Initially, its announcement dropped like a bombshell, as SEOs feared their learned practices for optimising content – bolstering with buzzwords and trending topics – would be rendered obsolete, plummeting engagement and SERP ranking. Twitter users shared GIFs of stock market crashes and pandas smashing up computers, whilst bidding ‘RIP’ to programmatic SEO and niche sites. Others hailed the update as a bold, new frontier for SEO; a much-needed cleanse of SERPs polluted with trash content.

However, since the announcement and initial rollout, the past couple of weeks have been peculiarly quiet, even underwhelming. A recent poll by Aleyda Solis revealed that only 20% of SEOs had noticed any difference to their rankings after the update, with 63% seeing no change whatsoever. Of that 20%, it was a 60/40 split between those who saw the update as having a positive or negative impact, with those voting positive taking the slight majority.

The melodramatic memes have been superseded by perplexed shrugs, as displayed by this tweet likening the update to a half-arsed security guard. Google’s public liaison for search, Danny Sullivan, addressed the disappointment on Twitter, stating, “Update isn’t done. It’s also part of a continuing effort, as we’ve explained. We’ll keep refining how it works”. Google’s search advocate, John Mueller, chipped in, “I’d give it a bit more time”. Sullivan went on to acknowledge the previous hubbub, tweeting:

“I also get that when we announce an update, there are the memes and the gifs and the jokes and the OMG the sky is falling reactions that can even make me laugh. But updates don’t necessarily mean a big giant shift. If you have good content, you’re generally fine…”

So, what does ‘good content’ actually look like? Mercifully, Google has outlined some clear questions for SEOs to ask themselves when checking their content meets the ‘people-first’ approach, including:

• Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
• Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
• After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
• Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

The blog also goes on to list some questions to ask oneself in order to avoid the kind of SEO that this update vows to phase out, including:

• Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
• Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
• Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
• Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
• Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
• Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?

In many ways, this update could be hugely beneficial for both SEOs and performance marketers seeking to cut through the noise and better reach their audience. The ‘quality over quantity’ approach levels the playing field, ensuring that as long as you are delivering authentically to your audience, your ranking will improve. Still, with the past two weeks feeling so anticlimactic, it’s difficult to know what to expect. Is this the calm before the storm, or should we expect a mere drizzle?

The post Google’s ‘Helpful Content’ Update – SEO-pocalypse, or Business as Usual? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

While the energy needed for a single internet search or email is minimal, the number of UK internet users is projected to increase to 88.7% of the country’s population by 2025. Those scraps of energy and the associated greenhouse gasses emitted with each online activity rapidly begin to add up.

While many organisations have made significant progress over recent years in the push to become more eco-friendly, a recent study of marketing professionals by the WFA revealed many gaps remain in brands’ collective journey to a more sustainable future. Climate change and environmental degradation are two of the greatest challenges of modern times, and while we can’t single-handedly change the whole world when it comes to sustainability – we can make sure we manage our own slice of it and start to bring our collective emissions down. As such, even small improvements like following SEO best practices can multiply into real effective change.

How can SEO help the environment?

A solid SEO strategy goes far beyond keywords and links. It means optimising every inch of your online presence so that a website is not only discoverable to users, but also builds trust and credibility – ultimately helping you stand out from competitors. From an environmental standpoint, a good technical SEO strategy means that energy consumption is naturally lowered as it aims to improve page speed by reducing the number and size of assets that need to be loaded. As a result, faster, higher performance websites also have lower bounce rates, meaning a user is less likely to visit another website to complete their intended goal.

These user experience considerations, along with making content findable through a well-thought-out navigation, with no broken links or unnecessary redirects, aims for a fluid customer journey. This fluidity allows users to reach their destination, all while loading the fewest and most energy efficient pages as possible.

Not only is making speed efficiencies the responsible thing to do, but it will help marketing efforts too. With Google’s Core Web Vitals algorithm update starting to roll out, a faster, more energy efficient website has never been more important for organic performance. A faster website is not only beneficial for SEO and customer experience, but can positively impact paid campaigns, as reducing load times have also been shown to boost the quality score of landing pages. One client saw a Cost Per Click (CPC) decrease of 62% for an ad group after a +3 point improvement of the mobile speed score on the campaign landing pages.

The impact of a faster, more efficient website goes way beyond SEO metrics. Over recent years, we’ve seen significant growth in the priority given to corporate social responsibility by companies, as consumers and employees demand businesses take interest in more than just profits. Research shows that sustainability and purpose now drive purchasing decisions, with an IBM survey finding that four in 10 users make their primary purchasing decisions in a purpose-driven way – the same number that are driven by value/cost. Reducing a brands website carbon emissions is a necessary step in sustainability transformation that customers now expect from the brands that they love.

Investment in ECO SEO & measuring its ecological impact

With many speed improvement recommendations often requiring significant investment, sustainability is an additional factor to deploy when convincing non-technical stakeholders of the need for site speed updates. While it might not be a deciding factor of its own, effectively communicating the additional benefits of improved page speed will get attention from other areas of the business. Communicating the impact of your commitment to sustainability is essential to reap the additional benefits – helping improve employer branding as well as both internal and external PR.

