tracking on Google & Bing RankiX supports rank tracking on Google and Bing—for businesses that want to increase website traffic, these search engines are the most important to track.  After you’ve added your keyword (as discussed above), you’ll need to specify the following tracking settings: Desktop or mobile results (your website ranks differently for different devices) The country of the search engine (e.g., Google.com , Google.co.kr , Bing.com , Bing.cz ) Location Google Business Profile tracking (more on this in the next section) Note: For Bing, only desktop rank tracking is available. By tracking rankings on Google and Bing, you can: Identify the keywords and topic clusters  that earn you the most traffic and optimize your content to improve visibility/rankings further. Identify whether rank changes are Google-specific (i.e., a Google algorithm update ) or whether your content quality is improving/degrading compared to your competitors across both search engines. Compare performance across search engines. Rank tracking for your Google Business Profile Your Google Business Profile (GBP)  is at the heart of attracting customers to your brick-and-mortar location. It’s how local businesses rank in the top-three GBP results on the first page of Google. How your GBP ranks determines whether you’ll appear in the local pack, shown here. RankiX can track where your GBP ranks for high-intent local searches.  You can also use RankiX to see how your GBP rankings change after you perform optimizations. So, if you recently got a new backlink  or more Google reviews , you’ll be able to see how that impacts your GBP rankings. Then, you can invest in whichever tactic is more effective at increasing your rankings and business outcomes. Rank tracking for YouTube RankiX supports rank tracking for YouTube, allowing you to monitor your video rankings in the same way you monitor your Google rankings. This is useful whether you have an active YouTube business channel or are sponsoring another influencer/channel . To track your YouTube video’s rankings, add the video ID (the section of the video’s URL after “v=”) and the relevant keywords. Rank tracking for your Amazon listings Tracking your Amazon product listings’ rankings allows you to: Make changes to your product page  in response to ranking fluctuations. Collect data on which products get the most interest, helping you guide future product development (e.g., a new phone release may cause more interest in cases for that phone). RankiX supports Amazon product rank tracking for eCommerce businesses  that don’t want to pay for multiple tools just to track their performance on Amazon. To get started, select “Amazon” and input your Amazon ASINs and the keywords you’re interested in tracking. Report on your rankings with Rankix Tracking your rankings is only half the job—the other half is keeping up with them and understanding them. This is where reporting comes in . RankiX generates different types of reports and notifications to make managing your visibility easier and faster. The data in your reports will serve as the backbone for future strategic changes. Let’s go through a few types of reports available on RankiX. Automated reporting First, you can generate daily, weekly, or monthly reports that are automatically sent to your email. Go to the “Reports & Notifications” tab and click “Add new.” Select the “Scheduled Report” option, then fill out the details you want included in the report. This is also where you tell RankiX who to send the reports to. Just input the desired email address and your reports will be delivered directly to your inbox (or your client’s inbox). Notifications Notifications are a secondary, but invaluable, type of reporting. Unlike scheduled reports, which automatically send on preset intervals, notifications are triggered by certain predetermined events. For example, you might set up a triggered notification any time one of your rankings drops by more than two spots. This drastically reduces your reaction time, enabling you to implement fixes much faster when things start to go wrong. RankiX also supports live link reports, which are continuously updated web pages that contain all the ranking information you choose to include. Sharing this link with others allows them to check on updated rankings without accessing your Wix or RankiX dashboards. You can also protect this link with a password to help keep your ranking data secure. Monitor multi-channel rankings to show up everywhere your customers look for you Rank tracking is non-negotiable for businesses that rely on their online presence to attract customers. With RankiX, you can perform multi-channel rank tracking to monitor the channels and platforms that matter the most while getting an overview of your overall brand footprint online. The RankiX app  is available now on the Wix App Market, with a free version that lets you check five searches daily. Get started today to start building up your trends data for better search visibility. Eyal Aftabi - Founder and CEO of Pro Rank Tracker Eyal Aftabi is the founder & CEO of Pro Rank Tracker , a specialized rank tracking and reporting solution for SEO agencies and in-house teams that recently launched RankiX for Wix.

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

Author: Miriam Ellis It used to be that a simple Google search would typically deliver a wide enough array of results to help you find what you were looking for. This was a passive experience on the part of the searcher—enter a keyword phrase and you’d have the world at your feet.  This is no longer the case for two reasons: We use the internet for so many more activities than we did 20 years ago. Multiple sources indicate that Google’s search result quality has worsened in recent years. Gut-check my statements by thinking about your own phone and laptop use. Do you spend most of your screen time searching, or doing something else these days? Are you satisfied with Google’s top organic results, or do you have to dig deeper to find what you want?  When you look at your own usage and realize that many of your potential customers are likely hanging out somewhere other than the search results, what you’ve learned must become central to your digital marketing strategy. The days of your top goal being a spot in Google’s top 10 results are fading fast. As internet users become more active in their habits, your brand must catch up with them.  Let’s take a look at how you can adapt your marketing to support the active search journeys your potential customers are actually embarking on.  Table of contents: The decline of passive search Why passive Google search is broken Active search: How users actually use Google today How to embrace active search Support your audience’s active search journey: Best practices Do not mistake other platforms for Google Structure your team to reflect your audience’s active search journey Monitor brand mentions and distribute content The decline of passive search Passive search is the act of typing your keyword(s) into a search engine and being adequately satisfied with whatever ranks (or appears high up on the search results page).  While passive search is a good fit for basic functions (like checking a weather forecast, the time in another country, or converting US dollars into Euros), it has significant limitations for modern day users—limitations that other platforms are actively looking to fill. In some ways, recent Google’s algorithm updates  even discourage passive searches by forcing users to dig deeper on other platforms, which I’ll discuss more in the next sections.  Why passive Google search is broken In the past, the public was largely satisfied with the assets Google ranked highly for more complex search terms. Now, hardly a week goes by without new studies , surveys, and articles expressing and explaining why so many people no longer find the Google Search experience acceptable. There are almost as many theories for the cause of this dissatisfaction as there are Google users. Here are three factors to keep in mind: Google is losing the quality battle  — Google has allowed content from big brands (presumably created by content farms) to take up too much space in its index, according to Greg Sterling , co-founder of Near Media. When authoritative domains publish large volumes of low-quality content that have little or nothing to do with the brand’s recognized fields of expertise, searchers are unlikely to be well-served. All too often, weaknesses in Google’s algorithm  are simply allowing large players with the ability/budget to produce encyclopedic content to outrank smaller publishers with genuine authority. “I am no fan of Forbes and am often dismayed by what it ranks for, but one could argue that its strategy and choices are an entirely a rational response to Google’s algorithmic biases.” — Greg Sterling, Co-Founder at Near Media Google’s UX has become too cluttered  — Recently, I was talking to a fellow SEO who was so befuddled by Google’s current search experience that they suddenly realized they had been unintentionally clicking on ads . Not only are paid advertisements difficult for both novice and adept searchers to distinguish from the organic results, but the plethora of SERP features  has resulted in a mess. Commercial-intent searches, such as [organic fair trade coffee beans], are now met with a wall of product grids and shopping features that make finding a simple website link like wandering through a house of mirrors. Not long ago, the UX was so much simpler than this, and Google’s index served as a table of contents for real businesses that real people could understand and use with little trouble. Above the fold, there are more filters, tabs, and ads than there are organic search results for this query. Google has forgotten it’s a part of the search journey, not the destination — With the exception of easily answered searches that fall into the [what’s the weather like] category, Google-controlled assets do not satisfy most search intents . The problem is, Google has decided that it wants to be the end point for too many queries (in order to keep users on Google and increase its revenue potential). In the past, the SERPs acted as stepping stones on your journey to relevant content—the thing the user was searching for, be it a product, a local business, an informational resource, or anything in between. By contrast, the results nowadays increasingly feel like the only thing Google wants you to discover is…Google. Earlier this year, a US District Court ruled that Google violated antitrust law  and acted as a monopoly at the expense of competitors. As we can see, it has also been at the expense of users, like your potential customers, who want to find you and not just another self-preferenced Google asset. Active search: How users actually use Google today Active search refers to when the user has to dig deeper than a search engine’s top-ranked results or transition to a completely different platform to satisfy their search intent.  Here are three examples of how users must now search actively to find what they’re looking for: 01. A searcher is looking for [how to restring an acoustic guitar].  Google’s top results feature an AI overview scraped from sources of unknown quality, followed by a long list of low-quality sites that are riddled with ads and popups. The dissatisfied searcher either keeps digging or finds the nearest link to transition out of the SERPs to YouTube, where a video from a genuine expert will walk them through the process, step-by-step.  Google’s AI overviews have rolled out to a mixed reception due to questionable quality and integrity. This example recommends drinking urine to help pass a kidney stone. Source: Search Engine Roundtable. 02.   A searcher is looking for [organic linen drawstring capri pants],  but none of the shopping results Google features on its first page (or even within the top 50 results) match all aspects of this user’s long-tail query . The searcher abandons Google and goes to Instagram to find a product that exactly matches their specific preferences, perhaps from a boutique seller. 03.   A searcher queries [why did JRR Tolkien dislike tape recorders].  There may be some relevant content returned in Google’s top-ranked results, but the searcher will not feel fully satisfied unless they can interact one-on-one with real people who have a track record of demonstrating authority in this genre of fiction. They head to Reddit  and either jump into an existing discussion or start their own.  In all three cases, the searcher has made a significant transition from being spoon-fed by Google’s results (i.e., passive search) to becoming an active seeker of the specialized solution that uniquely satisfies them. This is the transformation we are witnessing today that requires a major marketing adjustment on the part of businesses, organizations, and publishers. How to embrace active search While the rise of active search is specific to the era we are currently marketing in, the potential solution may be a familiar one for veteran marketers, and it requires you to determine where your brand’s ‘home’ is (in addition to your brand’s domain/homepage). To that end, Rand Fishkin, co-founder at SparkToro, urges brands to market like it’s 1964:  “What I’m suggesting to you is that digital marketing in 2024 is a lot like marketing in 1964. It is getting the right message that appeals to the right people in the right places and at the right time to the right audience.” — Rand Fishkin , Co-founder at SparkToro He’s specifically referencing how difficult attribution has become in a zero-click dynamic, but a top takeaway that’s applicable to nearly every scenario is this: in 1964, marketing depended on being wherever your customer was.  It meant constructing your futuristic supermarket in the most densely-populated neighborhood in town. It meant getting your holiday catalog into households before anyone started shopping. And, it also meant going to business lunches, sponsoring local sports teams, and socializing within your community so that you became known (and liked) by the people you wanted to serve.  The task ahead of you is to translate mid-century marketing to the web, actively engaging with (and establishing a presence in) your potential community.  For local businesses , all the old-school, offline community involvement remains smart, but whether local or virtual, organizations should start spending a little less time worrying about ordinal organic rank and a lot more time hanging out with their customers.  If what Fishkin is saying (and what I’m suggesting) sounds like radical change, you’re right—keep reading! Support your audience’s active search journey: Best practices Your audience’s active search journey can look very different from that of other audiences (even those shopping for similar products or services). So, you’ll need to build up your own rules of engagement for your audience/business.  Here are some of my best practices to get you started: Do not mistake other platforms for Google Structure your team to reflect your audience’s active search journey Monitor brand mentions and distribute content Do not mistake other platforms for Google I’m not suggesting that search engine rankings are unimportant—they still matter. For local businesses, your Google Business Profile  is still critical. But, how you think about where your business fits is rapidly changing.  You can’t be one of ten blue links in Google’s SERPs anymore and call it a day. Instead, bring the maximum creativity your entire team can muster to figure out whether the best fit for your business exists on one of the following platforms, where you can socialize one-on-one with your potential customers: TikTok Reddit Discord Patreon Substack YouTube Instagram Facebook X/Twitter If your organization already knows that there is a better match for you on a platform not listed above, you’re ahead of the game, but most enterprises are struggling to find the right home-away-from-home page. In most cases, the right platform is waiting for you somewhere in my short list. But there’s a twist to all this. If we look back at the past two decades in SEO and marketing, you can see that we developed a habit of throwing everything at Google to see what would happen. Some of the content we threw in there was not good, and a lot of it didn’t deserve to see the light of day in the SERPs. This is not an approach you can take with the social platforms where you need to establish yourself.  Experimentation is definitely necessary, but if you annoy the public with low-quality marketing tactics, you risk being blocked by other members and even banned from communities . You’ll still put on your SEO hat to look at rank tracking reports  and the like, but you’ve got to find a different hat for joining the party at Reddit or Substack. In those environments, audiences will judge you by how well you socialize, and in some of them, behaving like a salesperson will get you booted. The secret ingredient to succeeding is being deeply passionate about whatever the topic is that you have in common with a particular community —rather than being there to sell, you are there to participate in a shared interest. The shared interest could be a physical town or city if your business is local, or if virtual, your passion might be the music associated with the instruments you sell. Maybe it’s the homes that can be beautified by the lamps you manufacture, or the photography that can be captured by your specialized lenses.  And here’s my most radical advice of all: if you do not genuinely feel passion for what your business offers, you need to employ people who do. This may sound ironic, given that developments in AI are causing major enterprises to lay off staff on the notion that having fewer employees will make a more attractive picture for shareholders. Be wary of this trend, because in order to sustain profits, focus belongs on how appealing your brand looks to customers (not shareholders). If the emerging social aspects of doing 21st-century business like it’s 1964 are outside your comfort zone as a business owner, find and hold onto staff who are willing to hang out, help out, and build relationships.Treat each environment with respect, because social spaces are akin to other people’s homes.  Embrace the zeal of posting images and videos. Engage in the comments section and comment on other people’s work. Give away free advice. Be there for others and demonstrate your expertise, authenticity, and trustworthiness.  It must happen every day on Nextdoor that someone hires a house painter who shares their interest in making Halloween costumes for cats, just like it used to be common for mid-century people to hire a contractor because they attended the same bridge club. Structure your team to reflect your audience’s active search journey Once you’ve established where you’ll be socializing with your community, organize your staff to build and maintain a presence.  