It goes without saying that e-commerce is on the rise. If you’re anything like me, you won’t remember the last time you went on a full-blown shopping spree. Instead, Amazon Prime makes a hefty dent in the bank balance each month. But if you own a business selling products online, how can you compete with the likes of Amazon and Ebay? 

Well, to boost the flow of visitors to your site, an absolute must is SEO strategy. Optimising your e-commerce website will see you reaching your widest audience possible, without having to spend a hefty sum.

With Christmas soon approaching, it’s a crucial time to raise your SEO game. This guide will take you through how exactly SEO differs for e-commerce and some key focus areas to get you started.

What is SEO for E-commerce?

E-commerce SEO is a marketing technique used to increase a site’s visibility on search engines, and drive more traffic as a result. It comes down to fine-tuning your website to reflect user intent and meet search engine guidelines.

Does search engine ranking really matter? Yes! Backlinko found that the first result on a Google SERP gets 27.6% of clicks. Similarly, Semrush’s study of 20,000 websites found the site in position 10 to get only 10% of position 1;s traffic.

Source: Semrush

The benefits of SEO for e-commerce business owners are endless. You’ll not only see increased visitors to your site, but also improved brand awareness, and sales, all for practically no cost.

But, with search engines updating their algorithms like they’re going out of fashion, it can be daunting to know where to start. Plus, you’ll be aware that e-commerce SEO is different to optimisation for a traditional website. Let’s take a look at where these distinctions lie…

How is E-commerce SEO different?

SEO for e-commerce is not quite a walk in the park.. E-commerce sites require more work than your average content-focused website. This is primarily because you need a more thorough understanding of user intent. There are two different types that should be on your radar:

Informational keyword intent = this is users looking for an answer to a question (e.g. you sell dress-up costumes, and people are searching ‘Halloween events in my city’ and ‘Halloween costume ideas from films’)

Transactional keyword intent = these keywords show the strongest intent to buy, and you’ll want to target these terms in product pages or landing pages. Examples include words like ‘buy’ and ‘for sale’. Transactional keywords also refers to users looking for a specific product (e.g. if you sell candles, it would help to know that users are looking for ‘soy wax’ or ‘Christmas scented’ in their searches).

Other types of intent include:

Navigational: This is the name for when someone types a website or brand name into the search engine, e.g. ‘Wikipedia’ or ‘Cedarwood Digital’. You should naturally rank well for your brand name keywords.

Commercial: These searches are along the same vein as Transactional Keywords and are used by people researching specific brands or products. These terms indicate that the user is in the market to buy, but might not be ready to make the purchase yet. An example would be ‘reviews for…’ or ‘compare…’

Essentially, e-commerce SEO requires a far deeper level of keyword research. You’ll need to really analyse buyer intent and understand the particular products, product categories, and content that they’re searching for. 

There are a few other ways that E-commerce SEO differs:

📌Images and reviews are important because users can’t pick up or try on a product in real life

📌Page-load time can  also be more critical than a content-based site because your customers will likely want to browse through lots of products to make their decision

📌Your URLs will need more attention because on an e-commerce site there are lots of pages your customers will never be searching for. It’s vital to sort through and prioritise your URLs so that new visitors aren’t directed to a bank details or shopping cart page. 

*Tip: a robots.txt file can be installed to block certain URLs from being crawled*

It’s not just about the customers though! You’ll also want to develop a good knowledge of how the search engines work and what they reward.

This might all be sounding like a big ask but don’t panic, we’re here to make an e-commerce strategy nice and simple. Here’s our 4 fundamentals to give you a head start.

How to optimise your E-commerce pages for SEO

1. Keyword research

If you’re looking to optimise an e-commerce website, your first step should always be keyword identification. You need to determine the high-value search terms your target customers are using.

As said, it’s slightly different for e-commerce – you’ll want to pick out a mix of commercial and informational keywords. And…it’s a good idea to consider multiple factors when choosing the words to target. Volume, competition, relevancy and intent are all equally important here.

But where to find these all-important keywords? AlsoAsked and Amazon autocomplete predictions are a good starting point for keyword ideas. Then, we recommend Ahrefs for more advanced research – this software will give you detailed metrics for each keyword.

For example, here are the results for ‘dog beds’:

This is a goldmine. Information on rank position and search volume are vital to consider when choosing the right keywords to target.

2. On-page SEO

When it comes to e-commerce websites, there are two types of pages you’ll want to devote the most attention to: product category pages and product pages.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

When optimising your title tags and meta descriptions, keep two things in mind. You want to rank on page one of the SERPS, but you also need to appeal to the users so they actually want to click through! Edit your title tags and meta descriptions to include your keywords, but keep them user friendly.

