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02.12.2023
Опубликовано CURSA на 02.12.2023
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I like email. Data says almost all of us do. Email breathes easier than the social noise pollution of customers and brands trying to shout at each other through a disjointed deluge of disaster and dog photos. Ever notice how your brain feels switching from the overstimulation of Twitter to the one-on-one hush of a list of emails which you can either choose to open or delete? Do you experience a difference? Stats indicate that our private email inboxes are a sort of refuge we’ve come to count on, a quieter corner where people can experience satisfying customer service when done right. When Moz and SMB email marketing software provider iContact joined hands this past summer, I began looking for an opportunity to explore our shared goals of facilitating brand discovery and brand-consumer communication. Like you, I’ve absorbed years of steady statistics about the outstanding ROI of email marketing amid louder social media hype, but this was my first chance to sit down with an expert like Hank Hoffmeier, who is Strategic Insights Manager at iContact. I believe reading Hank’s tips and talk on trends today will make 2022 the year you center email in your customer service strategy for its welcome privacy, usefulness, familiarity, cost effectiveness, and excellent conversion potentials. The profit and popularity of email marketing Miriam: A stat which stunned me is that email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent, yet I sometimes feel like email has been presented as “boring” vs. the glaring busy box of social. What is your take on this, Hank? Hank: According to Demand Curve, email marketing has a higher ROI than any other form of publicity, can drive 6x more conversions than Twitter posting, and is 40 x more likely to be noticed than what a company posts on Facebook. Email marketing allows you to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, at a ridiculously low cost. Stop throwing money at PPC and social media advertising that takes longer to convert and costs so much. Email marketing allows you to get personal with your subscribers. This is either not plausible or can be very challenging with other channels like social media that require you to follow customers to message or DM them. Email is where we obtain long form personal messages, obtain order and shipping information, and communicate at work. With your email marketing campaigns, each message can feel like a one-on-one conversation by using segmentation and personalization. Subscribers can be greeted by first name and can experience content that matters to them on the basis of data such as survey information, purchase history, engagement history and more. Make sure to ask for information to help provide a better experience for your subscribers. Miriam: Email open rates increased 13.64% in 2020, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I was surprised to read that it’s actually millennials who are spending more time in email than any other group. What stats convince you most that email is popular, not just with brands, but with everybody? Hank: A study from Pew Research says six in ten American workers who use the internet say email is “very important” for doing their job, while the Content Marketing Institute reported that 83% of B2B marketers use email newsletters for content marketing. Still not convinced? 95% of online consumers use email! In fact, to sign up for a social media account, you need an email address. The demise of email marketing has been reported year after year, but it is still a pillar in the content marketing world. Email’s edge amid privacy concerns and consumer protections Miriam: Consumer privacy has become a huge topic for SEO, and I’ve mentioned above my “quiet corner” idea about email, but I know it also faces challenges. What can you tell me about respecting customers’ privacy? Hank: Data privacy is going to be trending next year. Email marketers are going to need to do more with less. We are seeing more of an emphasis being placed on data privacy. Apple in particular is creating a challenge in measuring email open rates and identifying subscriber location. For sure, we will see more email and technology companies follow suit. There is also the pending demise of third party cookies to worry about. By collecting first party data, marketers will be able to continue segmenting, targeting and personalizing their emails for maximum effect. Things that will help marketers prepare would be updating sign up-forms, using surveys, and integrating with CRMs and e-commerce platforms to make better use of data being collected. Miriam: I’ve talked about social channels being overwhelming, but complaints about groaning inboxes are common, too, especially when customers receive emails they don’t want. What can you tell me about double opt-in as a vehicle for respecting customers’ wishes? Hank: Marketers should only send emails to people who want to receive emails from them. No exceptions. One way to ensure that subscribers really want your emails is to use a double opt-in process. This allows subscribers to confirm that they want your awesome emails and also helps them find your email in their inbox right away and dig it out from spam, should it land there. Your double opt-in messaging should not be generic. Get potential subscribers excited to receive your emails and want to opt-in right away! Remember to offer value and entertainment. More importantly, once subscribers opt-in, you need to send a welcome email right away, telling them what to expect and how often. It helps set expectations and allows you to start your relationship off right. Miriam: So, what types of emails have you documented as being most welcomed by customers who have definitely opted-in, and have you noticed any differences in this between virtual and local business customers? Hank: For the most part, the differences are small between brick-and-mortar and e-commerce emails. They are both similar in that brands are looking for conversions and the differentiation is that the conversion for brick-and-mortar can drive traffic into a physical location vs. e-commerce’s solely online purchases. The same email marketing best practices work for both entities. According to the IDC, 80% of people check their email within 15 minutes of waking up. Email is still the preferred method of communication for consumers. We buy stuff and want to know when it will ship. We want to be entertained and inspired. Marketers need to educate and inform their subscribers using email. Emails that have images and video tend to perform best. According to Forrester, video content has a 95% retention rate versus a 10% rate with text only. Use more images and videos in your email marketing campaigns to entertain and inform. The mobile mountain and the marketers’ meh Miriam: 64% of small businesses are using email marketing, but one-in-five campaigns isn’t formatted for mobile use. This is a huge mountain of a problem! Both Moz and iContact care a lot about SMBs. What advice do you have to help them make the necessary mobile transition? Hank: Let’s face it, we live in a mobile world. More than half of email opens are on a mobile device. If you are not creating mobile responsive email campaigns, you are creating friction with your recipients. It is a bad experience that will lead to subscribers ignoring your emails or worse, marking them as spam or unsubscribing. Almost every email marketing platform will have a drag and drop email editor that inherently creates a mobile responsive version for you. iContact has an easy-to-use editor that provides inspiration and great results. Let’s cover some basic items: Email content needs to have the ability to stack elements on top of one another and images and text must conform to the size of the screen they are being displayed onAvoid images with small details that will not render well on mobile, while also making sure that your content is not cluttered and allows for finger-friendly clicks and scrolling. Calls to action, such as buttons need to be legible and clickable. Use larger font sizes, shorter subject lines, avoid stacking links, and the most important tip is to test, test, test!Miriam: Sadly, about half of marketers confess they feel the email campaigns they’re engaging in are only poor-to-average in quality. It’s definitely a “meh” state of affairs. What are the top mistakes you see in your day-to-day work in this field and do you have tips for improvement? Hank: The biggest mistake I see email marketers making is thinking of their campaigns through their lens. They do not get to know their audience (avatar) well enough to send emails that matter to them and wonder why the results are lacking. Consider: It’s important to find the right frequency of emails that resonate. Do not send too many or too few emails. Survey your audience or watch trends in your reporting to find out the right amount of emails to send.The days of “spray and pray” are over. Many marketers fail to use subscriber segmentation. Segmentation allows for better-targeted emails. According to the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), marketers can realize up to a 760% increase in ROI by using segmentation. How about that? Better results for sending the right message to the right person!The most underutilized feature in email marketing is automation. By using workflows, you can create a powerful welcome or nurture series as well as have checks and balances along the way to drive better engagement and conversions.Miriam: I do feel concerned for SMBs when I receive their emails with formatting errors or other problems that must be undermining the success of their campaigns. What are the bare minimum basics small business owners should look for in an email marketing tool? Hank: Since email marketing has been around for a long time, whatever platform you choose should not be hard to use, should offer the most up-to-date features, and have good support. Look for these must-haves: SegmentationAutomationEasy to use email editorTemplatesDependable supportSplit testing capabilitiesEmail for welcome stability in 2022 I learned so much from chatting with Hank, and hope you’ve found good takeaways, too. As he says, email marketing has been around for a long time, and there’s something reassuring about that. Make no mistake, email isn’t standing still. I’m interested in innovations surrounding AMP-style emails that turn mailers into microsites, enabling recipients to complete a checkout, book an appointment, or RSVP without having to leave their inbox. Dark mode email compatibility is another trend I’d like to know more about, and I’m always on the lookout for A/B split test developments that indicate how to prompt more engagement on matters of social progress. But I think it’s the longstanding reliability of email that appeals to me most. As marketers and business owners, we feel constantly pressured to jump into the latest-greatest-new-thing. There can be fun in that, but also fatigue. Also, wasted client budgets when trendy experiments lack a foundation of proven results. Recently, I saw Rand Fishkin explain that email open rates are 252x higher than Facebook page engagements. Veteran marketers have been softly sharing this kind of wisdom about tried-and-true email marketing for years. Do experiment! Do build the brands you market to converse everywhere. But don’t forget to take a breather when it’s so readily available, leaning on the steady edifice of email with its history of high conversion rates. Most companies, and most customers, have experienced more rapid change lately than we’ve wanted, and I’d say this should make the dependability of email communications all the more welcome to all parties in the year ahead.

