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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, January 28, 2025 | 1PM ET Get ready for 2025! Join 10 SEO experts for a panel discussion on top trends to watch for in the coming year , with insights from in-house, consultant, PPC, and agency professionals. From Google updates to AI-driven SERPs and everything in between, we’ll cover it all. Wix Studio   hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein will be joined by SEO experts from across the industry: Naomi Francis-Parker, Charlotte Tilbury Paul Andre de Vera, Stripe Aleyda Solis, Oranti Mark-Williams Cook, Candour Rishi Lakhani, Consultant Jamie Indigo, Cox Automotive Anu Adegbola, Search Engine Land Greg Finn, Cypress North In this webinar, we’ll cover:  How SEO trends impact in-house, agency, consultant and PPC marketers Fresh insights to inform your planning for the upcoming year  New tools and techniques to help you deliver SEO wins  Meet your hosts: Mordy ObersteinHead of SEO Branding, Wix In addition to leading SEO Branding at Wix, Mordy also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is an organizer of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Tune in to hear him on Wix’s SEO podcast SERP’s Up, as well as Edge of the Web. X  | LinkedIn   Crystal Carter Head of SEO Communications, Wix Crystal is an SEO and digital marketing professional with over 15 years of experience. Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds and Tomy. An avid SEO Communicator, her work has been featured at Google Search Central, brightonSEO, Moz, Lumar (DeepCrawl), Semrush and more. X  | LinkedIn Paul Andre De Vera - Global SEO Content Strategy at Stripe Paul Andre de Vera (Dre) is a B2B digital marketer with over 15 years of experience in creating video content that ranks. He hosts the weekly SEO Video Show and serves as a speaker, online educator, SEO consultant and as an organic growth strategist for companies like SAP and Workday. X  | LinkedIn Aleyda Solis - SEO Consultant and Founder at Orainti Aleyda Solis is an SEO speaker, author, and the founder of   Orainti , a boutique SEO consultancy advising top brands worldwide. She shares the latest SEO news and resources in her SEOFOMO  newsletter, SEO tips in the Crawling Mondays  video series, and a free SEO Learning Roadmap called   LearningSEO.io . X  | LinkedIn Greg Finn - Partner at Cypress North Greg is co-founder at Cypress North, where he serves as head of performance and innovation and co-manages the digital marketing department. He also co-hosts the Marketing O'Clock podcast , providing updates, insights, and hot takes on the latest SEO, PPC, and social media marketing news. X  | LinkedIn Naomi Francis-Parker - SEO Manager, Charlotte Tilbury Naomi is an SEO expert with over 5 years of experience working with eCommerce brands. Her passion for SEO stems from a holistic approach to digital marketing that promotes growth by leveraging a combination of content, PR, social media, and SEO. X  | LinkedIn Mark-Williams Cook - Digital Marketing Director, Candour Mark Williams-Cook has over 20 years of SEO experience and is co-owner of search agency   Candour , founder of AlsoAsked, and owner of a pet category eCommerce business. In addition to sharing his knowledge at conferences, Mark has also trained over 3,000 SEOs via his Udemy course. X  | LinkedIn Rishi Lakhani - Digital Communications Strategist Rishi Lakhani is a seasoned digital marketing strategist with over two decades of expertise. Since launching his career as a marketing executive in 2000, Rishi has been at the forefront of developing SEO models and best practices. He has contributed extensively to globally renowned SEO blogs and speaks at numerous industry events. X  | LinkedIn Jamie Indigo - Technical SEO Expert Jamie Indigo  is a technical SEO who studies how search engines crawl, render, and index. They love to tame wild JavaScript and optimize rendering strategies. As a marketing-dev hybrid, Jamie is skilled at solving riddles and overcoming boundaries. X  | LinkedIn Anu Adegbola - Paid Media News Editor, Search Engine Land Anu Adegbola has been Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land since 2024. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media, video and more. She is the founder of PPC networking event PPC Live and host of weekly podcast PPCChat Roundup. She is also an international speaker on stages including SMX, Friends of Search, brightonSEO, AdWorld Experience and more. X  | LinkedIn

