The world of search is undergoing a seismic shift, with AI-powered tools like ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot changing how users interact with search results. But even in this time of rapid innovation, one thing remains certain: Google continues to dominate the search landscape, holding an impressive 90% market share.
So, what does this mean for your search strategy? How can you adapt to stay visible and competitive?
That’s where we come in.
Join us on December 5th for an exclusive webinar with experts from Botify and DemandSphere, where we’ll walk through their in-depth analysis of 120,000 Google queries.
Together, we’ll uncover critical insights into Google’s AI Overviews, and how to utilize them effectively.
In this live webinar, you’ll learn:
The Mechanics of AI Overviews: What triggers them, which queries they prioritize, and how they’re reshaping the search experience.
Mastering SERP Real Estate: How much space these features occupy and the optimization strategies you need to compete.
Actionable Tips for Staying Ahead: Boost your visibility and rankings without the need for a total strategy overhaul.
Whether you’re a seasoned SEO professional or just starting out, this webinar will give you the insights and tools you need to navigate today’s increasingly competitive organic search environment.
Why Should You Attend?
AI Overviews are quickly becoming a defining feature of Google’s search results. Understanding how to optimize for these changes could be the difference between thriving in search or being left behind.
Plus, we’ll explore why SEO fundamentals—like high-quality content and effective crawling strategies—remain essential, even in an AI-driven world.
Don’t Miss Out!
Join us for this live session to gain exclusive insights, participate in an interactive Q&A after the webinar, and walk away with actionable strategies to plan your SEO efforts for 2025.
Can’t attend live? No problem! Register now, and we’ll send you a recording so you can watch when you want.
Miss the days when you could appear as the top result on a SERP?
It’s possible to relive those SEO glory days by learning how tuned in your website is to AI.
What Is An AIO In SEO?
AI Overviews, or AIOs, are one of Google’s newest search features to grace the SERPs.
AI Overviews provide users with AI-generated answers and topic summaries, and they are gaining momentum. Google launched it as an experiment in May 2023, and since then changed the traditional search to kick off a new era of SEO.
Now the focus for SEO is on optimizing websites for AI Overviews.
According to SE Ranking’s studies, this feature is often observed forlonger, mainly informational queries. These queries arecommon in niches like Relationships, Food and Beverage, Business, and more. While AI Overviews were initially only available in the US, they have recentlyexpanded to six countries, where they can now hold top positions in search results.
No doubt, this is only the beginning of the rise of AI Overviews. To stay ahead in SEO, start tracking the impact of AIOs on your sites now. Let’s look at how to do this quickly and easily!
Step 1. Find Out Which Target Keywords Trigger AIOs
Begin by finding out which of your keywords trigger AIOs and which ones you can optimize your content for.
This will help you attract more traffic through the new search.
Doing this manually can take a long time, especially if you have a large project with thousands of keywords.
To automate this process, useSE Ranking’s Competitive Research tool. This tool contains 22 million AIO-triggering keywords in the US region and 2.2 million in the UK region.
Go to the Organic Traffic Research section.
Filter keywords by the AI Overviews feature, as shown in the screenshot below.
The table will now only display keywords that trigger AIOs.
Export the entire list.
Pro tip:
Explore the intent, search volume, position, and difficulty of all keywords triggering AIOs. This will help you prioritize content optimization for AIOs. For example, if a keyword is likely to bring in very little traffic, don’t focus too much on monitoring and optimizing content around it.
Step 2. Add Keywords To An AI Tracker To Monitor Them
The next step is to streamline how you monitor your presence in AIOs. Keeping track of every keyword manually is difficult and time-consuming, so having an automated tool is a must.
We suggest using the handyAI Tracker because it lets you add and monitor up to 1,500 keywords.
The AI Tracker is available to all users during the14-day trial of SE Ranking. Access this tool and our complete SEO suite to outperform competitors and boost traffic.
To get started:
Create a project in SE Ranking.
Add all the keywords exported during the previous step.
Head to the AI Tracker tool.
Click Select keywords.
Choose the ones to track for AI Overviews.
Once you’ve added the keywords, the tool will check their positions in AIOs daily. This makes it easy to monitor changes in AI results and your presence in them.
Step 3. Check Your Site’s Visibility On AIOs
Of course, many SEO specialists are concerned most about whether their site is included in the AI Overviews source list.
Consider using the AI Overview Presence graph inSE Ranking’s AI Tracker to understand the situation clearly and see how visible your site is in AIOs. This tool shows how many of your added keywords triggered AIOs and how many AIOs feature your site in Google’s list of resources.
Look at the table below to see which keywords triggered AIOs and which didn’t. If the icon has a gray strike-through, there are no AIOs for that keyword. If the icon is gray, there are AIOs present, but your site is not included. If the icon is purple, your site is featured in AIOs.
What do these numbers mean? If there are 100 AIOs but your site appears in only 10 of them, you’re likely losing traffic. When AIOs appear in search results, users often won’t scroll past them to find your site. This still holds even if it ranks first in regular results.Recent research from SE Ranking confirms this, stating that featured snippets show up alongside AI Overviews 45.39% of the time, while ads appear with AI Overviews a staggering 87% of the time.
This data helps you identify which keywords to focus on. You can then track how your new AIO strategy performs over time. If you take steps to get into AI snippets, each graph will show a rising curve.
But remember: AI Overviews are constantly shifting. AIOs might appear one day for a query and then disappear the next. You might even see your site in an AI snippet at the top one day only for it to disappear completely the next. Moreover, Google is constantly changing the appearance of its AI snippets.
