On Wednesday I had the pleasure of speaking at Brighton SEO’s Online PR Show, along with a great line up of speakers, talking about all things Online PR and beyond!
My deck, entitled “Using Digital PR To Enhance Your E-E-A-T Signals” was designed to explore how Digital PR can and should be utilised to enhance those all important E-E-A-T signals that Google is looking for on a website, in addition to looking through some case studies of where we had used it effectively, with great impact.
This deck is particularly useful for clients who sit within the YMYL industry (of which we have quite a few!) where the importance of key trust and expertise signals become even more important due to Google holding the website to a much higher quality standard.
Some key takeaways from the talk include:
👻 Use your client’s expertise to generate great outreach ideas – focus on the key strengths of your spokespeople to understand the types of publications and areas you might want to cover & what they might be best suited to (and also most likely to be seen as an expert for!)
👻 Use Reverse Digital PR as a way of getting clients to come to you, rather than having to go to them, this is also a great way to establish yourself as a credible resource and it’s the gift that keeps on giving as journalists will continue to find and use this source over time.
👻 Think outside the box, if you can’t get any real life ways to showcase your expertise then innovate – look at soaps or fictional situations where you can demonstrate your expertise and still build those key signals
👻 Get your news listening right – digest news, as much as you can and get your news listening set up so that you are ready to jump on topical trends – this will help you to be first to the conversation when you need to be.
It was a great day with a range of great speakers & for anyone who missed the event you can catch it online again in the next couple of weeks or in the Brighton SEO vault! You can also view my slide deck here
If you’re a user of Google Analytics (GA), you’ll be very aware that the latest version of GA, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), is set to take over the current version – Universal Analytics (UA) – in the upcoming months. The countdown to July 1st is on and it’s important to have an understanding of what GA4 is, how the new version compiles data and how to use the data.
You might have set up your GA4 properties as soon as it was announced back in 2020 and be a pro by now. Or, you might be ignoring the alert warning you of the impending migration to GA4.
If you relate more to the latter, it would be a good idea to sort this sooner rather than later. In the article below, we have picked out the key elements of GA4 that are important to know ahead of time.
What Are The Key Differences Between Google Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4?
There are some key differences between Universal Analytics and Analytics 4 that you should be aware of and consider when using the data. Most likely, the first difference that you’ll notice is that GA4’s interface appears much more user-friendly and simple to navigate than UA’s.
Moving past the initial interface, there are several key differences that we have seen with the newest version of Google Analytics.
Broadly, these key differences include:
📌 Differencesin data collection methods
📌 Updated metrics such as engagement rate
📌 Easier cross-domain tracking and consolidated web and app data on GA4
📌 Improved integration with Google Ads
📌 User-centric focus with GA4
📌 Doesn’t rely on cookies
Below, we explain what these differences mean and how to navigate these when using GA4.
Data Collection
The biggest difference between UA and GA4 is that GA4 collects and processes data differently from UA.
To explain the difference between data collection in its simplest form – UA uses a sessions-based data model which essentially tracks interactions on a site within the given timeframe whereas GA4 uses an events-based model in which it tracks user interactions as events which allows for a more detailed view of user behaviours. Events can include page clicks, views, scrolls, video views and other actions that users may do on your site.
GA4 collects data in a variety of ways. Behaviour can be tracked on an individual basis and across devices using unique identifiers such as User IDs and Device IDs.
GA4 also uses Google Signals to collect data from signed-in Google accounts across devices – although you must comply with Google’s policies for data collection and use which include GDPR so it’s important to check compliance before tracking Google Signals
Another feature of GA4 is that it has the ability to predict data using modelling and predictive analytics. For example, if a user declines cookies, modelling will allow GA4 to fill in gaps by using data from similar users.
Metrics
With these different data models comes a difference in the metrics that are recorded and used. Some of the notable metric alternatives include:
📈 Bounce Rate vs Engagement Rate: GA4 uses Engagement Rate in place of Bounce Rate. Engagement rate shows the percentage of engaged sessions which refers to sessions in which a session lasts 10 seconds or more, has a conversion event or has at least 2 pageviews.
📈 Sessions vs Engagement: GA4 uses Engagement as a primary metric which records all user interactions even if this is across multiple sessions.
Cross-Domain Tracking
The newest version of Google Analytics offers a simplified way of measuring a user’s behaviour across domains and this just needs to be configured within the settings of your GA4 property. For example, if you have a website where a user may start on one domain and will eventually navigate towards a second domain – GA4 will be able to track behaviour of a user across these two domains. To find out more, Google Support has a helpful article on setting up cross-domain measurement.
Setting Up A GA4 Property
Now that you know how GA4 collects data and some of the ways in which GA4 differs from UA, now would be a good time to learn more about how to set up a GA4 property so that you can familiarise yourself with how to navigate the new Analytics.
It’s fairly simple to set up a GA4 property in your Analytics account, you just need to take the following steps:
1. Firstly, in the lower left hand side of the page, select ‘Admin’ and click ‘Create Property’ under ‘Property.’ Then you can add in a property name. This can be anything but it would be best to add your business or account name here.
At this stage, you can also fill in the details related to your business. Then simply click create.
2. Then, you will need to go to the ‘Data Streams’ section in the Admin folder and you will need to add your website as a data stream.
Here, you can also add in app details if you have an app for your business. For our purposes, we will just be focusing on adding a web stream.
Simply click on the ‘Add Stream’ button, select ‘Web’ and input your site’s URL into the ‘Website URL’ section. You can also give the stream a tailored name here.
There is also the option to configure settings and tailor the measurements to your personal preferences here. For example, you might want to untoggle ‘Video Engagement’ if your site doesn’t have videos or you don’t want this data. These will all be selected as default, however, you can easily edit and save your individual preferences.
3. Once this is set up, a unique GA4 measurement code will be created which will allow GA4 to collect and track data. This tracking code will need to be added to every page of your website and can be done through adding to the code of your site or can be added in Google Tag Manager.
4. Check that the property is set up correctly and is collecting data. You will be able to see this in the ‘Real Time’ report in GA4. You can also use the site https://tagassistant.google.com/ to check that your tracking code is on a certain page.
Using GA4 Reports
As mentioned earlier, GA4 appears easier to navigate and is supposedly more user-friendly than UA but does this extend to the reports? We think so!
The default report options on GA4 look something like this:
The reports give clear insights into performance and are split into focused reports which give some really helpful data visualisations.
A summary of each default report can be seen below:
📊 Acquisition – Gives insight into how users find and use your website, which channels drive traffic and the user behaviour in each of these channels.
📊 Engagement – Provides insight on how users interact with the website and the content they come across. This report will show data on user behaviour on reports on metrics such as pageviews, session duration and events.
📊 Monetisation – Provides insight into revenue generated by the website and includes metrics such as items purchased, revenue, average purchase revenue and items added to cart. This is particularly important for Ecommerce websites.
📊 Retention – Provides insight into user engagement rates and retention, measuring retention rates over time using metrics such as new users and returning users.
📊 Demographics – Provides insight into demographic data such as age, gender and provides information on different user types.
📊 Tech – Provides insight into devices used by website users with information on device type, device models and operating systems.
The great thing about GA4 reports is that you can edit collections in the Library folder to make the dashboard customisable to your needs as a business and what reports might be most handy for you.
Navigating GA4 Reporting For SEO
In terms of using GA4 reports for SEO purposes, there are a few easy ways that you can navigate the reports to find metrics and figures that can help you to report on performance and also to spot areas for improvement.
The main report for monitoring performance related to organic channels is the Traffic Acquisition report. This can be found under Life Cycle → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition.
To monitor organic traffic in this report you can filter to show Organic Search results by typing Organic Search into the search bar function. This will give you an overview of overall organic performance. To view on a more granular level to monitor individual page performance, you can add a secondary dimension by pressing the ‘+’ symbol, selecting Page/Screen and then selecting Landing Page + Query String. You will then see the performance of individual landing pages. Here, you will be able to monitor metrics such as Users, Engagement Rate, Conversions, Total Revenue and other metrics that may be useful to know.
Another way that you can use GA4 for your SEO reporting is by integrating Google Search Console which creates a report that allows you to analyse your organic search performance. Here, you will be able to see keyword queries that led users to clicks, landing pages that engage users and see where your site ranks in the SERPs. Google Support offers a handy article on integrating Search Console with GA4.
It can be daunting to use a new tool when you don’t know too much about it but hopefully after reading this introduction to GA4 you can feel more confident in understanding the benefits of the new Analytics as well as knowing how to set up a property and navigate through GA4 to use the reports. If you haven’t set up your GA4 properties yet, we would recommend getting this done as soon as possible ahead of the cut off.
As discussed above, GA4 offers a thorough and user-friendly way of reporting on key metrics and allows you to analyse performance on a more granular level focusing on individual channels of traffic.
Knowing how these reports work and how data is collected, we are confident in using the platform to report on website performance for our clients and analysing reports to highlight organic opportunities to improve the user experience which can help to drive more revenue or more leads for your business. If you think that this is something that we could help you and your business with, why not check out our SEO services page or contact us to find out more.
When auditing a website for SEO purposes, it can sometimes be the case that internal linking and site navigation are taken for granted and are given little credit or less credit than backlinks. In reality, these signals are some of the most important. They allow Google to effectively crawl your website, allow you to signpost the most important pages on your site and support users on their journey to finding core pages as well as helping users to find supporting information and additional resources that could enhance their experience.
Internal linking strategies can be really effective campaigns to boost your SEO efforts. So, let’s look into what an effective internal linking strategy for SEO looks like and how you can go about creating one for your website.