When it comes to measurement, up until recently it’s been extremely difficult to measure what the emissions from a particular site might be. While there are now many tools on the market that can estimate these emissions using data sources, including the energy source used by services and traffic volume, this is not yet precise. By taking a more top-level view, we can assess the impact of implementations which we know will make websites more efficient, such as a reduction in the number of server requests.

Building a ‘better web’

Google has long talked about building a ‘better web’ – whether trying to eliminate spam content from ranking in its search results or encouraging businesses to build responsive and secure websites, the focus has usually been on a user’s online experience. Recognising there is a bigger sustainability picture which can be considered by businesses takes our understanding of a ‘better web’ beyond things like speed metrics and which protocol is used.

It might seem like a small step to take in the drive for greater sustainability, but when it comes to reducing the impact of people’s behaviour on the environment, when taken together, lots of small steps can make a dramatic difference. Not only are brands increasingly assessed by customers by their social purposes, but companies are also being weighed in the financial markets by their focuses on Environmental and Social Governance (ESG). These efforts reinforce better actions and responsibilities which can be taken throughout a business when it comes to taking steps towards a better world. 

The post Going Green: Reducing Environmental Impact With SEO appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In other words: the sooner work commences, the faster the results will roll in. Instead of waiting until new products are well established and generating larger search volumes, SEO efforts should be active from the get-go. This lesson is more important than ever, considering that  50% of CMOs aim to enhance company performance by unveiling fresh offerings in existing or new markets this year. 

With future success dependent on early action, a firm grasp of how to use SEO efficiently to target audiences at every stage of the marketing funnel — including the considering, curious and unaware — is paramount. 

Growing pains: what obstacles do marketers face? 

What’s good for a brand is frequently good for SEO. Typically, this phrase refers to powerful and consistent content that wins user attention, drives loyalty, and helps make businesses easily discoverable online. However, there are also notable parallels between fundamental brand challenges and SEO challenges. For instance, checking out the competition for product names is crucial from an SEO perspective, to ensure minimal rivalry for brand keywords and secure robust positioning for more generic terms. 

From an SEO-specific point of view, when launching a new product offering or brand, marketers must carefully navigate several potential issues. In particular: the possibility of confusion around where products sit in the search arena and which categories they fall under, as well as how to produce content that targets every stage of the funnel. All of which means campaigns should drive more than high-speed and blanket exposure. Instead, initiatives need to centre on securing effective reach across multiple types of users, from those already considering your goods or services to those who are simply curious or may be unaware of your offering. 

Hooking users who are primed to buy 

Focusing on users with the highest conversion probability is an obvious priority. So is the first step for SEO strategy, which is to check that the chosen domain name isn’t already in use or too broad to stand a chance of ranking — think “Max Bright” for toothpaste or “All Weathers” for new outdoor gear. Less immediately apparent is the need to look beyond just the product page when selecting keywords for a website, and to understand core requirements, tastes and search behaviours for individuals in the ‘considering’ phase. 

One valuable reference point for gathering this information is in-depth competitor analysis; covering not just products, but also search tactics. By pinpointing the terms rivals are currently targeting to talk about themselves, marketers can obtain a comprehensive understanding of what audiences shopping for products in their vertical are searching for and home in on the most relevant keywords. Meanwhile, assessing competitor rich search results can highlight opportunities to spark purchasing inspiration, by selecting similar terms and topics such as branded knowledge panels, ‘People Also Ask’ boxes, and Featured Snippets. 

Combined with smart keyword research tools that identify areas where marketers can hit the highest iteration volume for specific keyword variations, this will offer the means to own the branded search landscape. Additionally, incoming insights about  keywords with rapidly growing search volume can also be continually mapped to site content and URLs, ensuring user queries are rapidly answered and maximising the likelihood that great experiences will lead to more purchases. 

Harnessing SEO to convert the curious 

Curious audiences are a positive indicator of progress, but custom can’t be guaranteed.  Therefore, after product awareness and traffic begins to climb, it’s vital not to assume that SEO’s job is done. Marketers should set their sights on limiting the risk of lost user attention and sales by streamlining the path from initial interest or curiosity to further exploration of your brand and engagement.

Achieving this requires your search strategy to make it simple and quick for users to access information. Again, a large part of this involves keyword and competitor research. Identifying overlapping products and evaluating their digital footprint — such as associated search suggestions and the search engine results pages (SERPS) they feature in — can give marketers a clear picture of where they should be aiming. Equipped with this knowledge, marketers can ensure that search efforts appear in the right places to reach those intrigued by new products and encourage investigation; not to mention seizing interest and leading them towards your site instead of competitors. 

