Google’s John Mueller answered a question on LinkedIn about the ideal content length for performing well on Google. Participants in the discussion pressed for specifics, raised concerns about being SERP-blocked by Reddit, and suggested that Search Console should offer content feedback. Mueller’s response challenged SEOs to rethink their approach to content.
What’s The Best Length Of Content For SEO?
Of course, the underlying problem is the question itself which is asking what should be done in order to make better content for Google, which is the opposite of what Google’s algorithms are set up to identify.
Yet, there is some merit to the question because maybe some people are new to publishing and don’t really understand what the best length is for content. On the other hand, publishing content that’s so long that it veers off topic is a mistake that many people, regardless of experience level, commonly make.
This is the question asked:
“Hi John, is there an ideal content length that performs better on Google search results? Should we focus on creating longer, in-depth articles, or can short-form content rank just as well if it’s concise and valuable?”
There are a lot of ideas about how to make content so it’s understandable if someone is confused about it.
Mueller’s Answer Is Questioned
Google’s John Mueller answered the question and it was a good answer. However others had concerns about the ranking choices that Google makes that can block good content from ranking.
Mueller answered:
“There is no universally ideal content length. Focus on bringing unique value to the web overall, which doesn’t mean just adding more words.”
Mueller’s suggestion to focus on bringing “unique value” with published content is good advice. Adding unique value doesn’t necessarily mean adding more images, more content, less content, more graphs, or step-by-steps. All of those things could be helpful but only if it’s relevant to a user and their query.
Yet, as someone pointed out in that discussion, a site with good content could still lose out in the SERPs due to Google’s “preference” for showing sites like Reddit.
A person with the user name SEOBot _ wrote that Google should offer more information and feedback about what “unique value” content means in relation to their own content. While it might seem strange that a publisher is unclear about what constitutes “unique value” content, the question calls attention to the confusion that some publishers feel about how sites are ranked by Google.
This is the follow up question asked by that person:
“…do you have any example of content on the website that follows this and is able to get the Google love. “Focus on bringing unique value to the web overall, which doesn’t mean just adding more words.” This is a very vague and unrealistic ask if the GSC can start pinpointing this content/section as not making any sense or not adding any value.
We really eager to learn and know how the content is actually generating value to the web. If all the value is being generated by top publishers/brands then what exactly the small publishers/niche site owners suppose to write to survive?”
Mueller responded:
“SEOBot _ If you’re looking for a mechanical recipe for how to make something useful, that will be futile – that’s just not how it works, neither online nor offline. When you think about the real-world businesses near you that are doing well, do you primarily think about which numbers they focus on, or do you think about the products / services that they provide?”
What Mueller seems to be saying is that focusing on site visitors, not Google, is the way to understand what “unique value” content is.
I recently presented at a search marketing conference on the topic of seven things publishers can focus on to improve their content. There’s a lot to say about optimizing content but really, publishers and SEOs can get pretty far by taking Mueller’s advice about thinking about how you would approach selling to people in an actual store or focusing on writing for people (like I’m doing right now).
Others joined the conversation to essentially ask the same thing, looking for specifics on what Google is looking for in content. Mueller had said all there is to say about it.
Mueller advised:
“If you count the words in best seller books, average the count, and then write the same number of words in your own book, will it become a best seller? If you make a phone that has the same dimensions as a popular smartphone, will you sell as many as they do? I love spreadsheets, but numbers aren’t everything. “
Takeaway
If everything a person has learned about SEO centers around strategies for keywords, worrying about “entities” and whether articles are interlinked with the right anchor text then what Mueller is saying will sound confusing. I’ve been doing SEO for 25 years and I remember a time where SEO was about creating content and links for Google. But this isn’t 2004, it’s 2024 and we’ve reached a time with SEO where it’s increasingly not about creating content for Google.
If you’ve been paying attention to the chatter in the SEO space recently, you might have noticed that “brand marketing” has become cool again.
Due to the Google “leaks,” many SEO pros have come to the conclusion that building a strong digital presence will yield SEO results.
Also, water … is wet.
Leaks, floods, and drips aside, there are better reasons why you should be focused on brand marketing right now.
Allow me to explain. [Warning: This post contains excessive amounts of snark.]
Building The Case For Brand Marketing
I’m not going to do the whole “5 reasons why you should focus on brand in 2024.” It would be off-brand for me.
What I would like to do, if you’ll indulge me, is first build up the case by looking at where the ecosystem we call the web is currently at.
I’m less focused on “the benefits” of the brand and more concerned about why the ecosystem itself demands a focus on this type of marketing.
It’s less a matter of “you’ll get X, Y, and Z” by focusing on the brand and more a matter of why you’ll be out of sync with your potential audience as a whole.
The Web Is Moving To Be More Conversational
The internet has become more conversational, and it’s only going to get more conversational.
One of my soapbox points is that content is one of the most quickly changing things on the planet. What we consume, how we consume it, and what we expect out of it are rapidly and constantly changing, and the consequences are often underappreciated.
My classic example of this was the first televised US presidential debate, which took place in 1960 and pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon.
If you listened to the debate on the radio, you tended to think Nixon won. Those who watched on TV tended to think JFK won.
Why? Well, Richard Nixon comes off as Richard Nixon, and JFK, well looks like JFK. I’m being a bit facetious, but it is true. Nixon famously looked pale, had a five o’clock shadow, and didn’t look directly at the camera.
The evolution of content has extremely understated consequences.
Like in 1960, we are at one of those pivotal moments in the history of content.
Think of the internet like TV commercials. Over time, what once resonated becomes campy and sem, if not downright, spammy.
Could you imagine Coca-Cola running and trying to sell its product using its 1980s Max Headroom “Catch the Wave” commercial?
Try selling my kids a sugar-infused breakfast cereal using a TV commercial from the 1950s. Good luck.
It’s not because those commercials are “bad.” It’s because the language and tone that resonates changes over time.
It’s a simple enough point … unless we’re talking about web content. For some reason, we feel web content and its consumption trends should eternally stay the same.
We write the same kind of content in pretty much the same way and balk at any changes.
But that doesn’t change the reality.
The content we create doesn’t speak to users. It’s not positioned correctly. The tone is off. The goals that support the creation of content, to begin with, are distorted. And more. There are a lot of problems – and to me, they all begin with content not being conversational.
In fact, I will go so far as to say Google should stop saying, “Write for your users,” and should start saying, “Have conversations with your users.”
We all think we’re “writing for our users” – I mean, who else are we trying to lure and convert?
It’s very easy to fool yourself into thinking you are “writing for your users.” It’s harder to convince yourself you are having some sort of dialogue with your users – which is what I think Google really means anyway.
All this said, what do I mean by content not being conversational and how do I know it’s even a problem?
What I Mean By Content Not Being Conversational
It’s not hard to see that we are not engaging our users in a conversation or dialogue.
All you need to do is head over to your nearest landing page and have a look at the language.
How much of it is just the company throwing out jargon or borderline nonsense?
Here’s what I came across in literally less than five minutes of digging around:
Screenshot from author, July 2024
Is it really without limits? Can I literally do whatever I want without any limitations whatsoever? I don’t get it – are we talking about God or graphic design software?
Is the below really a new way to run high-velocity sales? Does it literally refine the entire process like no one else is doing or has done before? Or is the company just saying this and spitting out whatever they think will drive conversions?
Screenshot from author, July 2024
You see this all the time in PPC ads:
Screenshot from search for [buy accounting software], Google, July 2024
No nuance. It is the best accounting software, and I should trust that it is without any form of qualification.
This kind of copy, while it may have worked in the past, doesn’t (and if it does now, it won’t in the relatively near future).
This kind doesn’t actually talk to users in a real way. It actually treats the user like an idiot.
The average web user is far more savvy than they once were, far more mature, and far more skeptical.
Not taking a more genuine approach is starting to catch up with brands.
How Do I Know Not Being Conversational Is Even A Problem?
Greenwashing.
It’s when a company claims to be more environmentally conscious than it is. It’s spin and PR nonsense.
Companies thought they could pull a fast one on unsuspecting users. However, folks are now savvier and are catching on to brands positioning themselves as being “green” when, in reality, they might not be (or at least to the extent advertised).
