How Do Keyword Optimizations Change After Helpful Content Update? via @sejournal, @rollerblader

Today’s Ask an SEO question comes from Ines, who asks:

“Can we go over how/if keyword optimization will change (after the Helpful Content update)?”

Great question, and one that gets asked a lot, especially when sites get penalized, remain stagnant, or lose positions.

Keyword optimization strategies should not change at all because SEO pros should never be optimizing for keywords.

If you want Google to know when to show and optimize your page, you have to optimize for a solution and the topic so that the person searching will benefit from the page they land on.

Yes, keywords make a page understandable for a search engine, and if it is the phrase and jargon your customers are using, it will be relatable.

Being relatable can increase conversions because you’re speaking your customer’s language. But don’t stress over the keyword.

If you’re going to focus on something, the best bet, if you want traffic and conversions, is to hone in on the intent of the searcher.

When you do this, the keyword begins to appear naturally throughout the page – and in ways an actual customer would be using it.

I’ll share an example and then expand on it while fine-tuning the “keyword-based” content.

If the keyword is “blue t-shirt,” do not do:

• Title Tag – The Best Blue T-Shirts from Blue T-shirt Store.
• H1 Tag – Blue T-Shirts From The Top Blue Tee Shirt Shop.
• Blurb – “We sell the most comfortable blue t-shirts available. Each blue t-shirt comes in crew neck, v-neck, and wrangler or baseball style with blue tee sleeves. Shop below to find the best selection of blue tee shirts in cotton, polyester, and blends.”

This is trying to optimize for a keyword phrase and keyword stuffing.

You also do not need variations of the phrase “blue t-shirt” as often because modern search engines have begun understanding the differences. They use the context and, likely, the structure of the page to understand what the product, service, or content on the page is.

It’s a hard habit to break – and I’m guilty of it – but one that is vital for success with the spam, core, and HCU signal checkers and algorithms.

One thing we do with our clients is have a stranger read the text.

If their facial expressions change, the test groups look confused because they’re repeating the same phrases over and over, or they pause and start to laugh; we have keyword-stuffed the content (i.e., optimized for the keyword) and need to rewrite the text.

Pro tip: You don’t have to spend tons of money on focus groups. I use coffee shops and cafes where there’s a regular influx of people coming in and out (so nobody knows what I’m asking after 10 minutes), and people are bored waiting for their coffees. I’m giving them something to do. At times, I’ll pay for their coffee as well.

Let’s look at another way to get the same message across that is more “SEO friendly” but with fewer keyword optimizations.

In this example, I’m thinking about the types of phrases that would answer a customer’s questions and incorporating them into the architecture and content so they know they’re in the right place if they visit.

It may look like:

• Title Tag – Comfy Blue T-shirts Available in Popular Styles.
• H1 – Blue T-shirts for Sports & Casual Wear.
• Blurb – “Are you looking for a graphic t-shirt that is perfect for school, or a wrangler with blue sleeves for baseball? You’re in luck. Here at ABC brand, we sell a huge selection of these tees in multiple fabrics and styles no matter what style you need.”

This type of copy isn’t perfect, but it speaks to the reader and lets them know you may have a solution for their “blue t-shirt” needs. But like I said, we can take this multiple steps further.

I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but from my experience, I have seen the relevance of a header tag pass through to the copy below. So if the H1 tag is “Blue T-shirt,” don’t stuff that in below.

Describe the blue t-shirt, its purpose, and uses instead of keyword stuffing. Modern search engines likely know how to connect the two. So, let’s go deeper and create a more topically relevant copy experience.

Pro-tip: Talk to your customer support and warehouse team and look for the reasons the blue t-shirts get returned. Adding hints as to which to buy can reduce returns, time wasted with customer support about sizing, etc. This reduces overhead, labor costs, and wait times for actual customer problems.

Issues you may discover in our fake scenario may include:

• Faded during the fifth wash.
• Didn’t fit or was too tight.
• Ripped after wearing.
• The colors didn’t match the photos.
• Arrives after the needed date (think print on demand for parties).

Take the customer support and warehouse feedback and place it in a keyword cloud, or try using AI or a custom GPT to create a keyword cloud of the most common three to six-word phrases.

This gives you a way to meet customer needs and potentially include longtail phrases with topical relevance throughout the category and product pages.

Once you have these, think about where these answers can be included on the page:

• A few additional words in the product description or category.
• FAQs on the product or collection/category page.
• The blurb at the top of the page, or if needed, below the product grid.
• It can also be included in your live chat scripts, although that won’t help with SEO.

You can always try adding content to a column in the products as well as your site search box. However, site search won’t help with SEO, so I’ll save that for a different column if someone asks. How does this relate to SEO?

Modern search engines try to show the most relevant experience, and if someone is looking for a product that ships fast, has positive reviews, doesn’t fade, and can stand up to summer camp dirt and grime, having this information on your page lets them know you have a solution to the searches needs.

But don’t go wild!

Here’s what the page may look like now:

• Title – Fade-free Blue T-shirts in Multiple Styles & Materials.
• H1 – Blue T-shirts That Last.
• Blurb – “From baseball to casual wear, and cotton to mixed blends, when you shop ABC brand, you’ll discover a selection of fade-resistant blue t-shirts that are machine washable and in sizes from XS to XXXL. 2-day shipping available. Buy a size up; they’re tight in the chest.”

Now add in FAQs, but make sure they only apply to the blue category of t-shirts. If they apply to red, white, green, or purple, then they should go in the main t-shirt category, as blue FAQs should be specific to blue.

Here’s an example of an FAQ that belongs on the category page and one example that should not go on the page.

One that can go on the page:

What does the blue look like after five washes?