The right long-tail keywords in your meta description can really work in your favour. Try modifiers like Free Shipping, Wide Selection, 25% off for an extra push.

Product Descriptions

Here, it’s important to avoid creating duplicate content. I know it takes time, but work on making every piece of content unique. Don’t use the same descriptions across pages on your site, and try to make your description different from the manufacturer’s website. If you’re a bit strapped for time or resources, focus initially on products ranking on the bottom of Google’s page 1. 

Click on any of the highest-ranking search results for your product type, and you’re guaranteed to see product pages with longer, comprehensive descriptions. Make sure to include lots of important details about your item, but keep it snappy enough to capture a user’s attention and  might even persuade a customer to press buy!

Latent semantic indexing keywords

These long words aren’t as scary as they look – LSI keywords are simply those closely related to your main keyword. You can find them in Google Keyword Planner, or simply by typing a keyword into a Google or Amazon search box.

Here’s an example of Hayes Garden World using LSI terms effectively for their parasols. ‘Tilting’, ‘Aluminium’, and different heights (2.5, 2.7) are all common elements of search terms so have been included in the meta descriptions:

3. Blogging

Blogging is a form of content marketing that can effectively increase your ecommerce site’s search visibility. Blog posts have the potential to:

>Build your reputation as a credible source

>Improve your site’s authority

>Increase visibility in organic search

To reap the benefits, blogging needs to be done right. You can’t just randomly upload a post each month and hope for an increase of traffic. There’s no doubt that it takes time and effort, but done correctly, it can send powerful signals to Google (and provide your customers with genuinely helpful content!). Blogging can be done in the format of buying guides, related articles or general insight blogs. 

Here’s an example of an ecommerce business using blogging effectively:

This music shop is using blogs to demonstrate that they’re an expert on the products they’re selling, and to help them rank for specific keywords. They’re positioned as a source of information with an in-depth knowledge on the history of each instrument model.

Here’s a couple of top tips for your e-commerce blog:

✔️Optimise each blog for SEO –  include your researched keywords etc.

✔️Use blogs to present your products as a solution to a problem, remember to link out to product pages where appropriate.

✔️But… every post doesn’t have to be about your specific products or services. Sometimes the most interesting content might lie in a broader area related to your niche that can internally link back to the main category/product page.

4. Link Building

Links back to your e-commerce site act as votes of confidence that Google uses when weighing up a page’s trustworthiness. If your domain is relatively new, building quality backlinks is a failsafe way to help Google recognise your authority faster.

Backlinks aren’t only gold dust in the eyes of Google, they’ll also boost traffic to your website, increasing sales! You’ll want to aim for sites with a high Domain Rating score. Large, respected websites, ideally operating within your sphere, will be the most rewarding.

As an e-commerce site, press mentions and product placements are your best bet to build links and get the product out in front of your target audience. This is something we’ve leveraged for a natural deodorant client.

We gained solid product placements through:

➡️Undertaking a lot of audience research to identify who and where our audience was (using a combination of paid and meta data)

➡️Profiling our audience and user interests, in addition to understanding the types of websites they were using.

➡️Then pulling together targeted website lists – a mixture of daily newspapers, regionals and bloggers

How Cedarwood Digital can help optimise your e-commerce website

SEO for e-commerce is a long-term, continuous process. It’s never really ‘finished’, but the steps in this guide should give you a good idea of where to start.

In summary:

–Start with rigorous keyword research of both commercial, and informational keywords (and don’t forget your LSI terms)

–Explore blogging as a lucrative element of content marketing to provide helpful content to your consumers

–Keep those product descriptions unique and in-depth

–Stay on the look-out for new keywords relevant for your products

–Backlinks through product placements are a simple way to reap backlinks and authority

Looking for a helping hand with your e-commerce SEO? The SEO experts at Cedarwood Digital have heaps of experience boosting traffic and sales for e-commerce businesses. 

You can check out our client case studies and testimonials on this website. If you think we might be a good fit, how about getting in touch today to find out more about our services?

With Google’s recent Helpful Content algorithm updates, it is more important than ever to write content primarily for the user. Producing content that will perform well on search engines now comes down to creating genuinely valuable content.

As SEO content writers, it’s vital to understand your intended audience, and their user intent. If you create content for the user you’ll see the nice added benefit of high ranking positions.

