Ask An SEO: Should We Optimize For Keywords With High Search Volume Or Competition? via @sejournal, @rollerblader

In this week’s Ask An SEO, Chandrika asks:

“What are the important points to consider when doing keyword research for SEO using Google Keyword Planner? Should we focus on keywords with a monthly search volume of 500? Or, should we prioritize keywords with low or high competition?”

This is a great question, and here’s an easy answer: Don’t focus on the keyword. Focus on the solution for the user based on the intent of the keyword.

Google Keyword Planner shares the estimated search volume for a keyword, but that doesn’t mean the entire volume represents your audience. Some of them may be looking for information rather than shopping, and only a portion of them are there to be converted into revenue.

The word “bark,” for example, could be the bark on a tree or the noise a dog makes.

A search for bark on a tree could be what it looks like or feels like, whether it’s a sign the tree is healthy or not, and questions about using it to determine the age or genus of the tree.

“Bark” for a dog could refer to the specific sounds made by certain breeds, could indicate that the dog is sick, or the user is looking for ways to get a dog to stop barking or train a dog to bark on command.

If there are 500 searches, perhaps 300 are for the noise the dog makes, from which 200 are for determining if the dog is sick or healthy, and 50 are for training your dog to bark.

If you sell books on dog training, this may not be the best phrase to go after, but it is a topic you may want to cover. This is where optimizing for the topic comes in.

The topic will encompass the “SEO keywords” and increase the potential pool of traffic based on the entity it ranks for, and the solution it provides.

Optimize For The Solution And Topic

Instead of optimizing for a keyword by stuffing it into the copy, headers, and title, optimize for the topic it relates to.

Ask yourself what the person searching for this keyword is looking for, and build a series of pages that meet these needs.

• If it is a conversion phrase, then incorporate the questions and solutions the person has related to the product query into the product or collection page. This can be done in the copy itself or in the FAQs, if your template has them.
• When the keyword has an informational and conversion intent, such as “micro needling,” it can be about the process and procedure, a before-and-after photo series, or someone looking to find a local med spa. This means your site should have multiple content types for the SEO keywords based on the stage of the customer’s journey, including:
  • Pages that show the before and after, and by skin type and age.
  • Blog posts and guides that cover the process and alternatives if it isn’t a match.
  • Comparisons between micro needling and similar procedures to help the person know which is better suited to their needs.
  • A direct conversion page where you can onboard the lead or take payment.

By creating guides that address the topic, your website becomes stronger for the specific phrases.

Machine learning and AI are getting better at understanding what the content solves, and they use the trustworthiness of the content and its phrasing to determine the keywords the page should rank for.

If the content is clearly showing knowledge and expertise, and the claims or solutions are backed up by proven facts, you can show up for keywords without optimizing for the phrase from Google Keyword Planner.

Once you have the content and user intent, like shopping or learning, completed text-wise, add schema.

Use article or blog post schema, depending on whether you’re a news site, for informative content. Use the shopping schema, such as product, collection, or service, along with the area served and additional types to help drive the intent of the page home.

Keywords With Higher Search Volumes

Keywords with high search volumes are tempting to optimize for. However, instead of worrying about the keyword, take other keywords that are similar and are part of the solution.

Put those together into a group, and then think about how they interact to educate the person so that the person will have the information they need to make an informed decision about their purchase, whether it is a product or a collection/category page.

Keywords and search volumes are part of topics, but you don’t focus on their volumes – focus on the solutions for the phrases.

Your goal is to create the ultimate resource for the topic, whether it’s a question, a guide, or compatibility for products and services.

When you do this, the keyword search volume may multiply exponentially, and you can optimize the same page for multiple high-volume phrases.

By doing this, you may also be able to avoid creating content that cannibalizes itself by having a content map of your website.

When you know a page is dedicated to a topic and specific intent, you have your reminder not to create another page just because there is a search volume you found.

Instead, try to incorporate the theme of the phrase based on the search intent into the correct page for that search volume.

Competition Scores Do Not Matter

Someone has to show up for the phrase, so why shouldn’t it be you?

Competition scores are scores made up by SEO tools, not used by search engines.

Search engines are concerned with providing the most accurate answer in the easiest-to-absorb format and in the fastest way possible. If you do this, you may be the site that gets the ranking and the traffic.

For highly competitive phrases where big money is being spent, you will need some authority and trust, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t create the content that can rank.

You may get lucky and take traffic from the more established sites – it happens a lot. When it does, it can attract backlinks naturally from highly authoritative sites, which helps build your site’s stability.

Another reason to create this content now is that having it in an easy-to-use and trustworthy format can help it rank once your website is strong enough. I’ve seen this happen, where multiple pages rise to the top during core updates.

If you don’t create the content because you think it’s too competitive, you won’t have the chance to rank it when core updates happen.

The last thing I’d consider when looking at keywords with 500+ monthly searches is the long tail.

Long-tail phrases can be part of the topic. When you filter a keyword research tool to only show volumes at 500+, you miss out on parts of the entity, which can include consumer questions.

Knowing what matters to the consumer or user helps to provide them with more complete solutions.

When the page answers all of their questions, they can now convert (if your funnel is good), or they may subscribe to your publication because you’re a solution provider.

We never focus on SEO keyword volume when doing research, but we love high volumes when we find them.

We look at what will benefit the person on the page and if it matches the topic of the site, products, and services.

From there, we use keywords and search volumes to set a potential goal in traffic, but we don’t stress if there is no search volume.