What is the “It’s New” Video Series "It’s New" is a daily video series delivering the latest SEO news hosted by Barry Schwartz.  The show keeps you up to stay up-to-date on the ever-changing landscape of SEO, covering topics such as Google algorithm updates, industry trends, and actionable tips for improving website search engine performance. The web series includes each day’s search marketing updates, presented by a panel of four PPC and SEO experts: Barry Schwartz:  Founder of Search Engine Roundtable and news editor at Search Engine Land Mordy Oberstein:  Head of SEO Branding at Wix Studio Greg Finn:  Partner and head of performance and innovation at Cypress North What topics are featured on “It’s New”? Viewers can expect to see a well rounded view of the latest happenings in new SERP features, Google SERP tests, SEO data studies and industry events on most episodes. But the individual topics are curated daily by the panelists based on their expertise, specialisms and value for the audience.  Barry Schwartz brings over 20 years of experience covering Google news to every session. Trusted by both Google and the SEO industry at large, he is often the first to report on announcements for Google Algorithm Updates  and volatility in search results. Schwartz confesses,  “I have a weird passion, the passion is for tracking how Google is changing across ranking and user interface. Google Search can make or break some companies and websites and being able to create content that helps these companies cope with these changes has been a true privilege in my career.” With a keen interest in how SEOs can impact LLM searches , Crystal Carter often explores the latest updates from ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Gemini and other AI-powered search engines. “I love covering a new product release or update in AI search,” she explains, “AI in search is a fast-evolving space so it’s important to stay abreast of the latest features releases, partnerships and use cases. News from Google is still extremely valuable for SEOs but offerings from Open AI will influence our activities in the very near future”. As a long time champion of leveraging SEO tactics to manage brand equity , Mordy Oberstein often selects news items that illustrate industry trends and contribute to a pattern of how brands are best positioned online. "To me, it’s about tracking all of the things. It gives you a sense of where Google is headed and perhaps more importantly where the entire web ecosystem is heading. To an SEO and marketer that’s invaluable information.”  And while SEO is a strong focus for every episode, many editions of It’s New feature coverage of developments in search advertising as selected by PPC veteran, Greg Finn. From Google Ads to Microsoft Advertising, you’ll discover everything that’s new and how the platform changes may impact the SERPs.   About the show, he says “I love that we can hit on all search engine news in a very bite-sized (~10 min) daily format that is light and fun. I love the feeling of having experts chatting about the news in a water-cooler format that brings listeners along for the ride!” When are new episodes available? Episodes are published Monday - Thursday around 10am ET. You can watch them here and also on the Rusty Brick YouTube channel . Past episodes are also available for free on the channel. Who are the hosts of It’s New? Barry Schwartz CEO, RustyBrick Barry Schwartz is the founder of the Search Engine Roundtable  and has covered search for over 20 years. He is also a news editor at Search Engine Land and is a speaker, moderator, and coordinator at many industry conferences, including SMX, PubCon, and many other marketing and technology events. Twitter  | LinkedIn Mordy Oberstein Head of SEO Branding, Wix In addition to leading SEO Branding at Wix, Mordy also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is an organizer of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Tune in to hear him on Wix’s SEO podcast SERP’s Up , as well as Edge of the Web. Twitter  | LinkedIn   Greg Finn Partner, Cypress North Greg is one of the founders of Cypress North and its head of performance and innovation. He co-manages the digital marketing department and works to ensure clients achieve the best results. He also co-hosts the Marketing O'Clock podcast , providing updates, insights, and hot takes on the latest SEO, PPC, and social media marketing news. Twitter  | LinkedIn

Author: Gus Pelogia Have you ever had a client who wanted to rank their commercial page for a broad, highly competitive keyword? You can’t exactly fault them—common sense says to go after the biggest opportunities with your best-converting page.Unfortunately, much of that choice is not up to you (or the client). It’s up to Google and what it thinks searchers really want to see for that keyword. The question you should then ask (and what you should actually prioritize if you want long-term success with SEO) is:  “Do I stand a chance at ranking for this keyword?”  In this blog post, I’ll show you, step-by-step, how to run a search engine result page (SERP) analysis to answer this question as well as how to adjust your strategy to increase your chances of ranking. Table of contents: What is a SERP feature? SERP analysis: What it is and why it’s essential Example 01. [hotels in NYC] — An aggregator’s paradise Local pack Traditional blue link results People also ask (PAAs) Related searches Example 02. [double bed mattress] — Categories, filters, and shopping results Refinement chips Shopping Google Shopping & Wix Example 03. [registered nurse] — Broad intent, mixed results Knowledge panel How to incorporate your SERP analysis into your content plan How to run SERP analyses at scale Counteract AI overviews with information gain What is a SERP feature? SERP features  are, as the name suggests, special results displayed on Google, Bing, and other search engines. (This makes more sense when you consider that, back in the early days of search, Google’s results would consist primarily of just a few ads and ten blue links.) An example of a modern SERP, with paid elements, SERP features, and traditional ‘blue links.’ As years passed, search engines added new elements to their results. Google started providing users with additional information before they even clicked through to a website. SERP features are how this additional info gets organized and displayed. Just as there are many different types of searches a user can conduct, there’s a long list of Google SERP features designed for those particular results, which is why they’re so helpful in reverse-engineering what it takes to rank for a given query.  Common SERP features include: Featured snippets Local pack People also ask Top stories Image carousel Video snippets Sitelinks Rich snippets You don’t need to pay attention to (or optimize for) all of them, but you do need to get familiar with the ones that show up regularly for keywords that you want to rank for. SERP analysis: What it is and why it’s essential Understanding whether you can realistically rank for a given keyword is easy once you can read the hints the SERP gives you. These hints vary by sector/industry, and that’s where your SERP analysis starts.  When analyzing a SERP, ask:  How is the search engine displaying results relevant to your business? What SERP features are relevant for your website? (I.e., local packs, knowledge panels, product listings, etc.) Do you have the right assets (pages, images, videos) to compete in this space? You may run into a situation where a client wants to rank for a competitive keyword with their commercial page ( product page , sign-up form, etc). Before you can commit resources to optimizing that page, you need to analyze the SERPs for how Google interprets the intent users have when searching those keywords. Broadly speaking, searches have one of four keyword intents : Intent Explanation Example queries Informational keywords Searchers are seeking information or answers to certain questions, so these keywords often contain phrases like what is  or how to . [how to become a nurse] [how to choose gym shoes] [best exercises to lose fat] Navigational keywords Searchers are looking for specific sites, pages, or places (in the case of  local search ) that they already know about, so these terms often include the names of brands, places, or things. [wix] [asana login] [doordash] [madison square garden] Commercial keywords Searchers are edging closer to converting and want to research the service or good, compare products, read reviews, and look for offers to help them make a decision. [iphone vs google pixel] [hotels in London] [gutter cleaning service] [car insurance comparison] Transactional keywords Searchers have made up their minds and intend to make a purchase or complete an action, so these terms often contain phrases like for delivery , for sale , and buy XYZ online . [buy iphone 15 pro] [denver bus tour] [superbowl tickets] We’ll go into examples below, but essentially:  If all results on a SERP are informational, you’re very unlikely to get a commercial page to rank for that term. This is less about what you or your client think is right or ideal, but rather about what Google (or another search engine) has decided. If you want to stand a chance, you need to play by their rules. Let’s dive into some examples that represent various scenarios and industries that you might have clients in. Example 01. [hotels in NYC] — An aggregator’s paradise An example of a SERP for [hotels in NYC]. This example has been truncated for length. Which hotel in the city wouldn’t like to rank for this keyword? [hotels in {location}] tends to be the highest search volume  keyword for visitors looking for a hotel in the city (which is why it’s our first example). However, similar to any other large city, there are only a few opportunities for hotels themselves to rank—there are hundreds (if not thousands) of hotel websites and the search is so broad that, even as a human, it’s difficult to assess what to rank. Let’s analyze this SERP, feature by feature. On page one, we have: Local pack The local pack is a widget that shows Google Maps results; in this case, highlighting three hotels. Clicking on this result leads the user to the hotel’s Google Business Profile (GBP) , listing their reviews, website, directions, operating hours, and other details. For most search results where a local pack appears (e.g., hotel, tourist attraction, restaurant), there’s a high chance that users will continue their research using the local pack, sometimes never reaching your website. To rank in this SERP feature, businesses should follow local SEO best practices . Wix has a wide range of local SEO articles and guides  that dive deep into these techniques. Pro tip:  While this is true for a lot of results with local packs, hotels have a unique feature—Google displays a list of online travel agencies to book the hotel through, allowing travelers to choose dates, see nearby attractions, and so on. You still have an opportunity for visibility, however, bookings might happen