The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. I like […]
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02.12.2023
Опубликовано CURSA на 02.12.2023
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What is “share of voice”? Share of voice (SOV) in marketing originated as advertising terminology, defining the percentage of media spend by a company compared to the total spend in the market. In essence, it’s meant to gauge visibility of a brand compared to its competition. In the SEO world, it measures organic visibility compared to the rest of the search landscape. Share of voice has been used in the SEO industry for years, but recently more SEO tools have begun incorporating it as an additional measurement alternative to simple rank tracking. Rank tracking is extremely valuable, but when it comes to reporting and speaking with stakeholders unfamiliar with the minutiae of SEO, rank tracking can get people confused and caught up on a specific rank for one term at one point in time. Not to mention that search engines are extremely sophisticated now, and many factors can influence why a brand may rank position #1 in one location and position #8 in another. Share of voice is an alternative measurement that brings rank tracking to a higher-level conversation about overall awareness performance. I’d be remiss not to mention that share of voice is just one metric to incorporate. Good SEO measurement dives deeper into the business impact of the channel, But including SOV can be a great way to discuss overall awareness, which is an important step in the funnel to sales and conversions. How is SOV calculated? Share of voice is typically calculated as (Position Click Through Rate X Search Volume) / Total Volume summarized for all keywords. This allows higher search volume terms to make a bigger impact than those with lower volume. For example, if you rank position #3 for a term with 1,000 monthly searches and position #1 for a term with 100 monthly searches, you would do the following math to get SOV: Keyword 1: Position 3 CTR 9.25% * 1,000 = 92.5Keyword 2: Position 1 CTR 34.76% * 100 = 34.76Total SOV = 127.26 / 1,100 = 11.57%Thankfully, tools can do this automatically for us. (2013 me was doing this at scale in Excel, and ain’t nobody got time for that anymore!) How to use STAT SOV STAT automatically calculates SOV within their tool. They do this at a few different levels: the overall project, a data view, and a tag. This allows for flexibility to report on SOV for the whole site, a certain section, or a certain topic. You can get as creative as you want when setting up the tags and data views. Just keep in mind what you would want to report as SOV for a website when creating your tagging strategy. There are plenty of resources already on how to set up tagging strategies. Here is a great article on the overview of using tags for analyzing data, and STAT resources have plenty of documentation on how to set up tags. Out of the box, STAT utilizes their own click-through-rate percentages, but you can customize them to match your industry if you have different metrics you’d like to use.’ STAT automatically calculates the SOV for the top competitor sites in a group of keywords. You can add your sites domain(s) and any top competitors you want to make sure are included as “pinned” sites within the SOV settings tab. Learn more about how to customize the SOV settings here. Once you’re all set up with your customization, you’ll receive daily updates to SOV and can use the helpful reporting dashboard to compare over time. Incorporating SOV into reporting dashboards You can always export data directly from STAT or utilize screenshots in your monthly report format of choice, but I prefer using the STAT Google Data Studio connectors. These allow for an easy data connection and the ability to add custom visuals to existing or new reports. It’s a shortcut to making client-friendly visuals that don’t require custom updates. Here is a great resource to start with if you are new to the STAT GDS connection. You’ll have to learn how to do simple API calls to get some of the data points you need, but I promise you’ll feel more powerful once you master. If the API instructions scare you, use this builder to input your own account metrics as a shortcut. Once you have your API details, go to this link to begin setting up the SOV data connection at the site level and use this link to set it up at the tag level. You should see a visual similar to the following. The site connector will have Site ID and the tag connector will have Tag ID. Fill in your fields and add to an existing or new report. Once you have the data in your report you can now build your ideal visuals. Visualizing SOV Share of voice in STAT is listed in an ongoing line chart or a table. I find that useful as an SEO, but a stakeholder tends to just need a quick snapshot they can read as “good” or “bad” quickly. People’s attention span is getting lower and lower with more things to distract them everyday. Good data visualization can get your point across faster and gain trust with stakeholders. There are a few options I tend to use as a starting point. These range from snapshot in time visuals to trending visuals. Bar chart Bar charts are extremely easy ways to visualize the SOV in a way that allows the audience to compare and see who is winning and who is losing in a snapshot in time. To visualize SOV within a bar chart use Site as your Dimension and Share of Voice as your metric. Ensure SOV is properly calculated as a percent of the total. You can either customize your date range to be a default time frame or use a date range filter on the page to allow it to be changed on the fly. Pie chart Pie charts are very controversial in the data viz industry. These are generally not a good option since you can’t easily compare the inputs to each other. I challenge that the share of voice is less of a comparison and more of a percentage of total, which is what a pie chart is meant to show, and therefore sometimes utilize them as a quick snapshot. I tend to include a bar chart next to this visual to dive in more just in case, but you do what you prefer. Follow the same instructions as the bar chart when setting up the visualization. Table Tables are simple and effective ways to easily read data. I wouldn’t suggest this as a visual by itself, but it’s great to have as a reference for a chart or for an analyst. By default the table settings will sum the share of voice metric so make sure you adjust it to be a percentage of total. Line chart This would be similar to the out-of-the-box visualization in STAT itself. The difference is that you can visualize in more of an aggregate format and make them a bit more in line with your reporting visuals. Add certain colors to draw attention to your sites or calls-outs as needed. When setting up a line chart, use a simple number versus a percent to make sure it aggregates properly. Again, these are just starting points, use what you need to tell the right story to your audience. Take it to the next level One of my favorite parts of GDS is the ability to interact with your data and customize it on the fly. These are just some quick tips to make your dashboards even more useful. Utilize filters Filters allow you to adjust data on the fly. There are two types of filters: a page level filter that can change multiple visuals while looking at the report and a visual level filter that pre-filters specific visuals. Use a page level filter when you want the report viewer to have the ability to dig into the data and use visual level filters for when you want the data to only display the filtered data you selected. Page-level filters You can add a filter under the “Add a Control” dropdown. The most common page level filters I use include date range control and dimension filters. You can set up dimension filters to be self-selecting or custom search options. Which you choose depends on what you want a report viewer to have access to use. For example, adding in a filter for Sites allows you to change the competitors listed in a visual. This can help you remove competition that is making the visuals hard to read (*cough* Google *cough*) or that the audience doesn’t care about. Visual-level filters There are different options to apply filters at the report, page and visual level, but all of these are filters that are applied to your visual before it’s created. This customizes the data in the visual to exactly what you want to show versus the report viewer having to self-select. For example, you could add a visual level filter to only show the sites you have manually added, in case you didn’t want to show the full landscape. I wouldn’t recommend using pie charts for filtered data, since it does remove key data points from the total. You can learn more about filter options from Google’s resources. Create competition groupings Calculated fields in GDS give the ability to layer data transformations on top of the raw data source. You aren’t modifying the data itself, but instead creating a new value to include in the report. There are plenty of resources to learn how to create calculated fields so I’ll just cover the high level steps here. Example: You want to visualize the types of competition with the top SOV by site type versus domain. Setting up the following calculated field will summarize the SOV by grouping so you can get an even higher level view of your top competition: To add a calculated field, open the data source and click “Add a Field” and then add in your custom code. Make multiple views Who says you only have to have one report? I’m a huge fan of an internal and external report view. This allows you to set up more details in your internal report while keeping an external report high level and focused on the visuals. Use the internal report to dive deeper and build your insights for the stakeholder-facing one. For a client-facing report I tend to keep the visuals focused on a specific time frame without the ability to filter. This allows the client to see what I want them to see. For my internal reports, I tend to include the ability to adjust timeframes, include multiple filter options, and include tables to support my visuals so I can easily download or see the raw data if needed. Get creative with your data With tools like STAT and Google Data Studio, you can combine data sources on a common data point. The SOV data source has “Date” as a field, so any other data source that includes a date can be combined. Want to visualize SOV on the same chart as traffic? Want to combine multiple tag SOV data sources into one? Want to layer published content dates over SOV changes? Get creative and try it out! Might as well start asking if you can visualize something and then see if you, can versus feeling limited to the basics. We’ve covered how to set up your projects to look at SOV with STAT and how to pull that data into the Google Data Visualization tool in this article. Now go forth and use your learnings to create something custom for your client or business. Remember to focus on the story you want to tell first, and let the data bring it to life.

