30-second summary:

Zero click search presents advertisers with the opportunity to pro-long budgets during periods when the paid search landscape is hypercompetitiveBrands can cash in on zero click searches for the organic element of their overall search strategy to gain visibility and drive conversionsBarilla Group’s global digital & search marketing manager, Nitin Manhar Dhamelia advises on zero click search optimization and measurement

Historic context

Back in 1998 when Google was founded, it served 10,000 searches per day and by 2012 it was 3,500,000,000 searches per day.​ And in 2021, search volumes continue to explode with Google serving around 5,600,000,000 searches globally per day.​

Its success in becoming a transitive verb was borne when Google tasked itself with bringing order to the chaos of the world’s knowledge. It knew that to achieve this magnitude of top-of-mind awareness, the key would be to create a window to the web that was inclusive, accessible, and easy to understand for the general population; it knew that inclusivity would accelerate adoption. Even today, the search giant is always working on improving the consumers’ search experience and 2021 saw several key algorithm updates roll out – passage ranking, page experience, page titles, MUM, mobile-first indexing, and more.

Not too far ahead in the future, Google is going to make it even easier for consumers to access information about brands.​ But why?

Micro funnels

Because people visit Google in key decision-making moments along the buyer journey – essentially, each Search session can be deemed a micro funnel. In fact, after the pandemic, there is no undoing the great reset. Nearly, 15 percent of Google search queries Google attended were first of their kind. And 81 percent of consumers discovered new brands online during the pandemic.

“There isn’t a world where people revert back to their 2019 behaviours, and part of that is now a part of their comfort zones.” – Corie Barry, CEO, Best Buy

Google’s own recent retail report identified four key consumer insights:

Dynamic demand: People’s buying patterns will continue to change in response to unpredictable timesDigital inspiration: People will use the internet to be inspiredConvenience: People will prioritize convenience while shoppingSupportive spending: People will be more mindful of how and where they spend their dollars with “values” playing a major influencer

Even though less favored by advertisers, zero click searches are pockets of opportunity for brands to focus on as part of their branded search strategy.

With great power comes great responsibility

With its always-on innovation focus, Google is constantly expected to eclipse itself (for the better) and the way it aims to achieve that is by presenting information in ever more easy-to-digest consumer-friendly formats.​

Its solution? Bringing convenience and comfort to their searcher’s online journey with zero click search. This means redesigning the search experience to align with a lucid consumer journey, which in some cases implies that – the journey both starts and ends in Google, and without a single click in the search results:

In terms of how this translates into volumes of searches, take a look at the data from an industry study below:

​

What does this mean for brands?

In my own research the split of traffic between the core search marketing channels for a keyword that has a “need” intent, calculates to:

Paid: 6.5 percentOrganic (above the fold): 31.5 percentOrganic (below the fold): two percentZero Click Searches: 60 percent

Extraordinarily, the last number isn’t too far off an original 2020 study that was made of a sample size that is far greater than most brand marketers might have immediate access to.

However, when smaller, localized in-house studies surface very similar results it drives the conversation forward into where we need to focus a proportion of our overall search budgets: creating data-driven content that contributes to adding value and top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) to consumers.

Tips for brands to optimize and measure zero click search

The people also ask (PAA) feature in Google (essentially website content derived FAQs in Search results) are around six times more likely to appear in a search results page versus featured snippets.  And therefore, PAA should not be underestimated as a branding tool. So the first tip is to create editorial content that resides on your website and optimize for PAA – using long-tail search data.

And the second tip is to optimize your content for featured snippets across brand and partner websites – your keyword traffic or search traffic insights could help prioritize this activity internally.

Another interesting insight that stood out was – regardless of the industry, most “big” brands will trigger a PAA.

Measuring zero-click performance

Gauging the impact of zero click search remains a frequently asked question itself and a continued enigma that has hampered brands from focusing on this highly important search facet. These are some valuable avenues for search marketers to track the zero click search features’ performance:

1. Understand relativity

Understand the relationship between impression volume and average ranking for a target keyword(s) in the Google search console to create insights into where branded content can trigger a zero click search result.

2. Track soft metrics

This is where the soft metric shines – so by focusing on zero click SERP features for brand vs competitor domains, it’s possible to create an index to track the outcomes and evolution of a soft metric such as ‘share of intent’. This will help you grow product or service awareness/consideration via the zero click search element of your Search Strategy.

Piecing all this information and tailoring it to your brand will positively add a new dimension to your search marketing strategy.