In this scenario, your social media managers will likely take on a more emphatic role. Duties will include: Social media monitoring and participation Social content ideation and creation Social content distribution Social media analysis and reporting If your brand develops its own social hub (like a Discord server), you’ll need all of the above, plus additional roles like: Community moderators Account managers Technical support staff Monitor brand mentions and distribute content The more complex your business model is, the more likely it is that you’ll need tools to scale both monitoring your social channels and distributing content to them. Whether you have multiple business locations to promote  or multiple social channels to manage, software can help you: Monitor mentions of your brand on topics that are relevant to it. Organize and format content appropriately for each channel. Popular software choices include Sparktoro, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite. Future-proof your digital marketing with more humanity and authenticity I’m not pleased with what’s happened to Google’s SERPs and I hope it can improve, but I confess to being open to any trend that helps businesses be more real with more people. If you can see the positives in this change from passive to active use of search and the web, you’ve got some real opportunities ahead of you. Miriam Ellis - Local SEO Subject Matter Expert at Moz   Miriam Ellis is a local SEO columnist and consultant. She has been cited as one of the top five most prolific women writers in the SEO industry. Miriam is also an award-winning fine artist and her work can be seen at MiriamEllis.com . Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Veruska Anconitano Google’s algorithm updates  can throw even the most well-optimized businesses into chaos, leading to sudden drops in rankings, traffic, and revenue. For companies that rely heavily on SEO, these changes can feel like moving goalposts, making it difficult to maintain consistent visibility.  While you can’t outsmart every update, you can lessen the impact by turning to a powerful tool: market research. When you deeply understand your audience and diversify your digital strategy across multiple channels, you reduce the risk of algorithm changes taking a toll on your business. In this article, I’ll show you how integrating market research into your strategy can help stabilize your performance, minimize dependency on SEO, and build a more adaptable, future-proof business. Table of contents: Market research 101 How to conduct market research for your business and audience Omnichannel marketing: Sustain growth without relying on SEO How to integrate market research into your digital strategy 01. Define clear research objectives 02. Gather data from multiple sources 03. Create feedback loops across departments 04. Analyze and prioritize insights 05. Implement findings in an agile framework 06. Channel-specific implementation 07. Create a regular research schedule 08. Integrate tools and technology for real-time insights 09. Align research with KPIs and business objectives Market research 101: What it is & why it’s essential Market research is more than just data collection; it’s a practice rooted in social science that seeks to understand human behavior, preferences, and needs. Drawing from fields like psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics, market research helps explain why customers make certain choices and how they interact with products and services. Understanding your audience, their target market, and the socioeconomic conditions they navigate is crucial to your success. Brands that excel at knowing their target audience—its needs, pain points, and underlying motivations —are the ones that thrive over the long run, while those that overlook this fundamental process usually struggle to gain traction.  Studies have shown that businesses that prioritize customer-centric strategies  outperform those that don’t, with  one report by Deloitte  indicating that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that aren’t. By using   qualitative research methods , such as interviews or focus groups, you can gain deep insights into customer motivations and emotional triggers.  This is particularly useful for uncovering the underlying reasons why people feel a certain way about a product or service. For example, focus groups often reveal emotional drivers, like the need for belonging or status, which may not be immediately evident from quantitative data alone. On the other hand, quantitative methods , such as surveys or data analytics, focus on gathering measurable data that you can use to identify trends across larger populations.  Quantitative research is essential for confirming patterns observed during qualitative research and allows businesses to make strategic adjustments based on clear, objective feedback. For instance, statistical analysis may reveal  that customers who engage with a particular feature of a product are more likely to become repeat buyers, guiding future product development and marketing strategies. By combining both qualitative and quantitative research, you’re able to gain a more complete understanding of your target audience, which helps your team make informed decisions that align with customer preferences. In the face of Google’s frequent algorithm updates, market research provides a clear understanding of what your audience needs, helping you build strategies that are less affected by search algorithm  changes.  After all, even if you please the search engines and chase rankings, Google, Bing, or whatever generative AI  engine will never be your customers—it’s your human audience that you actually need to convince. The benefits of effective market research Effective market research delivers actionable insights that influence every aspect of your business, from content strategy to product development. Thoroughly comprehending your audience’s needs and preferences means more informed business decisions that lead to:  Improved content Enhanced user experiences Stronger product-market fit Together, these elements contribute to sustainable business growth and adaptability. Let’s dive a bit deeper into exactly how this should play out. Improved content strategy When you create content with audience insights in mind , that content is more likely to perform well across channels and less likely to be negatively affected by changes in Google’s algorithm updates.  For example, if your research indicates that your audience values sustainability, you can focus your content on eco-friendly products, positioning yourself as a brand that aligns with their values. From an SEO perspective, this represents a long-tail strategy  that appeals to high-intent customers while minimizing competition for more generic terms that are less relevant to your product/services. And, by understanding where your audience consumes content, you can distribute it across multiple channels (e.g., social media, email, PPC) rather than relying solely on SEO for visibility. This ensures your message reaches your audience on platforms they frequently engage with, reducing dependency on search engine traffic alone. Better user experience Market research directly informs user experience (UX) design by identifying how your audience interacts with your website and digital products. This allows for more intuitive design choices that enhance engagement and  leads . For example, if research shows that your target audience prefers simplified navigation and quick access to information, you can design your website accordingly, leading to lower bounce rates  and higher conversion rates. Microsoft Clarity (available for Wix) can record user interactions and generate heat maps to help you improve UX. Source: Microsoft. Improved user experience also indirectly benefits SEO . Search engines may prioritize websites that deliver positive user experiences, as measured by metrics such as time on page, click-through rates, and bounce rates. When you design your website to meet the needs of your audience, these engagement metrics improve, potentially strengthening your search rankings. Enhanced product-market fit Beyond content and SEO, market research helps businesses refine their product offerings by identifying unmet customer needs . For example, by surveying your audience, you might uncover demand for a feature you hadn’t considered, allowing you to tailor your product to meet market demands. Once you’ve gathered insights, you can  adjust your product or service  to align more closely with what your target audience values. Whether this involves changing a product feature, adjusting pricing strategies, or altering your brand messaging , market research ensures that your offerings stay relevant to your customers’ evolving needs. How to conduct market research for your business and audience As you’ve probably gathered, actionable market research can leverage both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gain a comprehensive understanding of your audience. While market research can get more complex in execution, it’s conceptually straightforward: Select the right approach(es) Gather and analyze data Phase 1: Select the right research approach(es) The most appropriate approach depends on what you’re looking to learn about your potential customers. Market research method Description Example techniques Example use case Qualitative This approach involves gathering in-depth insights into customer behaviors and motivations. Interviews Focus groups Ethnography Interviews with target customers can reveal emotional drivers behind purchase decisions, giving a deeper understanding of why certain products resonate more than others. Quantitative This method involves collecting numerical data to measure and analyze at scale. Surveys  Website analytics Data mining Analyzing survey data could help you identify trends, such as the growing popularity of specific product features or the influence of price points on purchasing decisions. While qualitative and quantitative research often complement each other, there are cases where you can apply them independently.  For instance, you might exclusively use quantitative research when a business needs to gather broad statistical data about customer behavior at scale, such as analyzing website traffic or purchase trends. On the other hand, qualitative research might be your sole focus when you’re exploring the emotional drivers behind customer loyalty through in-depth interviews or focus groups. Phase 2: Gather and analyze data To generate actionable insights, you must effectively gather and interpret data. Data collection techniques:  There are many ways to collect data, including surveys, social media monitoring, and analyzing customer relationship management (CRM) systems. For example, social media monitoring allows you to track customer sentiment in real-time , helping you adapt quickly to changing preferences and behaviors. Interpreting results : Once you’ve collected the data, you need to interpret it to surface trends and actionable insights—this step is critical to translating raw data into business strategies. For example, by analyzing web analytics, you might notice a trend of increasing mobile traffic, signaling the need to prioritize mobile-first design in future content creation and product development. Platforms like Wix Analytics (shown above) and Google Analytics 4 can show you data trends over time, like sessions by device, time on page, etc. Omnichannel marketing: Sustain growth without relying on SEO Today, even though SEO is a foundational marketing strategy, relying solely on it can expose your business to risk. By adopting an omnichannel marketing strategy that distributes content across multiple platforms, you can reduce your vulnerability. Market research plays a key role here, guiding the creation of content and strategies tailored for multiple channels. This ensures that you can maintain consistent traffic and engagement regardless of search algorithm shifts. When thoughtfully executed, you can expect to: Reduce your dependence on SEO  — Instead of relying solely on SEO to drive traffic, brands should develop a more well-rounded digital presence by leveraging various platforms. Channels like social media, email marketing, paid campaigns, and direct customer engagement can act as alternative traffic/revenue streams, providing stability during inevitable search algorithm fluctuations. Zalando , the European online fashion retailer, is a prime example of this approach.  While Zalando benefits from strong SEO, the company heavily invested in its mobile app, social media channels, and personalized email campaigns to ensure it reaches customers wherever they are. This brand’s app allows users to shop seamlessly, offering exclusive features that incentivize engagement outside of traditional search, including an exclusive shopping club called “Lounge” (shown below).  Improve and adapt your SEO strategy —   With a deep understanding of your audience, you’re not only insulated from search reliance, you’re also better positioned to adapt to algorithm updates proactively. Instead of reacting to a drop in rankings, businesses can adjust their SEO strategies in anticipation of customer behavior shifts and search intent. BuzzFeed  is an excellent example of a company that pivoted its strategy to meet its audience’s increasing video content consumption. As research began to show that audiences were spending more time engaging with video, BuzzFeed adapted its content production accordingly.  By shifting to video-based SEO , BuzzFeed maintained strong visibility and engagement despite Google algorithm changes. This pivot helped the company capture a broader audience and ensured that it stayed ahead of SEO trends . Position your brand for better recognition  — Another key advantage of market research is the ability to  refine your brand’s positioning , making it more memorable (and less dependent on search algorithms for visibility). One company that exemplifies this approach is  Oatly . Initially, Oatly needed more clear differentiation in the oat milk market. Through in-depth market research, the company discovered that consumers were drawn to their mission of creating a sustainable, healthier alternative to traditional dairy. By aligning its messaging with this mission, Oatly successfully repositioned itself as a brand dedicated to environmental and personal well-being. This new brand identity resonated deeply with consumers (particularly those interested in plant-based diets). As a result, Oatly’s recognition grew, allowing it to thrive across various channels and minimizing its reliance on SEO. Today, Oatly is viewed as a leading brand in the plant-based movement, a status that shields it from the fluctuations of search engine rankings. Promote sustainable growth  — Businesses that prioritize diversified strategies have the best shot at steady growth and predictable revenue, regardless of the latest search trends. Patagonia , the outdoor clothing brand known for its commitment to sustainability and social activism, is a great example of this approach. It has effectively used market research to understand its target audience’s values and behaviors, enabling the company to build strong customer loyalty across platforms. The brand actively engages its audience through social media campaigns, purpose-driven email marketing, community-building initiatives, and partnerships with environmental organizations. For instance, Patagonia’s ongoing environmental campaigns  resonate deeply with their eco-conscious audience, driving engagement across social media and other channels. Its strategy also includes producing high-quality content that aligns with its brand’s values, such as documentary films about environmental issues, which it promotes through various platforms outside of traditional SEO.  Improve product development with a customer feedback loop — A multi-channel approach also facilitates faster feedback loops, allowing businesses to gather real-time data from customers across platforms. For example, by monitoring customer reviews , social media interactions, and direct email feedback, you can continuously refine your product offerings. This real-time engagement helps you stay aligned with customer needs, making it easier to adapt quickly to market changes and improve product-market fit. A great example of this is  Glossier , a beauty brand that built its success by engaging with its community through social media and customer reviews, using this feedback to inform new product development. For instance, its popular  Milky Jelly Cleanser  was developed based on insights gathered from customer feedback about their skincare needs. This constant interaction with its audience allows Glossier to stay closely aligned with customer preferences, refine their offerings, and continuously innovate while maintaining a loyal customer base. How to integrate market research into your digital strategy Now that you know the basics, it’s time to gain some firsthand experience by actually applying this concept within your strategy.  Assigning clear responsibilities to each team is essential. This ensures that research insights are correctly implemented and drive decision-making across all departments.  Follow these steps as part of an ongoing process: Define clear research objectives Gather data from multiple sources Create feedback loops across departments Analyze and prioritize insights Implement findings in an agile framework Channel-specific implementation Create a regular research schedule Integrate tools and technology for real-time insights Align research with KPIs and business objectives 01. Define clear research objectives Responsibility: Marketing leadership The marketing leadership team (in collaboration with department heads and stakeholders) should establish the specific goals of your market research. Determine what insights the business needs regarding audience, competitors, and market trends. For instance, are you trying to understand customer pain points, explore new market opportunities, or optimize content for better engagement? Setting clear objectives will guide the entire research process. 02. Gather data from multiple sources Responsibility: Market research team The market research team collects data through qualitative and quantitative methods. To gather qualitative insights, conduct customer surveys, focus groups, and social media listening. Quantitative data will come from analytics tools , CRM systems, and third-party reports. The research team should also work closely with the analytics team to ensure a comprehensive data-gathering approach. 