Google Discover data, for example, isn’t going to show up, but if the content aligns with interests and your site qualifies, you could get featured and attract a ton of new visitors.

I hope this helps answer your question.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Ask An SEO: How To Convince C-Suite To Support Brand-Based SEO via @sejournal, @MordyOberstein

In this edition of Ask An SEO, a marketing leader reaches out with a question:

My company put pressure on me to deliver results of more traffic to our product pages.

How can I try to convince the CMO that we should invest more in brand building that will most likely reduce traffic?

There’s so much to chew on with this question. Before I get into the thick of it, I want to challenge the premise: “brand building that will most likely reduce traffic.”

It’s something I hear from clients often enough. It’s a premise I hear from SEOs all the time. While it may be true in this specific case, I would like to say something regardless.

I’m glad brand has entered into the SEO conversation. Long overdue.

At the same time, brand hasn’t been the forte of the search marketing industry. As a result, there’s a lot being said that, when put under scrutiny, doesn’t hold up.

I’d take a lot of the brand strategy you’re hearing from the SEO industry with a grain of salt.

Just because you target an audience doesn’t mean you lose wider reach. It can happen – and very often it should happen – but does it not have to happen?

You can speak to a core audience very deeply while not losing the attention of your secondary audience. Streaming platforms do this all the time.

Apple TV has an identity around great sci-fi content, but it also speaks to a wider audience as it throws some solid comedies into the mix (at least in my opinion).

Both of these “identities” work because there is a common thread: Apple puts out higher-quality content than other platforms.

So, will you lose traffic by focusing on brand? You probably should, but that’s only because I’ve been around the proverbial SEO block a few times.

It is, however, entirely possible to do things like pivot to a new audience while retaining the old one.

Losing audience as a result of building the brand is 100% not an inherent outcome. If anything, in the long term, it’s the total opposite. Brand building is all about connecting with more audiences over time.

Let’s move on to your question and work with the premise that you will lose traffic by increasing content and audience targeting.

I’m not even going to go into the obvious point and glaring absurdity of not wanting to have a more specific focus and more refined audience targeting in favor of “traffic.”

So, we’re going to work with two premises:

1. You will lose traffic by focusing on brand.
2. Not getting that “traffic” is “bad” somehow.

How do you sell this to the CMO?

For The Conceptual CMO

I’m going to start at a very conceptual level that will probably not speak to your CMO, but is very important for you to understand when you make your pitch.

The web is not the web you think it is. The web was a place where Wired could write about coffee mugs and rank them because everything was on an equal footing.

It was one giant “web” that was unified, where anyone could rank for anything so long as the content was halfway decent.

That web doesn’t exist anymore.

There is no “internet.” There is the internet that talks about home goods. There is the internet that deals with technology products. There is the internet that takes up sports.

On this internet, Wired isn’t relevant for coffee mugs. That’s not its sphere of influence. The web is no longer one giant unified void that algorithms sift through to pick up whatever site on whatever topics.

Think of the internet as independent spheres that sometimes move and overlap with other orbits but are generally self-contained.

If you’re selling this bowl of goods to a CMO, I would pitch it as you’re getting ahead of the curve. You’re getting ahead of the traffic loss that has already hit so many sites and is going to hit yours eventually.

I would sell this as “being able to perform as the landscape shifts.” You have to function in alignment with the ecosystem. There’s no way around it.

If you don’t, it will all hit the fan. It’s only a question of “when.” Usually, brands will wait until it’s already too late.

Not operating within the confines of the ecosystem is like trying to row a boat on an ice skating rink using a tennis racket.

For The Pragmatic CMO

The conceptual construct I just defined above will not speak to most CMOs.

While it’s extremely likely that you, the VP of marketing, head of growth, marketing manager, etc., understand this point, most CMOs are not in touch with the ecosystem enough to be swayed by this argument.

For most CMOs, I would start with the competition. Show similar sites that have undergone traffic losses because they haven’t changed with the tides.

If you’re a HubSpot competitor, showcase all the traffic HubSpot lost. And then, translate that into all the dollars spent in time and resources trying to capture traffic, as if it were 2015.

Image from author, April 2025

Honing your audience makes it less expensive to run marketing campaigns and assets.

Don’t pay to speak to everyone. Pay to speak to the right ones.

If your marketing strategy is aimed at casting a wide net, you will inevitably either pay for content production that isn’t of value or simply pay for pure visibility that isn’t worth the value.

You can also do the opposite. You can show competitors who have gotten ahead of the curve. That usually lights a fire under most CMOs. Seeing that the competition is getting “ahead” in whatever way is very uncomfortable for the C-level staff.

If you can show that your strategy is already being implemented by competitors, squeeze. And frame it. Frame it well: “Our competitors are starting to speak more directly to our ultimate target audience, and you can see that here, here, and here.” That will have an impact that they won’t ignore.

You have to try to concretize this as much as possible.

The problem with brand, as Alli Berry once put it to me, is that it’s the silent killer. I have witnessed this firsthand on more than one occasion with clients.

You don’t realize it’s the decline of brand efficacy until you have a real problem on your hands.

What happens is, time and time again, the decline of brand efficacy first manifests itself in whatever performance channel.

Suddenly, your social media performance or organic search performance is on the decline.

The immediate knee-jerk reaction brands have (especially as you move up the ladder) is to fix the channel.

These are the meetings where you are told to change things up and fix performance. You know, the meetings where you leave with your head shaking since it’s clear no one knows what they’re talking about.

