seo enhancements
Jan 21 2025
How to create an effective SEO roadmap

The start of the year is always a good moment to start or update your SEO roadmap. This is a structured collection of tasks you plan to do to enhance your site’s performance. If you already have one, great! If not, read this article to find out what you can do and why you need an SEO strategy.

Table of contents

What is an SEO roadmap?

An SEO roadmap is a strategic outline for enhancing a website’s visibility in search engines. It consists of all the SEO tasks you wish to perform in a given period of time. These tasks encompass keyword research, content strategy, and technical SEO.

We need a plan showing how people find our product or business. Once we know that, we’ll need to write content strategically targeting these people. At the same time, we’ll find a way to improve our website’s technical aspects to ensure it performs flawlessly.

The goal is to connect your SEO plan to the broader business goals. This will help you focus on the right things for the desired results. Of course, this isn’t just about performing better and properly managing your resources. It helps allocate time and budget effectively to areas with the most impact.

Setting up and managing an SEO strategy has many benefits. It provides a solid framework for tracking performance and fine-tuning it where necessary, helping you target the right people and stay ahead of the competition.

Why do you need an SEO roadmap for that?

While it’s easy to jump right into the SEO work you need to do, it’s better to have a roadmap. An SEO roadmap helps your decision-making process. It helps you prioritize the activities that drive the most value. And it gives you a sense of direction.

Setting up such an SEO roadmap will help you increase your website’s visibility in search. It will also help you target the right audiences and reduce costs by focusing on high-impact areas.

Your new strategy should support the overarching business goals. Often, that’s increasing sales. By increasing organic traffic, you can boost sales and revenue. It could also support brand awareness. Enhancing your brand’s presence in search engines makes it more recognizable. Plus, you’ll want to engage customers.

Building a solid, holistic SEO strategy also keeps you agile. You’re much more on top of things and able to respond to changes in search history trends or market conditions. This is another thing that gives you a leg up over a slightly less well-prepared competitor.

How to create an SEO roadmap

Before creating an SEO plan, you need to collect some insights. Clearly define what you want to achieve, and audit your site to get a feel for the issues you must fix. Then, the budget and availability of resources must be figured out to get the updates done. When you have everything, you can build out your SEO roadmap.

Define your goals and priorities

Creating a successful SEO roadmap begins with setting clear goals and establishing priorities. This step helps focus all efforts and align them with broader business objectives.

Set SMART goals

The most important thing is to work in a structured manner. You need a framework to verify if the work you’re planning is feasible and measurable. Here’s how to effectively define your goals and priorities using SMART criteria.

  • Set SMART goals: Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This framework ensures clarity and direction.
  • Specific: Clearly describe what you want to achieve. For instance, instead of saying “increase traffic,” specify “increase organic traffic by 20%.”
  • Measurable: Use metrics to track progress and evaluate success. Example: “Reach 50,000 monthly page views by the end of Q2.”
  • Achievable: Make sure the goals are realistic. Think about your resources and constraints. Consider current performance as a baseline.
  • Relevant: Align goals with business objectives. If brand awareness is your number one goal, focus on increasing visibility in search engine results.
  • Time-bound: Set a deadline to create urgency. Example: “Achieve a top 3 ranking for targeted keywords within six months.”

Of course, there are many other options. Consider frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize tasks by urgency and importance. This method helps you prioritize tasks by urgency and importance, sorting them into four categories: do first, schedule, delegate, and don’t do. Use this matrix to categorize SEO tasks, focusing first on urgent and important ones, like fixing critical site errors.

Align with business objectives

Your SEO goals should fall in line with your overall business strategy. This way, SEO efforts will help your company achieve its goals. For example, if your company wants to grow its market share in a particular area, you should focus on local SEO. This means targeting local keywords and directories.

Not all tasks are created equal, so determine which ones will have the biggest impact and put them on your SEO roadmap first. Look for tasks that are easy to do and give you quick results, like fixing high-traffic pages. Also, focus on projects that match your main business goals, even if they take more time and resources.

Remember to meet with all the important people to ensure that your SEO goals are what they want and that they fit with the whole company’s goals. Talk to the marketing, sales, and product teams to understand what they want and how SEO can help them achieve it.

Audit your website

Conducting a thorough website audit is critical in creating an effective SEO roadmap. This process helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. You can add the audit findings as improvement tasks to your roadmap.

Do a content audit

Most of the time, people find your website through your content. As such, it’s an essential part of your SEO strategy. But your content might have become a tangled mess if you’ve been at it for a while. A content audit can help inform your SEO roadmap and help you untangle that mess.

Review your existing content and see if it (still) meets user needs and aligns with your goals. Then, look for content gaps to determine whether your audience is interested in a topic you haven’t discussed on your site yet. If you find these or other opportunities, add them as tasks on your roadmap. Don’t forget to check the on-page SEO of your key pages.

You can do a proper content audit by hand, but tools like Semrush and Ahrefs make this process much more manageable.