Although our blue tones are made from X, Y, or Z dyes which are fade-resistant, fading happens, especially in warm or hot water. Here’s a color chart featuring Royal, Baby, and Navy after five, 10, and 30 washes.

One that should not go on the page:

The blue isn’t like the color in the photo, what can I do?

If the color doesn’t match the image on the page, you’re covered by our return policy which you can find here.

The second FAQ does not go on the page because it applies to any and all colors. It is about the return policy and is not specific to a blue T-shirt. It belongs on a general store FAQ page.

An alternative to the FAQ is to include you have a money-back guarantee near the CTA on the product pages and link to the policy from there. It’s a trust builder, not a piece of unique copy.

Focusing and optimizing for keywords is how you get penalized. Focusing on providing a good user experience and the topic of the queries is how you get rankings.

• Look at the keyword groups.
• Match the intent to the page type, like a collection, product, blog post, or comparison.
• Write content that answers users’ questions.
• Match the images to consumers’ needs.
• Include bonus tips that help make a positive shopping experience, like sizing and care instructions.
• Don’t keyword stuff.

I hope this helps answer your questions about keyword optimizations and the helpful content update. Thank you for being a subscriber.

More resources:

Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

How Can You Begin To Rank In New Markets (Local, National, International) via @sejournal, @rollerblader

Today’s ask an SEO question comes from Mark:

“How can a small company that only ranks in its local markets begin to rank in another market? What would you do to help the small company rank in a new area?”

Great question, Mark! The good news is that the answer is fairly easy and can be applied to local, national, and international in the base strategy.

All three can also require foreign language versions, but that is for another post. I’ll give some hints in this one for that situation, though.

I’m going to cover the basics of getting SEO traffic in new markets here, making the assumption it is regional vs. new products, and then share some tips specific to local, national, and international.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

If you’re local or have a national footprint, when you expand, make sure to update your area served or serviced by location. This link goes to Google’s guide for how to use a service area.

Make sure to keep your hours up-to-date on the website, landing page, and on your GBP.

This helps the search engines to understand where you’re now offering services, what your footprint is, and when customers can access your offerings.

You can also launch new profiles for new locations. Just make sure you verify ownership for each one and keep them up-to-date. This includes holiday hours and closings.

Schema

Do you have service area or organization schema on your site or pages? Make sure to fill out and update the “area served” fields by referencing Wikipedia or Wikipedia’s entries.

Wikidata has almost every city, county, state, country, and region to help you define where your products, services, stores, etc., are located.

The more you can help the search engines know where you offer services, and the hours you offer them, the better job they can do at showing you as a provider to people in those markets.

Do you offer services in all of North America (US, Mexico, Canada)? There’s a page for that, too. This way, you don’t have to reference all three.

But something really weird here is that Wikidata includes “Greenland” as North America.

That’s definitely not accurate for your locations, although it is technically part of the continent (geographically). Politically, Greenland is part of the EU, as it is currently a territory of Denmark.

Here’s a screenshot of the page with a date stamp. This likely wouldn’t impact your ability to rank, so don’t second-guess yourself here.

I’m using this as an example because it could be confusing as to why you may reference this page when you don’t offer services in Greenland.

Screenshot from Wikidata, January 2023

Localize Or Regionalize Your Titles And Descriptions

Meta descriptions are not a ranking signal or used in rankings – at least, that’s my opinion – though they do influence how many people click through to your site. But only when a search engine uses the meta descriptions you create.

Title tags, however, do move the needle, based on my experience, when combined with other on-page elements.

When the description reinforces the region or market the title displays for, you create an enticing ad for a consumer to click on.

And meta descriptions are vital.

If you are optimizing for tourists and mention you’re right by a specific landmark, they will know you’re close to their location and may click on your listing over another business higher up that shares generic titles and descriptions.

This can work for retailers, pharmacies, restaurants, housing or car rentals, etc. Here’s a guide I created for writing localized meta descriptions and title tags.

Build Citations And Do PR Work

This one is a double win! Look up local blogs, newspapers, and magazines, then focus on getting featured and mentioned.

By being featured, you can get referral traffic and customers to your business and signal to search engines you have a new local location or expansion. In some cases, you may get a backlink.

Whether the backlink is natural and good or not depends on the site linking to you and the type of link.

As an added bonus, if the new market you have moved into recognizes and trusts the media company’s brand, feature the logo on your page.

This may help build trust to increase conversions both online or for foot traffic if they’re deciding between two businesses to try.

If you were to expand into my city (Washington D.C.), focus on Washingtonian Magazine, Popville, or ARLnow. These could be recognizable by locals in our area.

Other Things To Pay Attention To

One thing to keep in mind when you expand your footprint is that demographics may change location by location.

You may find the new location has a different skew for race, religion, single vs. married, income levels, or age ranges. This means the way you market also needs modifying.

• If you offer new languages, make sure to check your hreflang tags so they reference the correct language version for products, services, and content. Here’s Google’s guide on this.
• Update the imagery to match the demographics of the customers who will be contacting you for services or visiting your location.
• Make sure the wording makes sense for their needs. If your original location is in a DINK-heavy area (dual income, no kids), and the new one has multiple elementary schools, mention the new location is kid-friendly or add in relevant promotions, e.g., “kids eat half price.” While you might do this for the kid-friendly location, keep the wording focused on relaxing, calm, quiet, and romantic for the DINK location.

Expanding a business or service is exciting, and it is easy to begin getting traffic, customers, and sales from it.

You just need to put in the work, make sure you cater to the needs of your new audience, and that your content and code are updated regularly. I hope this helps.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Toey Andante/Shutterstock

How Do I Optimize SEO Conversions On Non-Branded Search Terms? via @sejournal, @rollerblader

This week’s Ask an SEO question comes from Arpit, who asks:

“How do I optimize SEO conversions on non-branded search terms?”