03. Create feedback loops across departments Responsibility: Cross-departmental collaboration (marketing, product development, customer service) Marketing, product development, and customer service teams should establish regular feedback loops with the research team.  Marketing can share engagement metrics. Product development can share user data. Customer service can report on customer queries and issues.  This collaborative process ensures that research findings continuously influence decisions across departments. 04. Analyze and prioritize insights Responsibility: Market research and data analytics teams With support from the data analytics team, the market research team should analyze the findings to identify actionable insights.  Prioritize insights based on relevance to business objectives and potential impact. Communicate high-priority insights to relevant teams (e.g., content, product development) for immediate action. 05. Implement findings in an agile framework Responsibility: Marketing and product development teams The marketing and product development teams should implement the findings in an agile framework, setting up pilot projects, A/B tests , or experimental campaigns to apply research-driven strategies. For instance, test new content or product ideas across digital channels, measure results, and adjust strategies based on performance data. 06. Channel-specific implementation a. SEO Responsibility: SEO team The SEO team should use market research insights to refine keyword strategies  and optimize content based on search intent. This includes creating content that addresses the needs and questions identified during research . b. Social media Responsibility: Social media team The social media team should tailor content to align with the platforms your audience frequents (based on research). They should create visually engaging posts and interactive content using real-time feedback from social media monitoring tools. c. Email marketing Responsibility: Email marketing team The email marketing team is responsible for segmenting email lists and personalizing campaigns based on research findings. They should ensure that email content speaks directly to the interests and needs identified for different customer segments. d. Paid advertising Responsibility: Paid media/advertising team The paid advertising team should leverage insights to create targeted ad campaigns on platforms like Google and Meta Ads . They should optimize ad copy, visuals, and targeting settings to align with customer preferences discovered through research. e. Content marketing Responsibility: Content marketing team The content marketing team should develop content assets like blog posts, videos, and infographics that align with audience needs and trends identified through market research. They should regularly evaluate content performance and adjust strategy accordingly. 07. Create a regular research schedule Responsibility: Market research team The market research team should schedule regular research intervals (quarterly, biannually, or annually) depending on business needs and market dynamics. This ensures continuous insight gathering and helps the business adapt to market changes in real time. 08. Integrate tools and technology for real-time insights Responsibility: Analytics and IT teams The analytics and IT teams should implement and maintain the technology to track and report key data points . They should ensure that platforms like Google Analytics and CRM systems are integrated with the market research process to provide automated, real-time insights to relevant teams. 09. Align research with KPIs and business objectives Responsibility: Marketing leadership and business development teams Marketing leadership should coordinate with business development teams to ensure that outcomes (from your marketing research implementation) align with broader business goals and KPIs. Hold regular review meetings to assess the integration of research insights into the overall business strategy. Market research: Let customers tell you how you should adapt your digital strategy Market research isn’t just a tool for reacting to changes; it’s a proactive approach that you should integrate into your digital strategy to drive continuous improvement. Focusing on audience insights enables you to create content that stays relevant and resonates no matter how algorithms change. This forward-thinking use of market research enables you to diversify traffic sources, reduce reliance on SEO, and develop strategies that evolve with your audience’s needs. To maximize its impact, ensure that market research informs all channels—SEO, social media, email marketing, and paid ads. This multi-channel approach enhances customer engagement and strengthens relationships while refining your product-market fit through real-time feedback. By incorporating regular research, agile testing, and cross-department collaboration into your process, your business can stay adaptable and future-ready. Investing in market research lays the groundwork for long-term growth and stability, driving success across all areas of your digital strategy. Veruska Anconitano - International & Multilingual SEO Consultant   Veruska is an SEO consultant  that works at the intersection of SEO and localization to help companies enter non-English-speaking markets. She follows a culturalized approach to SEO and localization, leveraging cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and data. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Krystal Taing Service area businesses (SABs) are one of the most common types of local business, but unlike traditional brick-and-mortar locations, they don’t have a physical storefront to help them increase awareness. So, they rely on local SEO  to help get them in front of potential customers. When it comes to optimizing search visibility for SABs, there’s a lot of nuance to master (compared to brick-and-mortar businesses). In this blog post, I’ll walk you through that nuance, how to leverage third-party platforms to extend your local SEO, as well as advanced tactics. Table of contents: The fundamentals of local SEO for SABs Navigating Google, Facebook, and Apple guidelines for SABs Advanced local SEO tactics for SABs Measuring your local SEO success Additional resources for SABs Local SEO: Service area businesses vs. brick and mortar stores Service area businesses provide their services at the customer’s location, which could range from residential homes to commercial establishments. Examples include plumbing services, home repair, and cleaning services.  The broad geographical area SABs cover, coupled with the lack of a physical storefront, pose specific SEO challenges—the most prominent challenge being how to effectively target and reach potential customers scattered across different locales. The absence of a physical store location is what makes local SEO for SABs so important. It ensures that these businesses appear in search results when potential customers in their service areas look for relevant services. This targeted visibility is essential to driving inquiries and leads, and securing business. While local SEO for both brick and mortar businesses as well as SABs is essentially the same discipline, SABs will have a more specific set of considerations to optimize for (in addition to following established local SEO best practices ). The fundamentals of local SEO for SABs Local SEO for SABs revolves around several key factors:  Relevance (i.e., how well your business reflects the searcher’s intent) Distance (i.e., physical proximity to the searcher) Prominence (i.e., the popularity of your business) These factors help search engines determine which businesses to show in local search results.  Furthermore, setting up and optimizing a Google Business Profile (GBP)  is vital for SABs. It allows businesses to specify their service areas and ensures they appear in Google searches from those regions.  Hiding your business address in Google Business Profile. In addition to GBP, SABs must manage their listings on platforms that allow them to hide their business addresses (while still showing the area they serve), such as certain local business directories (e.g., your local Chamber of Commerce  and Manta Business Directory ). Use platforms to promote your SAB: Google, Facebook, and other local listing guidelines Each platform has its own guidelines for how SABs should represent themselves. Typically, if the platform supports search-based functions, it will also support listings or profiles for SABs. However, some platforms that are more focused on maps and driving directions, such as Apple Maps, will have different guidelines or may be unable to support SABs.  Here are some platform guidelines that every SAB owner should know: Google Business Profile An example of a service area for an SAB. Source: Google. Google Business Profile provides specific functionality and guidance for service area businesses . Most notably:  SABs can only create one profile for the metropolitan area that they serve. SAB owners can specify their service areas by city, postal code, or another type of area. Each listing can serve up to 20 service areas. The boundaries of your overall service area should not exceed about two hours of driving time from where your business is based. Avoid listing virtual offices unless they are staffed during business hours. An example of a prototypical SAB that fits the criteria above could be a cleaning service that operates from a central office and serves a specific area. This listing should have one profile for the office, clearly stating the service area. Hybrid businesses  (i.e., businesses with a physical location that also provide on-site services, like an auto repair shop with a garage and roadside assistance), on the other hand, can designate a storefront address as well as a service area.  Google will show searchers your address as well as highlight your service areas on your profile (as shown below). Google uses your business details and other sources to decide how to show your address. These sources can include additional content found on the web about your business and areas it serves, as well as customer feedback directly from Maps. For individual SABs (not multi-location), this is pretty straightforward to understand and manage because your business is represented by (and limited to) one service-area business profile. For businesses with multiple different locations  (i.e., chain businesses/franchises; like a chain of pest control service branches with separate offices in different cities), you can have one profile per location. As is the case with an individual SAB, the service area for each profile shouldn’t extend more than two hours’ driving time from your base (though some businesses might need larger areas).  If you run your business from home  (like a plumber might), make sure to hide your home address on your GBP. When you hide your address, Google will display an outline on the map showing your service area. The ‘directions’ action button will also be removed from your profile.  Facebook Facebook also supports service area businesses. The platform only provides very light guidance to users managing their business pages, stating:  “If you don’t have a location where people can visit your business, edit your Page info to hide your street address on computers and mobile devices.” — Facebook Once you configure this setting, you will see only the city and state displayed on your business’s Facebook page.  Additional sites and platforms One of the challenges facing service area businesses is that many sites require an address in order to list your business. This means if you have an address that you do not want customers potentially showing up at (such as a residential address), then you are limited in terms of the sites and platforms you can use to represent your business.  SAB-friendly platforms include: Yelp Angi Nextdoor Yellow Pages CitySquares DexKnows Avvo Thumbtack Unfortunately, even though iPhones account for a massive share of mobile devices, Apple Maps currently only supports businesses with a published address , so only storefronts or hybrid businesses can publish their business listings here.  Recently, however, Apple introduced some support for SABs . Now, these businesses can register with Apple Business Connect , a platform that allows them to manage their brand visibility on iPhones and other iOS devices. Through Apple Business Connect, SABs can display and customize their business name, logo, and other branding elements in Apple applications, such as Mail, Phone, and Tap to Pay. Advanced local SEO tactics for SABs To further enhance local SEO, SABs should focus on the following tactics: Build local citations  — Getting listed in industry-specific directories boosts SEO and places your business in front of potential customers looking for specific services (meaning those customers may be more likely to convert). Based on your industry, you can build citations on sites like Yelp , Avvo , and Thumbtack . Look at your website referral traffic (in Google Analytics 4  or your analytics platform of choice) for a helpful indicator of where customers are already discovering you. This can help you prioritize which sites to focus on first.  In this example, a landscaper in San Diego might prioritize Yelp and Houzz over other local business platforms. Build up and manage your customer reviews  — Customer reviews  build trust, influence rankings, and are crucial to your local SEO success. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and respond promptly to any feedback. Businesses that provide services to their customers (as opposed to a product), cannot overlook the impact and importance of consistent and positive reviews. Creating and optimizing local pages —   This is crucial for enhancing visibility and customer engagement for service area businesses, especially if you operate multiple locations in different regions. In order to build local service area pages that rank and convert, you should: Create unique local pages for each service your business offers (e.g., a catering service might create pages for each of the types of events they cater). Highlight local-specific information that resonates with the audience, including details about local landmarks, events, and community involvement. Add unique photos that are relevant to that location and its services. Encourage customer reviews and testimonials specific to each location. An example of a local landing page for a multi-location service area business. Measure your local SEO for continued success The only way to know that your optimizations are paying off is to measure your efforts. Focus on KPIs such as: Local SEO metrics Metrics that SABS should also focus on Search rankings Local search traffic Conversion rates Website calls and chats Scheduled appointments Online form submissions Service area businesses typically want to drive new customers or bookings, so in addition to ranking, track and optimize how many inquiries you are driving. Even as an SAB, you can utilize common SEO tools to monitor your performance: Google Analytics — Track and analyze website traffic from local search queries, helping to understand how users find and interact with your site. Google Search Console  — Monitor and report on local search visibility, keyword rankings, and issues affecting performance in local search results. Google Business Profile Insights  — Measure customer interactions, such as calls, direction requests, and views on Google Maps and Search. GBP Insights show you how many calls originate from your GBP listing. Interpreting the data from these tools is essential. Regularly review metrics to identify trends and areas for improvement. Use this data to refine your strategies, ensuring continued SEO success. By consistently analyzing these KPIs and using the right tools, you can optimize your local SEO efforts effectively, leading to improved visibility and customer engagement. Unlock local SEO potential for your SAB As is the case with traditional SEO, you’ll need to adapt best practices for your particular business and niche. There’s always an element of trial and error involved, but you can maximize your efforts by familiarizing yourself with tips and guidance from local SEO experts. For further reading, here are some additional resources that can help your service area business increase its organic search visibility:  Google Local Service Ads Understand how your address impacts ranking for your SAB Should SABs show or hide their address? Krystal Taing - Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions, Uberall Krystal Taing is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall. She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU. She helps brands at managing hybrid customer experiences. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Miriam Ellis One of the greatest things about a career in local SEO is that it doesn’t require a degree, making it accessible to just about anyone with a passion for the trade and an interest in educating themselves. A ‘textbook’ knowledge of local search optimization, however, is just the beginning.  You’ll need a game plan—covering ongoing education, the type of business you want to work for, and everything in between—if you want to enjoy the benefits and day-to-day duties that a successful career in local SEO affords you. Consider this your starter kit to understanding this role and career path. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a much clearer idea of whether a career in local search marketing is right for you, as well as a set of steps to follow to kickstart your development. Table of contents: Local SEO expertise: Master the craft First-party guidelines for local SEOs Local SEO guides written by experts Resources for ongoing local SEO career development Find the right work environment for your local SEO career Work for yourself Work at a major local business brand Work at a small local business brand Work at a marketing agency Work at a local SaaS company How to set yourself apart in the local SEO industry Where to get help with your local SEO career Local SEO expertise: Master the craft Because major players like Google and Apple continuously evolve their local business platforms, expect to do a lot of learning on a regular basis to keep up with the changes.  