It’s also worth recognising that curious audiences are at a different juncture in the funnel than considering users, meaning search terms and needs will be different too. As a result, analysing their unique queries and habits is equally as important to collect the insights necessary for refining keyword use, optimising content, and bolstering traffic.

Reaching the unaware before your competitors 

There comes a point in every new product or service journey where driving long-term growth means moving into unknown territory. To keep bringing in fresh prospects, marketers must connect with users who haven’t heard of their brand or offering and aren’t yet browsing for such items. Once more, SEO can help them cut through the online noise.

An integral aspect of attracting wider audiences is, of course, expanding search activities. Seed keywords — including broad terms of one or two words — have a key role to play in enabling marketers to extend their reach, before narrowing back down. For marketers, determining seed keywords related to their brand provides a base they can leverage in conjunction with research tools to isolate and target more detailed, long-tail queries using modifiers. For example, that could entail starting with “ways to de-stress”, building to “running to de-stress”, and finally “size 5 trail running women’s trainers”.

Stepping outside of familiar audiences also requires creative thinking and experimentation. In addition to standard procedures for finding the best opportunities — such as analysing SERPS, autocomplete phrases, and rich results — marketers should tap into a variety of sources including listening tools such as AnswerThePublic, forums and comments sections, to produce more diverse digital content that’s underpinned by a deeper perspective on industry trends, topics and user questions. 

To make the most of SEO, marketers must be realistic about its abilities. While instant floods of traffic are unlikely, it can put new products on track for something that’s more valuable than quick, and often fleeting, volume hits. Marketers must appreciate that a sizable element of long-term product growth is reliant on speedy and multi-faceted SEO activation that not only gets new wares in front of relevant audiences, but also engages users across the buying lifecycle. Ultimately, by developing search strategies to reach the considering, curious and unaware, savvy marketers can build long-lasting relationships, loyalty, and sales.

The post Why Go-To Market Success Depends on Early SEO Action appeared first on PerformanceIN.

So what is dwell time?

In simple terms, ‘Dwell Time’ is the actual amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage before returning to the search engine results page (SERP).

It’s important not to get this confused with Bounce Rate, which shows the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page.

Think about yourself for a second. When googling something, you most likely click onto a few different webpages, and after having a quick look at the content, you realise it’s not what you’re looking for, so you hit the return button. The time you spent on the site is the Dwell Time.

It may seem quite simple, but Dwell Time can be difficult to understand. For instance, if a page is very clear and concise, telling readers exactly what they want to know as soon as they click onto it, they may leave the page sooner, thus decreasing the Dwell Time. This means that higher Dwell Time doesn’t automatically mean a page is ‘better’. However, the longer somebody spends viewing your page, the more likely the page satisfied their needs.

It is subjective, meaning SEO experts should take into account the content they are thinking about and whether or not a higher/lower Dwell Time is desired.

What Dwell Time is not

It should also be noted that measuring Dwell Time alone is not an accurate or all-round helpful way of understanding your audience. However, considering this alongside the measures you use already, it could give you the results you’ve been missing.

Dwell Time is not something that can be measured via a third-party tool. It is a metric that only search engines can measure. This doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be considered, however.

Whilst there is no one thing that can be done to increase Dwell Time, it’s pretty easy to think about what will assist in this. For instance, placing key information all the way down a long page is not going to give visitors the quick answers they want. A slow loading time isn’t going to encourage visitors to stay on a site. Considering and implementing these changes could be the key to ensuring visitors stay on your site as long as you would like them to.

Dwell Time is definitely something that should be taken into consideration when trying to analyse engagement. It may seem unimportant as it cannot be viewed as a metric on third-party tools that are commonly used, however, it could be the key to getting visitors to stay on your site, and navigate around it.

The post WTF is Dwell Time? appeared first on PerformanceIN.

What we don’t talk about enough, though, is the risk of continuing to slog away at longer-term, mature campaigns without a long-term strategy. Of ending up in a rut, spinning your wheels only to see your brand get left behind, whether that’s in a single big drop after a core update or a slower long-term slide into irrelevance. 

To manage that risk, SEO’s need to be constantly reviewing, challenging and elevating their strategies. SEO has the potential to be far more than a list of increasingly nit-picky technical tweaks. Done right, it should be at the heart of your long-term digital strategy, helping future-proof your brand both inside and outside of the SERPs. 

The SEO Treadmill: Knowing when to stop

The early stages of an SEO campaign are often the most exciting. Taking advantage of big technical and content wins can lead to big jumps in visibility, with hockey-stick performance graphs and the bragging rights to go with them.

Unfortunately, those big wins tend to be all too finite. Managing SEO campaigns long-term can be trickier, with fewer quick rewards, less glamour and a lot more legwork. You’ll quickly move down the cost-benefit hierarchy, from big sweeping changes to rote tasks generating lower returns and requiring higher levels of investment. 

You could also start to worry about losing what you’ve built. With search engines changing constantly, performance is never guaranteed, no matter how long-established or successful your campaign. Big changes start to seem riskier, and you can never be sure whether the work you’re doing is having no impact, or if it’s stopping performance from going into decline. 

