When it comes to search engines, Google wants to return the most relevant pages for its users so that those users are getting the most relevant and accurate answers to their queries. This is especially apparent when it comes to YMYL and in this blog we are going to be discussing the concept of YMYL and why it is important that webmasters understand it for SEO purposes.

What is YMYL?

YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life” and it refers to web pages that cover any topics that have the potential to impact a user’s future happiness, health, financial stability or safety. Google introduced the YMYL category in 2014 to indicate how seriously it takes the importance of factual correctness on websites which have the ability to impact a person’s life.

Source: Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

YMYL is extremely important when it comes to SEO because Google holds these websites to a higher standard when reviewing their quality. Optimising your YMYL content and making sure that it is accurate and up to date, in addition to backing it up with external linking, showcasing authoring and generally demonstrating the expertise of the article, will all help to ensure that you’re giving off the right signals to Google. As a result, Google may look more favourably on your website for matching user intent and purpose, therefore helping it to perform better in the search results. 

People are often using Google to research information on a wide range of topics including health queries and financial questions. It is important that the information they are finding on the SERP is accurate and up to date because if it is not then it could have extreme consequences for the user. This is why Google finds it so important to ensure these YMYL pages are of high quality.

Examples of YMYL pages: 

• ➡️Finance pages – eg. investing or banking pages 
• ➡️News and current events pages
• ➡️Health and safety pages 
• ➡️Legal pages
• ➡️Shopping pages that allow users to make online purchases 

How to know if your web page is a YMYL topic

Many topics do not come under the YMYL bracket but it is important to know whether the content on your website is a YMYL topic because if it is, Google will hold your website to a higher standard so that it is fully meeting the users needs and not causing any harm to their wellbeing. It is therefore important that you understand what YMYL topics are, to see if you are discussing them on your webpage. 

Google will not explicitly tell you if they are viewing your web page as a YMYL page so it is important that you ascertain whether or not it falls within any of the YMYL categories. 

When determining whether your website covers a YMYL topic, you need to think about whether you are creating content that can directly impact a person’s health, financial stability, or safety or the welfare or well-being of society.

Source: Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

If your web page contains YMYL topics, then it is important that your content will help and inform the user and, you need to ensure that there is no content on your web page that could cause the user any harm. 

Within the Quality Rater Guidelines, Google also gives us some clear examples of what does and doesn’t fall into the YMYL category, so if you aren’t sure it’s worth checking out the QRGs as they can give some helpful insight!

YMYL Guidelines

When it comes to YMYL content, it is ranked differently to content that is not YMYL. Google explained this in their ‘How Google Fights Disinformation’ blog: “For these “YMYL” pages, we assume that users expect us to operate with our strictest standards of trustworthiness and safety. As such, where our algorithms detect that a user’s query relates to a “YMYL” topic, we will give more weight in our ranking systems to factors like our understanding of the authoritativeness, expertise, or trustworthiness of the pages we present in response.”

In 2022, the YMYL guidance was updated by Google in order to give clarity on what they are looking for when it comes to quality on YMYL web pages:

• ➡️Content – the main content of the webpage is extremely important if you fall into the YMYL category, it is important that your webpage has a good amount of high quality content 
• ➡️E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust) signals – enhancing E-E-A-T signals for YMYL pages is especially important because the information needs to be completely accurate because any misinformation on these pages could potentially cause harm to the users.  
• ➡️Keep the user in mind – Google wants to ensure that you are creating a website that has the best intentions for the user, so that they are gaining the best user experience.

Best SEO practices for YMYL content 

Due to the fact that Google ranks YMYL pages differently, it is important that you understand the best SEO practices to take for your YMYL web pages:

1. Create user-focused content 

As we have seen, content is one of the most important factors for Google when they are ranking YMYL web pages and Google will often look at your content to make sure that it is accurate information and that it is of high quality. 

In order to rank well for YMYL content:

• ➡️Make sure that your content is always up to date
• ➡️Ensure the content is useful for the user
• ➡️Have organised content that is easy for the user to understand 
• ➡️Make sure there is enough content so that the web page fully covers the topic and satisfies the user intent

Content is extremely important for YMYL pages, you need to make sure that your content is fundamentally benefiting the users and not giving them any information that could have consequences for their future. 

When you are creating content, making sure that it is user-centred is of the utmost importance but this will also benefit you when ranking because Google wants content that is helpful to the user – matching user intent and purpose plays a key role across YMYL websites – and this doesn’t always mean adding large amounts of content either – make sure that you review the way that your website answers the user’s queries. 

2. Optimise your E-E-A-T signals 

As we have seen from Google, E-E-A-T plays an important role when Google is ranking YMYL web pages. 

Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust are key signals for Google, especially when they are examining the quality of YMYL websites. Below, we will discuss the concepts of E-E-A-T and the diagram above also shows what each concept means. 

Experience – when it comes to experience, it is important to showcase that the author of the content has firsthand or real life experience for the topic and subject that they are discussing. 

Expertise – expertise refers to the amount of knowledge that exists behind the content and behind your website as a whole. Particularly for YMYL websites, Google wants to ensure that whoever is creating the content for your website is an expert in the field, so you need to ensure that you are showcasing this on your website. 

Authority – this focuses on making sure that your website is seen as an authoritative source, so instead of proving yourself to be an expert, authoritativeness focuses on others showcasing you as an expert. This can be done through gaining high quality backlinks and where Digital PR will be extremely valuable. 

Trust – according to Google, trust is the most important aspect of E-E-A-T: “Of these aspects, trust is most important.” Providing trust signals across your whole website is imperative so that Google can know that your website and the content that you are providing to users is trustworthy and it will be providing factual information to users. 

When optimising your YMYL web page, optimising all four aspects of E-E-A-T is highly important to prove to Google that your content is valuable to users and that it is providing accurate information that will not have the potential to harm users. 