Bookmark platform guidelines (the first-party documents on how to achieve visibility within an ecosystem) and local SEO guides written by established practitioners, and schedule time for ongoing professional development by keeping up-to-date with industry news and developments. First-party guidelines for local SEOs Create a bookmarks folder so that you can easily access these essential references: Guidelines for representing your business on Google  — Google is the dominant player in local search. Mastering its guidelines for how to manage Google Business Profiles (GBP)  is critical to your potential clients’ visibility. Local SEOs basically memorize these guidelines because they come up in day-to-day work. Google’s prohibited and restricted content guidelines  — Familiarize yourself with Google’s restricted content guidelines and pay special attention to what the platform prohibits with regards to local business reviews . Apple Business Connect user guide  — Apple’s platform and guidelines are not nearly as extensive as Google’s, but they can still be valuable for your clients because of the iPhone’s popularity amongst consumers. Don’t ask for reviews on Yelp  — Many of Yelp’s policies and guidelines are similar to other platforms, with one notable exception: It prohibits review solicitation. There’s not much to memorize or bookmark here, so instead, be mindful of this policy and inform your local clients so that their reviews don’t get flagged. Local SEO guides written by experts While the major local platforms will tell you what rules to follow, they don’t provide an overview of local SEO as a whole and won’t necessarily tell you about all the ways you can optimize your clients’ online presence—this is where local SEO guides by experienced practitioners come in to fill the gaps and give you a career kickstart. There is no shortage of guides for local SEO (and more get published or updated every year). Here are my top recommendations: An Introduction to local SEO  by Krystal Taing  for Wix The Comprehensive Guide to Local SEO  in 2024 by BrightLocal The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide  authored by me for Moz The Local Search Ranking Factors Report  from Whitespark If you put in the time to read all of these, you’ll build up your familiarity with core local SEO best practices  very quickly. In particular, your clients will expect a mastery of: Google Business Profile Review management On-page SEO Keyword research Local citations Link building Multi-location SEO Analytics and reporting Resources for ongoing local SEO career development Once you establish your base of local SEO fundamentals, you’ll need to regularly monitor industry news and trends to deliver results for your clients.  Below is a short list to which you should add your own preferred publishers as you progress in your career. Each of these resources feature different local SEO experts and industry leaders, most of whom you can find and follow on X/Twitter or LinkedIn.  The Wix SEO Learning Hub’s local SEO section The Near Memo Podcast Search Engine Roundtable Search Engine Land’s local marketing column The Sterling Sky blog The GatherUp blog The Whitespark local SEO email course The Local SEO Guide blog BrightLocal’s blog Many of the companies above also feature newsletters that deliver local SEO developments right to your email inbox. Some of these entities also host in-person and virtual conferences and workshops that you can attend to further your education and meet industry peers (which can also be vital for your local SEO journey).  Find the right work environment for your local SEO career As a local search specialist, there are five main scenarios in which you can work: Work for yourself (e.g., a consultancy, freelancing,) Work at a major local business brand Work at a small local business brand Work at a marketing agency Work at a local SaaS company Let’s look at each of these and cover the key pros and cons of each work environment.  Work for yourself (e.g., consultancy, freelancing) You can start your own consultancy, agency, or software business. For example, you can launch a business that serves small-to-enterprise-level local business clients. Or, you can even offer your services to existing agencies that have their own clients.  Pros of starting your own local SEO business Cons All the work you do goes towards building up your own reputation and authority as a local search professional Direct control over how you want to serve clients and grow your business Set your own schedule, your own fees, and be the decision maker in your own career Gain tons of hands-on experience working directly with clients and, if your company is successful, you will get to decide whom you wish to hire to expand Working for yourself is the only true ‘job security’ Responsibility for your success rests entirely on your shoulders No guaranteed paycheck when you work for yourself Likely to face heavy taxes as an independent contractor Pay for healthcare out of your own pocket Home loans may be harder to secure since the mortgage industry is prejudiced against self-employed professionals May struggle with work/life balance Sole proprietors sometimes suffer from a sense of isolation If you enjoy working independently and can manage your time well, starting your own local SEO business can be very fulfilling. To evaluate whether this might be right for you, monitor how other consultants market and talk about their businesses. A few examples include: Greg Sterling  (Near Media/Dialog) Andrew Shotland  (Local SEO Guide) Joy Hawkins  (Sterling Sky Inc.) Work at a major local business brand You can seek employment in the marketing department of a large brick-and-mortar or home services brand with hundreds or thousands of locations/service areas. Think businesses like U-Haul, BestBuy, Roto-Rooter, REI, etc. Pros of working as a local SEO for major local brands Cons Experience how local search works at scale, gaining insights into enterprise-level operations Work with a team (rather than alone) On-the-job training Get acquainted with enterprise-level tools, software, and techniques. If the brand is engaged in publishing, you can begin building your reputation by blogging or podcasting for them You can gain depth of expertise by focusing on local SEO for one niche/business (rather than various client businesses) A regular paycheck and benefits The quality of your work life depends on how well the employer manages operations and treats employees Career growth depends largely on the employer’s decisions (i.e., periodic review process that determines whether your salary grows, etc.) Employment can be terminated at any time, regardless of your contributions, if the employer instigates a layoff, merger, or acquisition Larger businesses tend to have more layers of decision making, which can bog down your work After working at an agency, it’s common for local SEOs to move to major local brands. While they no longer have to juggle multiple client priorities and generally enjoy more stability, it’s worth noting that these enterprise environments tend to vary greatly, with some lacking resources or led by management that does not value SEO. Work at a small local business brand Instead of seeking employment within a department of a big brand, you might prefer to become one of just a few members of a marketing team (or even the only member) for a smaller local business. For example, there might be a small restaurant chain, a boutique hotel, a non-profit organization, or a winery near you that needs your skills.  Pros of working as a local SEO for a small local business Cons Your contributions may be more easily seen and appreciated when you work within a smaller organization (i.e., easier to prove the value you bring) You can become indispensable to a small brand more easily than within a larger one More opportunities to branch into other marketing disciplines (social media, PPC, etc.) If the employer is too small, you may struggle with adequate compensation Benefits are unlikely to be competitive with major brands Small employers frequently need to be sold on the value of marketing services (instead of automatically understanding the value as larger employers tend to). This means your career growth may be limited by the smaller scope of the business In this scenario, you carry more of the responsibility for the brand’s success. You may also have to wear more marketing hats, which can add to your skills but can also detract from the core local SEO work you wish to focus on. These are both pros and cons, depending on your outlook. Work at a marketing agency You can seek employment as the local SEO for a marketing agency that offers a variety of digital services, such as consulting, copywriting, link building , SEO, etc.  Pros of working as a local SEO for a marketing agency Cons Reputable agencies recognize the value local SEOs provide and offer competitive compensation Working across a range of clients can help you learn many useful skills in less time You may enjoy teaming up with talented co-workers to deliver success for the agency’s clients Agency work can provide valuable first-hand experience with all of the components that are involved in professional marketing campaigns A regular paycheck and benefits When poorly managed, agencies can suffer from an over-emphasis on meetings and an under-emphasis on work-life balance for employees and delivering results for clients Work load can vary greatly—even between teams within the same agency Algorithm updates  and other widescale Google changes can generate significant workloads overnight (especially if many clients that are affected) Your satisfaction here largely depends on how well the agency is structured and managed. Some local SEOs spend their entire careers working at agencies because they enjoy the challenge and variety of client work, which can be very useful if you want to position yourself as an expert. Work at a local SaaS company You could go to work for a software-as-a-service brand that sells tools to its local business customers. For example, a SaaS company might offer review management or citation building software.  Pros of working at a local SaaS company Cons A wider variety of potential positions (e.g., guiding product development, evangelizing the product via a variety of marketing campaigns, client services) can allow you to try something new or make a lateral career move SaaS companies often need to engage in more B2B marketing activities, which could mean opportunities to represent the brand (and build your personal profile) at conferences, on webinars and podcasts, etc. A regular paycheck and benefits Depending on the nature of your work, you may be less hands-on with SEO implementation If it’s a newer SaaS company, funding and revenue issues may result in periods of instability Many SEO and marketing agencies offer a SaaS tool as a secondary line of business. This can cause an identity crisis within the organization, where the services side is at odds with the SaaS side The goal of many software brands is to get acquired by larger brands, eventually leading to acquisitions and mergers which can result in the original staff being replaced Some popular local SaaS companies include: Whitespark GatherUp BrightLocal Before we move on to how you can set yourself apart in a crowded industry, take a second to acknowledge that no job is without its pros and cons, and there’s a good chance you’ll work in a variety of situations over your career. If you become dissatisfied with a scenario, look for ways to either improve it from the inside or move on to a better opportunity.  How to set yourself apart in the local SEO industry Whether you plan to work for yourself or for an employer, you should do all you can to accrue relevant experience—this is important for both career longevity and prosperity. While you can take a trial-and-error approach by taking on as much work as possible, it’s better to start by listening and studying what’s already out there, as local SEO expert Claire Carlile advises: “Immerse yourself so that you can understand what exists—what is done well and by whom—and where exists the ‘need’ or ‘requirement’ ... Being part of the local SEO community has been one of the most rewarding and fulfilling aspects of my work, so if you want to contribute at a community level, remember to LISTEN for a while, and then perhaps reach out to someone in that space that could be a useful sounding board to help you identify, shape, and refine the nature of your contributions.” — Claire Carlile , Local Search Marketing Advocate at Jepto To take your local SEO career to the next level, you’ll need to consistently demonstrate your expertise—and what better place to do that than where local SEOs and local business owners congregate, as Colan Nielsen of Sterling Sky suggests: “Seek out the places where local SEOs and business owners are active online and insert yourself into conversations, providing as much value as you can. At first, you will observe more than you participate, but as your confidence and knowledge grows, you become more vocal.” — Colan Nielsen , Vice President at Sterling Sky In addition to this excellent advice, each of the following steps will assist your career development: Get your hands on at least one local business to optimize — If you’re just starting out, actively seek an opportunity to market a small local business. You may charge a very low rate (or even work for free) for a short time because the experience you’ll gain is invaluable. Good options include a business owned by a friend or relative. If no one in your circle owns something like a bakery, a food truck, or a landscaping service, other options could include a local place of worship or a community center that has little or no marketing budget. Be transparent that you are a novice and will abide by the guidelines of the platforms you experiment with, and thank the business owner for helping you earn skills.  Share the results of your work  — Get yourself some dedicated social media accounts to promote your work. LinkedIn and X are good bets in the SEO industry, but if you enjoy video, don’t overlook TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. As you work on your first client’s local SEO, document what you do and your results. For example, if you teach a client how to earn their first ten Google Business Profile reviews and their business moves up in the rankings, make a social post about this small success. Little by little, you’ll learn from your experiments and if you generously share what you learn with others, you’ll attract followers and industry connections.  Don’t be intimidated by more experienced practitioners that know more than you do. There are always people at every level of learning on the internet. Be transparent that you are a beginner, admit when you make mistakes, and maintain your commitment to ongoing learning. Nearly everyone in the local search industry, regardless of seniority, shares this commitment.  Build your professional profile  — As you take on paying clients or secure employment with a brand, find ways to grow your online profile. This could include: Building your own website and blog Creating a podcast or Substack Speaking at (or hosting) workshops, webinars, or conferences Being a guest on someone else’s podcast Contributing articles to a variety of industry publications Developing free and paid training materials Developing your own tools or software Pay attention to what interests you most about local search marketing and work hard to build a reputation for knowledge in a particular area. Some local SEOs specialize in technical aspects, like audits, structured data , or troubleshooting. Others specialize in an industry, such as hospitality, realty, or legal.  Make time to explore things that fascinate you, because you can bring a level of energy to certain topics that will help you stand out in the industry and to prospective clients and employers. Develop a local search marketing philosophy  — Over time, your experience will likely culminate in a philosophy from which you operate in the local search marketing industry. Your stance on how you approach work will not only help you make decisions in a variety of scenarios, but will also be felt by others with whom you work and communicate.  Some local SEOs emphasize volunteerism, devoting hours of their time to helping business owners for free on forums like the Google Business Profile Community . Some have a socio-economic stance that inspires them to work only with independently-owned small businesses because they believe in the benefits of the Buy Local movement  or hold environmental beliefs that inspire them to take Clean Creatives’ pledge  not to work with fossil fuel businesses. Alternatively, you might work only with large enterprises in hopes of localizing their messaging so that it’s more useful to communities. Some bring healthy skepticism to the job, investing time in helping others to navigate some of the less pleasant aspects of local search, like review fraud , while others continuously publish studies that shed light on confusing aspects of working within Google’s system .  You can be a very pro-Google local SEO, have feelings of ambivalence about aspects of their operations, or vigorously challenge their messaging and positions. It’s all up to you, and as long as you’re coming from an authentic position, your voice can be of service to your peers and clients. Build authority over time  — The more you contribute to both clients and the industry, the more authority you will build as a professional local search marketer. In the process, respected peers and publications will hopefully begin to cite and link to your work, request quotes and articles from you, and invite you to speak at events. As you become better-known and liked, you may even begin creating your own events at which others would be proud to participate. You may author e-books or try your hand at traditional publishing. Some local SEOs have ended up in online and television news pieces, providing commentary on aspects of local search that intrigue or baffle the public.  Where to get help with your local SEO career It’s part-and-parcel of working in local search marketing to continuously run into problems you’ve never seen before. This is, in part, because so many different scenarios and problems exist, but also because new ones always crop up. This is what makes participating in the larger industry invaluable, because there’s a good chance that if you’re not sure how to respond to an emerging issue, a peer will already have ‘been there and done that’!  