It’s easy to waste vast amounts of time and money by unwittingly slipping into this sort of “treadmill mode” on your campaigns – churning the same blog content strategy, conducting the same tired outreach campaigns, and making ever-more-trivial tweaks to your image alt text in the hope that if you just do it long enough, it’ll all work out. 

This inevitable slide from short-term wins to long-term slog not only tanks your SEO campaign’s ROI – it puts your brand at risk of being outpaced by competitors and left behind.  

Doing well? It’s probably time to change your strategy

If you’re getting too comfortable with your SEO campaign, that’s a dangerous place to be. If you’re relying on tired old tactics or getting lazy in your execution (and by definition, doing well enough that this isn’t a huge problem right now), you’re putting yourself at serious risk of having the world move on without you. 

It can be difficult to know when you’ve reached a tipping point where staying on the same path is no longer productive. Your team might not be forthcoming with that information either – if your agency has come to rely on your retainer investment, they’re unlikely to be the ones saying “this is getting a bit pointless now, guys” as they deliver their 42^nd identical monthly activity report.  

However, if growth has slowed and new ideas are getting thin on the ground, it could mean the time is ripe for challenging some long-held assumptions and asking some difficult questions. For example:

Stop looking at the letter and focus on the spirit

Of the many outdated narratives the SEO industry should really have jettisoned by now, by far the worst is the idea of “cracking the algorithm”. 

In truth, machine learning means that there isn’t really some secret code to unravel anymore, at least not in a sense that we’d ever be capable of understanding. 

If you’re focused on codifying SEO to the Nth degree, it’s easy to end up in a cycle of pointless activity for activity’s sake. This sort of thinking can also lead to over-reliance on loopholes or exploitative tactics, and this can be exactly what gets you into trouble when Google does inevitably catch up with you. 

While there might not be hard and fast answers, there are a lot of very good, common-sense guidelines on how to make websites more accessible to search engines and more attractive to users. Instead of scouring the internet for the latest SEO acronym that’s going to fix everything for you, ask difficult questions instead. 

Is my site still relevant? Does it really – hand on heart – deliver value for the search intent of the keywords I’m targeting, or am I just shoehorning keywords in for the sake of it? If my site wasn’t indexed anymore, would anybody really care? If not, how do I change that?

These questions are harder to answer (and will definitely take more soul-searching) than most SEO audit templates. However, taking action on the really big questions is likely to have far more impact on your future SEO visibility than jumping blindly onto the next jargon-fuelled bandwagon.  

Apply SEO Insights to other channels (not just PPC)

Search is like no other marketing channel. It’s unique in that users actively request answers and information, interacting with brands rather than simply having them interrupt their day. 

This makes for great conversion rates (provided you have a thorough understanding of search intent), but it also gives you a direct understanding of your potential customers’ needs, wants and worries. 

Search is an opportunity to build a personal connection with stressed-out, advertising-blind customers in a way that’s increasingly difficult via other channels. If you don’t believe me, just look through your own search history for the past couple of weeks – it’s sometimes frightening how much of our lives is laid bare through the search bar. 

While few people underestimate the value of search as a marketing channel, it’s easy to miss out on the potential benefits of search insight across a whole range of other areas of your business. 

Search can tell you whether your niche is on an upward curve and likely to see an influx of competitors, or whether it’s contracting and you might need to pivot.

It can tell you whether you’re speaking your customers’ language, or whether you’re starting to sound outdated. 

Search data could be the inspiration for your next product offering or your next marketplace disruption. If you’re only using it to decide your next blog post title, you’re missing out. 

Reduce your reliance on SEO

While it might seem trite, reducing your reliance on SEO is about more than just dividing your business’ eggs into more baskets. Ironically enough, the less you need search engines, the more likely it is that you’re the sort of business they’d want to include in their listings. 

I forget exactly who originally said it, and I’m probably paraphrasing it horribly, but a quote that’s always stayed with me goes something like this:

“Be the result that Google would be embarrassed not to show.”

If you’ve got a strong brand, a loyal customer base, and a consistently high level of users searching for you by name, you’re probably doing all the things that Google would want to see from a high-performing search result. If, on the other hand, you’re not offering anything beyond being first in the rankings, you’re at considerably higher risk.

“The spirit, not the letter” comes back into play here. 

While it’s probably going to be regarded as some form of SEO agency treason, here’s an idea: if your SEO budget isn’t generating a noticeable level of ROI, stop investing and put that money into something more fundamental instead. 

Not everybody needs to be investing thousands into SEO month on month to no end, and much as we’d like to believe otherwise, the SEO industry doesn’t always have the answers. I’d much rather see my clients pause or stop SEO campaigns to focus on bigger developments to their proposition or user experience than keep churning out rote SEO tasks to try and maintain an increasingly precarious position in the rankings.