The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. What is […]
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02.12.2023
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Content marketing and optimization are crucial parts of any respectable online marketing strategy. Without content, how does your target audience know who you are and what you’re offering them? Without content optimization, how do you expect that audience to notice you at all? For my team at Tao Digital Marketing, our work with AFG Law goes to show that results can be achieved by focusing on creating the right content for the right audience. In this case, we saw:  Leads increase from 306 to 840 (174%)Increased impressions from 1.44m to 3.57m (148%)Increased clicks from 17.5k to 55.5k (217%)Clicks on top page increase from 8,549 to 30,419 (255%)By making strategic changes at the right time and focusing our efforts on optimization, we generated these positive results — and so can you! Objectives The objective of any SEO work is ultimately all the same: to increase leads and generate sales. We wanted to improve the customer journey through the sales funnel, all the way from «reach» (through pieces of content that would help potential clients), down to engaging with AFG Law by contacting them for legal assistance. When we first spoke to the client, we discovered that the only way they were tracking leads was by verbally asking customers how they found out about them, which they would then enter into a CRM system. To address this gap, we wanted to provide tangible evidence that would help them see exactly where the customers were coming from, and the journey they took along the site. We took AFG on as a client in April 2020, but naturally, results started to pick up from July 2020 as Google started to crawl the site more regularly. In this case study, we’ll be focusing on comparing July-December 2020 and March-September 2021 to give a fair six month representation of both years. Our targets/KPIs for 2021 were as follows: More than double leads from 306 to 650More than double clicks from 17.5k to 40kTechnically optimize the siteBe able to clearly demonstrate the customer journeyThe target audience was people who required the services of solicitors, so we wanted to provide answers to questions they may be searching for in blogs, as well as service pages appearing for those who needed legal assistance as soon as possible. Law can be a complicated subject to understand, so it was important to really break down the chosen topics in a lot of detail. Our strategy focused heavily on content creation alongside technical changes that would support the performance of the content. Our strategy Step 1: Cross-analyze content data The first steps we took included creating three audits: 1. Content audit We create this using the Google Search Console KPI on Screaming Frog. This allows us to see current topics on the site and identify any thin or irrelevant content that could be deleted or noindexed. We can then review full URLs, word counts, clicks, and overall CTR. Our tech team then orders the topics depending on how useful they would be to the client, such as focus keywords, search volumes, relevancy to client, seasonal data, time sensitive information, long tail or short tail keywords, etc. This can help to speed up the ideation process and focus on quick wins. 2. Content gap analysis This can be done by using tools like Moz Pro’s True Competitor and also by manually searching through competitor’s sites to find topic areas you don’t cover. You can then find new areas in which to create content. 3. Competitor audit This can also be done using tools and manual checks, as even after the above two audits, you can still miss little gems of data that can help with ideation. In our case, after taking time to thoroughly review these audits for AFG, content ideas were then reviewed and researched by our content writer, moving onto our next step. Any content that may have been holding the site back from a technical perspective was handed over to our tech SEO experts, which is explained further in strategy point four. Step 2: Create the content After reviewing data from the audits, our content writer created and researched ideas. They looked to see if there were topics that AFG were lacking strong content for in the content audit and gap analysis, then checked if competitors were talking about them as well (or if they weren’t — that can be good news too, depending on the client and topic). From there, they pulled together ideas for new blog posts, pages, and other content, and for optimizing existing content (for example, if AFG poorly mentioned a keyword that we highlighted as a good area of focus in the spreadsheet). They then carried out the usual checks: Looking at keyword difficulty and search volume to figure out which keywords and topics are a priority, then at who else is ranking to use their posts for inspiration.Researching within Google Search Console (GSC) to see if existing pages were ranking for certain terms. For pages we planned on updating, we checked what the page was initially ranking for, and what elements needed keeping in and what needed adding. We also looked at what queries were ranking.After this, «skeleton documents» are created, which detail the URL, meta description, keyword(s), as well as frequently asked questions, which can be found through Moz, the SERP, GSC and Answer the Public. In November 2020, we uploaded a «Guide to Common Assault, ABH and GBH», answering the huge variety of questions we found through our research. The popularity of this piece absolutely soared and gained 28,000 clicks, with an average of 2.2K clicks per month. The piece also ranked for 691 keywords, and ranked at position one for «common assault charge uk». As we added FAQ schema to the page, it also appeared in the featured snippet for the key phrase, too. It received over half of the clicks (56%) for «common assault». The success of this piece is largely down to answering a large number of questions — 24 to be exact. As we mentioned, law is a complicated subject, so it’s vital that any potential clients can get their answers on AFG’s site, then follow the call to actions placed throughout to access further assistance. Clear, natural CTAs were really important, not only to conclude the articles, but also to encourage readers to use AFG’s services. Check out the example below to see how we tied one into a commonly asked question: We also included contact forms on popular and newer pieces to make the contacting process as smooth as possible. As you can see from the Thrive graph below, this has been very successful since we implemented the process eight months ago: One thing to note: In October 2021, AFG decided to remove and redirect all pages regarding criminal law, including the common assault guide, as the criminal department is closing for new instructions.  Another topic that has been hugely successful is probate. We noticed that there were a large number of searches around «probate meaning uk», and «what does probate mean uk», which to us, suggested there was a lack of UK resources around this topic. We then created an in-depth guide to UK probate law. As it is such a complex area of law, this gave us the opportunity to really elaborate and give users the answers they were looking for. This has become AFG’s second most-viewed page (after the common assault guide), ranking position one for «probate meaning uk» and other related terms. The piece ranks for 278 keywords and gets around 800 clicks per month, gaining 51% of clicks for the term «probate meaning uk». Step 3: Analyze and review content Creating great content is one thing, but tracking and tweaking content along the way is a whole other untapped source of information that many agencies just don’t have the time or resources for. We do this on a monthly basis as part of both research and client reporting. Each client receives 24/7 access to a live spreadsheet of work undertaken, as well as a monthly video report going into detail about the success of certain pieces of content, amongst other work. Google Search Console is one of the most useful tools for us when it comes to tracking the performance of live content. We usually give content time to be indexed and to gain traction before going back to it — this can be anything from six weeks to six months. Once a piece of content starts to perform, we’ll analyze the data in GSC. Take the aforementioned probate guide, for example. We covered a significant range of topics and queries to ensure that the guide was thorough. Even so, there will naturally be some questions we failed to answer. This is mainly because in our initial research, we take the most popular, topically relevant and applicable questions to discuss and answer within our guides to ensure that we meet the target intent.  GSC will tell us what queries and keywords the guide is ranking for. For this, we looked into the data and saw an interesting query: «What is a Personal Representative?». We’d mentioned this keyword in the content but, at the time, it didn’t feel necessary to explain it in its own section within the content. It was still ranking, however, due to it being contextually relevant and briefly mentioned. After reviewing the term, understanding the search volume and relevancy to the content, we decided to add this to the guide as a standalone query. This meant that, although we were actually ranking for this term beforehand, we can now meet the search intent in more depth, providing much more useful information for those searching for that specific keyword and capitalizing on that search volume. From a technical and psychological perspective, we look at heat mapping through Lucky Orange, which provides real-time data across a range of months.  Step 4: Implement technical SEO Tweaks that support technical SEO are perhaps some of the most important changes we made alongside content optimization to see real results. A technical SEO audit was undertaken alongside the content audits to provide direction. The site was unsecured when we first gained access, so there were a lot of fundamental updates to make.  1. Noindexing and deleting content There was a huge amount of content already existing on the site, but not all of it was bringing in traffic, and was actually harming the site by exhausting crawl budget. AFG participates actively within the community and were writing many, many blogs, which was great for their brand and nice for their existing connections to read, but wasn’t going to bring in leads. We decided to noindex or delete a lot of these pages due to very low traffic and low rankings. This was done for close to 1,000 pages. Usually, we would redirect these URLs, but since they had no traffic we did not on this occasion. These decisions were made using the data from the content audit. 