Great question! This one is all about meeting user needs and modifying your copy or the page experience at the current step in the consumer journey.

And it applies to both B2B and B2C.

In some cases, you’ll need to use a multi-channel approach. The good news is it is a pretty easy one to solve.

The first step is to evaluate what the intent of the visitor is. Consider whether they are:

• In the research phase.
• Mid-funnel and choosing between products or vendors.
• Ready to convert but not ready to pull the plug.

In The Research Phase

Someone just researching solutions hasn’t decided if they’re ready to convert yet. So make sure you have remarketing pixels ready to tag them.

Remarketing is vital here because there is an interest in a product or service you provide.

By tagging them, you can bring them back once they’re ready to convert and share new content to help educate them during their journey. This is especially important with large and B2B purchases.

Pro-tip: PPC likely has the lifecycle timestamp and channel touchpoints if they’re tracking lifecycle customer data.

Remarketing includes email and SMS opt-ins, social media, PPC, and media planning or ad buys. And there’s a huge benefit to these channels from your SEO efforts.

Your company can save PPC money on low-intent but topically relevant keywords by having you rank for them and get the clicks for a new customer at a fraction of the cost.

The PPC, ads, and social media teams can work with your SEO top-funnel traffic to drive the conversion as the lead warms. Make sure they report back on this touchpoint so that all channels win in company-wide reporting.

Cold leads are an important part of the consumer journey and acquisition campaigns.

This even applies to medical needs like plastic surgery, large purchases like SaaS solutions and data centers, and corporate trip planning.

What we do with clients that have this problem is create thought leadership and educational content to build trust for the research phase.

By becoming a “trusted resource” or “authority” on the subject, we begin building a relationship with them mentally and a positive association with our brand.

By having educational content show up for each question they have, we have the opportunity to earn their trust as a company that really knows the topic.

This way, when they decide it is time to pull the plug, they may come to our sales page directly or see our remarketing ads and convert through them.

Either way, it is about meeting the user’s needs at each step of their journey.

Mid-funnel

Someone mid-funnel could be looking for comparisons or to solve a problem – like changing a water heater tank or learning how to do a pull-up.

If you’re taking them to a product page, they may not need the product yet. Instead, take them to demonstrations with a video or a written guide with step-by-step instructions to complete the task.

This way, they can see the solution with their own eyes and know you’ve been there and solved it before.

I’ll use the water tank as an example here.

By showing multiple standard sizes and where they fit in a room via images and video, you can help the person visualize the size they need vs. what they thought they needed.

You can explain how many minutes of hot water it can produce or answer other questions they might ask – and even those they haven’t thought of yet.

This builds trust while showing experience in their situation.

Next, demonstrate how to install it in case the user is a DIYer. This can be done on the same page, or you can lead them to a new one.

The benefit here is you can highlight which tools are needed and link to those product pages to increase your order value and items in a cart.

These are two metrics we report on with some clients. If it turns out to be too hard for them or intimidating, close the content out with a call to action to hire your company to do it for them.

Pro tip: If you are a local business and cannot offer nationwide services, sell the leads to a trusted third party.

Or let the consumer know that you do not service their area, but XYZ company does, and use an affiliate link (with an advertising disclosure) to provide a resource and ask the person to subscribe to your channel.

I have this guide to finding an affiliate program you can make money with and this one to getting started in affiliate marketing.

Ready To Convert But Didn’t Pull The Plug

This is the tricky one. You could have a “high-intent” keyword that isn’t converting as it should.

There are a couple of places I start here; these can fix a large portion of the conversion issue.

Option 1

Crawl and index your customer service conversations, then extract all that have the product or service mentioned.

Next, look for common questions and see if your product or service page explains you do offer them. If not, update your page as soon as possible.

Option 2

Use abandonment intent pop-ups to ask potential customers why they’re leaving. It may be you’re priced too high, or they don’t understand you actually provide the solution.

• If priced too high, work on trust builders like money-back guarantees, positive reviews, educating the audience on quality over discounts, or work on your pricing if you have a margin.
• When the copy doesn’t reflect you provide a solution, add it to your copy to answer the question. You could do an FAQ or place it within the product description above the CTA if enough people mention it.
• You can also work on getting PR mentions in industry and mass media websites. The logos on PR bars can increase trust and conversions in many niches.

Pro tip: If customers are not sure the product will fit, work, match (color, theme, size, etc…), or solve a problem, you may need to create a demonstration and guide content vs. optimizing a product page.

And try adding the uses to the product copy above the call to action.

Wrapping Up

The trick to converting non-branded search traffic is to find out what was missing from your current consumer or lead process and add it in.

If that doesn’t work, discover what step of the customer journey the person is in and bring them to the right experience.

And that is how you can convert non-branded SEO keywords into paying customers.

I hope this guide helps, and thank you for reading.

CRO is one of my favorite types of projects. Thank you for asking this one!

More resources: 

Featured Image: eamesBot/Shutterstock

Should You Focus On Zero Search Volume Keywords? (Festive Flashback) via @sejournal, @rollerblader

Celebrate the Holidays with some of SEJ’s best articles of 2023.

Our Festive Flashback series runs from December 21 – January 5, featuring daily reads on significant events, fundamentals, actionable strategies, and thought leader opinions.

2023 has been quite eventful in the SEO industry and our contributors produced some outstanding articles to keep pace and reflect these changes.

Catch up on the best reads of 2023 to give you plenty to reflect on as you move into 2024.

In this Ask an SEO, Mouna asks:

“Should we use a keyword even when we don’t have volume or keyword difficulty data ? Sometimes there are no info on [tool name redacted] concerning some keywords?”

Great question, Mouna!

And the answer is yes, you should focus on zero search volume keywords when it makes sense for your company.

