Four Reasons You Can’t Ignore Branded SEO in 2025

This post was sponsored by Similarweb. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

According to Rand Fishkin:

‘For most small and medium businesses and newer creators/publishers, SEO is likely to show poor results until you’ve established credibility, navigational demand, and a strong reputation among a sizable audience.’

In other words, if you want to build organic traffic, build your brand.

The question is how do search engines measure brand, and what does that mean to your SEO?

In this post, I’ll dig into what influence SEOs have over brand-building, and show you:

• Why branded SEO is an untapped opportunity you should grab with both hands.
• How brand in SEO differs from traditional brand strategy.
• Ways you can educate Google about your brand.

Branded SEO, An Untapped Opportunity

Branded SEO remains a largely untapped SEO opportunity. It’s untapped because, as SEOs, we’re trained to ignore branded traffic. However, by ignoring branded search, you are potentially missing some big opportunities to move your business forward.

The reason is that users don’t just use search engines to discover information and products. They also use search engines to discover brands. By focusing on how your brand shows up, you have an opportunity to influence how middle-of-the-funnel users perceive your brand. If you get it right, that could turn into a long-term relationship with your brand. Get it wrong, and I’m sure you have a number of competitors that would love to have the business.

This leads us to a crucial question…

Is There An SEO Angle To Brand?

As SEOs, we influence how content appears on search engines. The function of a search engine is to match end users with content. This means as SEOs, we are not just dealing with how users perceive your brand. We are dealing with how search engines understand how users perceive your brand.

The difference is not subtle.

Search engine algorithms measure how strong a brand is and incorporate those signals into the search results. They primarily seem to use three methods:

• Measuring branded search queries
• Measuring brand engagement metrics
• Understanding your brand entity

So, if the search engine incorporates brand signals into how it generates search results, then as SEOs we should be looking for a strategic way to influence these signals.

1. Branded Search Queries

Google’s leaked documents reveal a crucial aspect of branded SEO: the strength of a brand significantly influences its search rankings. This is measured through what we can call the BrandQueryFactor. This metric assesses how frequently users search for a brand by name. The more brand-specific queries a company receives, the higher its likelihood of ranking well in search results.

We understand that branded searches affect your rankings, the question now is, in what way do they affect your rankings?

Perhaps the answer can be found in a Google patent called Ranking Search Results. This patent describes how Google uses branded search queries as a quality factor similar to links. In fact, it describes branded and navigational queries as implied links that demonstrate user trust and intent.

These ‘implied links’ have a slightly different role in establishing a site’s authority than actual links:

• Links act as a vote of confidence from other websites, often indicating external recognition or authority
• Branded queries reflect real-world user interest, signaling how often users search for and interact with a resource through queries

Putting that together with the Google leak metrics above, we see that brand signals include user engagement and branded query analysis. Google uses these signals to see how users engage with your brand.

Increasing brand signals with branded queries and direct traffic

As an SEO can you increase branded traffic? The sad truth is, not directly. When your SEO starts to bring in traffic you will see an increase in branded searches. But this is an indirect benefit rather than a branded search strategy.

Does this mean branded search is out of your hands?

To answer this, it’s important to first understand how to increase brand signals.

A few years ago, when I worked as an SEO manager, I noticed something. Whenever we ran PPC campaigns, we would see increasing amounts of branded search terms in our Search Console accounts.

The reason is pretty simple. People saw our ads and Googled the brand name. Take a look at the Similarweb Channels report below. What do you see? (Hint, the blue line represents organic traffic.)

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

Channel data for greenies.com

 As we see above, organic traffic seems to correlate directly with paid search.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

Looking at the organic search breakdown for the brand in 2023, we see that 72% of the site’s keywords were branded.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

Channel data for elorea.com

 What we see above is organic traffic directly correlates with other channels.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

Looking at the organic search breakdown for the brand in 2023, we see that 81% of the site’s keywords were branded.

The reason for this pattern is that the more your audience sees your brand, the more likely they are to Google your brand.

Another great example of this is monday.com. The brand has doubled down on its brand strategy, focusing primarily on YouTube ads.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

Its YouTube ads together with its memorable domain name has led to unprecedented levels of direct traffic.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

Although I haven’t yet seen evidence that Google uses direct traffic as a ranking signal, it stands to reason that it does. What’s more, you can see that Google has taken notice of the brand.

Try Googling the word Monday and then Google the word Tuesday and compare the results. To Google the word Monday refers to a brand.

Screenshot from search for Monday, Google, September 2024

Tuesday, on the other hand, is a day of the week.

Screenshot from search for Tuesday, Google, September 2024

The takeaway: You can increase brand signals like branded keywords and direct traffic by focusing on other channels.

So where does this leave you as an SEO?

You have the data to assess branded keywords and direct traffic, putting you in a unique position to partner with marketing leaders to work on big-picture marketing strategies designed to increase branded keywords.

2. Brand Engagement Metrics

Looking at the Google leak we can also see that Google measures user engagement as a signal of brand strength.

Brand Engagement Metrics includes user engagement factors such as click-through rates (CTR) and user interactions with the brand’s content. Higher engagement can positively influence rankings.

This means focusing on improving user engagement is a crucial aspect of brand SEO.

The best way to evaluate user engagement on your site is to compare your engagement metrics with that of your competitors.

For instance I’m analyzing toyota.com and four of its competitors with the Similarweb Website Performance report. Looking at the Engagement metrics we see that ford.com is getting more engagement in almost all metrics.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

One of the best ways to improve user engagement is to focus on site navigation. This means figuring out the flow of information on your site and including it in your:

• URL structure
• Bread crumbs
• Top level menu

Also make sure that the top of the fold section of every piece of content directly answers the user intent directly.

3. Creating content For [Brand] + Modifier Keywords

You have direct influence over how your brand appears when users search for it on Google. While you might assume all your branded traffic goes to your homepage, there are actually other ways to capture this traffic.

What’s more, your branded traffic can help you discover customer sticking points or even areas where you are potentially losing customers to your competitors.

Want to see how? Try digging through your branded keywords. You are looking for keyword modifiers that either represent issues to resolve or opportunities to be won.

Keyword modifiers might be:

• [brand] pricing
• [brand] reviews
• [brand] alternative
• Where is [brand] located
• [brand] alternative

By looking through your branded keywords, you can quickly see how users are interacting with your brand by seeing the questions they are asking. Make sure you have content that answers all of these questions. If you find long-tail queries it might be a good idea to create an FAQ on your site.

If you don’t do this you might see your branded traffic go to sites like YouTube or worse, your competitors.

For instance using the Similarweb SERP Players report below, we see a large portion of branded clicks for Ninja Creamy going to YouTube.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

What’s fascinating about this is that YouTube is not above the fold. This means that users often have more than one search intent and are willing to scroll to find what they are looking for. Can you afford to lose traffic for YouTube?

Screenshot from search for Ninja Creami, Google, September 2024

In a case like this depending on which videos users are clicking on, it might make sense for the brand to create video content designed to feature on the SERP.

A great example of a brand that got this right is wildgrain.com. In 2023, the keyword ‘wildgrain reviews’ was trending. Fortunately for the brand they already included a page on their site featuring reviews.

Googling the keyword, users were faced with Wildgrain’s own reviews page ranking in position #1. What’s more the rich result included a review rating of 4.7 out of five. It also listed the amount of reviews (which currently stands at 31040.)

Screenshot from search for Wildgrain reviews, Google, September 2024

Our data shows that 72% of searches were zero-click. That means the vast majority of users were satisfied with what they saw in the search results.

What’s interesting is of the remaining 28% of users, 57% clicked on the Wildgrain’s own result.

Screenshot from Similarweb, September 2024

The takeaway is with the right content, you can directly influence how users interact with your brand, even on things like reviews.