2. Addressing redirects The problem with many of AFG’s URLS was that they were far too long and didn’t include the keyword the page was aiming to rank for, so we changed several URLs and created 301 redirects from the old URLs. There were also a number of 404 errors that needed to be addressed and changed to 301 redirects. 3. Technically optimizing content There were several pages that featured multiple H1s, an issue that needed rectifying as soon as possible. We manually went through these and changed them to appropriate H1s, H2s and H3s. Page titles were also optimized to include keywords and company name, as well as meta descriptions, which were edited to under 155 characters. FAQ schema was added to service pages that answered frequently asked questions as well as top performing pages, such as the common assault and probate guides. In order to convert as many site visitors as possible, we also installed a Thrive Leads exit intent popup that appeared when a user was navigating off the page. This is used as a last resort to keep people on the site and to encourage them to get in touch, especially if they’re on a page without a contact form. 4. Making use of internal and external links Building both internal and external links has been vital in improving AFG’s domain authority from 18 to 24. Internal linking was especially important as some vital pages were several clicks deep and not easily navigated to, so we used a combination of «Site:afg.co.uk [relevant term]» to find pages with similar topics that could be linked to, in addition to the Link Whisper software. We also built links through answering PR requests (HARO, Response Source and #journorequest on Twitter) and guest blogging. It was important for us to build links to key pages, and to pay attention to natural anchor text that flowed within the content, rather than standing out as an obvious link. Results compared to objectives Leads Goal: More than double leads from 306 to 650We exceeded this goal by increasing leads gained from 306 in 2020 to 840 in 2021, a 174% increase. This comes as a result of creating useful content, adding various contact forms on the page, as well as the exit intent form.  Clicks Goal: More than double clicks from 17.5K to 40KWe exceeded this goal by increasing clicks to 55.5K, 217% of the original number. This comes as a result of various changes we made, such as creating highly relevant content that matches the user’s search intent, optimizing page titles and metas, and implementing FAQ schema.  In 2020, the top page was the homepage, which gained 8,549 clicks between July-December. This year, the common assault guide was the top page, which gained 30,419 clicks between March-September 2021, meaning we have increased clicks to the top page by 255%. Technically optimize the site Although this is not as tangible as the other goals, the results can certainly be seen in the increase in clicks, impressions, and traffic. Changes such as shortening and optimizing URLs, addressing redirects, and link building worked in harmony with content creation. Clearly demonstrate the customer journey In September 2020, we connected AFG’s site to What Converts, a lead tracking software. This creates a unique custom phone number for visitors on the site so that the software can record exactly what page resulted in a call. It also tracks general form fills from the site. As you can see in the image below, calls are the much-preferred contact method of AFG’s clients, taking up 1,025 of the 1,229 leads (83%) since we connected the site to the software. The rest came through contact forms from various different pages on the site. The software also breaks down the exact page the customer came from, as well as where in the world they are based, pictured below. Naturally, most leads came through the contact page. Thanks to more than exceeding our set KPI goals, AFG have been very pleased with our work and Director Anita Boardman the following to say: “For years, we’ve been looking for a company to carry out the work Tao Digital have done for us, and be able to clearly demonstrate the customer journey as well as some fantastic results. We’re extremely pleased with the hard work carried out and have been able to grow our business further as a result of this work.” Have you tried similar strategies? Have any suggestions for this process? Let me know in the Moz Q&A or on Twitter @LydiaGerman1! 

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Before you start reading, I’ll forewarn you that this article will start with a tweet and end with a challenge. Sound good? From one of my favorite SEO role models, and founder of Women in Tech SEO, Areej AbuAli:  So, before getting lost in the sauce in the various metrics, it’s important you understand that your business goals are unique to you, so the way you measure your goals should reflect that. From there, the next steps are to get a better grasp of what quality traffic means for your website, and then evaluate how users engage with your content.  To get a better understanding of what’s considered “quality traffic”, we’ll look into various Google Analytics metrics that will help you create a rock solid SEO strategy.  Why does quality of traffic matter for SEO success? At the end of the day, quality traffic is what accelerates business success, especially for post-publishing optimization.  For example, let’s assume your blog has 200 visitors per month with a conversion rate of 1%, generating two leads. By improving the quality of your traffic, your conversion rate and number of leads will also increase: Traffic: 200Conversion rate: 4%Leads: 8This indicates that “superfan” visitors are far more engaged and therefore more profitable than moderately excited users. Google’s new page experience algorithm update further solidifies this statement.  It’s become crystal clear that the way that consumers interact with your website contributes to your business growth.  How do you measure the quality of your organic traffic in Google Analytics? We can go on and on about Google Analytics, but today we’re specifically looking at traffic quality. Here are the top metrics to keep an eye on: Engagement metrics: time on site, pages per session, exit rateConversion metrics: conversion rate, form submissions, other goal completions, Relevance metrics: bounce rate, user geo-location, new and returning visitorsEngagement Metrics Time on site The time on site is the measurement a user spends on a site, regardless of whether it’s being used or not. For instance, let’s say a user has multiple tabs open but isn’t necessarily using all of them at once — Google Analytics still counts the time the tabs were open.  In fact, Google counts sessions up to 30 minutes without a visitor clicking on other pages. But once the timestamp hits 30 minutes, that session will be counted as a bounce. Knowing this, it’s clear that not every user who lands on your site is highly engaged. Generally speaking, the more time a user spends on your site the better. This indicates that your SEO strategy has defined content that is worth their while. Furthermore, the way you have structured your site not only helps them find the information they need, but they also read more about other topics or services that you might be offering.  A good time on site indicates:  High-quality contentGood site architectureProper internal linkingGreat UX designHigh-quality traffic that’s interested in your products and servicesTo set efficient goals, you could measure time on site together with the next metric, pages per session.  Here’s a sample goal: Users who spend an average of four minutes on your site, and at least two pages per session are more likely to be engaged with your content.  To find this metric, click audience (on the left side) > overview (underneath) > under overview, click average session duration. Pages per session To put it simply, pages per session is the average number of pages a user views in one session. It is one of the most important behavior metrics within GA, as it indicates how deep within your site a user navigates to. Essentially, the more pages they view, the more interested they are in what you have to say. Typically the first page a user lands on is your home page, but the goodies are on your service or product pages. With that said, to obtain quality traffic, you should aim to have at least two pages per session on average.  If you aren’t seeing these results, you need to start investigating what isn’t working. It might be that you’re targeting the wrong keywords or your audience is in the wrong country, and therefore they bounce.  If they land on your home page and don’t move onto another page, it’s a possibility that your home page isn’t properly linked to other pages, it’s too slow when loading, or the overall architecture of the site is confusing. Tweak this if necessary, and observe what happens. Often, the simpler it is to get around your site, the better!  Now, as you view your pages per session, I recommend segmenting pages per session based on channel, so you can see which streams have a greater impact and double down on that.  To find pages per session, navigate to GA, and then click “Acquisition overview”. Under the behavior bar you’ll see “pages per session”: Exit rate This one’s pretty straightforward. An exit rate tells you how often a customer has left your site from a page. Unlike a bounce rate (which I’ll discuss later), the exit rate tells you that a user left one page, and went to another. Let’s take a look at an example to illustrate. Let’s say a new visitor enters your homepage, but they want to learn more, so they navigate to your blog. They spend some time reading your content and find what they want, so they exit. This shows up as a percentage under site content > all pages > exit rates.  (see image below to visually see where to find the exit rate on your Google Analytics)  Of course, if the exit rates are high you’ll want to assess elements like: Website copyImages/videosSite load timePage designStart by tweaking one element at a time and analyze the results after each change until your exit rates start improving. Some pages will inherently have higher exit rates than others such as  your privacy policy and contact us pages (usually users find what they’re looking for on Google without entering your site).  However, if you manage to decrease the exit rates for your services pages, blog posts, and/or product pages by tweaking the components we just talked about, you’ll find higher quality traffic and more conversions. Now that you’re an expert in engagement metrics, let’s have a closer look at conversion ones. Conversion metrics Conversion rate Google Analytics adds up all the goal completions of  your site  and calculates that as the overall website conversion rate. Nonetheless, consider looking at each goal separately to see how they’re performing so that you’ll know which goals you’re meeting and which conversion goals need to be adjusted.  