Focus on what matters

In these times more than any other, it’s clear that change and instability is a fact of life. This is true for SEO too, and while losing visibility is a worrying prospect, the truth is that it’s impossible to prepare for every eventuality.

We’ve never really spent too much time tracking specific Google updates at Cameo Digital. Instead, we’ve always focussed on doing what seemed most in line with the spirit of what Google was trying to achieve, and it’s mostly paid off.

While there’ll always be idiosyncrasies that need specialist SEO knowledge (the need for a technically well-optimised site will probably never go away), good SEO is less about chasing the algorithm than its ever been.   

While this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared, it does mean we need to tread a fine line between hedging against potential losses and actually making gains. Continuing to run bloated, low impact SEO strategies might be helping you to maintain your rankings and prevent decline, but there’s always the possibility that money could be spent on something more impactful. 

Continually understanding, developing and proving your value to your customers is the best way of ensuring a future for your business, and understanding SEO is a great way of doing this. 

The post Getting off the Treadmill: Why SEO Can No Longer Exist in a Vacuum appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In advertising, there are several key questions that are always bandied around: how are our ads performing? What’s the ROI like? Are we increasing brand awareness?

Marketers using Google Ads have been comfortable responding to these questions, often relying on the ‘average position’ metric but as of September 30th that metric is being fully retired to make way for ‘prominence metrics’, made up of Impression Share and Impression Rate, which have been being phased in since November 2018.

If this development fills you with panic and like the vast majority of people on the planet you’re initial response is normally to resist change, don’t worry! It is possible to transition from one metric to the other seamlessly and without impacting success.

Why is ‘average position’ being retired?

The ‘average position’ metric let advertisers know where their ads were in ad auctions compared to other ads- not necessarily on the SERP. In this old system, a position of one didn’t necessarily mean you were maximising an opportunity or that ads were showing up above the organic results or not, only the order versus other ads.

Without clarity advertisers have been left guesstimating ad performance and, with an increasing share of searches coming from mobile and new ad formats, the position isn’t as easy to define as it once was.

What is Impression Share and Impression Rate?

In a nutshell, Impression Share is the percentage of impressions that your ads receive compared to the total number that your ads are eligible to get. It’s a way of highlighting missed opportunities by indicating how often a particular ad showed up in the search results. 

Impression Share gives you a clear understanding of where your ads will actually show on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). These new metrics are specific and reliable indicators of page location, which is incredibly valuable.

There are three versions of Impression Share that all measure your impressions divided by the total eligible impressions for your ads, based on different locations on the SERP:

• Search (absolute top) IS: The impressions you’ve received in the absolute top location (the very first ad above the organic search results) divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location
• Search (top) IS: The impressions you’ve received in the top location (anywhere above the organic search results) compared to the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location
• Search impression (share) %: The impressions that appear anywhere on the page

Impression % (or rate) shows you how often your ads are showing at the top of the search results page. This was a shortcoming of average position, as even an ad in position two might be at the bottom of the page.

The two metrics that are only based on your impressions, not the total number of eligible impressions are:

Impression (absolute top) %: The percentage of your impressions shown as the very first ad above the organic search results

Impression (top) %: The percentage of your impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results

How do I optimise for awareness?

Advertisers who are more focused on driving awareness than ROI should be targeting Impression Share. This ensures your ads are meeting a visibility threshold and helping to raise awareness of your brand.

How do I make the most of the new metrics then?

There are always a couple of different ways to skin a rabbit so the transition from ‘average position’ to Impression Share will vary depending on the skills and capacity within each team. If you choose to run your ads directly through Google, their advice is simply:

For those currently “using average position to understand the location of your ads on the page, it’s better to use Impression (Absolute Top) % and Impression (Top) %. If you’re using average position to bid to a page location, it’s better to use Search (Abs Top) IS and Search (Top) IS.”

The easiest way to set your targets is to look at recent performance for campaigns across the three impression % (rate) metrics and use this as a starting point. This will ensure the smoothest transition from targeting a position to targeting impression share.

The table below shows our default mapping from a position target to impression %. This should only be used for advertisers with limited historical data.

However, if like many advertisers who are still getting to grips with the change, you prefer the reassurance of a purpose tool which automatically sets bids to achieve your share Google Ads goal, there are providers out there who offer this. If you keep the following five points in mind when selecting a provider, you can’t go far wrong:

1. Goals-by-device: Independent device optimisation because user behaviour varies a lot between desktop and mobile
2. A responsive intraday bidding engine: Make sure you the tool you select uses the latest prominence signals and runs every few hours to make hitting targets easy
3. A holistic account strategy: The ability to apply bid strategies across multiple Google accounts within the same workflow, instead of individually
4. A single bid strategy: For easy comparison, make sure that the tool is compatible with both position-based bidding for non-Google publishers and Impression Share metrics for Google
5. Immediate setup and launch: With the September 30th deadline fast approaching, it’s imperative that advertisers can dive right in and begin targeting to Impression Share, without the need to upload historical data

The post Google Bids Goodbye to the Average Position Metric appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In the ever-changing world of SEO focuses on driving more traffic can leave your brand’s site trailing the competition. There are a multitude of factors that can have a significant impact on your organic performance, from technical enhancements to optimising content for intent.

