Search Results

Webinar on how to optimize for AI visibility on Wix & Wix Studio Grow and manage your presence in ChatGPT from your Wix & Wix Studio websites. Join this webinar to learn how to use new techniques and features—including the AI Visibility Overview and LLMs.txt generator— to thrive in AI search. As AI reshapes the digital landscape, understanding generative engine optimization (GEO) is paramount for discoverability. This session will equip you with unprecedented insight into how your brand appears in the emerging era of large language models (LLMs). What you’ll learn: How to use the AI Visibility Overview dashboard  What Wix LLMs.txt and other tools mean for growth Where Wix’s AI agents can support you with your site optimization Meet your hosts: Einat Hoobian-Seybold Head of Product SEO & A11y, Wix Einat began her SEO career by developing organic strategies for top global brands and later discovered her love for product development. As the Head of Product  for Wix SEO, Einat builds impactful products that make SEO accessible and approachable to more than 200M users around the world. 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, OMR, BrightonSEO, Moz, DeepCrawl (Lumar), Semrush, and more. LinkedIn

Driving Local SEO Growth in the AI Age  Monday, October 27, 1 PM ET AI is dramatically shaking up local search, and the way we’ve been doing things might not cut it for much longer. This talk is for anyone who wants to cut through the hype and get real about what AI search means for local SEO.  Join local SEO expert Amanda Jordan as she shares how generative engine optimization(GEO) is already changing the game, what these changes could mean for the future, and, most importantly, what you can actually do to prepare and thrive. Get practical, actionable takeaways you can apply immediately, whether you’re managing a local coffee shop or overseeing 1,000 business locations.  Leave with a clear understanding of the shifts happening now, what we might face next, and strategies to stay ahead. What you'll learn Understand the current shifts:  Discover the specific ways AI is already changing local search rankings and influencing user discovery right now. Take action:  Walk away with practical, no-fluff strategies you can apply immediately to future-proof your local SEO, regardless of the size of your business. Future-proof your approach:  Gain a clear roadmap of future shifts in the local search landscape and stay ahead of the curve. Meet your hosts: Amanda Jordan, Senior SEO Specialist, Owner.com Amanda is a local SEO expert and the Senior SEO Specialist at Owner.com. She has worked in local SEO since 2011. Her background in local legal and enterprise SEO means she’s a pro at tackling complex problems for clients. When she's not creating local SEO strategies, she's playing with her son and dogs. LinkedI n 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, OMR, BrightonSEO, Moz, DeepCrawl (Lumar), Semrush, and more. LinkedIn

Author: Simon Schnieders When you run an SEO agency, you're sort of like Taylor Swift—you always need to reinvent yourself. For years, clients chose my SEO agency , Blue Array, because we focused on search that converts . That hasn’t changed. But what has  changed is the way people search, and that means reshaping our message for today’s landscape, where large language models (LLMs) are more popular and site traffic is down. To adapt, SEO agencies need to be fluid and dig deep into learning everything and anything about LLMs, how to optimize for them, and so much more. That’s why I felt my agency needed a narrative refresh. To bring this narrative refresh to life, we had to rethink our tagline, introduce new offerings, and focus more holistically on search that converts by meeting audiences in the many new places they’re searching, and guiding them toward meaningful actions. And that’s what I’ll cover in this article. SEOs are primed to make this pivot, and they have the skills to guarantee success. This isn’t about abandoning our core values—it’s about reframing them for a changing world. If you’ve wondered how to turn your tried-and-true SEO strategy into a comprehensive plan for the modern search landscape, read on. How to position your agency for the new era of search I don’t personally prefer the idea of “search everywhere optimization” because it suggests that we need to be everywhere, on every platform, and that’s not the case. In reality, agencies don’t need to spread themselves thin chasing every shiny new channel.  Rebranding in this new landscape isn’t about chasing breadth, it’s about sharpening focus. The real opportunity lies in understanding which touchpoints truly influence your audience, and then doubling down on the places that actually drive meaningful results. Here’s how to do that in your own agency. Dial deeper into your core values Like I mentioned, at my organic search agency, Blue Array , one of our core values has always been search that converts. That hasn’t changed with the shifting search landscape.  What are your core values? Now’s a critical time to recommit to them and to determine a compelling framework that ensures that your strategy is truly in line with your north star. For us, that meant adjusting our tagline, which used to be “search engine optimization.” To establish our relevance in today’s search world, we tweaked our tagline to “search that converts” to speak more broadly about conversion, not just SEO.  Consider going niche Do you have a specialty? Lean into it. Become the search agency for eCommerce brands or B2B fintech. This will focus your attention in terms of outbounds and give you a clear market to go after. It can also aid in generating lots of relevant case studies and white papers with a clear expertise (something that can also help your probability of showing up in an LLM search). Read more creative ways agencies are managing clients in the age of LLMs . This has worked well for me in the past. When we started my agency, we were quite unique because we were just a pure-play SEO agency. This was an intentionally uncommon move. At the time, the common wisdom—driven by books like The Marketing Agency Blueprint —was to diversify and become a generalist, offering paid search, paid social, and all those ancillary services. I thought, if that's the common wisdom, and if I'm uncommon with my wisdom, I'm going to find a niche . While others were becoming generalist agencies, we went in as specialists. That was our initial niche, and it proved to be incredibly effective. I knew that SEO was one of those things that was very difficult for companies to hire for and retain talent around. So, at the time, there was a business case for a pure-play SEO agency. Timing was very important and understanding what was happening in the market was key. How to choose your niche There are macroeconomic factors that can come into play when choosing your niche. When you're first figuring out who you're going to be targeting, you need to make very deliberate strategic moves. But you must choose your niche wisely. Look for market gaps:  If there’s an emerging industry, consider if you’re well placed to service it. If you have expert knowledge in a sector with limited marketing support you may be able to get clients better results. Assess market viability:  Look at the size of the market and potential growth. If clients in your chosen niche have limited income, then there’s a limit on how much you can charge. If your niche is under significant market pressures, then clients may be more likely to churn. Expand strategically:  You don't need to stay in your niche forever. Build your business, your name, and your reputation within that area. Then, use that credibility to pivot into broader, more generalist opportunities later on. In the Wix Studio Agency Forecast report , 62% of agencies reported that exploring new market opportunities was a viable growth strategy. Stand out from the sea of sameness Good content will always be at the heart of search (and has been a core value for Blue Array since the beginning). Why? Because the only way you can cut through the noise is by investing in content that intercepts the sea of sameness, and you're not going to get that by asking an LLM to generate content (as it will only say what has already been published on the web). Consider activity that drives multiple client touch points and creates unique value like: Creating white papers, research, and reports for your target market Host your own events and webinars to position your team as thought leaders Invest in personal branding  for leaders in your team Photo from Blue Array's LondonSEO XL event As a search agency in 2025, we need to understand what kind of content our clients should produce and then where that content needs to be placed, whether that's onsite or through earned media. Revisit your offerings Use this shift in landscape to consider new services that meet today’s client needs. For example, at Blue Array, we deepened our offerings around reputation management. If you’re interested in learning more, I outlined an intriguing case study about the US real estate industry in this post . We’re also getting more into brand monitoring, where you can track real time mentions of your brand. At Blue Array, one of our offerings is a verticalized service called Ignite, which is specifically tailored to startups and scale-ups. We offer a vastly reduced day rate and a specific timescale that supports the needs of that audience. It offers great value for new businesses and allows us to speak to the next generation of CMOs. It's a strategic investment in future relationships and a brilliant way to build a pipeline of future, larger opportunities. This service came about because we identified a need within our client base and evolved our offering.  Is there an arm of your business that has shown promise but is underdeveloped, or could be repackaged into a bespoke offering? Now might be the perfect time to invest more there. Then, actually deliver results A rebrand will only take you so far without a mindset shift. Search isn’t just about rankings anymore; it’s about understanding the signals models use to define authority and changing the way you work to meet the search needs of today. Here’s how to switch up your day-to-day. Explore new platforms Once we had a new tagline, we needed a new framework to determine that everything we set out to do for our clients aligned with search that converts . My trifecta to stress-test a high-converting search strategy is: What is the source of traffic that’s converting for you and your competitors? Where do people go after they visit your site? What platforms are influencing LLMs’ recommendations? In order to optimize for conversion in this shifting landscape, you need to understand the upstream and downstream of competitors' websites in order to attribute last click conversion as well as understand where people go after they visit these sites. Maybe you know that your core demo is on TikTok and you invest in search there. What other platforms are they searching on? What other touchpoints impact their buying decisions? You also need to know who is schooling the most popular LLMs. For example: Wikipedia is a very influential source of information for modern LLMs —it’s free to use and highly structured, making it the perfect hub for both training and citations. LinkedIn is another source I see LLMs pulling from for thought leadership. These platforms, while they may not be a hub for your target audience, might become the sources for queries that your core customer searches in an LLM. Think like an LLM Let’s try an example: When you query a model about “best” something, what does “best” mean to the model? To some degree, it’s the collective consciousness of the web because that’s what it’s trained upon. But if “best” means that I have a high volume of glowing reviews, I need to know where the models are pulling from. Is it G2? Is it Yelp? Open up an LLM and drop a query for “best” running shoes, smart watch, or anything else in your category and see what sources your model cites. Once you know which sources the model trusts, you know exactly where to focus your efforts. Rethink your reporting Traditional keyword tracking is breaking down in the age of probabilistic models. With deterministic models like Google of old, reporting to stakeholders  was more straightforward. Rankings were less of a moving target once established, so you could track keywords, measure impressions, and know exactly how visible you were for a given query.  Reporting in 2025  has completely changed. Typically when we’re reporting today, we’re generating hundreds of thousands of queries to try and understand the probability that a client will be mentioned in an AI-generated search. Because with a probabilistic model, you can only have probabilities of appearing. Wix's AI Visibility Overview provides a look at your site's visibility and brand perception across LLMs The problem is that many SEO tools are still stuck in the old paradigm. They think you should still be tracking keywords or prompts, and then your visibility for those prompts. That makes no sense with probabilistic models because its output is going to change based on things like a user’s geography, previous chat history, or even running the same prompt twice. It’s a brand new world for reporting on SEO in 2025 (and many of us are figuring it out as we go), but there are some great tools to help you sort out your data storytelling approach. Evolve and deliver Rebranding your SEO services for the new world of search isn’t about chasing every shiny new platform or rewriting your entire playbook. It’s about staying rooted in what’s always mattered, while being willing to evolve how you tell that story and deliver on it.  Reinvention doesn’t happen in a single moment. It happens in the space between reflection and action, between knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of. Just like my agency’s own narrative refresh, this moment is an opportunity to get sharper about your values, bolder in your positioning, and more creative in how you meet clients where they are.  Reinvention isn’t optional in SEO—it’s survival. And if you approach it with clarity and conviction, it can also be the m ost exciting chapter yet. Simon Schnieders, Founder of Blue Array Simon Schnieders is the Founder of Blue Array, the UK’s largest specialist organic search agency. With a background in leading SEO at Zoopla, MailOnline, and Yell, he’s a recognized authority in the industry. Simon frequently speaks at major search conferences and contributes thought leadership on SEO/GEO strategy. Linkedin

Author: Yossi Fest If you’ve been in the SEO world for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard the term crawl budget. You’ve also likely come across the paradox: for some websites, it's critical to success; while for others, it’s almost irrelevant. Crawl budget is one of the many concepts where if you ask an SEO whether you should spend time optimizing for it, the most honest answer you’ll get is “it depends.” The reality  is that for the vast majority of websites, crawl budget isn't something you need to worry about. But if you’re dealing with a large site—one with deep taxonomy, tens of thousands of URLs, or frequent content updates—neglecting crawl budget optimization could be quietly holding back your page indexation, visibility, and traffic.  SEO is constantly changing, but crawl budget remains one of the core factors that decides how effectively Google discovers, revisits, and serves your site. In this guide, I’ll break down what crawl budget is, why it matters for some sites but not others, how to figure out if you have a problem, and the strategies and activities that have the biggest impact. What is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to Google’s allotted time and willingness within a given time period that it will spend crawling your website. It’s the balance between what your site technically presents and allows to be crawled, and Google’s perceived value of your content. Two main factors drive crawl budget: Crawl capacity Crawl capacity is about how many requests Google can make without putting too much strain on your servers. If your site responds quickly, serves lightweight pages, and handles multiple requests smoothly, Google will usually crawl more aggressively. But there’s another side to this. Google doesn’t have infinite capacity for crawling. It still needs to prioritize crawling across the entire web, which means there's always a ceiling on how much attention your site can get—no matter how optimized it is. Crawl demand This is Google’s way of deciding which URLs are worth its attention and how often they should be refreshed. The biggest factors that influence crawl demand are: Perceived inventory. By default, Googlebot will try to crawl every URL it can find on your site. This is where smart optimization comes in: guiding Google toward your most valuable content and keeping it away from the junk.  Popularity. Pages that earn more backlinks , have higher engagement signals, and/or that generate more consistent traffic tend to get crawled more often. Google assumes popular URLs are more valuable and tries to keep them fresh in its index. Freshness . If you refresh your content , Google will revisit it more often to make sure it has the latest version. On the flip side, pages that rarely change naturally get crawled less frequently.  When crawl budget matters (and when it dosen’t) As pointed out earlier, the reality is that most sites don’t and will never have a crawl budget problem. Googlebot is smart, efficient, and (mostly) capable of finding your content and keeping up with its changes if your site is small, clean, and simple.  But once you start stacking 10’s of thousands of URLs, faceted navigation, and parameterized URLs-galore, everything changes. This is when crawl inefficiency starts bleeding into indexing speed, organic rankings, and visibility.  You don’t  need to worry if: You’ve got fewer than ~10k URLs Your site structure is clean and relatively flat Your pages rarely change  You’re not seeing  indexing delays for new content You do  need to care if: You run a very large site: If you’re a publisher, large eCommerce site, or store, crawl budget matters. When you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of pages, or even millions of pages, small inefficiencies compound fast. News articles that should be indexed instantly miss critical visibility windows. Seasonal product launches get delayed. Evergreen content refreshes lag behind competitors You’ve got faceted navigation, filters, parameters or dynamic URLs. Think eCommerce, marketplaces, travel sites. Every filter combo, sort order and view mode creates another URL. New content takes forever to index. No one expects instant indexation, but if you’re publishing fresh content and it takes weeks to show up in Google, there’s a good chance that Googlebot is not prioritizing discovery of new URLs.  