4. Educating Search Engines About Your Brand Entity

Another aspect of how Google evaluates your brand is through your brand entity. Google’s machine learning allows the search engine to understand real-world entities. It does this by gathering information about entities mentioned around the web and arranging that information in a similar way to how a human brain arranges information.

The purpose of this is to understand the relationships between people, places, and things so that Google can deliver more relevant and contextual information in the SERPs.

Google’s knowledge is constantly expanding and updating as new information becomes available.

How does Google understand your brand?

To find out, just Google it. If there are strong signals around the web, Google will present you with things like a Knowledge Panel, Twitter (X) boxes, image boxes and more.

Screenshot from search for Mr Beast, Google, September 2024

If you don’t see anything, you have work to do, as I mentioned above, a large portion of users hear about your brand and then Google you. What they see when they arrive on your brand SERP is up to you.

The great news is you can educate Google about your brand entity. When you do that, you’ll not only improve your brand SERP, but you might see your brand popping up in other strategic places.

For instance, below, I’ve searched for Fandango, a company that sells movie tickets. If you look at the bottom of the Knowledge Panel on the right, you’ll see Fandango’s direct competitors including:

• AMC Theatres
• Regal Cinemas
• Cinemark Theatres

Screenshot from search for Fandango, Google, September 2024

How did a site’s competitors make it into the site’s Knowledge Panel? Google doesn’t only rank content for keywords any more. It understands what the brand entity is and what it relates to. The result is you might find your brand mentioned appearing on your competitor’s brand SERP or in other relevant places on the web.

How do you educate Google about your brand entity?

There is a clear method to educate Google about your brand entity.

1. Establish an entity home page: Create a dedicated page that describes your entity. This page should clearly outline what your business does and who it serves. Although this can be any page on the web, the best place to do this is on your ‘About Us’ page.

2. Build entity citations: Mentions of your brand across the web will reinforce the information provided on your brand homepage. It’s important to keep your brand description consistent around the web so that Google can match each citation with your entity’s home page. Citations can appear on pages you control, such as social media profiles but citations on pages you don’t control often carry more weight and provide the most benefit.

3. Link from your entity homepage to your entity citations: This could mean including links to your social media profiles as well as any guest posts, videos, or podcasts your brand is featured on.

Far From The Final Word On Brand SEO

As an SEO, if you prioritize branded SEO, you are not just a technical specialist. You have access to data to shape the business’s digital identity, which can drive tangible and sometimes immediate results. This paradigm shift allows you to directly impact revenue streams, aligning SEO efforts more closely with overarching business objectives.

If branded SEO is a paradigm shift for you, consider this.

Branded SEO is only one ranking factor in Google’s complex maze of ranking systems. You can read more about it in our latest ebook: Google’s Ranking Anatomy: Dissecting 90+ Ranking Signals.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Similarweb. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Images by Similarweb. Used with permission.

Page Speed Insights: 6 Powerful Tips To Optimize Your Website via @sejournal, @DebugBear

This post was sponsored by DebugBear. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Having a fast website is important not just to provide a great experience for visitors, but also as an SEO ranking factor.

You’ve probably heard of Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool before.

But do you know how to get the most out of PageSpeed Insights? We’ll look at 6 key tips to help you optimize your website performance.

What Is PageSpeed Insights (PSI)?

Website performance has long impacted Google rankings. Accordingly, Google first launched its free PageSpeed Insights tool back in 2010.

PSI is built to help website operators check how fast their website is as well as provide recommendations for how to improve it.

Why Does Page Speed Matter For SEO?

In 2021, Google introduced a new set of website performance metrics, called the Core Web Vitals. The three metrics are:

• Largest Contentful Paint: how fast does your website load?
• Cumulative Layout Shift: do page elements move around unexpectedly?
• Interaction to Next Paint: does the page respond to user input quickly?

A good page experience is rewarded in Google rankings. There’s a “Good” rating threshold for each metric that you need to reach.

Graphic showing Core Web Vitals rating thresholds, September 2024

How To Test Your Website With PageSpeed Insights

Running a performance test with PageSpeed Insights is easy:

1. Open PageSpeed Insights
2. Enter your website URL
3. Click “Analyze”

Test results will appear in just a few seconds. There’s a lot of data, but we’ll explain what it all means next.

Screenshot of test result on PageSpeed Insights, September 2024

1. Understand Where PageSpeed Insights Data Comes From

Each test result on PageSpeed Insights consists of two key sections: “Discover what real users are experiencing” and “Diagnose performance issues”. Each section shows a different type of page speed data.

What Is The Real User Data In PageSpeed Insights?

The real user data in PSI comes from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX).

This data is collected from Chrome users on desktop devices and on mobile devices running Android. To contribute to the CrUX report, users need to:

• Be logged into their Google account
• Have opted into browser history synchronization
• Have enabled usage statistics reporting

Wondering if your experiences are included in this real user data? Open the chrome://ukm URL in your Chrome browser and check if metrics collection is enabled.

The real user tells you how fast your website is for actual visitors and how it’s impacting your SEO.

However, the CrUX report also comes with some limitations:

• Data is always aggregated over a 28-day period, so you won’t immediately see if your website is getting worse
• You can see how fast your website is, but CrUX does not tell give you any diagnostic data to speed it up
• Not every page on your website will have CrUX data, as a minimum number of recorded visits has to be reached before Google publishes the data.

You can use a real user monitoring (RUM) tool to get around these limitations. RUM data has several advantages over CrUX data, like instant updates and detailed diagnostics.

Screenshot of a Core Web Vitals trendline in DebugBear real user monitoring, September 2024

What Is The Diagnostic Data In PageSpeed Insights?

While the real user data tells you how well your site is doing, the diagnostic data gives you insight into how to optimize it.

PageSpeed Insights uses Google’s open source Lighthouse tool to test your website and provide a detailed analysis. A Lighthouse test is run in a controlled lab environment, which can means that a lot more information information can be collected compared to real user data.

The lab-test is also run on-demand, and is not subject to the 28-day delay that applies to CrUX data.

At the top of the Lighthouse report Google’s shows an overall Performance score between 0 and 100. This score does not directly impact rankings – Google uses CrUX data for that. However, a good Lighthouse score usually means that your website is also loading quickly for real users.

The Lighthouse score itself determined based on 5 performance metrics:

• First Contentful Paint: how quickly does the page start loading?
• Largest Contentful Paint: when does the main page content show up?
• Total Blocking Time: are user interactions blocked by CPU processing?
• Cumulative Layout Shift: does content move around after it appears?
• Speed Index: how quickly does the page content render overall?

Screenshot of performance metrics in PageSpeed Insights, September 2024

Below the overall Lighthouse assessment you can find diagnostic insight that suggests concrete changes you can make to optimize your website.

Each row audits one particular aspect of your performance. For example, if you eliminate render-blocking resources then it will take less time for page content on your website to become visible.

Screenshot of performance diagnostics in PageSpeed Insights, September 2024

2. Use The Score Calculator To See What’s Dragging Your Score Down

If you want to improve your Performance score on PageSpeed Insights, where do you start?

Every Lighthouse report includes a “View Calculator” link that takes you to the Lighthouse Scoring Calculator. This tool tells you how much of the five metrics that Google has measured is contributing to the overall score.

For example, here we can see that the page we’ve tested has a good Cumulative Layout Shift score, while the Largest Contentful Paint receives a poor rating.

We can also see that each metric is assigned a weight. For example, 30% of the Performance score is determined by the subscore for the Total Blocking Time metric.

Screenshot of the Lighthouse Scoring Calculator, September 2024

3. Review Phase Data For The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Metric

One of the most insightful audits is often the “Largest Contentful Paint element.”