You can optimise your E-E-A-T signals for YMYL pages by:

• ➡️Including the author’s basic information and credentials 
• ➡️Adding an About Us page on your website including information about the people behind the website, including achievements etc… – this also helps to provide “clear and satisfying information” that Google looks for on YMYL websites, mainly focusing on the About Us page and also the information that is available on a Contact Us page
• ➡️Including a reviews page from real customers 
• ➡️Gaining high quality backlinks from other credible websites linking to your webpage

3.  Add external links to your content 

Including external links to your content is very important, a link is a clickable object on your webpage that leads from one page to another, they can appear as text, images or buttons and they will link from your website to a different website. When including external links, ensure that they appear naturally throughout your website and make sure that they are going to another high quality, authoritative web page so that Google knows your resources are trusted and will give users the correct information. 

You should add in external links whenever you are quoting someone, using information from another website or making a big statement. When linking to a credible source, you are showing Google that your information is accurate and it will also back up your level of topical expertise.

4. Make sure your website is well built with a user-friendly design

It is important to make sure that your YMYL website has a user-friendly design, this includes optimising the page speed, making sure there are no broken links and making sure it is optimised well for both mobile and desktop browsers. This will show Google that you are keeping your website well maintained and making the site easy to use for your users. 

Using Google’s Page Speed Insights and other free online tools can help you to keep an eye on your page speed and see where improvements need to be made, it’s also worth being aware of Core Web Vitals and the impact this can have – so definitely two things to be keeping an eye on from a YMYL perspective.

Summary

YMYL refers to any topics on a website that can have real word effects for the user. When it comes to SEO, it is extremely important to understand what YMYL is because if you have content on your website that falls in to a YMYL category, Google will hold your website to a higher standard, therefore meaning that it will be harder to rank on the SERP and that you need to make sure that the quality of your website is extremely high. 

Google holds YMYL web pages to a higher standard because of the potential impact that they can have on a user’s life. If you have a website that sits within the YMYL category, as you will be held to a higher standard, it is highly important to optimise your website for SEO by following the above steps so that you can increase your visibility within the SERPs and ultimately increase conversions and sales to your website. 

If you have got YMYL content within your website then it is important that you optimise your content for SEO and hopefully this blog has helped you with ways in which you can optimise your website for YMYL. If you want any additional support when optimising your YMYL website for SEO, get in touch with us today and we can help!

Did you know that 97% of users search online to find a local business? And that a huge 78% of these local searches result in an offline purchase? If your Manchester-based business isn’t optimised for local search, you could be missing out on a significant portion of potential customers.

But what is local SEO? This blog will delve into what it is and how it differs from your standard SEO practices. Put simply, local SEO is a targeted approach to search engine optimisation that improves your website’s visibility when people use search terms with local intent. E.g. ‘agencies near me’, ‘Manchester marketing firms’ etc. 

Local SEO is more important than ever and an essential tool enabling you to reach high-intent users and convert them into paying customers. Stay tuned for a run-down of what local SEO can do for your business and our tips and tricks to ensure you’re maximising its potential.

What Is Local SEO?

Through analysis of user behaviours, Google worked out that searches for certain businesses (like plumbers, restaurants, and yes – digital marketing agencies) are often local in nature. For this reason, search results now take location into account when you search for one of these ‘local terms’. You don’t even need to specify a location, Google’s clever algorithms sense what you’re after and show you the best utilities near you. But how can you make sure that Google sees your business as one of the ‘best’ in Manchester and puts it at the top of the SERPs? The answer is local SEO.

Local SEO goes beyond traditional SEO by focusing on optimising your online presence for a specific geographic location. It involves claiming and optimising your Google Business Profile listing, strategically using local keywords throughout your website content, and encouraging positive customer reviews. 

These steps send strong signals to search engines that your business caters to a specific area. The result? When people in your city or town search for products or services you offer, your business is more likely to appear prominently in search results, leading potential customers right to your doorstep. So, local SEO isn’t just about ranking well; it’s about attracting users who are actively looking for what you offer in their local area.

What Are The Benefits Of Local SEO?

By now it should be clear that local SEO is a powerful tool for driving sales and boosting your business. But let’s go over the three areas where local SEO can make the most significant impact.

Traffic and visibility

Local SEO done right will get your business seen by the right people at the right time. A robust strategy will significantly boost your visibility, attracting a flood of highly relevant local searches. This is because local SEO helps your business rank higher in search results for relevant local keywords – and this translates to more targeted traffic. 

Credibility

Building trust with potential customers is key to any business’s success, and local SEO plays a significant role in establishing your website’s credibility. An accurate Google Business Profile, and consistent contact details across your website create a sense of reliability for potential customers. Equally, local SEO’s emphasis on online reviews act as social proof – building trust and encouraging purchases.

Sales and revenue

Realistically, your number one priority is to get paying customers through the door (or new clients brought in). Local SEO is your key to achieving this; it’s a cost-effective way for your business to build trust, reach more customers and ultimately drive sales. 

Let’s face it, the whole point of getting more website traffic, being seen online, and building trust is to boost sales, right?  Ranking high in local searches puts your business in front of potential customers who are already interested and ready to buy what you offer.

Tips For Improving Local SEO For Your Manchester Business

🐝 Google Business Profile

The first step to improving your local SEO is setting up a Google  Business Profile. This is a free tool that lets you manage how you’ll appear in Google Searches and Google Maps. Within this profile, you can highlight good reviews, include contact details and directions to your business, and link to key pages on your website. If a user searches for your business, this profile will appear on the right-hand side and it’s up to you to make sure they’ll want to click through.

🐝 Google Map Pack

This is the term used to describe the real top spot in Google’s local search results. If a user makes a search with local intent, the first thing they see is a set of businesses and a map identifying their locations. This appears above the traditional search results and is reserved for the very best businesses. For example, if we were to search for recruitment agencies in Manchester, the map pack looks like this:

Under each business is a condensed version of their Google Business Profile, and this pack has become a key factor in consumers’ buying choices.