through a third party. Traditional blue link results The traditional search listings (i.e., the blue links) are usually the arena in which SEOs fight hard to rank, but in this specific case (for hotels in large cities), most SERPs are packed with online travel agencies (not websites from individual hotel brands). Most page one results for [hotels in denver] are online travel agencies For this particular SERP, all page results are large aggregators (such as Booking, Expedia, and Trivago), except denver.org . In this scenario, not only are you competing with large travel brands with huge budgets, but also with a certain type of page: aggregators with hundreds of hotels, a high volume of user reviews , tons of filters, and many more details. If you’re a hotel chain, creating a similar experience might give you a chance to rank. List all of your properties in NYC (or your target city), add filters, price, etc. If you manage just one hotel, the chances that you can rank for this type of query are very low and it’s unlikely the effort would pay off. Having worked with hotels in the past, I found the most success with blue links when targeting smaller areas, such as [hotels near {city}] or hotels in small cities, where the results are more of a blend of travel agencies and local hotels. People also ask (PAAs) PAAs are common follow-up questions from the initial search. Google already displays them expecting users to consider that as a next step. The results shown in this feature tend to be informational, which means they’re a step further from conversion. In this case, after a broad search ([hotels in NYC]), travelers are likely to narrow their search to the best areas to stay, average hotel cost, the cheapest areas to stay, and where celebrities stay in NYC (as shown below). If your hotel has a potential answer for any of the above, then you stand a chance to rank in this feature. Long-form content tends to rank here and the PAAs are not dominated by a handful of websites, meaning that the barrier to entry is lower (given that your website is relevant to address these searches). Related searches Despite its placement all the way at the end of the SERP, this is a relevant feature for hotels. Google knows that users will narrow their search with more criteria until they find their ideal hotel. Smoke-free, great views, fireplaces, and bars are listed as related searches for this query, but any attributes a hotel has can appear here. The ‘Related searches’ box loads at the bottom of the SERP and is another opportunity for hotels Similar to the local pack, you should focus on local SEO (e.g., earn user reviews mentioning this amenity) and highlight these attributes on your website. One important distinction from the local pack is that if a user clicks on a hotel, the next SERP is about the hotel itself and features your website front and center, making it a larger opportunity to get a conversion straight on your website. Example 02. [double bed mattress] — Categories, filters, and shopping results The first traditional blue link is already below the fold. The experience in the US (left) is also considerably different from Ireland / Europe (right). Google SERPs change completely for this keyword. To start with, you get a shopping experience with filters, such as: Price (e.g., Under $150) Type (e.g., Memory foam) Features (e.g., Water resistant) On this SERP, nearly all traditional blue link results are to eCommerce websites’ mattress category pages, so the obvious hint here is to create a similar page listing all your products in this category.  Refinement chips Refinement chips are the little bubbles that appear below the search bar to help users refine their query. Similar to other SERP features, Google is trying to guess what search you’ll need to do next. For a broad keyword like this one, it’s likely that customers will have more requirements before they make a purchase. If you click on a filter (such as ‘memory foam’), the results become more specific, suggesting that, if you want to rank here, you should have unique pages for ‘double bed mattress’ and ‘memory foam double bed mattress’. Shopping results have extra refining features directly on SERPs. Shopping Above the traditional blue links, this SERP is packed with shopping results. To be eligible for shopping results, create a Google Merchant Center  account and upload your product information. Shopping results are visually different from traditional results. Product images are highlighted next to price, discount, and delivery details. Google Shopping & Wix Wix users can integrate their Google Merchant Center account with their Wix store  to be eligible for relevant Google Shopping results. Example 03. [registered nurse] — Broad intent, mixed results Same keyword, different location. Google added specific results based on user location. The SERP on the left is for NYC and the right is Los Angeles. Sometimes the intent of a keyword is not explicit (i.e., implicit intent ) and Google guesses what people want by serving a mix of results. In this example, I searched [registered nurse] from NYC and the top 10 blue links are a mix of: Government website to check and renew registration Job definitions Open