What Are Internal Links?
Internal links are hyperlinks that point from one page to another within the same domain. They usually appear within content on a page or in the main navigation menu and footer as clickable links that take you through to another page on the same website.
How Can Internal Links Help My SEO Efforts?
Internal links can help your SEO efforts as they are crucial to signposting important pages for both users and search engines. They can help search engines such as Google to crawl through your site efficiently and understand the relationship between your pages which will help them to get indexed and ultimately ranked better.
Clear and relevant internal links also help to create a greater overall user experience and can even improve user engagement if you provide links to useful and relevant resources. For example, providing clear and clickable links to buying guides or related articles for a product or service that you offer.
Why Should You Create An Internal Linking Strategy?
Creating an internal linking strategy is important as effective internal links can:
💡 Help search engines to find and crawl new pages to rank your content better
💡 Improve user experience by providing a clear navigation through related content
💡 Disperse link equity between pages and around the site
💡 Outline the importance of a page on a site and establish hierarchy
💡 Create hubs that display topical authority by linking between related pages and content
What Are The Use Cases of Internal Linking Strategies?
The strategy that you choose to create can depend on what your goal is and what you want your outcome to look like once the recommended internal links are in place.
For example:
🔎 You might be trying to improve the authority of a certain page or a selection of pages by ensuring that high authority and relevant pages on your site are linking back.
🔎 You may want to help your users and search engines effortlessly navigate through to certain pages and signpost clear links to supporting content such as related blogs.
🔎 You might already have a great internal linking strategy and just want to tidy up existing links.
🔎 You might even be trying to stop two pages on the same domain from competing with each other for high volume and high intent keywords.
Creating An Effective Internal Linking Strategy
Once you have decided what the goal of this strategy is for your individual website, you can start to look at opportunities for internal links.
It is always good practice to take a step back and evaluate the state of your current internal linking strategy before suggesting new links are added.
There are several housekeeping steps you can take to audit your site’s existing internal linking.
Below, I have outlined the 3 most important initial steps to take:
❕ Check For Orphaned Pages
❕ Evaluate Existing Anchor Text
❕ Tidy Up Broken Internal Links
To check these on your site, I would recommend using a crawling tool such as Screaming Frog.
Check For Orphaned Pages
Orphaned pages are pages that exist on your website but they are not linked to from within the same domain, are not included in the sitemap and do not have any external links or backlinks pointing to them. In essence, these are standalone pages that would struggle to be found by a user or a search engine.
To check for orphaned pages on your website, you can use Screaming Frog’s guide and follow the steps on How To Find Orphaned Pages.
You can also use Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser together with the main crawling tool to compare data sets and identify orphaned pages easily. Here, you will also be able to see which of these pages are being accessed but not linked which may be causing issues.
Evaluate Existing Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible text that a hyperlink is attached to. On a page, this text is usually formatted to be underlined, bold or italicised to signal a clickable attribute.
If the goal of your strategy is to perform some housekeeping on your existing internal links, you can simply assess anchor text across your site. Here, it would make sense to focus on the pages that are most important for SEO first.
If you have a list of priority pages that you are looking to boost through your internal linking strategy, it would be a good idea to audit the existing internal links that point towards this page. Here, you should review what the anchor text for these internal links looks like as there may be opportunities for improvement here.
In terms of best practices for anchor text, Google has recently released guidelines on writing good anchor text which should be followed. This includes examples of bad anchor text which includes text such as ‘Click here,’ ‘Read more.’
Tidy Up Broken Internal Links
Broken internal links are links to pages that cannot be found by the user or pages that no longer exist.
Using free tools such as Google Search Console can help you to identify any broken links or 404 error pages. Alternatively, using an effective paid tool like Screaming Frog will crawl all internal links on your site and highlight those that are broken. With any broken links, you can look to update these to a similar new page, another similar relevant page or remove the link if there is not a suitable alternative.
Clearing up these broken links can help to improve user experience and also help ensure that crawlers don’t end up on a broken page which could waste crawl budget.
Methods To Find Relevant Internal Links
If your goal for this strategy is to boost the importance or authority of certain pages, you will want to highlight opportunities to link to relevant pages.
To find suitable internal links within your site there are several ways to do this. Below I have outlined the two methods that we have found are most effective for this:
Method 1: Site Search
The first method is one that can be done by anyone and is free. This would be best for smaller sites with less pages or could be used alongside Method 2 for larger sites.
This simply involves using the search bar to conduct a search for your chosen keyword and should be searched for using the following command: ‘site:yourdomain “chosen keyword” or as pictured below.
This method will help you to see pages that mention or are related to your chosen keyword that Google has indexed. This would be great for smaller sites that have limited content as you will be able to easily see all related pages. When shortlisting these related pages, just make sure that they don’t already include an internal link to your chosen page!
Method 2: Screaming Frog Custom Search
For this method, you will need the paid version of Screaming Frog to get all of the results. This method is better for larger sites and will provide a larger dataset for you to work with.
In this method, we will use the Custom Search function in Screaming Frog to search for keywords that are utilised within pages on the site to spot linking opportunities to relevant pages. For example, if one of my priority pages for this strategy was our SEO service page, I would want the crawler to search all pages on my site that include the anchor text ‘SEO’ within the page content.
Steps To Take For Method 2:
Set up Screaming Frog to run a crawl as usual but take an additional step to set up Custom Search by selecting the following pathway ‘Configuration → Custom → Search’ from the top menu as imaged below. Select ‘Search.’
Once the below image has popped up, you can start to input your selected keywords in the section marked ‘Enter search query.’
2. Input your list of keywords based on your priority pages. In the example below I have chosen to create custom searches for the service pages that we have at Cedarwood Digital. To add more searches, simply click ‘Add’ in the bottom right of the pop up.
Here, you should also instruct the crawler to focus on ‘Content Area’ by selecting this option in the dropdown.
3. Once you’re happy with the keywords that you have input, press OK and start the crawl. The Screaming Frog crawler will then crawl the site to identify pages that show instances of the individual keywords you have entered and will return these for each of the keywords.
4. Check the results of this crawl by selecting ‘Custom Search’ in the drop down as pictured below. In the left hand corner dropdown entitled ‘All’ you will be able to filter between each of your keywords with specific results.
5. Export your results for each keyword into an Excel spreadsheet and create a new tab for each focus keyword.
6. At this stage, I would suggest an additional step of also exporting all Inlink data from the crawl. You can do this by following the pathway: ‘Bulk Export’ → ‘Links’ → ‘All Inlinks’ in the top menu.
This will allow you to evaluate which of the Custom Search pages already include an internal link to your chosen page. To cross reference your Custom Search results against the Inlink data, add a tab to your spreadsheet that includes the copied Inlink data and simply filter by the chosen page and cross reference using a formula such as VLOOKUP.
Tip: Inlink data will also include internal links from the main navigation menu so I would suggest that you filter the data just to include links found in the content.
7. After cross referencing your data, you should now be left with a list of pages that include the relevant anchor text and do not currently include an internal link to your chosen page. These are the key opportunities to update and include internal links that point back to the page that you want to boost.
As an additional step, you may also want to combine efforts and use Method 1 to highlight any additional opportunities.
As you can see, reviewing internal linking and creating a strategy for this can be really beneficial in terms of elevating your SEO efforts and there are a number of ways in which you can do this. Above, we have outlined some actionable recommendations on how to create or improve an effective internal linking strategy.
Whatever your goal is, improving link signals throughout your website might just be the perfect place to start when thinking about your next SEO strategy. Above all, a focus on user experience and how they navigate through your website should be at the core of your strategy.
To find out more about how an effective internal linking strategy can boost your website or help with your SEO, we’d love to hear from you!
Local SEO is a term that gets used frequently in regards to SEO optimization for local businesses and if you have a physical store or offer a product to people within a certain area, then chances are it will be at the top of your radar – so here’s a short guide to what local SEO is, how it works and how you can get started.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO refers to the practice of optimizing a website and its content to increase visibility and rankings in local search results. Local search results are the organic search results that appear in response to location-specific search queries, such as “restaurants near me” or “plumbers in San Francisco.”
Local SEO focuses on optimizing a website’s content, on-page elements, and off-page signals to increase its relevance and prominence for local search queries. This includes optimizing the website’s meta tags, content, and images for local keywords, as well as building local citations, listings, and backlinks to establish the website’s authority and relevance in the local market.
Local SEO is particularly important for businesses with a physical presence or those that serve a specific geographic area, such as local service providers, restaurants, retailers, and healthcare providers. By optimizing their website and online presence for local search, these businesses can improve their visibility and attract more local customers.
How Important Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is incredibly important for businesses that operate in a specific geographic area or have a physical location, as it can directly impact their ability to attract and retain local customers. Here are some reasons why local SEO is important for businesses:
⚡️Increases visibility: Local SEO can help businesses appear in the top results for relevant local searches, making it easier for potential customers to find and contact them.
⚡️Improves credibility: A strong local SEO presence can help establish a business’s credibility and authority in the local market, which can help build trust with local customers.
⚡️Enhances user experience: Local SEO can help businesses optimize their website and online presence for local users, providing them with the information they need to make informed decisions about where to shop or do business.
⚡️Boosts website traffic: By appearing in the top results for local searches, businesses can attract more website traffic and increase their chances of converting website visitors into customers.
⚡️Increases conversions: Local SEO can help businesses target customers who are actively searching for their products or services, increasing the likelihood that those customers will convert into paying customers.
Local SEO can be incredibly important for websites who are looking to attract a local audience or for businesses where the search intent is deemed to be local.The approach can be quite different to normal SEO as well, so it’s always worth evaluating client need and situation before determining which approach is best for them.