Do a technical SEO audit

A technical audit will help uncover performance issues with the site. These issues might prevent search engines or users from properly accessing your site.

First, crawl your website using tools like Screaming Frog to see if it can be accessed properly. Uncover crawl errors and find out what’s happening on pages that are not available — accidental or not. Check for broken links or 404 errors and add these to your task list.

Evaluate and improve page load times, as speed affects user experience and rankings. Don’t forget Google’s core web vitals. Also, check that your site is responsive and functions well on mobile devices.

You should add those tasks to the roadmap if you find technical issues on your site that you want or need to fix.

Check the user experience

Every year, user experience is getting more important if you want to perform well in search engines. Make sure that your site is easy to navigate. It should have a logical structure that helps users find information quickly. Analyze site bounce rates and time to identify pages needing improvement. Again, if you find improvements to be made, add them to your SEO roadmap as tasks so you can work on them in a structured way.

The web is built around links, and while links have become slightly less important over the years, they’re still an important topic for search engines. In your audit, please look at your backlinks and see if you can acquire high-quality, relevant backlinks. Unless you have a manual action for spam from Google, it probably isn’t worth your time to disavow all the toxic links pointing to your site.

Estimate time and resources

Before you fill out your SEO roadmap, you need to estimate accurately the time and resources you have available to you. Doing so helps set realistic timelines to achieve your SEO goals.

Evaluate team strengths and capabilities

When working with a team, assess the skills available to determine who can handle specific SEO tasks. Also, understand the workload your team can handle alongside other responsibilities.

Budget planning

While you need enough people for your project, you also need a budget. Find the tools and technologies you need for SEO and budget accordingly. Also, decide if you need additional expertise, such as hiring freelancers or an SEO agency.

Set realistic timelines

It’s important to set realistic goals and timelines for the project. Give each task in your SEO roadmap a deadline. If you’ve looked at your tasks in detail, you know how long it would take. Do consider delays, as things will likely have a different duration than you thought before — even if you thought it through. Don’t forget to plan work for different teams in advance so they know when to come in.

Prioritize tasks based on resources

Look ahead and see if you can mix quick wins with long-term projects. It’s good to have successful moments during the project, not only at the end. Focus on optimizing existing high-traffic pages first while planning a longer-term content strategy. Make sure that the most critical tasks receive proper attention and resources.

Review and adjust

Your SEO roadmap is never set and done — there are always things to adjust for whatever reason. It’s important to review and adjust your strategy regularly. This helps you refine your plans and jump on new opportunities. Or, you can finally fix that pesky new thing that keeps popping up.

Schedule regular reviews

Don’t just wait for reviews to happen — plan them in advance. Conduct in-depth reviews every quarter to evaluate the overall effectiveness of your SEO strategy. In addition, you should hold monthly meetings to discuss ongoing tasks, recent results, and anything that needs priority.

Analyze performance data

Analyze all data thoroughly before making decisions. Examine all relevant data, including traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates, to get a complete picture of performance. From that data, identify your successes and failures. Determine which strategies are working well and which need reevaluation.

Get feedback from stakeholders

Ask your teammates for their views on what’s working and what’s not. If possible, hold feedback sessions to develop new solutions for issues. When necessary, ask customers or executives for insights on how you can make sure that the SEO plan supports overarching goals.

Refine goals and strategy

For all your research, refine your goals to reflect the necessary changes. If you performed better than you thought, why not take those goals up a notch? If not, see what you can do to improve. Also, don’t forget to place manhours in areas that need the most help.

Implement changes and track impact

When you’ve collected all your insights and know what you need to do, you should develop a plan to implement them. For example, you could update your content strategy or invest in different platforms to compete. Of course, you need to monitor the effect of the changes you made to your SEO strategy — and adjust if necessary!

A roadmap is the groundwork for SEO success

This guide provides the steps needed to develop an effective SEO plan. It helps you find long-term success for your roadmap while aligning it with broader business objectives. Be sure to work diligently on the tasks in your strategy and analyze and adjust if needed.

Do you need help keeping up with SEO? Be sure to sign up for one of our SEO webinars!



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.

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Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 11 2024
5 tips on how to create good seasonal content

It’s the festive season! Or it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, or the start of summer, or… You get the drift. People love to celebrate, which is why seasonal content tends to do well during those periods. So, should you put effort into creating content for the holidays? We think so! But you should be smart about it. Here are five tips to help you create good-quality seasonal content.

Why should you create seasonal content?

A big benefit of creating seasonal content is that you’ll stay top of mind. After all, your customers are probably looking for content to give them ideas for gifts, services, or events. By participating in the trend, you’ll show your audience that your business is relevant.

Of course, by having seasonal content, you’ll also be able to boost your brand’s visibility and traffic. Especially if you have content optimized for seasonal keywords! In short: most people get swept up by the holiday season, so it’s good to join the hype.