Here are four examples to make the business case if you’re being asked, “Why would we focus on questions that nobody is searching for?”

1. You build a site structure.
2. Customers could be asking, and this provides a solution to both them and future customers.
3. It is cheaper to remarket to someone than to pay for all acquisition touchpoints.
4. The question may not have search volume, but responses show up for the main phrase which has substantial search volume.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these examples.

1. You’re Building A Site Structure

On ecommerce sites, and sites built for branding, the amount of core website pages and content is normally limited.

By having these topics that are relevant to what your company or organization does, you can use zero search volume keywords and entities to create topically relevant content.

This content helps search engines and potential customers learn what you do, and which pages provide those solutions.

As you mention or demonstrate a product or service, you can source the conversion page with an internal link. This is a natural way to build a site structure for SEO and help the website visitor at the same time.

And if the page gets backlinks from quality sources, it could boost your other pages for a larger SEO boost.

Pro Tip: Just because a tool shows there is zero search volume, it does not mean there are zero people searching.

If you build a quality experience, you could become the website that gets cited as journalists and bloggers are looking for resources.

2. Because Customers Are Asking

An SEO tool does not know what your customers are asking. They can only come up with variations of questions and make assumptions about how many people are actively searching.

Talk to your customer support team and get the database of live chat questions.

If your customers are actively asking these questions, and the question or phrase is showing up in the SEO tools, it means there is in fact a search volume – and it is likely a high-intent one, too.

A high-intent keyword with 100 monthly searches could drive more revenue than a low-intent phrase with 10,000, as the person is further along in the sales funnel and looking to convert.

Pro Tip: Because you know the person is looking for a specific answer, and your customer support team has shown what answers the question and converts the customer, you have a data-based advantage compared to someone taking a shot in the dark and going with online research.

One option is to create a dedicated blog post for the topic.

If there is a how-to part, try adding a video demonstration and go for the YouTube and Google Video results.

And if it is something people are asking that is directly related to the use of a product or service, consider adding it to the text on your product or service page, as it may lead to a higher conversion rate. This could also be a good addition to an FAQ.

By answering these questions for people who are considering shopping with you or using your services, you can let them know they’re in the right place.

This reduces customer support’s workload because they’re not answering the same thing multiple times, and gives the social media and PPC teams a new asset to land people.

3. Remarketing Is Cheaper Than Acquisition

If you can bring the person in through SEO, you can tag them with remarketing pixels.

Instead of bidding on the big keywords where you need a massive budget, you can tag the person higher up in the sales funnel and bring them back for pennies on the dollar.

The added benefit here is that you gave them a solution in the content without a hard sales pitch. If you did a good job, you gain their trust.

Now, as your remarketing ads show to them, you have already built credibility and trust and can keep them coming back to more relevant posts or direct conversions.

But this all depends on the topic and where the person is in your sales funnel.

4. Your Content Can Show Up For Bigger Phrases

Even if the long-tail phrase or question has no search volume, type the shorter volume phrase into a search engine in incognito mode.  You may find the question actually does appear in the following and you can take the traffic from:

• People Also Ask.
• Related searches.
• Videos.
• Knowledge panels.
• Other.

If the titles of these, or the responses, are the same as your topic, you could replace them by creating a more relevant and better user experience.  Even though your phrase has zero search volume, it still shows up for a phrase with 20,000 monthly searches.  It’s a trick we use with some of our clients who have newer sites and aren’t ready for link building.

Look at what is missing, but needed, to provide a solution for the topic, and create it.  If the current top sites have a great answer, but the answer is buried under fluff, create content that gives the answer first and then provides more solutions.

Pro Tip: I do this on YouTube sometimes. I look for the videos showing up in the top results for the big phrases and then look to see what plays after each.

From there I study why these videos are recommended, what they’re missing, and what the other videos have in common with them.

Then, I create a better video and try to get the viewer without going for the main phrase.

In Conclusion

Yes, zero search volume keywords are worth going after, but only if they’re relevant to your business.

They can increase conversions for people in your funnel, be used by multiple channels, and bring in traffic the SEO tools don’t account for.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Will AI Kill SEO? We Asked ChatGPT (Festive Flashback) via @sejournal, @RyanJones

Celebrate the Holidays with some of SEJ’s best articles of 2023.

Our Festive Flashback series runs from December 21 – January 5, featuring daily reads on significant events, fundamentals, actionable strategies, and thought leader opinions.

2023 has been quite eventful in the SEO industry and our contributors produced some outstanding articles to keep pace and reflect these changes.

Catch up on the best reads of 2023 to give you plenty to reflect on as you move into 2024

It happens every couple of years.

First, it was Jason Calacanis and Mahalo, then the early social platforms.

We saw it again with voice search and smart assistants. For a minute, it was TikTok’s turn. Then the metaverse jumped the line.

Now, it’s ChatGPT and AI.

I’m talking, of course, about “SEO killers.”

Every now and then, a new technology comes along, and three things inevitably happen:

• Thousands of SEO professionals publish posts and case studies declaring themselves experts in the new thing.
• Every publication dusts off its “SEO is dead” article, changes the date, and does a find and replace for the new technology.
• SEO continues to be stronger than ever.

Rinse, repeat.

It would seem that search has more lives than a cartoon cat, but the simple truth is: Search is immortal.

How we search, what devices we use, and whether the answer is a link to a website will forever be up for debate.

But as long as users have tasks to complete, they’ll turn somewhere for help, and digital marketers will influence the process.

Will AI Replace Search?

There’s a ton of hype right now about AI replacing both search engines and search professionals – I don’t see that happening. I view ChatGPT as just another tool.

Much like a knife: You can butter bread or cut yourself. It’s all in how you use it.