How Does Local SEO Differ From Normal SEO?
One of the main differences between local SEO and normal SEO is the focus on local keywords. This requires businesses to conduct extensive keyword research to identify the most relevant and profitable local keywords for their industry and location.
Another important aspect of local SEO is optimizing a business’s Google My Business profile. Google My Business is a free listing service provided by Google that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including search results and maps. Optimizing a Google My Business profile involves providing accurate and up-to-date information about the business, including its name, address, phone number, and hours of operation. This can help improve a business’s visibility in local search results and increase its chances of attracting local customers.
In addition to optimizing for local keywords and Google My Business, local SEO also involves building citations. A citation is any mention of a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on the web. Building citations can help improve a business’s visibility and authority in the local market, as well as improve its rankings in local search results. This involves submitting the business’s NAP information to local directories, review sites, and other relevant websites.
Normal SEO, on the other hand, is focused on optimizing a website and its content for broader, non-location-specific search queries. This may involve optimizing for industry-specific keywords, improving website structure and navigation, creating high-quality content, building backlinks, and more. The focus of normal SEO is to improve a website’s visibility and rankings in organic search results, regardless of location.
It’s important for businesses to understand the differences between local SEO and normal SEO to develop an effective marketing strategy that meets their specific needs and goals.
What Is NAP?
In the context of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), “NAP” refers to the consistency of a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) across all online directories, listings, and citations.
Search engines, such as Google, use NAP information as a signal of a business’s legitimacy, accuracy, and trustworthiness. Therefore, it is essential for businesses to ensure that their NAP information is accurate and consistent across all online platforms where it appears.
Inconsistencies in NAP information can confuse search engines and potential customers, which can negatively impact a business’s search engine ranking, local search visibility, and online reputation. Therefore, businesses should regularly audit their online presence to ensure that their NAP information is consistent and up-to-date.
How Do I Build Effective Citations For Local SEO?
When it comes to local SEO, building effective citations is essential. Citations are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites. The more consistent and accurate your citations are, the higher you are likely to rank in local search results. Here are some tips to help you build effective citations:
Firstly, ensure that your NAP information is accurate and consistent across all directories and platforms. This means checking your name, address, and phone number for accuracy and ensuring that they match exactly across all platforms.
Secondly, claim your business listings on popular directories such as Google My Business, Yelp, Bing Places, and Facebook. This will allow you to manage your listings and keep them up-to-date.
Thirdly, optimize your business listings by filling out all the available fields, including your hours of operation, website URL, and other relevant information. This will help to provide users with all the information they need to know about your business.
Fourthly, focus on building citations on high-quality and authoritative websites that are relevant to your industry. These citations will carry more weight and help to improve your local search rankings.
Fifthly, use local keywords in your business descriptions and on your website. This will help search engines understand where your business is located and what services you offer.
Finally, regularly monitor your citations to ensure that they remain accurate and consistent. If you find any inconsistencies or errors, make sure to correct them as soon as possible. By following these tips, you can build effective citations that will help to improve your local SEO rankings and drive more traffic to your business.
How Do I Optimise Google My Business For Local SEO?
Optimising your Google My Business (GMB) account plays an important part in developing your local SEO performance – so it’s important that we optimise this as best as we can. Here are some of the best ways to optimise your GMB profile for local SEO:
⚡️Complete your business profile: Ensure that your GMB profile is complete and accurate, including your business name, address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and business description. Add photos and videos of your business to showcase your products, services, and location.
⚡️Choose the right categories: Select the most relevant categories for your business to help Google understand what your business is about and what services you offer. You can select primary and secondary categories to give Google more context about your business.
⚡️Get more reviews: Encourage your customers to leave reviews on your GMB page. Reviews can help improve your business’s visibility and credibility in search results. Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative, to show that you care about your customers’ feedback.
⚡️Use local keywords: Incorporate relevant local keywords into your business name, description, and posts. This will help your business show up in local search results when people search for products or services in your area.
⚡️Post regularly: Post regularly on your GMB page to keep your page fresh and engaging. Share updates, promotions, events, and other relevant information about your business. This will also help improve your business’s visibility in search results.
⚡️Monitor insights: Use the insights tab in your GMB account to track your page’s performance, including how many people viewed your profile, clicked on your website, and called your business. Use this data to optimize your GMB strategy and improve your local SEO.
It’s always worth focusing on GMB as a way of driving additional traffic to your website from a local SEO perspective – it can help to generate additional traffic to the website while also allowing you to collate valuable information like user reviews which can also help to boost authority and trust around your brand.
What Are Some Top Tips For Ranking In The Map Pack?
In addition to ranking well in the general SERPs, another key aim of local SEO is ranking in the map pack – the map pack is a feature on Google that displays a map with three local business listings related to a search query. Optimizing for Google Map Pack can help increase visibility for local businesses.
Ranking in the Google Map Pack, also known as the Local Pack or 3-Pack, requires a combination of various factors that impact local search visibility. Here are some tips to improve your chances of ranking in the Google Map Pack:
⚡️Create and Optimize a Google My Business (GMB) Listing: GMB is a free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Google Maps. To rank in the Map Pack, create a GMB listing, verify your business information, and optimize your profile by adding photos, business hours, and other relevant information.
⚡️Get Reviews and Ratings: Reviews and ratings are an important ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. Encourage your customers to leave reviews on your GMB listing, and respond to them promptly and professionally.
⚡️Ensure Consistency in NAP Information: As I mentioned earlier, consistency in your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) is crucial for local search ranking. Make sure your NAP information is accurate and consistent across all online platforms where your business is listed.
⚡️Build Local Citations: A citation is a mention of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites or directories. Building local citations from reputable websites can improve your local search ranking.
⚡️Optimize Your Website for Local SEO: Optimize your website for local SEO by including relevant keywords, location-based content, and schema markup. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and has a fast loading speed.
⚡️Get Backlinks from Local Websites: Backlinks from reputable local websites can also boost your local search ranking. Reach out to local bloggers, news websites, or other businesses in your area to see if they would be willing to link to your website.
Remember, local search ranking is an ongoing process, and it may take time to see results. Stay patient and persistent, and continue to optimize your online presence for local SEO.
Do I Need Local SEO?
If your business operates a local presence then local SEO is a great way to optimize for visitors to your store and people who are looking for your product within your area. If you are a place of interest or restaurant, bar or activity then this can be even more important as it can help to put you on the map when people are out searching.
Even if you aren’t directly local, having a GMB listing and optimising for local can help you to gain extra space within the search results, which is always valuable from an SEO perspective.
To find out more about local SEO or for help with implementation, get in touch!
Delighted to kick off the week by announcing that we have been nominated for 12 European Search Awards, it’s great to see everyone’s hard work rewarded over the last 12 months & to be recognised for some of the great client achievements we’ve had in this time!
Some of our nominations include:
🍉 Best SEO Agency 🍉 Best Use Of PR In Search 🍉 Best Use Of Search (Finance) 🍉 Best SEO Campaign 🍉 Best PPC Campaign
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the event in Lisbon in May! ☀️ 🍷🍹 You can find a full list of nominations here
Link acquisition has been around in many forms for years and has often been seen as one of the most important elements within an SEO campaign. Links are a great way to showcase to Google that people trust your website and find it useful – after all they are linking to it – and they’re also a great way to drive referral visitors to your website, in addition to building a great neighbourhood for your website to be in – but it’s not enough to just build links into your website and leave it at that, you need a strategy to maximise the impact of link building by looking at which pages you are directing your links into.
Many people focus exclusively on building links to the homepage, but in many instances this misses out a lot of value that can be created from deeper page linking.
Deeper page linking is something that has been discussed widely – but in practice it’s something that we need to actively incorporate into our campaigns. We can help to guide this by developing effective/thematic strategies to target specific sections of our website with targeted campaign to help grow authority within these sections and improve overall performance.
Why Is Deeper Page Linking Important?
So you might be asking – is it not enough for me just to build great links into my website? While building great quality links into a website definitely helps performance, if we look at the mechanisms of link flow and equity we can see why targeting these campaigns to specific sections can help to add value.
Think of your website as one entity – any link juice that comes into that entity is received by the page the link is pointing to – as such, if 80% of your links point into your homepage then this will likely be one of the strongest pages on your website. This is great if you want your homepage to rank well, but in most instances, the pages with the best user intent match and the pages we want our users to go to sit further within our website, usually on product or service pages – and these are the areas we really want to give an equity boost.
With so many pages often on your website and usually some form of navigation to link all your key pages to the homepage, by the time you get to these pages a lot of link equity has been lost along the way and therefore the value from these links can often be heavily deprecated from what it was when it initially reached the website – as such, the value of getting link equity from the homepage to your sub-pages is far less than getting value directly from the source – hence deeper page linking is a popular option. By building the link directly to the page you are maximising the equity that you are passing to this page and helping to give that sub-section a boost.
Building links to deeper pages on your website can provide several benefits for your SEO strategy. One of the most significant advantages is the improved visibility and authority of individual pages on your site. When you build links to deeper pages, you signal to search engines that these pages are valuable and relevant, which can boost their rankings in search results.
This is especially important for websites with a large number of pages, as it can be difficult for search engines to identify and prioritize the most important pages on the site. By building links to deeper pages, you can help to ensure that these pages are given the attention they deserve.
Another benefit of deeper page link building is the potential to increase traffic, conversions, and revenue. When you improve the rankings of individual pages on your site, you make it more likely that people will find and visit those pages. This can lead to increased engagement with your content, more leads or sales, and ultimately a stronger bottom line.