You cannot get away with it anymore (and you never should have tried). The only thing that works is being genuine.
If your product is not actually “the best,” then don’t say it is – or, in fact, realize there is no “best” or “ultimate” or “fastest” or whatever. There is only what meets the needs of users in what way. That’s fancy talk for “pain points.”
Being genuine means talking to your audience and not at your audience. It’s having a dialogue with them.
Going the “traditional” route with your language is the equivalent of marketing language greenwashing … and it applies to your informational content, too.
Perhaps nothing epitomizes this more than the falling stock of influencer marketing. Study after study shows that younger users are far less likely to purchase something because an influencer is associated with it.
Influencer marketing, as we mostly know it, is a facade pretending it’s not a facade. Do you think Patrick Mahomes really eats Chicken McNuggets or has a strong preference to use State Farm for his insurance needs?
All influencer marketing is just a digital marketing version of a celebrity in a TV commercial.
Do you think whatever TikTok influencer really prefers Capital One or even knows that it’s not a geographical reference?
While the idea of “influencers” seemed like a viable idea at the onset it’s fundamentally not sustainable because it’s fundamentally fraudulent. (For the record, “community” marketing is something else entirely. While it might rely on “influencers” within a community, it is far more genuine.)
It seems that folks have caught on to the idea that maybe this influencer being paid to say or do whatever is not actually an accurate reflection of reality (much like social media influencers themselves, to be honest).
A 2023 Drum article quotes one study as saying upwards of 80% of users say a brand’s use of influencers does not impact them one way or the other.
For the record, there are other studies that indicate that influencer marketing is a viable option. I agree, but I think it needs to be qualified. Just paying an influencer to say good things about your brand is not authentic.
There are authentic ways to work with communities and influential folks within them. That tends to happen more with micro or nano influencers.
Again, it’s rocket science. Everyone knows the influencer is only saying the things they are saying because they’re being paid to. It’s relatively meaningless in a vast majority of cases.
It shows how much savvier the current web user is relative to the past, and it’s supported by where folks are heading and what they are trusting … themselves (DTA, am I right?).
A seemingly endless number of studies show users looking toward user-generated content. CNBC was quoted as saying, “61% of Gen Z prefer user-generated content.”
Image from CNBC, July 2024
Which brings me to my next point.
Informational Content Is Just As Bad & Reddit On The SERP Proves It
Up until this point, I’ve been focused on the nature of commercial content and the demand for conversational content.
The same concept applies to informational content, just for a slightly different reason.
Informational content on the web might not be as opaque as commercial content, but it is entirely sterile and stoic.
By sterile and stoic I mean content that doesn’t actually speak to the user. It takes a topic, breaks the topic down into various subtopics, and simply presents the information, and does so without ever discussing the context of the readers themselves.
No one has more data on emerging content consumption trends than Google and its ability to analyze user behavior in a variety of ways. And what has Google done for informational and commercial queries alike? Plastered the search engine results page with user-generated content.
The proliferation of Reddit on the SERP should tell you everything you need to know about the state of informational content and beyond.
All you need to do is head to the Google SERP and take a look at all of the Reddit results strewn all over the place, from different SERP features to the organic results themselves.
And while SEO pros may be upset about the abundance of Reddit (and rightfully so in my opinion), we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Do you really think Google wants to rank Reddit here, there, and everywhere? I personally don’t. I think Google would much rather have a diverse set of experience-based content to rank.
Regardless of your feelings about Reddit on the SERP, users’ inclination to prefer content created by other users tells you one thing: People are looking to move past all the facades and want something transparent that speaks to them—not at them.
Think about content like dress codes in the office. In the 1950s (at least in the US), it would be unheard of to show up to the office with anything but a suit and tie or a dress.
Just like professional dress codes have become less formal, so has content become “less formal” too.
And it’s a relatively recent development on both fronts. In fact, I would actually argue that office dress codes are a good representation of “where we are at” in terms of how and what we consume in terms of content via-a-vis formality.
While more traditional marketing language might have been acceptable and effective just a few years ago – it’s not any longer (at least not to the extent). We are less formal as a people, which means speaking to each other is also less formal. That has to spill over to web content at some point, and it has.
The AI Of It All
The rise of AI-written content accentuates all of this. When everything starts to sound the same having an actual voice comes more into focus. As AI conversion evolves, users are going to want to know that what they are consuming is “real.”
Much like a paid influencer, AI-written content doesn’t offer an authentic experience. And if we can see one theme in what users are looking for, it is an authentic experience.
I know someone is reading and thinking, “But AI is conversational!”
I would not confuse the fact that AI can reply back to you in an informal way as being an actual conversation or dialogue with another actual lifeform.
I have many relatives who will chew my ear off for hours on end as I nod away – that is not (much to their surprise) a conversation. Inputting prompts in reply back to an LLM and then having that LLM respond is not a conversation. (I feel like it’s insane that I have to say that.)
A real dialogue has to be based on empathy and the coming together of two distinct entities. This is what I mean by conversational. The dialogue has to be based on understanding the user’s pain points and meeting them.
AI not only doesn’t do that – but it dilutes that very concept. AI is content creation inherently devoid of understanding the “other.”
AI-generated content is the exact opposite of empathetic content. It is no wonder that it will drive a greater demand for something that is more connective (i.e., conversational content).
The rise of AI-generated content will inevitably lead to a greater demand for more conversational content simply because it is human nature to yearn for connection and existentially disdain void.
When you couple together the growing impatience with stale and stoic content aligned with the facade of much of the web’s commercial content with the rise of AI, it’s the perfect storm for a shirt in user demand.
A More Conversational Internet Is More Autonomous Internet
What’s this got to do with brand marketing? We’re getting there. One more step.
Users looking for more authentic web experiences point to people not wanting to be sold to. Skepticism and distrust are triggered by being urged to make a purchase.
Rather than being induced to click by some clever headline or urged to make a purchase by some influencer, people want to make their own decisions.
They’re looking for real advice. They’re looking for real information to have real needs met. And then they’re looking to be left alone to use that information to their liking.
It’s not an accident that Google added an “E” to E-E-A-T for “experience.” It wants quality raters to evaluate a page from an experience perspective because it has determined this is what users are looking for.
When your entire modus operandi is to seek out authentic information and experiences, the last thing you’re looking for is to be coerced. The last thing you want is to feel pushed into something.
The quest for authenticity in experience-based information is entirely about being able to make a well-informed, autonomous decision.
Urging users to click and convert with all sorts of marketing language and over-emphasis is antithetical to this mindset. Using language that feels slightly manipulative is antithetical to this mindset.
Trying to create spin and putting up a marketing facade (such as with classic influencer marketing) is antithetical to this mindset.
You can’t have Michael Jordan jumping over Spike Lee in a commercial to sell shoes anymore. It’s not real, and it’s not authentic. It’s fantastical. It’s fake.
You also can’t “drive” conversions by telling users you’ve developed a “new,” “revolutionary,” or “ultimate” solution for them. It’s not real, and it’s not authentic. It’s fantastical. It’s fake.
You have to create an environment where the user feels empowered and uncoerced.
How do you then go about targeting growth and revenue, all while allowing the user to feel autonomous and unsolicited?
Brand marketing.
Brand Is Your Best Friend In An Autonomous Web Scenario
I know there is going to be a tremendous amount of resistance to what I am about to say.
In fact, most companies will balk at my conception of things. For SaaS, it’s probably borderline heretical (I think startup SaaS brands often lag behind consumer trends more than anyone).
If user autonomy is the fundamental brick on the house the ecosystem is built on, then being top of mind is the cement that holds your marketing efficacy together.
What’s the opposite of pushing for clicks and conversions? Allowing the user to come to you at their own time and at their own speed.
Being top of mind is more important than it ever was because it aligns with the underlying psychological profile driving web experiences.
There is a direct equation between the consumer demand for autonomy in the buying journey and brand marketing. Creating the right associations and developing the right positioning with genuine differentiation is of the utmost importance if you want to align with how users think – and, more importantly, feel about the web.
If I had to put in a more “performance-focused” mindset, direct traffic is the future of the web. Get them to come to you on their own terms.