Will AI replace search engines? Let’s ask it ourselves!

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

That’s a pretty good answer.

Many SEO professionals (including me) have been saying for years that the days of tricking the algorithm are long gone.

SEO has been slowly morphing into digital marketing for a long time now. It’s no longer possible to do SEO without considering user intent, personas, use cases, competitive research, market conditions, etc.

Ok, but won’t AI just do that for us? Is AI going to take my job? Here’s a crazy idea: Let’s ask ChatGPT!

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

AI Isn’t Going To Take Your Job. But An SEO Who Knows How To Use AI To Be More Efficient Just Might

Why? Let’s dive in.

I still see a lot of SEO pros writing articles that ask AI to do things it’s simply incapable of – and this comes from a basic understanding of how large language models actually work.

AI tools, like ChatGPT, aren’t pulling any information from a database of facts. They don’t have an index or a knowledge graph.

They don’t “store” information the way a search engine does. They’re simply predicting what words or sentences will come next based on the material they’ve been trained on. They don’t store this training material, though.

They’re using word vectors to determine what words are most likely to come next. That’s why they can be so good and also hallucinate.

AI can’t crawl the internet. It has no knowledge of current events and can’t cite sources because it doesn’t know or retain that information. Sure, you can ask it to cite sources, but it’s really just making stuff up.

For really popular topics that were discussed a lot, it can get pretty close – because the probabilities of those words coming next are really high – but the more specific you get, the more it will hallucinate.

Given the extreme amount of time and resources it takes to train the model, it will be a long time before AI can answer any queries about current events.

But What About Bing, You.com, And Google’s Upcoming Bard? They Can Do All Of This, Can’t They?

Yes and no. They can cite sources, but that’s based on how they’re implementing it. To vastly oversimplify, Bing isn’t asking for a pure chatbot.

Bing is searching for your query/keyword. It then feeds in all the webpages that it would normally return for that search and asks the AI to summarize those webpages.

You and I can’t do that on the public-facing AI tools without hitting token limits, but search engines can!

Ok, Surely This Will Kill SEO. AI Will Just Answer Every Question, Right?

I disagree.

All the way back in 2009 (when we were listening to the Black Eyed Peas on our iPhone 3Gs and updating our MySpace top 8 on Windows Vista), a search engine once called Live was being renamed to Bing.

Why? Because Bing is a verb. This prompted Bill Gates to declare, “The future of search is verbs.”

I love to share this quote with clients every chance I get because that future is now.

Gates wasn’t talking about people typing action words into search engines. He meant that people are trying to “do” something, and the job of search is to help facilitate that.

People often forget that search is a form of pull marketing, where users tell us what they want – not push marketing like a billboard or a TV ad.

As digital marketers, our job is simple: Give users what they want.

This is where the confusion comes in, though.

For many queries that have simple answers, a link to a website with a popup cookie policy, notification alert, newsletter sign-up popup, and ads were never what the user wanted.

It’s just the best thing we had back then. Search engines never set out with the end goal of providing links to websites. They set out to answer questions and help users accomplish tasks.

Even from the earliest days, Google talked about how its goal was to be the Star Trek computer; it just didn’t have the technology to do it then. Now, it does.

For many of these queries, like [how old is Taylor Swift?] or [how many megabytes in a gigabyte?], websites will lose traffic – but it’s traffic they were probably never entitled to.

Who owns that answer anyway? These are questions with simple answers. The user’s task is simply to get a number. They don’t want a website.

Smart SEO pros will focus on the type of queries where a user wants to do something – like buy Taylor Swift tickets, get reviews of her album or concerts, chat with other Swifties, etc. That’s where AI won’t be able to kill SEO or search.

What ChatGPT Can Do Vs. What It Can’t

ChatGPT can accomplish a lot of things.

It’s good at showing me how to write an Excel formula or MySQL query, but it will never teach me MySQL, sell me a course, or let me talk with other developers about database theory.

Those are things a search engine can help me do.

ChatGPT can also help answer many “common knowledge” questions, as long as the topic isn’t contested and is old and popular enough to have shown up in the training data.

Even then, it’s still not 100% accurate – as we’ve seen in countless memes and with one famous bank being called out for its AI-written article not knowing how to calculate interest properly.

AI might list the most talked about bars in NYC, but it can’t recommend the best place to get an Old Fashioned like a human can.

Honestly, all SEO pros talking about using AI to create content are starting to bore me. Answering questions is neat, but where ChatGPT really excels is in text manipulation.

At my agency, we’re already using ChatGPT’s API as an SEO tool to help create content briefs, categorize and cluster keywords, write complicated regular expressions for redirects, and even generate XML or JSON-LD code based on given inputs.

These rely on tons of inputs from various sources and require lots of manual reviews.

We’re not using it to create content, though. We’re using it to summarize and examine other pieces of content and then use those to glean insights. It’s less of an SEO replacement and more of a time saver.

SEO Is Here To Stay

What if your business is built around displaying facts you don’t really “own”? If so, you should probably be worried – not just about AI.

Boilerplate copy tasks may be handled by AI. Recent tests I’ve done on personal sites have shown some success here.

But AI will never be capable of coming up with insights or creating new ideas, staying on top of the latest trends, or providing the experience, expertise, authority, or trust that a real author can.

Remember: It’s not thinking, citing, or even pulling data from a database. It’s just looking at the next-word probabilities.

Unlike thousands of SEO pros who recently updated their Twitter bios, I may not be an expert on AI, but I have a computer science degree. I also know what it takes to understand user needs.

So far, no data shows people would prefer auto-generated, re-worded content over unique curated content written by a real human being.

People want fresh ideas and insights that only people can provide. (If we add an I to E-E-A-T, where should it go?)