Tip 1: Create evergreen seasonal content

Good news for busy people! You don’t need to create a new piece of seasonal content every year. It’s way better to create one excellent Christmas post, for example, that you optimize every year. Preferably, you optimize it a month or two before the event or holiday takes place. 

This will save you time, and increases the likelihood of your content actually ranking (since that usually takes a while). So, avoid adding years to your content. Don’t write a piece about: Best recipes for Hanukkah 2024. Just delete the year from the title, and you’re good to go. 

If you do want to include the year in your title, don’t include it in your URL. That way, you can update the post and title each year without having to constantly create new posts and redirect the old ones.

Our Black Friday post has a year in the title, but not in the URL

What if you already have multiple content pieces about the same holiday?

If your posts rank well for different keywords and they get a decent amount of organic traffic, keep them. But if there is overlap in the keywords they’re ranking for and they get okayish traffic, it’s better to merge them into one big post. Just make sure the post’s content still makes sense. 

Our tip would be to use the URL of the post that is performing the best. For the other posts, make sure you redirect them to the optimized post so people won’t hit a 404. 

Tip 2: Do keyword research

Whether you want to write a new post or optimize an existing one, it’s good to do research. First, start with keyword research, so you know what your audience is searching for during specific events or holidays. 

Tip: you can always look for variations of your core keywords! For example, you can add “holiday” or “guide” or “summer/winter” to them.

Just don’t create content for content’s sake. Only write content if you’re sure that your audience is looking for this information. At the end of the day, you want your audience to feel that your site has added value. 

Tip 3: Do competitor research

Once you’ve picked out a main keyword, it’s good to search for that keyword in Google, for example. Analyze the top results. Are they blog posts or category pages? If they’re blog posts, what kind of articles are they? For example, if all the top posts are how-to guides then you probably have the best chance of ranking if your article is a how-to guide as well. Just make sure to write something different from what’s already out there.

Tip 4: Plan well ahead of time

It’s good to remember that people often search for gift ideas or tips for activities or recipes weeks in advance. This means you’ll need to have your seasonal content ready before the actual holiday! That’s why it might be a good idea to have a content calendar for your posts, so you won’t forget.

Plus, it’s good to publish new content early so it has time to rank. After all, once the event is there, you want your content to be findable by your audience. That’s why it’s also a good idea to make sure your content meets Google’s helpful content and E-E-A-T guidelines.

Tip 5: Keep your seasonal content updated

Even though you’ve created evergreen content, make sure to update it at least once a year—preferably a couple of weeks before the event or holiday itself. Let’s say you have a new tip, or one of your products is no longer being produced. By updating your content, you’ll ensure that your content is always relevant and helpful. Which your audience and Google will both like!

Don’t forget to republish your content as new!

Once you’ve updated your content, don’t forget to change the publish date. This way, people (and search engines) will know it’s been updated. Of course, if you have a feature on your site that shows both the publish and updated date, then this isn’t necessary.

So why should you republish or update your content? Again, it shows that your content is relevant and current. Because let’s be honest, how would you feel if you read a blog post with Tips for a perfect summer vacation and the date said 2018? You’d think it was outdated, right?

Tip: Our free Duplicate Post plugin allows you to easily rewrite and republish your posts! With the plugin, you can edit your posts without taking them offline.

A screenshot of the Rewrite & Republish feature in the WordPress backend.
You can access the Rewrite & Republish feature via the WordPress toolbar or from the post overview

Seasonal content: the gift that keeps on giving

If you’ve got a solid post that you can update every year, you’ll ensure that you’ll give your audience helpful content. Plus, you’ll gain more traffic during seasonal events. Just make sure to update or write your content weeks in advance, so it has time to rank. All that’s left then, is to promote your content, for example on your social media channels or via email marketing. Good luck!



Cindy Paul

Cindy is a content manager at Yoast. She writes and optimizes blog posts, and enjoys writing content that will help people create better content for their site and users.

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Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
seo enhancements
Oct 22 2024
How to write conversational content

People nowadays are uninterested in cold and business-like pieces of content. They want something authentic. They want conversations with people. That’s partly why Reddit is grabbing top spots in the search results because people know they’ll be reading something authentic. Hence why it’s smart to create more conversational content. But how do you do that? Read this blog to find out!

What is conversational content?

Plain and simple, it’s writing like you’re talking with someone. Not to someone. You’re not lecturing. You’re having a conversation with your audience. Though I’d suggest that you leave out the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and multiple uses of ‘like’ or other filler words, because those can be a bit, uh, distracting or annoying in a text.

For language purists: That also means letting go of some of the more formal writing conventions, like never starting sentences with ‘and’ or ‘but’.

Why conversational content?

As mentioned in the intro, people don’t want to read cold and dry texts. You probably don’t want to read some textbook answer that goes: ‘Conversational content is the art of writing in the way one might talk to other humans’. You, and many others, want to feel like you’re reading something written by another person. And one way to achieve this feeling is to create conversational content.