It works for both parties. You’re less susceptible to relying on whatever platform’s funky algorithm (whether it be social or search, it all kind of feels like a mess right now). At the same time, your users don’t feel like you’re overselling, pushing clicks, and otherwise nudging them to convert.
They’re coming to you because they found out about you, liked what they saw or heard, and decided to pursue the possibility of buying from you at their own pace.
Moreover, the brand allows you to connect. Again, in an AI world, the drive for connection will only increase. Brand is the intersection of your identity and your audience’s.
It is an associative connection, and it allows your audience to understand that there is a “you” behind the product or service you are offering.
This is the power of branding in the modern web.
What Kind Of Brand Marketing?
What kind of branding creates autonomy? Education-focused brand marketing.
Brand marketing can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. Often, on the digital stage, it means pushing the value of your product across the web.
I am not saying that this doesn’t have value or that it shouldn’t be done, etc. I am saying this is product marketing disguised as brand marketing.
90% of your brand marketing should hardly (if at all) push your product (beyond maybe a mention or something subtle of that ilk).
Brand marketing is about fostering an identity (either of a product, service, or the company as a whole) and using that identity to create messaging that positions the said product, service, or company in a certain way, thereby establishing a connection with your target audience.
The associations you build and the sentiment towards your brand that you establish should, hopefully, result in your audience seeing you as a relevant solution. But this is associative, and that’s important to remember.
The kind of branding I am talking about is focused on adding value to your audience’s life. Note that I didn’t say offering value via your product or service to their lives. First comes the value, and then comes the value from your product.
You can’t push the product in what might be called “branding” without first establishing a brand that showcases concern for the user and their life context independent of any “ask” (such as making a purchase).
You wouldn’t ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar before saying, “Hi, good morning. How are you?”
You shouldn’t ask your consumers to open their wallets and fork over money before establishing a real connection.
Yet, this is pretty much the internet as we know it.
A Note On Performance Marketing
I am not advocating you should not use performance-based marketing tactics to increase your reach and sales and whatnot. Performance-based marketing can be a powerful force for growth and revenue expansion.
What I am advocating for is performance sitting within a broader branding context. There has to be a balance between the two (and I don’t think it is an even balance).
With that cliffhanger, perhaps I’ll explore the balance between brand and performance at another time.
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.
Google Shopping’s generative AI makeover is a reality check for ecommerce marketers seeking organic search traffic.
Google launched the transformed version of Shopping to U.S. consumers on October 15, 2024.
“The new Google Shopping experience uses AI to intelligently show the most relevant products, helping to speed up and simplify” product searches, according to Sean Scott, Google’s vice president and general manager of consumer shopping, in a blog post.
Small and midsized business leaders often shudder when Google changes one of its services. Phrases like “show the most relevant products,” for example, are concerning. What sort of t-shirt or puffer jacket is “relevant”?
Shopping Graph
The answer might be in the Shopping Graph, which, according to Scott, powers the new Google Shopping along with Gemini AI.
A knowledge graph, such as Google’s Shopping Graph, is a map that connects ideas or concepts (nodes) via relationships (edges).
The new Google Shopping can identify puffer coats with zippers. Click image to enlarge.
In a 2023 article, Randy Rockinson, Google’s group product manager for Shopping, described how the Shopping Graph connects concepts.
“Let’s say you’re looking for a puffer jacket,” Rockinson wrote. “That seems easy enough. But what if you have something particular in mind? Maybe you’d love a women’s red puffer coat that’s cropped, shiny, and has a fleece hood.”
In that example, Google’s Shopping Graph understands the connection between a particular jacket on, say, the Nordstrom website and the concepts of red and shiny. It can return a list of products matching the specific request.
Google has used data graphs since at least 2012 and officially announced its Shopping Graph at its 2021 I/O event. Thus retail, direct-to-consumer, and B2B marketers are likely familiar with the concept.
Listings
Google’s Shopping Graph has about 45 billion product listings as of October 2024. Those listings come from several sources, including:
For many merchants, the connection to Google’s Shopping Graph begins with the ecommerce platform. Shopify, BigCommerce, and similar solutions streamline the submission of a well-formated product feed to the Merchant Center.
Nonetheless, knowing that Google Shopping via the Shopping Graph and AI wants to understand details such as whether a puffer jacket is shiny and has a hood unnerves many marketers.
Is your business optimized for these kinds of details?
Product Content
Merchants relying on Google Shopping should audit their product details on that platform, ensuring plenty of specifications and descriptions to help Gemini show personalized results.
Product feed? Showing up in Google Shopping starts with a quality product feed. Ensure that all required attributes — product title, description, price, availability, images — are included and up to date. Use high-quality images. Google Shopping uses images for Google Lens (the visual search tool) and virtual try-on services. And be certain inventory levels are accurate.
Structured data markup? Confirm that your ecommerce site uses structured data markup to give Google more context about your products. Structured data will help Google list and categorize products correctly in its Shopping Graph.
Optimize for visual shopping? In his post, Google’s Scott stated that a primary goal of the new Google Shopping is working with Google Lens and virtual try-ons.
Product reviews? We know that Google’s Shopping Graph gets at least some of its product data from reviews. Thus enabling and encouraging those reviews is a good idea.
Product-focused content marketing? We also know that Google uses YouTube videos as well as third-party blogs, gift guides, and similar to inform the Shopping Graph. Most stores focus only on feeds, which are essential. But don’t stop there. Tutorials, instructions, examples, and more could enable a competitive advantage in Google Shopping.
What’s Next
Search engine optimization and content creation remain at the core of ecommerce marketing as generative AI becomes more prevalent. The new version of Google Shopping is the most recent example.
Understanding how to use the robots.txt file is crucial for any website’s SEO strategy. Mistakes in this file can impact how your website is crawled and your pages’ search appearance. Getting it right, on the other hand, can improve crawling efficiency and mitigate crawling issues.
Google recently reminded website owners about the importance of using robots.txt to block unnecessary URLs.
Those include add-to-cart, login, or checkout pages. But the question is – how do you use it properly?
In this article, we will guide you into every nuance of how to do just so.
What Is Robots.txt?
The robots.txt is a simple text file that sits in the root directory of your site and tells crawlers what should be crawled.
Google will choose the least restrictive one. This means Google will allow access to /downloads/.
Why Is Robots.txt Important In SEO?
Blocking unimportant pages with robots.txt helps Googlebot focus its crawl budget on valuable parts of the website and on crawling new pages. It also helps search engines save computing power, contributing to better sustainability.
Imagine you have an online store with hundreds of thousands of pages. There are sections of websites like filtered pages that may have an infinite number of versions.
Those pages don’t have unique value, essentially contain duplicate content, and may create infinite crawl space, thus wasting your server and Googlebot’s resources.
That is where robots.txt comes in, preventing search engine bots from crawling those pages.
If you don’t do that, Google may try to crawl an infinite number of URLs with different (even non-existent) search parameter values, causing spikes and a waste of crawl budget.
When To Use Robots.txt
As a general rule, you should always ask why certain pages exist, and whether they have anything worth for search engines to crawl and index.
If we come from this principle, certainly, we should always block:
URLs that contain query parameters such as:
Internal search.
Faceted navigation URLs created by filtering or sorting options if they are not part of URL structure and SEO strategy.
Action URLs like add to wishlist or add to cart.
Private parts of the website, like login pages.
JavaScript files not relevant to website content or rendering, such as tracking scripts.
Blocking scrapers and AI chatbots to prevent them from using your content for their training purposes.
Let’s dive into how you can use robots.txt for each case.
1. Block Internal Search Pages
The most common and absolutely necessary step is to block internal search URLs from being crawled by Google and other search engines, as almost every website has an internal search functionality.
On WordPress websites, it is usually an “s” parameter, and the URL looks like this:
https://www.example.com/?s=google
Gary Illyes from Google has repeatedly warned to block “action” URLs as they can cause Googlebot to crawl them indefinitely even non-existent URLs with different combinations.
Here is the rule you can use in your robots.txt to block such URLs from being crawled:
User-agent: *
Disallow: *s=*
The User-agent: * line specifies that the rule applies to all web crawlers, including Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.