To view each individual goal, navigate to “goals overview” and then pick the goal you want to assess by selecting it in the drop down menu. From there you’ll see your conversion rate overview for that particular goal. Here’s an example of goals in the below image: Now let’s look at how organic traffic plays a role in this scenario:  How can we discover whether or not organic traffic on your site is helping you reach your conversion goals? If for example your conversion rate has gone down, while your organic traffic has gone up, it’s possible that you’re targeting the wrong keywords, thus getting less qualified visitors to your site. From there, you’d need to analyze which keywords need to be replaced (hint: check Google Search Console for keywords that are bringing in the highest CTR). By switching your perspective and looking at the conversion rate of each goal through individual traffic sources, you can make better decisions to optimize and therefore obtain higher quality leads.  Form submissions  To get the most out of Google Analytics, I suggest setting up event tracking for form submissions so that you have a clear overview of what users are doing on your website. Tracking your form submissions allows you to understand how users navigate to the form page and focus your marketing efforts there. Coming back to SEO, the relationship between form submissions and quality of organic traffic is quite similar to conversion rate. A form submission is considered as a goal which users are prompted to complete. If a large percentage of your users don’t fill in a form, this indicates that they are not engaged and therefore are not the right kind of visitors you should be targeting. If this is the case, re-assess the kind of information you request, the usability of the form, and the overall UX of your form page to make it more relevant and engaging. To track your form submissions, click on admin at the bottom left hand corner > click view > click goals.  Other goal completions In addition to the metrics mentioned earlier, you can also set up goals like trial sign ups, newsletter sign ups, ebook downloads, or case study downloads (to name a few). You can track these goals by time, events, pages, or url.  For example, if you recently posted on your social media channels about a free download, you can set up a goal and pinpoint which social media post brought the most traffic and assess the ones that worked better. As mentioned earlier, tracking your various goals helps you better understand your audience as well as how they engage with your website. You will be able to deep dive into the channels that work best for your overall marketing efforts, as well as identify ways to incorporate UX and content design into your SEO strategy. False conversions I’d like to mention that although tracking metrics in Google Analytics is important, it’s just as critical to ensure you’re not skewing your data through false conversions. Inaccuracies in your data set could cause several problems and lead you to the wrong conclusions about your traffic and its quality. Looking at such false data will be the reason to decide on and implement the wrong SEO strategy for your website.  To double check the goals you’ve set up, look for the conversions tab > goals > reverse goal path. Once there, you can identify where your goal conversions are occurring and if there are incorrect pages popping up that could be a sign you’ve incorporated the wrong data for a goal.  Check out the visual below for further direction.  Relevance Metrics User geo-location To find your audience’s geo-location, scroll to the audience on the left hand side, then geo, and finally location. Here you’ll find all the different countries that users are coming from, their acquisition, behavior, and conversion data. To get even deeper, you can click on a specific country and see state or city level data.  For larger and international businesses, the big picture geo location data will be most useful, but for smaller or location specific businesses, the granular data will be crucial. For instance, if you’re a boutique clothing store, the city view helps you understand what locations your customers are coming from so you can create more relevant content and optimize according to location.  By understanding the demographics of your audience, you can create highly relevant content to answer their questions and improve the quality of your organic traffic.  Bounce rate We spoke earlier about bounce rates, but let’s unveil how to use this metric to help your company. The bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who land on your site and quickly exit without navigating to another page.  For example, if you have affiliate links on your site, a user might click on a specific link and go off onto a new browser window. Your bounce rate would be high but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this particular situation, as affiliate purchases are one of your business goals. If you’re a service based brand and you have a high bounce rate, this indicates that people can’t find the information they’re looking for on your site and exit. Your bounce rate will depend on the goals you’ve set up on Google Analytics and what type of business you have. If you look at the acquisition overview section of your Google Analytics, you’ll come across the bounce rate. Here you’ll notice the bounce rate percentages from different sources of traffic. If the bounce rates are high for organic traffic, that could mean you’re targeting the wrong keywords or audience. If you’ve already switched to GA4, you may be missing the bounce rate metric from your dashboard. What GA4 gives you instead are engagement metrics.GA4 tags users who have either visited more than one page, completed an event or conversion, or who have been on the site longer than 10 seconds as “engaged users”. This metric will usually be higher than bounce rate, because certain sessions that would have been considered a bounce are now classified as an engaged user. The engagement overview on GA4 gives you an idea of how many of your users engage with your content and for how long, which is a useful substitute for the GA bounce rate metric. New & Returning visitors To get more information on your new and returning visitors visit the audience tab, then click on behavior and “new and returning visitors”. Instead of looking at these metrics separately, it’s a good rule of thumb to view them simultaneously as your company grows.  Over time, you should see both numbers increase. However, if there’s ever a drastic decrease in the amount of returning visitors, that could be an alarming metric. You’d need to deep dive into the reasons why this is happening (such as a recent change on your site or the wrong marketing tactic).  Benchmarking Google Analytics traffic data  Let’s be honest here… you need benchmark data to truly understand how well your website is performing. I get it, we’re humans and we need guidelines! So in this section, I’ll cover low and high percentage rates for metrics discussed above.  For example:  To add, the new versus returning customers metric varies by industry and type of business however 20-30% for returning visitors is a typical ratio to achieve.  How to use Google Analytics data to improve your website’s SEO traffic quality and user engagement Google Analytics data is valuable because it helps us prioritize and strategize how to improve our SEO traffic quality. To truly see the benefits of using Google Analytics and to improve the traffic quality of your site, you’ll need to monitor engagement, conversion, and relevance metrics  over a long period of time, but these are only one part of the puzzle. Sustainable growth will come from continuously researching, analyzing, and adjusting your site. Downloadable version here What to do if your engagement metrics are underperforming On page optimization Optimizing your published content is an easy way to improve the quality of your traffic and increase engagement. To do so, you want to look at applying keyword research that matches search intent. Group keywords with similar topics and identify the right terms to target through each page of your site. Other specific on page optimizations include: Incorporating your target keyword in the first 200 words of your copyYour page title and meta description to have the acceptable Google length (72 characters for title and 170 for meta description)Your target keyword is included in H1 and subheadingsNow, let’s focus on design.  Think of content design  Another quote for you from Ginny Redish, Consultant Specialist in Web Usability and Writing: ​“Content is the user experience”. With that in mind, the layout of your website and the way visitors consume content has a gigantic influence on your user experience. Not only can creating human-first content design improve your SEO, it can consequently enhance your traffic and engagement metrics.  Here are some pointers on how to make this happen: Avoid large images and videos that take up a lot of page ‘real estate’Split your content into short paragraphs and headingsEmphasize important words and elements to improve readabilityUse lists and tables where possibleUp next, what to include in your blogs to ensure an excellent website experience. Write articles that provide the right amount of information Articles should be comprehensive, not too long just for the sake of word count and not too short where information is missing. Users will know if you’re keyword stuffing or simply providing fluff content that doesn’t actually solve their problems.  To make sure this doesn’t happen check out these tips: Create articles that match the word count of top-ranking competitors but also make content succinct enough so that it doesn’t overwhelm your readersCreate longer articles that can be promoted on other channels such as socialCreate longer articles that increase time on site metricsUse the right language There should be a balance between SEO language and copywriting. Ensure you’re using the right language with these tips: I said it before but I’ll say it again…Avoid keyword stuffing (user’s can smell a keyword stuffed article a mile away!)Avoid language that is not understandable from the userUse simple language with the right amount of keywords and spread those out evenly across your content.Study the way your audience communicates, and model your content and copy after that. You want your audience to feel comfortable and drawn to your content, not confused and repelled.  