Because when you write like you’re holding a conversation, chances are that your audience will want to talk back. Or in beautiful marketing terms: engage with your content.

How to start?

You now know the what and the why. Let’s look at how to start writing conversational content. Easiest way? Write a new blog post. Pick a topic that you’re interested in and that fits with your company or content strategy, then write like you’re talking with your audience! I know, I know, it’s not as easy as that. So here are some tips.

I’m writing this post…

Let’s get a quick tip out of the way: write in the first person. So, use I-sentences, like I’ve been doing so far. 

Speaking generally might come across as more professional, sure, but that’s not what you want. If you want to sound authentic, like a human, then you should let go of the generalized statements. No more “Our Product is Great and A Life Saver”. Instead, you can write: “I’ve used Our Product for my own small business, and this is how it’s helped me”. 

… And you’re reading it

Don’t forget to address the other side of the conversation. You. The reader. Address them like you would if you were having a conversation with someone. Don’t say “people” as much. Try to use “you” instead. 

For example, instead of writing “People want more connection”, write “You probably want more connection”. See? Way more personal when you’re getting addressed.

Ask questions

Do you like it when people ask you questions? Probably, right? As with any good conversation, it’s nice to ask questions. They make the other person feel heard and addressed. So use that in your content writing. Ask people questions, and you’ll see that they’ll feel more engaged already.

Don’t use difficult words

Unless! Ha, there’s always an unless. If you know your audience really well, and you’re sure they’ll understand this or that difficult word, then go ahead. Generally speaking, however, even experts like content that’s easy to understand. 

So, no difficult words. You will only equivocate your readers! Worse, some might see it as a diatribe, and accuse you of being dilatory (see how annoying it is when you don’t know half the words? If you do know them, kudos to you!). The short of it: if people lose focus or interest in your content, or simply don’t understand, there’s no way they’re going to engage with it.

Keep it short, okay?

Think about it: if you talk with someone, are you using sentences that are three paragraphs long? Probably not. Which means that as you write, you should keep your sentences short too. Plus, this will make your content easier to read, which is great for readability!

Pssht, if you have the Yoast SEO plugin, it will check if your sentences are too long. If they are, the plugin highlights them for you. This makes it easier to rewrite them!

Emphasize your words

With italics! It sounds almost like a slogan. But yes, it can help with making your writing sound more natural. Why? Because you emphasize words when you speak too. Sometimes it can even change the meaning of your sentence. 

For example (a very Dutch example, because if you live in the Netherlands, your bike will get stolen one day. It’s the circle of life): “I didn’t say he had stolen my bike,” means you really didn’t say that. But if you say, “I didn’t say he had stolen my bike,” you want to emphasize that it wasn’t him, but someone else.

Do not write ‘do not’

I’m a big fan of contractions. Grammar contractions, that is. They make a text sound so much more natural. Because let’s be honest, do you say “I do not want another coffee” or do you say “I don’t want another coffee?” Probably the second one, right?

Using don’t and I’m and you’re etc. will sound so much more natural to readers. Which means your content will sound more like a conversation too.

You’re a person, so write like one

Does that sound threatening? I do mean this in the nicest way possible! In order to write good conversational content, you have to ‘let go’ a little. The professional in you needs to take a step back and make space for your personality to shine through. Because if you can make your writing sound like you, it’ll sound so much more natural.

It all comes back to the “people don’t want impersonal and business-like content anymore”. They want to read content made by people. So let your own personality shine through. Make a little joke. Heck, use silly words like ‘delulu’ instead of delusional every once in a while (just make sure your text is still readable to everyone). Just be you.

Add examples and anecdotes

Another great way that will help you write like a person is to add examples. Personal examples, to be exact. It doesn’t have to be long. You don’t have to let us know every detail about your life, but sharing about your personal experiences can help make a piece of writing feel more personal. 

Keep the conversation going

Okay, you’ve written a post or piece of conversational content. People are engaging, maybe even commenting! Don’t let the conversation end there. Reply to them. Use their point of view, their insights and questions, and perhaps create another piece of content. Build on the conversation. Keep it going!

What kind of content works for conversational content?

Finally, before you pour your heart and soul (and personality) into your content, let’s look at what kind of content works. 

An easy one is opinionated pieces. Has something interesting happened in your area of expertise? Write content about it, and give your opinion. Add to the conversation with your voice. 

But really, any piece of content can become conversational if you write it like that—if you use your own voice and personality, and make it yours. Look at this post! Technically, it’s a how-to. Those can be very dry. You’re just giving information, after all. But I’ve used the conversational content tips to make it, well, interesting. I hope I did a good job. 

Let me know if I did 🙂 And good luck with writing!



Cindy Paul

Cindy is a content manager at Yoast. She writes and optimizes blog posts, and enjoys writing content that will help people create better content for their site and users.