This audit shows you the largest content element on the page. The LCP metric measures how long it takes after opening the page for this element to become visible. The largest content element can be any type of page content, for example, a heading or an image.

That’s very useful, but Lighthouse actually provides additional insight by breaking the LCP metric down into four phases (also called subparts):

• Time to First Byte (TTFB): how quickly does the website server provide the HTML document?
• Load Delay: How soon after loading the document does the LCP image start downloading
• Load Time: How long does it take to download the LCP image?
• Render Delay: How soon after loading the LCP resource does the LCP element become visible?

This information will tell you where you need to focus on your optimization.

For example, in the screenshot below, we can see that the LCP image loaded quickly but then wasn’t rendered right away by the browser. That could be because other resources on the page were blocking the page from rendering.

Screenshot of the Lighthouse Largest Contentful Paint element audit, September 2024

Google recently ran an analysis to find out what LCP subparts contribute the most to the overall metric value. They found that server response time and image load delay are the biggest factors in LCP optimization for most websites.

While many website performance recommendations have focused on using compact modern image formats, image load time was found to be a minor factor on most slow websites.

However, you should still check the data for your website to see what optimizations can have the most impact.

4. Performance Score Variability Between Tests: What Does It Mean?

We’ve already seen that the real user CrUX data is aggregated over a 28-day period. Accordingly, its value is stable and only changes very gradually.

But the same can’t be said about the Performance score and other metrics measured in the lab. Testing the same page twice will rarely result in the exact same measurements, and often will show high variation. And if you run Lighthouse with other tools like Chrome DevTools you’re likely to see even bigger differences.

There are many reasons for differences between Lighthouse tests, for example:

• Differences in server response time
• Variation in content, for example due to A/B tests or advertisements
• Differences across test devices and test locations
• Inaccuracies during data collection

Google has written a detailed guide on Lighthouse variability. You can run tests several times and look at the average to get a more consistent assessment.

Data Accuracy: Observed Vs Simulated Data

One common reason for discrepancies between page speed testing tools is the way the data is collected. In a lab test the network is throttled to a fixed speed, typically to match a slower mobile data connection. The way this throttling is achieved can impact your measurements.

PageSpeed Insights uses an approach called simulated throttling. Measurements are collected on a fast network connection. After that, a simulation of a slow 4G connection is applied to estimate how the page might have loaded on a mobile device.

You can install the Site Speed Chrome extension to view the original observed metrics when running a test on PageSpeed Insights.

Screenshot of Lighthouse reported and observed metrics, September 2024

Simulated data can sometimes be unreliable, as the Lighthouse simulation doesn’t handle all real life edge cases that can happen when opening a website.

For example, in this test we can see that the Largest Contentful Paint metric is reported as one second worse than the values observed when opening the page in Chrome.

However, the original values for the First Continental Paint and for the Largest Contentful Paint metrics were identical. This suggests that the simulated metrics could potentially not match what real users experience.

You can check the settings section of the Lighthouse report to see if the metrics were measured as reported or if a simulation has been applied.

Screenshot of Lighthouse settings, September 2024

If you want to get reliable page speed data, the free DebugBear page speed test is built to provide the most accurate insight. Collecting real measurements takes a bit longer than running a simulation, but it will also help you make the best decisions when optimizing your website speed.

Why Des The Real User Data Not Match The Lighthouse Test Rresults?

When testing your website on PageSpeed Insights you’ll often find that the real user metrics are much better than those reported by the synthetic Lighthouse test. Why is that?

That’s because the Lighthouse test uses a very slow network connection. The CrUX Core Web Vitals data looks at the slowest 25% of user experiences on your website, but typically, even those visits come from a device that has a decent network connection.

So, a bad Lighthouse performance score doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll fail Google’s Core Web Vitals assessment. But it can indicate that some users are having a poor experience and that there’s more room for improvement.

Screenshot of real user and lab-based performance metrics in PageSpeed Insights, September 2024

5. Use The PSI API To Automate Performance Testing

Got a lot of pages on your website you want to test? You can use the PageSpeed Insights API to automatically run website tests in bulk.

The API provides more detailed performance metrics and details on each Lighthouse audit. For example, you can use the API to see the most common performance recommendations across your website.

There’s even a way to access PageSpeed Insights data directly in Google Sheets.

JSON page speed data reported by the PageSpeed Insights API, September 2024

6. Know When To Reach For A Different Tool

PageSpeed Insights is a great tool to run a quick performance for a specific URL on your website. However, as we’ve seen above, this data comes with some limitations.

If you just want to get a site-wide overview of Core Web Vitals on your website, the quickest way to find this data is using Google Search Console.

Search Console will show you exactly how many pages on your website are slow or need to be improved.

Screenshot of Core Web Vitals data in Google Search Console, September 2024

Need to dive deep into CPU performance, for example to optimize the new Interaction to Next Paint metric?

The Performance tab in Chrome’s developer tools provides a detailed analysis of all kinds of CPU processing that happens on your website.

Screenshot of a website performance profile in Chrome DevTools, September 2024

Finally, if you want to optimize how different resources are loaded on your website, the DebugBear website speed test can be invaluable.

This test can provide a detailed report on what resources are loaded by your website, when they load, and how they impact rendering.

Screenshot of a website request waterfall in DebugBear, September 2024

How To Always Stay Ahead Of Your Website Speed

PageSpeed Insights and other performance tests are a great starting point for optimizing your website. However, without continuous monitoring, you risk reintroducing problems without noticing.

DebugBear is a monitoring platform for Core Web Vitals that lets you continuously test both your own website and those of your competitors.

Screenshot of the DebugBear performance dashboard, September 2024

In addition to scheduled lab testing, DebugBear also keeps track of Google CrUX data and collects real user analytics directly on your website.

The real user data provides a wide range of insight to not just help you keep track of performance but actively improve it:

• See what LCP subpart is causing the biggest delay for your visitors
• Find specific interactions and scripts that cause a poor Interaction to Next Paint score
• Identify specific countries or devices where performance is worse than usual

Screenshot of real user monitoring data in DebugBear, September 2024

Deliver A Great User Experience

PageSpeed Insights is a helpful tool for any website owner, not just telling you how fast your website is in the real world, but also giving you concrete advice on how to optimize it.

However, if you’d like to go beyond the data PSI provides and test your website continuously, you can sign up for a free 14-day DebugBear trial.

This article has been sponsored by DebugBear, and the views presented herein represent the sponsor’s perspective.

Ready to start optimizing your website? Sign up for DebugBear and get the data you need to deliver great user experiences.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by DebugBear. Used with permission.

International SEO Expansion: Best Practices Guide

Getting your international SEO strategy right can be an elusive feat.

There are a lot more factors at play than people give credit for, and it’s often a thankless job.

A successful international SEO strategy requires a deep knowledge of your company’s commercial strategy as well as technical SEO knowledge, cultural sensitivity, and excellent data skills.

Yet the industry often regards international SEO as just your hreflang setup.

In this article, I will distill the complexities of international SEO success into an actionable step-by-step list that will take you from beginner to advanced practitioner. Let’s begin!

Part I: Be Commercially Aware

1. Understand Why Your Company Is Going International

Companies can grow by expanding their products and services, focusing on gaining market penetration or expanding into new markets.

While your team’s goal might be traffic, leads, or revenue, the leadership team is likely working under a different set of parameters. Most of the time, leadership’s ultimate goal is to maximize shareholder value.

• In founder-owned companies, growth goals might be slower and more sustainable, usually aimed at maintaining and growing profitability.
• VC-owned companies have high growth goals because they must provide their investors with a return that’s higher than the stock market. This is what is known as the alpha, or your company’s ability to beat the market in growth.
• Publicly traded companies are likely aiming to grow their share value.
• Startups, depending on their maturity stage, are likely looking to prove product-market fit or expand their reach fast to show that their operations are scalable and have the potential to be profitable in the future. The goal of this is to aid in raising further capital from investors.