How Do I Know Which Pages To Target?
If you aren’t sure which pages to target then a good start is to look at the pages that you are trying to rank/optimise or the pages that are the most valuable/important on your website.
There are several techniques and tools that you can use to identify which pages on your website to build links to for SEO. Here are a few:
💡 Analyze your website’s analytics data: One of the best places to start is by analyzing your website’s analytics data to identify which pages are already receiving the most traffic. By building links to these pages, you can help to improve their rankings and drive even more traffic to your site. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics can provide you with detailed information about your website’s traffic, including which pages are the most popular.
💡 Use a backlink analysis tool: Another option is to use a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to identify which pages on your site are already receiving links from other websites. These tools can help you to identify the most authoritative and relevant pages on your site, as well as opportunities for building additional links.
💡 Conduct keyword research: Conducting keyword research can also be helpful in identifying which pages on your site to target with link building. By identifying the keywords that are most relevant to your business and your audience, you can create content that targets those keywords and build links to the pages that contain that content. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and SEMrush Keyword Research can help you identify relevant keywords.
💡 Conduct a content audit: Conducting a content audit of your website can also be helpful in identifying which pages to target with link building. By reviewing your existing content and identifying gaps or opportunities for improvement, you can create new content that is optimized for search engines and build links to those pages.
Overall, there are many techniques and tools available to help you identify which pages on your website to target with link building for SEO. By taking a strategic approach and focusing on building links to your most authoritative and relevant pages, you can improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.
What Tools Can I Use To Evaluate Which Pages I Should Build Links To?
There are several tools you can use to evaluate which pages you should build links to for SEO. Here are a few options:
💡 Ahrefs: A popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze the backlinks of your competitors and see which pages are getting the most links. You can also use it to analyze your own website and identify pages that are lacking in backlinks.
💡 SEMrush: Another popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze backlinks and identify the most important pages on your website. You can also use it to track your rankings and monitor your competitors.
💡 Moz: This tool provides a backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.
💡 Majestic: This tool has a comprehensive backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.
💡 Google Search Console: This free tool from Google provides insights into your website’s performance, including which pages are receiving the most traffic and which pages are linking to your site. This can help you identify pages that are important for SEO and prioritize them for link building efforts.
Ultimately, the best tool for evaluating which pages to build links to will depend on your specific needs and preferences. You may want to try out a few different options to find the one that works best for you.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s not hard to get started with deeper link building, with a couple of quick steps. Firstly, identify the pages on your website where you need to build internal authority, secondly create effective digital PR campaigns to drive links into these and finally, outreach your great campaigns. In no time you’ll be building authority into the website and reaping the rewards of it.
E-E-A-T contributes to a high quality web page, which is extremely important for Google and therefore extremely important for SEO. E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust and in terms of Google, these are the elements that they think make a high quality web page and in order to rank and gain organic traffic, your web page needs to demonstrate all four of these factors.
E-E-A-T is a set of guidelines used by Google’s Search Quality Raters to ensure search results are relevant, useful and trustworthy for the users. Updating E-A-T to E-E-A-T helps Google to maintain the quality of their search results. By demonstrating experience, expertise, authority and trust, you are improving the quality of your website which is extremely important for Google. So, by incorporating E-E-A-T and improving the quality of your website, you are creating a better user experience which is what Google is looking for so this could lead to higher rankings and a more engaged audience.
Let’s take a closer look at what the acronym E-E-A-T actually means for SEO and how it will impact your web page.
Experience
As we have discussed. The new “E” that stands for experience was rolled out in 2022 and this means that Google wants to see if the content that has been written demonstrates that it was produced with some degree of experience. For example, having actually used a product, or having actually visited a place. Google realises that there are some situations when users are searching and the most valuable content is content that has been produced by someone who has first hand experience on the topic that they are writing about. Google wants valuable experience to be included in your content because it is making sure that the content on the search engine is reliable and useful so that the results on the search engine are providing searchers with what they are looking for.
Expertise
The second “E” stands for expertise and this refers to the level of knowledge and skills that the author of the website has in the subject matter they are presenting on the web page. The level of expertise can be demonstrated through the quality of the content that has been written by the author. The depth of the information that has been provided by the author, the use of authoritative sources and the author’s credentials and qualifications can all factor into the expertise of the web page. In order to establish expertise, the author and the website must demonstrate a high level of knowledge and understanding of the topic that they are presenting. This can help to build trust with the user and will establish the author or website as a credible source of information in their specific field.
Authority
The “A” in E-E-A-T stands for authority and this refers to the level of authority and reputation that the author or website has in the subject matter that they are presenting. The level of authoritativeness of a page can also be demonstrated by the quality and depth of the content and the author’s credentials but the amount of engagement and shares the content has received can also demonstrate authoritativeness. Any signals that indicate that the content is widely respected and trusted in the field will prove authoritativeness. For example, if a medical website is written by a team of qualified doctors and the content is cited from other reputable medical websites, it will be considered an authoritative web page.
Trust
The “T” in E-E-A-T stands for trust and it is key for Google to understand whether your website is trustworthy for its users. The trustworthiness of a page refers to the level of reliability, accuracy and transparency that the content on the website has. The level of trustworthiness on a website can be demonstrated through various factors such as the use of reputable sources, gaining great backlinks and reviews. By establishing trustworthiness, the author or website can build trust with the user and can establish themselves as a credible and reliable source in their specific field.
Why is E-E-A-T important?
When it comes to E-E-A-T, all areas are extremely important, but in the search quality rater guidelines, Google regards trust as the most important member of the E-E-A-T family.
Google’s ultimate goal is to provide users with relevant, accurate and trustworthy information. By evaluating the E-E-A-T on your website, Google will be able to determine the quality and credibility of the content on your website and will therefore rank it accordingly. And although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor for Google like page speed or mobile-friendliness, the concept of E-E-A-T will be used by Google to evaluate the quality and credibility of websites, which they consider to be an extremely important factor of your web page, so will in turn affect the ranking of your web pages because the if the quality of your website is high then it is making for a better overall user experience.
Google’s quality rater guidelines explicitly state that evaluators should consider E-E-A-T when they are assessing the quality of websites. Pages with a low level of E-E-A-T will be regarded as a low quality page and pages with a high level of E-E-A-T will therefore be regarded as a high quality web page. Pages with high levels of E-E-A-T are more likely to rank well but it is important to remember that this is just one of the many factors that Google uses to determine their search rankings.
As well as promoting a high quality web page to Google, optimising your E-E-A-T signals will help to improve the user experience on your website. Websites with a high level of E-E-A-T are more likely to engage users and encourage them to spend more time on their website. This can in turn lead to increased traffic, higher engagement and ultimately, a better SEO experience.
It is therefore extremely important for website owners to focus on improving E-E-A-T signals by producing high-quality content that is based on experience and that is informative, accurate and trustworthy and, by establishing the author’s authoritativeness and trustworthiness in their specific field.
How to improve E-E-A-T on your website
Having now discussed the importance of E-E-A-T for SEO, you can see that improving your E-E-A-T can have a big impact on your web page’s rankings because it is directly linked to improving the user experience. So, here are some things you can do to improve the E-E-A-T of your website.
➡️ Write high quality content
➡️ Provide accurate information that covers the topic in depth
➡️ Include the author’s first hand experience relating to the topic
➡️ Include tips and hacks that demonstrate first hand experience of the subject
➡️ Review and update your content regularly
➡️ Cite reputable sources
➡️ Earn backlinks from other reputable sources in the same field
➡️ Include reviews on your website
➡️ Include the author’s credentials and qualifications
➡️ Include an ‘About Us’ section on your website including credentials and qualifications
By improving these areas, you can improve the E-E-A-T of your website and this can lead to a better user experience for your users, and therefore a higher ranking because Google will see your web pages as more valuable for the users.
E-E-A-T for YMYL pages
E-E-A-T is especially important for YMYL (your money or your life) web pages, which include content that provides information that could significantly impact a person’s health, finances or safety. Google holds these web pages to a higher standard of quality and accuracy because the information that is included on these pages can have a significant impact on people’s lives. Therefore, Google uses E-E-A-T as a critical factor when they are evaluating these pages. YMYL pages that demonstrate high levels of E-E-A-T are more likely to rank higher in the SERPs because Google knows that the quality of these pages will be extremely high.
For YMYL content, E-E-A-T is extremely important, Google will expect the authors of these pages to have relevant expertise, education and experience in the specific area that they are providing information on. Additionally, Google will look for authoritative sources to support the YMYL content and the websites must have a high level of trust throughout the website.
YMYL websites that do not meet the E-E-A-T standards are less likely to rank for these types of queries so it is crucial for these websites to focus on E-E-A-T factors when creating YMYL content to ensure it meets the quality rater standards and provides accurate and reliable information to the users.
Summary
To summarise, E-E-A-T is an important concept to understand when it comes to SEO. By demonstrating experience, expertise, authority and trust, you can improve the quality of your website and content, which will therefore provide users with helpful content, which in turn can help your website to rank better.
It is extremely important to optimise your E-E-A-T signals when it comes to SEO because ultimately, providing high quality content is going to improve your users’ experience which is highly important for Google. Hopefully, this blog has helped you to understand E-E-A-T and how you can improve it for your website so that you can create that better user experience.
We’re delighted to announce that our Director Amanda Walls will be speaking at the April Brighton SEO event in front of an audience of thousands talking everything SEO & Digital PR.