The reason this happens is that the issue isn’t the channel. There’s nothing wrong with the social or SEO strategy per se. Rather, there’s a huge gap in the brand strategy, and it’s starting to have an impact.

The “suddenness” of a performance problem can be an external shift (a change in consumer behavior, for example) – and that definitely can and does happen.

However, from my experience, the usual culprit is the loss of brand traction.

Often, a product hits the market at the right time, in the right way, in the right place. The stars align and the brand takes off.

At a certain point, the brand hits what I tell my clients is a “maturity inflection point.” The brand can no longer ride the momentum of its product or service the same way, and brand efficacy (and marketing potency) ebbs away.

By the time this happens, most brands have a strong client base, etc., so they never look internally. Instead, they focus on the specific performance problems. Thus, the brand becomes the silent killer.

Your job is not to let this happen to you. If you’re managing a marketing team at whatever level, your job is to nip this problem in the bud.

Now, if your CMO is more reflective and so forth, then the argument I gave earlier might work.

This is not the norm, so you need to concretize the argument.

Whether it be, as I mentioned, through the competitor angle or whatever, you have to gain some perspective and then translate that perspective into practicality.

Roll With Your CMO

My last piece of advice is to know your audience. CMOs are often bold and brash (likely because they feel they have to be), so speak that language. Come with a plan that has a bit of edge and flair to it.

If that’s not your CMO, don’t. If they are more analytical by nature, show the data.

It’s just a matter of knowing your audience and what language they speak. You have to roll with where your CMO and company overall are at. Otherwise, you might have the greatest plan, but it won’t land.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Ask An SEO: My Content Can’t Be Seen When I Disable JavaScript – Will This Affect My SEO? via @sejournal, @HelenPollitt1

This week’s question comes from Thomas, who asks:

I disabled the JavaScript just to check the content of my webpage, but unfortunately I could not see any content except the banner H1 tag.

Will it hurt my SEO? If yes, what are the advisable solutions for this?

This is a great question – it’s something that all SEO professionals need to be aware of.

We spend so much time trying to create interesting, engaging content that it would be heartbreaking to think that it isn’t visible to search engines.

However, given the recent advancements in Google’s ability to render JavaScript content, is that something we still need to be concerned about?

The short answer is yes.

Why JavaScript Can Be A Problem

We know that to ingest information, Googlebot will discover a page, crawl it, parse and index it. For JavaScript, the crawler needs to “render” the code. The rendering stage is where JavaScript problems can occur.

JavaScript has to be downloaded and executed in order for the content to be parsed. This takes more resources than the bot parsing content in HTML.

As such, sometimes Google will defer the rendering stage and come back to a page to render it at a later date.

Most websites these days will use some JavaScript – that’s absolutely fine.

However, if your website requires JavaScript to load important content that is crucial to the page, then it might be a risk.

If, for some reason, a search bot does not render the JavaScript on a page, then it will not have any context as to what the page is about.

It is crucial to remember that not every search engine can render JavaScript. This is becoming increasingly important in the era of generative search engines – very few of which render JavaScript.

Diagnosing A Problem

You’ve done the right thing by starting to investigate the effect JavaScript rendering might be having on your site.

Turning off the JavaScript and seeing what content remains, and what is still interactive without it, is important.

I suggest going a step further and looking at what is available to the search bots to read on a page’s first load. This will help you identify content accessible without JavaScript rendering.

Check Google Search Console

First off, use Google Search Console URL Inspection tool and look at the rendered HTML. If the content is present in the rendered HTML then Google should be able to read the content.

Check Chrome Browser

You can go to “View Source” in Chrome to see what the pre-rendered HTML looks like. If the content is all there, you don’t need to worry any further.

However, if it’s not, then you can use the Developer Tools in Chrome for further diagnostics. Look in the “Elements” tab. If you can see your content, then again, you are probably OK.

Check The Robots.txt

Sometimes, developers may choose to block specific JavaScript files from being crawled by disallowing them in the robots.txt.

This isn’t necessarily an issue unless those files are needed to render important information.

It’s always worth checking your robots.txt file to see if there are any JavaScript files blocked that could prevent the bots, in particular, from accessing the content of the page.

Next Steps

JavaScript tends to worry a lot of people when it comes to SEO. It’s a significant part of the modern web, however. There’s no escaping the use of JavaScript.

We need to ensure that our websites utilize JavaScript so that both popular and emerging search engines can find and read our content.

You don’t need to worry but be diligent.

If you have developer resources at hand, you can work with them to identify the most applicable solution.

Here are some checks you may want to make:

Are We Using Client-Side Rendering Or Server-Side Rendering?

Client-side rendering essentially utilizes the browser to render the JavaScript of a page.

When a page is visited, the server responds by sending the HTML code and the JavaScript files. The browser then downloads those files and generates the content from the JavaScript.

This is counter to server-side rendering, where the content is rendered by the server and then sent to the browser with the data provided.

In general, server-side rendering is easier for bots, can be a quicker experience for users, and tends to be the default recommendation for SEO.

However, it can be more costly for the websites and, therefore, isn’t always the default choice for developers.

Is Our Main Content Able To Be Rendered Without JavaScript?

The most important content on your page, the main content, needs to be possible to parse without JavaScript rendering.

That is always the safest way to ensure that bots can access the content.

Are We Using JavaScript Links?

A further consideration is whether your links can be crawled easily by the search bots.

It’s not always an issue to have links generated through JavaScript. However, there is a risk that bots might not be able to resolve them unless they are properly contained in HTML element with an href attribute.

Google states it “can’t reliably extract URLs from elements that don’t have an href attribute or other tags that perform as links because of script events.”