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Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
seo enhancements
Jul 25 2024
Elevating author and publisher entities in SEO

The SEO community has been buzzing following the release of internal Google documents, revealing more details about how author and publisher entities influence search rankings. These insights help you strategically optimize your author and publisher profiles. This article will explore these entities and give you some actionable strategies to incorporate their optimization into your existing SEO practices.

Table of contents

Tracking author and publisher entities

The leaked documents confirm that Google tracks and retains content authorship and publisher credibility data. These elements help the ranking algorithms. The rationale behind this is straightforward: credible and authoritative content is more likely to be accurate, reliable, and useful to users. Therefore, content attributed to recognized authors and reputable publishers is favored in search results.

Optimizing author and publisher entities

As interpreted by various sources, the Google document leak indicates that author and publisher entities play significant roles in search rankings. However, it does not clearly show whether one is inherently more important than the other. Instead, it highlights the complementary nature of these entities in establishing content credibility and authority.

Recently, Google’s Gary Illyes shed light on specific signals that are not considered beneficial for SEO. This emphasizes the importance of genuine user engagement and content quality rather than relying on easily manipulated elements. The following are signals Google deems less effective in contributing to your site’s search performance.

  1. Authorship markup: Google’s Gary Illyes mentioned that authorship markup, which is controlled by SEOs and site owners, is generally not considered a good signal for ranking purposes.
  2. Controlled markup: Any markup that can be easily manipulated by site owners or SEOs is not typically viewed as a reliable signal by Google.
  3. Quality signals: Google prefers signals that are harder to manipulate and more reflective of genuine user engagement and content quality.

While Google may describe certain signals as “not good signals,” it’s important to note that they are still considered signals. This situation is reminiscent of the famous exchange in “Pirates of the Caribbean”:

  • “You’re the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of.”
  • “But you have heard of me.”

In other words, even if these signals aren’t the best, they still have some recognition in SEO.

Practical implications

Google’s comprehensive approach to assessing online content trustworthiness involves many signals and metrics. Publishers can enhance their trustworthiness by focusing on content freshness, originality, structured data, and robust anti-spam practices. Their history further aids in evaluating long-term credibility, encouraging them to maintain high-quality standards consistently.

The Google document leak highlights the importance of both author and publisher entities in SEO. A balanced approach that optimizes both can significantly enhance content credibility and authority. Focus on detailed and accurate author and publisher profiles, leverage structured data, and employ tools like Yoast SEO. SEOs can build a strong foundation for improving search engine rankings and driving organic traffic.

Establishing credible author profiles

Building up your author profile is essential today. But you shouldn’t just limit yourself to building your profile; you should also make sure to present it properly on your publisher’s website. That means you have to build great author pages as well.

But how do you create detailed bio pages? Authors should have a dedicated bio page with qualifications, expertise, and a professional headshot. This page should be linked to all articles written by the author. For example: If Jane Doe writes for your publication, create a page like yourwebsite.com/authors/jane-doe that includes her bio, credentials, and links to all her articles.

On that author page, you should also include social proof. Incorporate links to the author’s social media profiles, professional networks like LinkedIn, and any notable publications they have contributed to. For example, on Jane Doe’s bio page, link to her LinkedIn profile and any major publications where her work has appeared.

Your author pages should have a solid foundation built on structured data, so implement schema markup. Use structured data to tag author information on each article. This helps search engines recognize and index author details accurately.

For example, add JSON-LD markup to each article page, including the author’s name, bio, and profile URL.

Use the Yoast SEO plugin’s schema framework to add author markup seamlessly. Yoast’s adaptable schema structure ensures all necessary author and publisher information is included and properly formatted.

Enhancing publisher credibility

What works for authors also works for publishers — these things go together. Don’t focus on just your authors; make sure you also put your publication in the spotlight.

Start by making it easy to find information about your publisher. Like author bio pages, create a dedicated publisher page detailing the organization’s mission, history, and achievements. Include logos, awards, and other forms of social proof. For example, create a page like yourwebsite.com/about-us/ that includes your publication’s background, mission statement, and accolades.

It’s important to prove who you are and what you stand for. List editorial policies, team members, and contact information to ensure transparency. For example, on the “About Us” page, include a section detailing your editorial guidelines and a list of key editorial staff with their bios.

Then, like enhancing authors, roll out structured data for your publishing house. Use Organization markup as implement schema markup provides search engines with detailed information about you. This includes the name, logo, contact details, and social media profiles.

Here’s a very basic example: Add JSON-LD markup to your publisher page including your organization’s name, logo, and contact information.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Your Organization",
  "logo": "https://yourwebsite.com/logo.png",
  "url": "https://yourwebsite.com",
  "contactPoint": {
    "@type": "ContactPoint",
    "telephone": "+1-800-555-5555",
    "contactType": "Customer Service"
  }
}

Again, be sure to use Yoast SEO for your structured data needs. Its schema framework allows you to efficiently add and manage organization markup, ensuring consistency and accuracy.

Combining author and publisher strategies

As mentioned, it’s not one or the other strategy — combine your efforts to make the most of it. Only then can Google truly understand your authors and publications.