From a spot-check in GSC’s Crawl Stats section, it looks messy. You see huge spikes in crawl requests, high numbers of 4XX and / or 5XX errors, and discovery dominated by everything except for HTML 200 status code pages. And you don’t recognize most of the URL paths and slug examples. If you’ve found yourself in the latter group and think you may have a problem, don’t panic. Crawl budget is an SEO issue that is easy to fix most of the time, once you know what’s going on. Between Google Search Console , log files, and smart architecture tweaks, you can take back control and make sure Googlebot spends its time where it actually matters.  How to diagnose  crawl budget issues To find out if you truly have crawl budget issues or crawl inefficiencies, there are two key tools for the job:  Google Search Console’s Crawl Stats report. This is great for spotting patterns and big picture trends. Server log file analysis. This is the real source of truth for exactly what’s being crawled.  Step 1: Start with GSC’s crawl stats report Where to find it: In Google Search Console, go to Settings > Crawl Stats. This report helps you spot crawl trends, identify inefficiencies, and understand whether Googlebot’s priorities align with yours.  At the top, you’ll see a box with line graphs displaying total crawl requests, total download size, and average response time. What to look for: Sudden spikes: Google’s possibly overcrawling duplicate or low-value pages. Drops: Google might be losing interest or throttling your crawl rate. Host status If Googlebot’s is exceeding the acceptable fail rate for any of the three metrics (robots.txt fetch, DNS resolution, and server connectivity), your crawl capacity is compromised. This means that Google will crawl your pages less.  Crawl requests breakdown By response: Make sure OK (200) dominates. Some redirects (3XX-level), as well as a small number of 4XX client errors and 5XX server errors are perfectly normal and expected—but they should never top the table.  By file type: HTML should be the top file type crawled. If CSS, JS, or JSON files dominate, your core content is competing for crawl attention.  By Googlebot type: On most sites, Googlebot Smartphone should lead. If desktop or other bot types dominate, this is a calling to double-check your mobile setup. Crawl purpose Look at discovery vs. refresh. It's normal to see lots of "refresh" crawl requests, so don't worry about that. However, you might have a crawl budget problem if you're putting out a lot of new content or have just performed a migration (involving new or changed URLs), and yet "discovery" isn't showing those updates. GSC limitations you need to know Before you treat this report as gospel, it’s important to keep the following limitations in mind: Sampled data: Individual URLs shown are just examples, not the full picture Limited history: Only covers a three month window Charts vs examples: Totals in charts are accurate, but don’t assume the examples represent all activity Use GSC to spot patterns, not diagnose root causes. For that, you need your server logs.  Step 2: Analyze log files GSC gives you trends. Logs give you facts. Your server log files show every crawl event: which URLs Google hits, when, how often, and what status codes it encounters. If you want to understand crawl budget at scale, this is where the answers live.  How to analyze your logs Regardless of whichever of the following methods you use, you will need to obtain server logs from your website. In some platforms, content management systems, and/or plugins, you’ll be able to find these pretty easy. If you can’t, simply ask your developer or webmaster to export website logs. Either Apache or NGINX are fine. If you’re using Wix, simply open your dashboard, head to Analytics > All Reports, and find the Bot visit / traffic reports under SEO Reports . There, you'll be able to analyze your log data  (including AI crawlers ) for up to the last two years.  Option A: Use a tool There are log file analysis tools out there to make this easier, such as Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer. Simply upload your log files and let the tool do the work for you by showing you your data in prebuilt views. Option B: DIY Simply upload your CSV into an LLM for analysis, or plot out the data yourself in Excel. You'll need to format your columns for consistency, filter for various bots / user agents, and verify IPs (instructions below) to make sure they are the official bots, and not spoofed ones. Once your data is formatted and organized, you can analyze patterns with line charts, pivot tables, etc. What to focus on in your analysis Firstly, always confirm Googlebot via user agent. Google’s confirmed crawlers can be found here , and their IP addresses are here . To simplify this process, just make sure the IP address contains %66.249%, as this is the predominant IP address Google uses. You can do this in a similar fashion for all other common web crawlers. Crawl frequency: Are your high-value URLs crawled often, or ignored? Wasted requests: Are search pages, infinite filters, or faceted URLs hogging crawl budget? Valuable pages missed: Are products, landing pages, or content hubs being skipped entirely? 5XX errors: Server errors kill crawl efficiency Site section analysis: Segment by URL / subfolder to see patterns of where Googlebot is spending time New content crawling: Check how fast new content gets crawled. Pro tip: Pair log data with organic traffic to measure time-to-first visit vs. time-to-index Status code stability: Spikes in 3XX, 4XX, or 5XX often point to structural or infrastructure issues Segmenting your analysis Look for issues by combining insights from GSC and logs to uncover crawl inefficiencies.  Overcrawled: Are search pages, filters,  paginated, or parameterized pages dominating crawl requests? Undercrawled: Are key site sections or money pages visited less than less-important sections? Misaligned priorities: Is Googlebot fetching images, CSS, JS, or API endpoints more than actual HTML content? This is where you find out whether Googlebot’s working for you or against you. If you see low discovery, wasted requests, skipped important sections, or persistent errors, it’s likely that you've got a crawl budget problem. How to optimize your site’s crawl budget Optimizing your crawl budget is a strategy, not a hack. And it’s not something you manipulate, it’s something you manage. Googlebot has limits. The good news is that there are a number of actions you can take to improve crawl efficiency and make sure Google focuses where it matters most.  These optimizations can be categorized at a high level into three key groups: Controlling what Google crawls: Manually controlling which URLs does and doesn't crawl. Guiding Google to the right pages: Helping Google find your most important content faster Making every crawl request count: Squeezing more out of every crawl Googlebot gives you 01. Controlling what Google crawls The first and arguably most important step is to make sure Google doesn't waste its time on URLs that it does not  need to crawl, and to make sure that Google is  to make sure Google can access all URLs it should be crawling.  Optimize your robots.txt Your robots.txt file lets you control which URLs bots can crawl. Use it to block URLs that don't need to be crawled.  Faceted  / Parameterized / Sort  URLS These pages are especially prevalent on eCommerce websites, marketplaces, and information libraries. Example: https://www.example.com/shoes Based on potential filtering on this page, it could generate dozens of URL variations that Googlebot does not need to crawl.  Example: https://www.example.com/shoes?color=blue&size=9&sort=price We’d want to block the following: Disallow: /*color= Disallow: /*size= Disallow: /*sort= Internal search results pages Depending on your SEO strategy, internal search results pages often have no unique value, and there can be an infinite number of these URLs generated (ie. a user can search endlessly). Staging, development, and demo environments Session IDs, tracking, and affiliate parameters User-specific or non-public content Auto-generated / UGC pages Duplicate pages for marketing campaigns API endpoints, JSON, and other non-HTML responses Caution: Be careful when blocking resources in robots.txt file. Blocking essential files like API endpoints needed to load content can prevent Google from rendering your pages correctly. Always test changes to ensure you’re not blocking anything required for page rendering. Speed up your site If your pages are slow to respond, Googlebot will crawl less often, crawl fewer pages, and deprioritize your site in favor of faster alternatives to spend its resources on. This isn’t speculation. Google has explicitly confirmed this in their crawl documentation : “If the site responds quickly for a while, the limit goes up, meaning more connections can be used to crawl. If the site slows down or responds with server errors, the limit goes down and Googlebot crawls less.” That’s why this action sits in this category. Site speed has a direct impact on crawl rates, and a faster site gives you more control over how much Google crawls. If you’re using Wix, the platform is built for performance. Wix serves content through a globally distributed CDN, automatically compresses and converts images to next-gen formats, lazy loads media, prefetches critical resources, and continuously optimizes JavaScript execution. Just remember to follow the best practices  to keep your site performing at its best. Crawl budget isn’t just about how many URLs Google wants to crawl, it's also about how your site can handle the requests. If your site consistently returns fast response times, Googlebot increases your crawl rate limit as it sees it’s effective / can keep up. If your site struggles, overloads your servers, or results in spikes of errors, Googlebot slows down crawling in order to avoid crashing your site. Some key tactics to improve your site speed: Reducing server response times Upgrading your hosting Using a CDN Ensuring you have an effective caching setup  Optimizing assets  Compressing and minifying CSS and JS Serving images in modern formats such as webp or avif Lazy loading all non-critical media Make sure links are crawlable Googlebot follows links to discover pages, but only if it can see them. If your links are hidden behind Javascript or lazy-loaded after interaction, Google may never find them; Google is spending none of its available budget on those pages. If Google can’t find the path, it won’t crawl the destination. Always use clean tags that render server-side to make sure they are in the HTML on initial page load.  Avoid lazy-loading navigation or critical content Bad: a ‘load more’ button that injects products via JS only when clicked Good: Paginated URLs that are visible to crawlers Offload resources to a CDN or subdomain Hosting resources like images, videos, pdfs, and JS bundles on a separate hostname or CDN preserves crawl budget for your main HTML pages. Google has explicitly confirmed  that crawl budget is managed at the host level, not across an entire domain or brand. By serving static files (images, scripts, CSS) from a separate hostname, whether that’s a CDN or your own subdomain, you effectively separate their crawl demand. This prevents unnecessary strain on the crawl allocation for your primary content. Example: Google continuously crawling heavy video files that rarely change. The result of this change is that Googlebot can skip heavy resources and spend its time on high-value pages. Before: https://www.example.com/assets/hero-video.mp4 After: https://cdn.example.com/hero-video.mp4 02. Guiding Google to the right pages Once you’ve directly limited what Googlebot is wasting it’s crawling on, and made sure all important pages can be accessed, the next set of actions should be to help Googlebot find and prioritize your best content.   Keep your XML sitemap lean and focused Think of your XML sitemap as Google’s best friend for understanding your site’s pages and overall structure. It should include only the pages you want indexed and exclude everything else. Best practices: Include only canonical, indexable, high-value pages Remove expired products, outdated offers, and low-priority URLs Make sure it is kept up-to-date Build strong internal linking structure At surface level,  internal linking might just seem like a simple way to guide users to related pages, but it plays a much larger role. It’s one of the most powerful ways Google discovers, prioritizes, and revisits your content.  Without strong internal links, pages risk becoming orphaned and ignored since Googlebot relies on links to find them. A strong internal linking structure requires deep strategy, but the below are the starting points: Link from high-authority sections. Add links from your homepage, category pages, or top performing blog posts to priority URLs / site sections Ensure that all valuable pages are within 2-3 clicks of the homepage. User breadcrumbs, related products, and content hubs  03. Make every crawl request count Even with controls and guidance in place, Googlebot’s efficiency will still not be at its peak if Googlebot keeps hitting roadblocks. These optimizations help to ensure that every request works toward your goal.  Clean up low-value content If you have pages that are filled with thin content, placeholders, low effort copy, or even blank pages (soft 404s), this is problematic for multiple reasons:  Google is spending time on these, rather than on higher-quality pages that provide actual value to users. High value pages get revisited more often. Your site’s ‘reputation’ improves. A site (predominantly) composed of strong, valuable page signals quality to Google, which can help ‘persuade’ it to spend more resources crawling it. Conversely, a site containing mostly mediocre pages that don’t have user-value do NOT signal quality to Google.  There are two courses of action here: technical and content-related: Conduct a technical audit of what can be cleaned up through de-duplication, blocking in robots.txt, fixing soft 404s, and so on. If the page really is  needed and has the potential to be more valuable to users, work on increasing the page’s content to elevate it to a level where Google would deem the page as more valuable. The most important thing is to ensure that every single page on your website has a clear purpose. Fix redirect problems Whilst there is no inherent problem with redirects, they can become expensive for Googlebot. Every hop uses another crawl request. Googlebot will follow up to five redirect hops. But just because it can, doesn't mean you should make it. Even one 301 redirect on a high-impact page can add in some friction and cause unnecessary waste. Conduct a redirect audit for all types of redirects on your site (301s, 302s, etc)  Update all internal links to point directly to the final destination instead of stacking 301 on top of 301 (eliminating redirect chains) Remove dead ends Dead ends are the silent crawl killers. When Googlebot encounters 4XX client errors and 5XX client errors, not only do they count toward your budget in various cases (see table below), but that’s a lost opportunity for Google to continue its crawl journey.   404s Be sure to audit your internal links and update or remove any that point to 404s.  If a page is gone but has backlinks, set up a 301 redirect to the closest relevant page If the page is intentionally deleted permanently, set a 410 Gone status instead. This signals to Google to drop it faster 5XX errors These are even more dangerous than 404 errors. If Googlebot repeatedly encounters 5XX server errors, whether from overloaded servers, caching issues, or dodgy APIs, it throttles crawling. In turn, this means fewer URLs discovered, and slower indexation / updates in search results.  Use server logs and/or Google’s Crawl Stats report to spot recurring 5xx patterns Work with your dev team to identify the root causes/s of these issues and to resolve them Set up monitoring to catch increases Crawl Budget VS HTTP Status Codes 1xx ( Informational) Doesn't affect crawl budget 2xx   ( Success) Consumes crawl budget 3xx ( Redirect) Consumes crawl budget 4xx ( Client Error)Except 429 Doesn't affect crawl budget 5xx ( Server Error) Consumes crawl budget Source: Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia Pacific 2025 What to do if Googlebot is crawling too much On the other side of the spectrum, there may be cases where Googlebot crawls your site too much. This aggressive crawling behavior becomes problematic when your servers cannot handle the amount of crawl requests and results in site slowdown, higher error rate, and even downtime.  The good news is that it’s pretty easy to detect and correct. You’l see spikes in crawl requests in your log files and Google crawl stats. To manage these upticks, simply serve 503 or 429 errors to Googlebot for a day or two. This signals Googlebot to back off without affecting long term crawling patterns and page indexing.  Final thoughts: manage your budget wisely Crawl budget isn’t  about forcing Google to crawl your site more; it's about making the most of the budget Google is willing to allocate to your site, and encourage it to use that allocation to the fullest. The faster, healthier, and better structured your site is, the easier it is for Googlebot to crawl more pages in less time. That said, as mentioned from the outset, this isn’t something every site owner needs to obsess over. If your site contains less than a dozen-or-so thousand pages, Google can usually handle them without a problem. But for large, complex, or frequently updated sites, wasted crawl requests mean missed opportunities. Through the approach of controlling what Google sees, guiding it to the right pages, and making every request count, you’re truly maximizing what’s available and giving Google every reason to fully tap into your site’s potential. Yossi Fest, technical SEO specialist at Wix Yossi Fest is a technical SEO specialist at Wix. He's passionate about championing technical optimizations for better search visibility. Before Wix, he worked as an SEO lead at digital marketing agencies, driving organic growth for enterprise clients. Follow him on Linkedin .