If your business or content delivers value through insights, curation, current trends, recommendations, solving problems, or performing an action, then SEO and search engines aren’t going anywhere.

They may change shape from time to time, but that just means job security for me – and I’m good with that.

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SEO Is Down, Help! A Guide To Diagnosing SEO Traffic Drops via @sejournal, @RyanJones

Today’s Ask an SEO question is a common one, both from SEO pros and from clients.

I’m going to focus more on the first part: What causedi my traffic to drop month over month?

Here’s the full question from Britney in Houston, who writes:

What would cause a company’s organic search traffic to sharply decline MoM? We don’t have any broken links, all on-page SEO looks great (titles, meta descriptions, etc), Google has pages indexed, etc.

We have been running Google PPC ads with decent success and that has been driving steady traffic to the site. Direct traffic is up. I’m at a loss… Any ideas?

A drop in organic SEO traffic month over month (MoM) can be frustrating and leave clients in a panic trying to figure out what happened and what they should do about it.

It sounds like you’re on the right track with your investigation, but there are a few other things we should look for.

I’m going to do my best to provide a sort of “checklist” for diagnosing (and hopefully rectifying) an SEO drop.

First Step: Figure Out What Dropped

Before we get into the technical stuff or causes, we need to learn more about what dropped. Was it a specific page? A specific query? Or something more.

The best way to do this is with Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools (use whichever search engine saw the drop.)

First, we’ll pull the MoM report and sort it by change. Then, look for any specific pages and/or queries that led to the drop.

If there are no key pages/queries that fell off, maybe it was a specific type of page or type of query that dropped.

This requires a little manual effort with the data, as all sites are different, but we should know our site well enough to spot any patterns. For example, maybe it’s all product landing pages, product family pages, or blog pages that dropped.

Pro tip: This is one of my biggest pet peeves I see in agency reporting. A report will start off saying that SEO is up or down X%, but never actually say what pages/queries/products caused that change.

That’s the information that your clients really want to know. Without that context, they can’t do anything actionable with the report. Always include the causes of any spikes in your reporting.

Once We Know What Caused The Drop, We Can Investigate

The first step is to do the “stupid” stuff.

If it was a specific page or template, let’s make sure it’s not blocked by robots.txt, still returns at 200 status code, and doesn’t contain an inadvertent noindex tag or canonical tag, etc.

You’d be shocked how often these things randomly occur on large enterprise websites without anybody knowing why. It’s always good to check.

From there, we should check the render of the page/template to make sure a code change didn’t cause the search engine not to be able to understand the page. This happens a lot, too, and can be tricky to catch.

I’d start by viewing the page cache on Google/Bing and using their fetch and render tools in their search consoles.

It’s no longer good enough to just “view source” in today’s web environment – so much can change with tag insertion and JavaScript that you really need to examine what was rendered.

I’m also a big fan of the View Rendered Source Chrome extension for helping out.

Ok, It’s Not A “Dumb” Technical Error. Now What?

Now is where it gets a bit tougher for us.

If we’ve made it this far, we’ve already confirmed that search engines can crawl the pages and that they can see the content on the pages.

So what else can cause the drop?

Was The Drop Related To Branded Queries?

If so, we should look at other marketing and advertising initiatives. For example, if the drop is due to the brand name, what happened to paid search queries for the brand name? Did they increase?

If yes, maybe there is some cannibalization going on. Do we still rank for that query, or did we drop? Did paid search clicks for the brand also decrease?

Then maybe we have a demand issue. Perhaps fewer people were searching.

We should look at Google Trends to confirm – but also look at spend on TV, radio, display ads, email campaigns, social media, etc. All of these things drive branded searches indirectly, and a decrease in advertising budget often leads to a decrease in branded searches.

Is It A Featured Snippet?

If the query is the type of question that can be answered directly in the search result pages, maybe we just aren’t getting clicks. Let’s head back to Google Search Console and check the rank and impressions.

If impressions are flat, but clicks are down, maybe something is going on in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

(Note: We can also use the rank, impressions, and clicks data to diagnose paid search cannibalization.)

If we’re still ranking for the query but not getting the clicks, then maybe the user is satisfied without clicking. For search queries like [how old is Taylor Swift?] or [what time is it in Bangalore?], the user doesn’t want a web page – they want a number.

There’s not a lot we can do to recover this traffic. Remember, the goal of search engines isn’t to send traffic to web pages but to answer questions.

It might be a good idea to take a hard look at our business model and make sure that we’re providing more than simple answers.

If it’s not the above, now could be a good time to take a look at our title tag and make some updates.

It’s beyond the scope of this article, but make sure the title is enticing with action words that include the main keywords, etc.

It’s None Of Those…

This is where the process gets more subjective.

Our first step is to do an (incognito) search for the queries that dropped. Pay attention to what type of sources or pages are ranking.

For example, if the results for the query are all third-party review sites and not brands, then the search engine has decided the intent of that search isn’t to reward a brand. You may not be able to rank for that query anymore.

Example: A query of [best tvs] doesn’t show any brands in the search results – only reviews and informational content – whereas a search for “OLED TV” shows mostly transactional content: places to buy a TV.

If your query no longer matches the intent that the search engine is trying to show, there isn’t a whole lot you can do – aside from creating some new content that is more in line with the intent that the engine is trying to reward.

This has been a hard pill to swallow for a lot of SEO pros.

Too often, we think of SEO as push marketing: “How do I get my website to rank for this term?” Instead, we need to be thinking of SEO as pull marketing: “What do people searching for this term want?”

Our users are telling us what they want, and search engines are telling us what type of sites they want to show for each query.

Our job is to listen and create those websites. That often comes with a lot of work and cost – but in some situations, it could be the only way to get the traffic back.

In Summary

Hopefully, this guide helped diagnose why SEO is down. There’s usually not one good answer, but the above line of questioning can help us figure it out more than not.