When it was first released, the snippet looked like this:
Now, it looks like this:
There are currently fewer links, with Google shifting them to the right to give them less importance. This ensures they don’t distract users from the main AI-generated information. It’s important to keep an eye on AIOs in case other changes occur. You’ll need to understand what to expect and whether you’ll still be visible in AIOs, even if you’re included in them.
In these cases, the tool stores cached copies of every SERP it crawls. This allows you to see how the appearance of AIOs has changed over time. You can easily check if your website links were prominently displayed in the AIOs or if they were hidden behind a button.
Step 4. Learn Which Sites Are Chosen Over Yours As AIO Sources
Another important step is to monitor the sites that appear in AIOs where your site is missing. Why is this useful? It helps you identify gaps in your content and allows you to optimize it. This increases its chance of being included in AIOs.
You can use the Organic-AI Overlap graph to check how many sites from the top 20 are currently featured in AIOs for your keywords.
Use the AI SERP Competitors section to fully analyze this data. It will show you:
Which sites are included in the AI snippet
How the top 20 results for that keyword look
If you notice that the AI snippet includes many sites outside the top 20, focus on what these sites are doing to be cited by Google. Conversely, if Google favors the top 20 sites for certain keywords, continue optimizing your site. It may eventually reach the top and greatly increase your chances of being featured in AIOs.
AIOs may also disappear, so aiming for top rankings is always a winning strategy.
Track Your AI Overview Efforts With SE Ranking
The entire digital world is entering a new era of AI-driven search. What we are seeing now is just the beginning. While the future is a mystery and holds more changes, one thing is certain: AI is here to stay, and we must adapt to work with it.
Monitoring AIOs is an essential part of this new strategy. Setting up this process correctly will undoubtedly give you results.
In fact, just in the last year, several new browser features have been released that offer:
New ways to optimize your website.
New ways to identify causes of slow performance.
All within your browser.
So, this article looks at these new browser SEO features and how you can use them to pass Google’s Core Web Vitals assessment.
Why Website Performance Is Key For User Experience & SEO
Having a fast website will make your users happier and increase conversion rates.
But performance is also a Google ranking factor.
Google has defined three user experience metrics, called the Core Web Vitals:
Largest Contentful Paint: how quickly does page content appear?
Cumulative Layout Shift: does content move around after loading?
Interaction to Next Paint: how responsive is the page to user input?
For each of these metrics there’s a maximum threshold that shouldn’t be exceeded to pass the web vitals assessment.
Metric thresholds for Google Core Web Vitals, October 2024
1. Add Instant Navigation With “Speculation Rules”
New Key Definitions:
When websites are slow to load that’s usually because various resources have to be loaded from the website server. But what if there was a way to achieve instant navigations, where visitors don’t have to wait?
This year Chrome launched a new feature called speculation rules, which can achieve just that. After loading the initial page on a website, other pages can be preloaded in the background. Then, when the visitor clicks on a link, the new page appears instantly.
Best of all, this feature is easy to implement just by adding a
Having a hard time increasing brand search volume and building a strong presence on SERPs, especially in a way that’s not consuming all of your precious time?
Let’s face it: many search marketers find it taking years to build their brand search volume when faced against major, established brand.
So what if there was a way to speed up this process and see results within months, instead of years?
Making your brand stand out requires a strategic touch and a targeted, data-driven approach. By learning to understand and drive audience search behavior, you can improve your rankings, increase conversions, and even earn high-quality links—without waiting years to see results.
We’ll show you first-hand examples of how one brand created a new market category to solve a problem with conversion rates, along with another brand that grew their volume to over 150,000 organic clicks a month.
What You’ll Learn
Hosted by Kevin Rowe from PureLinq, this webinar will cover real-world strategies to increase brand search volume, backed by proven case studies from top brands. You’ll walk away with:
PureLinq’s simple yet effective process for understanding your audience’s search habits and how to use these insights to boost brand awareness.
Practical methods for leveraging podcasts, PR, and content marketing to drive more brand search.
Steps for breaking into new market categories and creating search demand from scratch.
Who Should Attend?
This webinar is perfect for:
SEO professionals eager to drive brand visibility in SERPs.
Content marketers focused on increasing brand engagement.
Business owners aiming to build brand trust and earn organic clicks.
Live Q&A with Kevin Rowe
Following the presentation, Kevin will be taking your burning questions on building your brand’s visibility. This is your chance to get tailored advice, supported by Kevin’s 15 years of experience in digital marketing and audience engagement.
If you’re serious about increasing your rankings and improving brand search volume, then you won’t want to miss this. Save your seat for this LIVE event and get ready to take your brand’s visibility to the next level.
Can’t make it on the day? Register anyway, and we’ll send you a recording to watch on-demand.
Sign up now to transform your approach to brand search and achieve results faster than ever before!
This post was sponsored by DebugBear. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
From a user’s perspective, a slow website can be incredibly frustrating, creating a poor experience. But the impact of sluggish load times goes deeper than just user frustration.
Poor page performance affects search rankings, overall site engagement, E-E-A-T, and conversion rates that results in abandoned sessions, lost sales, and damaged trust.
Sure, Chrome UX (CrUX) and Google’s CWV reports can indicate there’s an issue, but that’s it. They don’t provide you with enough details to identify, troubleshoot, and fix the issue.
And fixing these issues are vital to your digital success.
Image from DebugBear, October 2024
This article explores why slow websites are bad for user experience (UX), the challenges that cause them, and how advanced page performance tools can help fix these issues in ways that basic tools can’t.
UX, Brand Perception & Beyond
While often at the bottom of a technical SEO checklist, site speed is critical for UX. Sites that load in once second convert 2.5 to 3 times more than sites that require five seconds to load.