Amanda will be speaking on the Wednesday afternoon at the Online PR Show with her talk discussing “Using Digital PR To Enhance Your EEAT Signals” – a great talk for anyone looking to use digital PR to enhance their overall SEO – or for anyone who particularly works in a YMYL industry, where this is held to an even higher standard – to get a better understanding of how they can utilise digital PR in this way.
The talk will have:
💥 Lots of great Case Studies which show how digital PR can help boost your SEO
💥 Great ideas on how to think outside of the box when it comes to newsjacking & thought leadership
💥Insight into why digital PR matters for EEAT
💥 Ideas on how to get journalists to come to you!
So if that sounds of interest get yourself booked on or check the talk out online when an online version of the conference day is released the week after.
Digital PR is probably one of the most popular services that we offer at Cedarwood and we were early to market with this product – starting our offering back when our business began around seven years ago. Back then, Digital PR was referred to as “link building” (they are very different!), certainly wasn’t the buzzword it was today and it was a rare occurrence in a world of paid for link acquisition.
Today, thanks to the rise of Google tightening its link spam algorithms and a number of agencies (and SEO experts) championing the values of Digital PR, we find that EVERYONE is talking about it (even John Mueller!) – but we still find that in many situations when we are approached by clients they can be a little unsure as to what it is and how it differs from traditional PR.
So let’s take a look at what Digital PR is, how it differs from traditional PR and how you can combine tactics from both to deliver a great link acquisition campaign.
What Is Digital PR?
Digital PR is an online form of PR, which essentially looks to promote visibility and awareness for your business through digital platforms and online. Digital PR takes a lot of the elements from traditional PR and puts an online spin on them – so that still includes coverage for your clients, increasing brand awareness and making sure that you land all important links, but with digital PR you really have to consider what is going to land in the online space.
Digital PR is a slightly different skill set because it’s really focuses on online only with offline being a secondary consideration. It’s widely used for businesses that are online first and are looking to gain traction amongst their target audience as well as build those all-important links back to their website.
What Is Traditional PR?
By contrast, traditional PR has more of an offline focus or as you could say a combined focus, think events activation, newspapers, integrated campaigns, tv, radio, newspapers, billboards – everything that you have come to associate with this timeless form of PR. That’s not to say that you can’t combine elements of this for a very effective Digital PR campaign – it’s more that these are what you would traditionally associate with a Digital PR campaign.
Traditional PR doesn’t necessarily focus on attracting a digital presence and as such, for businesses that are online only it can often be seen as missing their target demographic. That said, there is no reason why traditional PR techniques can’t be used effectively to help drive success across Digital PR campaigns.
What Is The Biggest Difference?
The biggest difference between traditional and digital PR is the platform that it’s generally targeted at, with traditional PR focused on a more traditional offline audience, whereas digital PR being targeted at a predominantly online audience. It’s this targeting strategy that also contributes to whether or not one is more effective than the other for your ideal audience.
There are many other differences between traditional and digital PR including:
Feedback & engagement – due to the advent of online “comment” posts it’s a lot easier to get feedback on your content through Digital PR than it is through traditional PR, this can give you a good insight as to how your content has performed and also inspire you if you are to continue with that type of content in the future
Audience sizes – although traditional PR can give you a good audience size, the digital world is infinitely larger and digital campaigns can reach an international audience at a much greater scale than a traditional campaign.
Intent & Interest-Based targeting – one of the main differences between digital and traditional PR is the ways you can target your audience. With Digital PR you have the option to choose between interest and intent-based audiences – that’s the option to actually put your product in front of the user at the time they are searching for it, whereas with traditional PR this is mostly limited to the user’s interest by placing it within a specific magazine or publication
Purpose – the purpose of the two campaigns is often very different. In a lot of instances, Digital PR is designed to drive visitors and awareness to a website – and in many cases to support SEO through effective and targeted link acquisition. By contrast, traditional PR can be more about brand awareness and driving visibility – it can also be used as a direct sales platform but this is often slightly more difficult to attribute.
Measurement – Last but not least, one of the main differences between digital and traditional PR is the way that you measure it. Digital PR is in most instances a little easier to measure – you can rack based on link and link quality as well as reach and various other key metrics, traditional PR by contrast is just that little bit more difficult to measure – but it can still be done by coverage, reach etc…
Does This Change The Skill Set?
Many people think that you need a completely different skill set for traditional digital PR and this isn’t entirely true – but it definitely helps to have the online connections and contacts when you are trying to run a digital PR campaign. Digital PR is also incredibly fast paced and there are elements like newsjacking which do require experience and also an understanding of where to go to seek out an effective story – as a result this can become an important skill set to develop if you are looking to make the transition from traditional through to digital PR.
Are Traditional PR Skills Transferable to Digital PR?
100% you can transfer many traditional PR skills over to digital PR very effectively, but it’s important as with any campaign to take the time to understand what the client is trying to achieve with their campaign – and it might be that with digital PR that differs from what a standard traditional PR client is looking to achieve.
There are also a number of super valuable skills that traditional PRs can bring over to digital PR, in particular established journalist relationships – many of whom may now work for digital publications in addition to traditional offline publications and many of whom will have stories that they have written for print published online. In addition, an eye for a good story/angle in addition to a strong press release hook and timing for outreach are all important skills for digital PR which are carried across from traditional PR.
Is Digital PR More Popular Than Traditional PR?
I wouldn’t say that one type of PR is necessarily more popular than the other, but it would be fair to say that digital PR has seen a significant rise in interest over the last 24 months mainly due to its support for SEO and also that it has a proven track record of helping businesses to grow particularly in the online space.
The trend of digital PR took off massively during COVID-19 when businesses were forced online due to physical stores and properties being closed. At this time, people were looking for ways online to market their products and services – predominantly as this is where the audience was – and as such, digital PR took off.
We can see how the growth of digital PR has evolved over time, so it’s not that traditional PR is necessarily less popular, I would rather say that digital PR has evolved to be even more popular than it was before.
Is Digital PR Or Traditional PR Right For My Business?
Choosing the right type of PR for your business plays an important role in getting the most out of your campaign and it’s important to ensure that you understand your target market and which type of PR might be most effective.
If you are looking to attract a traditional audience and grow offline brand awareness and visibility then traditional PR is a great option. By contrast, if you are looking to grow your business online then digital PR is a great choice. To find out more about digital PR and how it could work for you get in touch!
We’re delighted to announce that we have been nominated for four awards in the PR Moment Awards 2023 for our work across Digital PR.
Digital PR has been the biggest growth area of Cedarwood over the last 12 months so we are delighted to have our work recognised by the PR industry, in addition to the work we undertake for SEO!
We’ve been nominated in:
🎀 Best Digital PR Campaign Of The Year:
Cedarwood Digital & Little Loans – Driving Digital PR In A Competitive Vertical Cedarwood Digital & Patient Claim Line – Building E-A-T Links Cedarwood Digital & Hayes Garden World – Building Visibility Through Effective Digital PR
🎀 Low Budget Campaign Of The Year:
Cedarwood Digital & EZ Shopper – Driving Ecommerce Success Through PR & Referral Sales
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the ceremony next month 🍹
In my opinion, log file analysis is one of the most underrated pieces of SEO analysis you can conduct – a fairly bold statement for sure – but if you have the ability to see how Google is actually crawling and understanding your website, as opposed to “emulating it” through tools like Screaming Frog, then this data is one of the most valuable insights that you can have to really understanding how Google views your website and more importantly how it sees the different sections connecting together.
Now I’m not saying there isn’t value in emulation tools, there’s a lot, and over the years I’ve used them significantly to help uncover potential technical issues across websites with great success – but in recent years I’ve really come to understand the value of Google’s direct crawl data and how when used properly, it can really help you to uncover potential blockers, issues and challenges on the website, in addition to understanding how to overcome these – that’s why I think that log file file analysis is an essential element of any complete technical audit.
What Is Log File Analysis?
Log file analysis for SEO is a process of examining the server log files to gain insights into how search engine crawlers and bots interact with a website. When a search engine crawls a website, it records the activity in the server log files, which can provide valuable information about how the site is being crawled, what pages are being visited, and how often. By analyzing these log files, SEO professionals can uncover issues that may be hindering the site’s performance in search engine results pages (SERPs) and identify opportunities to improve it.
Log file analysis involves a range of tasks, including identifying the search engine bots that are crawling the site, analyzing the frequency and duration of their visits, and monitoring the crawl budget allocated to the site. Additionally, log file analysis can help identify crawl errors, such as broken links or pages that return a 404 error, and ensure that search engine bots are able to access and crawl all of the site’s important pages. By using log file analysis to optimize a website for search engines, SEO professionals can help ensure that the site is easily discoverable by search engines and ultimately improve its visibility and rankings in SERPs.
Why Do I Need Log File Analysis?
Log file analysis is valuable for SEO for several reasons:
💡 Discovering crawl issues: Log files can help SEO professionals identify crawl issues that may be preventing search engine bots from discovering and indexing important pages on the site. This includes identifying broken links, pages returning a 404 error, or pages that are too slow to load, among other issues.
💡 Understanding crawl behavior: By analyzing log files, SEO professionals can gain insights into how search engine bots are crawling the site, such as which pages are being crawled most frequently, how often the site is being crawled, and which bots are crawling the site. This information can help inform SEO strategies and optimize the site for better search engine visibility.
💡 Improving crawl efficiency: Log file analysis can help optimize crawl budget by identifying pages that are being crawled unnecessarily or too frequently. This allows SEO professionals to prioritize the crawling of important pages, ensuring that they are crawled and indexed by search engines.
It provides valuable insights that you can’t get elsewhere and as a result, can help you uncover errors which might have previously been missed.
What Do I Need For A Log File Analysis?