So, how can you utilise this? Well, to get into the map pack results make sure to:

>>Claim your Google Business Profile 

>>Generate authentic online reviews

>>Link-build (but more on this later)

🐝 Reviews

You’ll notice that the three agencies in the coveted spots above had a good review average. Reviews really are crucial because the more high-rated reviews, the more chance of appearing in front of your target users, and providing the credibility they need to press ‘buy’. You’ll know that it’s within our nature to trust something that’s been peer-reviewed. Good reviews give you that extra bit of confidence to purchase. 

So, how can you encourage reviews? You need to make it easy for the customer – include a link to your Google   Business Profile on your website and a ‘leave a review’ button on key landing pages. Plus, following up with your customers via email is a good idea, politely asking them to leave a review. It can also be good to add an incentive here, although note that Google’s policy states that you cannot pay for reviews.

🐝 Address / contact details included on website

Including your business’ address, phone number and email address on your website is an important element of local SEO for a few reasons:

🡺Consistent contact information in multiple places shows Google that you’re a legitimate local entity

🡺Including these details is a clear signal to Google that you’re a local business – this will improve your ranking for relevant local keywords

🡺Aside from anything else, it’s really useful for the customer! People need to be able to contact you quickly and easily. And, don’t forget that Google takes UX into account too. This is particularly important now that most searches happen on mobile devices – users want to be able to call a company to find out more with one click.

Many companies integrate this into the header or footer of their website so that it’s easily accessible.

🐝 Optimise on page content for Manchester-related searches

This simply includes carrying out some keyword research to see what your local customers are searching for, and then naturally implementing these terms. As well as using tools for this, think about putting yourself in the customers’ shoes. What would your ideal clients be looking for and what words would they be using to search?

Of course, remember that high quality, useful content is a top priority so make sure your pages still read naturally. But it can be good to include terms like ‘Manchester’ for example, in your page URLs, title tags, headings, and image alt tags.

🐝 Local link building

Link building, the process of gaining backlinks from other websites, plays a vital role in off-page SEO. These links act as endorsements, signifying to Google that your website is an authority. But did you know that it can be tailored to local SEO too? Look for ways to attract links from locally-focused websites and prioritise this in your Digital PR strategy.

Local news outlets, industry blogs within your area, and websites of local businesses can all be valuable sources of backlinks. Share stories with a local site or perhaps write a case study about a local client in exchange for a link from their website. This will all work to strengthen your local online presence, increasing visibility and conversions.

How Cedarwood Digital can help with your local SEO strategy

Local SEO is done best with the help of SEO professionals. Here at Cedarwood Digital, we have a track record of boosting business’ sales through local SEO. If you’re a local business in Manchester, we can help you with your strategy; get in touch today to see how we can help you thrive in the Manchester market.

2.71 billion people worldwide are expected to shop online in 2024. This is more than ever before, but with over 5.6 million merchants now active on Shopify, how can you get noticed? You’ll be happy to know that the answer is not spending hundreds of thousands on Google ads. With the right SEO strategy, you’ll have traffic flying in in no time. Stay tuned for our four ultimate tips to get visitors onto your e-commerce site.

1. Internal Linking

Internal linking refers to hyperlinks pointing from one page to another on the same website. When a user clicks on an internal link they are taken to a different page on your website – it’s as simple as that. For example, we often place internal links in our blogs to our case studies page so users can get a better understanding of our work. Or, more often than not, we’ll include an internal link to a topically relevant blog or service page to support the user journey and build topical relevance.

It has a whole host of benefits, helping to increase traffic, improve indexability, and boost sales. Internal linking is crucial for any website, but especially so for e-commerce sites. Let’s get more into why this is…

Why Is Internal Linking Important For E-commerce Sites?

Internal linking is a massive help when it comes to improving user experience. As a user yourself, think back to a recent experience with e-commerce. It may not even occur to you that online shopping is quite so easy (often too easy!) because of the ease of use provided by things like internal links. No one wants to be searching high and low for that red v-neck top they’re after. Internal linking greatly improves the site’s navigation and helps your customers move between pages. Of course, this is especially important for e-commerce websites which often have a vast number of product pages and category pages.

Just look at this screengrab from Next’s website; they stock over 10,000 women’s clothing items but their combination of image and textual internal links here makes things nice and easy for the user.

Internal linking doesn’t just  help out the user, it’s also super beneficial for search engine crawlers. Through internal links, Google can better understand the structure and hierarchy of your website and connect topically-related pages, helping the algorithm to discover and crawl each page. Why should you care about indexability? Well, the more pages crawled, the more traffic and potential conversions!

Another element contributing to getting those pages ranked is link equity. This term refers to the value passed between pages within a website. Essentially, internal linking spreads the love – ensuring that all those little product pages get the attention they deserve from search engines.

Lastly, internal linking can be deployed to highlight key features on an e-commerce website. I’m talking sales, promotions, reviews, new collections etc. With effective graphics and copy, these links will draw attention and prompt users to click through.

2. Content Marketing

When developing an SEO strategy for any domain, the importance of content cannot be underestimated. Get your content marketing right and the merits are endless: backlink potential, boosted traffic, increased click-through rates, improved customer experience – the list goes on.

If you’re dealing with an e-commerce site you should focus first and foremost on your product and category pages. These have the most impact on customer experience, and the most value for revenue. Despite this, many online stores tend to neglect these pages, adding minimal content because it is a time-consuming task for a big e-commerce site. 

However, prioritising your product and category page content is a great way to get a leg up against the competition. Researching and implementing your keywords  onto these pages is a hugely effective way to scale the SERPrankings. Below you’ll see the content on a product page from Hayes Garden World – who knew there was so much to write about a garden bench!

Once your product and category pages are updated and optimised with useful text and quality images, turn now to strategic content. This is your longer-form content such as buying guides and blog articles, covering topics like ‘how to use’ your product, or ‘aftercare for’ your product. 

This is a great place to target related long-tail keyword traffic for raising brand awareness; providing additional insight could also help to sway your customers’ buying decision. It showcases the site as an expert in its field which, if we consider Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, cannot be overlooked! By developing this two-part content strategy you’ll successfully target different levels of the funnel and boost sales. To return to tip 1, strategic content is also a fab place to stick your internal links. Lure users in with helpful blog content then send them over to your key conversion pages.