And yet, today, an estimated 14% of B2C ecommerce websites require five seconds or more to load.
These numbers become even more pronounced for mobile users, for whom pages load 70.9% slower. Mobile users have 31% fewer pageviews and an average of 4.8% higher bounce rate per session.
According to a recent Google study, 53% of mobile users will abandon a page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
Poor page experience can negatively other aspects of your site, too:
Search Rankings – Google includes page experience, of which CWV and page performance is a factor, when ranking web pages.
User Trust – Poor performing pages fail to meet a potential customer’s expectations. They are often perceived by users as the brand inconveniencing them, introducing stress, negative emotions, and a loss of a sense of control to the buying process. Slower pages can also cause users to forget information gained from previous pages, reducing the effectiveness of advertising, copy, and branding campaigns between clicks.
User Retention – Site visitors who experience slow load times may never return, reducing retention rates and customer loyalty.
Why Basic Page Performance Tools Don’t Fully Solve The Problem
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse give valuable insights into how your website performs, but they can often be limited. They tell you that there’s an issue but often fall short of explaining what caused it or how to fix it.
Google’s Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) and Core Web Vitals have become essential in tracking website performance and user experience.
These metrics—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—offer valuable insights into how users perceive a website’s speed and stability.
However, CrUX and Core Web Vitals only tell part of the story. They indicate that a problem exists but don’t show the root cause or offer an immediate path for improvement.
For instance, your LCP might be poor, but without deeper page speed analysis, you wouldn’t know whether it’s due to an unoptimized image, a slow server response, or third-party scripts.
Image from DebugBear, October 2024
Here’s where DebugBear stands out. DebugBear digs deeper, offering more granular data and unique features that basic tools don’t provide.
Continuous Monitoring and Historical Data – Many speed testing tools only offer snapshots of performance data. DebugBear, on the other hand, allows for continuous monitoring over time, providing an ongoing view of your site’s performance. This is crucial for detecting issues that crop up unexpectedly or tracking the effectiveness of your optimizations.
Granular Breakdown by Device, Location, and Browser – Basic tools often provide aggregated data, which hides the differences between user experiences across various devices, countries, and network conditions. DebugBear lets you drill down to see how performance varies, allowing you to optimize for specific user segments.
Pinpointing Content Elements Causing Delays – One of DebugBear’s standout features is its ability to show exactly which content elements—images, scripts, or third-party code—are slowing down your website. Rather than wasting hours digging through code and experimenting with trial and error, DebugBear highlights the specific elements causing delays, allowing for targeted, efficient fixes.
Why You Need Continuous Page Speed Testing
One of the biggest pitfalls in web performance optimization is relying on single-point speed tests.
Image from DebugBear, October 2024
Running a one-time test may give you a snapshot of performance at that moment, but it doesn’t account for fluctuations caused by different factors, such as traffic spikes, varying user devices, or changes to site content.
Without continuous testing, you risk spending hours (or even days) trying to identify the root cause of performance issues.
DebugBear solves this problem by continuously tracking page speed across different devices and geographies, offering detailed reports that can be easily shared with team members or stakeholders.
If a performance dip occurs, DebugBear provides the data necessary to quickly identify and rectify the issue, saving you from the endless trial-and-error process of manual debugging.
Without tools like DebugBear, you’re left with only a high-level view of your website’s performance.
This means hours of trying to guess the underlying issues based on broad metrics, with no real insight into what’s dragging a site down.
Different Users Experience Performance Differently
Not all users experience your website’s performance in the same way.
Device type, geographic location, and network speed can significantly affect load times and interaction delays.
For example, a user on a fast fiberoptic connection in the U.S. may have a completely different experience than someone on a slower mobile network in India.
This variance in user experience can be hidden in aggregate data, leading you to believe your site is performing well when a significant portion of your audience is actually struggling with slow speeds.
Here’s why breaking down performance data by device, country, and browser matters:
Device-Specific Optimizations – Some elements, like large images or animations, may perform well on desktop but drag down speeds on mobile.
Geographic Performance Variations – International users may experience slower speeds due to server location or network conditions. DebugBear can highlight these differences and help you optimize your content delivery network (CDN) strategy.
Browser Differences – Different browsers may handle elements like JavaScript and CSS in different ways, impacting performance. DebugBear’s breakdown by browser ensures you’re not overlooking these subtleties.
Without this granular insight, you risk alienating segments of your audience and overlooking key areas for optimization.
And troubleshooting these issues becomes and expensive nightmare.
Just ask SiteCare.
WordPress web development and optimization service provider SiteCare uses DebugBear to quickly troubleshoot a full range of WordPress sites, solve performance issues faster, and monitor them for changes, providing high quality service to its clients, saving thousands of hours and dollars every year.
DebugBear offers these breakdowns, providing a clear view of how your website performs for all users, not just a select few.
Real User Monitoring: The Key To Accurate Performance Insights
In addition to synthetic testing (which mimics user interactions), real user monitoring (RUM) is another powerful feature technical SEOs and marketing teams will find valuable.
While synthetic tests offer valuable controlled insights, they don’t always reflect the real-world experiences of your users.
RUM captures data from actual users as they interact with your site, providing real-time, accurate insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
For instance, real user monitoring can help you:
Identify performance issues unique to specific user segments.
Detect trends that may not be visible in synthetic tests, such as network issues or slow third-party scripts.
Measure the actual experience users are having on your website, not just the theoretical one.
Without real user monitoring, you might miss critical issues that only surface under specific conditions, like a heavy user load or slow mobile networks.
If you’re not using continuous page speed testing and in-depth reports, you’re flying blind.