The good news is that the SEO team at Cedarwood Digital knows the exact framework to make your content more cost effective than ads – writing content that your readers and Google will love. Keep reading for our tried and tested top tips for expert SEO content.

Why Content For SEO Matters

Is optimising your content really that important? We’re here to tell you that yes, you really should care about content and consider SEO best practices when creating content.

Once you rank on the first page of Google you’re more likely to receive heaps of relevant and traffic to your website. And, as paid advertising costs rise and social media engagement gets increasingly hard to acquire, organic traffic is more important than ever.

As a business owner, the best decision you can make right now is investing time and energy in organic search. Make sure your site’s content is written with SEO firmly in mind and you’re guaranteed to increase visibility, and users finding your services.

Our Top Tips

So, you know you need to tailor your content for your users and search engines, but how exactly do you go about this? 

Here are the tactics which have seen our clients’ websites shooting up the ranks…

Keywords:

Whilst there’s no big secret formula for ranking in the SERPs, understanding your target keywords and using them correctly will make a huge difference.

It’s essential to do your research, so you know what words people are using when looking for the services your company offers.

You’re going to want to get these keywords naturally embedded in your content, and it’s also a good idea to use related words. The fancy word for this is latent semantic indexing, but it basically comes down to using words that go well with the keywords you’ve researched.

A hack for finding these words is simply to enter the main term into Google search, and noting down the related keywords that Google lists:

But be careful not to get so caught up with these keywords and related keywords that you lose track of keeping your writing user-friendly! There’s nothing more off putting than a paragraph of content where every other word is the same. As an SEO copywriter, it’s important to strike a balance.

Another top tip is to choose your keywords wisely.  Keywords that have a lower search volume can be just as valuable – as you have more opportunity here to rank high. A good content writer should assess the amount of competition around each keyword 

Content Readability:

Another thing to consider when optimising your content for SEO is its readability. This idea is pretty self-explanatory. Readable content is very easy to understand and written simply, using short words and sentences.

A fact you might be surprised to learn is that the average reading age in the UK is only 9! (According to the National Literacy Trust). Remember that your audience will include people with dyslexia, and people with english as a second language etc.

Google particularly cares about this readability because it affects user experience. Since 2021, Google’s algorithm has been specifically prioritising sites with a strong user experience. So this comes down to a website’s visual design, technical architecture and readability of its content.

The good news is there’s a bunch of great softwares available to give you a helping hand with readability. Some of our favourites to check out are:

>Readable

>Semrush Readability Assistant

>Hemingway

If uploading your content through WordPress, it’s also good to know that there is an SEO plug-in for WordPress (Yoast) which will assess your readability, amongst other factors.

Write helpful content:

Earlier this year, Google updated its helpful content system algorithm. This update allows Google to “more deeply understand content created from a personal or expert point of view”.

There’s now a focus on ranking content with “unique expertise and experience”. Equally, content that appears to have been primarily created to rank well is targeted and downgraded. So. creating content that your users will actually find helpful is more important now than ever

This is in order to help Google show more “hidden gems” in its search results. So, the question you might now be asking is whether your content is a hidden gem? Well, is it actually useful? Written for your users ? Predominantly focused on helping users, and just recycled information? These are the qualities to strive for next time you start typing.

Quantity *and* quality

We’ve seen in the past and the present that Google algorithms tend to reward informative content that fits its purpose and penalises thinner content. 

‘Thin content’ is the term Google uses to describe ‘low-quality or shallow pages’. These pages offer little value to a user and are not ‘substantially unique’. Content that could be hit by a thin content penalty includes things like entirely AI-generated content, and content scraped from other sources.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that a shorter word-count will prevent your site from ranking. Rather than aiming for a specific ‘magic formula’ word count, just focus on making sure your content sufficiently answers the users’ intent.

It can be the case then that longer content is better simply because you can share more information. Length also gives you the flexibility to present your information in varied ways – your readers and Google love headed subsections, lists and tables. However, a shorter piece of content can be equally as valuable, providing you’ve thoroughly researched your target audience, and what they are looking to find out.

When ensuring your content is high-quality, you’ll also want to bear E-E-A-T in mind. This acronym stands for ‘experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness’ and these are the criteria Google uses to assess your website. Demonstrating these qualities in your content will provide your users with helpful and reliable information and this has the side effect of helping your search engine performance. New to E-E-A-T principles?  Check out our in-depth rundown of how to make your content align.

Use Varied Content Types

On this point, displaying content in visually appealing ways is a bright idea for SEO. Using helpful videos and pictures is fab for readers. In the age of TikTok and ever-shortening attention spans, no-one wants too much grey text. Images make your content more appealing and can help make your ideas more understandable.