Nitin Manhar Dhamelia is the global digital & search marketing manager at Barilla Group. Nitin has a 15-year track record of global B2B/B2C team management, governance, commercial experience, across Americas, EMEA, APAC.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post Zero click search: the new consumer comfort zone appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Do you want to know a trick that helps companies build incredible search visibility, one that… stands the test of time and drives them insane traffic month after month…

The post Evergreen content: How to write articles that last appeared first on Mangools.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.seooptimisation.org/?p=293

Is WordPress good for SEO? The answer is quite simple: WordPress is as good for SEO as you make it. The whole thing is fully in your hands. Of…

The post WordPress SEO: A detailed step-by-step walkthrough for beginners appeared first on Mangools.

Just about every day I send in edits on Google My Business pages that have committed one party foul or another, but this is the first I’ve seen Google go out of its way to encourage those edits:

It was a partial edit of a business’s name, in which I removed a single stuffed-in keyword.  I find two things interesting, at least in this case.  The first is that I made that edit back in 2018.  The second is that that edit has stuck for almost 3 years, even though it would have been easy for the business to add back in the keyword.  Often when you make a Google Maps edit on the name of GMB page and Google agrees with your edit and makes the change, the business just changes the name back to whatever it was, and Google doesn’t do anything about it.  Often it becomes a tug of war.

I wasn’t the first to notice this; it’s reported in this tweet from last month.

Got an email update from @googlemaps. It says “Your reported problem is making a difference”

“You changed the name of Spicy Ramna Restaurant, which has now been seen over 2,000,000 times. Thanks for making such a valuable edit to the map.” #localguides #googlemaps pic.twitter.com/gtZFqRfkEC

— Saiful Islam Sohel (@saifulissohel) June 16, 2021

But that’s it.  I haven’t seen anyone else mention it yet, nor have I gotten similar nudges from Google on other edits.

So far, Google doesn’t seem to cheer recently-submitted, recently-approved edits.  You’d think if that Google really wanted to encourage more Mapspam policing you would get emails on fresh edits, the same way Google emails you all the time about photos and reviews you posted.

Of course, only some kinds of Google Maps anti-spam edits can even get 80,000 views.  A completely bogus GMB page that you get removed no longer gets any views, of course.  I suppose those sorts of edits would be harder to encourage, even though fake GMB pages are the most damaging type of Google Maps spam by far.

Presumably you could get the same kind of email if you make a “popular” edit unrelated to spam, like on a business’s hours, but notice the subject line of the email: “Your reported problem is making a difference.”  Seems to have a spam-control flavor to it.

Have you seen this before?  If so, when, and for what kind of Google Maps edit?

What do you think Google is aiming for here, exactly?

Leave a comment!

On your way to your seat at the Local Feast, they follow you around like a bad smell.  You toil to build a great page or resource on your site, and two days later they’ve copied it.  You put research and brain cells into your title tags, internal links, GMB categories, and citations, only to spare your competitor all that effort.  You get hard-earned reviews from happy customers, and then your competitor’s “customers” happen to write reviews on the same experiences.  In addition to stealing everything but your cattle, they may spam the map and diss you whenever anyone is listening.  Google won’t do much about any of it.

Copycats can get far, but only so far.  It’s like in chess, where a bad player can copy a grandmaster’s every move until the game-ending move.  In general, competitors who rip off your local SEO strategy will stop only once it backfires or otherwise stops working.  Between you and them, it’s a war of attrition.  You can outlast them.  The only question is how much they bleed out of you in the meantime.

What many business owners and SEOs don’t seem to realize is that, although you can’t stop competitors from ripping you off, you can make their strategy much less effective.  You do that by putting extra effort into certain parts that competitors can’t haul away  – what I like to call “protective moats” around your business.

What are some of those protective moats?  Here’s what I would consider the short list:

Your best links. Even if your competitors know of the specific good links you have doesn’t mean they (a) know how you pulled them off, (b) would be willing or able to put in the work you did to make those links possible, or (c) would see the same results. Of course, cheap-o directory links or links that require nothing more than payment/donations/dues are easy for your competitors to replicate (not that they’ll help either of you much).  But your finest, hardest-to-get links?  You probably have at least a few that took you (and maybe a helper) serious work to get, or that were the byproducts of years of work that you did without even thinking of the link.  Your competitors would have a very hard time landing those, and collectively they’re probably one of the major factors that have helped you in the local search results so far. Your offerings: services, products, or treatments. Just as some competitors are too lazy to market without ripping you off, they probably didn’t learn their trade as well as you have, and therefore can’t help customers/clients/patients in all the ways you can. You offer services or products, or perform treatments, or handle cases that they can’t.  Is it possible they could claim to offer those things and then do a bait-n’-switch on customers?  Yes, but then they’ll lose business, get torched in the reviews, lose more business, divert energy away from marketing the services they do offer, and possibly get into legal trouble.  The fulfillment part matters.  Meanwhile, your great range of offerings will help your visibility for niche or long-tail search terms, on top of giving you extra side-door ways to rank for the broader, most-competitive terms. (Relevant post: “Spin-off Pages: a Bazooka for Your Local SEO.”) “Practitioner” or “department” Google My Business pages. If you’re a dental practice with a pediatric dentist, that dentist can have his or her own GMB page.  With a little work on it and more work on the site (particularly on the landing page), that GMB page can rank for a whole range of “kids’ dentists” terms. The dental practice without the pediatric specialist has no such advantage.  The same is true if you’re a law firm with multiple attorneys, each with somewhat differing specialties, and one attorney specializes in immigration law: He or she can have a GMB page that ranks for “immigration lawyer” terms on top of whatever terms the main practice’s GMB page (or other attorneys’ GMB pages) rank for.  If you primarily sell widgets, but you also have a distinct area of your store where you repair widgets and another where you rent out widgets, then one or more of those could justify your having an additional GMB page for each department.  Unless your competitors have the same kind of staff or the same department, they couldn’t have those additional GMB pages – or the additional visibility. Your location. Even though it’s not hard to create and verify a Google My Business page at a bogus address, it may be logistically impossible or prohibitively tough for your competitors to verify GMB pages at your location. Even if they could get their own map pin right in your building, there is a good chance they’d be filtered out of the local map. Awards, certifications, and publicity. Certain distinctions often bring with them visibility for you on sites that may be big in your industry or your local market, and that themselves rank well in Google. They may also bring you good links, referral traffic, unstructured reviews, bragging rights, and branding power, which often the raw materials of effective SEO.  The fruit salad you earned may be the results of focused and intensive work, or the results of many years in the trenches.  Your competitor can start at the beginning, the way you did, but because a third party had to give you your props, there is nothing for a competitor to grab. Videos. If a video features your smiling visage, shows your business or branding, features your customers, or in general demonstrates how great you are, not only is it hard or impossible for a competitor to lift or edit, but also no competitor would want the video that results. Videos are inherently hard to rip off, which may be one reason that even all these years it’s still not all that hard to get them to rank for pretty competitive local search terms.  (Of course, the main benefit of a good video is to make your site more persuasive by embedding it on your site.) Persuasive reviews. Competitors can easily write or buy sock-puppet reviews, or fake their reviews in other ways. But those reviews usually won’t appear credible even on the surface, and will look even shadier when would-be customers look up who the “reviewers” are – none of whom seems to be a real person whose life can be researched a little through Google-fu.  Competitors can copy reviews, but they can’t copy authenticity.

—

There are always ants at a picnic, and you can assume some of your food will disappear or start marching away.  But if you pack enough food that the ants can’t or won’t eat, you’ll have plenty for yourself.

What are other aspects of local SEO that competitors can’t pick up and drag off?

Any first-hand stories about competitors who aped your strategies?

Leave a comment!

One of the first things you notice about Google Maps and the rest of the local search zoo is that usually there’s no single, isolated reason one business outranks another.  Rather, all kinds of factors come into play: some obvious, some less obvious, lots of maybes, and some that probably nobody knows about.  But I’d go a step further and say you’re in a much better position to get some solid rankings if you know how some factors tend to interact with each other, often in unpredictable ways.

You can’t look at local search ranking factors in a vacuum.  Google sure doesn’t seem to.  Now, it’s not a bad idea to work on your local SEO with a big checklist.  That can get you far, especially if you stick with it.  You only run into trouble when you seem to have done exactly what your strongest competitors have done – and maybe you even did it better – and you still come up short and have no idea why.

So the first thing to know is certain ranking factors seem to have relationships to each other.  The second thing to know is those relationships often are strange.  Not quite Hollywood strange, but counter-intuitive enough to elude most people most of the time.

Now’s probably a good time to stress that these are just my observations.  Granted, they’re based on my having gotten my local SEO overalls grimy for about 71 Internet years, and I’ve seen these phenomena pop up again and again.  I often explain these points to clients and others, and put them to the test all the time.  So I’m confident that you’ll observe at least some of the same things I’ve observed (if you haven’t already), though you may observe different things and draw different conclusions (which I’d love to hear).  In any event, it’s always possible that one phenomenon I think I understand is in reality something else.  Also, I don’t claim to be able to explain everything perfectly. I’m just sharing my lab notes, and hope you put them to use in your local market.

Anyway, here are some of the many odd relationships between ranking factors that pop up in Google’s local search results (Maps + organic):

1. The lower the density of local competitors for a search term, the more geography you can rank in.  Put another way: the more specialized your offering is, the wider service area you can realistically rank in.  That’s simply because for more-niche search terms Google needs to harder to turn up relevant results nearby, so it needs to look farther afield.  That’s true both in Google Maps and in the organic results.