Bookmark these excellent resources for when you inevitably come across an issue that you need help with: The Sterling Sky Local Search Forum  is a public forum you can join for free. Members are welcome to ask questions and engage with posts from others. When experiencing serious technical issues with Google listings, the Google Business Profile Community  is where you can post full details of a problem in hopes of receiving advice from volunteer Product Experts—when an issue is severe, these volunteers have the ability to escalate a report to Google. Grow your career by attending the on-going in-person or online LocalU  events, where you will be taught by some of the most respected experts in the local search industry. Always be on the lookout for interesting webinars that focus on growing your agency or career. The larger SEO industry has multiple traditional conferences throughout the year  and some (but not all) feature sessions on local search marketing. It’s always important to remember that everything about organic SEO plays a big role in local SEO, so studying the former is still critical to doing a good job with the latter. In addition to these public spaces and events, you may find private local search groups on Slack channels, Discord servers, or via email chains. You may even start your own group one day and invite others to join.  A career in local SEO: Online communities, local values One of the aspects of the local SEO industry that I’ve found most appealing for 20 years running is that it is a genuinely friendly, shared work environment where openness, generosity, and humility are core values.  None of the best local SEOs claims they ‘know it all’. Respected practitioners understand that we are always all learning together and trying to help one another adapt to the continuous changes in search marketing that impact us and our clients.  Being amiable and down-to-earth is a good attitude to bring to this large, global community of local search specialists. Best of luck as you further explore this career path! Miriam Ellis - Local SEO Subject Matter Expert at Moz   Miriam Ellis is a local SEO columnist and consultant. She has been cited as one of the top five most prolific women writers in the SEO industry. Miriam is also an award-winning fine artist and her work can be seen at MiriamEllis.com . Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Lazarina Stoy Anyone that works on a medium- or large-sized website for long enough will inevitably run into keyword cannibalization—which refers to competing against yourself for website rankings (i.e., two or more pages competing against one another for the same set of keywords ). Cannibalization can be harmless in some cases, but it can also lead to negative consequences for your organic performance. In particular, it can: Lead to frustration and poor user experience for your site visitors, who may end up visiting multiple pages before finding the information they need from your business Indicate duplicate content issues to both search engines and users In this guide, I’ll help you understand the different types of cannibalization that can occur on your site, the various issues they can cause, and how to identify them. I’ll also share strategies for diagnosing, fixing, and preventing cannibalization issues altogether. Table of contents: Common types of cannibalization Keyword cannibalization Search intent cannibalization Content cannibalization Potential impacts of cannibalization on website performance How to diagnose cannibalization issues Metrics to help you identify cannibalization issues Beginner-friendly tools to identify cannibalization issues How to fix cannibalization issues How to prioritize to resolve cannibalization issues Best practices to fix cannibalization on your website Content consolidation Content enhancements New content creation What to avoid when fixing keyword cannibalization Page deletion Page deindexing Key takeaways and advice on preventing cannibalization FAQ: Keyword, search intent, and content cannibalization Common types of cannibalization Generally speaking, cannibalization problems occur when pages on your website lack unique focus. Those pages might target the same type of user or keyword, or contain the same perspectives and content (or all of the above), and as a result, compete with your other pages. Despite the many misconceptions floating around about cannibalization issues making it more difficult for search engines to discover or rank pages, Google spokespeople have clarified that this is not the case ( 1 , 2 , 3 ). Even so, cannibalization can add unwanted friction to your user experience and is more of a strategic concern, as per Google, which can in turn impact search performance (and site performance, which I’ll discuss a bit later). Let’s now go through different examples of cannibalization issues to see which ones you should pay attention to. Keyword cannibalization Keyword cannibalization refers to multiple pages on your website targeting and ranking for the same keyword. This type of cannibalization isn’t always problematic—after all, pages always appear for multiple keywords, so some degree of query overlap is common. Keyword cannibalization becomes an issue when it hinders the user experience. Consider the scenarios below. Multiple pages on your website target the exact same keywords and have a similar on-page structure: Let’s imagine that there are three pages on your site targeting the keywords [customer onboarding mistakes] in the titles, URLs, and page headings , and all of them are listicles. This might lead to multiple pages with different (but synonymous) titles, like “5 Customer Onboarding Mistakes That Lead to Early Churn” or “4 User Onboarding Mistakes That Threaten Retention.” Even though the advice in these lists might be different, splitting the message/content into different pages compromises the user experience. Multiple pages on your site target the same audience and the same keywords with the same offer: An example of this would be creating three similar resources on the same topic (e.g., “New Client Onboarding Template”, “New Client Onboarding Guide”, and “New Client Onboarding Manual”). Regardless of the subtle differences, the core message and intended audience of all three resources is the same, causing frustration for users. Search intent cannibalization Search intent cannibalization happens when a website has multiple pages that are optimized to satisfy exactly the same search intent . This could manifest as keyword cannibalization, but may also be a bit more nuanced than that (and more difficult to detect). Search intent cannibalization is a sign of an uncoordinated or inefficient content strategy, and can occur regardless of website size (but is more typical of mid to large or enterprise websites ). Here are some examples of problematic search intent cannibalization: There are pages on your website that outrank the most appropriate keyword-match content, despite satisfying less of the searcher’s intent. An example of this would be if a website has a page that directly addresses the query [what is structured data validation ?] in an informational blog post. However, when a user searches this query in Google, this page (which is the most relevant to their search intent) is shown beneath other content on the site which also provides a definition for structured data validation as part of the content. There are pages on your website that outrank other pages better suited to satisfy the searcher’s intent due to authority, technical, design, or UX differences. This issue is common for large organizations, where different teams run different site sections and a particular team/department “owns” query performance. An example of such a problem would be a SaaS company’s product or service page outranking their documentation page for a branded query containing the term [API documentation] (e.g., [Google Search Console API documentation]). In this instance, the query already indicates the user’s desire to navigate to the documentation (which is a sign they either need to validate that the API can resolve a particular problem they have before they purchase or that they already have API access). The reasons for this cannibalization might be related to the on-page content or keyword cannibalization, but they might also be a result of more backlinks and/or better technical SEO or UX on the product or service page. Content cannibalization Content cannibalization is when the content on two (or more) pages are fairly similar, even when search intent or target keywords might differ. Content cannibalization can occur when you’re programmatically generating pages (as a result of a small database of content) or when a page isn’t targeted/focused correctly. Below are some common examples of content cannibalization. User-selected parameters generate different indexable pages that serve the same content and are populated from the same database. You can see this quite regularly on real estate websites, where there are indexable search category pages for different locations (such as states, cities, school districts, postal codes, and neighborhoods). In this case, these pages are likely populated from a sales property database. If there is a small number of properties per location, and there’s no additional unique content on the pages, content cannibalization can occur. In the left example (below), there is no content cannibalization as each of the pages has a different number of properties in them, and there is no keyword or intent cannibalization either. In the right example, all of the properties for sale in the larger district are all located in one neighborhood, leading to content cannibalization, despite there being different on-page keywords and search intent. In the image above, the circles represent the number of unique entries in your database for the different location levels—state (Texas), city (Dallas, Ausin), postal code (78751) or school district (Austin Independent School District). Programmatically–generated listicles are identical to indexable site search pages. Looking at travel websites, where we might find programmatically-generated listicles targeting the keywords [adjective + property type + location] (e.g., [cheap hotels in Barcelona]). In some cases, these pages might cause content cannibalization with indexable, filtered property search results. Here’s a concrete example from Booking.com, in which the title and search intent might differ, but the content is the same. The first search result is a listicle and the second is an internal search page, filtered with the appropriate parameters, as per the URLs. Before moving on, it’s important to mention that not all instances of keyword, search intent, or content cannibalization cause problems. Problematic cannibalization could look different for each website, though once present, its impact on the site and its revenue could be considerable. The potential impacts of cannibalization on website performance Cannibalization issues (regardless of the particular cannibalization type) can impact your website’s organic search performance, revenue, and user experience. Below are some examples of how problematic cannibalization can hinder performance in these areas: The top-ranked page is not optimized for the expressed search intent. For instance, going back to the Booking.com example, the blog listicle outranking the property listing (or listing category) page might be problematic as the user experience on the blog is not optimized for conversions, meaning that users would need to take additional steps to book a property (if they first landed on the blog). This might cause your potential customers to leave the site and perform another search, potentially sending them to book elsewhere (hindering both your user experience and your website’s revenue). The top-ranked page does not correspond to the search intent. Simply put, this is when another page addresses the search intent more robustly, but that page is not ranking first. This hinders the user experience and could signal to search engines that the page ranked at the top is not suitable to satisfy the intent of the query, resulting in diminished organic performance (i.e., higher bounce rate, fewer conversions, and the page that you created to rank for this topic/intent isn’t doing its job [wasted time/effort]). Multiple pages that are slightly different from one another rank and could possibly address the search intent. When it comes to keyword and search intent cannibalization, your website might present users with multiple content choices, leaving them unsure what to select or whether to go back to the search results to click on another result from your site. This could hinder the user experience, create frustration with your brand, and inflate certain metrics related to search performance (such as click-through rate, bounce rate, and returned users). In many such cases, these pages would likely struggle to capture high rankings on their own and would perform better consolidated. While there are many ways you can end up with cannibalization, it’s certainly worthwhile to resolve it when it affects important pages. Multiple case studies have demonstrated the positive impact that can come from this—one SEO agency even recorded a 110% uplift in organic sessions after they consolidated efforts on a real estate website. How to diagnose cannibalization issues The first step in fixing cannibalization issues is identifying them. Based on the different cannibalization types I defined earlier, here are a few different approaches you could take as a first step: 01. Find pages that target the same keywords , which would signal keyword cannibalization. 02. Find pages that speak to the same target user with similar keywords, offers, and messaging , which would signal search intent cannibalization. 03. Find pages that contain similar content, but may differ in terms of page and content structure, target keywords , and so on, which could signal content cannibalization. Let’s look at more concrete examples to identify cannibalization between such pages, including metrics and tools to use. Metrics to help you identify cannibalization issues To diagnose cannibalization, use the following metrics: Metric What to do Keyword rankings Map pages to their target keywords and monitor position changes. If other pages start overtaking the main page that’s supposed to “own” the keyword, then cannibalization is occurring. Organic traffic Check for traffic loss associated with certain keywords or pages that compete against one another in search. Click-through rate (CTR) Monitor changes in CTR for pages you think may be competing against one another. This metric could signal user confusion when two or more pages from your site are shown in the same set of search results. Backlinks Check anchor text on backlinks for similarities and alignment between your target keywords and the text referring sites are using to describe your page. Big discrepancies can signal misaligned content, which could work against the page. On top of the metrics mentioned above, there are additional elements you can review to diagnose the specific nature of your cannibalization problems. When diagnosing search intent cannibalization , also consider: Bounce rate and exit rate — These metrics can hint at the quality of the content on the page (i.e., breadth, depth, E-E-A-T , etc). Search intent alignment — Does the content and its structure align with the expressed search intent of the queries it ranks for? Conversion rates and intended page engagement — Lack of user engagement (like scroll or conversion events , for example) can signal low page quality or a fragmented user journey . When diagnosing content cannibalization , also look into: Instances of content repurposing — This can give you a sample to work with in identifying problematic content repurposing practices that could lead to cannibalization (e.g., using the same content database to create a listicle-style blog post and an indexable internal search page to target the same keyword with the same search intent). Internal linking practices — Do pages that are part of the same user journey or topic cluster link to one another? If not, this might cause them to show separately in the search results (i.e., not as “indented” search listings, but as separate listings altogether), causing confusion for users. Beginner-friendly tools to identify cannibalization issues You can review most of the metrics I’ve discussed in Google Analytics (GA4) and Google Search Console (GSC) . However, even if you can access the data, you still need to analyze it to identify the cause of your cannibalization problems—something many beginners struggle with. One common way to do this is via Google Sheets and/or Looker Studio. Fortunately, there are great time-saving, beginner-friendly templates you can use. Here are my favorites for identifying keyword cannibalization: Hannah Rampton’s Looker Studio cannibalization dashboard and associated spreadsheet , instructions for which can be found in this setup guide . With this resource, you can import Search console data (in Google Sheets or Looker Studio) and sort out pages that compete with one another for one or multiple queries. You can also quickly identify the degree of self-competition for certain queries. The Meta Blog’s easy-to-use cannibalization spreadsheet and associated checklist . With these two actionable resources you can not only identify competing internal URLs in Google Sheets but also resolve the identified issues following the suggested framework. If you already have a third-party SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs, you could easily find cannibalization using the position tracking report and keyword gap tool, the latter of which helps you identify shared keywords between two site sections (or subdomains on your site). How to fix cannibalization issues If you are positive any of the cannibalization types mentioned above are happening on your site, instead of acting at the keyword level, evaluate your strategies for content, on-page optimization, and internal linking to find the right place to start. Before doing anything, determine whether the competition between pages you’re observing is problematic and prioritize your efforts accordingly. Next, let’s discuss prioritization before jumping into examples of good and bad cannibalization solutions. How to prioritize to resolve cannibalization issues Regardless of the particular type of cannibalization, you should prioritize these two instances of problematic cannibalization and monitor the rest: When your main page for the keyword, intent, or content ranks lower than other pages on your site (but shouldn’t) — Enhance the content and improve the user experience for the main page. I’ll discuss options for the other ranking pages a bit later. When a page that’s of low relevance to the keyword, intent, or content outranks the main page — Consider taking actions to fix the cannibalization, such as content consolidation, content enhancements, or make edits to distinguish both pages. And, research changes in the SERP that might contribute to diminished search performance (such as Google showing new types of rich results for this particular query). Page status/issue Action Description High page importance, low position in search Enhance ​Your main page ranks worse than other