As an example, here’s how we’ve been implementing industry blogs into New Millenia’s content strategy to target relevant long-tail keywords, and drive engagement that’s useful to their users.

3. Focus On User Experience

User experience is critical for e-commerce SEO because Google prioritises websites that offer a satisfying and accessible experience to users – leading to higher rankings and increased organic traffic. UX and SEO truly go hand-in-hand; here are a few boxes to tick to ensure users have the best time possible on your site.

• ☑️How is your loading speed holding up? You’ll know first hand that there’s nothing more infuriating than a slow-loading website – there are only so many hours in the day! To make sure users stay on your site once they’ve clicked through, improve your loading speed by optimising images or reducing code. For a more in-depth guide to help you brush up on technical SEO, head over to our ‘5 Steps For Conducting A Technical SEO Audit’.

• ☑️Does your website have a user-friendly navigation menu? This makes it easier for people to find what they’re looking for and helps Google out too.

• ☑️How does your site look on mobile? Google has been prioritising the mobile version of domains for indexing since 2019. This means your e-commerce website must be mobile-friendly to even think about ranking! 

4. Acquiring Backlinks To Deeper Pages

A final point is the importance of building links to your e-commerce site to help drive organic traffic. Digital PR links are recognised as a good indicator of your site’s trustworthiness, but we’re not just talking about links to your homepage – it’s really worthwhile to secure links to specific landing pages. Pick out key, high-return pages and develop a targeted digital PR campaign to help grow authority within these sections. This will boost the authority of the individual page and bring in more conversions over time. Plus you’ll benefit from link equity again here. The deeper page being linked to will receive a boost in authority, and this will then be passed to connecting pages. Looking for a few top tips to build natural backlinks? See our guide here.

Get Expert Help With Your E-commerce SEO

In the competitive landscape of e-commerce, where copious online stores will be offering similar products, enhancing your visibility in search results is critical. Cedarwood Digital is an award-winning e-commerce agency with extensive experience driving online traffic for large, and small, retailers. If you fancy a chat about our ecommerce SEO services please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

We consume and are surrounded by content every day in all forms – in fact, the average person now spends 7 hours a day engaging with content. A podcast to start the day, social media content on your commute, industry blogs to inform your work – it all adds up! It won’t surprise you to learn that online content consumption has more than doubled since the start of the pandemic, and it shows no signs of slowing. 

Accordingly, more companies are adopting content marketing strategies than ever before. Its ability to engage a target audience, and major role in search engine optimisation, gives it the capacity to generate high-quality leads. But with ‘content marketing’ now a catch-all term increasingly thrown around in the industry, what does it actually mean and how can you tangibly implement content into your digital marketing strategy?

This post will explain how content marketing is far more than just a trending buzz word. Executed correctly, it is one of the most pivotal elements of any SEO strategy, and the key to unlocking dominance in the SERPs and user conversions.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the creation and publication of online content designed to educate and entertain. It’s far less promotional than an alternative like copywriting, and instead aims to build trust and interest in potential customers. Common examples of content marketing in action include blog posts, buying guides, email newsletters, videos and podcasts.

This content can then be optimised for search engines – in fact, content marketing is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Without high-quality, genuinely helpful content you simply won’t rank on the SERPs. And high ranks leads to more traffic, and increased revenue. Do you get the jist… 

With the rapidly growing presence of AI writing assistants, producing content at mass is now easier than ever. However, it’s no good churning out pages and pages of AI-generated content and hoping for conversions. Talk in the industry predicts an algorithm update on the horizon targeting this low-quality content. Plus, the point of content marketing is to genuinely help and engage its readers. Content provides substance and a point of connection to your audience – it’s the personable side of SEO.

How is content marketing different to SEO?

Whilst content marketing and SEO are closely linked, it’s important to understand the key differences – this lies in their function. Simply put, SEO drives relevant traffic from search engines to your website, and content marketing inspires these users to engage with your services and convert.

SEO, then, is a set of strategies aimed at improving the visibility and ranking of your website in search engine results pages. The aim is to attract non-paid traffic to your site by optimising various elements in line with Google’s algorithms – including keyword optimisation, backlink building, and improvements to technical elements.

Why is content important for SEO?

So, it’s all good having a robust SEO strategy, and heaps of users clicking through to your site – but once they’re here we want them to stay! Here’s a breakdown of the different ways content marketing compliments, and is ultimately critical for, SEO:

1. Content helps your pages rank better

It cannot be emphasised enough how important it is to show up in search engines, especially in Google’s results. Google made up 78% of global online search behaviour in 2023 and here in the UK over 80% of the population makes their e-commerce purchases online.

As said, content is extremely important to ensure your pages get seen. Without a good quantity of high quality content, search engines can’t index your pages, rank you on page 1, and send users your way.

Plus, this content needs to possess certain qualities. Search engines like Google use algorithms to determine the value of a website’s content so that, when users search for answers online, they’re delivering the most useful results possible. There are four things these algorithms love to see – experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (or E-E-A-T as it’s commonly known).

So, if your content showcases strong signals of experience and expertise etc. then this is a reliable way to gain visibility in the SERPs and bring in high-intent users.

Content also allows you to target specific or long-tail keywords that may be highly relevant to your target audience. Whilst it might not be possible to include all the relevant terms for your niche in your URL, headings and product descriptions, longer-form content like blogs is an easy way to make sure your site is still relevant for these words.

2. Content improves user experience

Quality content enhances the overall user experience, which is a positive signal for search engines and good news for your conversion rates. You want your content to be relevant, informative and easy to navigate – so that users turn into paying customers. 

The Demand Gen Report 2022 Content Preferences Survey found that 55% of buyers rely more deeply on content for making purchase decisions than they did a year ago. Plus, 90% of B2B buyers in 2023 researched 2-7 websites before making a purchase. Your content needs to be rich and genuinely useful to inspire users to choose your services and products. 