2. The lower the density of local competitors, the faster you can expect to rank for a given search term.  Kind of an intuitive point – of course Google’s less picky when it’s got fewer choices – but business owners lose sight of it all the time anyway.  That’s one reason when you open a new business or a new location you should focus on smaller, more-specialized terms, and on a tighter geography rather than on your whole service area.  You’re not biting off more than you can chew, and are more likely to get some visibility / customers on the sooner side.

3. The stronger the backlinks profile a site has, the higher likelihood that new content on that site – or GMB pages pointing to that site – will rank well early on.  Why is that bigger companies can create a Google My Business page, or add an unremarkable new page, or blast out a so-so blog post, and have it outrank most competitors right out of the chute?  Not necessarily after a day, but maybe after a few weeks – and in any case way sooner than you got any good rankings.

Whenever I see a business that’s visible quickly and without spamming, I almost always find a link profile that’s better than competitors’.  If your GMB page or “service” or “city” page or blog post (or whatever) is attached to a domain with good and relevant links, especially if you’ve earned them over the course of years, you’re more likely to get some solid rankings sooner, even if that exact URL on your site doesn’t  have any links specifically pointing at it yet.

4. The more good links you have, the more forgiving Google is of bad links.  (This phenomenon isn’t specific to local SEO, but rather is omnipresent in SEO.)  Most sites that have been around for more than a couple of years have some shady-looking links, often that the owner of the site doesn’t want and had no hand in creating.  There are always ants at the picnic.  Google seems to know that and take it into account.

The bad news is that’s probably why some bigger brands and organizations often get away with schemes like buying links, setting up a network, or jamming exact-match anchor text into links whenever it can, even if a smaller or newer business would get penalized if it tried to get a foothold that way.  Often the more-established companies have enough decent links that Google looks at the big picture and concludes that the company isn’t completely reliant on the schemes.  If a new site or one without many or any good links tries some scheme and 80% of its links already look fishy to Google, then of course that plan invites trouble, because at some point it’ll just be too much.

Meanwhile, a more-established site could get away with getting the same shady links, because those links might account for 5% of its haul.  Fair?  Maybe not, but that’s how it always seems to go.

The good news is that to the extent you have some links that took a little effort to get and are from relevant sites, then you don’t need to worry much about penalty if you’ve got some junk links in the mix.

5. The more you develop your homepage – which is usually your GMB landing page URL – the greater the range of terms you can rank for on the local map.  As I’ve found for many years, not only are you most likely to rank well on the local map if you use your homepage as your GMB landing page URL, but your homepage also is most likely to rank for a big bucket of search terms.  Other pages on your site tend to rank for a smaller, more closely-related groups of terms (if you play your cards right).  For most businesses, the homepage tends to have most or all of the good links.

That means a few things.  One is that’s probably why so often your homepage will outrank other pages on your site for terms you want those pages to rank for.  The other is that your homepage tends to have just enough link oomph to rank for at least some of the terms you want for, as long as the content is relevant.  That’s where most business owners trip at the 5-yard line: their homepages are lean on info on the services and service area, and read more like brochures.

6. The better your site performs organically, the more likely your GMB page is to rank well (somewhere, for some terms you care about).  Most of local SEO is organic SEO with a few twists.  If you’ve got several sites and aren’t sure which one to glue your GMB page(s), my suggestion is to pick the one that gets the most visibility in the organic results, preferably for locally relevant terms.  (By the way, that’s why some people get mileage out of the old tactic of using a page on a BIG domain – think Facebook or Yelp or Google Sites – as their GMB landing page URL.  That GMB page piggybacks off of the prominence and link mojo of that domain, and Google’s too unsophisticated or lackadaisical to do anything about it.)

7. The more you’ve worked on your local citations, the less likely you are to see any benefit from further work.  Especially if you’ve got other factors already working in your favor, and especially if your citations are a total mess, you can see a bump your Google Maps / GMB rankings after you’ve squared away your listings on the basic sites.  Beyond that?  Not so much.  Many business owners do some work on their citations, see a little boost, and think, “Cool!  I worked on 20 listings and saw results, so I’ll crank out 200 listings on other sites and should get 10 times the results.”  It never works out that way.  There’s a point of diminishing return in citation work, and in my experience once hits it real fast.

8. The better a page performs already, the more easily you can get it to rank for a related term, or in a nearby area, or both.  I can’t explain it, but time and time again I’ve noticed a “snowball” effect in which you identify a page on your site that already ranks well for certain local search terms, you add a bit of content that’s at least loosely relevant to the terms that page ranks for, and sooner or later that page ranks for those new terms, too.