Google as an answer engine

Organic search results have changed significantly, with Google trying to answer a search query in the search results. Optimising your site for Featured Snippets and People Also Ask (PAAs) questions can have a dramatic impact on increasing your brand’s visibility.

1. Identify your target keywords – a number of keyword analysis tools such as STAT allow you to see which keywords are generating Featured Snippets or PAAs such as Ahrefs and SEMrush.
2. Determine the opportunity – Featured Snippets are primarily populated by pages ranking between positions 1 to 8 in the search results so keywords ranking here should be your focus.
3. Analyse the competitors – For list and table Featured Snippets, the HTML markup used on a page influences inclusion in a snippet. Look for sites using bulleted lists (<ul> elements), numbered lists (<ol> elements), tables (<table> elements) and header tags (H1s and H2s particularly) to frame questions on a page, as these can influence inclusion in paragraph Featured Snippets and PAAs.
4. Match the intent – matching the intent of your content to the Featured Snippet or PAA, increases the possibility of being included in the feature. If the content in the snippet is informational but your content is highly commercial you will need to change it to be included. For PAAs, look to introduce content to your site that answers the identified questions, either by expanding your FAQ section or adding short FAQ content hubs to relevant pages.
5. Implement technical changes – markup relevant questions as H1s or H2s for both Featured Snippets and PAAs, as well as using tables or bulleted and numbered lists where relevant to structure your content in a format that matches the Featured Snippet.

Site speed

Site Speed has taken on an increased prominence over the last year with a number of algorithm updates including the Speed Update specifically targeting mobile site speed. Therefore, improving your mobile site speed is a key factor in improving overall organic performance.

Choose the right tools – Google recently updated PageSpeed Insights to provide a more in-depth analysis, but I recommend Google’s Lighthouse site speed audit which has more capability.

1. Choose the right tools – Google recently updated PageSpeed Insights to provide a more in-depth analysis, but I recommend Google’s Lighthouse site speed audit which has more capability.
2. Choose the right metrics – chasing 100/100 scores may be tempting but your focus should be on making your site faster for your customers. Google has popularised metrics which let your customers know whether the page is loading if it answers their query and whether they can interact with the page. Improving one or a number of these metrics will ensure you make the page feel faster for your customers.
3. Optimise for perceived speed – improve your customers’ perception of how quickly the page is loading, rather than just improving the overall load time. Ensure the main image on a page or your font files load quickly so customers can see whether the page answers their query (resource prioritisation).
4. Prioritise sitewide changes – these will have the biggest impact on performance as they are easier to implement and will affect the whole site. Ensure repeat customers don’t have to redownload files that haven’t changed (caching), making sure your servers can deliver files quickly (HTTP/2) and delivering images optimised for the web are a must.

Analysing the relevance of your link profile

Google uses topic relevancy signals when analysing the links to your site so securing PR coverage in relevant publications is important.

1. Download a list of your links – Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic are subscription-based tools that have sizeable indexes of links.
2. Filter the list – analysing the most authoritative links will provide you with the most actionable overview of your link profile. The above indexes use authority metrics scored out of 100 and filtering for sites with a score of 60 or above will give you a representative analysis of your links.
3. Analyse relevancy – determine whether you are obtaining coverage in relevant articles by using Natural Language processing to categorise the pages where your site has acquired links.
4. Acquire more relevant coverage – look for topics that are relevant to your products or services that are not highlighted in the above analysis and then target publications that cover these topics.

Understanding keyword intent

Optimising for the highest volume keywords will no longer deliver the biggest impact on organic performance. As searchers become savvier and Google’s machine learning algorithms begin to understand more complex queries, SEOs need to optimise for the searcher’s intent.

1. Segment your keywords – segmenting keywords by intent provides the platform to optimise content for consumer intent. You can use Excel to automatically categorise a keyword list, the example formula below categorises for local intent (keyword is in cell A2). =IF(NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“near me”,A2))),”Near Me”, IF(NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“open now”,A2))),”Open Now”, IF(OR(NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“in leeds”,A2))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“in liverpool”,A2))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“in newcastle”,A2))),NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“in manchester”,A2)))),”In Location”, IF(NOT(ISERR(SEARCH(“open late”,A2)))=TRUE,”Open Late”,”No Local Intent”))))
2. Download ranking URLs – download the top 20 ranking URLs for your categorised keywords using your chosen rank tracking tool.
3. Analyse intent – analyse the ranking URLs using the Natural Language tools to highlight the most popular topics appearing for each of your intent categories.
4. Update content – using the above analysis determine the content changes required to match your site to the intent from the search results.

Summary

The constantly changing landscape of Google’s search results provides SEOs with a number of opportunities to enhance a site’s performance. Prioritising tactics that will improve the visibility of your brand in a competitive landscape, provide better user experience, increase relevancy and match consumer intent will ensure that your SEO efforts have the maximum business impact.