This means that you must unify your branding across all content. Ensure that all content consistently reflects the brand’s voice and values. This includes using uniform author bios and publisher information across different platforms. For example, ensure that every article Jane Doe writes includes a standardized author bio snippet linking to her full bio page.

In addition, you should always attribute content to verified authors and the publisher, reinforcing credibility. For example, at the end of each article, include a byline such as “Written by Jane Doe, Senior Editor at Your Organization.”

Focus on content quality, relevance, and topical expertise

You can highlight your publications and authors all you want, but you will never make it without your topical experts writing high-quality, relevant content. This should be at the top of everyone’s list.

Focus on producing high-quality, original content that adds value to readers. This enhances the reputation of both the author and the publisher. Conduct thorough research and provide in-depth analysis in your articles to establish expertise and authority.

Encourage authors to write within their areas of expertise to build authority in specific niches. For example, if Jane Doe specializes in SEO, make sure she writes predominantly on SEO-related topics.

Actionable SEO strategies

You can also use classic SEO tactics to build your authors and publishers’ reputations. For instance, you could encourage your authors to contribute to reputable external sites to get a link to their bio pages. This builds both author and publisher authority.

Also, try to build up your citations. Find ways and outlets to get your content cited or mentioned by authoritative sources. You could contact industry influencers to review and mention your content in their articles or social media posts.

Keep everything up to date

Regularly update bio and publisher pages with new achievements, publications, and credentials. For example, you could enhance Jane Doe’s bio page with her latest speaking engagements, citations, and published articles. Also, periodically update older content to keep it relevant and accurate, maintaining the credibility of both authors and the publisher.

Entity SEO and its importance for publishers

Entity SEO focuses on optimizing for entities—people, places, organizations, and things—rather than just keywords. Google’s algorithms leverage the Knowledge Graph to understand and rank entities based on their relationships and attributes. Publishers should also focus on entity SEO.

One of the foundations of entity SEO is helping Google recognize your entities. One way to do that is to implement structured data. This helps Google recognize and categorize entities accurately. This includes using schema markup for authors, publishers, and organizations. You can use schema markup to define relationships between authors, their articles, and the publisher.

Together with structured data, linking your entities is a staple of Entity SEO. Make sure that internal links connect related entities within your content. For example, link an author’s bio page to their articles and the publisher page.

Be consistent in your entities. Maintain consistent information about entities across various platforms and websites. Inconsistencies can confuse search engines and harm rankings.

Last but not least, try to improve your chances of being included in Google’s Knowledge Graph. Make sure that you provide comprehensive and accurate information. For example, submit your organization and key authors to Wikidata and ensure their information is accurate and up-to-date.

Leveraging structured data and Yoast SEO

Structured data is the backbone of effective SEO for author and publisher entities. It enables search engines to understand and index content more accurately, making attributing credibility to the proper sources easier. The Yoast SEO plugin offers a robust schema framework that simplifies the implementation of structured data.

Yoast SEO provides a comprehensive and adaptable schema framework that supports various schema types, including author and organization markup. This ensures all necessary information is included and formatted correctly, enhancing visibility in search results.

Use Yoast SEO to add structured data to all relevant pages, including author bio pages, publisher information, and individual articles. The plugin’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to manage and update schema markup as needed.

Conclusion

The recent Google document leak has highlighted the critical role of author and publisher entities in SEO. SEOs can significantly enhance a website’s authority and trustworthiness by adopting a structured approach to optimizing these entities.
Implementing detailed author and publisher pages, leveraging structured data, and utilizing tools like Yoast SEO can create a solid foundation for improved search engine rankings.

Integrating these insights into current SEO practices will help build a credible and authoritative online presence, ultimately driving more organic traffic and engagement.

Read more: What is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)? »



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Jul 18 2024
What is Search Experience Optimization (SXO)?

Today, you have to think beyond simply ranking high on search engines. Users want more than just a simple website visit. Your visitors and customers are looking for an engaging experience. Search Experience Optimization (SXO) can help provide this. This merges SEO with user-centric design to help you attract visitors and keep them engaged. The goal, of course, is to convert them into loyal customers. We’ll explain the topic, how it differs from SEO, and why you could use it in your strategy.

SEO, SXO, OSO?

You might think, “Another acronym? SEOs sure love their acronyms!”. Of course, you are correct — we even wrote about another interesting acronym just last week: OSO (Organic Search Optimization). SXO, however, is one you’ll want to remember. It focuses on merging search engine visibility and user experience.

What is Search Experience Optimization?

Search Experience Optimization (SXO) enhances SEO with user experience design. One of SEO’s main goals is to improve your site’s visibility in the SERPs. SXO, however, goes a step further to ensure visitors have a positive experience that meets their needs and helps them reach their goals.