So let’s say you’re a dentist and you’ve got a page that’s mighty visible for “cosmetic dentist” or a similar term.  The chances are good you could get that same page to rank for the term “dental veneers” or “teeth whitening” (or both) with less strain than you could get separate, dedicated, more-targeted pages to rank for those terms.  I’ve found this most likely to work on pages that tend to be broad, like the homepage, “state” pages, and sometimes “service” pages.  It can help widen the variety of terms a page ranks for in the organic results, and in some cases it can widen your visibility in the 3-pack / Google Maps.  Often it’s not that hard to branch out if you attempt it on a page that already does OK.

9. The more reviews you get, the easier it is to get more reviews.  That can be a good thing or a bad thing.  When you’ve got many negative reviews, people are more likely to pig-pile you.  Or, when you’ve got many good reviews, the people who become your customers / clients / patients are more likely to have picked you because of your strong reviews, and are predisposed to write you a review when the time comes.

10. The longer Google Maps spam is around, the harder it is to get Google to correct it.  I don’t know if that’s because older spammy GMB pages tend to have piled up more reviews (which do seem to help spam stick around), or because the business is more likely to have listings on the sites that Google uses to confirm the info it has on a certain business, or because Google has enough behavioral data on the GMB page (what terms it ranks for, who clicks on it, where those people are located, etc.).  I suspect its some combination of those factors, plus some factor(s) I wouldn’t even guess.   In any event, there is a sad “fake it ‘til you make it” reality that benefits the slickest spammers and well-meaning unintentional rule-benders alike.

11. The faster you get good rankings, the more likely your rankings will swing up and down.  It’s nice if you saw a bump just from changing the name of your business and/or Google My Business page, or moving to a different address, or doing basic work on your local listings and site.  But that may also mean your competitors can knock you off with similar ease.  Or it may mean that for one reason or another you’re in one of Google’s test buckets, in which it rotates seemingly random local businesses into the results, presumably just to see who clicks.

I’m not saying that poor results mean you’ve got a brilliant long game that just hasn’t worked out yet, and I’m not saying that sometimes stubborn problems don’t  have simple solutions.  Quick wins may lead to lasting gains, and you’ll take all the good news you can get.

I’m just saying this: easy come, easy go.

—

To what extent have you noticed those kinds of interactions?  Do they seem to have helped or hurt you or your competitors?

Do you think something else is going on?

Any other “weird relationships” you’ve noticed between ranking factors?

Leave a comment!

30-second summary:

All the copy and strategic use of keywords in the world will not impress search engines if your web design is not fit for purposeThe design of your website or web app is linked intrinsically to user experience, which in turn impacts your Google quality score and SEO performanceWebsite design must drive users from A to B without any unnecessary steps in between – while retaining relevant copy that ties in with your SEO strategyReview your website design when considering your SEO strategy KPIs – a drop in traffic may be due to a substandard or outdated layoutDo not neglect copy, as UX meta copy will improve your CTR on paid advertising. In turn, though, ensure that your website’s design system is strong enough to obtain a suitable quality score and keep your Google Ads spending within budget

In many respects, a website is the home of your business on the web. To this end, it’s perhaps fitting that creating a website is not unlike building a house. To achieve your intentions, you’ll need to establish solid foundations before commencing construction. When it comes to building a website from scratch, that means engineering your design systems and templates to maximize SEO potential.

Many businesses emphasize content and keywords in their SEO strategy, with design becoming an afterthought. To return to our housebuilding analogy, that’s like laying a solid roof upon unstable walls. There is no denying that superior copy is critical to enjoying a successful approach to SEO. Even the most gifted writer cannot overcome substandard web design and user experience, though.

What is a design system?

No website, no matter how well designed, will remain the same forever. Therefore, websites and web apps need to be regularly audited, refreshed, and even wholly redesigned. Such steps are the only way to retain your target audience’s interest and ensure that you remain one step ahead of Google’s ever-evolving SEO algorithms.

At the very least, a website redesign is necessary every three years. If you diagnose a plummet in traffic, it may become essential sooner than this. Take a deep breath, review your data, and ascertain what is to blame for your drop-in visitors. If you suspect that your web design is the issue, a wait-and-see approach will not yield results. Your traffic will continue to drop, and the longer you wait to resolve the problem, the more mountains you will need to overcome.

Now, as anybody that has ever built a website from scratch will know, the task requires two things in abundance – time and money. Both are precious commodities for a business, especially an SME.

Alas, all websites periodically need a little tinkering under the bonnet. If you have established a design system, this will be significantly less disruptive. Effective website design systems ensure that your tech team or design agency has a firm and reliable blueprint to work from, and everything is in its place. Essentially, any work on your website is editorial rather than creative. As a result, you’ll enjoy positive implications on labor intensiveness and expense alike.