Remember, though, it’s not just Google that you need to be conscious of. It’s always better to err on the side of making your links easy to follow.

In Summary

It is crucial to make sure your content is accessible to bots, now and in the future.

That means that if your website relies heavily on JavaScript to load content, you may struggle to communicate that information to some search engines.

It’s true that Google is much better at rendering JavaScript-heavy sites than it used to be, but the SEO playing field is not just Google.

To make sure your website can perform well in search platforms beyond Google, you may want to change how your website renders content, making sure your main content is in HTML.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Ask An SEO: Should I Prioritize Selling On Marketplaces Or My Own Website? via @sejournal, @kevgibbo

This week’s Ask an SEO question comes from Mike in Toronto who enquires:

“For a small business that wants to sell products online, would you advise me to set up my own ecommerce website, or should I use a marketplace like Amazon instead?

This is undoubtedly one of the most common dilemmas for small business owners when they decide to start selling online.

It is a particularly tricky one to weigh up because the choices you make now could have quite a big influence on your strategy for months or even years to come.

But to give you my answer up front, my general advice is to begin selling via marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, or Etsy. This will give you visibility, sales, and near-immediate exposure with minimal effort.

Then, in the long term, you should gradually build out your own website, letting you own your brand and audience.

Of course, there are caveats here. Some product categories don’t tend to do well via online marketplaces. This often, but not always, includes things like furniture, fine art, vehicle spare parts, and so on.

The reverse is also true. If you’re selling books, personal care products, and some kinds of handmade goods, it often makes more sense to stick with the marketplaces.

The Pros And Cons Of Selling On Marketplaces

To help you weigh up whether or not to sell on marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, or eBay, here’s my take on the pros and cons of using them.

Advantages Of Selling On Marketplaces

• Instant exposure: Online marketplaces put you in front of millions of shoppers. In the UK, for instance, a whopping 20% of consumers buy goods on Amazon each week, and 80% buy something at least monthly. Having your products available on marketplaces helps you get exposure without having to build traffic from scratch.
• Easy setup: Listing your products on an established site is much faster than setting up a content management system (CMS) such as Shopify. You need very little technical know-how to list products on marketplaces, and you can get up and running in just a couple of hours.
• Marketplace SEO tends to be simpler: Optimizing your product descriptions, images, and titles for search algorithms on marketplaces is much more straightforward than trying to compete in Google search (indeed, you could even be competing against marketplaces in search engine results pages).
• Trust: Millions of people use marketplaces every single day. They trust these websites and are more likely to buy through them, compared to a brand they’ve never heard of.
• Logistics support: Online marketplaces offer different packages to their sellers, but there’s usually quite a bit of support available for deliveries, returns, refunds, and customer payment processing.

Disadvantages Of Selling On Marketplaces

• Fees: Marketplaces charge sellers varying fees. These can range from about 2% of the transaction value up to 20%, or even more for some product categories/price brackets. That can really undercut your profitability.
• No brand control: When you sell on marketplaces, you really are at the mercy of their algorithms, their policies, and their rules. There is very little you can do if the marketplace decides to push its own products over yours or suspend your account for whatever reason.
• No customer relationship: When you sell on marketplaces, you don’t own the customer data. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to cultivate long-term loyalty. You also can’t email customers with discounts or offers outside of the marketplace.
• The competition: Marketplaces are intensely competitive places. Not only will you be competing against many other small businesses in your niche, but you could also be up against big brands with name recognition. Somewhat disconcertingly, marketplaces like Amazon also sell their own versions of products (from jewelry to sweets to clothes hangers), which could directly compete with yours.
• Brand visibility: People who buy on marketplaces like Amazon may not even be aware that your brand exists. Many consumers assume they are buying from the marketplace itself, rather than your company.

The Pros And Cons Of Setting Up Your Own Website

Many ecommerce business owners dream of setting up their own websites. There’s something really exciting about having your own shop front to the world.

Here’s what you need to know before going ahead with that.

Advantages Of Setting Up Your Own Ecommerce Site

• Full brand control: If you run your own website, you own everything. It’s your site, your URL, your designs, your pricing. Rather than having to rely on a fairly generic marketplace storefront template, you can build a website that really matches your company’s ethos.
• Potentially better profit margins: By avoiding marketplace fees and commissions, you can potentially increase your profit margins.
• Better customer relationship: With your own website, you have direct access to customer emails and data. This allows for re-marketing and personalization (provided those customers have consented to communications).
• SEO: If you have built a well-optimized website, this can bring in traffic from Google and other search engines without you having to pay for ads. Essentially, that’s free exposure for the right audiences.
• Faster payments: When using marketplaces, you typically have to wait for scheduled payout dates (marketplaces typically hold onto money for longer in case of customer complaints or refund requests). With your own website, money from each sale will often land in your business bank account the next business day.

Disadvantages Of Setting Up Your Own Ecommerce Site

• Building traffic is hard: If you don’t yet have an existing audience, you need to invest in SEO, ads, social media, and content to start attracting potential customers.
• Technical setup: Building and running an ecommerce website is technically challenging. While a CMS like Shopify makes it a little easier, this is a lot more work than simply setting up a listing on a marketplace.
• Tech costs: The costs of setting up an ecommerce website are equally significant. You need to buy a domain name, code the pages, maintain the data, ensure the site and customer data are protected, maintain the website, and do various other technical tasks. Unless you’re confident doing this yourself, you’ll probably need to pay a specialist to do this for you.
• Trust takes time: Assuming your brand is fairly small, building up trust in your website takes time. The best way to do that is through social proof (for example, from customer reviews or companies like Trustpilot). But this won’t happen overnight; it can take months or even years to achieve.
• Logistics: There are various logistical issues to be aware of when setting up your own website. These include choosing a secure point of sale, managing shipping, setting up policy pages, or getting to grips with legal issues about refunds and returns.