positions Career statistics Considering 40% of results were New York State-related, this tells me there’s a local factor in play (doing the same search from Los Angeles, I found the California Board of Registered Nursing ranking instead). This means you could rank locally from a certain region or city if you target your content to that audience. Knowledge panel Knowledge panels may credit several sources of information. For many broad queries (such as this one, [registered nurses]), Google shows a knowledge panel . Since the user didn’t specify what they want to know about registered nurses, Google gives you a rich SERP with a touch of everything. This is often the case when people search for established definitions or entities  (people, locations, things, etc). In the example above, the knowledge panel cites sources (beyond just Wikipedia) and pages have a chance to rank both as an answer in the panel and within the traditional blue links. How to incorporate your SERP analysis into your content plan At this point, you know what type of content Google likes for your target keywords and topics. After you identify the keywords you want to target, the next step is to start creating content that matches these intents. You can start with a table like this: Target keyword Search volume Funnel stage Content type [how to choose a mattress] 5400 Top Guide [double bed mattress] 1300 Mid Product research [walmart queen mattress] 110 Bottom Product page A mix of content in each part of the funnel allows you to expand your coverage and be top of mind when potential customers are most open to giving your brand a chance. You can map the opportunity size based on what the SERPs are telling you instead of just hoping search engines will display your pages. A product page will naturally convert much better than a blog. If you have an average conversion rate per page type, this helps you estimate how many more sales, trials, or leads you can get and avoid missing the mark by just looking at search volume. Put yourself in the shoes of the consumers, who often need to research options (resulting in searches like [phone with best cameras]), and refine their queries (e.g., [iPhone vs Google Pixel 8]) before making a purchase (e.g., [buy iPhone 15 Pro]). This is also an important time to remember that search volumes are estimations and each tool will return a different number. Take these as a directional indication, not as exact science.  How to run SERP analyses at scale People search for the same things in different ways. For instance, how many ways do you think people can search for [how to boil an egg]? There are 1,700+ keywords with a total search volume of nearly 180K searches per month in the US alone, based on Semrush data.  Do you need a separate page for ‘soft,’ ‘medium soft,’ or ‘hard’ eggs? Is it different to cook using a generic air fryer vs. a Ninja? Again, our personal feelings and conjecture don’t really matter here. If your intent is to rank on Google, a SERP analysis will tell you what type of page you need. If you’re analyzing a small group of keywords, do it manually. However, when it gets to 50, 100, or thousands of keywords, this becomes a tedious task. It involves searching every keyword, seeing what types of pages rank, and counting them one by one to define what page type is more likely to rank before creating your content. To add to the considerations, there’s a good chance that many of the same pages rank for a lot of keywords, which means you could just create one article and be eligible to rank for all of these keyword variations.  This is a heavy lift just to know what content to create—and you haven’t even written a single line yet. Fortunately, many SEO tools can tackle this part of the process for you. I like to use a combination of them. After you do keyword research using your favorite SEO tool , you can go to Semrush, upload your desired keywords, and use its clustering feature (called Keyword Strategy Builder, fully released in the US and in beta worldwide). You can also just add one keyword and let Semrush come up with a cluster, but I prefer to do all my research first and cluster  based on what I defined as target keywords. Ahrefs has a similar feature: Every keyword has a ‘parent topic.’ In Ahrefs’ own words, to identify the parent topic, “ We take the number one ranking page for your keyword and find the keyword responsible for sending the most traffic to that page.” However, the first SEO software I saw with this functionality was Keyword Insights. At the time, I was having the exact problem that inspired this post: my client wanted to increase product trials and had pages for several product features, but in a lot of cases, Google was only showing listicles, reviews, or in-depth blog posts for these keywords (that we believed were commercial; e.g., [project management software]). To do this process on Keyword Insights, you upload a list of keywords (based on your own research) and can adjust the similarity level as desired to fine-tune your clustering. For example, if there’s an overlap of pages ranking in the top 10 for a group of keywords (e.g., the same five URLs rank for all the selected keywords), that’s a strong signal that you only need one page to rank. The tool also includes what type of page you should have to target the cluster. Keyword Insights allows users to fine-tune clustering options. Counteract AI overviews with information gain There are two important topics in SEO right now that influence both your SERP analysis and the content you’ll write. The first are Google’s AI overviews , where Google often answers a user’s query straight on the SERPs. This is relatively new and full of unknowns: Will people use them? How often does Google show them? How do you optimize to become a source for AI overviews?  