The Disallow: *s=* line tells all crawlers not to crawl any URLs that contain the query parameter “s=.” The wildcard “*” means it can match any sequence of characters before or after “s= .” However, it will not match URLs with uppercase “S” like “/?S=” since it is case-sensitive.
Here is an example of a website that managed to drastically reduce the crawling of non-existent internal search URLs after blocking them via robots.txt.
Screenshot from crawl stats report
Note that Google may index those blocked pages, but you don’t need to worry about them as they will be dropped over time.
2. Block Faceted Navigation URLs
Faceted navigation is an integral part of every ecommerce website. There can be cases where faceted navigation is part of an SEO strategy and aimed at ranking for general product searches.
For example, Zalando uses faceted navigation URLs for color options to rank for general product keywords like “gray t-shirt.”
However, in most cases, this is not the case, and filter parameters are used merely for filtering products, creating dozens of pages with duplicate content.
Technically, those parameters are not different from internal search parameters with one difference as there may be multiple parameters. You need to make sure you disallow all of them.
For example, if you have filters with the following parameters “sortby,” “color,” and “price,” you may use this set of rules:
As John Mueller stated in his Reddit post, you don’t need to worry about URL parameters that link to your pages externally.
John Mueller on UTM parameters
Just make sure to block any random parameters you use internally and avoid linking internally to those pages, e.g., linking from your article pages to your search page with a search query page “https://www.example.com/?s=google.”
3. Block PDF URLs
Let’s say you have a lot of PDF documents, such as product guides, brochures, or downloadable papers, and you don’t want them crawled.
Here is a simple robots.txt rule that will block search engine bots from accessing those documents:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.pdf$
The “Disallow: /*.pdf$” line tells crawlers not to crawl any URLs that end with .pdf.
By using /*, the rule matches any path on the website. As a result, any URL ending with .pdf will be blocked from crawling.
If you have a WordPress website and want to disallow PDFs from the uploads directory where you upload them via the CMS, you can use the following rule:
In case of conflicting rules, the more specific one takes priority, which means the last line ensures that only the specific file located in folder “wp-content/uploads/2024/09/allowed-document.pdf” is allowed to be crawled.
4. Block A Directory
Let’s say you have an API endpoint where you submit your data from the form. It is likely your form has an action attribute like action=”/form/submissions/.”
The issue is that Google will try to crawl that URL, /form/submissions/, which you likely don’t want. You can block these URLs from being crawled with this rule:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /form/
By specifying a directory in the Disallow rule, you are telling the crawlers to avoid crawling all pages under that directory, and you don’t need to use the (*) wildcard anymore, like “/form/*.”
Note that you must always specify relative paths and never absolute URLs, like “https://www.example.com/form/” for Disallow and Allow directives.
Be cautious to avoid malformed rules. For example, using /form without a trailing slash will also match a page /form-design-examples/, which may be a page on your blog that you want to index.
If you have an ecommerce website, you likely have directories that start with “/myaccount/,” such as “/myaccount/orders/” or “/myaccount/profile/.”
With the top page “/myaccount/” being a sign-in page that you want to be indexed and found by users in search, you may want to disallow the subpages from being crawled by Googlebot.
You can use the Disallow rule in combination with the Allow rule to block everything under the “/myaccount/” directory (except the /myaccount/ page).
And again, since Google uses the most specific rule, it will disallow everything under the /myaccount/ directory but allow only the /myaccount/ page to be crawled.
Here’s another use case of combining the Disallow and Allow rules: in case you have your search under the /search/ directory and want it to be found and indexed but block actual search URLs:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search/
Allow: /search/$
6. Block Non-Render Related JavaScript Files
Every website uses JavaScript, and many of these scripts are not related to the rendering of content, such as tracking scripts or those used for loading AdSense.
Googlebot can crawl and render a website’s content without these scripts. Therefore, blocking them is safe and recommended, as it saves requests and resources to fetch and parse them.
Below is a sample line that is disallowing sample JavaScript, which contains tracking pixels.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /assets/js/pixels.js
7. Block AI Chatbots And Scrapers
Many publishers are concerned that their content is being unfairly used to train AI models without their consent, and they wish to prevent this.
Here, each user agent is listed individually, and the rule Disallow: / tells those bots not to crawl any part of the site.
This, besides preventing AI training on your content, can help reduce the load on your server by minimizing unnecessary crawling.
For ideas on which bots to block, you may want to check your server log files to see which crawlers are exhausting your servers, and remember, robots.txt doesn’t prevent unauthorized access.
8. Specify Sitemaps URLs
Including your sitemap URL in the robots.txt file helps search engines easily discover all the important pages on your website. This is done by adding a specific line that points to your sitemap location, and you can specify multiple sitemaps, each on its own line.
Unlike Allow or Disallow rules, which allow only a relative path, the Sitemap directive requires a full, absolute URL to indicate the location of the sitemap.
Ensure the sitemaps’ URLs are accessible to search engines and have proper syntax to avoid errors.
Sitemap fetch error in search console
9. When To Use Crawl-Delay
The crawl-delay directive in robots.txt specifies the number of seconds a bot should wait before crawling the next page. While Googlebot does not recognize the crawl-delay directive, other bots may respect it.
It helps prevent server overload by controlling how frequently bots crawl your site.
For example, if you want ClaudeBot to crawl your content for AI training but want to avoid server overload, you can set a crawl delay to manage the interval between requests.
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Crawl-delay: 60
This instructs the ClaudeBot user agent to wait 60 seconds between requests when crawling the website.
Of course, there may be AI bots that don’t respect crawl delay directives. In that case, you may need to use a web firewall to rate limit them.
Troubleshooting Robots.txt
Once you’ve composed your robots.txt, you can use these tools to troubleshoot if the syntax is correct or if you didn’t accidentally block an important URL.
1. Google Search Console Robots.txt Validator
Once you’ve updated your robots.txt, you must check whether it contains any error or accidentally blocks URLs you want to be crawled, such as resources, images, or website sections.
Navigate Settings > robots.txt, and you will find the built-in robots.txt validator. Below is the video of how to fetch and validate your robots.txt.
2. Google Robots.txt Parser
This parser is official Google’s robots.txt parser which is used in Search Console.
It requires advanced skills to install and run on your local computer. But it is highly recommended to take time and do it as instructed on that page because you can validate your changes in the robots.txt file before uploading to your server in line with the official Google parser.
Centralized Robots.txt Management
Each domain and subdomain must have its own robots.txt, as Googlebot doesn’t recognize root domain robots.txt for a subdomain.
It creates challenges when you have a website with a dozen subdomains, as it means you should maintain a bunch of robots.txt files separately.
However, it is possible to host a robots.txt file on a subdomain, such as https://cdn.example.com/robots.txt, and set up a redirect from https://www.example.com/robots.txt to it.
You can do vice versa and host it only under the root domain and redirect from subdomains to the root.
Search engines will treat the redirected file as if it were located on the root domain. This approach allows centralized management of robots.txt rules for both your main domain and subdomains.
It helps make updates and maintenance more efficient. Otherwise, you would need to use a separate robots.txt file for each subdomain.
Conclusion
A properly optimized robots.txt file is crucial for managing a website’s crawl budget. It ensures that search engines like Googlebot spend their time on valuable pages rather than wasting resources on unnecessary ones.
On the other hand, blocking AI bots and scrapers using robots.txt can significantly reduce server load and save computing resources.
Make sure you always validate your changes to avoid unexpected crawability issues.
However, remember that while blocking unimportant resources via robots.txt may help increase crawl efficiency, the main factors affecting crawl budget are high-quality content and page loading speed.
Google has announced that Prabhakar Raghavan, the executive overseeing the company’s search engine and advertising products, will be stepping down from his current role.
The news came on Thursday in a memo from CEO Sundar Pichai to staff.
Nick Fox To Lead Search & Ads
Taking over Raghavan’s responsibilities will be Nick Fox, a longtime Google executive with experience across various departments.
Fox will now lead the Knowledge & Information team, which includes Google’s Search, Ads, Geo, and Commerce products.