Multi-Channel Is The Way To Go

It is very common nowadays to find small ecommerce companies that sell through multiple channels, including major platforms like Amazon, niche local marketplaces for specific geographies or interests, as well as their own websites and even social media.

It’s a bit outdated, but a 2017 study is quite illustrative. It found that 60% of SMEs made over half of their ecommerce sales on marketplaces, and a quarter had an equal split between marketplaces and their own websites.

Only 12% made all their sales on marketplaces, and only 8% sold exclusively through their own websites. Essentially, most SMEs eventually opt for multi-channel sales.

As I mentioned above, my feeling is that for most businesses, a multi-channel route is the best option.

Starting on a marketplace will help you win customers, gain some visibility, and also allow you to gauge demand for your idea.

As sales start to pick up in the marketplace, you can then begin investing in a website that will ultimately become the primary focus of your offering.

So, there is a lot to think about, but I really encourage you to jump in. It’s important to have a long-term strategy, but there is also a lot you can pick up through trial and error – and the journey can be incredibly fun and rewarding.

Good luck!

More Resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Ask An SEO: What Should Be On Your Author Pages? via @sejournal, @MordyOberstein

This week’s question about author pages comes from Joylyn:

We are working on building author pages for our content, would you mind teaching us best practices for building author archive pages with any SEO best practices.

A great question and perfect for me to answer from a branding perspective.

Author pages serve to build trust, authority, and all of that good stuff. That much should be obvious.

However, a lot of nuance goes into leveraging author pages. More than that, I would challenge the very notion of what an author page is and why we need them.

What Should Be On Your Author Pages?

The answer to that depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Yes, you’re to establish trust, but how you do that depends on a variety of factors.

Say, for example, your industry is constantly evolving and changing. Harping on your author’s past may not be the way to go.

Instead, trust may be better built by focusing on their recent accolades and accomplishments. It can be as simple as showing they have written extensively on the topic recently.

In other words, you need to establish what “trust” means in your scenario because it’s not universal.

Think of your author pages as “About Pages.” There’s a certain narrative to a good About Page and you can do the same with your author pages.

Don’t just say who the person is, but show how they got there.

Trust is often about contextualization. Don’t think about only presenting who the author is – rather, try to paint a picture that frames them.

Author pages don’t just offer some background about your contributors but your site. They become a pillar of “who you are” across the web. Your authors aren’t just authors – they are representatives.

Screenshot from Google, March 2025

When someone runs across your author pages (perhaps by Googling one of your authors, as I did with Loren Baker above), they and the page connected with them substantiate who you are.

The authority of a good author page goes beyond visitors to your site.

If you’re running a marketing strategy that is heavy in employee advocacy, these pages are a major part of any outreach program.

If your goal is to get your own people out there repp’ing the brand on podcasts, webinars, conference stages, etc., the author page becomes a pillar. It becomes the “home” that represents your advocates and you at the same time.

This again speaks to the author page not merely being a list of credentials and accomplishments but as a narrative around the authors themselves.

If you’re trying to build your brand and performance by leveraging your employees, contributors, etc., you need pages that offer strong contextualization.

Even if you don’t use the bio/author page as part of the outreach per se, there’s a very good chance anyone interested will run some kind of search and find these pages on their own (again, as I did above).

Which brings us to…

Who Needs Author Pages?

Let me challenge the entire question. Why are we stopping at authors? The question should be, “Who needs people pages?” The answer is everyone whose company has any people. So, the answer is everyone.

Every business needs to contextualize itself via the people associated with it. That can be the CEO, CMO, CFO, CTO, or COO – I’m out of “Cs,” but it should not stop there.

When I see a company only list its top employees, it comes off as one giant ego stroke. So, mission accomplished: You have contextualized your business. I now know you’re a bunch of narcissists.

Even if you’re a solopreneur, there should be content that in a sense parses out who you are on the site.

I think we’ve come to look at “author pages” as being this very narrowed page type. To me, it’s the wrong way to look at them. It’s not an “SEO” play.

And when you think beyond SEO per se, is there really a difference between an author page and an employee bio page?

Yet, it’s funny because we’ll spend all day talking about how to bolster your author pages and then create one never-ending page for the employees that merely lists their names.

How exactly is that helpful beyond giving your user the ability to manually look up some of these folks on LinkedIn (which means leaving your website)?

So, who needs “author pages”? Everyone. The question is, what type of “author page” do you need? Can you combine your About Page and “author page”?

I do that on my own website since I’m a one-person show, and the format allows me that opportunity. I felt that having a separate page was a bit of overkill.

There’s a bio about who I am on my homepage and then a longer section on the About Page – do I really need to create another separate page to talk about me again? Doing so felt like it would be too much focus on myself and not my audience.

Again, it’s not a question of “if” you need some sort of author or bio page, but what kind and in what format?

Author Page Best Practices

That said, here are some quick best practices I would consider adding to your author pages (and similar “bio” pages). Some of them are obvious, like:

• Social links.
• Standard bio.
• Image.
• Recent posts.
• Formal industry recogniton (such as Search Engine Journal does with its “Certification & Awards” tab).
• Areas of expertise.