pages for the keyword or intent. Implement search intent alignment changes and content edits to improve page performance. Consider consolidating pages if there’s similar content. Action needed: Implement content edits to enhance the content and improve user experience. High page importance, high position Monitor and protect Keywords in which you're ranking as expected (high position) with the main page for the keyword or intent. Action needed: Monitor and optimize as needed to defend your rankings. Low page importance, low position Monitor and do nothing Keywords where you're ranking low with a page that's of low importance for this keyword or intent. In most cases, this is non-problematic cannibalization as the page likely has other keywords of higher importance, and those are the rankings you should be concerned with. Action needed: Monitor and do nothing. ​High position, low page importance Consolidate Keywords where you’re ranking higher with a page that’s of low importance (compared to the page that “owns” the intent or keyword). In most cases, this is problematic cannibalization and you should consider consolidating the two pages or implementing appropriate internal linking. Action needed: Consolidate this page with a page that’s more important for this term or intent. Best practices to fix cannibalization on your website Now that we’ve established when it’s prudent to act on cannibalization issues, here are some approaches I recommend for resolving it. Content consolidation Consolidating content means combining multiple overlapping pages into a single, comprehensive page. It involves merging the relevant information, removing any duplicate or overlapping content, and ensuring that the consolidated page provides the best user experience and the most comprehensive topic coverage. This solution is both simple and efficient as it tackles cannibalization issues in multiple ways that help improve search performance: Improves the user experience by reducing confusion and creating a single source of truth on your site for a given topic or intent Simplifies internal linking as well as backlinking for external sites that want to reference your content Boosts authority and overall search performance as a result of improving the quality of the page with more comprehensive topic coverage When consolidating pages, make sure to also tackle the technical details, such as implementing page redirects and updating internal links , so that users and search engines can find the page. Content enhancements As I previously highlighted, there might be cases where page consolidation is not possible (or simply not recommended as pages may have a unique purpose and role). Enhancements, such as content editing, search intent re-alignment (perhaps even factoring in implicit search intent ), and on-page changes can really help you resolve keyword cannibalization in cases where it makes sense to keep all versions of the content. This approach works because it helps differentiate pages about the same topic by enhancing subtopic coverage while also keeping the authority of the pages intact. New content creation Throughout your cannibalization audit, you might discover that your content on a given topic gets discovered by users that are also interested in something not fully addressed by it (i.e., a query or search intent that is not fully covered by your existing content). This essentially represents a new subtopic or content idea for you to pursue so that you can capture that audience. In such cases, the best approach might be to create new content to fully cater to this search intent (assuming it’s relevant for your business/website). What to avoid when fixing keyword cannibalization In the section above, I addressed what you can potentially do to resolve cannibalization on your website—now, I’ll discuss what not to do. The practices I mention below fail to account for the nuances of cannibalization discussed earlier and are often a blanket solution that ultimately ends up hurting organic performance and user experience—which is bound to end up impacting your revenue opportunities as well. Page deletion Page deletion is not a good solution for cannibalization as it often ends up negatively impacting organic performance and user experience, causing more issues than it resolves. In particular, it can lead to: Loss of valuable content, which would otherwise generate search traffic Diminished search rankings due to loss of topical authority Disruption of the user experience (in cases where the page previously generated traffic or earned backlinks), such as users encountering 404 status errors Decreased authority for pages that previously earned backlinks Other potential technical SEO issues (such as broken internal links, etc.) Again, if you have no choice but to delete a page, at least put a 301 redirect in place so that you might side-step the risks mentioned above. Page deindexing For many of the same reasons why it’s bad practice to delete a page, page deindexing (asking search engines to drop the page from their index and not show it in search results) is often not an efficient way to resolve cannibalization issues. The main issue with this approach is that, at its core, it’s not user-centric. Site visitors can still navigate to the deindexed page via internal links, yet the value of those links from an authority standpoint is lost after you implement the noindex tag. Page deindexation does not resolve the issues that caused cannibalization, it only masks them from search engines. Key takeaways and advice on preventing cannibalization Cannibalization issues occur when pages compete against other pages on your site—for keywords, to satisfy an expressed search intent, or because of content similarities with other pages. Although not all instances of cannibalization are problematic, the ones that impact a website’s search performance and/or user experience also tend to affect profitability. You can use multiple approaches to diagnose and fix cannibalization issues, but the best way to handle it is to be strategic and prevent it from the outset. Here’s how to prevent problematic cannibalization from occurring: Create content and internal links strategically (as opposed to sporadically). Routinely monitor organic keywords ranking reports for instances of cannibalization and make appropriate changes to ensure that the content on your pages fully satisfies search intent. Regularly update and expand your keyword universe to find ideas for new content or to enhance existing content. Regularly monitor the SERP for changes in what Google considers the appropriate content type to satisfy search intent for different query types. For larger websites, implement systems to ensure that no keyword, search intent, or content cannibalization is accidentally introduced as a result of poor research or lack of communication between teams. By eliminating problematic cannibalization, you can save potential site visitors from the confusion of multiple similar pages ranking in search (or the wrong page ranking for the given query), helping users navigate to their desired destination. When your strategy and content are implemented properly, that potentially means better search visibility and more conversions for your business. Keyword, search intent, and content cannibalization FAQ What is keyword cannibalization? Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages from your website rank in the search results for the same search term. This confuses users and hinders their user experience, especially if the top-ranked page from your site is not the most appropriate page to satisfy their search intent. Is keyword cannibalization bad for SEO? While keyword cannibalization, search intent cannibalization, and content cannibalization are not inherently bad for SEO, they can lead to diminished search performance. These problems often signal an inefficient or uncoordinated on-page and content strategy, poor page-intent matching, or poor site structure. Keyword cannibalization can hinder user experience and decrease visibility in the search results, which is the opposite of what you want from your SEO. How can you tell if you’re cannibalizing keywords? Research the main search queries that visitors use to discover your existing pages/content—if you create content on a similar topic, for the same audience, it’s likely to cause some competition with these existing pages. Also, when creating a new page, consider the content you want to put on it. If this content exists in a similar arrangement elsewhere on your website, your new page may cause some cannibalization. Can you avoid keyword cannibalization? You can avoid keyword cannibalization by developing a good content strategy and workflow, implementing content enhancements to distinguish pages from potentially duplicative content, and routinely researching user search practices, the SERPs of popular search engines, and organic keyword rankings for your website. Lazarina Stoy - SEO & Data Science Consultant   Lazarina  is an organic marketing consultant specializing in SEO, CRO, and data science. She's worked with countless teams in B2B, SaaS, and big tech to improve their organic positioning. As an advocate of SEO automation, Lazarina speaks on webinars and at conferences and creates helpful resources for fellow SEOs to kick off their data science journey. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Andrew Cock-Starkey When planning new content or reviving older assets, proper keyword research can mean the difference between success and failure. While many keyword research tools can help with this process, Google Search Console  (GSC) stands out for its accessibility, price point (free), and because the data comes directly from Google itself, making it an industry standard.  In this guide, I’ll show you how to go further with this tool (well beyond the limitations of its standard web interface) to power-up your keyword research efforts. Table of contents: Pros and cons of keyword research in GSC’s web interface The Google Search Console API for more data Search Analytics for Sheets Filtering for actionable insights Regex for advanced data filtering 3 ways to use your GSC data for keyword research Pros and cons of keyword research in GSC’s web interface Google Search Console’s interface is often a good place to start your keyword exploration. If you’re thinking, ‘Wait, there are other  ways to use this data aside from tracking rankings and clicks?’ you’re going to love what’s coming up. GSC’s web interface is clean, clear, well-designed and once you know your way around, it’s pretty useful. In addition, Google often adds new features, elements, and improvements (hats off to the team that finally  added the ability to use regex in filters—more on them later). However, there are some caveats on data in Google Search Console’s web interface that I would be remiss not to mention at this early stage: Google redacts data in Search Console GSC only shows data for queries you already rank for GSC only shows the first 1,000 rows of data Google redacts data in Search Console The explanation around this is that Google’s systems remove any data that could identify individuals, so [Why does Andrew the SEO have such terrible dress sense?]   may never show up in your queries (thank goodness!). In Search Console when you apply filters (any filter), the great data redaction starts. Here’s an example by Mark Williams-Cook  showing a site with 148,000 total clicks—39,700 clicks from branded terms with 30,800 clicks on non-branded terms. So, what about the other 77,500 clicks? The answer: data redaction. Source: Mark Williams-Cook. This can be frustrating, but some of the tools I’ll show you in this article can help you address these issues. GSC only shows data for queries you already rank for If you’re doing keyword research around a brand new topic area or for a product in a niche you’ve never even operated in, Search Console may not be the best place to start. GSC does not give you details that other third-party keyword research tools typically provide (e.g., search volume , keyword difficulty , search intent ). It may be that you rank 85th and no one ever sees your site, but if you don’t rank at all  there won’t be any data there. But even when there is data, it’s limited—literally, as you’ll see below. GSC only shows the first 1,000 rows of data Investigate any issue in Google Search Console and you soon run into this: You get 1,000 rows of data—that’s it, no more. You want to see which queries you’re ranking for? Cool, you can see the first 1,000 rows. Which pages on your site are ranking? Okey-dokey… but only the first 1,000. Investigating an indexing  error or issue? Google says you have over 2,000 URLs that are not indexed because they’re a “Soft 404” (for example), but dig in and you can only see the first 1,000. If you’re working on a small site or you’re DIY’ing your SEO for a small business , maybe you’ll never even get near the 1,000 row limitation in Google Search Console. Only have 20 pages on your site? The likelihood of you needing 1,000 rows of data is pretty low. But if the site you’re working on has many thousands of pages, ranks for tens of thousands of queries, and is potentially throwing up many more thousands of errors and indexing issues, then that 1,000 row cap will get frustrating pretty quickly. You may be thinking, “Ah, but I can just add filters in GSC. Once I get below 1,000 rows the data is all good.” If, for example, you filter to just show queries that a specific page on your site ranks for, you can get fewer rows… and if you limit the date window to just the last seven days… and maybe filter to show only mobile device searches… And you can use the export button in Search Console to put all this in a spreadsheet. Sure. That kind of works. You can see where this is going: You’re just hamstringing your own efforts to get usable, actionable data—data that can actually help you make your site perform better. What if I told you there was a way to get 50x more data?  Or maybe even more? The Google Search Console API for more data Introducing the Google Search Console API (Application Programming Interface, but don’t worry, you don’t need to be a programmer to get the most out of them). If you want to dive into the API, great. Here’s the documentation . The key part for me, though, is this: “All use of Google Search Console API is free of charge. However, it is subject to usage limits.” That’s right. It’s free (my favorite price) and so long as you don’t go wild, you’re unlikely to run into those usage limits (and even if you do, waiting a minute or a day usually sorts things out). There’s nuance and exceptions here, but broadly speaking, you can make 40,000 QPM (queries per minute) and 30,000,000 QPD  (queries per day)—that last number is thirty million. Per day.  If you’re approaching those limits, you probably do need to dig into the documentation a bit more and start coding your own systems (or paying someone to do it for you). The Search Console API is “limited to 50K rows of data per day per type (web, news, image, and so on) per property” . So that’s 50,000 queries you could get. Or 50,000 pages. Or 50,000 URLs affected by an indexing error. Instantly, we’re in a different ballpark from that hard cap of 1,000 rows of data in GSC’s web platform. With the API, you can even get beyond that 50,000 limit too with some clever ‘stitching’ of data (but that’s a topic for another time and another blog post). Hopefully, you’re now thinking: “Show me how!” There are lots of tools out there, built by very clever people that will do all sorts of cool stuff with the Search Console API ( Shaun Anderson at Hobo’s  work is worth exploring—he’s built dashboards you can connect to your own data, saving you a ton of build time ). Some are free, some have a price tag, others work on a ‘freemium’ model ( SEO Stack  is an interesting new player in the paid-for tools area). My favorite tool for leveraging the GSC API for keyword research falls into the freemium category. It’s called Search Analytics for Sheets , by the very smart Mihai Aperghis . As the name suggests, this is an add-on that works in Google Sheets and you don’t even have to generate API keys to use it. It’s also free for up to 10,000 rows. Let’s assume that, like all discerning shoppers, you’d like to try before you buy. Let’s take the free version for a spin. Search Analytics for Sheets I’m not going to give you a ‘How to’ guide on Search Analytics for Sheets (mostly because Aperghis and his team have already done a far better job  of it than I can). Instead, I’ll show you some of the ways I use it and how it can help you get loads of useful information to help you with your keyword research. Once you install Search Analytics for Sheets  from the Google Workplace Marketplace (like the Chrome Store for stuff that isn’t in Chrome!), open up a new Google Sheet. Pro tip: Type “ sheet.new ” in your browser to do that from your browser bar. Then, in your new Sheet, look along the toolbar until you see “Extensions”. In there, you’ll now find Search Analytics for Sheets with the option to “Open Sidebar”: That will open up a sidebar that looks like this: Most of this is self-explanatory so, again, I’m not going to explain every single step. If a particular field isn’t obvious, there are handy question mark icons (shown above) that you can hover over them with your pointer for more details. Key things to note here are: Verified site  — if you don’t see the site you want to work on in the dropdown list, chances are you don’t have the right permissions. Go check. If it’s a client site, you may need them to change your Google Search Console permissions . If you do see the site you want in there, make sure you choose the right one: With or without the “www”? HTTP or HTTPS ? And domain-level properties work here too, so choose carefully. Date range — Too many times to mention I’ve tried to pull data on a site with a good idea of what I’m looking for, only to realize I set the wrong dates. Search type — You can use the tool to bring back data on Images, Video, Google News, or the web (default)—most times, most people want that one. Group By — This is basically asking you, “What columns do you want on your data?” You’re going to get clicks, impressions, CTR (click-through rate), and average ranking position by default. Let’s look at the dropdown choices. What else do you want? Probably at least one of Page or Query. Without those, you get something like this: Total clicks, impressions, CTR, and position for the entire site during the chosen date window. Lovely, but not all that useful. Add in Query and you get something like this: Now, you can see which search queries drove those clicks, impressions, etc. Go one step further and add Query and Page to get this: Now, you