On the back of this discussion, a lot of SEOs are talking about information gain (while this patent  was filed in 2018 and made public in 2020; it’s becoming more relevant now). This article by Sarah Taher  provides an explanation that’s easy to understand. Essentially, your article should provide something new (on top of what has already been written on the topic). It could be more information, how it’s displayed on the page, a new angle, new data, quotes, visual assets, etc. For a lot of topics, so much has already been written that Google doesn’t have a reason to rank a new page—unless it can provide more than what’s already available. This is the power of information gain in SEO right now. For informed SEO, make SERP analysis second nature SERP analysis is an essential starting point for your content strategy , but it’s also a great way to learn SEO. Google gives hints on what it wants to show searchers and this can open many doors. Look at what refinement bubbles are in place. Would creating a video be more effective than a product page or blog post? Can you create content for the next logical step your consumer would take? If you do this regularly, it'll become a natural analysis you even notice it’s happening.  Gus Pelogia - SEO Product Manager Gus Pelogia is a journalist turned SEO since 2012. He’s currently an SEO product manager at Indeed, the top job site in the world. Every day, he writes tickets for small and large initiatives and works in a cross-functional team with writers, UX, engineers, and product managers. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Chima Mmeje While header tags do not directly influence search rankings, they do serve an important function for SEO and your site visitors: Headers make your content easy to read and engage with. And, for search engine bots, they also provide vital context around the keywords on the page. It makes sense when you think of how readers and search engines interact with your page. The header is the first thing that gets the reader’s attention. It tells them what to expect when they click on a link or visit your web page. As they read through the page, each header tag (H2, H3, etc.) carries the reader along and makes it easier to engage with your content. At the same time, search bots use it to understand the primary keyword for the page. This can affect where your content is displayed in search results. What are header tags? In simple terms, header tags are headers in your page. Use headers to show the flow of your content and break up large chunks of text so that it's more digestible for readers. Headers also highlight the important aspects of your content. Where H1 headers are used for main headers (what the page is about), follow with H2 for supporting headers and H3 for less important headers. For example, here’s a sample structure for a blog post about “Choosing a smart watch”: H1: Qualities to look for when choosing a smart watch H2: Basics H3: Smartphone compatibility H3: Price H3: Battery life H2: Features H3: Fitness tracking H3: Music H3: Bluetooth & NFC connection H2: My top recommended smart watches Depending on how you format your content, most pages usually have H1, H2, H3, and up to H6 tags. When writing content, remember to craft headers and use them to guide your users—if it makes sense to users, chances are search engines will be able to make sense of it as well. The benefits of header tags In addition to providing a logical structure for your content, headers give visitors and search engines hints about how the page is organized. Oftentimes, users skim page content to find the information they came for. The right headers makes it easy for your visitors to scan the page and decide on which sections to read. Scanning becomes harder without headers—it’s worse when you have long blocks of text that hurt the eye. Search engines, like Google, also look at headers to better understand the content on the page. But, that's not all Google uses them for: If you look through search results, you’ll notice that Google sometimes picks out H2 tags to compile answers or display them in search results. The links in the red box above were generated from the content's header tags. In the example above, the links shown under the title of the result (which are generated from the page's header tags) indicate how the content is organized. This may make it easier for searchers to navigate to the exact information they're searching for. Additionally, these kinds of search result features may increase your listing's real estate in the search results page, making your content more eye-catching for searchers. 