Breaking up your content with infographics and charts is also a good idea because these have the extra advantage of securing you backlinks. Free software like Canva and Infogram will be your best friend here. Take a look at this infographic we put together highlighting new film releases this month:

Stay On Top of SEO Trends

Our final tip is a self-explanatory one – keep up to date with Google’s algorithms and the latest social trends. Search engines and SEO techniques are constantly changing, and content writers need to keep up!

Adjust your writing in accordance with changes to algorithms, and user preferences. A top tip for staying updated is to subscribe to some SEO newsletters. SEOFOMO and The Moz Top 10 are a couple of the best run-downs of recent news in the SEO world.

Can I Do My Own SEO?

You definitely can – there’s no specific qualification needed to write good content for SEO. Online guides like this one can be a great starting-point. However, an SEO professional, with heaps of experience, will likely be able to produce more effective content for your site.

SEO is a slow and steady process, it can take months and months to see the results of your work. Because of this, the trial and error approach could see you wasting lots of time and effort. As SEO experts, we have the know-how on how to execute a good content strategy. By employing the help of an SEO agency, you have the assurance that you will see results by a set time.

How Cedarwood Digital Can Help With Your SEO Content Creation?

Our SEO team at Cedarwood have years of experience helping clients write content with SEO in mind. We know Google’s search guidelines like the back of our hand and how exactly to drive up your visibility and sales.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you write content your users (and ultimately the search engines) will love.

In a commercial landscape in which 76% of consumers look at online presence before physically visiting a business, your digital presence is essential for business growth.

Prospective clients and customers are spending more time online than ever before, using search engines to find the products and services they need. To scale our businesses, we need to enhance our online visibility, and work on reeling in more traffic. But how can this be done without spending a fortune on ads? The answer is SEO. 

Search Engine Optimisation is an effective and inexpensive way to create more prospective clients, and grow your business in the long-term. With 46% of Retail Customer Journeys starting with a Google Search, the e-commerce space is becoming increasingly competitive. In this climate, you cannot underestimate the value of a robust SEO strategy. We’ll take you through an explanation of how exactly SEO can help you grow, if executed correctly. Listen closely and you should pick up some top tips to increase your online visibility.

Brand Visibility and Organic Traffic

Effective SEO can be leveraged to build brand awareness. A properly implemented strategy will assist you in ranking high in the SERPs, and this increases your brand visibility. Customers will be able to identify your business because of the relevant keywords and searches you will be ranking for. 

Increasing your brand visibility through SEO can subsequently increase your web traffic. This is the crucial objective of an SEO strategy, as increasing the quality and quantity of your organic traffic can lead to an increase in conversions if you’re targeting quality traffic. 

When your business name is seen frequently, users will be more inclined to believe that you have the service or goods they are searching for. They’ll then be more likely to click on your website and over time this could lead to a new conversion, and cha-ching, that’s a sale on the way for you! But how can you get yourself up those ranking spots and hopefully landing in Google’s featured snippets? 

The key is in the keywords. Research the right long and short-tail keywords to be implemented in your website, so that the search engine can recognise what your site is all about. Get them into your title, meta-description, and body of text. However, be careful not to keyword-cram – this will simply put a user off your product. Your content needs to use keywords but remain user-friendly and actually helpful.

Improve User Experience 

SEO can also help improve the user’s experience on your site. This can potentially lead to returning customers, and an increase in time spent on the domain.

User experience refers to how easily your customers can navigate your website – it’s the product of branding and web design choices. When people search for queries related to your company, we want them to find your website and enjoy their time on it. It needs to be well-designed, easy to navigate and have a respective load speed in order to be user-friendly, and this is achieved through SEO support and auditing.

Improving a website’s usability will result in more traffic, clicks, and eventual conversions. Plus, remember to prioritise not only technical SEO, but also the website’s content. Provide relevant and high-quality content, and you’re giving the user a reason to stay on the site for longer, and have a proper look through the services you are offering.

Also, good user experience makes people more likely to link to your website. And, as we know, backlinks are an  ever-important means to grow brand awareness and conversion rate.

Building Trust

SEO  focuses on pushing the E-E-A-T component of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. This means, optimising a website to demonstrate your proven Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. Trust is the most critical component of this, with Google stating that “untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T no matter how Experienced, Expert, or Authoritative they may seem.”