Pichai expressed confidence in Fox’s ability to lead these crucial divisions, noting:
“Throughout his career, Nick has demonstrated leadership across nearly every facet of Knowledge & Information, from Product and Design in Search and Assistant, to our Shopping, Travel, and Payments products.”
Raghavan’s New Role
Raghavan will transition to the newly created position of Chief Technologist.
He will work closely with Pichai and other Google leaders in this role to provide technical direction.
Pichai praised Raghavan’s contributions, stating:
“Prabhakar’s leadership journey at Google has been remarkable, spanning Research, Workspace, Ads, and Knowledge & Information. He led the Gmail team in launching Smart Reply and Smart Compose as early examples of using AI to improve products, and took Gmail and Drive past 1 billion users.”
Past Criticisms
This recent announcement from Google comes in the wake of earlier criticisms leveled at the company’s search division.
In April, an opinion piece from Ed Zitron highlighted concerns about the direction of Google Search under Raghavan’s leadership.
The article cited industry analysts who claimed that Raghavan’s background in advertising, rather than search technology, had led to decisions prioritizing revenue over search quality.
Critics alleged that under Raghavan’s tenure, Google had rolled back key quality improvements to boost engagement metrics and ad revenue.
Internal emails from 2019 were referenced. They described a “Code Yellow” emergency response to lagging search revenues when Raghavan was head of Ads. This reportedly resulted in boosting sites previously downranked for using spam tactics.
Google has disputed many of these claims, maintaining that its advertising systems do not influence organic search results.
More Restructuring
As part of Google’s restructuring:
The Gemini app team, led by Sissie Hsiao, will join Google DeepMind under CEO Demis Hassabis.
Google Assistant teams focused on devices and home experiences will move to the Platforms & Devices division.
Looking Ahead
Fox’s takeover from Raghavan could shake things up at Google.
We may see faster AI rollouts in search and ads, plus more frequent updates. Fox might revisit core search quality, addressing recent criticisms.
Fox might push for quicker adoption of new tech to fend off competitors, especially in AI. He’s also likely to be more savvy about regulatory issues.
It’s important to note that these potential changes are speculative based on the limited information available.
The actual changes in leadership style and priorities will become clearer as Fox settles into his new role.
There’s an elephant in the room, so let’s start there.
What happens when a large search marketing industry player buys a prominent media outlet focused on the search marketing industry?
Will the publisher’s coverage remain objective and agnostic? Will its authoritative guides include the breadth and depth of tools and platforms and services available – some of which are in direct competition with Semrush?
What happens to Search Engine Land’s reams and reams of existing content – articles, white papers, ebooks, videos – that refer to Semrush competitors (umm, not to mention their backlinks)?
What about credible viewpoints from respected authors that run counter to the new corporate party lines in some way? Will those voices still be published, amplified, quoted on SEL? Or watered down, or even silenced?
So many questions.
Community reactions, so far, have been either of a benign, congratulatory nature or else focused on concerns of bias.
SEL and Semrush both have been active in responding on social media, reiterating that:
“Our plan is to continue to remain independent and unbiased. Our goal is to provide quality knowledge as we always have.”
I do believe that these are their intentions for the existing editorial team, for now.
I’m curious to see whether this independence will stand the test of time, after the dust has settled and the news of this acquisition is lining our digital bird cages.
I’m interested in finding out if SEL’s editorial freedom will stand the test of shareholder interests in an NYSE-traded company that made $305 million in revenue last year. I think we will need to wait and see.
Here’s Where Search Engine Journal Stands
As one of the last independent publishers in the SEO industry, SEJ remains bootstrapped and unbossed.
No one pulls SEJ’s strings, controls our backlinks, our coverage, or our messaging.
That’s right. SEJ is the honey badger of SEO journalism: We report what we want, when we want, how we want.
SEJ is still committed to reporting the truth (well, the truth until things change with the algorithms) about what is happening in SEO and marketing.
SEJ is still committed to providing unbiased education and best practices for our readers.
A.k.a. business as usual here at SEJ.
Who Is Search Engine Journal Anyways?
Our team of 26 folks around the world is made up of writers, editors, designers, technologists, the back office who keep things running smoothly, sales operations. They make me so proud, if I may brag a little.
We encourage transparency, experimentation, accountability. We don’t tolerate office politics or toxic behavior. I like to think we’re close-knit. We share, we cuss, we amuse each other with silly memes. We have laughed together and cried together.
Most importantly, when the sh* hits the fan, we pull together. We rally. We get gritty. Over and over. I ask the team to try again, to improve, to keep learning – and they do it. And that is when you know you have an A-Team on your hands.
That’s the entire roster 😎. SEJ has no investors. No corporate overlords. And we want it that way.
Our independence has been challenging at times. It would be nice to have a corporate Daddy Warbucks who can “darken the skies with people,” as one of my favorite consultants liked to say.
And so it does give me pause when a rival publisher is now backed by a multi-national company with over 1,000 employees. That’s a monumental amount of resources, firepower, and reach.
But over the years, SEJ’s independence has ensured our team’s ability to provide 100% unbiased journalism and education for the search marketing community.
We do what we want. And this is what I have faith in: That our readers, our advertisers, our community will provide what we need to be a formidable David to this new Goliath.
This week’s Ask an SEO column comes from an anonymous asker:
“What should a backlink profile look like, and how do you build good backlinks?”
Great question!
Backlinks are a part of SEO as a way to build trust and authority for your domain, but they’re not as important as link builders claim.
You can rank a website without backlinks. The trick is focusing on your audience and having them create brand demand. This can be equal in weight to backlinks but drives more customers.
Once you are driving demand and have created solid resources, backlinks start occurring naturally. And when you have an active audience built from other channels, you can survey them to create “link worthy” pages that can result in journalists reaching out.
With that said, and when all else is equal, having the trust and authority from a healthy and natural backlink profile can be the deciding factor on who gets into the top positions and who gets no traffic.
Search engines, including Google, expect a certain amount of spammy links from directories, website monitoring tools, and even competitors that spam or try to do a negative SEO attack. These are part of a healthy backlink profile.
What is unnatural is when your website or company has done nothing to earn an actual link.
When there is nothing noteworthy, no original thought leadership or studies, or something that goes viral and the media covers, there’s no reason someone would ever have linked to you.
Having backlinks for no reason would likely be considered an unhealthy link profile, especially if they’re mostly dofollow.
Healthy link profiles contain a mix of dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, and mentions from actual users in forums, communities, and social media shares.
Unhealthy backlink profiles are where a website has links from topically irrelevant websites, when the articles have mentions of big brands and “trustworthy” or “high authority” sites, and then randomly feature a smaller company or service provider with them.
It’s an old trick that does not work anymore. Unhealthy link profiles also include private blogger networks (PBNs), link farms, link wheels, link networks, and where the sites have a high domain authority (DA), Authority Score (AS), etc.
Bonus tip:DA, AS, and other metrics are not used by search engines. They are scores that third-party SEO tools created and have absolutely no say when it comes to the quality of a website or backlink.
If someone is telling you high DA is good and Google trusts these sites, they’re selling you snake oil.
Although backlinks are not as important as they used to be, backlinks still matter. So, if you’re looking to build some, here are a few strategies to try, avoid, and tread lightly with.
Scholarship, Grants, And Sponsorships
These don’t work. Google knows you’re offering them to get .edu links, and in rare cases .gov links. And definitely from charities and events.
It’s easy to map back to who paid or bought them, and these likely won’t count for you SEO-wise.
If they make up the majority of your links, you should expect them to be neutralized by the search engines or to get a manual action against your site for unnatural link building in Search Console from Google.
If you’re doing a sponsorship, ask for the website being sponsored to place “sponsored” instead of “nofollow.”
And if you’re doing a scholarship or grant, feature the winner on your site, provide a full education and follow up about them, and have them share their story for the next few years in a monthly or quarterly column on your blog.
If you genuinely want to do good, share their story and progress. Otherwise, it was just for getting backlinks, and that works against you.
Citations And Broken Links
When you get mentions in the media, or a competitor has a naturally occurring link to a study, but it goes to a broken page, this is a good way to build a natural link. Reach out to these sites and ask them to link to your study instead.
You can mention their visitors are currently hitting a dead page if it’s a broken link, and present your study or resource, which is of equal or better value. Or share that yours has been updated where the current source is outdated and no longer applies.