Author: Andy Crestodina A few weeks ago, a fellow agency founder reached out to me. He wanted to talk about a problem he was having …with a keyword. He and his team had picked the phrase and made a very detailed page on the topic. They’d written 10,000 words. But the page wasn’t ranking. I told him I’d take a look. He shared the page and it was certainly detailed. And I started doing a quick bit of SEO for him: search volume, keyword difficulty, page authority, structure, originality. It looked fine. Any normal SEO would wonder what’s not working. Then I stopped. The phrase was very general. The intent was informational. The content was wordy and bland. It was basically no different from 1,000 other pages on the topic. Any normal marketer would wonder why the page was written at all. He’s a smart guy, but in this case, not very strategic. Not very audience-focused. Even if he crushed his goal of ranking first for that phrase, what was the point? No one who saw the URL would remember it 10 minutes later. You heard it many times. It’s what thousands of marketers do every day. Research a keyword, optimize the page, track the rankings, watch the traffic. But unless you're a media site that gets paid on pageviews, traffic isn’t your goal. Your goal is leads. You need to drive demand. And if you’re focused only on keywords and search volume, you’re missing the bigger picture. In a recent webinar  with Wix Studio , I sat down with Crystal Carter, Head of AI Search and SEO Communications at Wix, to talk about conversion-first SEO. Here’s the big takeaway: Marketers need to focus not just on traffic but on conversions. Not just on keywords, but on the visitor’s deeper needs. That shift in perspective, from a keyword-first to audience-first mindset, changes everything. Make the shift and you’re no longer chasing numbers, you’re solving problems for real people. You’re focused on your future prospect. If you know your audience, if you understand their questions and concerns, their pain points and challenges, you’ll naturally create content that connects and  converts. Make it work for your potential prospect first, then capture keyword opportunities second.  A page that is focused on the visitor and not just the keyphrase… Performs well for all sources of traffic Is more likely to be shared, bookmarked, talked about, remembered Triggers action Let’s break down how audience research actually impacts the bottom, not just the top, of the funnel. We’ll dig into the dangers of keyword tunnel vision, and look at some real examples.  Then, we’ll move into actionable tactics for researching your audience, uncovering their true information needs, and then write an amazing page that speaks to them directly. A few minutes from now, you’ll see why keyword research alone is insufficient, and how adopting an audience-first approach gives you not just more traffic, but more leads.  Keyword-first vs. audience-first Let’s start with the problem. Too many content strategies begin with a spreadsheet of search terms. The SEO team says: “This term has 5,000 monthly searches. Let’s make a page for it.” That can work, but it also creates blind spots. Why? Because you end up writing for algorithms, not humans. While strategy can feel like math, the real job is understanding a person’s problem and presenting a solution they connect with.  So, rather than thinking in GA4 sessions and users, take a step back to ponder what goes on at the other side of the screen: Someone with a question searches for an answer, they land on a URL, pixels load, and their eyes see the light from their computer.  The interaction between those pixels and their brain...That's the moment in which you become memorable or you don't. You become top of mind or you don't. You caused word of mouth or you didn't. And worse, you can unintentionally isolate your real audience because you’re allowing tech company algorithms  to get in between you and your customer. Keyword-first is when you go into your SEO tool of choice, you find a phrase with volume, and then you write the article.  Audience-first is the opposite: you ask, what does my audience need?  And then you write the page, even if the search volume is low. Even if it’s zero. Sometimes the right page is the one with only ten monthly searches, especially if those ten people are your exact prospects. This is where AI comes in because you can dig into the most important, least covered topics in your category. Keyword researchers never find those. AI can help you better align with the intent of your actual customer instead of just an algorithm. The “what is X?” problem Let’s bring this point to life with an example. Imagine you sell building management systems. You need leads. So you put your SEO hat on and do some keyword research. You find a lovely little phrase “How to choose a building management system.” It has some search volume. You decide to go for it. Using a keyword-first approach you plug the phrase into an SEO tool and it generates a content brief. Great. You hammer out a draft and the tool gives you a score. It could be higher so you slap an FAQ section at the bottom. The score goes up. Job done. But when you step back and look at the page, you noticed that it has a big “what is building management system” at the top. Waaaait a minute. Does that make sense? Think about your visitor. What do they need in this moment? If you rank, they click, the page loads...is this what they needed? Based on the phrase “How to choose…” we know that they are in consideration mode. They’re trying to make a decision between options. So why did you write a page that starts with a definition?  It’s absurd. The page definitely does not help them in this key moment. You did what the tools said to do. But you made something that completely misses the mark. You used tools to write for a robot, without actually thinking about the story in the life of your visitor. This visitor is a facilities manager or a real estate developer who’s actively considering their options. They’re middle-funnel, both problem-aware and  solution-aware. They already know what it is. That’s the danger of being keyword-first. You end up padding content with definitions and filler instead of addressing the visitor’s actual needs.  If you were to approach this content conversion-first, you’d view the entry paragraph as a critical place to build trust and showcase the value of your company or brand. You’d use this prime real estate to help them choose a building management system. In the process you can show what you offer and how it stands apart from competitors.  That shift from defining terms to directly solving problems is what turns passive readers into qualified leads. How to use AI for an audience-first approach Content marketers today are mostly using AI for brainstorming and editing, according to our annual Blogger Survey . More than writing headlines, suggesting edits, or creating visuals, marketers use AI as a thought-partner for content ideas. I have to agree. I frequently work with AI as an accelerant, not an author. How can it help me understand my customer’s concerns faster? How can it put me inside the mind of a buyer sooner?  These are the kinds of questions I ask AI to help me solve. With that in mind, here are a few ways that I use AI to optimize the customer experience and generate more conversions: Ask AI to go deep Let’s say we’re targeting zookeepers. There might be a million searches for: what is a zookeeper, what does a zookeeper do,  and how do you become a zookeeper.  But do you think these are terms that actual zookeepers search for? I don’t think so. So, rather than turning to an SEO tool, I ask AI: “What do zookeepers actually care about?” The results are wildly different from what I see in SEMRush. They care about glove thickness, dart guns versus blowpipes, and the best needle gauge for zebras versus rhinos. AI just told me what my true audience (and the audience most likely to convert) is interested in. Now I can create a content strategy that meets them where they are.  And this content doesn't just attract your future prospects. This content opens an avenue to deeper dives into more niche expertise with the potential for original research.  Not sure what to ask AI as you work to better understand your audience? Here are some questions to get you started: Let AI audit your page for human-first elements One key lesson in getting the most out of AI is leaning into what it does well, and one thing it’s great at is speaking in a way that only AI understands. That’s why I ask AI to generate all of my prompts.  To start, I compile my best practices for digital content. Take a look: Strong opening hook Visuals at every scroll depth Use of evidence and examples Formatting (headers, bullets, etc.) Internal links to related content Expert quotes or contributor input Personal angle or opinion Topical completeness (no major gaps) Notice how none of those are things that AI is awesome at. But AI is awesome at scoring content against these criteria. So give those criteria to AI and ask it to write a re-usable prompt. Then use that prompt every time. Let AI audit all of your content moving forward. Drop screenshots of your landing pages into AI with that reusable prompt, and AI will grade the page based on these criteria. It will point out where you’re missing the mark and what tweaks need to be made.  Try AI-powered personas Good marketing is done from the bottom up.  You need to understand your customer first. You need to understand their needs. An AI-generated persona  can help. A persona is a synthetic member of your target audience, and you can use AI to come up with various key personas that you can then show your content to to see if it meets their needs.  It works like this:  Give AI a persona prompt (see below) Review the output and improve it for accuracy Once it’s 95% solid, copy it out of the AI and put it into a PDF Upload the PDF and a draft of your page and ask it what’s missing from their point of view Now you’re looking at a list of ways in which the page fails to meet their information needs and you can make some of those audience-focused edits.  Ultimately, you need to know what wins the sales conversation to do good marketing. Keywords just attract visitors, but to convert them you have to solve their problems. Why put cheese on a broken mouse trap? Some content needs keyword research. All content needs audience research.  Keyword research isn’t obsolete. It’s still useful for understanding demand and competition. But it’s just the starting point. To put it plainly: Keyword research tells you what people type . Audience research tells you what people need . The audience always comes first. Conversions happen when you meet your visitors where they are, using their words and answering their real questions. Serve their needs, and the traffic and conversions follow. Audience-first content isn’t just better marketing. It’s respect for your reader’s time, attention, and trust. So the next time you’re tempted to chase a shiny keyword, pause. Ask yourself: Would my audience thank me for this page? Would my sales team send it to a prospect? Would it help someone decide? If the answer is yes, write it. Even if the tool says zero searches. That’s the difference between traffic and true marketing results. Because at the end of the day, rankings don’t keep the lights on. Customers do. Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media , an award-winning 50-person digital agency, focused on web development and website optimization for B2B lead generation websites. Linkedin

Author: Constance Chen At Google’s I/O conference this year, Google made a series of announcements introducing new updates and features across their products, offering a comprehensive suite of new AI-powered integrations. One of the most notable announcements was Gemini Live, an AI assistant that allows you to bring Google’s Gemini into the real world so you can interact with it in a dynamic way. Through your desktop or mobile device, Gemini can access your screen or camera, allowing it to see what you see and interact with the information in real time. For example, if you point your mobile camera at a flower, Gemini Live can instantly tell you which species of flower you’re looking at. You can access Gemini Live on Android or iOS via the Gemini app, as well as on desktop through Chrome or the Google AI Studio platform. If you haven’t heard of it yet, Google AI Studio is designed to allow users to quickly build and explore Google's generative AI models. This studio is a flexible platform that gives users and developers access to Gemini Live, Imagen (text-to-image model that generates images), Veo (a text-to-video model producing videos through prompts), and Lyria RealTime (a music generating model). With Google AI Studio, marketers can easily try out a number of Google’s generative AI tools and find ways to improve their content strategy and workflow. With all of these new innovations, there are new opportunities for SEO marketers to improve and streamline their day-to-day workflows. Here are some ways I found Gemini Live and Google AI studio to be impactful in my day-to-day SEO workflow. How to Use Gemini Live and Google AI Studio for SEO Both Gemini Live and Google AI Studio offer real-time, multi-modal intelligence, and advanced features that can help marketers with many of their day-to-day SEO tasks, including  keyword research , content optimization, and performance auditing. As Google’s AI capabilities and product suite continue to grow and evolve, marketers can take advantage of these tools’ efficiency and insights to create better strategies and deliverables. In the following examples, I used Gemini Live through the mobile app, and through my desktop using Google AI Studio. Conduct keyword research Improve content with E-E-A-T and helpful content guidelines Conduct a competitive analysis Write meta data in a different language Create better alt text Use Chrome developer tools to audit a site Troubleshoot code Visualize data Transcribe videos and audio Optimize Youtube videos using video transcripts 01. Conduct keyword research With Gemini Live’s screen sharing option on both desktop and mobile, you can ask Gemini to help you collaborate and brainstorm potential keywords to target when you’re creating new content or optimizing existing content. You can also ask Gemini Live to review your copy and provide recommendations to better align with user intent and SEO best practices. By pointing your camera or sharing your screen with Gemini Live, you can get real-time feedback on what you’re working on. In addition to brainstorming keyword ideas, you can also get recommendations for where to place keywords in headings, and how to revise headings in order to include your target keywords. You can also ask Gemini Live to review your final draft, fix grammar and spelling errors, and refine your language for better clarity. Related: Learn how to optimize your site with the Wix SEO Assistant 02. Improve content with E-E-A-T and helpful content guidelines Aligning with Google's E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and Helpful Content guidelines is now an essential part of your content strategy. By including Gemini Live in the content creation process, you can ask for practical tips on how to better your content by meeting Google’s quality content guidelines.  Upload a PDF of your content or screenshare with Gemini Live to ask for specific feedback to improve your content based on the E-E-A-T guidelines. Engage with Gemini Live in a back-and-forth manner to brainstorm ideas and discuss how to improve the article you're creating or optimizing. 03. Conduct a competitive analysis Using the screensharing feature, Gemini Live can assist you with analyzing competitor sites during your competitive audits. As you scour competitor sites, get Gemini Live’s assistance to uncover opportunities to improve your content strategy, technical health, and visibility. You can even review live search results with Gemini Live, allowing it to analyze the SERPs and get recommendations based on what it’s seeing on the screen so you can improve the position of your own content.  While conducting competitive audits, have Gemini Live evaluate your competitor’s site and point out SEO, UX, and general marketing practices that could also be applied to your website. Gemini Live can also give you ideas for which types of structured data to implement so you can improve content visibility in search results. 04. Write meta data in a different language Before LLMs and generative AI tools , writing meta descriptions and title tags in a different language for international domains was a clunky and imperfect process. Without a native speaker for support, Google Translate would only get you so far with unnatural phrasing. However, thanks to Gemini Live’s native language features, it’s easier than ever to create meta data for international websites, even if you don’t know the language. 05. Create better alt text Another clear advantage you have with Gemini Live’s screen sharing feature is its ability to produce better alt text for images. As a multimodal large language model, Gemini Live can understand both text and visual content, allowing it to generate more accurate and contextually relevant alt text for images that can improve accessibility  for screen reader users.  In this example, I had an image of a system log file that I didn’t know how to describe (as I’m not a system administrator). I asked Gemini Live to review the image and provide a brief alt text description that would capture what was seen in the image. It was able to provide a great description that could be used to improve both accessibility and clarity. Related: Check out the AI Alt Text Generator in Wix Studio's Accessibility Wizard 06. Use Chrome developer tools to audit a site Gemini Live is also incredibly useful when used alongside Chrome’s Developer Inspection Tool during a site audit. Users can use the screenshare feature to ask for help when using Chrome’s Developer Inspection tool, which provides extensive diagnostic information for website performance. A user can chat with Gemini Live to understand the purpose of each file and identify issues that are impacting page performance.  You can ask questions like, “What is this script and why is it slowing down the page?” Gemini Live can provide simplified explanations to help you pinpoint issues affecting site performance, along with suggestions for fixes. While conducting a performance audit, you can also ask Gemini Live to help you prioritize what developers should address first. 07. Troubleshoot code Another way you can use Gemini Live is by getting assistance to troubleshoot code. If you’re working on a script, or trying to understand backend code from a website, you can screenshare or submit a screenshot to Gemini Live. It can help you identify what each piece of code does, guide you through debugging, and identify possible issues.  08. Visualize data Instead of defaulting to a basic bar chart to visualize your data, ask Gemini Live to take a look at your dataset and suggest a chart to visualize the information. Share your screen or upload your dataset and ask Gemini Live to give you ideas. Then, use the Gemini app on your desktop to create the chart for you. For example, with this dataset for keywords rankings, Gemini Live suggested using a heatmap. I then used Gemini to create the heatmap, which made the data easier to understand and brought a new perspective to the data. With Gemini Live, you can turn your data into a more compelling visual story. 09. Transcribe videos and audio You can also submit videos and audio clips for transcription. This is especially helpful for editing and providing value and accessibility to users who visit your site or watch your content. Accurate and detailed transcripts can also provide additional context to search engines and LLMs that are trying to understand the content. 10. Optimize YouTube videos using video transcripts For YouTube videos, you can grab the transcript from the video and ask Gemini Live to generate a detailed, search-optimized video  description based on the transcript. With Gemini Live, you can identify key topics from the transcript, summarize main takeaways, and generate titles that include your target keyword for the video. This not only improves the video’s discoverability on YouTube and Google Search but also provides viewers with an informative description for better engagement and watch time. Constance Chen - Director of Search Marketing at Moving Traffic Media   Constance specializes in marketing strategy, building Gen AI-driven marketing systems, technical SEO, and content strategy. She studies and explores AI developments and machine learning, writing about industry advancements and providing insights on emerging innovations.