Therefore, a trustworthy business is going to be hitting those top spots on the SERPs. Additionally, demonstrating clear trust signals through SEO strategy is critical for business success because, when your company is credible and trusted by clients, they are more likely to buy your products or services. They will also be more likely to then recommend you to other potential customers. 

Prove that you’re a trusty source in your content through including reviews, demonstrating first-hand experience, and making it easy to contact your company. This will generate more and more leads for your business. See a Guide to E-E-A-T from the SEO experts at Cedarwood for an in-depth run-down on how to hit each element of the acronym.

In Summary

SEO is a long-term marketing tactic which, when implemented effectively, will see your website continually ranking well, receiving heaps of site traffic, and consequently scoring conversions.
Looking for some help running an SEO campaign to boost your business? The SEO team here at Cedarwood Digital have a mass of experience developing tailored, results-driven strategies for companies. Contact us today to start the journey of scaling your business.

With terms like ChatGPT being increasingly bandied around and most households now equipped with a virtual assistant, artificial intelligence is becoming more and more prevalent. Just this week, Meta announced the launch of their own AI assistant, to be used on Instagram and WhatsApp, and TikTok introduced a feature for labelling AI-generated videos.

No longer confined to Chatbot customer service assistants and driver assist vehicle systems, AI in 2023 is more capable and ubiquitous than ever before. The UK AI market is worth more than £16.9 billion, according to the US International Trade Administration, and 33% of medium-sized companies have now incorporated one AI technology. 

In SEO and the wider marketing industry, AI is similarly gaining traction. It is transforming both how search engines are powered, and how SEO professionals are optimising their content. Google first turned to artificial intelligence in 2016 with its search engine algorithm RankBrain, and since then, AI has been increasingly incorporated into search experience and SEO strategy.

There is growing discussion about the positive and negative implications of AI for SEO; this blog is going to take a deep-dive into the different forms of AI, and how they affect SEO. The experts at Cedarwood Digital will be offering their predictions for the future of artificial intelligence in digital marketing, and it will finish by explaining why SEO professionals must work to adapt and evolve in line with the trajectory of AI.

Content-writing AI

The use of AI to develop and create content is becoming more and more widespread. In late 2022, Chat GPT was released and has now been followed by countless writing AIs including ChatSonic, Jasper and Claude. The revolutionary impact of these conversational AIs is to the extent that Google Search’s guidance on AI-generated content has changed in recent months to allow for AI content creation, provided it meets the same quality guidelines established for human writers.

It is therefore definitely possible to leverage AI to help you create great content. Google wants humans to write content, but there is no reason why AI cannot help improve your business’s content quality. It seems to make sense as, after all, Google’s ranking system is designed to reward high-quality content, and AI can be implemented to deepen your understanding of a topic. 

However, there are also some concerns surrounding AI’s impact on SEO content writing. It’s important to bear these in mind when turning to a virtual assistant for help on a writing task…

>It is important to bear in mind that all the output of these assistants is based only on the data it has been fed, so, to create truly original and unique content you’re going to want to combine its generated information with your human creativity.

>Another concern is that it could decrease the quality of marketers’ content as they attempt to create content solely optimised for search engines. Note that Google wants content to be helpful and written by humans, for humans. SEO content still needs to provide real value for a reader to rank well.

AI and Search Results

On the topic of SERPs, this is one of the areas where we have seen the most significant impacts of AI. The way search engines understand and rank search results is changing, and AI plays a hefty part in this. Google is now using AI algorithms to analyse a user’s search history, location and behaviour to provide impressively personalised results.

But what does this mean for us SEOs? Well, we need to focus on optimising our content for these Natural Language Processing algorithms. Because Google’s AI can now understand the nuances of human search queries, our SEO strategies likewise need to produce content for the user. Include conversational long and short-tail keywords, and write articles that match user intent. 

Also, the big search engines are going beyond merely using AI to better their results and are now launching their own AI-powered search engines. Earlier this year, Microsoft Bing chat and Google BARD were introduced as answers to the influence of ChatGPT. These developments give us an idea of what we can expect more of in the future, but they are not without their concerns. Queries are being raised as to the privacy of these platforms, and potential of information leaks. Additionally, these large language models run the risk of generating misleading information under an authentic guise – because everyone trusts Google, right?

AI and SEO Analysis

As well as optimising for artificial intelligence, we can also use AI assistants to improve our content. SEO professionals can now utilise data-led AI insights to understand how users interact with search engines and websites. There are artificial intelligence softwares tailored to give you the know-how on everything from link building and keyword creation, to measuring your own traffic and engagement conversions. AI can help you optimise for voice-search, or the latest helpful content update, by scanning existing content and suggesting SEO-related changes.