You may see an overall decline in performance without understanding why, or you could miss opportunities for optimization that only reveal themselves under specific conditions.
The result?
Wasted time, frustrated users, lost conversions, and a website that doesn’t perform up to its potential.
DebugBear solves this by offering both continuous monitoring and granular breakdowns, making it easier to troubleshoot issues quickly and accurately.
With detailed reports, you’ll know exactly what to fix and where to focus your optimization efforts, significantly cutting down on the time spent searching for problems.
Google alone processes over 100 billion searches a month. So, if you get your strategy right, the potential to reach new customers through search is immense.
But here’s the catch: Search algorithms are always changing. The recent introduction of generative AI directly in search has shaken up how users interact with search engines.
What that means for SEO is that you can’t just set it and forget it – your SEO strategy needs to adapt to these changes to stay competitive.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps for creating an effective SEO strategy that aligns with both search engine algorithms and user expectations.
1. Align SEO With Business Goals & Define KPIs
It’s crucial to align your SEO strategy with your overall business goals and define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure success.
Knowing where you want to go and how you’ll measure progress ensures that your SEO efforts are focused and effective.
Your SEO goals should support your business objectives, whether that’s increasing brand awareness, driving more traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales.
During this planning phase, you’ll want to define your KPIs.
This is how you’ll measure the success of your implementations and figure out what’s working for you and where you need to make adjustments.
Average engagement time on page and bounce rate. (Bounce rate is not a universal metric for everyone, but is 100% dependent upon the events you set up).
Keep in mind that these are internal SEO KPIs that you can track in analytics.
Higher-level executives may be more interested in overall business impact, such as SEO-supported attribution and how SEO contributes to the customer journey.
It’s also important to convey that SEO is a long-term strategy that may take time to show significant results.
2. Set Realistic Expectations
One of the most common mistakes people unfamiliar with SEO make is expecting overnight results.
SEO is not a direct response style of marketing, and not all SEO strategies result in an immediate outcome.
Because of the variables involved with competition, inbound links, and the content itself, it’s nearly impossible to provide a definite timeframe.
You need to go into the process with an understanding that SEO takes time, and the more competitive the keywords you’re going after, the longer it will take to climb to the top.
This needs to be conveyed to stakeholders from the start to ensure expectations are realistic and to establish consistent, accurate data that earns trust.
SEO can be part of the entire customer journey.
Someone might find your site via organic search, then later see a paid ad, and finally make a purchase. Or they might see an ad first, then search for your brand and find you organically.
This is where multi-touch attribution comes into play. Using multi-touch attribution tracking tools like Triple Whale can help you understand how different channels contribute to conversions.
3. Conduct SEO Audit
Now that you’ve aligned your SEO strategy with your business goals and set the right expectations, it’s time to understand where you currently stand.
An SEO audit serves as the roadmap that will guide you throughout the entire optimization process and allows you to benchmark against your current site.
You need to examine a variety of aspects, including:
Domain name, age, history, etc.
On-page SEO factors like headlines, keyword & topical targeting, and user engagement.
Content organization, content quality, and the quality of your images (no one trusts stock photography).
Once you have a clear understanding of your current SEO status, it’s time to plan your timeframe and allocate budgets and resources.
This is yet another area of life where you get what you pay for. If you’re looking for fast and cheap, you’re not going to get the results you would by investing more time and money.
Obviously, your budget and timeframe will depend on your company’s unique situation, but if you want good results, be prepared to invest accordingly.
Search engine rankings are determined by an algorithm that evaluates a variety of factors to decide how well a website answers a particular search query. And a huge part of that is the use of keywords.
From single words to complex phrases, keywords tell search engines what your content is about. But adding keywords isn’t quite as simple as just plugging in the name of the product or service you want to sell.
You need to do research to ensure keyword optimization and avoid cannibalization, and that means considering the following:
Search Intent
Words often have multiple meanings, which makes it crucial to consider search intent, so you don’t attract an audience that was searching for something else.
For example, if you sell hats, ranking highly for ‘bowler’ will attract users looking for 10-pin bowling in the U.S., or in the UK about cricket and not someone shopping for a bowler hat.
Relevant Keywords
Once you’ve identified the search intent of your target audience, you can determine which keywords are relevant to them.
By aligning your keywords with search intent, you can produce relevant content and increase your chances of ranking higher in SERPs. Besides ranking high, it will also improve user satisfaction and increase conversion rate.
Keyword Research Tools
The brainstorming process is a great place to start keyword research, but to ensure you’re attracting the right audience and proving your value to search engines, you should utilize a research tool.
They can provide valuable data, such as search volume and competition level, and suggest related keywords you might not have considered.
Search Volume
By using keyword research tools, one of the most important metrics to look for is the search volume.
Ideally, you should target relevant keywords with the highest search volumes. However, it is important to assess the competition around that search term.
If you are going to compete with large and well-established brands and you are just starting, perhaps it is a better idea to choose long-tail keywords with less search volume but less competition.
They tend to be longer and are more likely to be used by people with specific stages in the conversion funnel, helping you reach users who are ready to convert.
An example of this would be [vegetarian restaurants in San Antonio], which would most likely be used by someone with a craving for a plant-based meal.
Lastly, remember that tools provide aggregate data of the same search terms with measurable search volumes, which they obtain from different data providers.
Often, there are long-tail searches that users perform, which are the same but formulated differently, and tools may report them as zero search volume due to negligible search volumes.
This phenomenon is likely to increase as highly intelligent AI assistants are integrated into mobile phones, and users are more likely to perform unique voice searches on the same issue.