Improve User Experience (UX) Look at your website and assess how easy it is to read, navigate, find out key pieces of information, and perform any actions. Here are some quick reminders: Place CTAs in the right spotsEnsure readability is consistent Make sure information is easy to navigateMake sure the site architecture has a solid flowEnsure the website’s design works well on both desktop and mobile As more consumers buy online for just about everything, the mobile user experience will contribute to your overall rankings. Here are five tips to optimize your responsive site: Check Page Speed Insights for mobile vs desktopEnsure all elements are properly visible and readable on both desktop and mobileOptimize image scale on mobileSimplify navigationShorten your text What to do if your conversion metrics are underperforming Use direct-response copywriting techniques Use compelling language that encourages users to take immediate action. Copy should be targeted and to the point. To support that statement, 54% of American adults read at a sixth grade level, or below according to the U.S. Department of Education. So the simpler the copy, the better. Optimize call-to-actions Make sure CTAs are placed in the right spots within a page, have the right color and the right text. Use powerful and emotionally driven words that’ll entice quick wins. You’d be surprised at how a single word tweak or color change can drastically increase conversions. Not to mention, this is the precise method to ensure that SEO is bringing in conversions and leads. Avoid any elements that could distract the user Although some may suggest pop-ups, let’s be real here— the majority of the time you scramble to click the x so you can get back to scrolling. With that being said, avoid pop-ups, numerous CTA’s, and banners. If people are always in a rush to leave your site, that certainly won’t help any element of your marketing strategy. What to do if your relevance metrics are underperforming Target the right keywords  Before creating a page or a blog, start with keyword research to identify which keywords you should target through your new piece of content. Think like your customer and identify exactly what their intent is and what’s trending in your industry. Also, pinpoint long-tail keywords that are highly specific to the niche you serve. This way, the content you put out will be for a very targeted audience, therefore conversion rates will be higher.  Review the topic and focus keyword search intent If the keywords you have selected are not performing well, review whether you selected the right ones and if they match search intent. Research what competitors are doing, so that you can put your own spin on the content around these keywords.  Localize your content so you’re targeting the audience in your target market Create content that’s relevant to where you’re located. For instance, if you own a pizza shop in Chicago, you might create a blog about the best places to get fresh cheese in Chicago. So instead of just developing random content, think about localizing content and examples that’ll attract the most qualified audience. Work on site speed (slower websites have higher bounce rates) In this day and age consumers want information at the speed of light, in fact 1 in 4 consumers will abandon a website that takes longer than 4 seconds to load. Tough crowd, right? To ensure speedy load times, visit Google’s Page Speed Insights to assess where the site stands in terms of page speed and to identify elements that slow down your website. Use Google Analytics data to measure and improve the quality of your SEO traffic At the end of the day, more qualified traffic = more money in the bank.  So your overall goal should be working towards creating the highest quality content, website, and user experience to convert those visitors into loyal customers.  To reach these goals, make sure to map out engagement metrics like time on site, and pages per session, conversion metrics like form submissions, and relevance metrics like bounce rate and user geo-location.  Now, in the beginning I said I’d end with a challenge, so here it is: Create a list of 3-4 priority metrics and craft a realistic goal for each of those. Can you do that? Great! And, for on-going reflection, bookmark this article so that you can refer back when need be. You’ve got this!

The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. Before you […]
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Content marketing expert Amanda Milligan is back with three more ways to make your content more newsworthy. If you haven’t seen part one, be sure to check it out!  Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!Video Transcription Hi, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Amanda Milligan, and I am back with a part two for how to make newsworthy content. So when I made part one, I was working at Fractl, and I talked about three things. Let’s see I remember them. It was data, emotion, and impact as three elements you need to be considering when creating newsworthy content. Those are still important. If you haven’t seen that Whiteboard Friday, check it out after this one. It doesn’t need to be in any particular order.  Now I work at Stacker. stacker.com is a publication, but it’s also a newswire. So like the AP for breaking news or Reuters for financial news, Stacker is a newswire for data journalism. So I work on the brand side though, where we partner with brands. They underwrite content, and we syndicate it to our newswire. I’ve been talking to the team, since I’m still relatively new, and they told me that these are three additional things that they consider when they are creating content for their publishing partners. So it was fascinating to get their take on this, and I’m really excited to share this with you.  Is it serviceable? So let’s just dive in. Three things to consider. The first is if the content is serviceable. Basically, all that means is how can it help the reader. So as marketers, we’re actually already pretty good at this. This is like the how-to content of the world just with more of a news spin. So it’s not going to be your standard blog post. It’s going to be more along the lines of how do you take something practical that’s happening to people, that’s also newsworthy, which we can get into exactly what that means. This will overlap with a lot of these other different qualities. So if it’s serviceable and it’s also adding context to a greater story, if it’s serviceable and also based on new data, or it’s based on an emotional component or it impacts a lot of people, those things all help it be newsworthy. Is it contextualized? The second is contextualized. This is something that Stacker really excels at and I find fascinating. So we can’t break news as marketers. That’s not our job. We’re not in the business of doing really quick reporting off of big events. That’s just not what we’re doing. So contextualizing is taking a look at what’s trending, what people are talking about, what’s happening and thinking about the other angles, the other perspectives that tell a more comprehensive story to that. This has worked really well. I think it’s something that all brands should be considering when they’re following like if you have those websites or blogs that you follow in your niche, thinking about what those kind of like top news stories are and how you can add to the conversation. Is it localized? Finally, localized. So this one is near and dear to my heart because I actually have a journalism degree even though I never became a reporter. I learned localization in college. I took a class called reporting that was extremely difficult. It was the weed out class for the journalism degree. The first time I got an A and I got my article run in the college newspaper, it was from localization. There was a national story about how doodling can help improve your concentration, which I thought was interesting and kind of contrary to what you would normally think. I called up local experts, like people at the university, neuroscientists, and I said, «Hey, I just saw this report come out. Do you agree with it?» They were thrilled to talk to me about it, and they told me all about how they absolutely believe that that’s true, that they doodle when they are listening to presentations. Anyway, it’s not that the data was any different or anything. It’s that it was localized. It was that it mattered to the people who were reading it because it was being corroborated by people in their own community. So localization can be a huge asset if you’re a brand that has a brick-and-mortar or not. If you specialize in certain areas, if your customers live in certain areas, localizing content can really speak to them in a way that the national content might not. An example story So I just ran through those things. So let’s do a little exercise. This is a statistic I saw recently. The median home price for an existing home in August of 2021 increased by 15% compared to 2020.  So this is from the National Association of Realtors. It’s a statistic I saw. The exercise I want to do is let’s try to come up with angles, not even necessarily the ones that you’re going to run with for the story, but to brainstorm in that direction.  1. Serviceable So serviceable. How do you take a statistic like this and consider the serviceable angles? So I have written, «Where are the most affordable places to live?» So if we’re finding that home prices are going up, it’s a practical, helpful thing to know where it could actually be affordable to move. If people are thinking about moving, they’re like, «I don’t know if it makes sense to do that.» At least now they can have their options. Then going a little deeper or even just like a different way of approaching the same conversation is what an average home looks like in X place at X price. So you’re taking those increased prices and you can show examples of what a home looks like. I’ve seen projects like this before. You probably have too. But it’s a different way of illustrating the same useful point, which is where could I actually see myself living. That’s what makes it serviceable. You’re giving them information that they can actually act on later. So those are some serviceable angles.  