Here at Cedarwood, we make use of AI softwares such as Ahrefs and Semrush to deliver the most effective SEO strategies for our clients. However, as much as these softwares are very helpful, we would always advise using them with a degree of caution – make sure humans are at the beginning and end of this content – Google can tell!

One drawback is that as these AI-powered tools become more commonly used in the marketing world, the competition for rankings increases. As more and more SEOs discover the softwares to make their content extra-relevant, we all need to work that bit harder to rank.

SEOs must stay updated on AI

Whether you love or hate it, AI is here to stay, So it is really important for SEO professionals to stay up-to-date and somewhat prepare for future possibilities. We can’t be sure what the future looks like for SEO, but it is looking increasingly likely that artificial intelligence will play a massive role.

This means that companies need to look at how they can exploit the growth of AI for their own benefit. We’d advise:

📌Creating content that is optimised for AI-driven search results, see our very own comprehensive guide here

📌Provide clear, factual answers in your content that answer users’ queries (FAQs and how-to guides like this one are great!)

📌It is ever-important to show that real people are behind your content – AI can never completely simulate a human writer, so make sure to get emotions and personal experiences in to your writing

📌Keep an eye on your competitors and observe how they’re using and responding to AI developments to give you that competitive edge

What does the future for AI and SEO look like? 

If the Cedarwood team were to have a go at predicting how AI could change in the following year, we would guess that:

~Natural Language Processing will only continue to get more advanced with search engines getting even better at understanding the meaning behind search queries, and especially voice search queries.

~We may see an explosion in the amount of AI content and automated creation of articles, videos etc. We imagine that this new content will consequently result in even more crawlers and advanced algorithms to dig out the meaningful content. After all, Google is famed for its ability to constantly evolve.

~Search engines will know us better than our closest friend. We predict more personalised search results than ever before, based on search history and behaviours across other platforms.

To sum up

Artificial intelligence is loud and it’s proud in 2023 and whether you like it or not, this is having a notable impact on SEO. As SEO professionals, we need to stay updated and adapt our strategies accordingly to stay ahead of the competition.

Looking for a helping hand with AI for SEO? Our SEO team here at Cedarwood are a whizz at all things artificial intelligence – get in touch with us today to discuss a tailored strategy for your business.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that markets like cryptocurrency, sexual wellbeing and vaping are growing in popularity.

With this increase in search, they are also facing more and more advertising restrictions. They are examples of what we call “restricted verticals”, and marketers for these businesses must now create new strategies to reach their target audience.

This blog will explain how restricted verticals can rank highly and increase website traffic, even without PPC, while also covering how SEO is highly effective on these particular SERPs, where the first listing is organic, not an ad.

I’ll finish by suggesting a few top tips for building an SEO strategy if your page falls within the restricted categories.

So, in which verticals can I not use Google Ads?

In their Ads guidelines , Google outlines areas where advertising is either prohibited or restricted. 

Entirely prohibited verticals include:

📌Dangerous products (this ranges from recreational drugs, to fireworks, to vapes)

📌Counterfeit goods (think that fake gucci purse your Auntie got you from Turkey)

📌Services enabling dishonest behaviour (those sites writing whole essays for you, that you definitely considered once or twice at Uni)

Then, ‘restricted content’ is sometimes allowed. So with these verticals, you might get away with advertising, but only on a limited basis. The ads may not show in every location, or the advertisers could need to meet additional requirements before their ads are eligible to run.

The primary restricted sectors are:

📌Alcohol 

📌Sexual content (ads are pretty much a no-go, even on Google Ads alternatives like Meta and TikTok)

📌Gambling (and this includes, casinos, lotteries, and betting sites)

📌Political Content

📌Healthcare and medicine (in the UK, ads cannot be run for prescription drugs, bulk drug manufacturers, and medical professional suppliers but can be run for over-the-counter medicines)

Other examples of things that cannot be advertised at all in the UK are:

📌Addiction Services

📌Legal Cannabis

How does Google know?

You may be wondering, how does Google identify if my ad complies? Well, in their guidelines they state that “we use a combination of Google AI and human evaluation to ensure that ads comply with these policies”. For most cases, they use technology modelled on human reviewers’ decisions. But, more complex or severe cases are “evaluated by our specially-trained experts”.

Essentially then, it’s pretty difficult to dodge these guidelines. Best to have a thorough evaluation of whether any of your ad content falls within a restriction.

Competition across these sectors 

As well as facing the challenge of Google’s guidelines, these restricted verticals must also tackle the problem of competition. 