To perform log file analysis, you will need access to the server log files that record the activity on your website. There are different types of log files that can be used for log file analysis, depending on the server and the software used to generate the logs. The most common types of log files are:
💡Apache log files: Apache is a popular web server software, and Apache log files are commonly used for log file analysis. Apache log files are typically stored in a plain text format and contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
💡NGINX log files: NGINX is another popular web server software, and NGINX log files are similar to Apache log files. NGINX log files typically contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
💡IIS log files: IIS is a web server software developed by Microsoft, and IIS log files are commonly used on Windows-based servers. IIS log files typically contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
Regardless of the type of log file, it is important to ensure that the log files contain the necessary information for log file analysis. This typically includes the user agent string, which identifies the search engine bots that are crawling the site, and the referrer, which identifies the source of the request (such as a search engine results page or a backlink).
What Should I Use For Log File Analysis?
There are several log file analysis tools available that can help you efficiently and effectively analyze your server log files. The choice of which tool to use will depend on your specific needs and preferences. Here are a few popular options:
💡Google Search Console: Google Search Console provides a range of SEO tools, including log file analysis. The log file analysis feature allows you to upload your server log files and view reports on how Google crawls your site. You can see which pages are being crawled most frequently, identify crawl errors, and optimize your crawl budget.
💡Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer: Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer is a desktop application that allows you to analyze log files from multiple sources, including Apache, NGINX, and IIS. The tool provides detailed reports on crawl behavior, including the frequency and duration of bot visits, and allows you to identify crawl issues and optimize crawl budget.
💡Logz.io: Logz.io is a cloud-based log management platform that offers log file analysis as part of its suite of features. The tool allows you to collect and analyze log data from multiple sources, including web servers and applications, and provides advanced analysis and visualization features, such as machine learning-powered anomaly detection and customizable dashboards.
💡ELK Stack: ELK Stack is an open-source log management platform that includes Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. The platform allows you to collect, analyze, and visualize log data from multiple sources, including web servers, applications, and network devices. The ELK Stack offers advanced analysis and visualization features, such as machine learning-powered anomaly detection and real-time data monitoring.
These are just a few examples of the many log file analysis tools available. When choosing a log file analysis tool, consider factors such as your budget, the size of your log files, the complexity of the analysis you need to perform, and the level of technical expertise required to use the tool.
Can I Use Excel To Analyse Log Files?
Yes, Excel can be used to perform log file analysis, although it may not be the most efficient or scalable solution for large log files. Excel can be used to open and sort log files, filter data based on specific criteria, and perform basic calculations and analysis.
To get started with log file analysis in Excel, you can open the log file in Excel and use the “Text to Columns” feature to separate the data into different columns based on delimiters such as spaces or tabs. You can then use Excel’s filtering and sorting features to isolate specific data, such as search engine bot activity or crawl errors.
However, keep in mind that Excel has some limitations when it comes to handling large log files, such as performance issues and the potential for data loss or errors. For larger log files, it may be more efficient to use specialized log file analysis tools that are designed for handling large amounts of data and providing more advanced analysis and visualization features.
What Are The Main Things I Should Look For In Log File Analysis?
When analyzing server log files, there are several key metrics and insights that you should look for to optimize your website’s SEO performance. Here are some of the main things to look for in a log file analysis:
⚡️ Crawl frequency: Look at how often search engine bots are crawling your site, and which pages are being crawled most frequently. This can help you identify pages that are being crawled too frequently or not frequently enough, and optimize your crawl budget accordingly.
⚡️ Crawl errors: Identify any crawl errors or issues that search engine bots are encountering when crawling your site. This can include broken links, server errors, or blocked pages.
⚡️ Internal linking: Analyze the internal linking structure of your site by looking at which pages are linking to each other and how often. This can help you identify pages that may need more internal links to improve their SEO performance.
⚡️ Response codes: Look at the response codes in your log files to identify any pages that are returning errors or redirects. This can help you identify pages that may need to be fixed or redirected to improve your site’s user experience and SEO performance.
⚡️ User agents: Identify the user agents in your log files to see which search engines and bots are crawling your site. This can help you optimize your site for specific search engines and understand how different bots interact with your site.
⚡️ Referrers: Look at the referrers in your log files to see where your traffic is coming from, such as search engines, social media, or other websites. This can help you identify which sources are driving the most traffic to your site and optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.
These are just a few examples of the main things to look for in a log file analysis. Depending on your specific needs and goals, you may also want to analyze other metrics, such as page load times, click-through rates, or conversion rates.
How Much Time Does It Usually Take?
The time it takes to analyze log files for SEO purposes can also vary depending on various factors such as the size of the log files, the complexity of the website or application, the level of detail required, and the tools and methods used.
For smaller websites, log file analysis for SEO purposes may only take a few hours or a day. However, for larger and more complex websites or applications, the analysis may take several days or even weeks.
In addition, the level of detail required in the analysis will also affect the time it takes to complete. A high-level analysis that provides a general overview of website traffic and user behavior may take less time than a detailed analysis that requires deeper insights into specific user actions and behavior.
It’s also worth noting that log file analysis for SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and analysis. As such, the time it takes to complete the analysis may depend on the frequency and extent of analysis required for your specific needs.
How Many Files Do I Need?
The number of log files you need for log file analysis for SEO will depend on the size of your website or application, the volume of traffic and user interactions, and the level of detail you require in your analysis.
Ideally, you should analyze all the log files generated by your web server to get a comprehensive view of user behavior and traffic on your site. However, this may not be practical or necessary for all websites.
In general, it’s recommended to analyze at least a few weeks’ worth of log files to get a good understanding of user behavior and traffic patterns. This will help identify any issues or opportunities for improvement in your website’s SEO performance.
You can also consider filtering the log files to focus on specific sections of your website or specific types of user behavior, which can help reduce the volume of data you need to analyze and make the analysis process more manageable.
Ultimately, the number of log files you need for log file analysis for SEO will depend on your specific needs and goals. It’s important to work with a knowledgeable SEO professional or use reliable SEO tools to help you determine the best approach for your website or application.
How Do I Get Started?
If after reading the above you want to get started on log file analysis then get in touch with your web developers (or your clients!) to get the files you need and get started. This valuable insight can really help you to identify any potential issues within the crawl and most importantly help to ensure that Google is crawling the website in an efficient manner – and getting to the pages that you need it to!
To find out more about log file analysis or for help with your SEO get in touch!
If you have an ecommerce store, then chances are that SEO will be close to the top of your priority list. After all, getting traffic – and more importantly, high intent traffic to your website plays an important role in driving sales and the success of your store.
Tackling SEO for ecommerce websites, particularly those with thousands of individual products can be a challenge especially when you add in elements like filters, faceted navigation and infinite scroll – so if you are looking to put your best foot forward and get ahead of your ecommerce SEO, we’ve put together a handy checklist for you below to help you improve your SEO performance and drive those all important sales to your website.
Here are the top things that you need to review to ensure that your ecommerce website has the best possible chance at SEO performance:
Crawl & Indexation
Effective crawl and indexation is one of the most important elements of an ecommerce SEO strategy as if your website or its content isn’t in Google’s index then it won’t be found by users who are searching. Ensuring that your website is indexed and then checking that Google can effectively crawl your pages is important to ensuring that your content is available to Google and has the best possible chance of returning in the search results. To help with this you can use the following:
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a really effective way to check on the indexation of your website and it has a super easy to use interface which can show you how your website is being indexed in the eyes of Google.
The “Page indexing” functionality shows how many pages are indexed and any potential indexation issues for the website, this can include pages which are excluded by “noindex” tags, pages which are canonicalised any other potential indexation issues.
The report can be a great way of understanding any potential indexation issues or evaluating why pages haven’t appeared within Google’s index – in particular, the “Crawled – currently not indexed” column highlights pages which Google has accessed but not indexed as it has chosen to exclude these pages from the index – this is often valuable insight for an ecommerce store as in many cases product variations such as colours, flavours, sizes etc… can be seen as duplication so by reviewing this you can identify the best way to index this content.
Log File Analysis
Log File Analysis is a great way to evaluate how Google is actually crawling your website and to identify any potential pain points or areas that Google can’t crawl (alternately also looking at which pages Google is crawling too frequently) – it can also help you identify if you have any orphaned content or content which has become unlinked from your main website and could therefore be problematic.
To do a thorough log file analysis we recommend at least 2-4 weeks of log files and to do them over several months to really understand how Google is crawling your website. Spider data is useful, but log files will really allow you to see what’s going on.
Crawl Analysis
In addition to log file analysis we’d also recommend undertaking a crawl analysis to evaluate how Google is crawling and indexing the website through an external tool such as Screaming Frog. By undertaking crawl analysis you can emulate the Google crawl, understanding how it reaches different pages and also the internal link value and structure of these pages – this approach can also help to identify any dead ends or issues where the Googlebot might not be able to get through.
Crawl analysis through a tool like Screaming Frog will help you to understand how effectively your website is being crawled and if there are any potential crawl issues which could be hampering your website from being effectively indexed and returned within the search results. It can also give you a good insight into the website’s crawl behaviours and if there’s any updates that you need to make to the internal linking to help improve the crawl path.
2. Page Titles & Headings
Page titles and headings are a hugely important part of your on-site SEO as they play an important role in signposting what content is on your website and what the content is about – think of them as a synopsis of the page. If you are trying to rank for “SEO agency” on Google then having a page title “SEO agency” with the heading “SEO agency” will definitely help to showcase to Google that that page exists on your website.