Above all, design systems create a positive user experience. If you expect to have any measure of success with your SEO strategy, superior UX is non-negotiable. 21st Century consumers have more choice than ever before, and patience is in short supply. If your website design system does not meet users’ needs quickly and efficiently, visitors will stay away – and Google will sit and take notice.

Do design systems influence SEO performance?

SEO and design systems initially appear to be opposites. Web designers focus on making a site look fabulous and providing accessible, fluid navigation. Copywriters ensure that the content meets a users’ needs, convincing them to follow the steps laid out in web design. In reality, these two disciplines are entwined when it comes to maximizing SEO.

First thing’s first – if you redesign a website without factoring your SEO into the equation, disaster awaits. Forget to apply 301 redirects, and Google may wipe your entire SEO strategy overnight. If all else fails, at least take advantage of UX microcopy to create engaging, interactive 404 pages. Ensuring that a redesigned website can still find high-performing pages is the only way to maintain SEO and SERP progress, though.

In addition, consider the impact of design on your SEO. Consider how mobile-friendly your design system us, and what coding you use. Anything more complex than industry-standard CSS or HTML may capture the imagination of a first-time user but can be considered a novelty. It may be challenging for readers to understand how to navigate such a site, and you’ll struggle to optimize your content. These issues will have a knock-on effect on your page ranking.

What makes the ideal web design for SEO and SERPs?

As discussed, any business or individual must update their website from time to time. Even if your site is still pulling in traffic, there is no harm in making tweaks. It’s much easier to keep traffic flowing than to regain loyalty and interest from lapsed consumers.

When reviewing your website’s design templates, ensure that you consider the following to maximize the impact of your SEO strategy.

1. Clear brand messaging

First and foremost, ensure that your website design templates clearly and directly explain your brand values and mission. Imagine that every click on your site is from a first-time visitor. Do they know what you can offer and how you’ll do so? If you cannot convince a user that you’re worthy of their attention in less than 15 seconds, they’re likely to click away and be lost for good. Google will acknowledge this bounce rate and adjust your quality score accordingly

2. Investigating competitors

As we have mentioned previously, all websites need to undergo periodic renewal, including your competitors’ online presence. Be sure to constantly check in on what your rivals are doing, especially those that seem to enjoy excellent SEO performance. Take your findings and build upon them, whether that’s taking a skyscraper approach to SEO copy or adjusting the layout and design of your site to meet the industry gold standard.

Before you embark on any kind of website redesign, factor all these matters into your thinking. If you create a website design system that meets all criteria, any future adjustments will be considerably more straightforward.

3. Understanding industry trends

As well as keeping an eye on your competitors, think about industry trends. While every consumer is unique, large groups can be relied upon to embrace a herd mentality. When building a design system, ensure that you can showcase any social awareness campaigns. Be ready to alter payment methods if a new financial platform takes the world by storm. Consider introducing one-click models to reach pages if these become popular. Few consumers will place their trust in a website that is deemed archaic and out of touch with contemporary tastes and expectations.

4. Be mobile-friendly

Website design packed with bells and whistles can look spectacular on a large HD screen. Consider how your site will perform when squeezed into a 5.5″ smartphone display, though. More and more people are eschewing desktop browsing for a portable alternative, which must factor into your design template. Failure to cater to the mobile market will place you firmly in Google’s bad books.

5. User experience

Arguably the most prominent concern of them all – you must ensure that your website design offers an enhanced UX for your visitors. Get people from A to B with a minimum of fuss. Do not be tempted to stuff your site with additional pages, creating more links in a chain to flex your copywriting muscles or cram in more advertising. Speed and simplicity will always win out.

6. Ease of adjustment

Is your website’s design system engineered in-house or through an external agency? It’s better to bring in outside help if you are not an expert in this field. If you do so, however, ensure that you understand how to make any changes yourself. Fast action may be required, and you will not want to be at the mercy of a third party’s availability.

7. Get meta

Meta text and tags will not directly influence your page ranking with Google, as they do not influence a quality score. Appropriate meta tags on images can help images be sourced by search engines, though, as well as enhancing UX for visually impaired visitors.

8. Gather first-party data

Another consideration when building a website design system for your SEO is the capturing of first-party data. In 2021, the real currency is information. By understanding your target audience and obtaining data that they willingly provide themselves, you tailor your offering to those likeliest to use it. Do not neglect opportunities to source this data for yourself – it will save time and money and ensure accuracy when building a customer profile.