Here are some stats showing you just how competitive these industries are:

>The casino industry is cut-throat, with legality constantly changing, and backlinks hard to acquire. Language Bear states that: the term “online casino” returns over 1 billion results on Google. If we look at one of the sector’s biggest review sites, there are close to 1,500 casinos listed.

>It won’t surprise you to hear that the vaping industry is rapidly growing, with a new trend of private-label brands beginning to dominate. This diagram shows how much this vertical is estimated to grow in the next five years:

Source: Technavio 

>Likewise, the sexual health and wellness market is projected to reach an estimated value of $2,100 million by 2030, according to mediainfoline. 

Source: NoGood

Why no ads may work in your favour… 

It’s not all bad news, I promise. When it comes to these restricted sectors, the first listing for a search result is the natural listing. So if your website is ranking well, you won’t have to sit below that pesky handful of ads at the top.

Having a look at the data, we can see how not having ads on search results can get users more clicks to their websites:

Source: Econsultancy

Econsultancy found that the CTR of the first-ranking page on Google SERPs is 17.9% when ads are displayed, but 25.7% in the absence of ads. That’s a whopping 30% increase.

Their research also shows that the number one slot secures the best part of clicks, with little to be gained for everyone ranking below:

Source: Econsultancy

What does this mean for businesses in restricted verticals?

What this means is that SEO is now even more valuable for websites where you can’t advertise. Without ads on your SERPs, you have a far greater opportunity to land that top position. It is now worth investing your time into a robust SEO strategy, or SEO professionals, to make sure you tap into this potential. Position one and that target demographic is up for grabs, and optimal SEO will make sure you grab it.

It is especially worth investing in SEO because traditionally, these verticals would have spent far more on advertising anyway. Traffic from organic search is free (although it will take some time, energy and investment), whilst each impression or click through advertising has a direct charge. And, PPC can get pretty expensive if your ads aren’t achieving a positive ROI quickly.

Even using an SEO agency is far more cost-effective than advertising. While investing in SEO professionals for your business will cost some money, it is a long-term investment.

How can users optimise their website for SEO?

To get you off the ground, here are a few aspects to consider initially.

1. Targeted Keyword Discovery: keywords will form the backbone of your SEO strategy. Do your research into what your demographic are searching for, then fit a mixture of short and long-tail keywords naturally into your content.

2. Website structure: a smooth-running site will rank far higher in the search results, and is more likely to hit that number 1 spot.

3. E-E-A-T: some of the restricted verticals (e.g. pharmaceutical websites) fall under the Your Money, Your Life category which need to hit specific requirements. Work on demonstrating experience, expertise, trustworthiness and authority in your content.

4. Backlinks: something that really helps you meet the E-E-A-T requirements is collecting credible backlinks which show Google you can be viewed as a trustworthy authority. 

Differences between SEO & PPC

I’ve covered the cost, but in what other ways do SEO and PPC differ? 

SEO is the practice of improving your website’s visibility through a myriad of aspects including content, site structure, loading speed and use of keywords. It’s less of a quick-fix, and more a process of optimisation which takes time but gives your page the best chance of being crawled.

PPC on the other hand, is pay-per-click advertising. On Google Ads (the most popular advertising system) this involves businesses bidding on keywords to show ads in Google SERPs. You then pay each time that someone clicks on your ad. PPC comes in many forms, not only as the top listing on Google’s results page. Check out this diagram showing different ad examples:

Source: WordStream

Do you need both?

In a nutshell, yes; they do different things, but both can help your business in different ways. They go hand-in-hand, and investing time into both SEO and PPC is the best way to achieve a well-rounded marketing strategy. PPC lets you customise your ads at any time to reach specific people, or promote a new deal. This is then effectively supplemented by SEO which helps the site show up more frequently in relevant search results.

What does the future look like for ad-restriction?

The current list of restricted verticals is not steadfast. Google states that “if we feel that certain kinds of businesses pose an unreasonable risk to user safety or user experience, then we may limit or stop related ads from running.”

Additionally, they posted just last month that an update to Google Ads policies is coming our way in November 2023. They explained that “Google will update its policies to limit impressions in certain ad-serving scenarios that have a higher potential of causing abuse or a poor experience for our users.” 

It is therefore a good idea to keep track of the fluctuating guidelines for ads, as more vertical restrictions may be on the horizon.

In summary

If your business comes across a dreaded ad restriction, this article should now put you in good stead. Don’t fret, just target that SEO optimisation, because high CTR and busy website traffic is now at your fingertips.