Understanding why businesses go international is essential for informing your SEO decisions. What’s best practice for SEO isn’t always what’s best for business.

You must adapt your strategy to your company’s growth model.

• Companies choosing to grow sustainably and maintain profitability will likely expand more slowly to a market that resembles their core market.
• VC-owned companies will be able to invest in a wider range of countries, with a smaller concern for providing their users with an experience on par with that of their core markets.
• Startups can try to beat their competitors to market by expanding quickly and throwing a lot of money at the project, or they might be concerned with cash flow and try to expand fast but cut corners by using automatic translation.

2. Stack Rank Your Target Markets To Prioritize Your Investment

I promise I’ll get to hreflang implementation soon, but so much about international SEO has to do with commercial awareness – so bear with me; this will make you a better professional.

Many companies have different market tiers to reflect how much of a priority each market is. Market prioritization can happen using many different metrics, such as:

• Average order value or lifetime customer value.
• Amount of investment required.
• Market size.
• And market similarity.

American companies often prioritize developed English-speaking countries such as the UK, Canada, or Australia. These are most similar to their core market, and most of their market knowledge will be transferable.

After that, companies are likely to target large European economies, such as Germany and France. They might also target the LatAm market and Spain in the same effort.

The last prioritization tier can vary widely among companies, with a focus on the Nordic, Brazilian, or Asian markets.

Part II: Know Your Tech

3. Define Your International URL Structure

When doing international SEO, there are 4 different possible URL structures, each with its pros and cons.

ccTLD Structure

A ccTLD structure is set up to target different countries based on the domain type.

This structure is not ideal for companies that target different languages rather than different countries. For example, a .es website is targeting Spain, not the Spanish language.

An advantage to this kind of structure is that the ccTLD sends a very strong localization signal to search engines as to what market they are targeting, and they can lead to improved trust and CTR in your core country.

On the other hand, ccTLDs can dilute your site’s authority, as links will be spread across domains rather than concentrated on the .com.

gTLD With Subdirectories

This is my personal favorite when it comes to international SEO.

These URL structures can look like website.com/en if they’re targeting languages or website.com/en-gb if they’re targeting countries.

This configuration aggregates the authority you gain across your different territories into a single domain, it’s cheaper to maintain, and the .com TLD is widely recognizable by users worldwide.

On the other hand, this setup can look less personalized to people outside the US, who might wonder if you can service their markets.

gTLD With Subdomains

This setup involves placing international content on a subdomain like us.website.com. While once popular, it’s slipping in favor because it doesn’t bring anything unique to the table anymore.

This setup offers a clear signal to users and search engines about the intended audience of a specific subdomain.

However, subdomains often face issues with SEO, as Google tends to view them as separate entities. This separation can dilute link, similar to the ccTLD approach but without the geo-targeting advantages.

gTLD With Parameters

This is the setup where you add parameters at the end of the URL to indicate the language of the page, such as website.com/?lang=en.

I strongly advise against this setup, as it can present multiple technical SEO challenges and trust issues.

4. Understand Your Hreflang Setup

In the words of John Mueller: hreflang can be one of the most complex aspects of SEO.

Screenshot from Twitter, May 2024

Hreflang reminds me of a multilingual form of a canonical tag, where we tell search engines that one document is a version of the other and explain the relationship between them.

I find hreflang implementation very interesting from a technical point of view. Because development teams mostly manage it, and it can be very much hit or miss.

Often, hreflang is constructed from existing fields in your content management system (CMS) or content database.

You might find that your development team is pulling the HTML lang tag, which follows a different ISO standard than hreflang, leading to a broken implementation.

Other times, there is a field in your CMS that your development team pulls from to build your hreflang setup.

Finding out how your hreflang tags are generated can be extremely helpful in identifying the sources of different issues or mitigating potential risks.

So speak to your engineering team and ask them how you’re currently generating hreflang.

5. Implement Hreflang Without Errors

There are three ways to implement hreflang on your site:

• On your sitemap.
• Through your HTTP header.
• On your HTML head.

The method most of us are most familiar with is the HTML head. And while you can use more than one method, they should match each other perfectly. Otherwise, you risk confusing search engines.

Here are some basic rules for getting it done correctly:

• In your hreflang implementation, the URL must include domain and protocol.
• You must follow the ISO 639-1 language codes – don’t go around making up your own.
• Hreflang tags must be reciprocal. If the page you’re listing as a language alternative does not list you back, your implementation won’t work.
• Audit your hreflang regularly. My favorite tool for this, since it added the hreflang cluster analysis and link graphs, is Ahrefs. For the record, Ahrefs is not paying me to say this; it’s a genuine recommendation and has helped me a lot in my work.
• You should only have one page per language.
• Your hreflang URLs should be self-canonicalizing and respond with a 200 code.

Follow the above rules, and you’ll avoid the most common hreflang mistakes that SEO pros make.

And if you’re interested in the technical SEO aspect beyond hreflang, I recommend reading Mind your language by Rob Owen.

Part III: Invest In Content Incrementally

6. Translate Your Top-performing Content Topics

Now that you have the basic commercial and technical knowledge covered, you’re ready to start creating a content strategy.

You likely have a wealth of content in your core market that can be recycled. But you want to focus on translating high-converting topics, not just any topic; otherwise, you might be wasting your budget!

Let’s go step by step.

Cluster Your Website’s Content By Topic

• Crawl your site using your favorite SEO tool and extract the URL and H1.
• Use ChatGPT to classify that list of URLs into topics. You might already know what you usually write about, so include those topics in your prompt. You don’t want to have a classification that’s too granular, so you can prompt chatGPT to only create groups with a minimum of 10 URLs (adjust this to reflect the size of your website) and class everything else as other. This is an example of what your prompt might look like: “I will provide you with a list of article titles and their corresponding URL. Classify this list into the following topics: survey best practices, research and analysis, employee surveys, market research and others. Return this in a table format with the URL, title and group name.”
• Start a spreadsheet with all your URLs in the first column, titles in the second column, and the group they belong to in the third column.

Measure Your Performance By Topic

• Export your GSC data and use a =VLOOKUP formula to match your clicks to your URLs.
• Export your conversion data and use a =VLOOKUP formula to match your conversions (leads, sales, sign-ups, or revenue) to the right URL.
• You can then copy your topics column onto a new sheet. Remove duplicates and use the =SUMIF formula to aggregate your click data and conversion data by topic.

Choose What Topics You’ll Be Translating First

Using this data, you can now choose what topics are most likely to drive conversions based on your core market data. Choose how many topics or pieces of content you’ll be translating based on your budget.

Personally, I like translating one topic at a time because I’ve found that generating topical authority on one specific topic makes it easier for me to rank on an adjacent topic that I write about next.

7. Localize Your English Content

Once you’re set up with all your key pages and a few content topics, it’s time to evaluate your investment and see where you could be getting a bigger return.

At this stage, many companies have translated their content into a few different languages and likely copied the US content into their UK and Australian sites. Now that you’ve done some translation, it’s time to work on localization.

If you’ve just copied your US content into your UK and Australian sites, your Google Search Console indexing report might be screaming at you, “Duplicate, Google selected a different canonical than the user.”

A very easy fix that could yield great returns is to localize your English content to the nuances of those English-speaking markets.

You will want to instruct your translation and localization providers to adapt the spellings of certain words, change the choice of words, introduce local expressions, and update any cited statistic for the US with their local equivalent.

For example, if I’m targeting a British audience, “analyze” becomes “analyse,” a “stroller” becomes a “pram,” and “soccer” becomes “football.”