9. Think like Google

Whether we like it or not, this is Google’s world, and we’re just living in it. Set up alerts and do whatever you can to stay one step ahead of any algorithm updates, whether major or minor. History is littered with horror stories of websites that lost four figures of revenue overnight due to traffic slumps following an algorithm update. While it’s impossible to predict what The Big G will get up to next, you can at least protect yourself by pre-empting changes.

10. Avoid intrusive advertising

For some websites, advertising is a necessary evil to maintain a revenue stream. Always consider the placement and style of advertising in your website design system. Static ads that fill a page or videos that slow down performance will infuriate users and lead to a high bounce rate. Google will also notice these issues and reduce your quality score accordingly. Slow loading speeds and an emphasis on advertising over quality content are both red flags.

11. Investigate ROI

Finally, think about how you will assess the success – or otherwise – of your SEO strategy. Is it time to update your choice of SEO tool? Think about the KPIs you measure regularly, and ensure your website design system supports such tools and plug-ins. There is little point in investing in SEO services if you are unaware of their performance.

Does copy influence SEO and SERPs more than design systems?

As discussed, a gold standard copy will not supersede poor website design. However, this does not mean that you ignore your copy needs in favor of focusing on aesthetics. Relevance and information are just as crucial to UX as rapid negotiation of a website. Never lose track of the importance of Google’s algorithms, either. If you fall foul of E-A-T expectations, it can be challenging to regain your standing.

So, to answer the question above, copy is not more important than website design – but it’s equally critical. A well-planned website will attract attention but great copy will retain it. Copy alone will not dictate a stellar Google quality score but can bolster conversions and improve CTR on paid advertising. Such steps are vital when taking advantage of SERPs.

All of this raises an important question – what should come first when prepping an SEO strategy, copy or design? Returning to the housebuilding analogy that opened this guide, design is the sturdy, reliable bricks and mortar of a dwelling. Copy is the personal touch that makes a house a home and something uniquely your own.

If you were building a home from scratch, however, would you not feel strongly about ensuring it met your needs? You would ensure that the dimensions accommodate your existing furniture and that the blueprints provide enough space that you will not need to move any time soon.

If you have your copy planned out before creating a website design system, you will have a margin for error. You can tailor every step of the user journey to the text that you have prepared, and where necessary, streamline your content with the aid of data storytelling. Above all, you can adjust copy without too much fuss, adapting to the ever-shifting SEO landscape. A design system is considerably tougher to remold around your prose. Always keep this in mind when planning your website.

Joe Dawson is Director of strategic growth agency Creative.onl, based in the UK. He can be found on Twitter @jdwn

The post Design systems and SEO: does it help or hinder SERP achievements? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.seooptimisation.org/?p=125

30-second summary:

To ensure organic visibility for your seasonal pages, start creating, optimizing, and analyzing them nowStart creating, organizing, and scheduling seasonal content assets now for a head-start when it’s time to start focusing on driving salesEvaluate your past seasonal content performance to be able to recycle, update, and possibly even expand them into standalone projectsResearch your competitive tactics to evaluate how they utilize seasonality in their digital marketing strategyCreate a detailed editorial calendar to plan out all assignments and deadlines to “catch” the rising interest in seasonal content and deals

Summer is a slow season for many businesses, especially those in a B2B niche. If things are a bit slow for you now, here’s an idea – Use these quiet months to turn your next big season into a huge boost for your business. Here is how you can start preparing for your next big seasonal content marketing campaign now:

1. Check your seasonal rankings now

Do you have a page (or pages) offering seasonal deals, gift ideas, and special offers? The demand for this type of content may be seasonal but its rankings should be permanent. That’s why I always advise against removing these pages or even delinking them throughout the site.

You want those pages to always be accessed by Google for your rankings to be there when the searches start climbing.

If you cannot find your site ranking for your target seasonal queries, it is time to set them up even if the actual season is still months ahead.

Source: Screenshot created by the author

Furthermore, Spyfu offers a comprehensive analysis of all SERP movements for you to identify important patterns and spot a competitor that was doing the best job retaining their organic visibility for seasonal search queries:

Source: Screenshot created by the author

Read more about this feature here

When it comes to SEO, seasonality can be tricky but it definitely needs to be planned ahead as organic SEO takes time to yield results.

2. Start creating seasonal assets (content and social)

Your high season is going to be a busy time for you and your team, so while planning your upcoming campaigns, start creating (and even scheduling) your content assets beforehand.

When brainstorming seasons content ideas, I always turn to Text Optimizer that does a great job suggesting related concepts and angles to focus on:

Source: Screenshot created by the author

The tool relies on semantic analysis

Content marketing involves a lot of channels, so the more you are prepared, the easier (and more productive) your seasonal campaign will turn out to be.