Page titles and headings should be clear and only focus on 1-2 keywords max – and there’s no harm in creating new pages for products that have reasonable search volume – in fact this is a great approach, especially when it comes to having a super-targeted page for specific categories or products. Undertaking fresh keyword research to identify where there is the opportunity to target new pages, and also undertaking research to evaluate if you are targeting the right keywords (i.e. should it be a cashmere “hat” or “beanie” based on product and search volume) will allow you to maximise the reach of your website and also ensure that you are gaining as much visibility as possible for your brand.
3. Page Copy
Page copy is incredibly important as it tells Google and the user about your products, brands or even your services. Ensure your copy is unique but also make it as helpful as possible – put yourselves in the shoes of the user to understand what it is that the user is looking for – have you answered their questions? Have you given them the chance to compare products? Have you given a guide to help them buy a particular product? These are all questions that the user will likely have so ensure that you are on hand to help them out.
As Google says in section 3.2 of the Page Quality Rater Guidelines, the “quality of the MC (main content) is one of the most important considerations for PQ (page quality) rating. Put simply, content is king and the quality of the content that you are putting onto your website, in addition to the reputation of the writer and the website that it’s published on, all play a key role in ensuring that your website is seen as trustworthy in Google’s eyes.
Google recently updated its Page Quality Rater Guidance to introduce the concept of E-E-A-T and at the centre of it all, was trust. Well-written content which is factually accurate and links out to good sources is a key component of trust on a website, so take the time to invest in creating effective content which is well-researched and factually backed, to ensure that you are giving yourself the best possible chance of adhering to strong on-page E-E-A-T.
4. About Us / Clear & Satisying Website Information
In the Page Quality Rater Guidelines one of the things that Google encourages raters to do is to look at a company’s “About Us” page to find out more about the company and the people who are behind the content on the website. Customer service is also an important aspect – particularly for an ecommerce website – and when it talks about “clear & satisfying website information” that means ensuring that a user can contact you if they need to – do you have a clear way for users to contact you? (either through a clear Contact Us page on the website or through a phone number in the top right hand corner) – are they able to get in touch if they need help or to return a product? Being able to offer effective customer service plays an important element in the trust of an ecommerce store, so ensuring that you offer “clear and satisfying website information” isn’t important only to Google, but also to your users.
5. Returns & Shipping Information
Which brings me onto the next point about returns and shipping information. While this is a staple on many ecommerce websites, ensuring that your returns & shipping information is clear and easily digestible is an important part of giving the user what they need.
Do you offer international shipping? Let your users know. What is your returns process like? By showcasing the information to Google and users you are not only giving them the “helpful” information that they need, you are also helping to build trust in your brand. Make sure this information is displayed clearly and easily accessible from both the main navigation of your website and also on specific product pages – pop outs can also help to detract users away from their user journey and this can also play an important role in boosting conversion rate.
6. Internal Linking
In our opinion one of the most under-rated SEO optimisation opportunities, internal linking, plays a key role in telling Google about your most important pages and ensuring that the Googlebot can effectively crawl through your pages, in addition to linking your content together semantically so that Google can understand what your pages are about and any supplementary content that you might have around them.
Internal linking is important to creating content clusters and pillar posts which help to group together your content themes – allowing Google to see that you have a depth of knowledge and trust about a particular topic when it comes to ranking you for it. Additionally, given that ecommerce websites often contain such a large amount of pages, internal linking can help to indicate which of these pages are most important, so if you are selling garden benches for example, linking different content such as bench buying guides, product launches and brand information into your key garden benches page, plays an important role in helping you to showcase your expertise around garden benches.
You can utilise Screaming Frog and other tools to help you gather a list of pages where there are internal linking opportunities – often blog content or category pages where you mention particular products, brands or categories but don’t link – and utilise this to pull together a linking strategy to help boost your internal navigation and link signals.
7. Schema Mark-up
Another invaluable SEO technique for ecommerce stores is the use and implementation of Schema and structured data mark-up, particularly product mark-up across products that are for sale in your store. The utilisation of schema helps Google to understand what is on your page and the implementation of key schema such as product mark-up and FAQ mark-up can also help you to pull key information about your products and services through to the search results.
FAQ schema is one of the most popular types of schema implementation and involves marking up questions or FAQ content on your pages. Including FAQs across category and product pages is a great way to give users additional information about your product or category range while also providing effective “helpful content”, by marking these up with FAQs you can also give Google the opportunity to present them within the search results as such:
By allowing you to see the FAQs within the search result you can get an understanding of the level of experience of a particular brand and their expertise.
Product schema is another great option if you are an ecommerce store or if you are selling a product online and in addition to giving valuable information to the user, this can also help to advise Google around important information pertaining to your products, this can include:
Price
Availability
Offers
Reviews
By implementing schema correctly, Google can pull this information through into the SERPs which can allow it to be displayed effectively and help to encourage users through to your website – especially if you are competitively priced and they have a price in mind.
Schema implementation can be relatively straightforward but it plays an important role in helping Google and users to understand more about your website and can be a real value add.
8. JavaScript & Code
Understanding how Google sees the JavaScript and code on your website plays a really important role in ensuring that your website is correctly indexed and that both Google and the user can understand what the page is about
In particular there have been a number of situations with JavaScript that has been incorrectly implemented has caused problems for Google across both crawl and indexation, most specifically this happens when JavaScript is implemented in a way that it blocks Google’s crawlers from effectively accessing the content therefore leading to Google not being able to see the content and therefore not valuing it as part of the page.
If you are unsure how Google is viewing the JavaScript on your website there are a number of ways that you can evaluate this in particular one very effective way is through using a tool to fetch and render your website in the way that Google would so that you can see if there are any render-blocking resources within your JavaScript which might be blocking the Googlebot from accessing your website. JavaScript can play an important role in the function of your website so it’s important to consider the impact that might have on your SEO when utilising it within the code, by using fetch and render it allows you to understand how Google sees this and allows you to ensure that your content can be effectively crawled and indexed.
9. Site Speed
Site speed plays an important role in your user experience and as such it plays a very important role and how effective the SEO on your website is. Google has for many years spoken about how important site speed is and in many cases it used to be true that if a website took over three seconds to load 50% of users would leave, this obviously isn’t ideal if you’re looking to attract and retain users on your website.
If you aren’t sure how your site speed currently performs then you can use the Google page speed insights tool to really understand how your website stacks up and a number of different speed metrics. The pagespeed insights tool also explains how your website performs on the core web vitals test, this is an important metric to Google and they have an algorithm update which specifically looks at how well websites perform against the core web vitals – we’ll talk about this a little bit more in next section.
Ultimately site speed plays a key role in user satisfaction so it’s important that you try and make your website as fast as possible so you’re delivering a good user experience as well as adhering to Google’s guidelines.
10. Core Web Vitals
Core web vitals playing important role in understanding how Google sees your website from a user experience perspective. There are three key considerations – LCP – that is how long it takes the largest element on your website to load CLS – that is looking at any images or areas of content on the website which is subject to shift when the user moves throughout the page and FID – that’s looking at how long it takes for the website to load from the first point of load.
A number of years ago Google introduced an algorithm update which was designed to ensure that websites performed well on the core web vitals test. The main purpose behind this algorithm was to encourage webmasters to create websites that drove a good user experience, had decent page speed and also ensured that when a user moved throughout the website the experience was seamless.
Although initially the majority of websites failed the core web vitals test, we are starting to see more and more websites take this seriously and as such, a higher percentage of websites pass this test than ever before. As a result, if you are building a new e-commerce store or you’re simply looking to upgrade your existing e-commerce store, then looking into core web vitals and how you can optimise to pass this test is an important SEO consideration
11. Image SEO
Image SEO is an important but often overlooked facet of effective SEO performance. This involves looking at the imagery in on your website and understanding how we could optimise this to appear within the Google image search and can be particularly useful if the product that you’re selling is driven by great image or if users are often searching for images on your website subject or topic.
To optimise for image SEO, one of the most important elements is the image alt text, this piece of code that often sits behind the image is the one descriptor that enables you to tell Google what that image is about. remember Google doesn’t always understand what an image is so we need to tell it in plain text form. The image alt text is a great way to tell Google what the image is about so make sure that you make your alt text as keyword rich and clear and concise as possible.
Another way that you can improve your Image SEO is through the naming of the images that you upload to your website. This doesn’t often have a huge impact but it can add to your Image SEO optimisation. As a result, when you’re uploading an image to the website we do recommend that you name the image with a keyword friendly format that again is clearly descriptive in plain text form of what is inside the image.
12. Sitemap
Sitemaps play an important role in helping Google to understand the structure of our website which can be very important when it comes to delivering an effective crawl. By creating an XML sitemap we are able to submit the sitemap to Google Search console and have Google effectively crawl the sitemap that we have created.
Submitting an XML sitemap to Google can also help us to identify where there are pages within the sitemap that haven’t been indexed or even pages in the sitemap which shouldn’t be indexed – this is really valuable in enabling us to give Google a really effective crawl and making sure that we maximise our crawl budget.
A sitemap will usually be created dynamically by the webmaster or the website itself and if you have an e-commerce store where you are frequently changing products or products might be going in and out stock, we would recommend setting up a dynamic type which refreshes at midnight each day, to ensure that the information that you’re sending to Google is relevant and correct.
13. Robots.txt
The robots.txt file on a website is one of the most important files that you can have to give guidance to Google and how you want it to crawl your website. within this file you can give guidance to the Googlebot to understand how it needs to crawl your website, this can include files and folders that you would like it to avoid crawling, or it can include areas of the website that you would like to block from the crawl altogether.