8. Invest In In-market Content

Once you’ve got the basics in place, you can start tackling the specific needs of other markets. This strategy is expensive, and you should only use it in your priority markets, but it can really set you apart from your competitors.

For this, you will need to work with a local linguist to identify pain points, use cases, or needs exclusive to your target market.

For example, if France suddenly made it mandatory to run a diversity and inclusion study for companies with over 250 employees, I’d want to know this and create some content on DEI surveys at SurveyMonkey.

9. Integrate With Other Content Workflows

In step six, we evaluated our top-performing content, chose the best articles to translate, and got it all down. But wait. Some of these source articles have been updated. And there is even more content now!

To run a successful international SEO campaign you must integrate with all the other teams publishing content within your organization.

Usually, the teams creating content in an organization are SEO, content, PR, product marketing, demand generation, customer marketing, customer service, customer education, or solutions engineering.

That’s a lot, and you won’t be able to integrate with everyone all at once. Prioritize the teams that create the most revenue-generating content, such as SEO, content, or product marketing.

Working with these teams, you will have to establish a process for what happens when they create a new piece, update some content, or remove an existing piece.

These processes can differ for everyone, but I can tell you what I do with my team and hope it inspires you.

• When a piece of content that’s already been localized into international markets is updated, we get the content in a queue to be re-localized the next quarter.
• When they create a new piece of content, we evaluate its performance, and if it’s performing above average, we add it to a localization queue for the next quarter.
• When they change the URL of a piece of content or delete it, all international sites must follow suit at the same time, since due to some technical limitations, not making the change globally would create some hreflang issues.

Wrapping Up

International SEO is vast and complex, and no article can cover it all, but many interesting resources have been created by SEO pros across the community for those who want to learn more.

Navigating the complexities of international SEO is no small feat. It’s an intricate dance of aligning commercial strategies with technical precision, cultural insights, and data-driven decisions.

From understanding your company’s core motives for global expansion to meticulously implementing hreflang tags and localizing content, every step plays a crucial role in building a successful international presence.

More resources: 

Featured Image: BritCats Studio/Shutterstock

Boost Your Conversions: Transform Your Landing Pages In Just 14 Days via @sejournal, @unbounce

This post was sponsored by Unbounce. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Your landing pages serve as pivotal points for converting visitors into customers. However, too many websites don’t focus on the first impression and lose crucial moments to engage and convert their audience.

Crafting a compelling landing page isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about strategically guiding your audience towards taking action.

Landing pages must hit it out of the park right away. They must match the interests and expectations of the users, provide a good and valuable experience, and clear next steps.

The following eight strategies can help you improve landing pages and focus on the KPIs that matter to drive performance. The right targeting, approach, and execution convert more visitors into leads and customers.

For a faster pace, implement the strategies below with the help of a 14-day free trial with Unbounce to quickly transform your landing pages and ramp up conversions.

Mameraman/Shutterstock, August 2024

Building an Effective Landing Page: Key Elements and Strategies

1. Set Clear Goals

• Define what you want to achieve with your landing pages: Whether it’s lead generation, sales, or webinar sign-ups, having clear goals will guide your design and content decisions.
• Understand your audience: Tailor the content, design, and offer to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience. Use language that resonates with them and addresses their pain points.
• Segmentation: If possible, segment your audience and create different landing pages for each segment to better address their specific needs.

2. Provide A Clear Value Proposition

• Make the offer front and center: Your landing page should clearly communicate what you offer and why it matters to your audience. Learn how to craft compelling value propositions with insights from Unbounce’s guide on effective messaging.
• Clearly state what your Unique Selling Point (USP) is. Clearly communicate what makes your offer unique and why the visitor should care. Show how you can address any pain points of your audience. Your value proposition should be prominently displayed, usually in the headline and subheadline.
• Benefits over features: Focus on the benefits your product or service provides rather than just listing features. Explain how it solves a problem or fulfills a need for the user.

3. Build Visual Appeal

• Engage your visitors with visually appealing content: Incorporate relevant images or videos that resonate with your target audience. Use professionally designed templates that are suited for your audience. Customize them to match your brand’s aesthetics and messaging.
• Clean layout: Keep the design simple, with a clear visual hierarchy that guides the visitor’s attention toward the CTA. Avoid clutter and unnecessary distractions.
• Mobile-friendly design: Ensure the landing page is mobile-friendly and looks great on all devices. With a significant portion of traffic coming from mobile, responsiveness is crucial.

4. Optimize Load Time

• Fast loading speed: Ensure your landing page loads quickly. A slow page can lead to high bounce rates, especially on mobile devices. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to optimize load times.
• Minimal scripts and heavy elements: Avoid heavy scripts, large images, or unnecessary elements that can slow down the page.
• Responsive design: Ensure your landing page is optimized for all devices. A responsive design enhances user experience, reduces bounce rates, and boosts conversion rates. This includes ensuring that your landing page is optimized for phones, tablets, and all desktop browsers.

5. Write A Compelling Call-To-Action (CTA)

• Guide visitors towards taking the desired action with a clear and prominent CTA button.
• Use language that is compelling and time-sensitive: This adds urgency to your CTA, such as “start, today, now”. Be specific with your CTA and spell out exactly what the value proposition is, like “Start your 14-day free trial today”.
• Consider the design and placement of your CTA: It should be prominently displayed, before the fold so it’s at a person’s eye line when they land on your page. Also, try using contrasting colors to draw attention.

6. Perform A/B Testing for Optimization

• Continuous testing: Regularly A/B test different elements of your landing page, such as headlines, CTAs, images, and forms, to determine what works best. If you’d like more tips on how to conduct effective A/B tests, check out this step-by-step guide.
• Data-driven decisions: Use analytics and user behavior data (e.g., heatmaps, session recordings) to inform your decisions and continuously optimize the landing page.

7. Build Trust And Credibility

• Social proof: Include testimonials, customer reviews, case studies, or trust badges to build credibility. Showcasing well-known clients or partnerships can also enhance trust.
• Transparency: Provide clear information about what visitors can expect after converting (e.g., what happens after they sign up). If applicable, mention any guarantees or refund policies.

8. Ensure Compliance And Security

• GDPR and privacy compliance: If you’re collecting personal data, ensure your landing page complies with GDPR or other relevant privacy laws. Include a clear privacy policy and obtain consent where necessary.
• Secure connection: Use HTTPS to secure data transmission and give visitors confidence that their information is protected.

Creating a high-performing landing page involves thoughtful attention to every detail that impacts user experience and conversion rates. By focusing on a compelling value proposition, a strong and clear CTA, trust-building elements, and ongoing optimization, you can develop a landing page that not only captures attention but also drives meaningful results.

Implementing these best practices will position your brand as a leader in the industry, ensuring that your landing page effectively converts visitors and meets your business goals.

How To Choose the Best Landing Page Provider

When looking to create a landing page we recommend choosing a platform that specializes in landing pages, so you get the best-in-class tool. Ideally, you are looking for a tool that can empower you or your marketers to create and optimize high-converting landing pages quickly and effortlessly without the need for developers or designers. Here are the must-haves from a landing page builder that will elevate your digital marketing strategy:

• Drag-and-drop builder: Look for a landing page provider that offers the option to customize landing pages to align with your brand identity without any coding skills required. This allows you to set up your landing page quickly and efficiently.
• A/B testing: Find a tool that allows you to experiment with variations to find the highest performing designs and content. This, in turn, allows you to increase your conversion rates.
• Templates: You want the choice of access to professionally designed templates tailored to various industries and goals for quick deployment.
• Integration: Choose a tool that offers seamless integration with your marketing tools.
• Tailored content: Find a landing page builder that allows you to create dynamic content based on your audience to build authentic connections and increase conversions.