If a certain problem is relevant to your specific industry and you know it, but tools report zero search volume, it is worth covering it and offering a solution.
You may find you have decent and highly targeted traffic that converts.
5. Define Your Most Valuable Pages
Every team needs an MVP, and in the case of your website, that’s your most valuable pages.
These pages are the ones that do the bulk of the heavy lifting for you.
For non-ecommerce sites, these are usually things like your home page, your services pages, or any pages with demos or other offers.
These pages are also likely MVPs for ecommerce sites, but will also be joined by category and/or product-level pages.
To find which pages are your site’s most important ones, you should consider what your organization is known for.
What verticals do you compete in? What pain points do you solve? Define these or add more based on the high-level keywords you came up with in the previous step.
Once you’ve identified the category and product pages that bring in the most visitors, you’ll be able to focus your strategy on improving them and increasing your organic traffic.
Here is an example from one of the websites I work on, showing how it looks and highlighting the importance of updating outdated content.
An example of content decay: updating content helped regain organic traffic.
Please note that you should refrain from using automatic updates with AI chatbots, as it is one of the most dangerous, spammy SEO tactics that can result in a complete loss of organic traffic.
Read our guide to learn content decay strategies you can implement to keep your organic traffic growing.
7. Optimize For User Experience
Don’t overlook the importance of how your site is structured, both technically and in terms of how users interface with it.
The best content and keyword strategy in the world won’t lead to a single sale if your site is constantly broken or is so frustrating to use that people close your page in disappointment.
You should carefully consider your site’s architecture and user experiences to ensure people are taking the desired actions.
With mobile traffic being 62.15% of total web traffic (and 77% of retail website traffic), optimizing for mobile is even more critical.
If you didn’t have any competition, there would be no need for SEO. But as long as other companies are manufacturing refrigerators, Frigidaire needs to find ways to differentiate itself.
You need to have an idea of what others in your industry are doing so you can position yourself for the best results.
You need to figure out where you’re being outranked and find ways to turn the tables.
You should know which keywords are most competitive and where you have opportunities by performing content gap analysis.
You should understand your competitor’s backlinking and site structure so that you can optimize your own site for the best possible search ranking.
And remember, AI chatbots are your competitor, too, where users can get answers directly without visiting a website.
This means that some of the traffic you might have received in the past could now be staying in the chatbot.
To compete, you need to offer something AI can’t: unique insights, personal experiences, and authoritative content that stands out.
Consider how AI presents information and find ways to differentiate your content. Focus on building your brand authority and providing value that AI chatbots can’t replicate.
Learn more about how to perform this analysis and develop a template for it by reading this piece.
9. Establishing Brand Authority And Link Building
All the points we covered so far are essential for success in SEO, but they are not enough.
You can achieve success by merely improving your website, and if you aim for your brand to exist only in Google Search, you will likely not be able to rank and achieve success.
It’s not such an easy thing to get right, and that is where most companies struggle and why SEO is hard.
To build brand authority, you need the following steps:
Build an email newsletter list.
Share valuable research and insights others want to link to.
Attend conferences relevant to your field and sponsor them if you have enough resources.
Seek opportunities for interviews or speak at conferences.
Host webinars or live sessions to share knowledge and interact with your audience in real time.
Participate in online discussions with your industry community on different platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, Reddit, or other platforms specific to your industry.
Collaborate with experts in your industry to contribute to your content.
Invite influencers to try your products or services and share their experiences.
Offer effective support to your customers.
Even if you get unlinked brand mentions, it is a step forward in building brand awareness.
Think of for a moment if one reads your unlinked brand mention on a reputable website (or on a TV show) and performs a Google search to find your brand.
However, in the age of AI, another benefit of unlinked brand mentions is that chatbots – which are trained on content across the web – may surface your brand name to users when they perform tasks or research.
10. Integrate SEO Into Your Workflows
SEO doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it impacts many other parts of your organization, including marketing, sales, and IT.
If you’re looking for the budget to perform SEO, you may find some of your employees are already well-qualified to help.
For example, your sales team probably knows which products people are most interested in.
Enlisting them in your SEO strategy development will help with lead generation and finding new targets who are already qualified.
Similarly, SEO can tell your marketing team what types of content resonate best, so they can fine-tune their campaigns. And your copywriters and graphic designers can develop the type of content that will help you shoot up the rankings.
Your IT team probably already has control over your website.
Your SEO strategy should be designed around their expertise, to ensure website design and structure, development cycles, data structure, and core principles are all aligned.
Evaluate your existing software, technology, and personnel, as there’s a good chance you have some of the pieces already in place.
If you need to scale production up, you may find the budget already in place in existing departments.
If you’re an external SEO agency or consultant, it’s crucial to establish strong communication channels with the company’s personnel who are responsible for implementing SEO recommendations and making decisions.
Read our guide on best practices for establishing effective communication between SEO teams in enterprise companies.
11. Align Your SEO Strategy With Your Customer Funnel
At the end of the day, sales are the name of the game. Without customers, there’s no revenue, and that means no business.
To aid in the sales process, your SEO strategy should align with your customer funnel.
Sometimes described as the customer journey, your sales funnel is a summation of the touchpoints customers have with your company as they go from awareness to post-purchase.
SEO fits neatly with every stage of this cycle:
Awareness: In the modern world, many customers first hear about your business online through a Google search, for example. Well-written blog posts are a great way to increase your awareness and increase your brand recognition.
Interest: This is where customers start doing research. And what better place to do research than your website? In-depth guides and ebooks will be a great match for satisfying users’ interests.
Decision: The customer wants to buy and is deciding between you and the competition. Case studies or testimonials could be the thing that sways them.