Some less so (and again, it all depends on your goals):

• Conference talks.
• Podcast, webinar appearances, and other “third-party placements” (similar to Search Engine Journal’s “Published Works” tab).
• Outlets where the author is quoted.
• Work experience (current and previous).
• History of how the author got into the industry and why.
• Personal industry philosophy (can even be a video).

The last thing I’ll say is: Watch the formatting.

99% of author pages, assuming they are substantial, feel like you’re reading a long article.

If you want to get the most out of the author page, you need to lay things out so that the audience can get a holistic sense of things at a glance.

Screenshot from Search Engine Journal, March 2025

The Search Engine Journal layout is one of the best I’ve seen online (and I’m not saying that because I’m writing this on Search Engine Journal).

I don’t feel overwhelmed by information. It’s all “chunked” in a way where I clearly notice the various areas of information without having to work hard to see it all.

That’s why it works.

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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Ask An SEO: How To Handle Duplicate Content Across Multiple Domains via @sejournal, @rollerblader

Today’s Ask an SEO question comes from Colin in London, UK.

“My question is about duplicate content. I work for a group of schools in the UK. We have 21 schools, each has its own website and domain with a link or banner linking back to our main group website. The schools are very busy, so to save time, we have created blog posts centrally to give to the schools. They change a few things but basically the pages are pretty much the same.

I have experience with SEO, so I put my Google good boy white hat on and said, ‘Google says not to do it, it’s duplicate content. We need them to be different.’

My question is will we be penalized? I understand they will compete with each other (multiples have taken page 1 at the same time), but otherwise, is this doing us harm?

Is Google smart enough to know we are a group with different emails? Should we rewrite them all? Should we just stop? It would be good to get a second opinion – maybe I need to lighten up or take take action and remove.

Please help. Thanks, Colin.”

Great question, Colin! It is something that comes up about once a year with our clients or as a question when I’m speaking at conferences.

I’m breaking the answer out into a few sections so that it can be applied to non-school situations, too.

But first, check out this post about Google’s duplicate content penalty myth, as it is something that is commonly misunderstood.

Use Canonicals When Publishing To Secondary Sites

In the situation above, it sounds like there is a main website and multiple variations.

If you’re worried about the variation websites taking from the main website, place canonical links back to the main site from the duplicate posts.

Let’s pretend these are the URLs:

• Official site – colininlondon.com/blog-post-school.
• Duplicate 1 – colininleeds.com/blog-post-school.
• Duplicate 2 – colininglasgow.com/blog-post-school.

The official site will have a self-referencing canonical link because it is the main website and the post that should be ranking.

Duplicates 1 and 2 should have their canonical links point back to the (official) main website. This way, Google knows which site is the official one and which are duplicates.

You can also use schema, addresses, and other localization factors to help define that these are the same company and brand, similar to doing locations if you’re a brick-and-mortar business or using TLDs for country-specific targeting.

One thing to be careful of is having canonical links go to the wrong site.

When you publish original content on a specific school location site, make sure the canonical link is self-referencing vs. going back to the official site or main site.

And if the content gets published to the official site and secondary websites, have the canonicals point to the specific school location site.

You also want to make sure your sitemap excludes the content if it is not the official version. Not a big deal at this point, but still something you can control.

Publish To The Most Relevant Audience

When you’re stuck trying to think of which site should be the official one, or your content management system (CMS) allows you to assign a main site for the content, think about who would benefit most from the post and publish there.

If it is an event and only accessible to one or five schools vs. the 21, publish to the most relevant audience and use the same canonical plan above.

You may want the content to be accessible to all students, parents, and faculty, but if it is only relevant to a smaller grouping or a single school, only publish it to the most relevant location.

Some Content Is Not A Duplicate

In the case of snow days where some schools may be cancelled, others delayed, and some are business as usual, feel free to post these.

The main part of the content will be the same or similar, and that is ok. You can have the same opening and closing of the post; the most important content is the name of the school and the information about when school starts based on the location.

It may be beneficial to have a main post with all locations and their status on the main site, then have the “duplicate” variations with localized information on the individual.

A lot of people assume this would be duplicate content. It shouldn’t be as it is catered to a specific audience and only that audience.

Think about a pharmacy or retail chain where the only differences are hours of operation, phone number, and a couple store-specific details.

Should Content Be Rewritten For Each Site?

If you have the ability and you can make it relevant to that specific location, then yes, there would be a benefit.

For example, you may have a boys-only or girls-only school, or elementary, high, and preschool. If the content is for the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), chances are the concerns for the elementary school parent meetings will be different from those in high school.

By adding the agendas, decisions, board members, times, and other unique attributes of the meetings, you can have similar openings and closings because the body and meat of the posts will be unique.

Use Google Business Profile

Something I have not personally done, as I’ve not worked specifically on schools with multiple websites, is using Google Business Profile for your local locations.

I have done this with retailers and similar industries, such as non-profits and service providers, that have local branches, each with its own domain.

By setting the URLs up and combining them as entities, you may help to reduce the duplication of similar content. Google Business Profile will allow you to sync them together.

This will not help with your main duplicate content question, but it could help with making sure the locations are accounted for in the local search results which may be relevant in specific situations.

If your sites make it clear you’re not trying to game the system, then I wouldn’t worry about duplicate content penalties.

If you’re really concerned, use canonical links that reference the main version that lives on the group website. Then use self-referencing canonicals for any unique content published on the individual school sites.

I hope this helps, and thank you for asking!