can see which of your pages is getting all those clicks and impressions. Note: In these examples, I’m just showing the first five rows of data so the screenshots make sense and are legible, but we’re up to 25,000 rows in most of these examples. You can  add in Device and Country too (and get something like this): But be careful—there are limits (even if they’re big numbers) and each data point or column you add is another query against those limits. Only draw down the data if you actually plan to use it. Back to our sidebar; remember, there are still a few more bits to review: Filter by — I’ll explain this in more detail in its own section. Aggregation Type — There are just two choices here: By Property or By Page. If you’re experienced with Google Search Console data, you may be familiar with these already. Basically, it’s asking: If you have two or more pages ranking for the same query, do you want to see that data rolled-up into one (‘By Property’)? Or do you want it split by page (‘By Page’)? Rows returned — How many rows do you want? 1,000, 10,000 or 25,000? (Or more if you’re willing to pay for a subscription.) Results sheet — Don’t skip this last one. Options here will look something like this: The default is to create a new sheet. In this field, you’re choosing where you want Search Analytics for Sheets to put   all the data it fetches you. Eventually, you may end up with a row of tabs along the bottom of your Sheets that look a bit like this: These aren’t as confusing as they may look. They’re all called “SAS” (Search Analytics for Sheets) and then the date and time: 2024_10_18_13_42_16 (the 18th of October 2024, at 13:42:16, which was when I pulled this data). Personally, I maintain this naming structure as knowing when   you did these data runs can be super handy, but you can change your tabs to whatever you prefer for your own workflows. When you run a new query, be sure to designate where you want the data to go. If you make a mistake and want to fetch the data again, you can get the tool to write over the top of your old Sheet (choose it by name from the drop-down or pick Active Sheet). Otherwise, stick to Create New Sheet—it’s easy to move or rename it later. There is likely to be a lot of data in these spreadsheets so eventually things are going to run very slowly if you have multiple tabs open in Google Sheets. This is worth bearing in mind (it’s also worth looking at tools like SEO Stack  that’ll do the data storage side for you). Lastly, hit the big blue “Request Data” button at the bottom of the sidebar and leave the tool to do its thing. It usually only takes a minute or two, but this may depend on the complexity of the search you’ve set it to do. You should now have around 25,000 rows of data. Lovely, lovely, data. Just by ordering, the columns you can uncover some interesting stuff: Which pages get the most clicks? Which queries have the most impressions but the fewest clicks? Which pages have zero search impressions? Etc. And now, you’re doing it with up to 25x more data than you can see directly in Search Console. Filtering for actionable insights Twenty-five thousand rows is too much data for anyone to take in and analyze, so like all good SEO folks, we’re going to pan this data for the gold. We’re looking for patterns and trends. Filtering is going to do a lot of heavy lifting for you here. You can easily create filters to provide you with actionable intel, such as showing all the pages with low impressions or queries with lots of impressions but low/no clicks. How to filter out…  Brand filters are useful for many types of businesses. If you’re not already ranking at the top of results for your own brand name, you probably have bigger issues to address than keyword research. The thing with branding is, when it’s working well, it can create a lot of noise in your data as a byproduct. That issue can be compounded by typos and spelling errors: is it [Starbucks] or [Starbux]? And what about [starbuck] or [strabucks] (common typos). If a user goes through the trouble to punch into Google [Starbucks near me] or [Starbucks central Cambridge], they’ve pretty much already decided where they want to go. All data is useful, but if we were working for the famous mermaid coffee shop brand, maybe we don’t need to do a lot of work around our rankings for branded search terms. With a filter, you can screen all those searches out of your data. To give Search Console it’s due, you can do this right in the online interface: The “+ Add Filter”  button does just that. And, thanks to the addition of regex filters, you can set up filters like this: That will screen out all the examples above (note the “Doesn’t match regex” option). Search Console uses the RE2 syntax for regex and has its own guide on how to use it GSC . But remember, you’re only getting back a maximum of 1,000 rows of data here. You can also do this in the Google Sheet, but with all   the data you’ve pulled through. There are some basic filters available out of the box: You can also use the “Custom formula is” option to get your regex jam going again using the REGEXMATCH formula (layering it up with “If” commands, you can do some crazy useful stuff in Sheets but that gets a little complicated a little too quickly for this post). You can do this with Search Analytics for Sheets too—even before you fetch the data. You can set-up a filter that does/doesn’t match regex and get up to 25,000 rows of data narrowed down to your area of focus: You can even add multiple filters to really hone in on the data you want. Conversely, in Search Console you can add filters, but only one per type (so you can have one Query filter and one Page filter; but not two different Query filters). With REGEXMATCH, layering up filters can get very complicated and a misplaced pipe (|) or parenthesis can break everything. In Search Analytics for Sheets, you can add multiple filters like this: In the example above, I’m looking to pull all the queries that don’t mention my brand name (or common misspellings) but also queries that don’t  mention SEO or Search Engine Optimisation (spelled with an s or a z for my American friends!) and  the page URL has to contain the word “google”. So I’ve got two Query filters and one Page filter—something you cannot do directly in Search Console. You don’t have to go far to find top SEO experts reinforcing the importance of brand in SEO . So filtering out your brand searches from non-branded searches is only going to get more   important for most businesses (and the SEOs that work for them). You can expand this beyond your own brand too. Use these filters to screen in/out competitor brand names. Are you ranking for a competitors’ name? Perhaps in searches around comparisons (e.g., [Is brand x better than brand y?] or [Alternatives to brand z])? How to filter in… Filters can work to include terms, too. Something that’s great to do for all sorts of reasons (including SEO), is to answer questions your customers have . Using a smart bit of regex, you can grab all the question-based search queries your site ranks for a question: /\b(how|what|why|when|where|can|do)\b The /\b ensures the regex matches “how” but not “show” or “however”. You could add an /i at the end to make the whole lot case insensitive, so it would match queries with [How do I…] and also [how do i]—very handy when lots of folks searching aren’t very particular about their grammar (especially when using mobile devices!). However, it’s worth noting that Google Search Console makes all query data lowercase. I include the tip around making regex case insensitive because capital letters can (and do) show up in URLs. If you want to filter to find your ‘About’ page and you set up a regex filter like this: (about) It is not going to find it if your about page lives here: optimisey.com/About-us This is because of that capital letter after the slash. So that /i can come in handy for those sorts of regex filters. Regex for advanced data filtering There are a ton of regex guides out there ( JC Chouinard’s  is a great starting point) so this isn’t the place for another one. The best way to work with regex is often trial and error (and the various GPTs and AI bots are often pretty great at helping you write or correct regex!) but below are some good examples to get you started and hopefully get your brain working to come up with even more. Regex What does it do? How does it do it? /\b(how|what|why|when|where|can|do)\b Finds all the queries with questions that include the words who, what, where, why, when, etc. / specifies the start of the string. \b is used to mark a word boundary. This example ensures that the words we look for are just those words, so “how” and not “show” or “howitzer”. | means ‘or’. In this example we’re telling it to look for how OR what OR why, etc. .*\/$ Looks for anything that ends with a forward slash. Handy for finding your URLs that end with a slash. If you use the filter “does not match regex”, you can also use it to find all the URLs that don’t end with a slash. . means any character. * the previous thing any number of times. \ ‘escapes’ the next character (i.e., use the character as a character instead of as a regex command). \/ in this example would make the filter literally look for the forward slash. $ means ‘this is the end’, so in this example the / would have to be at the end of the URL. .*(best|alternat|vs|versus|review|compar).* Looks for commercial comparison terms. Useful for finding queries from potential customers that signal commercial intent. . means any character. * the previous command (in this case, ‘.’) any number of times. In this example, we want queries with “alternate” OR “alternative” and “review” OR “reviews” and “compare” OR “comparison”, so we want to leave them open-ended. 3 ways to use your GSC data for keyword research Congratulations! You’re now awash with data and you have the knowledge, tools, and the regex skills to do amazing analyses with it—analyses like: Find content to merge/consolidate or update Refine and improve existing content Find new content ideas Find content to merge/consolidate or update Sort your sheet of URLs by impressions and clicks to find all your pages that have low (or no) search impressions and clicks. You’ve now got a list of pages that you should review:  Why aren’t they getting any search traffic?  Have they dropped from the index because of a technical issue?  Are they outdated now and have been overtaken by something new—maybe even something new still on your own site ? Ashwin Balakrishnan’s guide on content consolidation  can help you put some of these issues to rest. Refine and improve existing content By focusing on a subfolder or page, you could extract a huge amount of data on that particular section of your site. Perhaps your /blog/ or all your /services/ pages, or even just a single specific page (such as your highest- or lowest-converting page). With the huge amount of data about those specific pages, you can now zoom in on all your customer questions (our how|why|when… filter above). Then, find the questions that you don’t  answer very well and update those pages so they do satisfy your visitors. Find new content ideas Taking this idea further, there may be enough questions left unanswered by your existing content that it warrants creating a new piece of content. Perhaps there are some queries that an existing piece of content gets lots of search impressions for but does not rank very well. Alternatively, it may perform well on lots of commercial queries, but does much poorer on informational queries. This could demonstrate a gap in your content funnel . You’re getting searchers nearer to the point of purchasing (the commercial queries), but not when they’re still exploring or looking for answers (the informational queries) or vice versa. Build out new content around those informational queries to help put your brand top of mind when those searchers later move on down the funnel. And internally linking  from one to the other could help the rankings for both  pages. Matching searcher intent  can make a world of difference to your rankings and conversion rates. The more keyword data you have, the better your optimizations will be These are just a handful of the things you could do with the huge range of data you can now unlock from your Google Search Console setup. Data-driven decisions are often the best decisions, so make sure you’re getting all the data you can to inform the choices you make based on your keyword research. Andrew Cock-Starkey - SEO Consultant at Optimisey Andrew is an SEO consultant and trainer at his company, Optimisey . He's one of the specialist instructors on the Wix Studio SEO learning course and loves dreadful puns and rambling analogies. Linkedin

Author: Mordy Oberstein Brand and SEO, it’s all the rage—and when I say ‘rage’, I don’t mean the sudden popularity that ‘brand’ has within the world of SEO. Rather, I’m referring to the rage I have about how performance marketers of all kinds interpret branding.  As someone who has straddled both sides of the fence over the last decade, I’m in a unique position to view the topic of brand marketing with regard to SEO from a slightly different vantage point.  With that, I’d like to explore where SEO fits into brand marketing with a level of conceptual nuance that I feel has yet to be presented to the industry.  It’s all the rage...  Which comes first, SEO or branding? Why SEO is a poor way to build a brand Why brand logically comes before SEO The two phases of marketing: Where brand & SEO fit in Branding defines the foundational phase of marketing Set your brand identity Establish your market positioning Craft authentic brand messaging The momentum phase: Where performance & SEO enter the picture The net result and the great SEO connection Which comes first, SEO or branding?  For me, this is the seminal question: How does your brand help SEO? Or, how does SEO help your brand? I ask this because the general sentiment I’ve come across within the SEO industry is that SEO helps you build a brand. As organic marketers, we see SEO as the primary starting point that holds the keys to the kingdom and success on the internet. Why SEO is a poor way to build a brand I’d like to tell you that, while SEO can help with your brand efforts, it's terribly ineffective at this. In fact, the opposite is true: brand power helps SEO, not the other way around. But before we get into how brand marketing amplifies your SEO efforts (which I will get to later on), let’s rock the boat with why SEO is a bad way to build a brand.  Before we do that let me loosely define what ‘brand’ is. Different marketers will take this in different directions.  For me, brand is the connection between your identity and your audience’s ‘self’ (or identity). The point of contact between who you are and who your audience is—that is your brand. Brand is the intersection of who you are and what you do in the context of who your audience is and what they need/want. At its very core, branding is connective. In that regard, how does SEO stack up? Not very well.  SEO lacks narrative: The primary issue with using organic rankings to build a brand is that it is impossible to purposefully build a narrative. If brand is all about connection, then it’s also all about persona (or more technically, brand identity).  In terms of branding, search is entirely piecemeal. You do not control any narrative because there is no narrative. From a brand POV, you’re getting a random person landing on a random page.  It’s not only possible, but also likely that users who land on one of your pages will not understand who you are as a brand. Search leans towards utility. Its users want an answer or a product/service and then they want to move on.  Yes, they may enjoy your content, see you on other SERPs  and build an affinity towards your brand. But what happens is that SEOs co-opt this scenario and use it to define the effectiveness of SEO on brand building, when, in truth, this is more the exception than the rule.  Not only does a lot have to go your way for this scenario to play out, it's not even strategic. Even if you had a brand strategy that included staunch brand identity, strong positioning, and crisp messaging, you would hardly be able to communicate that via search. You don’t know what page the user will end up on or which keyword you will even rank for in the end (or for how long). So even if you had a brand strategy, I’m not even sure why you would rely on SEO to be the vehicle to communicate it? (Let alone the sheer amount of time it would take.) We’re already touching on my next point… SEO as a vehicle for branding is inconsistent:  You can’t build a brand strategy around something as inconsistent as search because determining who will see what content (and when) is not very straightforward. Google may see your site as relevant for one subset of keywords, but not for another. Your site may excel at bringing in clicks from the SERP for a certain subtopic, but not for another. Or, just when you’re ranking for a certain cluster of keywords , an algorithm change  occurs and that advantage diminishes for a few weeks until Google’s testing phase is over and you go back to normal (if you’re that lucky).  This is a terrible way to build a brand. It’s far too inconsistent and piecemeal—after all, consistency is the only way your brand will have any cache amongst potential customers. None of it speaks, at its core, to being able to communicate a certain narrative in a logical and methodical way.  Can it happen with SEO, though? Like I said before, yes, but doubling down on how SEO will build your brand is literally ignoring the conceptual structure of what brand building is.  Which leads well to my next point... SEO is not connective: Fundamentally, there is a barrier between you and the audience—that barrier is the search engine. You are not connecting with them directly. It’s very hard for you to be seen with any vitality or even as an entity  when you ‘build your brand from SEO’. It’s not hard to see why this is: Leaving the medium (which is a big factor) aside, you’re not creating content for an audience. Unlike assets (e.g., a podcast, newsletter), when you create content to rank, there’s an extra layer between you and the audience. This makes it harder to take feedback or follow up with questions using your SEO strategy than it might be with something like a podcast or a newsletter. For the SERP’s Up podcast , we’ve taken listener questions from previous episodes and created new ones to answer them. That’s communicating. Even if you did follow up with a new piece of content, under an SEO-led initiative, the user would have to Google the query and then find you again, which is very unlikely.  Lastly, you’re writing content in an effort to rank . Yes, of course, you have your audience in mind, but you’re fundamentally trying to rank—not resonate.  