Purchase: Having a search engine-optimized point of sale makes it easy for people to buy, and optimized product pages are what can move the needle.
Post-purchase: Once you’ve acquired customers, think of ways to retain them by publishing support articles or offering loyalty programs.
12. Report And Measure
Finally, you need to define what success looks like for each KPI measure and report the progress you’re making.
There are a variety of both paid and free tools available that you can use to measure and track conversions, and compare them weekly, monthly, or by another timeframe of your choosing.
Simply find one that works for your budget and needs.
For a guide on how to create impactful reports that generate quality insights, read our guide here.
Conclusion
No one ever said SEO was easy, at least not anyone who has done it. But it’s a vital part of any modern organization’s business plan.
However, with a solid strategy, a willingness to learn, and a little old-fashioned elbow grease, even a complete beginner can send their website to the top of the SERP.
In this piece, we’ve given you 12 steps to take to get your SEO strategy off the ground. But of course, this is just the start.
You need a unique plan that will work for your industry and your needs.
Luckily, Search Engine Journal can help with this, too.
Download our ebook on SEO strategy with a full-year blueprint for an easy-to-follow 12-month plan you can use to develop a solid strategy, track your progress, and adjust to changing situations.
In a recent discussion on Reddit’s r/SEO forum, Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, cautioned against relying too heavily on third-party SEO metrics.
His comments came in response to a person’s concerns about dramatic changes in tool measurements and their perceived impact on search performance.
The conversation was sparked by a website owner who reported the following series of events:
A 50% drop in their website’s Domain Authority (DA) score.
A surge in spam backlinks, with 75% of all their website’s links acquired in the current year.
An increase in spam comments, averaging 30 per day on a site receiving about 150 daily visits.
A discrepancy between backlink data shown in different SEO tools.
The owner, who claimed never to have purchased links, is concerned about the impact of these spammy links on their site’s performance.
Mueller’s Perspective On Third-Party Metrics
Mueller addressed these concerns by highlighting the limitations of third-party SEO tools and their metrics.
He stated:
“Many SEO tools have their own metrics that are tempting to optimize for (because you see a number), but ultimately, there’s no shortcut.”
He cautioned against implementing quick fixes based on these metrics, describing many of these tactics as “smoke & mirrors.”
Mueller highlighted a crucial point: the metrics provided by SEO tools don’t directly correlate with how search engines evaluate websites.
He noted that actions like using disavow files don’t affect metrics from SEO tools, as these companies don’t have access to Google data.
This highlights the need to understand the sources and limitations of SEO tool data. Their metrics aren’t direct indicators of search engine rankings.
What To Focus On? Value, Not Numbers
Mueller suggested a holistic SEO approach, prioritizing unique value over specific metrics like Domain Authority or spam scores.
He advised:
“If you want to think about the long term, finding ways to add real value that’s unique and wanted by people on the web (together with all the usual SEO best practices as a foundation) is a good target.”
However, Mueller acknowledged that creating unique content isn’t easy, adding:
“Unique doesn’t mean a unique combination of words, but really something that nobody else is providing, and ideally, that others can’t easily provide themselves.
It’s hard, it takes a lot of work, and it can take a lot of time. If it were fast & easy, others would be – and probably are already – doing it and have more practice at it.”
Mueller’s insights encourage us to focus on what really matters: strategies that put users first.
This helps align content with Google’s goals and create lasting benefits.
Key Takeaways
While potentially useful, third-party SEO metrics shouldn’t be the primary focus of optimization efforts.
Dramatic changes in these metrics don’t reflect changes in how search engines view your site.
Focus on creating unique content rather than chasing tool-based metrics.
Understand the limitations and sources of SEO tool data
AI is rapidly changing how search engines like Google rank websites. To stay competitive, it’s essential to know which ranking signals matter most and how to optimize for them.
Join us for our upcoming webinar on October 16th, “Optimizing For Google’s New Landscape And The Future Of Search.”
We’ll explore how these changes are impacting SEO strategies and what you can do to succeed in 2024 and beyond.
You’ll leave with a collection of actionable insights that will help you craft a winning SEO strategy and navigate the disruption successfully, while getting optimal engagement and ROI.
Why This Webinar Is A Must-Attend Event
Google’s AI-driven algorithm is transforming search rankings, and this webinar will provide you with the expert insights and actionable strategies needed to stay ahead of the competition.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The top ranking signals to optimize for increasing your search visibility.
Expert-level SEO strategies that will improve performance right now.
Insights on how to optimize your website to win rich search result types.
Expert Insights From Nathan Endres
Nathan Endres, Sr. SEO Analyst at Conductor, will walk you through the ranking signals that still matter, and how to fine-tune your content strategy to maximize engagement and ROI in an AI-first world.
Who Should Attend?
SEO professionals who want to understand Google’s AI-driven algorithm and the strategies to gain visibility in them.
In-house SEO and marketing professionals building strategies for the next year.
Agency professionals who want to prepare for the SERPs of 2025.
Live Q&A: Get Your Questions Answered
Got questions about Google’s future direction? Stick around for a live Q&A session where Nathan will answer your pressing SEO concerns and provide additional insights.
Can’t make it? No problem! Register now, and we’ll send you the recording after the event.
Don’t miss this opportunity to decode Google’s latest updates and gain a competitive edge.
Keywords are the foundation of SEO. Although content is king, keywords come first: they decide what sorts of users will find you in search. And since you want to be found by the right users, you’d better choose your keywords wisely.
What kind of keywords are good for your site?
They have a high search volume.
In non-SEO terms, it means lots of people type those keywords into search bars. A few hundred searches per month is good, but going higher is always encouraged. The more, the better.