Unbounce.com, August 2024

Expert Insights: Why Unbounce Is Essential

• Speed and efficiency: With Unbounce’s user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface you can quickly launch landing pages, saving valuable time and resources. This allows you to focus on other critical aspects of your business. (You can also include custom code, if you prefer.)
• Conversion-centric design: Unbounce has 100+ templates designed with conversion principles in mind, ensuring that your landing pages are both attractive and effective.
• A/B testing: Unbounce offers seamless, built-in A/B testing so you can make data-driven optimization decisions with confidence.
• Advanced targeting and personalization: Unbounce offers dynamic text replacement to deliver personalized experiences to your visitors, enhancing their likelihood to convert.
• AI-powered traffic optimization: Unbounce’s Smart Traffic automatically directs visitors to where they’re most likely to convert, based on data from over two billion conversions.
• Seamless integration: With dozens of integrations, including Hubspot, Mailchimp, and Salesforce, and thousands more available through Zapier, your worlds can talk to each other at the click of a button.

Free trial: Take advantage of the Unbounce 14-day free trial so you can test out the platform and see how you can transform your visitors’ journey into a positive and higher-converting experience today.

Real Success Stories With Unbounce

Businesses like Going and Webistry have leveraged Unbounce to achieve remarkable results in conversions and customer acquisition. Learn more about their success stories here.

Screenshots from unbounce.com, August 2024

Elevate Your Marketing Game With Unbounce

In the competitive realm of digital marketing, having the right tools is essential. Unbounce equips you with the expertise and resources to build landing pages that deliver results. Take the first step towards maximizing your marketing efforts with Unbounce’s proven solutions. Sign up today for a 14-day free trial and transform your digital presence.

Your journey to higher conversions and business growth starts now. Unbounce’s 14-day free trial offers you a risk-free opportunity to explore the platform and see first-hand how it can benefit your business.

By the end of this trial, you will have created, tested, and optimized landing pages that drive results. You’ll gain valuable insights into your audience’s behavior and preferences, allowing you to make informed decisions, refine your marketing strategies, and increase your ROI

Final Thoughts

In the competitive world of digital marketing, having the right tools can make all the difference. Unbounce gives you the expertise, resources, and insights you need to build high-converting landing pages that propel your business forward. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to elevate your marketing game.

Sign up for the Unbounce 14-day free trial today and take the first step towards unlocking your business potential.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Unbounce. Used with permission.

In-Post Images: Images by Unbounce. Used with permission

Impactful Local SEO At Scale: Delivering Better Results To Clients via @sejournal, @realserps

This post was sponsored by SERPs. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Providing SEO services to businesses with numerous locations can be challenging without a refined process. Multi-location SEO can be a drain on efficiency, impacting your ability to take on bigger projects or more clients.

However, delivering high-quality, Google-compliant SEO at scale doesn’t have to be difficult.

The secret is applying just enough automation where it counts to complement the real human work and knowledge of your agency. One highly effective strategy is leveraging AI for geo-targeted landing page creation – streamlining repetitive tasks and allowing you to do more with fewer resources.

With the right approach, you can achieve impactful local SEO at scale, ensuring better outcomes for your clients and sustainable growth for your business.

Not sure how to start? SERPs offers geo page automation tools and customized support to help you integrate white-hat landing page automation into your local SEO workflows.

This article covers four ways to enhance your multi-location service packages using AI and automation with tools like SERPs.

Build Standard Operating Procedures For Each Local SEO Client

Automation needs guardrails to ensure effective results and compliance with Google’s best practices. White-hat programmatic SEO requires planning, but this upfront work ensures a successful campaign that delivers the ROI your clients are looking for.

The first step is to develop a deep understanding of your client’s brand, ideal customer profiles (ICP), and current content strategy. This research gives you the keywords, emotional hooks, benefits, and features to guide the automation process.

This ensures that the landing pages your automated system creates are effective and also compliant with each brand’s style guide, voice, and marketing messaging.

When you use SERPs’ premium local SEO software, their team of experts will assist you by performing a full review of a domain of your choice. They will help you identify gaps in your clients’ strategy and website, as well as in your current SEO process.

Using this knowledge, you can build an SOP for all your current clients and future onboarding operations. A swift and insightful onboarding process will distinguish your agency from its competitors and set your campaigns up for success.

Use Human Assets To Seed AI Landing Page Creation

Before the algorithms generate new pages, develop high-quality seed content that they can draw from.

This is key to keeping the process white-hat and the outputs high-quality. Your team’s expertise shines during this stage because the better the seed content, the better the results of the campaign.

Think about how automated assets work in Google Ads. The AI tools take existing assets from a website and use them to generate new content to optimize ads. Your process will work similarly. The more you give the algorithms to work with, the better they’ll be able to optimize new pages.

The services SERPs provides are dedicated to helping agencies grow their local SEO programs and MRR.

They provide tools and strategies to streamline the production of geographically targeted landing pages. Your team provides the exceptional creative assets your clients already love you for.

This partnership of creativity and process leverages your expertise and knowledge of your clients to develop effective white-hat automation.

Apply Automated Landing Page Creation Using Consistent SOPs

Once you’ve established guidelines and developed seed content, apply AI tools to create landing pages for each geolocation your client wants to target.

To ensure that the new landing pages follow the necessary guidelines, place specific variables on your seed pages. This directs the AI where to apply variable content and ensures that critical messaging remains consistent across all of the new geo pages.

You maintain control of the quality standards because the AI isn’t creating the bulk of the original content. The purpose of the software is to allow your team to execute necessary optimization tasks automatically.

This is the ideal combination of expert human touch and automated workflow. It improves your capacity to deliver results at scale while also improving outcomes for your clients.

The results speak for themselves. SERPs has a number of testimonials and case studies you can review attesting to the effectiveness of this approach. Combining expertise and automation in this way is safe and efficient. Your customers will love the results, and so will ranking algorithms.

Apply Local Knowledge & Expertise To SEO Content

Different communities have different needs. Ask your clients about particular communities and locations they want to focus on.

High-priority pages will benefit from any insights you can gather about the needs of local customers. In addition to any information your client has, you can use reviews, questions, and local demographics to refine the messaging of individual pages once they’ve been created.

Local knowledge takes landing pages a step further in meeting Google’s quality standards. Identify any priority locations early in the client’s campaign so you can note which landing pages may require an additional touch after creation.

The best use of local SEO automation is in combination with your skills and knowledge as a marketer. Premium service and efficiency with automation don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Providing exceptional local SEO pages at scale while reducing the impact on your team improves both your service offerings and your ROI on those services.

Your Human Insight + AI Automation = Better Services & Bigger Profit Margins

Effective local SEO at scale can be achieved through best practices that prioritize human insight, efficient SOPs, and judicious use of automation.

The best way to think about AI is as a force multiplier to your efficiency. You must start with research, insights, and content created by humans to ensure high-quality outputs and white hat processes.

Then, apply AI to quickly execute landing page creation tasks according to specific variables.

The power of creating exceptional geo-targeted landing pages at scale is in freeing your team to do more of their best work and fewer monotonous tasks.

Deliver optimized local SEO landing pages with high-quality assets and content with SERPs.com. Increase traffic and revenue for your clients with fewer resources and a higher ROI on your services.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by SERP’s. Used with permission.

AI Integration in Marketing: Strategic Insights For SEO & Agency Leaders via @sejournal, @CallRail

This edited extract is from Data Storytelling in Marketing by Caroline Florence ©2024 and is reproduced and adapted with permission from Kogan Page Ltd.

Storytelling is an integral part of the human experience. People have been communicating observations and data to each other for millen­nia using the same principles of persuasion that are being used today.

However, the means by which we can generate data and insights and tell stories has shifted significantly and will continue to do so, as tech­nology plays an ever-greater role in our ability to collect, process, and find meaning from the wealth of information available.