Furthermore, there are a few cross-channel content marketing tools that can help create and organize your seasonal content. For example, Boosted by Lightricks allows you to easily create festive videos in multiple formats:

Source: Screenshot created by the author

This way you can create content assets that will fit all of your channels. There’s also a handy Brand Kit feature allowing you to maintain a consistent visual identity throughout all your assets:

Source: Screenshot created by the author

The app is available on iPhone and Android for free. You can choose to upgrade for $4.99 per month. I for one have been using the free tier (and the above screenshots are taken when using the free version of the app).

The platform also offers a list of seasonal content ideas and hashtags to make your campaign even more effective.

There are a few more video creation apps out there but I don’t think any of them let you access so many great features for free.

Another great content creation tool that gives you lots of free features for free is, of course, Canva. I’ve been using Canva for free for as long as I can remember without ever having to upgrade.

Source: Screenshot created by the author

Here’s the guide on planning a Christmas marketing campaign

3. Evaluate your past seasonal campaign performance

If you were publicizing any seasonal content over the years, find all of it to:

Explore an opportunity for an update (“Can I reuse this asset this year?” as well as “How can I make it better?”)Evaluate how effective it was in attracting traffic as well as turning those clicks into conversions

Google Analytics offers an easy way to identify landing pages that did the best job attracting traffic during any period:

Go to the Acquisition report and select one channel (for example, “social” or “organic search”)Select the date range of your seasonal campaign from the last year(Optionally) Check the box “Compare” and select “Previous year” from the drop-downClick “Landing page” tab in the chart below:

Source: Screenshot created by the author

This gives you an at-a-glance report of the highest traffic page from your previous campaigns. You can further narrow it down by using word filters (for example, type “blog” there to see your best performing seasonal content).

To analyze conversions, you can use Google Analytics goals and funnels. Another tool I am using to closely monitor incoming traffic and its conversions is Finteza. Because it makes it incredibly easy to narrow the data down to identify which traffic source is sending traffic and how well it converts as compared to other pages.

Source: Screenshot created by the author

Read more about Finteza’s conversion funnels here. Finteza costs $25 a month and there’s a 30-day trial available for you to play with the tool before committing.

4. Consider starting a tradition

If any of those previous content assets turned particularly successful, consider expanding that idea into a new project! We all remember the overwhelming success of “Elf YourselfAsk Santa, and NORAD mini-projects that were able to engage (and convert) thousands of people year over year.

 A separate (single-page) site will be easier to brand and promote without causing any strong associations with your main business. If you need some inspiration, check out Namify:

Source: Namify

5. Look what your competitors did (or didn’t)

Competitive analysis is important because it motivates a business owner to do more and do it better. Therefore I always include competitive analysis in any of my marketing planning.

There are plenty of ways to research your competitors and what they are doing. My first step is always checking Ahrefs and what other search queries they are ranking for:

Source: Screenshot created by the author

Ahrefs is the only platform in the industry that also offers an estimate of traffic each search query sends. Here’s how they calculate it. Ahrefs lowest tier is $99 per month but it is definitely a must-have tool if you are doing SEO.

Similar Web is another nice tool for competitive research. I like looking at their “Referral Traffic” report to identify which sites are sending traffic to my competitors:

Source: Similar Web

This basic report is available for free.

It is also a good idea to set up Google Alerts to be modified when your competitors are doing something new.

6. Create your editorial calendar

Every year people seem to start preparing for big holidays earlier. It is not unusual to spot a Holiday-centric social media ad in October. This can actually cause both excitement and irritation.

So the important question remains: When should I start publishing seasonal content?

This may depend from niche to niche, so I always suggest typing your target seasonal search query into Google Trends

Source: Screenshot created by the author

It also helps to compare several of your target search queries. For example, in this niche the demand seems to be pretty consistent over the years:

Source: Screenshot created by the author

When it comes to organizing and scheduling your content assets, there are a few great calendar plugins to choose from. I mostly use CoSchedule because it allows me to also schedule those updates to your social media channels as well as assign certain content assets to various contributors. 

CoSchedule costs $29 per month. It supports scheduling to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram. I prefer the tool because it combines on-site content planning (assigning content assets to be written) and social media scheduling. This allows me to create a very well-aligned content marketing campaign and makes it easy to organize editorial workflow across many channels.

Instagram also offers a helpful guide on planning your seasonal content strategy here

Source: Screenshot created by the author

Conclusion

Seasonal planning is a great way to make the most of those seasonal interest spikes and build more sales. The earlier you start preparing for your big season, the more time you have to handle an increased amount of sales. Good luck!

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

The post Here’s how you can master your next seasonal digital marketing campaign appeared first on Search Engine Watch.