For citations where nobody has a link, try letting the website owner know it saves the user a trip to a search engine to find another answer. And when they have a good experience on the website, they’re likely to come back for more information.
Topically Relevant PR
I’m a big believer in PR to acquire backlinks naturally. But you have to do things that make sense for your business.
Local stores and service providers should get links from local news stations, local bloggers, and niche websites in their industry.
Service providers need to focus on trade publications, industry-relevant blogs and publications, events, and social networks.
Stores will do well with niche and audience-relevant bloggers, communities, publications or media websites, and mass media coverage that is not affiliate links or in an affiliate folder.
Think about what is newsworthy that you can do or provide that these groups would want to cover.
PR and SEO agencies that work with content will be able to provide ideas, then you can choose which ones you like and run with them. Not every campaign will work, but hang in there – the right one will happen.
You can also try surveying your audience for original data points and studies, and then publish them. And that goes to the next tip.
The publications must be topically relevant to you in order to help with SEO and avoid penalties.
If your customers and users are not the reader base of the website or publication, the link and coverage will appear unnatural and you’ll eventually get penalized or a devaluation.
Press Releases
Press release backlinks and syndication backlinks work against you, not for you. But that doesn’t mean they cannot help with link acquisition. For this strategy to work, provide enough data to gauge interest.
Share some of the data points from the study as a teaser and give a way for editors, journalists, and industry professionals to reach out to you.
Don’t charge for the study. But ask them to source and cite the data on your website, or reference your company as the source of the information.
But keep in mind that if your talking points are the same as your competitors, and you have the same type of data, there’s no reason to add another citation or to cover you.
What can you discover and share that hasn’t been covered and will enhance the publication’s articles in a new way? Put yourself in the reader’s shoes and think about what is missing or what questions were not answered.
If comments are enabled on the publications, look for questions and build a resource backed by data that answers them.
You can then reach out to the editors and make a strong case to either add you or create a new post about the new topic since the previous one did well.
Bonus tip: Even if you don’t get a backlink, being cited can go a long way, as you may be able to use the company’s logo in your PR bar as a trust builder. You can also reach out to the PR or brand team and ask for the link using the citation strategy mentioned above.
Blog And Forum Commenting
This does not work. Search engines know that anyone can go and spam these, use a bot, or pay someone to do this.
They will work against you, not for you. Just don’t. Let the communities and site owners link to you naturally.
If your customers are on the blog or in the community, join the community and participate. Use it to acquire an audience and build trust for your brand.
Not for backlinks. The backlinks and community mentions will eventually happen. And this is how they can become natural.
Social Media Profile Links
This does not work because anyone can create an account and get the link.
Links for SEO must be earned. Social media is about building an audience and bringing them to your website.
The backlinks are useless for SEO, with one exception. Some search engines crawl and index accounts.
If you struggle to get crawled, an active social media account that gets crawled and indexed fast may be able to encourage spiders to find your website and pages more easily.
Focus On Being Worth Linking To
There’s no shortage of ways to get backlinks, but not all links are good. If the link can be purchased or acquired by anyone, like a directory, it won’t help you with SEO.
If your customers are not on that website, and the majority of the website isn’t topically relevant to you, chances are the backlink will work against you.
Healthy link profiles have a mix of good and bad, natural and unnatural. If your company hasn’t done or shared anything link-worthy, there are no backlinks that can bring you long-term success.
Focus on being worth linking to, and the backlinks will come naturally.
More resources:
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
Google Flights and Google Hotels have dominated travel-related Google search terms in recent years, which has been seen as a threat by many travel operators.
However, if approached properly, the growth of Google Travel represents an opportunity for those who adjust their strategy.
SEO expert Lily Ray shared the Google Travel graph below on a LinkedIn post a few months ago. It only takes a quick glance to see significant month-over-month growth of Google’s/travel/ directory across travel-related search terms.
Screenshot from LinkedIn post by Lily Ray, June 2024
This is despite the fact, as Lily points out, that Google Travel results don’t appear to be the most comprehensive or helpful, which are presumably key criteria when it comes to organic visibility.
In fact, in many cases, when you search for a city-specific phrase on the main Google Travel page, it simply takes you to a Google search results page for the city, where your search begins anew.
Google-dependent travel companies look at the rapid growth of Google Travel and see one thing: a threat to their existence.
However, remember, Google is not acting as an agent for most of these transactions, so you can still perform and grow online.
You simply need to adapt your strategy and establish your authority, relevance, and experience to give your brand the best opportunity to show up on Google Travel surfaces along with your own pages in organic search results.
We’re going to assess four specific travel surfaces: Google Flights, Google Hotels, Google Vacation Rentals, and Google Explore. We’ll unpack the following for each one.
Google Travel structure and appearance in Search.
Who’s currently winning with Google Travel.
Optimizing to appear in Google Travel spaces.
Note: There is one other surface, Google Things To Do, which is currently only available as a Google Ads product, but did live until November 2023 under the Google Travel page. From an SEO perspective, “Things To Do” can be found as a list of things to discover within Google Explore. We’ll touch on this further when discussing how to optimize for this surface.
Understanding Google Travel’s Structure
In case it wasn’t clear from the graph above, Google Travel is huge. And by huge, I mean huge.
There are effectively two levels to Google Travel when it comes to organic search.
1. Google Travel SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Features
Google Travel SERP features, which are effectively listings of flights or properties along with location, date, and other feature filters to help searchers choose the best flight, hotel, or vacation rental option to suit their needs.
Typical travel SERP features for flights, hotels, and vacation rentals look like this:
Screenshot from search for [flights to san Francisco], Google, August 2024
Screenshot from search for [hotels in san francisco], Google, August 2024
2. Google Travel Organic Pages Appearing As Typical Organic Search Engine Results
Screenshot from search for [cheap flights from austin to san francisco], Google, August 2024
Screenshot from search for [hotels in san Francisco], Google, August 2024
This review will focus on the latter of the two because these are the easiest to measure.
We also assume, in most cases, that when one of the organic results appears, there’s a high likelihood the SERP feature will also appear at the top of the page.
Semrush recognizes over 750,000 Google Travel pages in the U.S. alone.
Assuming Semrush’s crawler won’t crawl and index every single page, it’s very reasonable to assume the actual number of Google Travel pages exceeds 1 million in total.
Google Travel Page Structure And Appearance In Search
The main Google Travel page is pretty bare bones with “Google” as the title tag, one H2 heading labeled “Popular Destination” and a grand total of 124 words.
Not exactly an exercise in SEO best practice, but then again, this page at least does not rank well for the term “travel.”
Screenshot from Google Travel Home page, September 2024
Flights
The Google Flights page, by comparison (at the time of writing), ranks in the top 3 for the terms “travel,” “flights,” and many other high-value keywords.
This page offers a much more robust user experience with flight search, an interactive flight search map, useful tools to find the best deals, FAQs, and links to popular flight departures/destinations.
However, this page is specifically focused on air travel, whereas all other page one results are more holistic in their broader travel offerings.
Screenshot from Google Flights Home page, September 2024
The primary function available on the Google Flights page is a flight search, which, when enabled, provides a short list of the “Best departing flights” (“ranked based on price and convenience”) followed by a much longer list of “Other departing flights.”
It is good to note how best-departing flights are being ranked when it comes to determining how to appear in this list.
There are also opportunities to track prices or compare pricing via a date grid or price graph tied to your selected travel dates.
Hotels
Google no longer appears to have a dedicated Hotels page per se, as google.com/travel/hotels currently redirects to a Google Hotels search page that has a title tag, “Discover Hotels For Your Next Trip – Google Hotels.”
Similarly, there is no Google Vacation Rentals page, but there is a Google Vacation Rentals search page, which has a title tag that is simply “Google Hotel Search.”
Curiously, google.com/travel/vacation-rentals does not currently exist.
As you can see in the screenshot below, Google Travel Hotels are tightly integrated with Google Maps. Filters enable searchers to refine their needs based on price, ratings, stars, amenities, and other factors.
Also note that hotels offering “Deals” are highlighted with green buttons and pricing, and they generally rise to the top of the search results, much like best-departing flights. This is not the case with vacation rentals.