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Since April last year, we have found a lot of our analysis and conversations are revolving around the E-A-T update. The update was released on August 2018 and focused improving rankings for websites that could demonstrate Expertise, Authority and Trust within product and services online

As with any Google update, there are winners and losers, and techniques adopted or rejected by SEO agencies and a need to share data at an industry level to determine best practice moving forward. Here we will break down some of our findings. 

Definitions

We touched on the overall definition of E-A-T earlier – but here’s some further detail for you.

Expertise — How knowledgeable the site owner or content author is on the subject matter they talk about. This is especially important for the aforementioned YMYL sites, not so much for gossip websites or similar. Are you an expert in your field? 

Authoritativeness — The websites online profile in general and how google can perceive your brand to be positive or negative in the public eye. Are you an authority figure in your subject matter? Do you have some reviews somewhere that say you aren’t great and you don’t provide a good service (or the opposite)?

Trustworthiness — Relating to the sites quality and ability to be trusted by a user. Specifically, elements around data and site security etc. 

YMYL – what is and what is its relevance to E-A-T?

These guidelines were released as an addition to the earlier YMYL update focusing specifically on healthcare sites, which if you aren’t sure stands for Your Money Or Your Life.

Specifically defined by google as pages or websites that have an impact on the “happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users.” Examples that they give include:

• Shopping or financial transaction pages: webpages that allow users to make purchases, transfer money, pay bills, etc. online (such as online stores and online banking pages). 
• Financial information pages: web pages that provide advice or information about investments, taxes, retirement planning, home purchase, paying for college, buying insurance, etc. 
• Medical information pages: web pages that provide advice or information about health, drugs, specific diseases or conditions, mental health, nutrition, etc. 
• Legal information pages: web pages that provide legal advice or information on topics such as divorce, child custody, creating a will, becoming a citizen, etc. 
• News articles or public/official information pages important for having an informed citizenry: webpages that include information about local/state/national government processes, policies, people, and laws; disaster response services; government programs and social services; news about important topics such as international events, business, politics, science, and technology; etc. Please use your judgment and knowledge of your locale. Keep in mind that not all news articles are necessarily considered YMYL. 
• Other: there are many other topics that you may consider YMYL, such as child adoption, car safety information, etc. Please use your judgment.

So what is the significance of E-A-T with regards to YMYL and these types of websites?

E-A-T is effectively an extension to the YMYL guidelines and further defines what Google’s algorithms will be evaluated when considering where your website should be positioned within the search results. 
Ultimately, E-A-T can be summarised as trusted quality, and in order to build trusted quality, your SEO strategy needs to be more than just on-page enhancements and an offsite link building campaign – it needs to consider the difference between a page that users what to use to know something and whether want to do something (such as buying a product or service).

Considering E-A-T, what should our SEO strategy look like?

Your SEO strategy should be an all-encompassing, 360-degree strategy, that considers:

Strategy planning

• Who your target audience/s are
• What your target audience(s) needs to complete the desired action online (and whether your site currently offers this)

Business offering & credibility 

• Why your business can be trusted by these audiences
• How your website demonstrates your businesses ability to be trusted (security, accreditations, iso standards, testimonials, reviews etc)
• Is there an opportunity to improve this trust 

Relevancy & usefulness

• Detailed, relatable content to a user search query (how-to guide, Q&A answers, video content)

Content & digital PR

• What is your communication strategy for the year ahead? 
• How are you utilising PR to expose your communications to your target audiences via trusted online websites (more than just a link building campaign, this is about getting market reach)
• Are you connecting with social influencers that can help share your communications (think Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok)

Google search quality guidelines 

All of these guidelines, in essence, are covered within a document google released giving guidelines to its 10,000 strong quality raters – individuals worldwide that assist in checking and rating the search engine results pages. 
In essence, E-A-T requires auditing and planning of your business strategy as a whole. It is no longer safe to just consider how to get people online to convert and you should be considering how your business is perceived and trusted. 

How can you measure your website’s E-A-T?

As always, there is no clearly definitive way to measure your website’s performance against such algorithms or guidelines. We recommend keeping an eye on the usual metrics, such as

• Domain authority
• Page authority
• Traffic
• Keyword visibility 

My website isn’t in the medical or financial sector – does E-A-T still apply to me?

Whilst google clearly states within its guidelines document that these guidelines primarily apply to medical and financial websites, we believe it’s good to follow these guidelines regardless of your sector, as they are all indicative of providing website users with a website experience that’s informative, trustworthy, safe, and secure. 

The post Google’s E-A-T Update and What This Means for Your SEO appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Trying to boost brand visibility and reputation organically can seem like an elusive and time-consuming task but achieving high search engine rankings naturally not only drives consumers to your door, it also makes the most of performance marketing efforts.