Effective content marketing means more traffic, clicks and reads, and this should result in a greater number of conversions. Good user experience is also integral for lower-intent users. Look at it this way, imagine someone opens Google to search for pancake topping ideas. You’ve published an in-depth and well-structured blog article on your kitchenware website addressing this query and its ranking on page 1 – this user reads your blog and the useful content inspires them to click through its internal links. They’re taken to a product page and encouraged to make a purchase, despite this not being their initial aim.

3. A large online presence is beneficial for SEO

It’s good to have a larger quantity of high-quality content on your site. The more content you have, the more chances you have for your web pages to come up in the search results. Also, by continuously adding content, you increase the crawl frequency of your website. However, it’s a common misconception that merely increasing the size of your website makes it appear more authoritative to search engines. John Mueller, at Google, has said that ‘it’s definitely not the case that if you have more pages indexed that we think your website is better’. Posting pages and pages of thin, AI-generated content is not the key to good SEO. Bigger is better but only if these pages have genuinely useful content.

There is also no such thing as having too much high-quality content – however, one thing to bear in mind is the risk of keyword cannibalisation. This scary-sounding term simply refers to similar pages within the same website competing with each other for a position on a SERP. Remember that Google ranks web pages, not websites. Just make sure that your content is unique, and target different keywords and user intents on each page.

4. Helpful content appeals to Google’s algorithm

The importance of writing good-quality content is made apparent in Google’s Helpful Content System – an algorithm update designed to promote quality content. This was launched back in 2022 and aimed to reduce “content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.” So, Google wants to see content that is actually helpful and written for the user – exactly what content marketing is all about. These detailed buying guides and expert blogs are being specifically rewarded by search engine algorithms. You won’t find a clearer rationale to prioritise content marketing than right here, in Google’s own guidelines.

How do you ensure your content marketing strategy is actually going to produce helpful content? In Google’s guide to self-assess your content, they provide a list of questions to ask yourself before hitting publish. Your content needs to be ‘comprehensive’, ‘insightful’, ‘original’ and ‘the sort of page you’d want to bookmark’. We’d recommend taking a look at the full list of questions to ensure your content will rank.

5. Shareability and link-building

Creating valuable and engaging content is a great way to encourage readers to share your content with their friends and colleagues. Plus, things like blog posts are perfect to share on your company’s social media platforms to showcase expertise and foster trust. Whilst social shares are not a direct ranking factor, the more shares, the more traffic and potential conversions. Social media activity will also play an indirect role in SEO by increasing visibility and attracting backlinks. 

A strong content strategy full of helpful information or data is a great resource for naturally acquiring backlinks to your site. Acquiring high quality and relevant inbound links to your site is crucial for SEO because they signal to Google that this is an authoritative resource, worth ranking. Creating a piece of content that answers a query related to your industry could gain the interest of a journalist and earn you backlinks without you having to even outreach the campaign. But, to attract high-quality links from reputable sites make sure your content is equally as high-quality.

Struggling to see results with your content?

If you’re looking for an in-depth strategy for creating high-quality content see our guide to content writing for SEO. Or, if your business is struggling to see the results you’re after with your content, get in touch to find out how our SEO experts can help. You’d be in good company – half of all marketers say they outsource some content marketing – go ahead and fill in our 2-minute form today.

In recent weeks the topic of forecasting for SEO has been widely discussed here at Cedarwood and as we are in the thick of pitching season, being able to provide data-backed forecasts for clients plays an important role in helping them to understand the type of ROI they can expect to get from our services, while also helping them to sell the service internally in at a higher level.

Forecasting has always been a tricky topic since the dawn of time, especially when you are dealing with an area such as SEO where you are very much at the behest of Google when it comes to algorithm updates and elements which can impact your performance no matter what you do.That said, being able to provide clear guidance and an outline of what is achievable plays a key role in being able to showcase the benefit that you can bring, so investing some time into forecasting effectively and setting up milestones along the way, goes a long way to showcasing a positive ROI and the value that SEO can bring.

Why Do I Need To Forecast For SEO?

Forecasting plays an important role in identifying ROI from an SEO campaign and while ROI on SEO is much harder to initially measure compared to other channels such as PPC, being able to give some guidance on what the available opportunity is, helps to quantify the role that SEO plays within the wider marketing mix and show the value that it can offer.

What Should I Include Within My SEO Forecasting?

While overall SEO forecasting is designed to give an idea of clear ROI and set targets for the first 6/12 months of a campaign, SEO forecasting should also look at the bigger picture of what an effective SEO strategy can offer, this can include:

📍Impact on other channels – while SEO will drive leads in its own right, it’s likely that implementing an effective SEO campaign will have a knock on impact on other channels. Reviewing assisted conversions and other metrics can help you to identify the type of impact this could have, which can be particularly prevalent for users who might have multiple touchpoints, where SEO is just the first step of the journey

📍Overall awareness – in addition to measuring conversions and return, forecasting can also be utilised to identify how brand awareness can grow within an SEO campaign, especially if your off-site SEO is focused around digital PR. Referral sales, placements, links and just general brand mentions can all be taken into account when it comes to evaluating potential reach and each of these can contribute to positive brand sentiment, in addition to increasing sales/leads

📍Brand reach – in addition to leads and conversions which can showcase ROI, brand reach is also another area where you can potentially forecast. If you are to gain coverage across key publications what does this mean for additional reach of your brand 

Where Do I Start With Forecasting For SEO?

The first place to start with forecasting is through data gathering – to make accurate forecasts, you first need to work with data that’s in place to ensure you’re able to take into account seasonality, on-site conversion rate and any other external factors. Examples of data that you need to collect from your clients include:

➡️Historical Data: Google Analytics can be a great place to start with this, but historical data from your client will give a good idea of where they’ve been and any seasonality that they face, which you can incorporate into your forecasting

➡️Conversion Information: Any information you can gather around Conversions including Conversion Rate, Top Converting Keywords – anything that will help you to quantify the impact that new traffic/improved keyword rankings can have on your website

➡️Order/Conversion Value: Conversion Value is also important as we know that some conversions are more valuable than others – understanding different conversion values allows you to project the business value or ROAS a lot more accurately

➡️Lifetime Value: In addition to the value from a single transaction, there will also be the lifetime value from multiple transactions – initial conversion value might be low, but over time this could grow if they become a repeat customer and it’s important to take this into consideration 

Once you have collated your data, you are ready to start the forecasting process.