That last point is more powerful than most people appreciate. It’s trying to build your brand with your arms tied behind your back.  So no matter how many SEOs tell you that you can build a brand via SEO, you can’t. It’s just not how brand marketing conceptually works.  Why brand logically comes before SEO  Let’s look at this question (of whether brand marketing or SEO is primary) from another angle: logic. Thinking of a brand from an SEO-first perspective assumes that folks here, there, and everywhere will see  your content, come to your site, and you  will become a ‘brand’ that they are now aware of.  But let me just ask, who is this ‘you’  that we’re referring to? Who is this mysterious ‘you’ that ‘your’ audience is going to become aware of? SEO, from a purely logical point of view, cannot be the starting point for brand building. You have to establish who the brand is, and that happens way before SEO is even a consideration. This means you need to develop who ‘you’ are at the brand level.  What is your brand’s overarching purpose and mission? What is its core identity? Does that identity have enough depth, clarity, and differentiation?  How does your brand’s identity align with (and hopefully connect with) who the audience is?  There has to be a ‘you’ that is firmly established before a particular strategy is put into place—SEO included.  And no, an SEO strategy  will not answer these questions or deal with these topics with enough depth. There is a process to marketing and if you take a closer look at that process, the notion of brand being built by SEO becomes an inept one. The two phases of marketing: Where brand & SEO fit in A lot of what I advocated above has to do with the fact that marketing has a process that is more or less universal. While you can break down the marketing process into an infinite number of parts, at minimum, there are two: the foundational phase and the momentum phase. Branding defines the foundational phase of marketing As I alluded to above, before  you  can get into specific strategies (such as an SEO strategy), you need to define exactly who this ‘you’ actually is.  The building blocks that form the rest of your marketing efforts come together throughout this process. Unfortunately, it’s a process many companies do not invest in enough. In fact, I would say there is a tendency to skimp on the foundational phase (or skip it altogether) because we’d all love to jump straight to building some momentum.  Unfortunately, that’s not usually possible. So, let’s first define what we are trying to do in the foundational phase.  For our purposes, let’s view this process as three major stages: identity, positioning, and messaging (with messaging being the smallest of these three, as I’ll explain). Set your brand identity Absolutely everything starts from here. If your brand isn’t in touch with who it is and what it wants and needs, it’s going to lack direction that will have a negative butterfly effect on all things marketing and sales.  There are few things to keep in mind when trying to set your brand identity. First and foremost, you cannot ‘put lipstick on a pig’ (although the notion sounds incredibly entertaining). Just like in real life, you are who you are. Your brand identity has to be rooted in reality.  Truth be told, this process should almost be therapeutic in a way. You’re not a marketer at this point, you're a therapist trying to help the brand see itself for who it is.  In that sense, you are not creating brand identity as much as you are simply tapping into it.  In my opinion, this mindset is make-or-break.  On a more pragmatic level, here are a few things you want to ensure:  Depth of branding  — Brand identity without meaning is utterly pointless. If your brand lacks meaning, it inherently lacks the ability to connect.  The concept that your brand represents—that it basically lives—has to have some sort of emotional depth (existential depth is even better). What does that even mean? There are emotional concepts and constructs that are more or less integral to the human experience (e.g., community, connection, support). Your brand identity should be attached to and framed in a way that speaks to one of those more integral human experiences.  The example I always give is ‘fun’. I didn’t have fun today. I probably won’t have fun tomorrow (I’m writing this on a Sunday). I may not have fun until the weekend, and I can live with that because ‘fun’ is a surface-level human experience.  Connection, on the other hand, is not surface-level. I need to feel connected to something or someone each and every day. If I don’t feel connected, I won’t be able to function.  So imagine your business is an amusement park and you say “We’re all about giving our consumers a fun time”—you’re basically saying that you are not integral. If you were to reframe how you thought of yourself and, instead of being about ‘fun’, you said that your mission is to “help people reconnect to who they truly are by being joyous,” that’s a heck of a lot more substantial than ‘fun’, isn’t it? Clarity of identity  — To effectively communicate who your brand is, the underlying concepts must be refined and crystallized. A vague sense of brand identity, no matter how meaningful, won’t translate. The more crisp and clear your vision of your brand is, the more effectively you will be able to impart that to an audience.   Differentiation of branding  — The brand meaning you establish for yourself should also have market differentiation (it’s entirely possible to create something that is meaningful, but not differentiated). So before you lock down your brand identity concept, have a look around just to make sure you are distinct enough. I do not advise starting the brand identity process here at all. So many brands make this mistake. I cannot tell you how often I see people recommend starting the branding process with competitor analysis . However, like I said earlier, you are who you are and that’s regardless of the competition.  If you start here, as counterintuitive as it sounds, you’ll most likely end up sounding just like your competition. It will have the exact opposite effect.  Establish your market positioning The second stage of the foundational phase of marketing is when you set brand positioning. Positioning is when the identity of your brand and its products/services are contextualized by the needs of your audience.  In English, that means positioning is how you (and your offering) slide into the context of your audience’s lives. It transcends your USP.  A USP is simply a proposition. It’s a reason why your audience may choose your product or service. Positioning is how your audience associates to and connects with you and your offering once the proposition has been made.  Your brand identity and positioning should naturally flow into each other.  Using our amusement park example from earlier, if your business is about rediscovering the joyous part of who you really are, then you are positioning yourself as a place to reconnect.  That assumes your audience wants to reconnect, sees you as a way to do so, etc.  Thus, the first step after establishing your identity is to understand your audience’s life context: What are your audience’s life experiences?  What’s happening around them so that they experience life this way?  Within this context, what are their needs? Does your offering speak to these needs? If so, how? In what way?  Does this reflect a layer of market differentiation? This line of thinking will help you create and cement your positioning. Again, the goal is to create an intersection between who you are, what you offer, who your audience is, and what their emotional needs are.  In my honest opinion, positioning is where your brand actually lives. It encompasses brand identity and is where the connection between your brand and your audience begins.  It also naturally (and latently) speaks to the specific messaging you’ll use to communicate.  Craft authentic brand messaging  I always felt this was the least important stage to focus on. Not because messaging isn’t important per se—rather, if you get the brand identity and subsequently the brand positioning right, your brand messaging  should be obvious.  Ironically, messaging is where many brands tend to spend the most time. This isn’t because they value brand fundamentals (i.e., identity and positioning), but because there is no way around it.  If you’re going to promote your offering or create content assets of whatever variety, you’re going to need wording and phraseology.  So, brands will spend a lot of resources and effort on messaging—but messaging without establishing identity and positioning beforehand is likely to flop.  Again, let’s continue with the case of our fictional amusement park. If the brand, as we’ve said, is all about ‘reconnecting with joy’ (i.e., the brand identity) and helping people rediscover their joyous selves (i.e., the brand positioning), what should the messaging be? It’s kind of obvious (as it should be).  Whatever it may be, the messaging should revolve around ‘forgetting the stress of daily life for a day and rediscovering yourself’.  The goal then of the messaging phase is to pin down the exact tone and phraseology you think will be most effective (and that can often depend on the asset, medium, etc).  The main point is that your messaging aligns with the positioning you established. Oftentimes (and this is something SEOs need to watch out for), the brand will veer away from positioning-aligned messaging in order to incentivize a click or conversion , for example.  This is an extremely slippery slope because in no time flat your entire messaging construct can become misaligned. That leads to inconsistency and fractures your branding efforts. It makes good sense to audit your messaging at regular intervals to determine how aligned it is with your brand. Misaligned messaging Partially aligned messaging Aligned messaging Strongly aligned messaging Completely aligned messaging Contradicts brand identity Secondary elements align but the core messaging as a whole does not Messaging generally aligns (even though secondary elements may be misaligned) The messaging clearly and distinctly advances the brand’s core goals  All facets of messaging promote brand identity in a way that deeply resonates with the audience (it may even take your branding to the next logical stage of its evolution) The momentum phase: Where performance & SEO enter the picture All of the work I outlined above in the foundation section is meant to be the catalyst of your momentum. I abide by the outlook that marketing is all about momentum—and that momentum allows for performance marketing tactics to take hold. Momentum relies on connection.  It’s fundamentally about making people feel engaged by your brand and connected to you. Think about it like a podcast: We get all sorts of comments, requests, and interactions when we share the SERP’s Up podcast on social media. It gives the show a certain momentum, but that momentum came from the connection Crystal Carter  (my co-host) and I established with the audience.  Momentum is the outcome of a brand strategy that has substance. Like your core brand strategy, it relies on connection and engagement to gain traction, which means you can’t genuinely generate momentum if you skip the foundational phase of the marketing process.  For your brand to generate momentum, there are some ‘prerequisites’ that you need to meet.  Ensure your ‘gaps’ are filled and that you are consistent across the board. Do your creative assets resonate with your audience? Is your design collateral, from your website to media kits, aligned with your brand? Are you focused on the channels where your audience actually lives ? Do you have the right infrastructure in place? Topic focus At this point, you need to create a very tight topical plan. If the topics you address are all over the place, the identity you established early on will become diluted. Asset creation Now is the time to get into the nitty-gritty of the assets and activities your brand will engage in. What is their purpose? Where will they live? Who will they target and when? What balance of sales content versus educational content will you produce? Cadence and distribution So you know what you’re going to say, where you’re going to say it, and to whom… But, how often? And more importantly, how will you get it out there without just peeing into the wind? I do want to pause for a second and point out that the ‘marketing strategy’ (as we traditionally refer to it) is starting to take shape. It’s all part of the plan.  To the latter point about cadence and distribution, momentum is about engagement. This is where your marketing strategy is going to really start getting into the weeds—it’s where your hardcore marketing strategist shines the most, in my opinion. At this stage, you really have to understand what does (and doesn’t) resonate and when and where it does (or doesn’t) resonate.  You then need to hunt for opportunities (with the goal in mind that more momentum will produce more opportunities). This is where you have to get a bit creative with how you can engage with an audience.  I break down this process into four core elements:  Offline activities — It’s incredibly important to think about real-world marketing activities. All sorts of opportunities develop from real world connection and the ability to resonate with an audience is off the charts relative to digital.    Community engagement   — Getting into the weeds of your industry’s community is at the core of generating engagement. It’s possible to do this as the brand itself, but is generally more effective when representatives or advocates from the company can jump in.  Educational content — Creating educational content (not informational content— educational content because it has to be genuine and not part of a marketing ploy) should be at the absolute core of every brand’s strategy. As a former teacher, I will tell you there is only one relationship that comes close to the power of a parent-child dynamic, and that is the teacher-student relationship. You are not only positioning yourself to be an authority, but more so you are creating trust and connection. You are genuinely helping your audience and that matters so much. Your educational content is what allows you to create sales content that can resonate.  Partnerships — To expand your reach and ability to resonate, you need to get out of your own bubble. Partner with other complementary brands. However, be cautious because who you partner with says a lot about you. Partnering with the wrong person or organization (putting reputation issues aside for now) could signal that your own offering is for a specific audience (which it may not be). There are a lot of latent signals sent here, so thoroughly consider the implications your partnerships may have on your audience. In April 2024, we combined a partnership with offline activities by recording a live episode of the SERP’s Up podcast at BrightonSEO. For the record, these elements can all overlap. You can partner with someone to conduct an offline activity that is all about education. That should be obvious, but I felt I had to reinforce it.  The net result and the great SEO connection You mean we’re finally going to talk about SEO? Yes, my deepest apologies for creating a knowledge scheme and not starting off with ‘ 5 Ways Your Branding Efforts Build Up Your SEO ’. Forgive me.  Let’s recap what we outlined until now and then discuss the likely outcomes: Establish a core brand identity that has depth and meaning. Identify audience needs and how brand as well as product/service identity addresses those needs (i.e., positioning).  Develop specific messaging to communicate the established positioning. Ready the brand to develop momentum by ensuring brand alignment, etc. Set topical focus(es) Develop a strategy to engage and resonate with an audience (i.e., achieve momentum) Now before we get into the outcomes, I want to remind you that we already established that both brand and momentum demand connection. So there’s no shortcut or easy way out. You have to go through some version of the process I laid out here.  OK, now we can talk about outcomes. If all goes according to plan, your brand will have: Produced assets for specific channels around targeted topics with messaging that deeply resonates with your audience Engaged in offline activities that created new connections and new levels of resonance Integrated (at some level) with your industry’s community and began to create a direct conversation with your audience Developed educational content that positioned you as a trusted authority and overall helper Expanded your reach and resonance by strategically collaborating with a variety of partners  Let’s talk about these outcomes in a more practical way, with a bit more marketing lingo sprinkled in: You chose a target audience and refined your topical focus. You created content and messaging that resonates with them.  You began to develop awareness via community engagement. You developed trust and authority via your educational content. You added to that authority, but this time with additional reach via collaboration.  What practical goals does this help you achieve?  If more people are engaged with you because you have a core identity, strong positioning, are partnering with more people, and producing targeted content that has value, then you should see: Increased mentions across the web  Increased backlinks   Increased branded searches Increased topical focus Increased authority and trustworthiness around your topic  I could go on.  Brand or SEO—Who is the primary helper?  Let me ask again: Is it SEO that helps branding? Or, maybe it’s branding that helps SEO? With what I’ve outlined above, your overall digital presence increases as a result of brand marketing, thereby increasing the chance for Google to pick up on a variety of signals (i.e., links, mentions, branded searches, etc). At the same time, the process should refine your topical focus and give you an air of authority. SEOs may know this as E-E-A-T , and in reality, E-E-A-T is the by-product of months (if not years) of foundational work, much as I’ve described in this article.  Now, please go ahead and tell me that brand does all of this, yet SEO is what helps brand because some random searcher might find some random page and repeat this process until they come to the epiphany that you are a noteworthy brand related to whatever it is you do.  *Scoff* Mordy Oberstein - Head of SEO Branding, Wix   Mordy is the Head of SEO Branding at Wix. Concurrently he also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is one of the organizers of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Twitter  | Linkedin