There is a multitude of techniques that brands can employ to improve search engine optimisation (SEO), but SEO is essentially based on two factors – relevance and trustworthiness. Given this tall order, what can be done exactly to achieve brand visibility through organic search?

Maintain an accurate and engaged online presence

In an age where online search is more prolific than ever before, having an accurate and engaged online presence is the first step to boosting a brand’s online visibility organically. According to the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, 66% of marketing experts identified Google My Business listings and reviews as the most important fundamentals that affect online visibility. 

Inaccurate online business listings – such as incorrect operating hours or contact information – have a significant impact on brand visibility and reputation. For one thing, inaccurate information frustrates consumers, which can lead to negative reviews and the loss of potential business. But business listing inaccuracies are also damaging in a surprising way – they negatively impact trustworthiness, one of the key factors for high search engine rankings.

Search engines cross-check different directories to verify business listing results, and if the information matches, search rankings rise. On the other hand, any inconsistency or inaccuracy in business listings can cause search engine rankings to drop. With most consumers focusing on only the first page of search results, high search rankings are vital to achieving meaningful brand visibility online.

As well as managing business listings, engaging with consumers on social media and via online reviews is crucial to improving a brand’s organic search rankings. In a recent Sprout Social survey, when brands responded to customers through social media and online, 65% became more loyal to the brand and in an Uberall survey of 1,000 consumers, 34% of customers who left a review after purchasing a product but did not receive a reply from the business, stopped buying from there.

Loyal customers continue to engage with and generate buzz about a brand online, but unhappy ones most certainly do not. Social media and online reviews, which naturally mention key words and reference brand names, also provide fresh, free-of-charge online content that drives a brand’s relevance online and raises search engine rankings.

Organic search visibility enhances performance marketing

The number one reason given by online users for their lack of engagement with advertising is its lack of relevance. According to a study by TechnologyAdvice, 79% of internet users almost never look at online ads and an enormous 90% of users that click on ads don’t follow through. The advertising itself is not to blame – advertising relevance is.

Marketers are well aware of the importance of reaching prospects that are a good fit for their advertising efforts and employ many tactics to do so. Localised advertising, which uses consumer location data to display applicable brand messaging to the right audience is one method brands use to reach consumers with germane content. With the widespread use of online searches for products and services ‘near me’, as well as the increase of voice search – ComScore estimates that 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020 – this type of location-based marketing is certainly one way to reach consumers with more relevant content.

Combine with localised performance marketing 

Today’s consumer relies on their mobile device when they’re out and about, and with both organic and paid click-through rates (CTR) declining in the past few years, it’s more important than ever to be relevant. In fact, Sparktoro reports organic CTR went from 67% down to 39% between 2015-2018, and after a steady decline from 2015-2017, paid CTR has only just begun to rise again – but is still only at 3.12% as compared to organic CTR at 39%.

In order to address this trend, brands that achieve high organic search rankings and combine them with localised performance marketing will hit the right audience because the content is relevant to consumers not just physically in the geographical area, but to those who are seeking a specific product or service in the local area.

Organic SEO and paid-for-performance marketing go hand-in-hand in improving a brand’s online visibility. Brands that improve their organic search rankings by actively managing business listings and engaging with consumers online will also enhance their performance marketing efforts. For example, the consumer who has clicked on the top search results for hotels in Paris is much more likely to click on the ad for flights to France. Organic SEO puts the right people in touch with the right information, which is ultimately every brands’ goal.

The post How Brands Can Achieve Visibility Through Organic Search appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Google has diluted its controversial Comparison Shopping Service (CSS), which critics say encourages the creation of “fake” price comparison sites, with one agency calling it “a feeding frenzy” among ad agencies and ad tech firms.

Sky News reported that after an attempt to encourage price comparison sites to bid for places in its Shopping box didn’t go to plan, for the last four months Google had been encouraging ad firms to build price comparison shopping sites for it to present in the Google Shopping box. The company offered incentives to retailers that passed their adverts through CSS, which then Google showed the names of the CSSs in the Google Shopping box, giving the impression of a thriving comparison shopping marketplace.

Google’s CSS launched in June 2018. Within four months, 120 sites turned up to the scheme, and then to the surprise of the participating agencies, Google changed the terms of the agreement. In an email, Google outlined that it would no longer be giving retailers a rebate of 30% on their ad spend, worth up to £27,000 a month. Instead, starting November 1, the rebate would be 5%.

Sky News found out that Google has slashed the incentives it gives all but the biggest retailers, leaving many small agencies feeling betrayed.

However, a site operator told Sky News the sites were not designed to be used for shopping, claiming it’s “an advertising system that looks like price comparison”.

The search giant is under pressure after it was fined a record $2.7 billion in 2017 by the European Commission, having been accused of “skewing” search results in favour of its shopping ads.

If Google fails to please the Commission, it could be liable for non-compliance payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, backdated to the start of non-compliance.

The post Google Withdraws on its Price Comparison Site Scheme appeared first on PerformanceIN.