Author: James Clark Errors are bad and need to be fixed, right? That’s not always the case when it comes to 404 errors on your website. These errors give a clear signal to users and search engines that a page is “Not Found”—which can actually be the right thing in many situations.  Let’s take a look at when these 404 errors matter for SEO (and why), how to find them on your site, when you should resolve them, and how to do so. Table of contents: What are 404 errors? “Soft 404” errors 410 errors 404 pages aren’t always bad 404 errors for SEO Why 404 errors matter for SEO Unpublishing and republishing content Requesting a recrawl 404s due to broken links How to find 404 errors on your website Find 404 errors with Google Search Console Find 404 errors on Wix or other web platforms Find 404 errors in Google Analytics 404 error examples and fixes Page URL has changed Page has been deleted User mistypes a URL Mistake in a link Spammy backlinks No content (soft 404) What are 404 errors? 404 errors occur when a user requests a missing web page and the server responds to say “Not Found.” This can happen when a user mistypes a URL, an internal link is broken, the page URL has changed, the page is deleted, etc. Whenever you visit a webpage, your browser requests it from that website’s server and the server responds. Along with the page’s content, the server will send a so-called “response code” or “status code”—a small note or label indicating whether the request has been completed. In most cases, the request will be successful and the server sends a “200 OK” status code. But sometimes, the requested page can’t be found on the server. Perhaps it no longer exists, never existed, or moved (and we’ll look at all those scenarios in the final part of this article). In that case, the server will usually give a different status code: “404 Not Found.” The “404 Not Found” status code is commonly called a 404 error, although it doesn’t necessarily indicate an error with your website. If a user requests a web page that doesn’t exist, the error may be on the part of the user doing the browsing. Server status codes don’t mean much to the average user, so when a server returns a 404, a website will typically display a human-friendly HTTP error page. Sometimes, as you can see here with Google’s, the page will use the term “404”: But, more often than not, they will simply say “Page Not Found.” Here’s the New York Times’ 404 page: Incidentally, if you want to see any website’s 404 page, try going to a URL that is unlikely to exist. I tend to go /bananas, for example:  https://google.com/bananas  or https://www.nytimes.com/bananas But, you can use your own random word or nonsense phrase. What are “soft 404” errors? “A soft 404 occurs when a webserver responds with a 200 OK HTTP response code for a page that doesn't exist rather than the appropriate 404 Not Found. Soft 404s can limit a site’s crawl coverage by search engines because these duplicate URLs may be crawled instead of pages with unique content.” — Google Search Central A regular 404 error is when a user requests a missing web page and the server responds to say “Not Found.” What if the page is missing but the server responds to say “OK”? That’s when we have a so-called “soft 404.” It isn’t actually a status code, but a term used by Google and the SEO industry to describe this situation. You might also come across the term “hard 404,” which is just another name for a regular 404 (when the server gives the appropriate response code). One scenario that results in a soft 404 is a page with no content: The server successfully serves the page (which explains the “200 OK” status code), but from a search engine’s perspective, the content is “not found.” This might sound unlikely, but it happens surprisingly often with tag and category pages. If your web platform automatically generates a page for each category, and you create a category without assigning any content to it, you’ll end up with a page that has no content. This so-called “thin” page is a perfect contender for a soft 404. Classifieds and eCommerce websites might also generate soft 404s if no stock is available for a search results page or combination of filters (as shown below). Soft 404s are confusing for both users and search engines , so you should fix them wherever they occur. This is another scenario we’ll look at in the final section of this article. If you’re not sure whether a page is returning a 404 response code or not, you can see for yourself using Chrome’s built-in Dev Tools . What about 410 errors? You may come across another response code that is very similar to a 404: “410 Gone.” While a 404 only indicates that the page is not found, a 410 means the page is permanently  unavailable. In practice (and especially from an SEO point of view), there’s little difference between the two. Google has clarified, for example , that “if you’re just removing content [from your website] naturally, then that’s perfectly fine to use either one.” 404 pages aren’t always bad A 404 status code isn’t necessarily bad, and neither is a user seeing a 404 error page. It just means the page they tried to access couldn’t be found.  For example, let’s look at one common cause of 404 errors: mistyping a URL. A user wants to go to  yoursite.com/news , and accidentally types yoursite.com/mews  into their browser address bar instead (“mews” instead of “news”). That page doesn’t exist, so they get a 404. Now, this isn’t a scenario you can prevent. Nothing is broken on your website—it’s purely a case of user error. The best thing you can do in this case is provide a 404 page that has as much value as possible for the user. Many sites, such as YouTube and the BBC, include a search box on their 404 pages, giving users a second chance to find the content they are interested in: Besides being useful, your 404 page could be entertaining. Amazon’s 404 page currently displays one of the dogs of Amazon: “the dogs who help make Amazon a great place to work.” Each time you hit (or refresh) the 404 page, you’ll see a different cute dog: This then encourages users to visit the “Workplace” section of the site and supports Amazon’s recruitment efforts, so it provides value to both the user and Amazon.  But, perhaps incentivizing users to visit your 404 page is a step too far: it will artificially inflate your 404 traffic, making identifying and (potentially) fixing 404 errors trickier. 404 errors for SEO Just as 404 error pages aren’t inherently bad, neither are 404 errors necessarily bad for SEO. Google has said so consistently for more than a decade: Why 404 errors matter for SEO So if 404 errors aren’t necessarily bad, can’t be completely avoided, and don’t result in any sort of penalty from Google, why do they matter at all for SEO? To answer this question, we need to look at how Google (and other search engines) treat 404s—including soft 404s. Google doesn’t want users clicking on search results that take them to pages that are “Not Found,” as that would be a poor user experience. So, it’s no surprise that Google removes those URLs from its index . This means they will no longer appear in search results. That’s not the only action Google takes when it encounters 404s. As Google Senior Search Analyst John Mueller explained : “We generally reduce crawling a little bit of those URLs so that we don’t spend too much time crawling things that we know don’t exist.” This can be a good thing, as it helps you manage your crawl budget (i.e., the number of pages a search engine bot will crawl  and index on a given site, within a given time period). You don’t want a search engine to spend too much time crawling pages that don’t exist, as you would have to wait longer for it to crawl your new or recently updated content . This becomes more of a concern the larger your website is. Even with Google crawling 404s less frequently, you can still lose a large chunk of your crawl budget to those pages. For example, here’s a site where 34% of requests are squandered on 404s: Screenshot from Google Search Console. Think twice about unpublishing and republishing content The fact that Google crawls 404s less is something to bear in mind when you’re thinking about unpublishing content. Let’s say you have a page with out-of-date content. You’re planning to update it soon, but you decide to unpublish the page in the meantime—leading Google to remove it from its search index. Then, even once you update the content and republish the page, you may have to wait an uncertain length of time before Google recrawls the URL and adds it back to its index.  This would be frustrating with a single page, but imagine if it affected a whole section of your site. It would be better, if possible, to leave the page published and just update the content as soon as you can. Requesting a recrawl If you do temporarily unpublish a page and it gets removed from Google’s index, you can use Google Search Console (GSC ; a free, invaluable SEO tool) to ask Google to recrawl the URL —that is, send its bot to visit the page again and attempt to read the content: “Indexing requested” for an individual page using the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. Even when you request a recrawl, as Google says, “Crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.” And there’s no guarantee that a recrawl will result in Google adding the page back into its index. Later in this article we’ll look at GSC in more detail, in particular how you can use it to identify 404s. 404s due to broken links There’s another reason why 404 errors matter for your SEO: while they aren’t a cause of SEO problems, they may be a symptom. They could indicate anything from a typo in a single link all the way up to a major issue with your site structure or content. Let’s take the example of a typo in an internal link  (a link from one page of your site to another). Any user clicking on this link would encounter a 404 error rather than reaching the content they clicked through to. This is clearly bad for user experience and may result in the user leaving your site in frustration. If you’re an eCommerce business, you could miss out on a sale as a result. But, the impact of a broken internal link can be greater than that. As we explain in our Hub article “ The fundamentals of internal linking for SEO ”: “Internal linking is essential for any site owner that wants to rank their content on the first page of Google search results. This is because Google looks at the quality and quantity of internal links pointing to a given page to help it assess which pages are important on your site.” — Goodness Azubuogu, SEO Analyst at Trek Marketing Our link (with the typo in it) isn’t pointing to the correct page, so isn’t telling Google anything about the intended destination. By fixing the link, we can better help Google understand the importance of that destination page, potentially improving its ranking in search results. The same applies to inbound links (i.e., links to your website from other websites, also referred to as backlinks ). Here, we could be talking about: Links in marketing campaigns such as on social media Links acquired naturally from other sites as a result of your high-quality content Links acquired as a result of deliberate outreach and link building If these links are broken, any users clicking on them will get both a 404 error and a subpar user experience. And again, you’re missing out on an opportunity to send Google a signal about the importance of the destination page. Of course, it can be harder to fix broken inbound links, as you may not have direct control over them! Email newsletters and other broadcast emails are a bit of an exception. Google doesn’t crawl email newsletters (unless a web version also exists), so links here don’t help Google to understand your site—but they could still be broken and cause 404s. Broadcast emails can be an important source of traffic and conversions. Check them for broken links to avoid unwanted 404s. So while 404 errors aren’t inherently bad for SEO, they present an opportunity for you to find and fix errors that might otherwise hold back your SEO (and UX). That’s why it’s a good idea to investigate all your 404 errors and decide, case by case, whether you should take action. How to find 404 errors on your website Before you can decide whether to act on your 404 errors, you need to be able to find them. There are a few ways to do that: With an SEO tool, such as Google Search Console In your content management system (CMS) or web platform Using an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics 4 They each have pros and cons, so let’s look at them in turn. Find 404 errors with Google Search Console Google Search Console is a free SEO tool from Google that helps you understand how the search engine sees your website, including information on any 404 errors it has discovered. To use GSC, you first need to verify your site to prove you own or manage it. Our complete guide to Google Search Console  has instructions on doing this. Then, within GSC, go to the Page Indexing  report ( Pages > Index ). This shows you how many pages of your website Google has added to its index—and how many it has omitted. Scroll down a little and you’ll see a table listing various reasons why pages aren’t indexed, along with the number of pages affected by each reason: One of those possible reasons is “Not Found (404).” (You may also see “Soft 404” or “URL blocked due to other 4xx issue”—Search Console Help provides a full list of possible non-indexing reasons .) If you do have pages that are “Not Found (404),” click on this reason to see: The number of pages affected A graph showing the trend over time Some example pages with this non-indexing reason The last time these pages were crawled Use the EXPORT option at the top of the report to export a list of affected pages in CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets format (note: Google caps this at 1,000 pages).  You could fix those 404s, wait for Google to recrawl the pages, and then export another batch of 1,000 URLs—but this would be very slow. And, besides, I’ve already shown you that not all 404s are unwanted. You might be wondering whether this data is available via an API instead. Unfortunately, while Search Console does have an API , it doesn’t cover indexing data. If you find yourself hindered by these limitations, consider one of the other methods of identifying 404s. Find 404 errors on Wix or other web platforms Your CMS or web platform may also provide you with information on 404s (although sometimes a plugin or extension is necessary). The Response Status over Time report in Wix, showing 4XX and 5XX errors. Wix gives you this sort of insight out of the box  (as shown above). Here’s how you find it: Log in to your Wix dashboard In the main menu, go to Analytics & Reports > Reports Scroll down to the SEO section of the page Click Show more reports Click on Response Status over Time By default, the report shows a bar chart so you can spot trends — but switch over to the “Table” view if you want to dive into the details. Use the “Response status classes” search filter at the top to show only 4XX responses (this includes 404s, 410s and other so-called “client errors” ). For each 404, you’ll see the page affected, the date of the first hit, the date of the most recent hit, and an overall count. This will let you identify the biggest issues first and make the most effective use of your time—important if you have a lot of 404s! Click the Download option to export your data as a CSV, Excel file, or image, and continue working on it outside Wix. If your CMS or platform doesn’t provide you with any information on 404s, you may be able to get it directly from your server logs instead. These text files are a record of server requests (including response codes) and can often be accessed through your hosting account. Your web host should be able to provide instructions on how to do this. Find 404 errors in Google Analytics Finally, you can also track 404 errors via analytics tools, such as Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This is easiest if your 404 page has a unique page title such as “Page Not Found” or “404 Error.” You can then build a report that shows pageviews for any pages with that page title. Looking at the URL (page path) dimension will show you where the 404s are happening. The 404 page on this site has a unique page title of “Page Not Found,” so it is possible to search for it in GA4 reports. Unlike the Google Search Console approach, this won’t detect soft 404 errors. It also only detects pages that are not found, rather than images or other file types. However, it may pick up on 404s that Search Console misses—such as those resulting from broken links in email newsletters. Analytics Mania has a comprehensive guide to tracking 404 errors  in GA4, whether or not your 404 page has a unique page title (two different methods). 404 error examples and fixes Now that you’ve found your 404 errors, what action should you take? That depends on the cause of each 404. Here are some common scenarios and a fix for each. The page URL has changed A page URL might change even if you don’t edit it yourself. Depending on your platform, renaming or moving the content could trigger a URL change.  Let’s say your URL structure for an individual post is: yourwebsite.com/category-A/post-name Moving the post from category A to category B could change the post URL—as could changing the post name. Your platform or CMS might automatically put in a redirect from the old URL to the new one (which is the case whenever you change a Wix page’s URL slug ), but if it doesn’t, anyone coming into the old URL (through an internal or external link) will encounter a 404.  