The above are important factors when considering how to optimize for appearance in these search results.
Screenshot from search for [toronto hotels], Google, September 2024
Vacation Rentals
Google Vacation Rentals are similar to hotels, displaying a filterable listing of properties alongside an interactive Google Map.
However, searchers are required to click on a result from the list or map, which then provides additional lists of “Booking options” and “Additional results from the web.” Both lists provide booking options, but being found under the actual “booking” category is obviously more valuable.
Each listing includes an Overview, Prices, Reviews, Photos, and About section. The quality and quantity of content contained in each of these undoubtedly factor into how properties are ranked and displayed.
Screenshot from search for “toronto vacation rentals”, Google, September 2024
Explore
The last component of Google Travel to consider is Explore.
As the name suggests, Explore is focused on enabling travelers to search for new destinations or look for deals based on their budget and travel dates (important to note for brands keen to be found here).
Explore is effectively a filterable, interactive map displaying thumbnails of potential destinations with flight prices, which, when clicked, extends into a fuller view of ranked things to do, places to stay, flight options, information on when to visit, and questions asked by other travelers.
The title tag for this interactive page is dynamic based on the starting location chosen by the user, e.g., “Toronto to anywhere | Explore.”
As mentioned earlier, things to do/discover appear at the top of an Explore results page.
The “things to do/discover” on Explore appear to be the most popular local places and attractions, which have been optimized from a local SEO perspective. Reviews are front and center here, as they are in the Google Map Pack.
The Help button on Explore indicates, “These destinations are ranked mainly by popularity, and the cost and convenience of travel from your location. Factors include frequency of mentions across the web, destination search queries, travel time, number of stops, and airport changes during layovers.”
It is interesting and important to note the inclusion of “frequency of mentions across the web” as a ranking factor.
Screenshot from Google Explore Home page, September 2024
So, Who’s Currently Winning With Google Travel?
While some brands view Google Travel as a threat and with disdain, others see an opportunity and are reaping the benefits of having another highly visible channel through which to access their customers.
As Kevin Indig recently pointed out, large brands have an advantage, as this plays an increasingly significant role in search visibility.
A quick review of Google Travel Spaces reveals the following players managing to gain prominence:
Google Flights
As you’d expect, the major airlines, buoyed by their significant branding and authority, dominate Google Flights.
However, there certainly is an opportunity for lesser-known discount airlines/brands to appear, particularly under best-departing flights where the key driver is price.
Google Hotels
Here, major hotel chains and online travel agents (OTAs) like Expedia and Booking.com rule again.
However, opportunities clearly lie in Google Maps and local SEO, where smaller, local businesses can leverage their “local authority” and gain visibility.
On the Google Vacation Rentals side, attention should be paid to OTAs like VRBO and Booking.com, which are also highly visible and appear in the Booking Options list mentioned earlier, so property owners certainly should leverage these.
However, there are several other property types of online agents (e.g., glamping, short-term rental) who also appear.
As with hotels, vacation property owners should certainly look to leverage their local standing to garner attention and build authority.
Google Explore
The brands that appear to be winning in Google Explore tend to be those offering deals or popular experiences personalized to the searcher’s location and historical preferences, which plays to the desires of the perceived audience search.
As noted, the things to discover/do appearing in Explore will be the most popular attractions and experiences, which have gained local organic search authority.
Optimizing To Appear In Google Travel Spaces
In light of the organic search visibility, Google Travel spaces are able to achieve, travel brands are well advised to do whatever they can to optimize their web presences to gain visibility in these coveted spaces.
Below are some factors and suggestions for each space, considering how content appears to be prioritized for display in each.
Google Flights
To be clear, to appear on Google Flights, you must first be an airline operator offering flights to consumers.
If you are part of such an organization, these recommendations are for you.
Schema Markup
Implement flight schema markup on your flight listing pages to provide Google with structured data about your specific flight offerings (i.e., departure/arrival airports, dates, prices, etc.). This will help Google better understand your content and improve your Google Flights results visibility.
Competitive Pricing
Price is a major factor in Google Flights rankings. Regularly monitor your competitors’ prices and ensure your fares are competitive.
Consider offering special flight deals or promotions to garner attention for specific flights or destinations.
Landing Page Optimization
Create dedicated, keyword and user-experience-optimized landing pages for specific flight routes, destinations, or promotions.
Ensure a clear call-to-action (e.g., “Book Now”) exists, and a straightforward booking process is in place.
Website Technical SEO
Make sure your website has a solid technical foundation (fast loading times, secure connections, logical page and navigation structure, mobile-friendly design, etc.). Technical issues can negatively impact your overall search visibility.
Google Hotels
Google Business Profile Optimization
Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP) to enhance your local authority. Ensure all information is accurate and up-to-date (address, phone number, hours of operation, photos, etc.).
Encourage guests to leave reviews on your GBP and respond to those reviews in a timely manner. Positive reviews and response rates can help boost your rankings.
Post content regularly to your GBP to demonstrate your commitment to community and customer engagement.
Hotel Ad Campaigns
Consider running optimized Google Ads hotel campaigns in concert with your SEO efforts. While not organic in nature, this tactic will enable you to have your hotel’s rates and availability displayed directly in Google search results, on Google Maps, or YouTube. Focus on ads for keywords you do not already maintain high organic rankings for.
Website Optimization
Optimize your website for relevant keywords, user experience, and conversions.
Highlight key selling points (amenities, location, unique features) and include high-quality photos and videos.
Ensure your booking engine is easy to use and mobile-friendly.
Incorporate a blog or other content marketing device as a means to publish fresh, relevant content linking to your primary product pages.
Local SEO
Identify and obtain local citations from relevant sources (listings on online directories and review sites). Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information across the web is crucial for local SEO.
Engage with your local community and build relationships with other businesses in your area.
Google Vacation Rentals
Listings On Major Platforms
Consider listing your vacation rental properties on major OTAs already integrated with Google Vacation Rentals (e.g., Vrbo, Booking).
Optimized Property Descriptions
Craft compelling and detailed property descriptions highlighting your properties’ unique features and amenities.
Include relevant keywords in your property descriptions.
High-Quality Photos
Include professional-quality photos, videos, or virtual tours on your property pages, as these are essential for attracting bookings. Showcase your property in the best light.
Be careful when adding high-quality image or video content to not negatively affect page load or overall user experience, particularly on mobile devices.
Competitive Pricing and Availability
Regularly review your pricing strategy and ensure your rates are in line with similar properties in your area.
Keep your calendar up-to-date and respond promptly to all booking inquiries.
Ask For And Promptly Respond To Reviews
Reviews are prominently displayed under Vacation Rentals and, as such, should be actively pursued and responded to. These will both factor into rank and will no doubt be referenced when consumers are considering booking a property.
Google Explore
Competitive Pricing
Ensure your prices are competitive, considering a fair percentage of consumers on Explore are looking for deals. Highlight any promotions or discounts.
Off-Site Optimization
Google’s inclusion of “frequency of mentions on the web” as a ranking factor in Explore clearly indicates that user-generated content on social media or other external forums like Reddit is being reviewed and referenced.
As such, it will certainly benefit travel brands to be actively engaged with consumers on these platforms.
Consumers of all ages are looking outside of Google to conduct their travel planning and share their experiences. Brands that aren’t monitoring and engaging on these channels are missing out on significant opportunities to extend their reach and build their authority.
Use High-Quality Visuals
Invest in captivating photos and videos to showcase your destination or property. Consumers on explore are searching for unique, new experiences, so provide content that will catch their eye and imagination.
Create Appealing Destination Descriptions
Craft enticing descriptions highlighting the unique features your destination or travel experience has to offer, complementing the visuals noted above.
Up-to-Date Information
Keep your listings updated with accurate pricing and availability, as many consumers may be looking for last-minute travel opportunities.
GBP Optimization For Those Offering Things To Do
As things to do/discover are effective Google Map Pack results, the same suggestions apply as those mentioned for Hotels.
General SEO Best Practices Across All Platforms
Outside of the Google Travel-specific suggestions above, there are several other general SEO best practices site owners should employ to maximize their authority.