They accurately capture search intent.
The relationship between a site owner and the users works like any business transaction: if you don’t offer them what they want, they won’t take it.
It’s like buying new shoes. If you are an adult with a size 7.5, you are not going to buy children’s shoes (not for yourself, anyway). And looking for generic shoes without anything specific in mind will take you forever to find what you really need.
Keywords are much the same. If you have an online store where you sell shoes, then a product page optimized for the keyword “shoes for women size 7.5” will do a much better job than one saying “shoes for women” or even just “shoes.” Bottom line: use keywords which describe precisely what your target audience wants to find.
They aren’t too competitive.
High competition for a keyword means many other sites are already ranking for it – and beating them all won’t be easy. But pretty much every keyword has a less competitive version. You just need to find and use it.
How do you find keywords which match all these criteria?
For search intent, you must know your target audience and their needs really well, and then use your best judgment. Other factors can be represented in numbers, and that’s where SEO tools come in, such as WebCEO’s Keyword Suggestions tool.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
Do you have any keyword ideas of your own? Enter them in the field and press Search. The tool will generate a table of related keywords, and then you just pick the most promising ones.
2. Optimize Your Pages With Keywords
Got your keywords? Great. Now, you need to make sure you are using them well.
For maximum effectiveness, your site pages must have keywords in these places:
Page URL
Page title
Meta description
H1-H4 headings (even better if you have a table of contents)
Throughout the text itself
Image filenames and ALT texts (for Google Image Search)
If the tool finds any spaces that could be filled with keywords, do it and run another scan afterward. Instant improvement before your eyes!
One more thing: while having keywords is a must, avoid going overboard with them. One set of related keywords per page, or even one keyword per page is usually enough. Then weave the keywords into your text in a natural-sounding way. The gold standard for content is normally written text with helpful information.
3. Optimize Your Site Structure
It’s easy to turn your website into a poorly interlinked mess if you don’t know what you are doing.
When you do know what you are doing, you can help your most important pages receive a significant ranking boost – just by placing links correctly.
Your users will appreciate it, too. Who doesn’t like having all the content they need at their fingertips?
So here’s the recipe for an optimal site structure:
Page hierarchy. Picture a tree: the home page as the root and the destination pages (i.e. landing pages, product pages, blog articles) at the ends of the branches.
Screenshot from IncreMentors.com, January 2024
Topic clusters. It’s good practice to interlink pages that are dedicated to related topics.
Navigation bar. A bar at the top (less usually on the left side) of the screen, containing links to the most important site pages (e.g. home page, About Us, Contact Us).
Footer bar. Another bar at the bottom of a page, containing the same links from the navigation plus some others, at your discretion. Often, the footer bar contains social media links.
Breadcrumbs. Have you ever seen a bunch of links in a row, something like Home » Category » Subcategory » Page? They are called breadcrumbs and they help users keep track of where exactly they are on a website.
Three-click rule. An unspoken rule says: users should be able to get from any page A to any other page B in three clicks or fewer.
But to use links on your site like a pro, you want to know exactly how much authority your web pages have. And you can find out with the right SEO tools.
This tool will reveal the pages with the highest amount of link juice. Proceed to share it with your most valuable pages just by linking to them from those high-authority pages.
This practice is at its most effective when the interlinked pages are related to each other through their topics – in other words, when they form a topic cluster. For example, a page about the best toothbrushes and another about the best toothpastes. It’s natural to link the two together, so a slight ranking boost to both is guaranteed.
4. Max Out Your Loading Speed
How long is too long? Five seconds may not seem like much, but if that’s how long it takes your page to load, most users will have already left.
People hate slow loading pages. People hate waiting in general. Whatever the place or the website, everybody wants to be serviced without delay.
And Google concurs. That’s why site loading speed is a major ranking factor, one you absolutely must not neglect.
Not only it measures your pages’ loading speed and Core Web Vitals, it also offers constructive criticism by detecting what’s slowing your website down. Just follow the tips from the report and watch your website soar.
And remember to be on constant alert for any slow loading site pages. Set the Speed Optimization tool to send you regular reports, and if you find a page that’s dragging its feet, help it take off.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
5. Audit Your Site For Errors — And Fix Them
Nothing is perfect, not even the best website in the world. Things break, errors appear. But no self-respecting site owner will let things stay broken – that’s recipe for losing your customers!
This tool detects all kinds of hiccups, from broken links to more serious issues like server errors. Look upon your report and do not despair. It’s merely a list of fixable things.
You can solve those problems yourself or send the report to your site admin and let them handle it. After the job is done, rescan your site and generate another report showing the drop in errors. Your client will love it.
And yes, the Technical Audit tool can also send automated scheduled reports.
Screenshot from WebCEO, September 2024
6. Check The Quality Of Your Backlinks
What do you think is the number one ranking factor? Which one of them can give you the highest ranking boost?
The hint is right there in the heading above. That’s right: backlinks.
Links from other sites pointing to yours. If your site isn’t on Google’s #1 page, then lack of good backlinks is most likely why (assuming everything else is okay).
To see if you have a backlink problem, you need to check the current state of your link profile.
Total backlinks and linking domains. The ratio between them can give you a rough idea about how many links each domain gives you on average. If that ratio is too high (e.g. 1000 backlinks per domain), then most of those backlinks are probably of poor quality.
Loss of backlinks. Sometimes sites stop linking to you. Maybe they found someone with better content than yours, maybe they took down the page with the backlink, or maybe even their site died. Whatever the reason, it can affect you rankings negatively.