2. Contextualized  Contextualizing. So there’s a lot to unpack in this stat. I believe this was a Forbes article I was reading, and they go into a little bit of detail about some of the context. But there are other ways to dive into the context. Even without reading the story, what I was thinking about was: What is the average down payment now? So if the home prices are increasing, presumably the down payment costs are increasing. What I remember the article saying was that that’s always the biggest hurdle, or not always, most of the time the biggest hurdle, especially for first-time home buyers, is the down payment. It’s a big sum of money. So how much is that increasing, and what does that look like for the average person? What does that amount of money equate to in the rest of your life? How long would it take to save that amount of money? These are all contextualizing details that make it feel a little bit more relevant to you. Then I said, «How does this compare to the average student loan debt for a person?» So just telling a greater financial, like personal finance story. The way the team at Stacker thinks about contextualizing is you’re comparing it to similar things. So things may be historically is the quickest way to do it. Like how has this been in the past? But also different things that are still relevant. That’s where student loans come in. It’s not just in a vacuum. Your financial situation is impacted by multiple elements, and it’s good to get a full picture of that.  3. Localized Finally, localizing. So how have prices changed? So this is the average in general. But have they changed in different states at a different rate? Which states has the price increased more? Which states maybe have stayed the same or maybe have dropped? That’s not being illustrated by a national statistic. What local programs exist for first-time buyers? This is a great combo of serviceable and localized. So if you are a first-time home buyer and you’re thinking, «I have no idea how I’m going to do this now because COVID happened. I don’t know how I’m going to afford a house.» An article that shows them all of their options, tells them what localized programs there are for first-time home buyers is extremely relevant and serviceable and local, and that is where you get the sweet spot of newsworthy content where publishers are really going to want that information. So consider these as potential angles to brainstorm when you’re coming up with content ideas.  Final tips Consider the data Also consider what I talked about last time, which is data. We’re all about data. If you can use original data in your story or take existing data and draw new conclusions and tell new stories with it, that’s gold. Consider emotion Emotion, does it have an emotional impact? Impact, meaning how many people does it affect. All of these things are great, great lenses to come up with fantastic newsworthy content.  Thank you so much for listening to this and taking the time. If you have any questions, feel free to reach me on Twitter. I’m @millanda, and my email is amilligan@stacker.com. I love talking about this stuff. Please reach out if you have any questions and thank you so much again. Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. Content marketing […]
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Because of its broad field, SEO has many touch points with a variety of different marketing channels. As other channels’ operations influence SEO, both directly and indirectly, it’s essential to deploy an integrated marketing approach in which each channel supports the other, in order to optimize marketing efforts and enhance your brand’s user experience. This article provides you with a number of different actionable tips for combining SEO with the marketing channels listed below, that will not only save you time, resources, and money, but will lead to even better results for your team and company: SEAAffiliatePRSocial MediaEmailUX/UIContentSearch Engine Advertising (SEA) Both SEO and Search Engine Advertising (SEA) are keyword-driven processes that focus on ensuring a website reaches the top positions of the search engine results page (SERP). While SEO is a slower process that focuses on organic positions with long-term results, SEA is a much faster approach that focuses on the position of ads with short-lived results. Although SEO and SEA might seem like adversarial approaches, they actually complement each other — by sharing data, knowledge, and insights, both can be leveraged to achieve better performances. Here are a few of the different ways that SEA and SEO can work in symbiosis: Achieve SERP domination SERP domination means achieving a prominent position on the SERPs for both paid and unpaid results. Maximizing SERP «real estate» increases a sites’ visibility, credibility, and chances of getting clicks from searchers. For some competitive terms, ranking in position one organically is insufficient to be visible above the fold, as the number of paid ads and SERP features pushes the organic results down. Both site awareness and confidence from potential visitors increase when a website is visible organically as well as through paid ads, which will result in the site showing up multiple times on the SERP. Example of a search query where a website is prominently visible on both SEA and SEO positions on the SERP.Use SEA to predict SEO While SEO is a fundamental channel with tremendous potential ROI, it is a long-term and continuous process that requires initial resources and the passage of time before it begins to show results. The difference between SEO and SEA in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) over time.As SEA campaigns provide immediate results, they can help to make sure your SEO strategies are worthwhile by testing their initial priorities. Information like the conversion rate and potential of different keywords and pages in paid campaigns can help determine whether or not they should be optimized for long-term SEO strategies. Optimize metadata PPC campaigns provide precise results not only in terms of conversions, but also with regards to click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, and time on site for different sessions. It allows for the assessment of the searchers’ intent with regards to keywords and landing pages. The data from A/B testing done by the SEA team can be used to enhance metadata for SEO. For example, using the copy from the best-performing ads to optimize page titles and meta descriptions can help improve organic CTR. This strategy works the other way around, too: high-performing SEO snippets can be a source of inspiration for SEA ad copy. Example of how SEO can be inspired by best performing SEA ads.Improve Quality Score Optimizing Google Quality Score is crucial for an effective SEA strategy, as it determines the performance and cost of PPC campaigns. Overview of Google Quality Score factors with Landing Page Experience as a decisive factor.One decisive Quality Score factor is the landing page’s relevance and quality. As SEO is all about providing the best experience to users, SEA can benefit from the help of SEO to make sure their ads direct users to highly relevant and optimized landing pages. Optimize bidding strategy and budget management SEO and SEA go hand-in-hand when aiming for an optimal and dynamic bidding strategy. When organic rankings for certain keywords generate a relatively high number of conversions (without necessarily ranking in top positions), it would be wise to start advertising for these queries in PPC campaigns and/or increase their allocated budget. Also, if you observe specific keywords generating high conversions through PPC campaigns, it would be a good idea to begin optimizing for them in your broader SEO strategy, in order to obtain better organic positions. In the long-term, this also provides the opportunity to reduce the SEA budget for (expensive) keywords when they are already performing well in organic search, especially if the ad budget is limited. Use SEA as a backup strategy SEO isn’t an exact science, and many variables influence organic rankings. Results might take longer than initially expected, or rankings can decrease significantly in a short period of time. PPC can be used as a short-term solution to maintain a site’s presence and generate traffic from the SERPs. Affiliate Marketing Affiliate Marketing and SEO both rely on links. From the SEO side, backlinks contribute to a website’s authority in the eyes of the search engines, and are one of the most important ranking factors. The higher the authority, the higher the likelihood of ranking. From the affiliate side, links are sales streams to generate conversions. Finding the right partners to drive relevant traffic to a website that converts is the main goal. Unlike organic links, search engines do not see affiliate links as «votes» due to the obvious commercial relation with tracking parameters applied. Both Affiliate Marketing and SEO need to build up a strong network of publishers to promote and enhance their content. There are three ways in which both channels can inspire each other: Streamline partner research SEO uses a variety of strategies to find relevant domains to obtain backlinks. For example, looking at competitors’ referring domains and top-ranking domains for specific topics is the specialty of an off-page SEO. Affiliate Marketing and SEO can sometimes target the same domains without being aware of it. Inefficient outreach due to channels not communicating internally costs unnecessary time and looks unprofessional. Therefore, united research and sharing the list of potential affiliate and SEO partners can be beneficial before starting a campaign. Combine partner acquisition Streamlining outreach between different departments not only saves precious time, but can also save a significant amount of budget. When a particular website is potentially valuable for both channels, it is favorable to negotiate a cooperation with its webmaster for the two channels simultaneously. By killing two birds with one stone, it’s possible to negotiate the best overall deal and conditions. Seize content inspiration Editorial affiliate links are placed in relevant context within a page copy. Whenever a referral partner generates many leads, it indicates that their content is trusted and appreciated by its readers. SEO can use this as a source of inspiration for its own content creation strategy. PR The role of Public Relations (PR) is to create brand awareness and strengthen brand image and authority. SEO’s role is to increase a website’s overall authority to acquire more organic traffic. As both PR and SEO need to reach out to authoritative and relevant websites, they can help each other in the following ways: Identify target audience and trending topics PR aims to spread the message of a company, and communicate that message in the best possible way. Leveraging SEO for PR helps to detect who the target audience is and what their interests are in order to improve awareness and visibility. A way to enhance this message is to associate it with currently trending affairs. SEO can provide great insights into search volume for specific keywords throughout the calendar year, and topics presently trending using Google Trend data. Google Trends data for the search term