So How Do I Forecast?

There are a number of different ways that you can forecast, depending on your own personal style, but in general I like to work with high performing keyword positioning and CTR graphs to understand how the growth of high performance pages and keywords can impact growth in conversions and therefore ultimately drive business revenue. This is particularly valuable when grouping the keywords together to understand which sections of the website offer the most opportunity and what that opportunity could look like. 

The beauty of this approach is that I’m not relying solely on a metric like “Organic Traffic” which can be impacted by blog posts and other non-converting pieces, rather I’m relying on keywords which I know drive value and conversions so I can be confident in the conversion rate I’m putting forwards and that if I’m forecasting a traffic increase I know that it’s going to have an impact.

I use a spreadsheet that allows me to input keywords, conversion rates, search volumes and associated data and showcases a graph like the below which allows me to understand at a basic level what one, two, three or more position increases would look like both in terms of traffic and in terms of conversions.

While it’s not an exact science, it allows me to look broadly at the impact that SEO can have on a website and quickly identify whether it’s a worthwhile investment (we won’t recommend SEO if we don’t believe it can drive an effective ROI).

Once I’ve pulled together some top level graphs I can then deep dive into different circumstances based on CTR graphs and SERP snippets – i.e. looking at keywords where there are specific SERP features vs others where there are not, or looking at keywords where there might be an easier SERP as it won’t take the same amount of effort to move all keywords on position – that’s why I group my keywords into “themes” at the start and forecast them accordingly. 

Once I have all of this, I focus on  the main outcome – total conversions – and then use conversion value to place a metric on this which relates to ROAS from their initial SEO spend. I often convert this into a multiplier to showcase the value of SEO investment that we hope to achieve.

By doing all of this we are able to give some guidance to our clients of what we expect them to receive from SEO and what is realistic within a given timeframe. As with anything to do with SEO we know we are at the behest of Google, but this is still a great place to start!

If you’d like to find out more about SEO forecasting, or the opportunities that might be available to you, get in touch!

Of the three pillars of SEO, on-page, off-page and technical, it’s the latter which is most often ignored. The clue’s in the name – it’s technical and possibly the trickiest to get right. But neglecting to run regular technical audits of your website is a rookie error, and this blog is going to get into the nitty gritty of why this is.

What is a technical SEO audit, I hear you say? It’s essentially a deep dive into the technical aspects of a website – looking into its structure and code to identify points of issue and opportunity. It’s important to set the technical foundations at the beginning of your SEO strategy. Conducting a technical audit to ensure your pages are crawlable and indexable is crucial before we can get on with the next steps of a strategy. Technical SEO is also important from a user experience perspective, and this blog will clarify how elements like page speed are instrumental for the success of your site.

To reach those coveted top SERP positions where conversions and traffic are at your fingertips, your website needs to be fast, secure and crawlable to get Google and your target users on side.

There are a huge number of little elements that make up technical SEO, and this blog won’t cover everything. Instead, we’ve whittled down the world of technical SEO auditing to 5 key steps. Our aim is to make this complex subject matter nice and simple for you, so you can tackle a technical SEO audit with ease.

1. Ensure your site is crawlable

First and foremost, you need to check your website’s crawlability. This means making sure that search engines can find your pages and follow links within your site’s content. You can do this in a number of ways to make sure that your site, and specific pages, are crawlable. 

Firstly, it’s useful to check your ‘Crawl Stats’ report in Google Search Console. This will give you an overview of how your site is being crawled by different Googlebots and allows you to spot any unusual dips or increases in crawl requests that may need investigating.  It gives you statistics about how Google has been crawling your website over the last 90 days and is intended for websites that have more than 1000 pages (if your site is smaller, you won’t need to audit crawling information in so much detail). As shown in the screengrab below, the report provides you with data on the number of crawl requests, the total download size, and the average response time.

There is also a section titled ‘Hosts’ which is perhaps the most important area to audit, when analysing the health of your website. Under this section, Google accesses three crawlers: robots.txt fetch, DNS resolution, and server connectivity. 

You’ll ideally see three green ticks however, a white tick indicates that there has been at least one serious crawling issue in the past 90 days and a red exclamation mark shows you there’s been a crawling issue over the past week. If you’re not seeing three ticks, check the details to see if the issues were related to robots.txt fetch, DNS resolution, or server connectivity. Then, check the response codes of failed crawl requests and investigate the issue further.

Google Search Console is a goldmine for all things technical SEO. As well as checking out your Crawl Stats, be sure to look for any crawl errors in the Coverage Report. It will tell you if any specific pages have crawl issues. This is a problem to troubleshoot if any of your site’s key pages are flagged.

Another useful tool to assess your site’s crawlability is Google Search Console’s Sitemaps Report. A sitemap is a blueprint of your website that helps search engines crawl and index the content. In the sitemap you should include pages you want to be visible and rank for, and also any that search engines may have a hard time finding. The report will tell you if Google has had any problems receiving your sitemap. 

2. Assess your site’s indexability

Within the Sitemaps Report on Google Search Console, you’ll also receive information about any indexing issues. Indexability means that search engines can show your pages in search results. It’s all very well that Google is successfully crawling your pages, but we need them to be shown to users too.

Indexability can be audited a few different ways. Perhaps the easiest way is to simply enter site: followed by your domain name into Google, as we have done here:

The search results will then tell you the number of URLs indexed, for our site, 277 pages are indexed. Here, you‘ll want to keep an eye out for a large difference between the number of pages you have, and the number being indexed.