The right approach here is to put in a redirect yourself. In this case, you want a permanent or “301” redirect —it’s called this because it returns the status code “301 Moved Permanently.” You may be able to add the redirect directly in your web platform or CMS, or you may need to edit your web server configuration files . In addition to helping your users reach the content they want, the redirect will pass any link equity to the new URL, so your organic search rankings and traffic won’t suffer. If you can, you should also update any links so they point directly to the new URL. This is to prevent redirect chains if the content moves again in future (see the image below). An example of a redirect chain. One redirect is fine, but you want to avoid situations where Page A redirects to Page B, which redirects to Page C, and so on. This adds to page load times and may affect your crawl budget. To see whether there is a redirect chain already in place for a particular URL, use a tool such as Redirect Checker . This will show you the redirects it takes to get to the destination page, along with the status code at each point. For example, it takes two redirects to get from the HTTP non-www version of my homepage to the HTTPS www version: Finally, you will want Google to discover, crawl, and index  the new URL. The redirect you’ve put in place should help this happen, but you could also request a crawl in GSC. The page has been deleted Deleted pages are another common cause of 404s. Your course of action here depends on why you deleted the page. If you deleted it because you merged it with another page, or because it’s very similar to other content on your site, you should absolutely set up a 301 redirect. However, if you deleted the page and you don’t have any other relevant content on this topic, then just leave the 404 in place. “Not Found” is the correct server response in this situation. Don’t be tempted to redirect a deleted page to irrelevant content, or indeed to your homepage. Google has said in the past that it could see this as a soft 404 , so there would be no SEO benefit from doing so. It could also be confusing to users. You should, however, remove any internal links to the deleted page. This will help prevent user frustration should someone click through to missing content. The URL Inspection Tool  in Google Search Console will tell you how Google discovered the page, which can help you identify where these broken links reside: However, this might not be the only link. So a more efficient option might be to use an SEO tool, such as Screaming Frog , to crawl your site and generate a comprehensive list of internal links (the free version is fine for sites with less than 500 URLs). A user mistypes a URL We’ve already looked at a scenario where a user accidentally types “/mews” instead of “/news” and gets a 404 as a result. If this is a one-off, there’s nothing you can do about it. But if the same misspelling keeps happening, you may want to put a 301 redirect in place from the misspelled URL to the correct one. As Google recommends: “If the URL is a commonly misspelled or alternately spelled word or URL (for example, example.com/flights/canceling versus example.com/flights/cancelling -- notice the extra ‘l’ in ‘cancelling’)... then map your common misspellings or alternate spellings to the same page on your site using redirects or some other mechanism.” — Google Search Console Help A mistake in a link 404s can also happen when someone links to one of your pages but makes a spelling mistake in the link itself. This means that the link ends up pointing to a non-existent page. If this is an internal link, the solution is easy: fix the link! But if it’s an inbound link, things can be a bit trickier. You could reach out to the referring website owner and ask them to fix it. After all, they thought your content was valuable enough to link to in the first place. However, they may be unable or unwilling to do this. The next course of action would be to 301 redirect the non-existent page through to the intended destination. That way, anyone clicking on the broken link will be taken through to the correct content—and that page will gain link equity from the inbound link. Spammy backlinks Your site may attract spam or fake backlinks that result in 404s. These links are often generated programmatically (i.e., in bulk, using a script or other automated process) and point to pages that have never existed on your site. Here, “Not Found” is the correct response, so you can safely leave these as they are. There’s no need to try to fix them or “Validate Fix” in GSC. Don’t use Google Search Console’s “VALIDATE FIX” for pages that are giving a 404 if “Not Found” is actually the correct response. No content (soft 404 ) With a soft 404, there’s a mismatch between the server response (“200 OK”) and the page experience—and it’s this mismatch that confuses both users and search engines.  The solution is to bring the two in line. This usually means one of the following courses of action:  Optimizing by adding content to the page  Deleting the page to ensure the server responds with a regular 404.  301 redirecting the page to another, relevant page that does have content Add 404s to your regular SEO auditing and maintenance Now you know what 404s are, how to find them, and what to do (or quite possibly not do) about them. But, checking your site for 404s isn’t a one-off job. It’s an ongoing task that will help you pick up on problems with your website or marketing as soon as possible, minimizing harm to your business. For the best site health, you should come up with a process for monitoring your 404s regularly. Verifying your site with Google Search Console is a good first step, as this free tool will email you if there is a sudden increase in pages giving this error.  For larger sites, you may prefer to set up 404 tracking in Google Analytics 4 or another analytics tool. You could even then pull this data into Looker Studio  and automatically email yourself a one-page report each month. It doesn’t matter exactly how you do it, as long as it is something you can keep  doing. Don’t let your process for identifying 404 errors be “Not Found”! James Clark - Web Analyst   James Clark is a web analyst from London, with a background in the publishing sector. When he isn't helping businesses with their analytics, he's usually writing how-to guides over on his website Technically Product . Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: Naomi Francis-Parker I find that a lot of eCommerce brands don’t see the value in creating content that isn’t directly related to selling their products. Though product is the cornerstone of any eCommerce business, there’s a common misconception that simply by offering something your customers want, they will visit your website and buy from you—no questions asked. By their very nature, eCommerce websites are a shop window for products, but in a world where shoppers have more options than ever before, you need to stand out and demonstrate why your brand is the best choice. One of the most effective ways to do this is through content that connects with users at all stages of the marketing funnel. You need to transform your website from a shop window to an informative, decision-making resource that truly adds value to your customers’ buying experience. In this guide, I’ll explain why eCommerce brands need a content marketing strategy and lay out a framework to help you research, plan, and implement expertise-led content to appeal to customers at all stages of the marketing funnel. Table of contents The value of content marketing Why eCommerce businesses need content Product detail pages & product landing pages: Content that sells Informational content vs. Commercial content: Why you need both Informational content: Examples and use cases Commercial content: Examples and use cases How to plan an eCommerce content strategy Research your topic Plan your pillar guide Expand your subtopics into clusters Add internal links and CTAs The importance and value of content marketing  Content marketing’s primary advantages are twofold: Content marketing can benefit your SEO and help you rank more prominently in search results for your niche. Content marketing can assist potential customers who want to know more about your product or topics in your niche. Content marketing for SEO Every serious business is fighting for a slot at the top of Google search results, and content marketing is one of the few ways you can truly get there by demonstrating your expertise. Search engines operate on the understanding of topics, and your performance in the search results is influenced by how well your website presents valuable and unique knowledge (in the form of content) within your topic area. In other words, you need to show Google that your website deserves to rank for relevant topics and demonstrate why it is more deserving than your competition (who will likely be writing the same content). These are the fundamentals of content marketing, and most businesses recognize that by having content on their website, they are more likely to rank for the topics they want and therefore drive more potential customers to their website via greater visibility on Google (or other search engines).  However, when people talk about content marketing in the context of SEO, I find that this is often restricted to informational content led by keywords and search volumes  that only cover the basics of a topic.  Writing content purely to target a set of keywords with desirable search volume that happens to align with your niche will only get you so far.  The internet is becoming increasingly flooded with such content in nearly all industries, making it increasingly more difficult to stand out from the crowd. That’s why you also need to consider content marketing for the customer. Content marketing for the customer To help cut down on low-quality content, Google aligned its search quality evaluator guidelines  with what human users value and trust—expertise. This incentivizes you to leverage your experiences (as a business or business owner) as a point of distinction, proving to search engines and users that your content isn’t just a cookie-cutter article for ranking. I’ve found that when this concept is explained to businesses, most assume that “experience” only applies to service-based businesses or bloggers who write about specific topics. Experience is seen as something that only an individual or a small group of individuals can provide, rather than a big brand—which isn’t true. Expertise is born out of experience, so if your business has the expertise to sell a product, then you also have the experience of selling your products to (and sharing knowledge with) your audience. This is what users are looking for when they’re searching for content that is relevant to their query. Content that is created for the user and can demonstrate experience through expertise (the other “E” in E-E-A-T) will naturally become content that ranks. In short, content for SEO and content for the customer are now the same. Why eCommerce businesses need content Nearly every eCommerce business that I’ve worked with assumed that content isn’t for them because:  They think that content is for publication websites or blogs. The content they created in the past hasn’t generated revenue. To sell your products and to show users you know what you’re talking about when it comes to those products, your website needs to become more than a shop window. You need to evoke a sense of trust and the only way to do that effectively on your website is through different types of content that caters to potential customers’ needs, no matter what they are. Site visitors look for various types of content according to the stage of the customer journey they’re in. It’s the same as someone walking into your physical store and asking a store clerk for advice. A good store clerk will provide as much information as possible to help the customer better understand a product or choose a specific product based on their query. Having no content on your website (besides your products) is the same as having a store with no store clerks.  Ultimately, your potential customers will leave to seek advice elsewhere and will likely purchase from the same competitors that gave them the advice they were looking for. This is why your website needs to be an information resource tailored for customers regardless of whether they’re ready to buy. Product detail pages & product listings pages: Content that sells This might sound basic, but your product listings pages (PLPs) and your product detail pages  (PDPs) are not the same as your blog. Each serves a different purpose and caters to customers at different stages of the marketing funnel, so the content you provide on each page type should differ to match the corresponding user intent . User intent Description Informational The user is looking for more general information or answers about your product/industry. Navigational The user is looking to navigate to a specific site or page that they already know about. E.g., the returns or login page. Commercial The user is moving closer to conversion and wants to research/compare products, read reviews, and find other information that will help them make a decision. Transactional The user has decided to buy and intends to make a purchase or complete an action. PLPs and PDPs, let’s call them “money pages,” both cater to customers in the middle of the marketing funnel at the interest and decision stages. These customers have an idea of what they want and they’re looking at their options to find the best product to meet their needs. For example, they might want a new pair of running shoes but aren’t sure which type to go for. They will be browsing your money pages and looking for information to help them make an informed decision. In other words, they’ve just walked into your store and asked a store clerk for advice. This advice must match the intent of the query for the customer to move closer to conversion, so you would expect the store assistant to explain the differences between each type of trainer and suggest several options based on the customer’s requirements. At this point, you wouldn’t expect the clerk to explain the history of running or how running affects your health because you will have likely researched this information before you decided to go into the store. In the same way, customers don’t expect your money pages to do this either. This is the key difference between the content you provide on your money pages and the content on your blog. One is for selling and the other is for informing. One of the most common mistakes I see eCommerce businesses make is putting as much information as possible on their money pages in hopes it will help them rank. The problem is that this is generally content for content’s sake and therefore adds no value for the user while providing a worse user experience. Your money pages’ duty is to provide expertise to help secure an eventual sale and move the customer further down the funnel to the conversion stage. Just like it’s a store clerk’s job to do the same. Therefore, the most effective content to have on these pages is FAQs  with answers that are accurate, insightful, and aim to help customers pick the best product for them. This, coupled with some contextual information about the product collection and perhaps some of your bestsellers is enough to make your PLPs engaging and informative without turning them into a blog. BULK’s whey protein PLP contains FAQs and bestsellers to educate customers and help them find the best product. Source: Bulk.com There will be times when customers need a little more information about a topic or want to learn more about something specific. You can guide these customers to your blog content with internal links . That way, you’re enhancing the experience without blurring the lines of intent. This also has the added benefit of improving the internal linking structure between your pages, which improves the topical authority of your site overall. Informational vs. Commercial content: Why you need both “We tried doing content but it didn’t convert, so we stopped”. This is something that I’ve heard countless times from businesses and it does make sense—if you’re an eCommerce brand and your main goal is to sell products, then you naturally want to focus on content that converts. But with this mindset, you’re ignoring users at the top of the marketing funnel who are just starting their buying journey and are looking for a solution to their problem. If your business has the solution, why not nurture those users early on with information that can help guide them down the funnel and turn them into your potential customers? As users progress through the funnel, their preferences for content shift. Those in the awareness stage are more drawn to informational content because they’re researching the topic as a whole, while those in the decision stage are researching more specifically to find the exact product that addresses their needs, so they are more interested in commercial content. More than half (52%) of customers go out of their way to purchase from their favorite brands (according to a study  by Zendesk), with one of the most influential factors being support. Aside from the traditional customer service support that you provide, I believe that support can also come in the form of content that truly helps the customer and makes them feel confident about your expertise and your product. If you want to be recognized as a business that supports its customers—rather than one that just wants to sell products—your website needs to have content that is both informative and commercial. Without both, you’re leaving money on the table. Informational content: Examples and use cases There’s a reason why even the biggest eCommerce brands have whole portions of their website dedicated to education—it’s because an informed customer is more likely to make a purchase. By educating your customers, you make them feel like you understand their needs and are willing to help them without forcing them to buy something. This is why all businesses need informational content. The types of content that users are looking for during the early stages of the buying journey are: Informative blog posts How-to guides Infographics Webinars The purpose of this content is purely to educate and inform. This isn’t the place to push your latest products (that comes later) so don’t be tempted to treat this content as a sales pitch. That’s not to say that you can’t add internal links within the content where relevant, just make sure they’re subtle and make sense. Source: Newbalance.co.uk. New Balance does a great job of this by publishing dedicated guides that are purely informational, but with subtle links to their products throughout (as shown below).  