dogecoin. Utilize press releases for SEO Press releases do not directly provide ranking benefits for SEO if the publication is clearly marked as such; as John Mueller of Google stated, the best practice for links in press releases is to put them in «Nofollow» according to Google’s guidelines. In addition, Google ignores most links within press releases. Nevertheless, press releases might be of interest to publishers who will be willing to write a piece of content about your news and link back naturally to your website, thus providing SEO value. For this reason, PR should inform SEO when press releases are being sent out, as they could be used by SEO as link baits to obtain organic publications and «Dofollow» backlinks. Create link baits Digital PR consists of acquiring qualitative backlinks through the promotion of valuable content. SEO and PR should cooperate to create linkable assets (infographics, guestographics, studies, interviews, etc.), which are powerful elements to acquire backlinks and increase authority and brand awareness. An example of a successful link bait created by AirHelp, which generated many organic backlinks from sources such as Forbes, CNBC, the Daily Mail, and others.Convert unlinked brand mentions into backlinks Some media platforms happily write about a brand without linking to their website in the publication. SEOs can easily track these unlinked brand mentions using alerts from various tools in order to gain backlinks. An example of an unlinked brand mention of Zalando.Reaching out to the authors of articles and asking for a link back to the website will work in most cases, as it is editorially relevant for readers to gain more information about the brand and the product or service that they offer. Social Media Marketing Social Media Marketing (SMM) and SEO both need to serve users with engaging content to generate traffic and trigger conversions. They share common goals and can support each other in the following ways: Get content indexed faster Sharing new content on social media platforms stimulates pages to get (re)indexed faster as search engines noticing and following the links in the posts will be encouraged to (re)crawl the pages. Understand user intent SMM can generate tons of insights about the target audience, as it is often easier for users to share and interact with content on social media than on websites. This type of data allows for the creation of highly relevant landing pages that directly answer searcher intent. By measuring which content generates the most engagement, how users interact with it, and which questions and/or problems they might encounter using a product or service, SEO can improve the communication and user experience on the website. Plus, social media can provide additional information regarding new trending topics and keywords related to the niche and company. By using third-party tools, SMM can, for instance, analyze which topics on Twitter are frequently associated with either their brand or their competitors. By sharing this information, SEO can confirm that these themes are also present on the website. SparkToro Audience Intelligence for hashtags related to Asos.Optimize posts with relevant keywords As social media platforms use algorithms that utilize keywords when deciding to display content to their users, SMM must optimize their hashtags and keywords in their posts. SEO can assist SMM by providing the right set of keywords and queries optimized to reach the most relevant and largest possible audience on social media platforms. In addition, social media posts might appear on the SERPs for certain keywords in specific niches. Pinterest posts showing up on the SERP.Promote new content SMM is an excellent and easy way to promote a website’s new content to its audience. When a new piece of content comes online on the website, it’s important to share on the different active social media accounts. This will encourage traffic and user engagement. Stimulate link building Although social links to a website don’t directly influence SEO rankings, actively sharing content on social media is a great way to attract natural and high-quality backlinks to a website. Making influencers aware of a quality piece of highly relevant content might lead to them referencing it on their blog or platform. Develop joint partnerships As many website and blog owners are also active on social media, a joint approach between SEO and SMM in acquiring partnerships can save time, effort, and budget for the marketing channels and company as a whole. Email Marketing SEO and Email Marketing (EMM) focus on different aspects of marketing, but are both powerful acquisition channels. By sharing their respective data, both channels can highlight potential issues and discover opportunities: Increase CTR and open rates By knowing which email subject lines achieve the best open rates, SEO can take inspiration to further optimize page titles and meta descriptions to increase organic CTR. Vice versa, it can also benefit EMM to copy headlines of landing pages with the highest CTR on the SERPs. Improve content relevancy Measuring email click-to-open rates (CTOR) and landing page bounce rates can be very insightful for both channels, to know what keeps users from taking the desired actions. When adjustments in either lead to improvements in user behavior, the changes can be implemented in the other channel as well. Recycle content Newsletter content is not being indexed by search engines. Therefore, successful emails can be recycled, fine-tuned, and turned into blog posts that can be shared across different channels. Promote content and earn backlinks Sending out an email to customers and followers is a great way to make them aware of new content on the website that might interest them, leading to more traffic and user engagement. Linking to blog posts within the emails can increase the chances that people will further link back to it, resulting in an increase in natural backlinks. UX/UI SEO + UX = SXO: Search Experience Optimization. User experience is an essential aspect of SEO. In June 2021, Google released the Page Experience update, which rewards websites for providing an excellent on-site experience to their users. Google Page Experience update ranking factors.Communication and cooperation between SEO and User Experience (UX)/User Interface (UI) are both needed, as both can support each other on different elements such as: Build information architecture Logical site architecture is fundamental in order to allow search engines to crawl, index, and rank a website appropriately. From the user perspective, a good website structure allows one to easily navigate a website and get a clear understanding of it. The deeper a page is buried in the site architecture, the harder it will be for it to rank, as it takes more effort for search engine crawlers and users to reach it. Because navigational links are given more weight, only important and useful pages should be kept in the navigation. Ensure mobile-friendliness SEO and UX should ensure that a website is mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendliness has been a ranking factor since 2015 and is becoming even more important with the Page Experience update. Responsive design, text size, and tap targets size are examples of elements Google considers when evaluating if a site is mobile-friendly. Google Mobile-Friendly Test.Improve page speed Speed is decisive for user experience and rankings, especially when optimizing for Core Web Vitals. Some website design elements can be implemented on the website without consideration of their impact on website performance, and SEO has to monitor the effects that changes made by developers and designers have on the speed of a page. Manage pop-ups and ads While pop-ups and ads are an excellent way to catch and/or retain users, they can have a negative impact on your rankings. In January 2017, Google released an update stating that intrusive ads are now a negative ranking factor. As such, it has to be guaranteed that interstitial ads are being used with a lot of care so that they don’t interfere with an optimal user experience. Examples of accepted interstitials and intrusive interstitials that make content less accessible.Content Writing content that no one reads is the tragic reality companies that don’t invest in SEO are facing. The role of SEO is to make sure that the writers produce content that people are actually looking for. Although content is part of SEO work in many companies, both channels still work independently from each other. There are several elements to consider where SEO can guide content creation to serve quality content, optimized for both visitors and search engines: Provide content relevance Qualitative and keyword-rich content, which answers and satisfies searchers’ intent, will drive user engagement and enhance visibility on the SERPs. SEOs can help content writers to make sure that the topics they write about are actually sought-after and relevant for a company’s potential clients and customers. Content format, structure, length, and freshness have to be defined with users’ expectations in mind. Ensure uniqueness Each piece of content must be unique. Duplicate content, whether internal or external, can prevent pages from appearing in the search results. SEO can ensure that every page has unique content, especially above the fold, to prevent duplicate content issues. Enhance E-A-T E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is a concept used by Google Quality raters to assess web pages’ quality. It is essential to display information about the author(s) of the content on a website, especially for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) websites. Is E-A-T a ranking factor? Not if you mean there’s some technical thing like with speed that we can measure directly.We do use a variety of signals as a proxy to tell if content seems to match E-A-T as humans would assess it.In that regard, yeah, it’s a ranking factor.— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 11, 2019 A piece of content is considered qualitative and is valued by users when its author has experience (in either an academic or professional capacity) in the field he or she is writing about. SEO can assist content creators in optimizing for E.AT. on the website. Conclusion SEO is a fundamental and powerful channel for increasing a website’s presence and value. As we’ve seen from the above examples, there’s massive potential for achieving dramatically better results when SEO is used in conjunction with other marketing channels. Whether this is SEA, Affiliate, EMM, or any of the other discussed examples, SEO can be integrated in order to achieve optimal results and greater conversions.

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