While modern-day SEO inches ever closer to SXO, it initially emerged as a natural evolution from SEO. It understands that ranking high in Google is just the first step. The challenge lies in keeping visitors and turning them into customers. Combining SEO techniques with UX best practices, SXO creates websites that are easy to find and enjoyable to use.

SXO is about optimizing for both humans and search engines. It takes the entire user journey into account. It sets a path from when someone types a query into a search engine to where they complete an action on your site. This holistic SEO approach gets your website traffic. Once there, you’ll provide a fantastic experience that engages and converts.

The main components of SXO

Search Experience Optimization merges traditional SEO with UX. Combining these components helps create a site that is both search engine-friendly and user-friendly.

SEO basics

SEO is the foundation of SXO. You’ll still do the same stuff, like conducting keyword research to identify the terms your target audience is searching for. Once you have these keywords, you should use them in your content like you are used to. On-page SEO helps search engines understand your site properly. As a result, it can correctly index your content, which helps improve your search rankings.

User experience

User experience is at the heart of SXO. The goal is to keep visitors engaged. For this, you must prioritize ease of navigation, build an intuitive design, focus on accessibility, and make your content readable with great typography. You’ll build a well-structured website with clear menus, hierarchy, and navigation to help users find what they need quickly. An appealing design with high-quality visuals can make your site more engaging. And, of course, there’s also a bigger focus on conversion optimization.

Engagement metrics

To offer a great experience, you need to monitor user behavior. Engagement metrics provide valuable insights into how users interact with your site. For instance, a high bounce rate might indicate that people can’t find what they need. On the other hand, a longer average time on page might suggest that they engage with your content. Analyzing these metrics finds many things to improve and gives you data-driven decisions to enhance the UX.

Content quality

As we know, content quality is essential in both SEO and UX. Your content should be helpful and relevant to your audience’s needs. Use clear and concise language. Aim for excellent readability. High-quality content helps with search engine rankings, keeps users engaged, and encourages them to explore your site.

How SXO differs from SEO

Search Experience Optimization is SEO with an extra focus on user experience. SEO aims to increase visibility in the SERPs and attract organic traffic by optimizing content and technical aspects. SXO, on the other hand, aims to attract visitors and retain and convert them. While SEO brings users to your site, SXO helps them have a great experience once they arrive.

Technical vs. holistic approach

While content forms a big part of SEO, it is often more technical, focusing on structured data, meta tags, backlinks, and site speed. These elements help improve your rankings. SXO has a more holistic approach and combines this with user-centric design principles. It aims to improve the overall user journey, from the initial search query to the final conversion. It focuses on ease of navigation, usability, and content relevance.

Metric differences

Measuring success in SEO and SXO has quite some overlap, while SEO metrics are a bit more search engine-centric. They include rankings, organic traffic, and click-through rates (CTR). These metrics tell you how well your site is performing in search results. SXO metrics are also more user-centric. They include engagement metrics and conversion rates. These metrics provide insights into how users interact with your site and how effectively it meets their needs.

An example of SEO vs. SXO

Let’s look at a short example that hopefully makes the differences even more insightful:

SEO approach

An e-commerce website that sells running shoes focuses on optimizing for high-quality keywords. They begin by conducting extensive keyword research to identify popular search terms like “buy running shoes,” “best running shoes,” and “affordable running shoes.” Once they have identified these keywords, they optimize their product pages by incorporating these in the content. Additionally, they ensure that images are optimized with relevant alt text.

To enhance their technical SEO, they improve site speed and mobile-friendliness, both of which are crucial for better search engine rankings. They also create an XML sitemap and submit it to search engines to improve site indexing. The content creation strategy involves publishing blog posts and articles targeting specific keywords, such as “Top Running Shoes for Marathon Training” and “How to Choose the Right Running Shoes.” To further boost their SEO efforts, they build backlinks by contacting fitness blogs, influencers, and online publications, increasing their authority.

SXO approach

In addition to the above SEO tactics, the e-commerce website also focuses on the user experience to better meet user intent. They start by analyzing search queries to understand the underlying intent, such as whether users are looking for buying guides, reviews, or specific product features. With these insights, they create comprehensive buying guides that explain how to choose running shoes based on different factors like foot type, running style, and terrain. They also offer interactive tools like quizzes to help users determine the best shoe for their needs.

The website has a clean, intuitive layout that ensures easy navigation. This way, users find what they’re looking for quickly. Clear, prominent calls-to-action (CTAs) like “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” and “Take the Quiz” guide users through the purchase process. To increase engagement and build trust, they incorporate user reviews and ratings on product pages, videos, and 360-degree views of the products to give users a better understanding of the shoes.

Personalization plays a key role in their SXO strategy. They use data from previous interactions to personalize recommendations, showing users products that match their preferences and past behavior. For conversion optimization, they streamline the checkout process to reduce friction, offering multiple payment options and guest checkout. Additionally, they implement retargeting strategies, such as email reminders for abandoned carts, to encourage users to complete their purchases.