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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Ask An SEO: Does Dwell Time After Google Ad Clicks Impact Organic Rankings? via @sejournal, @rollerblader

Lalindra from Ontario asks:

“Does the dwell time and user engagement after clicking on Google Ads impact search engine rankings? If yes, since when has this been in effect?”

That is a really good question! It goes along the common myth of PPC impacting SEO, where the more you spend, the better your SEO is.

In theory, no, clicking a PPC ad and dwelling probably won’t impact your SEO – positively or negatively. It will impact your budget if Google Ads assumes it was a legit click and visitor. But, if Google thinks it is a fraud click, you might not be billed for it.

Does PPC Spend And Click Help Boost SEO?

For years, some agencies and in-house SEO professionals have claimed that spending more on PPC increases SEO presence and visibility.

The Google leak, combined with the DOJ trial, fueled these rumors even further. But, the idea that higher PPC spend improves your SEO is a myth, not a fact.

This applies even more to a few users clicking and then dwelling. That is a single user or small group, not a large enough audience to cause any form of signal about the page’s user experience.

Google deals with massive data sets and volumes, so a few clicks, even a couple hundred, is likely not enough to signal page quality. For the same amount of time and money, you could likely get media coverage, which would move the needle further.

That said, there could be some potential for increased visibility if PPC clicks lead to actions that suggest a positive user experience like dwelling, scrolling, and engagement.

For example, there are theories from the Google leak and DOJ trial about “navboost” and “glue.” These concepts suggest how shopping browser extensions may influence how high your page ranks in the top 10 results.

Could PPC Campaigns With High Volume Of Traffic Impact Rankings?

If your PPC ads drive massive volumes of traffic to your website and those users reads multiple pages for publishers and spend time (dwell) on your blog post or in your shop,  this could signal that the UX is relevant for a specific query.

This would also require the browser to track both the query searched and dwell time while ignoring the factor that it was a click from PPC.

The browser would also need to feed the data back to the core SEO algorithm, say that the PPC click experience was relevant for a query, and give it a priority for SEO.

In this scenario, it can be assumed that Google Ads and Google SEO are working together – but they likely are not.

I think they play with the interface and queries, as well as recommendations to boost profits, but I don’t think the PPC team has control over SEO results – just a personal opinion.

If Google Ads sent signals for Google SEO, you wouldn’t see smaller brands and new sites rank, you would see the big brands who are spending the most money. Type “t-shirts” into Google. You likely won’t see big brands like Target, Walmart, Macy’s, etc. dominate organic search results.

If big brands spent big money, and the PPC algorithm fed this into SEO, it would be their golden opportunity to generate a large traffic volume.

By losing some money on PPC for a generic term, they get the big prize of organic SEO traffic.

If it were that easy, there would be no SEO industry because the big brands could simply buy their way to the top.

But small companies can still compete and win. We have clients in highly competitive niches who can move quickly because they are not tied up in red tape needing to negotiate layers of approval. This means they are responsive, can act on the fly and beat major brands

When Can PPC Support SEO?

So, what could be true here? If you spend money building a brand via PPC and the traffic is relevant and coming in volumes, users may start searching for your brand by name or brand + modifier, e.g., “[Your Brand] T-shirts.”

If your domain already has trust and authority and now has a significant volume of people looking for your t-shirts because of a viral social media video and your large spending on PPC ads, the SEO algorithm may pick up this demand.

This means that users are actively saying “your brand has these, so please show it to us”. If the search engine does not show it to them, they go to a different search engine or may try a large language model (LLM) to search.

I have seen this happen firsthand – that the algorithm starts sending traffic for generic phrases in these scenarios. It was especially true when I worked in the infomercial product space.

As users naturally began searching for the product type alongside a brand or domain name, websites started showing up for non-branded phrases in search results.

You may have a product such as a mop or broom, something that waters plants, or a blanket that is going viral. As your product takes off, signalling this is the product brand users want, the generic search can trigger your product and website as the best result.

This helps it climb up (along with quality backlinks, media coverage, and social media chatter) and rank for the generic phrase.

If you have the budget to build virality through PPC, it could help your SEO. But it isn’t the dwell time that is helping; it’s the actual queries being searched and the increased volume via the PPC boost.

But once the trend wears off, you have to do real SEO work to keep it.

I could also see this working for larger purchases that require multiple website visits, such as real estate, luxury vacations, mattresses and furniture, etc.

Bottom Line

In short, no, clicking your own PPC ad and dwelling won’t help your SEO.

You’d have to do it at large volumes and make it appear to be unique users, all having a good experience.

But, running large-scale PPC campaigns that generate branded searches and repeat visits could help send signals that influence Google’s algorithm to test your website for similar phrases.

I hope this answers your question. The only way to know is to test; if you do, I’d love to see the results.

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Featured Image: Damir Khabirov/Shutterstock

Ask An SEO: Why Is Google Not Indexing My Pages? via @sejournal, @rollerblader

This week’s Ask An SEO question comes from Harjeet:

“Hi! I have a website that provides information of warehouses all over United states. The problem is that only eight to nine pages are indexed by Google. But it has many dynamic pages.

For example, if you do a search for any location on homepage search bar, it will open the location page with the listings.

But Google is not indexing the location pages and warehouse listings as well. Can you help me solve this issue?”

That’s a great question, and I think I can help.

After looking at your website, it looks like you have a crawling issue with a lack of actual pages and not an indexing one.

I can verify you only have nine pages in Google’s indexes. This is because you only have nine actual pages on your website.