You can also use the ‘site:’ operator to establish whether a specific page on your site has been indexed by adding the page URL after ‘site:’. If the page doesn’t appear in the results, there may be an underlying issue for you to investigate as you could be missing out on valuable traffic if that page is important to your business or services. 

For an in-depth audit of a domain’s indexability, Google’s Coverage Report on the Search Console is definitely the way to go. As you’ll see below, this tool shows you the status of every page. The report identifies errors, indexed pages, pages with warnings attached, and excluded pages.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of trying to fix every issue highlighted in this report, but it’s important to assess this on a case-by-case basis and make changes where it will have the most impact on organic performance. For example, the report often highlights pages that include a noindex tag as an error, however, in most cases these will be pages that you simply decided you don’t want to be indexed but it’s worth a check in case a page with commercial value is on the list and you can quickly amend this. 

3. Is your website mobile-friendly?

Google began rolling out mobile-first indexing in 2018. This means that the search engine is increasingly using the mobile version of your pages for ranking, rather than the desktop form. Google explained that this move was ‘to better help out our – primarily mobile – users to find what they’re looking for’. 

In 2024, mobile search is more prevalent than ever, with  92.3% of internet users now accessing the internet using a mobile phone. That comes to a whopping 4.32 billion mobile internet users. What this all means for us is a need to make content and structures mobile-friendly. More and more of your competitors are presenting their content in the most accessible ways for mobile users. Making sure your website is also compatible will ensure you don’t miss out on valuable traffic.

What’s a free and easy way to check if your site is user-friendly? Well luckily for you, Google has another great tool. Its mobile-friendly test ‘Lighthouse’ runs a series of audits and assesses if your pages are mobile-responsive. It generates a comprehensive report, and each audit comes with a document guiding you through troubleshooting practices.

Here’s an example of how your Lighthouse report will hopefully look, should your mobile-accessibility be up to scratch. We’d also advise checking your website manually from your own mobile device. Check that components such as contact forms and phone number links are working successfully.

4. Audit page speed

For over 6 years now, page speed has been an important factor for Google searches and technical SEO. And page speed comes down to more than simply how fast your content loads – there’s not one metric. It’s all about providing a good user experience and ensuring it’s as easy as possible for search engines to crawl your pages. To achieve a thorough audit of page speed, you’ll need to go beyond assessing how quickly the site loads on your laptop. It’s a good idea to use online tools to get a full analysis.

Google has another free tool: Google PageSpeed Insights.This provides a performance score and review, along with showing you opportunities to make page speed savings.

If your site speed is lower than you’d like, there are a few effective fixes. For example, ensure you are using a quick server, that your caching is effective, and that your site doesn’t have too much unnecessary javascript.

Page Speed Insights may also highlight that there is work to be done to optimise your images to improve page speed. Often overlooked, auditing your images actually has numerous benefits. It should improve load speed which in turn will create a better user experience and could fuel conversion rates.

Here are a couple of pointers for addressing image optimisation:

📌Choose the right image format: PNG and JPEG are the most common, with PNG being better quality at the expense of a larger file size 

📌Compress your images: you can use Photoshop or TinyPNG to reduce their file size

📌Consider improving the image file structure: remember that the file path and file name are used to rank images so use a category related topic

5. On-page Technical Review

It’s also crucial not to neglect your on-page elements. Basic features like H1 tags and meta descriptions can be the difference between first and second position on the SERPs. An on-page review can be boiled down to these five key areas. We’ve listed them in order of importance so you know what to prioritise in your audit.

1. Canonical Tags: 

This distinguishes the primary and secondary version of duplicate content on your site and designates which version should be indexed. This is vital because it will save your crawl budget, and prevent important pages being missed.

2. Structured Data

Test your structured data using a tool like the Structured Data Testing Tool  and ensure it’s up to scratch to boost E-E-A-T signals. It contains information to help Google better understand your website, and can even land you a spot in the Knowledge Panel on search engine results.

3. Hreflang Tags

Hreflang tags are essential if you have different versions of your website in different languages. They can also function as a ranking signal so are important not to neglect if looking to improve your position in the SERPs.

4. Page Titles and Title Tags

Although it is time-consuming, we’d definitely recommend giving each of your important pages a title tag. This lets Google know what the page is about, and is also beneficial for user experience. Optimise by aiming for 50-60 characters, and including at least one targeted keyword.

5. Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are another important way to summarise page content and encourage users to click through to your site. Try to make these descriptive and unique but below 105 characters. Undertake some research into user intent to ensure your descriptions include what the users want to see. Adding a call to action (like ‘learn more’ or ‘try for free’) is also a good idea.

Of course, there are many other important elements to review and investigate during your technical audit but we’ve outlined our highest priority checks above (as these also often have the highest impact if we are finding issues in these areas). When you are conducting a technical audit, you will also want to review overall site security – have you installed an SSL certificate? Additionally, checking your internal links are working effectively is significant for user experience, and you should audit pagination and response codes to ensure users are directed correctly.

Get professional help with a technical SEO audit

At Cedarwood Digital we offer a range of technical SEO services, whether you need an audit completed for your website, or some support with a website migration. Our white label SEO service will give you the best foundation to perform well in organic search. We have years of experience working with SMEs and large organisations on full audits, link audits, crawl evaluations, and everything in between.

Drop us an email at [email protected] or fill in our quick form today to find out more.

In the fast paced digital landscape, staying ahead of your competition is a constant challenge when striving for organic online visibility. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plays a vital role when it comes to online visibility, and one effective strategy to increase your visibility and improve rankings is to conduct a competitor audit. Understanding what your competitors are doing can provide you with valuable insights and can help to inform your own SEO strategy. 

In this blog, we will be discussing the importance of competitor audits for SEO and we will also delve into how you are able to conduct one. 

What Is An SEO Competitor Audit? 

An SEO competitor audit is a strategic process that involves analysing and evaluating your competitor’s website and their online presence in order to gain valuable insights for your own SEO strategy. 

The Importance Of Competitor Audits In SEO

Staying ahead of the competition can be a difficult task in the online world, however conducting a competitor audit will allow you to have a clear understanding of the organic landscape so that you can know where you currently stand, and what you need to do to progress and improve rankings so that you see better SEO results. 