So, what is the future of data storytelling?

I think we’ve all talked about data being the engine that powers business decision-making. And there’s no escaping the role that AI and data are going to play in the future.

So, I think the more data literate and aware you are, the more informed and evidence-led you can be about our decisions, regardless of what field you are in – because that is the future we’re all working towards and going to embrace, right?

It’s about relevance and being at the forefront of cutting-edge technology.

Sanica Menezes, Head of Customer Analytics, Aviva

The Near Future Scenario

Imagine simply applying a generative AI tool to your marketing data dashboards to create audience-ready copy. The tool creates a clear narrative structure, synthesized from the relevant datasets, with actionable and insightful messages relevant to the target audience.

The tool isn’t just producing vague and generic output with question­able accuracy but is sophisticated enough to help you co-author technically robust and compelling content that integrates a level of human insight.

Writing stories from vast and complex datasets will not only drive efficiency and save time, but free up the human co-author to think more creatively about how they deliver the end story to land the message, gain traction with recommendations and influence decisions and actions.

There is still a clear role for the human to play as co-author, including the quality of the prompts given, expert interpretation, nuance of language, and customization for key audiences.

But the human co-author is no longer bogged down by the complex and time-consuming process of gathering different data sources and analysing data for insights. The human co-author can focus on synthesizing findings to make sense of patterns or trends and perfect their insight, judgement, and communication.

In my conversations with expert contributors, the consensus was that AI would have a significant impact on data storytelling but would never replace the need for human intervention.

This vision for the future of storytelling is (almost) here. Tools like this already exist and are being further improved, enhanced, and rolled out to market as I write this book.

But the reality is that the skills involved in leveraging these tools are no different from the skills needed to currently build, create, and deliver great data stories. If anything, the risks involved in not having human co-authors means acquiring the skills covered in this book become even more valuable.

In the AI storytelling exercise WINconducted, the tool came up with “80 per cent of people are healthy” as its key point. Well, it’s just not an interesting fact.

Whereas the humans looking at the same data were able to see a trend of increasing stress, which is far more interesting as a story. AI could analyse the data in seconds, but my feeling is that it needs a lot of really good prompting in order for it to seriously help with the storytelling bit.

I’m much more positive about it being able to create 100 slides for me from the data and that may make it easier for me to pick out what the story is.

Richard Colwell, CEO, Red C Research & Marketing Group

We did a recent experiment with the Inspirient AI platform taking a big, big, big dataset, and in three minutes, it was able to produce 1,000 slides with decent titles and design.

Then you can ask it a question about anything, and it can produce 110 slides, 30 slides, whatever you want. So, there is no reason why people should be wasting time on the data in that way.

AI is going to make a massive difference – and then we bring in the human skill which is contextualization, storytelling, thinking about the impact and the relevance to the strategy and all that stuff the computer is never going to be able to do.

Lucy Davison, Founder And CEO, Keen As Mustard Marketing

Other Innovations Impacting On Data Storytelling

Besides AI, there are a number of other key trends that are likely to have an impact on our approach to data storytelling in the future:

Synthetic Data

Synthetic data is data that has been created artificially through computer simulation to take the place of real-world data. Whilst already used in many data models to supplement real-world data or when real-world data is not available, the incidence of synthetic data is likely to grow in the near future.

According to Gartner (2023), by 2024, 60 per cent of the data used in training AI models will be synthetically generated.

Speaking in Marketing Week (2023), Mark Ritson cites around 90 per cent accuracy for AI-derived consumer data, when triangulated with data generated from primary human sources, in academic studies to date.

This means that it has a huge potential to help create data stories to inform strategies and plans.

Virtual And Augmented Reality

Virtual and augmented reality will enable us to generate more immersive and interactive experiences as part of our data storytelling. Audiences will be able to step into the story world, interact with the data, and influence the narrative outcomes.

This technology is already being used in the world of entertainment to blur the lines between traditional linear television and interactive video games, creating a new form of content consumption.

Within data storytelling we can easily imagine a world with simulated customer conversations, whilst navigating the website or retail environment.

Instead of static visualizations and charts showing data, the audience will be able to overlay data onto their physical environment and embed data from different sources accessed at the touch of a button.

Transmedia Storytelling

Transmedia storytelling will continue to evolve, with narratives spanning multiple platforms and media. Data storytellers will be expected to create interconnected storylines across different media and channels, enabling audiences to engage with the data story in different ways.

We are already seeing these tools being used in data journalism where embedded audio and video, on-the-ground eyewitness content, live-data feeds, data visualization and photography sit alongside more traditional editorial commentary and narrative storytelling.

For a great example of this in practice, look at the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Snow fall: The avalanche at Tunnel Creek (Branch, 2012)” that changed the way The New York Times approached data storytelling.

In the marketing world, some teams are already investing in high-end knowledge share portals or embedding tools alongside their intranet and internet to bring multiple media together in one place to tell the data story.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content will also have a greater influence on data storytelling. With the rise of social media and online communities, audiences will actively participate in creating and sharing stories.

Platforms will emerge that enable collaboration between storytellers and audiences, allowing for the co-creation of narratives and fostering a sense of community around storytelling.

Tailoring narratives to the individual audience member based on their preferences, and even their emotional state, will lead to greater expectations of customization in data storytelling to enhance engagement and impact.

Moving beyond the traditional “You said, so we did” communication with customers to demonstrate how their feedback has been actioned, user-generated content will enable customers to play a more central role in sharing their experiences and expectations

These advanced tools are a complement to, and not a substitution for, the human creativity and critical thinking that great data storytelling requires. If used appropriately, they can enhance your data storytelling, but they cannot do it for you.

Whether you work with Microsoft Excel or access reports from more sophisticated business intelligence tools, such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Looker Studio, or Qlik, you will still need to take those outputs and use your skills as a data storyteller to curate them in ways that are useful for your end audi­ence.

There are some great knowledge-sharing platforms out there that can integrate outputs from existing data storytelling tools and help curate content in one place. Some can be built into existing plat­forms that might be accessible within your business, like Confluence.

Some can be custom-built using external tools for a bespoke need, such as creating a micro-site for your data story using WordPress. And some can be brought in at scale to integrate with existing Microsoft or Google tools.

The list of what is available is extensive but will typically be dependent on what is available IT-wise within your own organization.

The Continuing Role Of The Human In Data Storytelling

In this evolving world, the role of the data storyteller doesn’t disap­pear but becomes ever more critical.

The human data storyteller still has many important roles to still play, and the skills necessary to influence and engage cynical, discerning, and overwhelmed audiences become even more valuable.

Now that white papers, marketing copy, internal presentations, and digital content can all be generated faster than humans could ever manage on their own, the risk of informa­tion overload becomes inevitable without a skilled storyteller to curate the content.

Today, the human data storyteller is crucial for:

• Ensuring we are not telling “any old story” just because we can and that the story is relevant to the business context and needs.
• Understanding the inputs being used by the tool, including limitations and potential bias, as well as ensuring data is used ethically and that it is accurate, reliable, and obtained with the appropriate permissions.
• Framing queries appropriately in the right way to incorporate the relevant context, issues, and target audience needs to inform the knowledge base.
• Cross-referencing and synthesizing AI-generated insights or synthetic data with human expertise and subject domain knowledge to ensure the relevance and accuracy of recommendations.
• Leveraging the different VR, AR, and transmedia tools available to ensure the right one for the job.

To read the full book, SEJ readers have an exclusive 25% discount code and free shipping to the US and UK. Use promo code SEJ25 at koganpage.com here.

More resources: 

Featured Image: PopTika/Shutterstock

What Can AI Do For Healthcare Marketing In 2024? via @sejournal, @CallRail

This post was sponsored by CallRail. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has huge potential for healthcare practices. It can assist with diagnosis and treatment, as well as administrative and marketing tasks. Yet, many practices are still wary of using AI, especially regarding marketing.