6 tips to improve your SEO with header tags Header tags are important for both your content and SEO. Here are six tips to ensure your header tag optimization is follows best practices. 01. Use one H1 header tag per page A common mistake on some homepages and other conversion-focused pages is to have multiple H1 headers on a single page, but it does more harm than good. You only need one H1. While search engines will crawl multiple H1s on a page, it dilutes the effectiveness. The H1 header is the first thing the reader sees on the page. Take time crafting an H1 header that is engaging and persuasive, as it plays a role in determining if the visitor will go on to read the content or not. 02. Stick to the traditional header hierarchy It’s important to use an easily understood hierarchy structure when applying header tags. That means you shouldn't jump from an H1 to an H4 header, for example. So, if you want to explain something beneath an H2 header, the logical step would be to use an H3 header. If you were diving deeper within an H3 header, the next header would be an H4. Deviating from a hierarchy structure affects user experience and causes confusion for both the reader and search engines. 03. Match search intent to headers It’s important that the header matches the search intent of the page. When users type in a query or keyword in the search bar, there's specific information they want to see. Your content has to provide that information or Google won’t display it on Page 1. For example, let’s say you want to create content targeting the keyword “best website builder,” but you don't know whether to format it as a review, long-form blog post, or a landing page. To get a better idea of what's likely to rank, reference the search results for the keyword. In this example, it's clear that you’ll need to write a review, based on what’s already ranking. The header will also follow a similar pattern. Optimize your header for the user’s search intent and you’ll have a higher chance of driving more traffic. However, avoid using clickbait headlines that don’t deliver the promised content. 04. Avoid keyword stuffing Don’t use multiple keywords in a headline. A great way to avoid keyword stuffing is to use long-tail keywords that have lower search traffic but high purchase intent. For example, the keyword “buy glasses online” has an average monthly search volume of 33,100 monthly searches. It would be impossible to rank for that keyword with a new website. But, you have a significantly higher chance of ranking for “buy glasses online with VSP insurance”—this keyword has a lower search volume of 260, it’s longer and users are specifically looking to buy glasses with VSP insurance. Don’t use H1 tags like “buy glass online: best online glasses.” That’s two keywords in one header tag, which signals to Google that the content on the page may not be relevant or provide much value. Keyword stuffing hurts your ranking and prevents you from showing up higher on search results. Rather, integrate additional keywords between the H2 to H6 headers of your page. 05. Use headers to break up text People love scannable content. In fact, Forbes calls it the most overlooked content marketing factor . Research from the Nielsen Norman Group also found that scannable content has a 58% higher chance of performing better with readers. When writing landing pages and blog posts, it's best to keep paragraphs short (roughly three lines of text). Keep H2 and H3 subheaders no longer than four paragraphs. 06. Use secondary keywords in your subheaders Conduct keyword research to determine the primary and secondary keywords for each page. These can be short or long (e.g., “Link building” or “What’s the best link building software”). Use the primary keyword in your H1 tag and spread out secondary keywords in H2 and H3 tags. This signals relevance to both Google and your potential visitors. However, the priority should be to write naturally, not simply forcing keywords for the sake of ticking off an SEO checklist. How to update header tags on Wix Now that you know what headers are and how to use them, let’s add headers to your Wix website. Wix provides a few ways to update your headers , either through the Wix Blog or Wix Editor. Text settings It’s possible to change the hierarchy of header tags without affecting the design or content of that particular the page. Highlight the text and select Edit Text . Next, click SEO & Accessibility and choose your preferred header tag from the list. Wix Blog When writing a blog post with the Wix Blog editor, you can edit headers by selecting the text. By default, the H1 header is your post title in the editor. Highlight the portion of text you want to turn into a header tag. Next, click the text style menu and choose the appropriate header from the drop-down menu. Chima Mmeje - Senior Content Marketing Manager, Moz Chima Mmeje is a content marketer and strategist at Moz, where she positions the company as the authoritative source of truth in the SEO industry. She's also the founder of The Freelance Coalition for Developing Countries , a UK nonprofit providing free resources and training for marketers of color. Twitter | Linkedin