The product links aren’t intrusive and are less frequent than the links to supporting content, making it more helpful to users. This also helps build strong topical authority by showing search engines that there’s a clear link between each of the guides and the PLP. Source: Newbalance.co.uk. The metrics you should use to measure the success of this type of content need to be engagement-based  (rather than conversion-based). To determine how well your informational content is working, measure things like: Impressions Rankings Clicks Click-through-rate (CTR) New users Bounce rate and/or engagement rate Average pages per session Average session duration Average time on page The goal here is to make the content as engaging as possible to encourage users to explore more and move into the consideration stage. Make sure you’re writing multiple content pieces that each cover an entire topic so you can include links to other relevant content throughout. This will not only improve your user experience as you’ll have several resources that potential customers can explore, it will also strengthen your topical authority, which can lead to better visibility, rankings, and traffic. Commercial content: Examples and use cases Commercial content exists to help customers in the consideration stage make an informed purchasing decision. There is an educational element to commercial content that can spill over into the realm of informational content; this is fine, as a customer’s movement through the marketing funnel doesn’t have to be linear. The types of content that users are looking for at this stage of the buying journey are: Buyer’s guides Product comparison guides Product deep dives and demos FAQs The purpose of this content is to provide your customers with information about your products that will help them decide whether it’s right for them. The key with this kind of content is to describe your products as though someone had just walked into your store and asked a sales assistant for more information about a product (or a set of products) because they know what they want but they’re not sure which product to choose. Buyer’s guides and comparison guides are great ways to help your customers decide, especially when two products have the same or similar features. The metrics you should use to measure the success of this type of content need to be conversion-based as well as engagement-based.  To determine how well your commercial content is working, measure things like: Average pages per session Average session duration Average time on page Returning visitors Branded traffic Revenue Pay close attention to the user journey  from these pages to understand how many people are reading your product-focused content and making a purchase off the back of it. Source: Lululemon.co.uk. Lululemon’s running hub is a good example of commercial content done well. The company highlights its products throughout but provides relevant information about why they suggest a particular product within the context of the original query. This is helpful for customers who need a little guidance before they make the final purchase and a great way to connect your blog with your money pages whilst remaining aligned with user intent. Source: Lululemon.co.uk. How to plan your eCommerce content marketing strategy Before you begin to plan your content marketing strategy, you need to decide which product category you want to focus on first. You can focus on more than one category (depending on how much time and resources you have), but I always recommend starting with one because it’s easier to plan and easier to build a robust topic cluster  that way. This product category will be the topic you want to increase your website’s visibility for, so knowing this before you start will help guide the content as you plan your way through the marketing funnel. Once you determine your topic, you now need to plan according to each stage of the marketing funnel, starting with your informational content and then ending with your commercial content. For this example, I’m going to continue with the theme of a brand that sells running shoes and accessories. 01. Research your topic The first step in planning your content is to:  Research to understand what kinds of questions potential customers are asking about your chosen topic. Research what competitor content already exists to answer those questions. The easiest way to do this is to do a Google search using some of the primary keywords related to your topic and see what content comes up in the results. In the screenshot below, I’ve Googled [road running for beginners] and all of the top results are informational. This confirms that the content I need to create on this topic needs to be informational to match the user intent and rank successfully for this keyword. I can also see what the most common questions around road running are by looking at the People Also Ask box. This can help guide the content’s structure and provides good insight into what my content should include to ensure it adds value to the user. I also recommend using an SEO tool  like Semrush or Ahrefs to see what content works well for your competitors to give you an idea of which subtopics to start with as you build out your funnel content. Analyze your competitor’s top blog posts to see which subtopics you need to focus your content on to engage the user. For each potential piece of content, write down whether the content will be informational or commercial, as this will help you map your content against the marketing funnel. Some SEO tools even categorize keywords by their intent, but I always recommend that you actually search the topic/keyword to manually assess how Google treats the query. 02. Plan your pillar guide This is where you get back to basics. As an expert, it’s easy to assume that most people know the basic information about your industry/topic because it’s second nature to you. The reality is that there’s always someone who is a complete beginner and these people are the target audience for your top-of-funnel content. This content will form the basis of your pillar guide. Pillar guides are all-encompassing guides that cover a topic at a general level to provide the reader with everything they need to get a good understanding before delving further. In our example, this could be a “Beginner’s Guide to Running.” Pillar guides will naturally touch on all the nuanced subtopics that form the main topic, but only with enough depth that encourages the reader to explore that subtopic further. Your subtopics will then form all of your supporting content pieces and drive users further down the funnel. An example of a topic cluster with pillar content. To plan your pillar guide and figure out what you need to include, I always recommend using customer FAQs coupled with search data as sources of information. As an eCommerce business, you will likely have an idea of the questions your customers ask when wanting to better understand the topic you specialize in—these are the questions you’re looking to answer within your pillar guide. Additionally, utilize a tool like Semrush (shown above) and couple it with Google’s People Also Ask  feature (shown below) to find out what else users are asking about the topic. This will give you an idea of the types of information that people want to know and what you need to cover. Remember, the pillar guide is typically for beginners, so make it as accessible as you can. In our example, the structure of your pillar guide could look something like this: Why you should start running Running vs jogging: What’s the difference? Health benefits of running Different types of running terrain Road running Trail running Track running Treadmill running Different running styles Recovery run Long run Tempo run Fartlek run Progression run Running equipment Shoes Bottoms Tops Accessories Socks 03. Expand your subtopics into smaller content clusters Now that you have planned your pillar guide, you should be aware of the subtopics that will form your supporting content pieces. Expanding on your subtopics is crucial to deepening the user’s understanding and is the first step to guiding them through the marketing funnel. Additionally, subtopics often lend themselves to long tail keywords , which are typically better at attracting high-intent customers. Start with an informational guide When expanding your subtopics, start with another informational guide that focuses just on the subtopic you’ve chosen (e.g.; trail running). Within this guide, you can start to discuss your products in relation to the topic, but make sure that the knowledge outweighs the product mentions to keep the guide informative and not overly sales-oriented. For example, your informational guide could be “An Enthusiast’s Guide to Trail Running.” This would include information on: What is trail running? Trail running vs. road running Trail running vs. track running Trail running equipment Tips for trail running for beginners This guide is knowledge-led with just one section dedicated to products (“trail running equipment”) which nurtures customers who are still at the awareness stage whilst introducing products for them to explore. This is how you help guide your customers further down the marketing funnel. While it may be tempting to link out to your product pages at every opportunity, those links might suggest to Google that this content is actually commercial in nature, which could negatively affect your search rankings for informational queries, but definitely affects your user experience (like your store clerk asking “Do you want to buy that one?” for each shoe a potential customer gazes at). Build out your commercial guides Now that you’ve subtly and naturally introduced your products, there will be users who have moved firmly into the consideration stage of the funnel. This is where the content will be led partly by search data but mainly by your customer data and expertise, and should reflect what your customers want to know about your products. For example, you could create any of the following: A product comparison guide explaining the differences between two similar products Source: Lululemon.co.uk. A product highlight guide that explains all of the key features of a particular product Source: Nike.com. A buyer’s guide that puts your products in the context of the topic Source: Brooksrunning.com. These are just some examples. Pay attention to which products customers are comparing yours to (or choosing over yours), then explain—via your content—the considerations that shoppers should look at. With a bit of creativity, you can build out many useful subtopic clusters to help audiences make their buying decisions. 04. Add internal links and review your CTAs The key to any successful content marketing strategy (but especially a full-funnel strategy) is internal links and relevant CTAs . This helps ensure that your content cluster is structured in an intuitive way for the user but also for search engines. Internal links need to point from your pillar page to your subtopic pages and vice versa. Your subtopic pages need to link to the relevant PLPs and PDPs to ensure the topical authority is clear as well as any link equity that you may acquire through link building . Your eCommerce content needs to complement sales—not deter them To futureproof your content marketing strategy and make sure that it’s relevant to your audience at all stages of their journey, start by thinking about what your customer needs to know about your products before they decide to make a purchase. For your informational guides, keep these key things in mind: Cover the basics—your customers don’t know what they don’t know. Focus on the need-to-know information to help your customers understand your industry. Use your internal data to understand your real customers’ questions . Don’t try to force the sale. For your commercial guides, keep these points in mind: Speak about your products within the context of your topic. Answer questions that real customers are asking. Internally link to both your money pages and your informational content. Integrate product mentions with genuinely useful information that’s relevant to the topic. Your content should be complementary to your sales—not a detriment. A knowledge-led content marketing strategy can help you generate revenue through information if you focus on educating the user and guiding them through the marketing funnel. By turning your website into an information resource, you’ll turn users into customers who are more likely to remain loyal because you’ve nurtured them every step of the way. Naomi Francis-Parker - SEO Manager Naomi is an SEO expert with over 5 years of experience working with eCommerce brands. Her passion comes from a holistic approach to digital marketing that encourages growth through the collective use of content, PR, social media, and SEO. Twitter  | Linkedin

Webinar on SEO for AI Search Conversions In this essential webinar, Andy Crestodina and Crystal Carter will give you tips and tactics to shift your SEO strategy from merely attracting traffic to converting highly qualified visitors into valuable leads in the age of AI search.  Learn how to craft content that directly addresses user intent, leverages AI trends, and ultimately drives real business growth. Don't let your marketing efforts fall behind—discover how to future-proof your pipeline and achieve measurable results. Download Andy Crestodina's Presentation Download Crystal Carter's Presentation What You'll Learn: In this myth-busting, practical webinar, you'll discover how to optimize your SEO strategy for the AI age: Prioritize Conversions Over Clicks:  Understand why chasing rankings alone is insufficient and how to build content that truly drives leads, revenue, and sales. Adapt to AI-Powered Search:  See why pages designed to satisfy bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) needs are perfectly positioned for discovery by AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other conversational search tools. Write for the Right Visitor:  Discover how intimately knowing your specific audience's needs, emotional triggers, and fears can drastically improve traffic quality and lead generation. Meet your hosts: Andy Crestodina Cofounder and CMO Orbit Media Andy is the CMO and Co-Founder at Orbit Media Studios in Chicago. He has been at the forefront of digital marketing innovation for over two decades. With a deep-seated passion for SEO, analytics, and website optimization, Andy is highly regarded as a leading expert in the marketing field. X/Twitter  | 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, OMR, brightonSEO, Moz, DeepCrawl (Lumar), Semrush and more. Twitter  | LinkedIn

Author: Mordy Oberstein Wix Studio  (launched in October 2023) brings a lot of new capabilities to a lot of different types of people across the web. From designers to developers to content creators and beyond, there’s a lot to explore.  While there’s been a lot written about Wix Studio, I’d like to dive into the platform from the perspective of a digital marketing agency.  Let’s take a look at the Wix Studio features that might be the most valuable for those working at scale, managing teams, projects, and clients, and creating high-performing websites. Table of contents: What is Wix Studio? How is Wix Studio different from Wix? Wix Studio features for SEOs & digital marketers Custom reusable templates (and site sections) Advanced permissions settings and team management Client management kit AI-powered responsive sections Reusable apps and widgets Bonus: The Wix Studio AI Assistant What is Wix Studio? For the record, I promise this H2 is not here for some absurd SEO reason—rather, it’s here because this may be your first introduction to Wix Studio.  Wix Studio is an advanced web builder created specifically with agencies and enterprise-level companies in mind. The platform offers both advanced customization as well as project management capabilities.  We built it to address the needs of large to enterprise-level businesses, as well as the needs of agencies and large in-house teams looking to manage a project (if not multiple projects) at scale and with less friction.  To that end (because my intention is not to write a bunch of marketing mumbo-jumbo), Wix Studio enables you to: Customize a site’s CSS  Create custom breakpoints and design with pixels Leverage hundreds of APIs Create code within the Wix Studio IDE  or connect a site to GitHub Collaborate with multiple teammates on a canvas in real-time  How is Wix Studio different from Wix?  In short, Wix Studio offers a more advanced editor geared toward web professionals. It also offers a business manager meant specifically to help agencies and enterprise teams oversee sites, projects, clients (in the case of agencies), team members, etc.  At the same time, Wix Studio is built on the Wix infrastructure. This means that all of Wix’s advantages get carried over to Wix Studio as well. This includes:  99.9% uptime Enterprise-level security  Cutting-edge SEO tech (such as structured data  automation, one-click indexation inspections , etc.) All of the foundations—from performance to security to SEO—that are embedded into Wix are part of Wix Studio, with the added power of the Wix Studio editor, business manager, and way too much more to cover right now (but if you want to learn more, check out the Wix Studio Academy ).  For now, I’ll highlight some of Wix Studio’s functionality that was designed to make work easier for digital marketers and SEOs.  Wix Studio features for SEOs & digital marketers For agencies, more efficiency means more ROI. The following Wix Studio features can help you work more efficiently across all your clients: Custom reusable templates (and site sections) Advanced permissions settings and team management Client management kit AI-powered responsive sections Reusable apps and widgets Bonus: The Wix Studio AI Assistant 01. Custom reusable templates (and site sections) Whether it’s a landing page or a category page, creating something that performs well can take a lot of refinement. Getting to the point where you’ve nailed the formula for a certain page type, template, etc. can legitimately be the culmination of years of trial and error.  This is why when we, as marketers, find something that works, we tend to stick with it.  In Wix Studio, you can take your winning formula and reuse it across any and all of your clients via custom templates. Custom templates work at the site level, meaning that you can reuse a template you created for one client by repurposing it for another.  