Backlink texts. A good anchor text tells users what they are going to find on the other side of the link. If it fails to do that, fewer people will click on the link. Look for non-descriptive anchor texts (such as “click here”) that are keeping your rankings down – changing those texts can be just what you need.
Harmful backlinks. Spammy links from low-quality sites will do you no favor. If you have too many toxic backlinks, you will have to take them down.
Knowing the state of your link profile opens two different paths to improving it: link building and link detoxification. Let’s start with the former.
7. Revise And Expand Your Link Building
If you want to gain new backlinks and increase your site rankings, you’ll want to do some link building.
Which sites give the best backlinks?
They are highly authoritative;
They are topically related to your site.
And the closer they fit these criteria, the harder it will be to land your backlinks there. Those sites have high standards.
Have high-quality (and ideally unique) content on your site that others will want to link to;
Find broken links on other sites and offer those sites’ owners to link to your content instead;
Find unlinked mentions of your site or brand and offer to add a backlink;
And we strongly encourage you to try out even more. You may find some of the link building strategies easier or more effective than others.
What About Steps 8-14?
You bet it’s just the beginning. Do you want to take up even more SEO techniques to start preparing for 2025?
Good news: the full SEO guide is exclusively available to WebCEO users in PDF format, and it’s completely free. Download it now and get a head start on your competitors!
Now, what about the content of the actual calls? Well, you can use that, too.
Let dive into how you can use call analysis to further inform your strategy.
How To Analyze Your Call Data
The insights you collect from customer phone interactions can have a game-changing impact on your business.
But you want to make sure the effort required to dig into those calls is worth it for your team.
This is where AI and machine learning technology can be utilized effectively to streamline your process and save time.
For example, Conversation Intelligence is an AI-powered tool by CallRail that constantly records, transcribes, and analyzes each inbound and outbound call.
With transcriptions that have near-human level accuracy, Conversation Intelligence goes a step further by spotting keywords, tagging calls automatically, and qualifying leads with powerful automation rules.
Plus, with multi-conversation insights, you can easily transform countless conversations into actionable insights at scale.
Not only does this analysis unlock deeper insights to help you catch customer trends and spot long-term shifts, but it also tells you what you should focus on in your content.
2. Website Form Submissions
Another effective way to gather essential audience insights is through website form tracking.
When this data is paired with deeper analytics, you can gain a clear understanding of what drives the most qualified leads for your business.
With Form Tracking, you can find out exactly which ad or keyword made someone click “submit” on your form.
Launched last year by CallRail, this tool allows you to build custom forms or integrate existing ones, pairing the data with inbound call conversions for a holistic view of your marketing efforts.
Combining Call Tracking And Form Tracking
Leads often connect with businesses through multiple channels, so focusing on just one source isn’t really enough.
By using Call Tracking and Form Tracking together, you get a comprehensive overview of your leads’ entire customer journey.
Both of these tools essentially work by installing a single line of JavaScript code on your site, which captures and relays information about each of your leads back to CallRail.
You can easily evaluate the various campaigns that you’re running, like paid ads, social media posts, email nurture campaigns, etc. – all of which could be opportunities to incorporate tracking numbers and links to your forms.
Using both a tracking number and a form tracking link gives your leads the option to choose how they prefer to contact your business.
And as they reach out, you’ll be able to measure which campaigns and which conversion type – calls or forms – is getting the best results.
3. Customer Feedback & Surveys
If you really want a deep dive into the minds of your customers, surveys are an incredibly effective way to get feedback directly from the source.
Surveys allow you to ask your users targeted questions and receive precise answers about their preferences, pain points, and expectations.
You can then leverage this comprehensive data to guide your marketing strategy and fill any content gaps you may have.
Discover the type of content your customers prefer, the topics they are most interested in, and how they like to consume information.
Once they point out areas where they feel your content is lacking or what they would like to see more of, you can then fill the gaps in your strategy to give them what they want.
Integrating Customer Feedback Into Your Content
Understanding your audience can help you tailor your content to better meet their needs and preferences.
Here are some tips for how you can effectively integrate customer feedback into your content creation process:
Create a Feedback Loop: Ask your audience to rate the usefulness, quality, and relevance of your content to gain a clear picture of where you can improve. Then establish a system where their feedback continuously informs your content. Regularly conduct surveys and update your strategy based on the latest insights.
Prioritize High-Impact Content: Identify the topics and formats that resonate most with your audience and prioritize them in your content calendar. For example, if customers indicate a preference for video tutorials over written guides, focus more on creating video content. This ensures that you’re always aligned with what your audience finds most valuable.
Test and Iterate: After publishing content based on customer feedback, monitor its performance to see if it meets the intended goals. Use analytics to track engagement, shares, and other metrics. Be prepared to refine your content based on ongoing feedback and performance data.
Communicate Changes: Let your audience know that their feedback has been heard and implemented. This not only builds trust but also encourages more customers to participate in future surveys.
Unlock Higher Search Rankings With CallRail’s Data Solutions
Google is constantly changing its algorithms to produce higher quality search results for users, which presents numerous challenges for marketers and website owners.
Between the upcoming phase-out of third-party cookies and the recent core update, the search engine is cracking down heavily on content it deems as unhelpful.
That’s why it’s time to take a user-first approach to your content strategy.
By leveraging first- and zero-party data through methods like call tracking, form submissions, and customer surveys, you can create high-quality, relevant content that meets your audience’s needs and boosts your Google rankings.
CallRail’s suite of tools makes it easier to gather and analyze this data, helping you refine your marketing strategy and drive sustainable growth.
Ready to see the impact for yourself?
Try CallRail free for 14 days and start transforming your data into actionable strategies for higher ranking content.