It’s also important not to overreact and give things some time. As Google continues rolling out algorithm updates, sometimes we will see a page come back on its own, or the intent of the SERP shifts over time.

It’s important not to overreact too much, throw out useful or helpful content, or lose track of user and SERP intent throughout the process.

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Has The Helpful Content Update Impacted SEO Content? via @sejournal, @rollerblader

This week’s Ask an SEO question comes from Nicole, who writes:

“How do you think this (Helpful Content) update and the language Google is using around it will impact the SEO industry and how SEO is perceived within the marketing field?”

Thanks, Nicole – interesting question.

Understanding The ‘Helpful Content Update’

As SEO pros, we need to remember that most people don’t care what Google says, and will likely never read a word of it. This includes other marketers, C-level leadership, and other departments.

We know that the helpful content update has a goal of making sure the content cuts out the fluff and gives a solution, but Google’s guidelines don’t matter to anyone but us.

It is our job to teach what “helpful” content is and why it is important, and then reference the documentation from Google when asked where they can validate.

But chances are the person will skim through and not read in detail like you or I.

Pro-tip: I use non-SEO tools to make my case.

Using Non-SEO Tools To Prove Your Point

Mouseflow and Hotjar are great for showing revenue gains and losses, as well as increased clicks through into a conversion funnel.

By making a page more “SEO” friendly for the helpful content update, you can prove the removal of excess images, wording, etc., leads to a better UX and revenue stream for the company.

By using tools the other teams are familiar with, you make your case from their point of view vs. the SEO one. This goes a long way.

Branding Vs. SEO: Finding The Balance

Branding is still going to want to tell the story of the page, which may result in less specific wording because being direct is “off-brand.”

A branding professional likely views the branding words as “helpful” to the consumer vs. what Google and an SEO pro would consider helpful. The telling of the story could also result in using wording a consumer hasn’t heard of, but the wording is “on brand.”

There is nothing wrong with that, either. It is our job as SEO pros to have a backup plan.

Pro-tip: Assign pages meant to rank and pages not meant to rank. The helpful content update is a sitewide classifier, but don’t overthink it.

Leave the homepage to show up for your branded phrases, which it will, and let branding brand it.

By doing this, you may be able to take the categories, services, and products, and optimize those for the user and SEO. And you can let PPC use direct vs. branding language in their campaigns, which will further make your case for the main site.

Overcoming Sales And Ad Teams Handles

Branding isn’t the only obstacle we face when it comes to the helpful content update.

Sales could require a strong call to action or sales pitch in the first paragraph or two because they feel that a call with the person is helpful. It is also so they can get an answer (and a lead.)

As SEO experts, we know the page is to first provide an answer to the visitor and then go for the sales pitch and call.

By answering the user’s question first and showing we are a solution, we can turn a cold lead warm and increase the sales team’s conversions.

And as SEO pros, we need to phrase it in a way that resonates with the sales team.

Then you have the ads teams. If your website makes money through advertising or affiliate, they’ll likely want cost per thousand (CPM) and affiliate ads front and center, even if it blocks the content and solutions.

Using Third-Party SEO Tools

Pro-tip: Instead of waiting for Google to penalize the site so you can make your case, use third-party SEO tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz to show traffic drops from competitors.

Combine the drops with screenshots from the Way Back Machine and show what happened to cause the drop. For ones that recovered, you can show how the page experience changed.

The Broader Perspective: Google’s Site-Wide Evaluation

Now, the fun part: speaking other peoples’ languages.

Most people who are not SEO pros will consider SEO content a bunch of keywords stuffed into text, headers, and titles.

And they assume you have to have a certain length or word count. Neither is true, and because they will not be reading the wording around the helpful content guidelines, those guidelines won’t change their mind.

It is up to you to educate them and share that the helpful content update isn’t just about content; it’s the full site experience.

One of the biggest changes with the helpful content update is that Google is looking at your website as a whole, not each page individually.

Content Segregation: Customer Vs. Corporate

One obstacle I run into when doing SEO audits is when PR publishes each release on the blog and HR posts company announcements.

In some cases, the product team publishes weekly updates, too. Some of this can be “helpful,” but most are not.

In this situation, the “helpful” content is no longer primary, as it gets buried under things that are not important to potential customers.

It hurts your ability to do customer acquisition because the blog is less “helpful.” Someone who has not shopped with you or begun using your services does not need to know about the latest bug fixes or features launched. They’ll learn about those on your product or service pages and in your sales funnel.

And they don’t care that someone got promoted or you did a team BBQ at the company picnic. That only matters to the HR team.

For the blog to be helpful, most of the content should be interesting to new customers and informative to current ones, so they want to click through and read more.

In the situation above, we create two separate content areas.

One for current customers to get updates, and this content can exist internally within your interface. You can also set it into a folder on the blog which you block from crawling in robots.txt. Archiving works great here, too.

In order situations, I split it out and do a company blog that talks about announcements and events, and lets people share their stories with their teams and the organization internally.

We may even set up a separate URL so the corporate blog doesn’t impact the customer site. This way, it shows to the teams who are the audience and does not take away from the helpful information on the conversion site.

The “Helpful Content” Litmus Test

When explaining “helpful” content to other team members, I like to do a litmus test like the pro tip above.

If I’m in person with the client, we take the version they created and a version I create, and we see what people say after being exposed to both. Go out to a coffee shop or ask strangers who look like they match your customer profile to absorb one or both pieces.

The goal is to get an equal number of responses, so it is fair.  More important is that you ask the right questions.

Here’s an example.

Take the title tag and the first paragraph or two from the content and separate them. You do this for both the non-SEO piece (make it A) and the SEO piece (make it B).