Custom templates are stored in a library within the main Wix Studio dashboard. In addition, SEOs and digital marketers are often looking to templatize an element or page of a site. For example, if you have the perfect conversion-oriented landing page for a SaaS product, you want to be able to replicate that across any applicable clients. This is where creating custom reusable sections of a site comes in.  Wix Studio lets you create a library of reusable page sections.  When working on a client’s site, you can pull in saved assets that you’ve used across any number of projects. In our example of the perfect LP for a SaaS product, you can save the sections that matter to you as a reusable asset. Then when you have the next client, you don’t need to start from scratch. You can simply import those site section assets and recreate your perfect LP in a matter of a few clicks.  As another example, say you like to have a design asset that lists the local business’s total number of locations, number of clients served, and number of years in business (or whatever). You can save that asset and add it to a similar client’s local landing pages without having to rebuild it. All you’d have to do is align the numbers to that specific business.  There’s an endless number of ways you can use Wix Studio’s custom reusable templates. The bottom line is that you can take site elements that work (and even recreate pages) and replicate them on your other clients’ sites, saving you time and letting you work with greater scalability.  Here’s more on how you can get started creating reusable custom templates  and custom reusable sections  with Wix Studio. 02. Advanced permissions settings and team management If a variety of your team members also work on a client’s site, then the ability to set specific permissions can help you better manage the project while providing the client with a sense of security.  Wix Studio gives you in-depth control over what team members can (and can’t) do on a client’s site.  To start, you can assign general user profiles to members of your team. For example, if a team member is only working within the CMS, you can assign them the “Content Writer” role so they can edit any of the text, links, and media, but not make wider site changes.  Get started setting team member permissions by seeing if one of the broader profiles in Wix Studio fits your needs. You can also create a custom role to get more granular about what team members can access on the site.  Create a custom role for your team members to set more granular permissions. For example, you can create custom permission settings that dictate whether or not a team member will be able to: Manage social posts from the site Access SEO tools Create and manage emails or coupon codes Manage the client kit Create, delete, or modify CMS collections  Publish or edit blog posts  Create custom code  Access the alternate versions of the site in other languages Etc.  Within the Wix Studio editor, you can even assign which static pages a team member can or can’t edit .  03. Client management kit  As an SEO, I know that client relations can make or break your agency’s success. That’s why Wix Studio’s client management tools—specifically the client feedback tool and the client hand-off kit—are some of my personal favorites. Client feedback tool The feedback tool allows you to invite a client to offer feedback  directly on the site itself, but without altering the work you did on the site. It’s almost like using the comment feature on platforms like Figma.  Collect client feedback directly on editor pages using Wix Studio. If you’re a content marketer or an SEO, this can save you from having to either run through the site with the client or decipher exactly what the client is looking for.  Clients won’t have to take screenshots and try to explain to you via email.  So at a minimum, you’re making it easier for the client to give you feedback, which is not only better for your overall relationship, it’s better for your business over the long term. Wix Studio’s feedback tool allows clients to leave comments efficiently. Once a client leaves feedback, you’ll get a notification and be able to manage any comments within a unified dashboard.  You can manage client feedback directly in the Wix Studio dashboard. Client kit I tend to provide a wealth of resources when handing SEO tasks off to clients . I’ll often send a report, a list of “SEO reading material” to help the client contextualize things, and even Loom videos showing them how to implement my recommendations . Wix Studio’s client kit lets me upload everything to one place. And when the client logs into their account, they’ll immediately see the resources in their own dashboard.  The Wix Studio client kit enables you to upload any resource you’d like into one central dashboard. In addition to uploading whatever you’d like, you can connect your Wix Studio account with Google Drive and simply import documents directly from there.  Once you’ve uploaded assets to your Wix Studio account, you can simply select them from your library to add them to a specific client’s kit. This is helpful if you have designated resources to share with your clients at various stages (e.g., new client onboarding, quarterly updates, etc). 04. AI-powered responsive sections “Does content display well for mobile devices when viewed on them?” This is one of the questions Google asks when assessing page experience . Moving beyond Google, designing a mobile-friendly site can lower bounce rates, enabling you to better drive conversions for your business (or client’s business).  Wix Studio helps you build responsive websites that provide a fluid, intuitive experience for your mobile device users. The built-in AI responsiveness tool  enables you to create responsive functionality with a single click.  When you select a page section within the Wix Studio editor, an “AI” icon will appear (shown below). Click on it to automatically create a responsive design for that section.  You can apply the tool to every breakpoint, to a specific section, or solely to the mobile version.  If you like the design, simply click to accept it. You can reject it and run a new implementation as many times as you like. Or, you could abandon the AI recommendations altogether and manually adjust the page to your preferred responsiveness. If you’re adjusting responsiveness manually, page elements can be set to various behaviors to ensure they function correctly: Text is automatically set to scale in proportion, but you can customize it here, too.  But again, the AI solution makes responsiveness more accessible and can make the process far more efficient. For more information on these options, reference our knowledge base guide on building a responsive site on Wix Studio .  05. Reusable apps and widgets Similar to replicating custom themes and site elements across your client’s websites, Wix Studio lets you create reusable apps and widgets via Wix Blocks .  With Wix Blocks, you can build anything from a simple list widget to a custom dynamic element (like a countdown clock or mortgage calculator). You can start a build from scratch or use one of the various templates available.  Once you’ve started, you can insert various elements and make a variety of adjustments using the “Add” panel (shown below). You can do things like add text, insert buttons, change layouts, embed media, and so on with ease. So even if you are using a template, you can adjust the app or widget to your liking.  If you already built apps and want to pull them into a new application, you can use the embed functionality. The Wix Blocks Add Panel enables you to embed code to build apps or widgets. You can build an app or widget once and reuse it for other clients’ sites. In this way, all you’d most likely have to do is adjust some design elements or small functionality changes and you’re all set.  It’s really a matter of efficiency and getting the maximum value for your efforts. Build an app or widget once; reuse it multiple times across multiple clients. You can even sell the apps  you build to other Wix Studio users. Bonus: The Wix Studio AI Assistant For those that code, Wix Studio has its own IDE  that enables you to add code to the backend (and more complex code to the frontend than the editor itself allows for).  Built into the Wix Studio IDE is the Wix AI Assistant , which can aid professionals that are already proficient at coding but is invaluable for those who dabble.  You can use the AI Assistant to both create code or fix code that isn’t working the way you intended.  In the example below, I asked the AI Assistant to create basic code for an accordion: Not only do I get the basic code, the AI Assistant also gives me guidance on how to go about implementing it:  If I get stuck here, I can just go back and ask a follow-up question.  In the case of fixing code, I purposefully botched some FAQ structured data markup. The AI assistant had no issue realizing that I had set the “type@” to “FAQ” when it should have been “FAQPage”:  This powerful tool can make your processes a lot more efficient and embolden you to try new things when working with a client that you wouldn't have otherwise taken on.  Wix Studio is the best of Wix for agencies and enterprise businesses There are so many possible use cases for the Wix Studios features listed above. I tried to offer the general gist of things to show you how some of the elements are relevant to digital marketers of all types.  In addition to that, Wix Studio incorporates the best of Wix. This means you have enterprise-grade security, 99.9% uptime, and… all of the SEO , marketing , and analytics tools Wix offers.  Specifically, this means Wix Studio comes with:  Automated structured data for blog pages, products, courses, etc. One-click indexation status inspection A full suite of analytics and sales reports Native integrations with Google Merchant Center, Google Tag Manager, Amazon, etc.  Access to tools like Semrush, SE Ranking, Klaviyo, and much more The platform has evolved into a multi-layered ecosystem—explore these capabilities to see how they can help you accomplish more for your clients.  Mordy Oberstein - Head of SEO Branding, Wix   Mordy is the Head of SEO Branding at Wix. Concurrently he also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is one of the organizers of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Twitter  | Linkedin

Author: James Clark Understanding who comes to your site, how they get there, and then how they interact with it gives you crucial information for optimizing your site for search, and for future users. This knowledge is key to improving your site content and its functionality. In order to do this, you will need data from site analytics tools, among them Google Analytics. NOTE: Google's Universal Analytics is set for deprecation on July 1, 2023 . Refer to our guide on getting started with Google Analytics 4 for the most up-to-date guidance. What is Google Analytics? Google Analytics is a powerful web-based tool offered by Google to help you understand your website’s users—where they come from, what they do on your site, and whether they are converting. If you’re finding Wix Analytics Reports useful but really want to dive deeper into your data, then Google Analytics could be for you. It is also a good option if you’re already using other Google products such as Google Ads, as it’s designed to work together with these products to help you gain more insight into your marketing activity. Although Google does offer a premium version of Google Analytics, called Analytics 360, this is an enterprise-level solution with an enterprise-level price tag. The standard Google Analytics is both free and suitable for most websites, so that’s what we’re focusing on here. Google Analytics isn’t the only analytics tool available, and it isn’t even the only free tool, but it is certainly the most popular. With a huge community of users and lots of guides and resources available, as well as easy integration with Wix, it’s an obvious choice. What about Google Analytics 4? There is a lot of buzz—and confusion—about Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Google first introduced the next generation of its analytics platform in October 2020, but it will continue to support Universal Analytics (the version of Google Analytics that this article focuses on) until July 1, 2023. That essentially means that on July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics will stop processing hits and site owners must switch over to GA4. Why not start with Google Analytics 4 now? Some of the functionality that marketers and site owners might look for isn’t available yet in GA4. Nevertheless, it's a good idea to set up your GA4 property as soon as possible so that you can start keeping track of how users interact with your site. This will also enable you to get acquainted with the interface, which is a departure from Universal Analytics. You can simultaneously maintain properties for your site on Universal Analytics and GA4—this provides you with the robust features of Universal Analytics while preparing you for the inevitable transition to GA4. Creating your Google Analytics account To use Google Analytics with a Wix site, you’ll need a Premium site with a connected domain. The process has two steps. First, create your Google Analytics account and get your tracking ID. Then, enable Google Analytics on Wix and add your tracking ID. Here's how to do both. To create a Google Analytics account, you’ll need a free Google account. If you use Gmail, then you probably have one already, but if not, you can sign up for one here . Next, follow these steps: Go to analytics.google.com Click on the blue Start measuring button Give your account a name—maybe use your own name or the name of your business—and click Next Enter a property name—this could be the name of your website Important! Click Show advanced options and toggle on Create a Universal Analytics property Enter your website's URL, including the www Select Create a Universal Analytics property only (there's no harm in creating both a Google Analytics 4 and a Universal Analytics property, but we're going to focus specifically on Universal Analytics for this article) Provide some basic information on your business as prompted, and hit Create Choose your country, then read through and accept the relevant data processing and data protection terms Congratulations—you’ve created your first Google Analytics account and property. You should now be on the “Tracking Code” page, and in the top left you’ll see a Tracking ID in the following format: UA-123456789-1 Make a note of this, as you will need it in a minute! The letters “UA” at the beginning tell you this is an ID for a Universal Analytics property. If your ID begins with a “G”, you’ve created a Google Analytics 4 property instead. Adding your tracking ID to Wix Now that you have your Google Analytics property set up, completing the process on Wix is relatively straightforward. Log into Wix and go to Marketing & SEO > Marketing Integrations In the Google Analytics panel, click Connect At the top right, click Connect Google Analytics Paste in your entire Google Analytics ID (for example UA-123456789-1) Click Save Verifying your setup It typically takes 24 hours for data to start showing up in most of your Google Analytics reports. The exception is the suite of “Real-time” reports—reports that show you what’s happening on your site right now . Data appears in these reports straight away, making them perfect for checking that your setup is working correctly. In the vertical menu on the left, click on Real-time to open up the category and then click on Overview . This particular real-time report shows you, among other things, page views on your site as they happen. In most cases that includes your own page views, unless you are specifically filtering them out or are using a browser that blocks Google Analytics. So, go ahead and view a few pages—the data should appear in the report. Finding reports The next step is orienting yourself in Google Analytics. All the reports are listed in a vertical menu on the left-hand side of the interface. Aside from the real-time reports, there are four other categories of standard (i.e., predefined rather than custom) reports: Audience —who are my users? Acquisition —what are my sources of traffic? Behavior —what do users do on my site? Conversions —are users completing important actions, or “goals”? Each of these categories can be useful for understanding the effectiveness of your SEO activity. For example, you might want to know what proportion of traffic comes from organic search (Acquisition) and the landing pages those users come in on (Behavior). Next, you might want to look at how many purchases those users are making, or how many inquiry forms they’re filling out (Conversions). If you’re looking for a specific report but can't seem to find it, just type the name into the search box at the top of Google Analytics and click on the suggested matching result. The search box is also smart enough to understand questions about your data, such as: How many users did we get last month from the UK? What percentage of users were from organic search? What is my most popular landing page? Just type in your question and hit enter to open the “Insights” panel. As well as (hopefully) answering your question, this panel will provide you with a link to the most relevant report and suggest some follow-up questions you might want to ask. Working with a report You have a question about your site and you’ve found the most relevant report. Now, you need to analyze the data in that report to tease out your answer. But, how? For this example, we'll look at the Location Report (in Audience > Geo > Location ), which shows the geographical location of your site's visitors. Part of the Location report, showing date range selector, primary dimension selector, and search box. First, select a date range in the top-right. By default, the report will show the most recent seven-day period, but this is easily changed by picking a new start and end date. Tick “Compare to” if you want to compare, for example, the last 30 days against the same period last year. Perhaps you’ve noticed high traffic levels from Canada recently—comparing against a previous period will let you see whether this is an anomaly. Just below the main chart is