I want to start with an overview of some of the site issues. Then, after the overview, I’ll share how to resolve a large chunk of this so you can begin getting pages crawled and indexed.

Identifying The Gaps In Your Website Structure

It’s very hard for both consumers and search engines to navigate your website because you are missing links and easy-to-find navigation.

There are also two sitemaps, and one of them is incorrect. The good news is your correct one is listed in robots.txt, but it only has your site’s navigation in it and not the pages that are being created dynamically.

To start, list the most important subpages in your sitemap so search engines can find them more easily.

The robots.txt file also includes a disallow directive for all user agents which is problematic because this is blocking crawling and not guiding crawlers to proper folders and pages.

Specify “allow” for the important folders and pathways you want crawled. This guides spiders to the pages and folders you feel are most important.

On top of the sitemap and robots.txt issues, there is no internal linking. Internal links are important to allow crawlers to move around your site and find new pages that need indexing.

Next is to look at the quality of your content and how it is displayed.

The content on your site is thin and there is no content that can provide the kind of information that experts in storage in the local area would know.

Add unique content and location information to each page individually (more on this below in the how to fix this issue section).

The site is also missing robots meta tags and canonical links. Meta robot tags give directions on whether the pages should be indexed or not and if links should be followed or not.

Canonical links say which version is the official version of a page and can help deduplicate similar or competing pages. Adding these will help search engines know what to do as the pages and links are discovered.

Last, you have no city or state-based pages as dedicated resources, but you do have them in a drop-down in the search box. The issue here is these pages don’t exist unless searched for.

If they don’t exist on an official URL, search engines cannot find them and index them easily.

There are other tech and content issues here, but I’m going to jump into fixing the main one, which is getting more pages indexed for you. And this is an incredibly easy one, so this is good news.

Filling The Missing SEO Elements

There are a few steps I would take if this were my site or project:

1. Build a cities and/or regions and states folder structure.
2. Get unique content for each.
3. Add in breadcrumbs and internal links.
4. Modify the robots.txt and sitemaps.
5. Do local PR work, not spammy links and directories.

Build A Folder Structure

When you allow a site search to generate URLs for cities, states, and locations, you create a ton of competing URLs.

People can spell a city wrong or use an abbreviation: Philly, Philadelphia (and is it Missouri or PA), or neighborhoods like Fishtown or Center City if it is the Pennsylvania version of Philadelphia.

And if you live in the DMV (DC, MD, VA) like I do, you may type in Washington or Columbia Heights vs. the state or city name. Washington could also be either DC or the state.

Building a folder structure lets you guide people to the correct location and makes it easier for search engines to know where you offer services.

For example, EU companies can structure by country; individual countries like Mexico could have states like Jalisco and Oaxaca and the major cities in each.

Create Unique Content

Original location-based content is easy to use for your niche. Each region has different climates, and cities do, too. Bring these into consideration when writing the copy.

If the region has more humidity, talk about how the building protects against mold, mildew, corrosion, and other humidity issues that impact storage and warehousing.

For areas that lose power because of hurricanes, snow, or even heat, talk about backup systems and refrigeration for temperature-critical items being stored.

You could include city-based content and localize with original talking points, including directions to the location. Don’t forget to include physical addresses, hours of operation, and phone numbers.

I wrote this guide to localized title tags and descriptions a while back, it applies here, too.

Add Breadcrumbs And Internal Links

Now that you have unique content for the states and major cities in an easy-to-navigate directory structure, help users and search engines find them.

Add breadcrumbs with breadcrumb schema to the site – ideally, at the top of the page so users can click and use them.

In the unique copy for the state pages, link to the city pages. If it will benefit the user, link back to the main head state pages from the city pages.

An example for this would be if one city has people renting in other cities in that state, or if one location fills up, other locations that are close by and are easily accessible as an alternative.

The copy may mention looking for other warehousing options in that state or other city/region. Use the name of the state or city with the call to action and make them an internal link.

You’re helping the user find a solution, and search engines understand what each page is about.

This is how you build an effective and meaningful internal linking structure for SEO. The main goal is to help a customer; the benefit is you make it easier for search engines to understand your site structure.

Modify The Robots.txt And Sitemaps

At this point, you have a good site and user experience. Now is the time to make sure the states and cities are in the sitemap, and then modify your robots.txt to allow the folders.

You can request a crawl from Search Console for Google and Bing’s version of Webmaster Tools.

As the spiders access robots.txt, they will find your listed pages, then through internal links find other pages to crawl to find all your pages.

With proper meta robots and canonicals, they will see clean pathways and be able to crawl your site better.

Drive Demand Through Local PR

Anyone can list in directories and pay to play. Yes, some may help you, but the real benefit is local PR.

Getting your business featured in the media drives local demand. People in those regions begin searching for your company by name and the services as modifiers on the keywords.

This may or may not help with SEO, but it does one thing: It builds consumer trust and gets you localized, high-value backlinks. These can send trust signals and customers to you.

Local media includes local blogs that do not allow guest posting or sponsored posts, TV and print media like local newspapers, radio stations and podcasts with descriptions with links, and other platforms that people in the city or state use.

You may be able to add a PR bar with “As Seen In” featuring local media logos to build trust with that region.

Summary

The good news is that you don’t have an indexing problem. The pages that exist are indexed.

You have discovery problems because only nine pages actually exist on your website.

The solution here is to build the state and city-based pages, fill them with content and site structure, and then do the work to build trust with PR and trust-building activities.

I hope this helps. Thank you for asking your question – it’s a good one!

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Featured Image: Sammby/Shutterstock