This particular file is very valuable for e-commerce stores who may have a filtering system in place such as faceted navigation – in this instance Google will naturally crawl every link that is created and that could be thousands and thousands of variations of a product such as size, colour, shape etc… and this could lead to a significant waste and crawl budget and it may also mean that Google doesn’t reach the most important pages on your website as frequently as it should. In this instance we would recommend implementing a robots.txt file to ensure that Google is crawling the right areas of your website and to prevent it from wasting crawl budget in areas that you would prefer it to avoid.
14. Product Information
Your product information pages are some of the most important pages that you’ll have on an e-commerce website. these pages give your users the information that they need to understand what type of product you’re selling, what the particular features of that product are and also important elements like what that product is made of and what size it is available in.
It’s important to be clear and concise with your product information and to make sure that you make as much information available as possible to the user to help them to make an informed decision. At the end of the day we want the user to purchase the products when they are on our website, rather than going to a competitor, so it’s important that we are giving them all of the information that they need to make an informed purchase.
Where possible try and make your product descriptions unique as this can help to add value to the user and avoid the duplication of many other retailers who will be selling the same products. Although we do understand that in many instances it’s difficult to do this and in some cases you will need to use the manufacturer’s copy on your website. If this is the case then try to add a unique element to your website in another way, this could be looking at implementing FAQs or pulling in some USPs of using your shop against a competitor.
15. FAQs
We mentioned FAQs in the last point as one of the most important ways to add unique content onto your website, but more than this they have the ability to answer your user’s questions and easily match your user purpose and intent, this is an important element in Google’s quality rater guidelines and something that you should be looking to add to your e-commerce store.
If you aren’t sure where to start with FAQs then looking at the types of questions that people are searching for using keyword research tools to understand conversational queries is a great place to start. In addition, you could look at the people also ask section at the bottom of the Google Search results to get an idea of what other users have been searching for related to your specific product or category group.
Once you have an idea of the questions that people are asking, you can then start to generate great copy that answers those questions directly and put it into faq format to fit into the website. We also recommend implementing FAQ schema which can help Google to understand that your content is in FAQ format and also that it’s answering a user’s question which is always super valuable to the content of the page.
16. Clear Titles & Headings
Clear targeting plays an important role in helping Google to understand what your e-commerce pages are about, this means ensuring that all product and category pages are clearly labeled with clear titles and clear headings telling the user what is on that page. We generally recommend that you only focus each page with one or two maximum keywords to ensure that those pages are seen as super relevant for that term and additionally this helps Google to understand that you are relevant for that term and may help you to perform better in the search results.
If you aren’t sure where to start with titles and headings then undertaking keyword research to understand what uses are searching for and the types of search volumes around those keywords can help you to choose the right keyword for that page. In many instances we see the e-commerce pages are set up to target the wrong keyword and in this instance they could be missing out on a great deal of opportunity. An example of this could be targeting a cashmere sweaters page with the keyword cashmere knitwear – on review we might find the cashmere sweaters has a higher search volume than cashmere knitwear, but as we have chosen to target it with the latter we are missing out on the opportunity to capitalise on that search volume. This is a great example of a situation where looking at how we are targeting the page and page title is important to ensure that we’re maximising the visibility for our website.
17. Product Information
Most e-commerce stores will have a mega nav or a main menu with very clean navigation and this allows Google to understand what the main pages on that website are and when it usually lands on the homepage, it helps to direct Google through the website to ensure that it lands on some of the most important pages on the site first.
This is one of the main reasons why having a good main navigation is so important – and much time and detail should be put into researching the right pages to go into the navigation, to ensure that you’re really maximising the opportunity here both from the user and an internal link equity perspective.
If you aren’t sure where to start with evaluating your navigation and your crawl, then a great place to start is with a log file analysis. Log file analysis allows you to understand how Google is crawling through your website and to identify which pages are most frequently called and which pages perhaps aren’t getting much of a visit at all. Once you’ve undertaken a log analysis you can have a really good idea of where you might need to improve the internal navigation of your website. If some of the most important pages aren’t being reached very frequently or there are a number of pages which are being repeatedly crawled perhaps indicating that Google is stuck on those pages, then updating your main navigation will help to ensure that Google can continue one it’s way and that the appropriate pages on your website are getting indexed as they should be.
18. Internal Linking
Internal linking plays a very important role in allowing Google to move through your website. Connecting your pages together and allowing the Googlebot to move effectively throughout the website without getting stuck in a particular area or without missing out on key pages plays an important role in ensuring that your website is effectively crawled and indexed giving it the best possible chance to return well within the search results. Internal linking also helps Google to understand what the most important pages on your website are, and building an effective internal linking structure can help to send positive page signals to ensure that Google understands which pages they need to consider as most significant on your website.
19. E- E-A-T
Last but not least we have the concept of expertise authority and trust, these words are perhaps some of the most mentioned words when we talk about SEO and the three of the most important elements when it comes to Google evaluating how your website performs in the search results. Google has told us time and time again how important it is for websites to showcase expertise, authority and trust through everything that they do both on-site and off-site and it’s no different for e-commerce stores which are often held to a higher standard due to the transactional nature of the website.
E-A-T can come in a number of different formats and there’s a number of things that you can do on your website to really push and exude these key signals, but in general on e-commerce stores there’s two areas that we focus on the most, these are the About Us page and the Contact Us page – as they both showcase important information to the user and to Google regarding who is behind the website and how they can be contacted if an issue arises.
Your About Us page should do what it says on the tin and that is it should tell people about you, it should tell people about your brand, your background, your expertise and why they can trust to make a purchase from you. This is also a place to talk about any achievements, awards, accreditations or other recommendations that you’ve had that can help to add to that trust side of the business. It’s also nice to include a meet the team page so that people can understand the names and faces behind the brand that they are purchasing from.
Your Contact Us page is also important – this provides your customers with the ability to connect with you if there’s a problem with the order or if they need to ask a question and this plays an important role in matching user purpose and intent and allowing the users to make an informed decision before they make their purchase. It gives them peace of mind if they do make the purchase and there’s an issue with it that they are able to resolve it quickly and easily so having a clearly visible contact us page with a number of ways to communicate with you effectively is always a bonus here. From an SEO perspective this is a big tick in both the authority and the trust boxes as it helps to build trust with the user knowing that they can communicate with you if there is an issue.
20. Mobile Optimisation
Mobile optimisation is critical, as the majority of e-commerce traffic often comes from mobile devices. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, has a responsive design, and is optimised for mobile search. Check the mobile usability report in Google Search Console to identify any issues and ensure a smooth user experience.
21. Canonical Tags
E-commerce websites often have multiple URLs for similar or identical content (e.g., product variations). Use canonical tags to avoid duplication issues and tell search engines which version of a page to prioritise. Proper implementation of canonical tags can help consolidate link equity and avoid keyword cannibalisation.
22. Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumb navigation is a great way to help both users and search engines understand the structure of your website. It aids user experience by providing a clear path back to previous pages, and search engines can better grasp your site’s hierarchy. Implement breadcrumb navigation, especially on category and product pages, to improve crawlability and SEO.
23. User-Generated Content
Encourage and showcase user-generated content, such as product reviews, testimonials, and ratings. This not only builds trust with potential customers but also creates fresh, unique content that Google values. Ensure that reviews are crawlable and well-structured, potentially using review schema markup.
24. HTTPS For Security
If you haven’t already, make sure your website uses HTTPS. Google prioritises secure websites, and customers are more likely to trust and complete transactions on secure sites. An HTTPS certificate improves your SEO and provides a safer experience for your users.
25. Pagination
E-commerce sites with large product ranges often require pagination. Make sure your paginated pages are properly indexed and optimised. Use the rel="prev" and rel="next" tags to inform Google about paginated content, and ensure that the most important category pages are easily accessible by both users and search engines.
26. Optimised URLs
Ensure your URLs are short, descriptive, and keyword-rich. Avoid dynamically generated URLs with lots of unnecessary characters. Instead, opt for clean, static URLs that describe the content of the page, such as www.example.com/mens-sneakers instead of www.example.com/category?id=123&product=456. This improves click-through rates and SEO visibility.
27. Content Silos
Group your e-commerce content into silos by creating well-organised categories and subcategories. This not only helps users navigate the site but also allows search engines to understand the relationship between your products and categories. A well-organised silo structure can improve your site’s relevance for specific search queries.
28. Alt Tags For Images
Ensure that all images on your website, particularly product images, have relevant and descriptive alt tags. Alt tags help search engines understand the context of the image, improving your chances of appearing in image search results. Descriptive alt text also improves accessibility for users with disabilities.
29. Local SEO For Ecommerce
If your e-commerce store has a physical presence or if you offer local services (e.g., store pick-up), consider local SEO optimisation. Create a Google My Business profile, ensure your NAP (name, address, phone number) details are consistent across the web, and optimise product listings for localised keywords to capture local search intent.
30. Social Proof Integration
Integrate social proof, such as customer testimonials, influencer endorsements, and social media engagement, into your product pages. This not only increases trust with potential customers but also contributes to SEO by encouraging users to engage with your site and share content, which can generate backlinks.
Summary
SEO is hugely important for e-commerce websites but in order to get the most out of your website it’s important to follow the right guidance and to understand what you need to do to get the most out of the search engine results. So if you are working with an e-commerce store or if you’re planning to launch one in the near future, take time to invest in understanding how you can get SEO to work for you and it will pay off in the long run. If you’d like to know more about how we can help you with your SEO for an e-commerce store then please get in touch!
Alternately if you are looking to approach ecommerce with a more immediate return then you may want to consider looking for a Google Shopping agency to support you with your product listing ads.
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