an option to choose the “Primary Dimension.” Google Analytics reports are all made up of “dimensions” and “metrics”; without getting too complicated, think of these as rows and columns of a table. For the Location report, the default primary dimension is “Country”—but you could change this to “City”, “Continent,” or “Subcontinent”. If you drill down into the data, the dimension may change automatically. For example, click on “Canada” in the Location report and the primary dimension changes to “Region.” This lets you see whether those Canadian users are all coming from, say, Ontario, or are spread out across the country. To the right-hand side of the Primary Dimension selector is a small search box. Unlike the large search box at the top of Google Analytics, this one is used to search and filter the data within the report. So, if you had a primary dimension of “City” selected, you could search for “Toronto” to see the data for that city only. Click “Advanced” if you want to search for more than one value (or rather, city) at the same time, or even exclude a particular value from your search. Although we’ve been looking at the Location report, these options and filters are common across most of the other standard Google Analytics reports. So, getting familiar with one report will help you use the entire tool with confidence. Accessing your data easily with Analytics Now you know where and how to find the data you want, let's make sure you can easily access it in future. The first option is simply to Save any report using the button at the top of the page. This adds the report to a list in Customization > Saved Reports. It also saves any search filters or other changes you have made to the standard report, which means you won't have to make those same changes again in future. Alternatively, you can click on the Share button just to the right of Save. This lets you share a report (via email) but, more importantly, lets you schedule it to be sent out on a regular basis—daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Once you set this up, you will be able to find and edit it (or delete it) under Admin > Scheduled Emails . You can also set up Custom Alerts so that Google Analytics notifies you when certain conditions are met. This option is located in the Admin menu above Scheduled Emails. For example, you might want to receive an alert when Google Analytics has received no data in any given day, indicating a problem with your site tracking—or perhaps with the site itself. Alternatively, you might want to be notified of any sudden, large changes (positive or negative) in your organic search traffic. Next steps on your Google Analytics journey If you’re serious about learning Google Analytics, take a look at the free video courses that Google offers in its Analytics Academy . These range from Google Analytics for Beginners right through to Google Analytics for Power Users. After that, you can even consider sitting the Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam and getting certified! Ultimately though, Google Analytics is just a tool—it will help inform your SEO strategy but can’t compensate for not having one. To delve deeper into how to build and implement your own SEO strategy, visit our SEO Hub . * You should make sure your use of Google Analytics is compliant with local data protection regulations. Learn more about this here . James Clark - Web Analyst James Clark is a web analyst from London, with a background in the publishing sector. When he isn't helping businesses with their analytics, he's usually writing how-to guides over on his website Technically Product . Twitter | Linkedin

Updated: October 9, 2024 Author: James Clark Google Analytics is without doubt the most popular website analytics platform in the world. But, why do so many website owners turn to Google Analytics to understand their audiences’ behavior? There are several compelling reasons. First, it’s free (or at least the free version is suitable for the vast majority of users). As you would expect, it plays nicely with Google’s other products— from Google Ads to Google Search Console  and the data warehouse tool, BigQuery . It’s also well established, with a large, knowledgeable community behind it and plenty of training available. Google even offers official certification . The latest version of Google Analytics builds on these longstanding benefits by offering a number of new features of its own. These include powerful custom reports  called “explorations,” improved user engagement analysis, and the ability to combine mobile app and website usage data—all so that you can analyze how visitors are behaving on your properties and optimize to meet your business goals. Here’s everything you need to know to get started (and excel) with Google Analytics 4. Table of contents: Google Analytics 4 overview What you can learn from GA4 Setting up your Google Analytics 4 account and property Google Analytics 4 account structures Create a data stream How to tag your site Data may take time to appear Find your way around GA4 GA4’s standard reports Explorations Google Analytics 4 overview The current version of Google Analytics is Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Although it was introduced back in 2020, many users stuck with the previous version of the tool, Universal Analytics (UA), until it stopped collecting data in 2023. Now all historic data has been deleted from UA and the interface is no longer accessible. GA4 is the only option when it comes to Google Analytics. If you were a user of UA, you may be surprised how different GA4 is from its predecessor. Although the user interface looks reassuringly familiar, everything under the hood has changed . GA4 collects, stores, and reports on data in a new way. The initial setup, too, is different. This means that you can’t use online guides or documentation about UA to help you navigate GA4. Before we dive into how GA4 works, let’s look at why you would want to use it in the first place. What you can learn from GA4 As a website owner, it’s gratifying to see traffic on your site and fascinating to learn more about your users—both of which GA4 is invaluable for. But, the platform is above all else a tool for making business decisions. For example, you can use it to inform your marketing strategy. Perhaps you spend a lot of time focusing on social media; GA4 can tell you whether that is driving users to your site and whether those users are converting. You might find that some other activity is quietly generating more revenue. In our example above, we’ve discovered that average purchase revenue per user is hugely higher for email traffic than for any other channel. That’s definitely worth further investigation. If you run a blog or a news site, GA4 can help shape your content strategy. It will tell you which content is attracting not just the most users, but also the most engaged users (or to put it another way, the ones least likely to bounce ). Knowing what works for your audience and what doesn’t can ultimately help you learn more about what they prefer. Once you have a grasp of GA4 and its capabilities, you can start to plan changes to your site that can help you achieve your business goals . And of course, GA4 will be on hand to measure how effective those changes are. This enables you to make incremental improvements to your site based on real data. Sounds good? Let’s get started! Setting up your Google Analytics 4 account and property To set up Google Analytics, you’ll need a free Google account. If you have a Gmail email address, then you already have a Google account. If not, you can sign up by following these instructions . Next, navigate to Google Analytics . If this is your first time using Google Analytics, you’ll encounter a “welcome” screen; click on the blue Start measuring button to go to the “account setup” page. If you already have access to at least one Google Analytics property,, you’ll instead be taken to the “Home” for whichever property you viewed most recently. To get to account creation from here, click on Admin  at the bottom of the vertical, left-hand menu and then on the blue Create Account  button. What you need to know about Google Analytics 4 account structures We’re mentioning accounts and properties a lot, so it’s worth pausing to explain exactly how these two concepts work together in Google Analytics. In short, a property represents a website or app you’re tracking. An account is a way of organizing one or more properties. So for example, you could have an account containing a property for your business website and a property for your personal website. Or, because GA4 can be used on apps as well as websites, you might have a property for the iOS version of your app and another for the Android version. Universal Analytics also had a third level, “views,” so each property could have one or more views with different filters applied. However, this concept doesn’t exist in GA4, so at the simplest level, to use GA4, you’ll need an account with a GA4 property in it. That’s what we’ll create now. From account setup, Google walks you through a few short pages of settings, asking for information such as your time zone and email communications preferences (which you can change later on anyway). It’s pretty straightforward, but watch out for the step called “Business objectives”: your choice here personalizes the types of report that appear in your GA4 property. If you aren’t sure, tick “Other” to get access to multiple types of report. By the end of the process, you will have an account with a property in it—but no data yet. For that, you’ll need to set up a “data stream.” Create a data stream To start viewing information about how your users interact with your site, you'll first need to feed site data to Google Analytics via a data stream. Here’s how Google defines a data stream : “ A data stream is a flow of data from a customer touchpoint (e.g., app, website) to Analytics. When you create a data stream, Analytics generates a snippet of code that you add to your app or site to collect that data. Data is collected from the time you add the code, and that data forms the basis of your reports. ” When you first create a property, Google will helpfully guide you through the data stream setup process. If you navigate away, it will prompt you to go back via a big, red Go to stream setup  button at the top of the screen. 01. On the data streams page, choose your platform: Web, Android app, or iOS app. Although you can have more than one data stream feeding into the same property, a simple website setup will just have the one “Web” stream. Let’s click that now. 02. On the “Set up data stream” overlay, add your website URL and a stream name of your choice (you can use the URL again if you like, or just call it “Web stream”). 03. On the same overlay, choose whether you want enhanced measurement (it’s enabled by default). This is a GA4 feature that automatically tracks certain user interactions, such as scrolls and clicks on outbound links. Although it was possible to track these interactions with Universal Analytics, they didn’t come “out of the box,” so this is a big step forward. Most of the time, you’ll want to leave it enabled and click Create & continue . 04. Still under Enhanced Measurement , click the cog icon to access advanced settings for the Page View event. Here you’ll find the option to track“page changes based on browser history events.” Without getting too technical, this option is to help Google Analytics 4 work with single-page applications (websites that don’t reload the page during the user’s journey). However, with some platforms, such as Wix, this option can cause duplicate pageviews. So Wix site owners will need to untick the box . 05. Finally, on the web stream details page, the key piece of information is the Measurement ID . This will be a “G” followed by 10 letters and numbers, in the format G-XXXXXXXXXX. You’ll need this ID no matter which method you choose to tag your website with your analytics code. How to tag your site How you tag your site (that is, add the snippet of code that collects and sends data to Google Analytics) depends partly on the platform it’s built on. One popular option is to use Google Tag Manager, and you’ll find instructions for this on the web stream details page. Some platforms and website builders offer GA4 integration without needing to install a third-party plugin. Let’s take a look at how Wix handles it: Go to Settings > Marketing Integrations  in your site’s dashboard. Click Connect under Google Analytics. Click Add Google Analytics ID . Paste your Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID in the pop-up. . Note: Make sure that there are no extra spaces before the code. Select the IP Anonymization  checkbox if you want to hide your site visitors’ IP addresses from Google. Click Save . Data may take time to appear Once you’ve set up GA4, the first place you will see data begin to appear is the realtime overview ( Reports > Realtime ). Google warns that it may take some time for data collection to start, but more than likely, it will happen almost straight away. The realtime report gives you a snapshot of users on your site over the past 5 and 30 minutes, including their locations, traffic sources, and “ events ”. Again without getting too technical, GA4 treats each user interaction on your site as an event—from session starts and pageviews, through to the enhanced measurement events we looked at earlier. If data is showing up in your realtime report, you can be confident your setup is working. But it could still take up to 24–48 hours for data to appear in the standard reports. Find your way around GA4 For experienced users, the layout of the GA4 homepage is similar to the old Universal Analytics. You can access all the predefined reports using the menu on the left-hand side of the interface, swap between different accounts and properties using the dropdown menu in the top-left, and get to your Admin settings via the link in the bottom-left. The universal search box along the top is a powerful feature. You can search for the name of a specific report, but you can also ask questions about your data, such as “How many new users yesterday?” A good place to start is by searching for “Tour”—the results to this query, such as Admin Settings Tour and Reports Library Tour, give you a quick visual tour of different parts of the interface. When viewing an individual report, you’ll see it’s made up of a number of “cards”—each card being an individual table or graph. You can customize these by clicking the “customize report” icon in the top-right (the one that looks like a pencil). And, of course you can designate a date range (the default setting shows the last 28 days). Finally, many of the cards have a small dropdown menu in the top-left that lets you change the primary dimension. For example, you may be able to change “users” to “new users.” This makes the reports much more flexible. GA4’s standard reports GA4 has fewer predefined reports than Universal Analytics, and at launch it was missing some popular UA reports. This proved something of an annoyance for migrating users!  Google has since reintroduced some of the missing reports, such as the landing page report, and in general GA4 needs fewer reports because the ones it does have are more flexible. The default reports are divided into sections including: Acquisition : Which channels do your users come from—organic, direct, paid search or something else? Within this section, the traffic acquisition report lets you compare various channels to see which has the highest engagement rate, number of conversions, and so on. Engagement : How “sticky” are your users—that is, how likely are they to return to the site? This section also covers events. One particularly interesting chart (shown below) plots event count over time, so you can see when there is a sudden change to one event relative to the others and troubleshoot it to keep users progressing through your customer journey. User Attributes (previously Demographics) : How does your audience break down by age, location, gender, and language? What interests do they share? The demographic details report shows engagement rate for each individual country, age bracket, gender and so on. This can help you understand who your content is resonating with—and who it is not. Explorations Another reason that GA4 doesn’t offer so many standard reports is that it encourages users to create custom reports called “ explorations .” Many different exploration methods are available, from “free-form” (which, by default, presents your data as a table), through to funnel exploration and segment overlap. Fortunately, GA4 includes a template gallery with pre-built examples to help you understand how each exploration method works. To build an exploration, start by selecting the relevant dimensions (categorical data such as country) and metrics (numerical data such as number of users), as well as adding segments, filters and so on. If you’ve used Looker Studio, or created custom reports in Google Ad Manager, then this will be familiar to you; otherwise, it might be a bit of a learning curve. But it’s worth persevering, as explorations are what makes GA4 so powerful. Fortunately, there are plenty of guides online to creating useful explorations, whether you want to explore your site search data  or understand how far users are scrolling  down the page. Do your future self a favor and set up your GA4 property today One of the most important capabilities that Google Analytics offers is the ability to compare how your current efforts are performing against previous baselines. But, you need to begin tracking that historical data to be able to compare it later. The sooner you set up your GA4 property, the more historical data you’ll have to compare against, which can help you make better business decisions. Now if you really want to unlock the full value of your data, try linking GA4 with Google Search Console and check out our guide to understanding organic traffic . You can even use GA4 to automatically monitor your backlinks  as part of an advanced SEO strategy. James Clark - Web Analyst James Clark is a web analyst from London, with a background in the publishing sector. When he isn't helping businesses with their analytics, he's usually writing how-to guides over on his website Technically Product . Twitter | Linkedin