The reality is that AI is here to stay, and many healthcare practices are beginning to use the technology. According to one recent study, 89% of healthcare professionals surveyed said that they were at least evaluating AI products, experimenting with them, or had implemented AI.

To help you determine whether using AI is right for your healthcare practice, let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of using AI while marketing.

The Pros And Cons Of AI For Healthcare Practices

Healthcare practices that choose to implement AI in safe and appropriate ways to help them with their marketing and patient experience efforts can reap many benefits, including more leads, conversions, and satisfied patients. In fact, 41% of healthcare organizations say their marketing team already uses AI.

Patients also expect healthcare practices to begin to implement AI in a number of ways. In one dentistry study, patients overall showed a positive attitude toward using AI. So, what’s holding your practice back from adding new tools and finding new use cases for AI? Let’s take a look at common concerns.

Con #1: Data Security And Privacy Concerns

Let’s get one of the biggest concerns with AI and healthcare out of the way first. Healthcare practices must follow all privacy and security regulations related to patients’ protected health information (PHI) to maintain HIPAA compliance.

So, concerns over whether AI can be used in a way that doesn’t interfere with HIPAA compliance are valid. In addition, there are also concerns about the open-source nature of popular GenAI models, which means sensitive practice data might be exposed to competitors or even hackers.

Pro #1: AI Can Help You Get More Value From Your Data Securely

While there are valid concerns about how AI algorithms make decisions and data privacy concerns, AI can also be used to enrich data to help you achieve your marketing goals while still keeping it protected.

With appropriate guardrails and omission procedures in place, you can apply AI to gain insights from data that matters to you without putting sensitive data at risk.

For example, our CallRail Labs team is helping marketers remove their blind spots by using AI to analyze and detect critical context clues that help you qualify which calls are your best leads so you can follow up promptly.

At the same time, we know how important it is for healthcare companies to keep PHI secure, which is why we integrate with healthcare privacy platforms like Freshpaint. It can help you bridge the gap between patient privacy and digital marketing.

In addition, our AI-powered Healthcare Plan automatically redacts sensitive patient-protected health information from call transcripts, enforces obligatory log-outs to prevent PHI from becoming public, provides full audit trail logging, and even features unique logins and credentials for every user, which helps eliminate the potential for PHI to be accidentally exposed to employees who don’t need access to that information.

Con #2: AI Is Impersonal

Having a good patient experience is important to almost all patients, and according to one survey, 52% of patients said a key part of a good patient experience is being treated with respect. Almost as many (46%) said they want to be addressed as a person. Given these concerns, handing over content creation or customer interactions to AI can feel daunting. While an AI-powered chatbot might be more efficient than a human in a call center, you also don’t want patients to feel like you’ve delegated customer service to a robot. Trust is the key to building patient relationships.

Pro #2: AI Can Improve The Patient Experience

Worries over AI making patient interactions feel impersonal are reasonable, but just like any other type of tool, it’s how you use AI that matters. There are ways to deploy AI that can actually enhance the patient experience and, by doing so, give your healthcare practice an advantage over your competitors.

The answer isn’t in offloading customer interaction to chatbots. But AI can help you analyze customer interactions to make customer service more efficient and helpful.

With CallRail’s AI-powered Premium Conversation Intelligence™, which transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes each call, you can quickly assess your patients’ needs and concerns and respond appropriately with a human touch. For instance, Premium Conversation Intelligence can identify and extract common keywords and topics from call transcripts. This data reveals recurring themes, such as frequently asked questions, common complaints, and popular services. A healthcare practice could then use these insights to tailor their marketing campaigns to address the most pressing patient concerns.

Con #3: AI Seems Too Complicated To Use

Let’s face it: new technology is risky, and for healthcare practices especially, risk is scary. With AI, some of the risk comes from its perceived complexity. Identifying the right use cases for your practice, selecting the right tools, training your staff, and changing workflows can all feel quite daunting. Figuring this out takes time and money. And, if there aren’t clear use cases and ROI attached, the long-term benefits may not be worth the short-term impact on business.

Pro #3: AI Can Save Time And Money

Using a computer or a spreadsheet for the first time probably also felt complicated – and on the front end, took some time to learn. However, you know that using these tools, compared to pen, paper, and calculators, has saved an enormous amount of time, making the upfront investment clearly worth it. Compared to many technologies, AI tools are often intuitive and only require you to learn a few simple things like writing prompts, refining prompts, reviewing reports, etc. Even if it takes some time to learn new AI tools, the time savings will be worth it once you do.

To get the greatest return on investment, focus on AI solutions that take care of time-intensive tasks to free up time for innovation. With the right use cases and tools, AI can help solve complexity without adding complexity. For example, with Premium Conversation Intelligence, our customers spend 60% less time analyzing calls each week, and they’re using that time to train staff better, increase their productivity, and improve the patient experience.

Con #4: AI Marketing Can Hurt Your Brand

Many healthcare practices are excited to use GenAI tools to accelerate creative marketing efforts, like social media image creation and article writing. But consumers are less excited. In fact, consumers are more likely to say that the use of AI makes them distrusting (40%), rather than trusting (19%), of a brand. In a market where trust is the most important factor for patients when choosing healthcare providers, there is caution and hesitancy around using GenAI for marketing.

Pro #4: AI Helps Make Your Marketing Better

While off-brand AI images shared on social media can be bad brand marketing, there are many ways AI can elevate your marketing efforts without impacting the brand perception. From uncovering insights to improving your marketing campaigns and maximizing the value of each marketing dollar spent to increasing lead conversion rates and decreasing patient churn, AI can help you tackle these problems faster and better than ever.

At CallRail, we’re using AI to tackle complex challenges like multi-conversation insights. CallRail can give marketers instant access to a 3-6 sentence summary for each call, average call sentiment, notable trends behind positive and negative interactions, and a summary of commonly asked questions. Such analysis would take hours and hours for your marketing team to do manually, but with AI, you have call insights at your fingertips to help drive messaging and keyword decisions that can improve your marketing attribution and the patient experience.

Con #5: Adapting AI Tools Might Cause Disruption

As a modern healthcare practice, your tech stack is the engine that runs your business. When onboarding any new technology, there are always concerns about how well it will integrate with existing technology and tools you use and whether it supports HIPAA compliance. There may also be concern about how AI tools can fit into your existing workflows without causing disruption.

Pro #5: AI Helps People Do Their Jobs Better

Pairing the right AI tool for roles with repetitive tasks can be a win for your staff and your practice. For example, keeping up with healthcare trends is important for marketers to improve messaging and campaigns.

An AI-powered tool that analyzes conversations and provides call highlights can help healthcare marketers identify keyword and Google Ad opportunities so they can focus on implementing the most successful marketing strategy rather than listening to hours of call recordings. In addition, CallRail’s new AI-powered Convert Assist helps healthcare marketers provide a better patient experience. With AI-generated call coaching, marketers can identify what went well and what to improve after every conversation.

What’s more, with a solution like CallRail, which offers a Healthcare Plan and will sign a business associate agreement (BAA), you are assured that we will comply with HIPAA controls within our service offerings to ensure that your call tracking doesn’t expose you to potential fines or litigation. Moreover, we also integrate with other marketing tools, like Google Ads, GA4, and more, making it easy to integrate our solution into your existing technologies and workflows.

Let CallRail Show You The Pros Of AI

If you’re still worried about using AI in your healthcare practice, start with a trusted solution like CallRail that has proven ROI for AI-powered tools and a commitment to responsible AI development. You can talk to CallRail’s experts or test the product out for yourself with a 14-day free trial.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by CallRail. Used with permission.