Mobile-First Approach
In today’s mobile-driven environment, which is particularly true for consumers exploring or planning their next travel experience, it is critical to have a site that loads quickly and seamlessly on mobile devices.
Content Marketing
A significant component of establishing online authority is having the answers to all of the questions searchers have regarding any given topic.
With travel planning, questions regarding destinations, transportation, accommodation, scheduling, cost, and other considerations abound.
It is essential for travel brands wanting to establish authority to have unique, helpful answers to all of their audiences’ questions via a content strategy that may take the form of blog posts, guides, videos, photos, podcasts, or other content marketing vehicles.
High Quality, Relevant Backlink Acquisition
Despite ongoing arguments about their validity and value, contextually appropriate backlinks obtained from domains with high authority and high relevance, will have a positive effect on a website’s authority by extension.
Travel brands looking to increase their authority should endeavor to establish strong partnerships, conduct digital PR, and obtain high-value backlinks from such sources.
What’s Next For Google Travel?
SEO is ever-changing, and this will be no different from what Google Travel is concerned with. Google AI Overviews have been rolled out in full and are being returned in search results across a number of categories.
They are not currently highly prevalent in travel, but there is no doubt AI is already part of the travel search experience. Something like AI Overviews, where searchers can interact with results to build their ideal trip plan more naturally, is coming.
Google Explore is already an interactive experience, and I’m fairly certain this will continue to evolve, powered by AI.
The good news on this front, as per a recent SEO Clarity research study, is SEO for AI Overviews is, at this point, very much the same as traditional SEO.
This study reveals in the top ranking, organic search results and sites/content make up the bulk (~99%) of what’s presented by AI Overviews.
Your Google Travel SEO Plan
The impact and dominance of Google Travel in organic search results is undeniable.
The question becomes, how do savvy travel marketers take advantage of, rather than shy away from, the challenge of being found in Google Travel spaces?
The focus, from an SEO perspective, should be on many of the traditional SEO and local SEO best practices aimed at establishing authority and trust among consumers, as prescribed in the past.
More resources:
Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock
Schema Markup is a key SEO strategy for brands that want to stay competitive in this new world of search.
Implementing robust Schema Markup can enable brands to improve their SEO performance by:
Helping search engines understand, contextualize, and disambiguate the content on their site – which allows search engines to show users more accurate results and drive more quality traffic to their site.
Achieving enhanced search results, specifically rich results on Google – which has been proven to increase click-through rates to webpages.
That said, implementing a proper strategy can be tedious and time-consuming. In addition, cross-functional coordination between content, IT, and SEO teams is required for this strategy to be done right.
In this article, we’ll help you figure out if your organization is ready to do this strategy and the right timing for you to kickstart your journey.
Is Your Website Ready For Schema Markup?
Let’s start by talking about the foundational elements you need to have on your website to get a positive ROI from doing it.
Before doing it, your website must have a solid technical SEO foundation. This includes (but is not limited to) pages on your site being indexable by Google and other search engines, your website having a fast load speed, and your website being mobile-friendly.
These technical SEO factors contribute to your visibility on the search engine results page (SERP). Without them, you may not yield the desired outcome from your investments.
In addition to these technical SEO factors, your website should have sufficient content for you to translate into Schema Markup.
Over the years, Google has emphasized the importance of helpful, people-first content and even made it part of its core ranking systems. This approach also requires robust, helpful, people-first content.
Is Your Content Ready For Schema Markup?
Content To Achieve Rich Results
Historically, the improved click-through rate from applying the structured data stemmed from pages achieving rich results on Google.
A rich result is an enhanced search result that includes additional visualizations like stars, pricing, or images in the search result.
As of today, there are over 30 rich results available, each with its own required Schema.org properties and content guidelines to adhere to. Since you can only markup content visible on your page, you must have the content available on your site to use the required Schema.org properties.
For example, to achieve a review snippet for your physician page, you need content on the rating count, rating value, review count, and the physician being reviewed.
Content To Describe Your Entities In Detail
Rich results aside, your website content should also describe the key “things” or entities related to your organization.
Entities are the most important things your customers need to know about your organization so they can engage or buy from you.
Your website is where you provide all the details about these entities, and this technique is what you can use to ensure search engines clearly understand the details about them and how they are related to other things on the internet.
When search engines can understand and contextualize your content with greater accuracy, they can present it to more relevant search queries.
When you have the content to achieve a rich result and semantic understanding, an even higher click-through rate can be achieved.
Content Formatted For Scale
For larger websites, your page layout is also a crucial content factor to consider before doing markup. We recommend having a consistent page layout for each pageset if you want to do it at scale.
For example, if you are using Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), you should use the same AEM components on your product pages.
This enables vendors or your IT team to implement this approach at scale, with consistency and accuracy.
In summary, this is what you need to have before you start doing the markup:
Good news: If you have these done, you will be ready to start your journey.
Key Events That Indicate It’s Time To Start Doing Schema Markup
There is arguably no better time to start doing this strategy than the present.
However, there are certain key events and sensible moments that can indicate that it’s time for your organization to start doing implementation.
Your Organization Is Looking For Incremental Growth Of Leads From Organic Search
The prime time to start doing it can come as a natural course of your marketing journey.
Say, your SEO team has built a strong foundation for your website, your content team is consistently producing quality content, your website is performing decently well, and your website is one of your key conversion channels.
If your marketing is at this mature stage, investing in structured data can bring that extra lift you want to see from your website.
It can drive more qualified traffic to your site, increase click-through rates, and grow conversions – which ultimately results in more revenue. Furthermore, it can be a competitive advantage that sets you apart from your competitors on the SERP.
At Schema App, our enterprise customers have seen an increase of 10-30% in traffic after implementing this strategy. This number is even higher for pages that have achieved a rich result.
If you can track your conversions, it is a measurable way for you to show your leaders how your team is moving the needle.
Your Organization Needs To Prepare For AI Search
The world of search is changing with the introduction of AI and large language models. Many marketing leaders have been pressured to answer how they plan on preparing for this change.
Schema Markup could be the answer to this. As mentioned earlier, when you implement this, you are translating the content on your website into a machine-readable format for search engines and AI bots to consume.
When you do proper markup, you also define the relationship between things on your website, creating a content knowledge graph of your web content.
Knowledge graphs can ground large language models and give your organization control over how AI search engines understand your content. It is also a reusable data layer supporting internal AI innovations and content optimization.
If your organization is looking for ways to prepare for AI search, it is time to start doing this method.
You Are Building A New Website, Undergoing Website Consolidation, Or Rebranding
Many marketing teams undergo website rebranding projects and consolidate their websites to ensure a consistent, thoughtful user experience.
However, these projects run the risk of loss in organic traffic due to search engines not understanding the change in company name or website URLs.
Thankfully, you can overcome this by utilizing Schema Markup to communicate this change to search engines.
During the rebranding process, you can notify search engines of the new name using the ‘alternateName’ property and use the ‘sameAs’ property to communicate that the old and new brands are the same.
After transitioning to the new brand, you can leverage the ‘legalName’ property to reference the new brand name and update the ‘alternateName’ and ‘sameAs’ property to reference the old name.
Part of a rebranding project might also involve you migrating to a new content management system. In that case, the case for implementing this technique is even more compelling.
You Are Migrating To A New Content Management System
Migrating to a new content management system often involves reviewing your existing content and how it is presented on a page.
This makes it a great time to start implementing it. Why? Because the content on your page informs you of the rich results you can achieve and what you can optimize with it.
As you build your new website, plan to have the SEO foundation, robust content, and scaleable templated content. As soon as it goes live, you can start your journey and maximize the value.
Are You Ready To Start Doing Schema Markup?
Doing it might be a natural course in your digital marketing journey, especially in the age of generative AI.
It could also be a way to mitigate traffic losses during your rebranding or CMS migration projects.
Whatever your reason, your website should have a strong technical SEO foundation and good-quality content before investing in a Schema Markup solution.
That way, you’ll be able to achieve rich results and create a robust content knowledge graph, reaping the full benefits of this strategy.
![Google search for [toronto vacation rentals]](https://ecommerceedu.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-vacation-rentals-104.png)