Uniting SXO and SEO

The online store integrates SEO and SXO approaches. This attracts a high volume of visitors through search engines and provides a superior user experience. Combined, this leads to higher engagement, increased user satisfaction, and better conversion rates.

For instance, a user searching for “best running shoes for flat feet” might land on a detailed guide that explains what features to look for, showcases top-rated products, and offers an interactive quiz. This comprehensive approach answers their query and guides them toward purchasing, enhancing both the SEO and the user experience.

What is Search Experience Optimization?

Search Experience Optimization combines SEO and user experience. With SXO, you don’t just aim to attract visitors through improved search engine rankings; you want them to have a great experience. This experience should be so good that it encourages them to stay, explore, and convert.

If you want to integrate SXO into your strategy, you need a holistic approach. This focus on experience and rankings builds a great online presence, ultimately driving long-term success.



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Jun 27 2024
Is OSO, organic search optimization, the new SEO?

There’s a new kid in town, and it’s one you want to be friends with: OSO. It stands for organic search optimization, and with the Search Generative Experience rolling out, this acronym is one you should pay attention to. It’s not here to replace our good old SEO. But it does want to change your thinking and the platforms you’re focusing on.

OSO is a relatively new acronym that adds a layer to SEO as we know it. Although I’ve seen different explanations of the acronym (optimized search optimization, organic search optimization), they all boil down to the same concept: multi-channel search optimization.

SEO vs. OSO: what’s the difference?

Where SEO is traditionally focused on getting your web pages high in the search results, the focus is shifting towards being present on different platforms, not just in the SERPs. Now, we have a good acronym for this new mindset: OSO. Naturally, you can continue working on getting your site traffic up, but you also need to think about the performance of your content in other places. Your website is no longer the only focus point; it’s one of (hopefully many) places where you can be found and contacted. Sure, you want to beat your competition and claim that first search result, but you also need to focus on overall branding online.

It comes down to seeing your website as part of the equation rather than the result. OSO wants you to be more. It wants you to become the best information source on all the channels where your audience can be found. It’s all-encompassing and ties all your marketing efforts together instead of being one part of it.

Where does this shift come from?

Online search continuously changes, and people are no longer just visiting your website. There are so many different places where you come into contact with them. Or want to come into contact with them. And when you do, you want to ensure their experience with you is pleasant and consistent. So your content needs to be high-quality and make purchases (or other actions you want them to take) possible in different places. Make sure to align your content and communication and be where your audience is. Don’t forget, that nowadays, even social media platforms act as search engines.

SGE and other AI-powered tools

Other good reasons to take organic search optimization (or OSO) seriously are the Search Generative Experience and Google AI Overviews, and the overall use of AI in search engines. This is an AI-powered search tool (by Google) that pulls from different places to generate an answer to an online query. SGE uses different sources to generate its results: online pages, customer reviews, social media posts, YouTube videos, etc. So, it’s not just focused on your website content. These AI tools will look at your content across platforms and use them to generate personalized results. Another reason why it pays to be present on multiple platforms and spend enough time on the content you’re sharing there.

Example of how Google’s Generative Search Experience works.

So, do you need to make any changes?

Well, are you mainly focused on your website content? Or is your brand also represented on other online platforms? Either way, I suggest researching where your audience can be found. Which online platforms are they using, and with what intent? You need to be there and catch their eye. As written by Andrew Holland in this article on OSO by Search Engine Land:

Your job is to build nets… giant nets.

We need to go back to the drawing board and alter our priorities. Naturally, website content will remain high on the list. But you need to add more stuff to the list. Come together with your social media team and align your content, strategize with your email team, consider creating videos or podcasts, and even look at offline events you should attend. And if you are doing everything independently, set the right priorities. Spend enough time on your website, but also think of ways to broadcast your expertise in your field.

What would that look like?

To give you an idea of what that would look like, I would like to use Yoast as an example. We have the SEO blog you’re reading, which we’ve been using to reach our audience since the company’s launch. Of course, our newsletter and social media followed quickly after that. But we also speak at (and attend) SEO, development, WordPress, and marketing events. We host different types of webinars and create videos and podcasts. This strengthens our brand and shows our expertise in different places where our audience can be found.

It sounds like even more work…

This shift might cause you some worries regarding time management, but it also means that you can spend less time diving into data as this is becoming less important. So save time by obsessing a bit less over the numbers and invest that time in researching your audience and creating new (and fun) ways to reach them. This allows you to think more outside the box, which can also be exciting! And don’t forget that you’re also involving other team members, so you’ll have more people involved in your SEO (or OSO) efforts. Use their expertise, work on the content together, and find out what works for your team.

It comes down to building your brand

To recap what we talked about today, OSO is not that different from SEO. This new acronym reminds you to think beyond your pages and Google’s search results page. SEO is still here and going strong; it just continues evolving. And that means that you and your SEO efforts should, too. Good luck!



Camille Cunningham

Camille is a content specialist at Yoast. As part of the Search team, she enjoys creating content that helps you master SEO.

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