Understanding who your competitors are and analysing how they are performing organically is an integral part of any SEO strategy. You may be wondering why this needs to be part of your strategy. Well, there are likely many websites that have very similar content to the content that is on your website, and they too will be fighting for the top spots in Google. Conducting a competitor analysis will allow you to stay one step ahead of those competitors, and will allow you to know where you need to improve. 

Conducting a competitor audit will allow you to do many different things including: 

Benchmark Performance

When conducting a competitor audit, you will be able to benchmark your own website’s performance against others in your industry. By analysing your competitors website’s and their online presence, you can identify areas where you are excelling, but the really valuable information that this will provide you with is where you can improve. By seeing what your competitors are doing well and where they are ranking, you can uncover opportunities for your SEO strategy which you can then work on with the aim of improving your rankings and overall SEO results. This benchmarking process will help you to see where you currently are against your competitors, and will also allow you to set realistic goals for your SEO strategy. 

Identify Keywords and Content Gaps 

By analysing your competitors keywords and content, you can reveal valuable insights into what works in your industry. By looking into keywords that your competitors are ranking for but you are not, you can uncover keywords that can then be included in your SEO strategy. 

Analysing your competitors keywords will also allow you to see any gaps in their content strategy and will allow you to create unique, valuable content that will set your website apart. This can improve your chances of ranking higher, but will also enhance the overall user experience on your website by providing your users with the most valuable and relevant information. 

Understand Your Competitors Backlink Profiles 

Backlinks are a crucial aspect of SEO and can influence your rankings as Google will use backlinks as a key signal of trust. During a competitor audit, you should definitely be analysing your competitor’s backlink profiles as it will help you to identify any high-quality backlinks that you might be missing and where your competitors are performing highly. By understanding competitors’ link building strategies, you can understand where you have any link gaps and then develop your own approach to acquiring authoritative and relevant backlinks.

Evaluate User Experience (UX)

Evaluating your competitors user experience is important because it will allow you to determine how top performing competitors are using on page elements to provide the best experience for their users. This will allow you to adjust your on page elements so that you are providing the most helpful user experience, which in turn can increase engagement rate and potentially conversion rate. Google openly states that user experience is vital: “You should build a website to benefit your users, and gear any optimization toward making the user experience better.” This therefore shows how important it is to keep up to date with what is working well in terms of UX and how to improve the user experience on your own website. 

Stay Informed About Industry Trends 

SEO is a dynamic and ever changing field, with search engines constantly updating their algorithms. By regularly conducting competitor audits, you can stay informed about the latest trends and innovations; you will be able to see what Google is returning and adapt your website accordingly. This knowledge will ensure that your SEO strategy remains adaptive, therefore keeping you ahead of the curve. 

How To Conduct An SEO Competitor Audit

Now that we know how important a competitor audit is for your SEO strategy, we need to know how to actually do it. Below are the steps needed to conduct a thorough and successful SEO competitor audit: 

• Identify your competitors – firstly, you need to identify your main competitors in the online organic space. These are the businesses that are competing for the same target audience. Ahrefs is one of the many tools that can be used to identify your organic competitors by heading to the “Organic Competitors” section. This will show you who your main competitors are and how you are performing in comparison to them which will give you a good overview before diving deeper into the particular sections which we have discussed. 

• Keyword analysis – you will then need to conduct thorough keyword research for both your website and your competitors which can be done in many different tools such as Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner. Identify the keywords that they are targeting and compare them with your own to see how you can improve your SEO strategy. Conducting a content gap analysis in ahrefs will allow you to see any keywords that you are not currently ranking for and what your competitors are ranking well for, and this can be a great starting point to inform your future content strategy. 

• Content evaluation – you should analyse the content on your competitors’ websites. Look into the type of content they are producing, the quality, length, and how it is engaging users. Then look into how you can improve your content strategy based on what your competitors are doing. Also, identify any gaps in their content strategy based on previous keyword research and you can then provide valuable content on your website that your competitors are not offering. 

• Backlink analysis – evaluate the backlink profiles of your competitors. Identify the websites that are linking to them, the DR and quality of those backlinks. Then perform a link gap analysis for your own website and in your new strategy, be sure to target those backlinks for your website. To look at competitors’ backlink profiles, head to the Ahrefs backlinks profile which will give you all of the information needed to analyse your competitors including the referring domains, amount of referring domains and the DR of each one. This will give you valuable insight to then perform a link gap analysis. 

• User experience evaluation – you should evaluate the user experience of your competitors by assessing factors such as navigation, formatting and overall design. A positive user experience can have huge impacts on SEO performance so it is important to monitor how your competitors are providing a good user experience so that you can implement better UX strategies throughout your site. 

• Monitor changes over time – competitor audits or not a one off task, they should be conducted regularly and you should keep track of changes in your competitor’s websites to see what effects the changes are having on their overall SEO performance so that you can adapt your website accordingly. 

By following these steps, you should be able to conduct a successful SEO competitor audit and inform your SEO strategy to gain organic visibility, which in turn can lead to more organic traffic and conversions (which is every SEOs dream). 

Summary Of SEO Competitor Audits 

In the ever-changing world of SEO, competitor audits are indispensable for gaining that competitive edge. By understanding what is working for your competitors, and where you can surpass them, you can adapt and improve your SEO strategy in order to achieve higher rankings, increased online visibility and in turn more organic traffic and conversions. But, it is important to remember that when you are conducting an analysis of your competitors, it is important not to imitate and copy, but to innovate and set your website apart in the SERPs. Use what your competitors are doing well as a base, and then improve upon this for your own website. 

Regularly conducting competitor audits will help to position your website and business as a leader in the SERPs and will allow you to be ready to adapt to changing trends and emerging opportunities in the SEO landscape. If you require any additional support when conducting a competitor analysis, don’t hesitate to contact us and our team of SEO specialists will be happy to assist in order to help with your organic visibility.