Have the stranger read the paragraphs from piece A and ask them what the title should be. If it matches what the goal of the page is, it was helpful and topically relevant enough to pass.

If they’re not sure or hesitate, the content isn’t topically relevant.  And this test can be reversed.

Say the first title (non-SEO one) to the person and ask them what they’ll learn if they go to the webpage.  If they don’t know, the title is not helpful enough to make them click through.

If you have position 1 in the SERPs, but position 2 speaks directly to them, some of your traffic will likely bypass your site for the next one down.

If you share both versions at the same time, have the person tell you which one will lead them to finding a solution and which they felt was more helpful to them.

If they just say “this one,” ask a follow up to get the “why.”

Many times, it turns out that the SEO content wins out because we tend to write solutions without the fluff and the pitching. We also do entity research and look at the language, tone, and jargon our potential users use.

This way, we can speak to them and at the level they absorb content in. And that is why our content is more “helpful.” Assuming you aren’t a keyword stuffer.

Changing Perceptions About “Helpful” Content

If other people would read Google’s guidelines, the wording in the helpful content update should make a nice impact. Not only on SEO but on the customer and user experience of your website as a whole.

However, non-SEO pros are busy with their teams, their channels, and their departments.

They’re not going to read it, so the new wording and guidelines won’t change their perception of what “helpful” is. It is up to you as an SEO pro to do that, and you can reference this guide as the “why” things should change.

I hope this helps answer the question, and thank you for asking it.

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When To Create Localized Folders And Pages For SEO via @sejournal, @rollerblader

This week’s Ask an SEO question comes from Manuel, who asks:

“Is it feasible to implement topic cluster/pillar pages locally? Like create business licenses related to each page of the US by dividing them by state > type of license > related documents. Can I create topic cluster/pillar pages right when starting a website (just a few months old)?”

Great questions, Manuel! I’m going to answer the second question first.

Can You Create Topic Pillar Pages For A New Website?

The age of your website does not matter in how you structure the content and folders. That can be done when rebuilding a domain that is 10 years old or starting a new URL.

You should always structure your website so that it helps the end user understand the site’s hierarchy and also shows the resources available within the section.

This, in turn, tends to make it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and understand your pages, too.

Pro-tip: Make sure to include the structure in navigational elements, breadcrumbs, internal links, sitemaps, etc., for the search engines.

Can You Implement Pillar Pages Locally?

Now to the first question. As a heads up, I give a direct answer at the bottom of this post, but I felt it was important to share the reasoning why I would take the approach I do before I answer it.

Your niche with business licenses will have a different need than others, even if they are similar.

If the user experience requires individual pages, then yes, create individual pages.

This applies to many industries, especially ones with regional regulations like real estate professionals, brick-and-mortar stores, etc.

When making this decision with clients, our rule of thumb is if the person needs to be present at the location or the local regulations change between areas, then local pages are needed.

There is a justifiable reason to build unique copy for each. And more importantly, the copy is unique because the services and requirements change.

If it is the same regulations in every area, we do a larger page for the customer acquisition phrases and sometimes build location pages solely to help end users find the local address more easily.

This is because each individual location would have the exact same service or product information. The individual locations we build are meant for map results, and customers just looking for the address. The service is the same, no matter what.

Differences in the copy can include rules and regulations, restrictions that change by city, county, state, or when the user experience would lead a consumer to the wrong solution.

If this matches your situation (and business licenses do), then yes, create a unique resources page. I’ll stick with business licenses because that is what you asked about.

Creating Local Business Licenses

Business licenses have different requirements and needs by state. And sometimes, the state may not require a business license for certain types of businesses, but the city the business is located in does require a license.

That alone is enough reason to create the hierarchy you have above.

People looking for state resources will need to know if it is required in their state, and you can make a mention to check the local city or county requirements and have a list of them (which are also internal links).

Now you’ve given a great experience to the end user, answered a follow-up question while providing a fact they didn’t know, and you’ve given the person a further resource. This is a good example of adding in E-E-A-T.

Just ensure you’re updating these pages regularly for accuracy, and you may want to include an “updated on” date at the top.

If it were me writing these, I’d include some templated items for standardization on the pages like:

• The unique $ the business has to pay.
• Which business types need a license, and which don’t.
• Unique requirements like how you do not have to file annual reports in Ohio, but you do in other states.
• Which city nearby may be better for some types of businesses with a reason or two why, or if this city/county/state is the best for specific types of businesses and why.

By doing this, you can help people who need a license for multiple locations, are scaling from out-of-state or country, will need a foreign qualification (this has nothing to do with being based overseas), and who may be franchising.

It makes the experience better so they can line up what is needed and make a decision about where to open their business.

Maybe a county over is better than the one they were thinking, and it only adds an extra 15 minutes to their drive. The benefit outweighs the negative.

Here’s another example using a hotel chain.

Each property has different features, prices, extra fees (taxes, tourism, parking), addresses, managers, etc. This is enough difference by city, within the same city, or state to justify a unique page.

You don’t want a potential guest to have to guess which location is the one they’re staying at, especially after a long day of travel.

You also don’t want them to assume all locations have free parking or are subject to tourism taxes and resort fees. Have a catch-all page for the hotels in the city, and individual location pages with the same images from the distribution sites.

This way, you can get people looking for a hotel in the city and show your locations while helping guests find their hotel more quickly.

In Summary

Your question about business licenses having a need for a unique folder and locality site structure is a good one.

Yes, I would do this because each state and region has requirements that change. There is enough of a difference to need a unique page experience.

If this were something like finding a registered agent, I would not do unique pages as a service, because there isn’t enough difference.

But having lists of recommended registered agent providers is enough, and that would justify the state and city or county-based structure.

Thank you for the question, and I hope this answer helps.

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