Are you confident that your Insurance page is optimised for Google’s rankings? If not, it’s time to learn how to improve and stand out in the hugely competitive market that is the insurance industry. According to Blue Corona, over 50% of insurance searches are performed on mobile devices. Effective SEO can help you tap into the internet’s potential.

Your page needs to cater to Google’s many guidelines and algorithm updates to stand out. No stress, this guide will help you tackle all the requirements .

This blog will firstly take you through why SEO is unique and important for insurance companies, sitting within the Your Money, Your Life industry. It will then discuss a point-by-point strategy for how to do insurance SEO, with a focus on E-E-A-T.

Why is SEO so important for Insurance Companies?

As we all know, the insurance industry is a large and competitive market, dominated by industry giants. According to ABI, the UK insurance market is the largest in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. This market is predominantly online, so that’s where your potential customers are too. 

SEO, then, is the key to ramping up your website traffic and finding those golden new customers. Good SEO can increase your visibility, get you higher ranks and generate trust in your audience. How exactly can you get your website to the top of the search results, competing with formidable competitors of the likes of GoCompare? Keep reading for the specific SEO strategies that will unlock those top spots.

Why SEO is also unique for insurance (E-E-A-T)

Insurance companies come under the YMYL (Your Money Your Life) category, so Google holds insurance websites to a higher standard. They need to focus on E-E-A-T more than your average, wholesome candle-making blog.

Source: Semrush 

A ‘Your Money or Your Life’ page is a term used by Google for pages that they think could impact “the future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users”. Examples include medical advice, information on mortgages, news about ongoing violence and yes – insurance websites.

Google introduced its Search Quality Rating Guidelines for these pages in 2013. Then, in 2014,  it added an emphasis on E-A-T, and last year, added an extra E. So in insurance SEO, we are now catering for E-E-A-T. But, what does this mysterious acronym actually mean for us?

E-E-A-T stands for:

Experience

Expertise

Authoritativeness 

Trustworthiness

Google’s algorithms will analyse your insurance page with these factors in mind, when it is deciding where to rank you. Pages perceived to have a no or low E-E-A-T can be held back, and a high E-E-A-T website is rewarded. I’ll now run you through exactly how to optimise your SEO for each of these elements:

Experience

The newest element of the guidelines requires an insurance website to demonstrate first-hand experience in a subject. Content needs to prove that its insights are authentic. This is quite easy to adapt to – just make sure you’re getting your personal experiences and opinions in, or providing personal photos. Another way to optimise a website for the experience factor would be to include a good-quality About Us page.

Google explains this more in the guidelines, stating that they ‘consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic. Many types of pages are trustworthy and achieve their purpose well when created by people with a wealth of personal experience.’

This is key because it differentiates between human and AI-written content. It also helps your brand image by showing the personality of the organisation, and proving that the employees are honest and authentic. This is important specifically in the insurance sector, where users are transferring money and need to feel safe.

Expertise 

This element of the guidelines wants you to demonstrate that you’re a credible source and can be achieved in many ways. Expertise is best shown not told; you want to focus on demonstrating in-depth knowledge in your content. Do your research, and back up your opinions with other reliable sources.

Another effective way to optimise SEO for the expertise guideline is by including writer profiles on your website. This should include formal qualifications and links to their other articles – all helping to demonstrate their skill set.

Here’s an example of an author bio on an Insurance Company’s website which is a gr-E-A-T example of Expertise:

Source: Accenture Insurance

This bio also includes an image of the author, and explanation of their role in the company; these are elements outlined in Google’s guidelines.

Authoritativeness

Author profiles, as well as creating a sense of expertise, will also build your authoritativeness. This refers to your reputation, especially within your sector. It can be developed through case studies which again show what you’re doing, rather than just claiming to it.

For example, CNN would be considered an authoritative source in the online News sector.

Authoritativeness can also be demonstrated through backlinks where other experts are citing you. These can be generated through infographics and content promotions, and are effective ranking signals for Google.

Trustworthiness

Lastly, Google’s guidelines for Your Money, Your Life pages specifies a need for trustworthiness. You can get this across via having a clear contact page, as well as reviews from real-life clients. 

Have your customer service info displayed clearly, with accurate phone numbers.

Alongside this, demonstrating your expertise and authoritativeness will work together to show Google you’re a trustworthy site. 

Source: Aviva Insurance

One last way that SEO differs in the insurance sector is that the sign-off time for content can take longer. This is because it will often have to go through stages of approval, as a result of the extensive YMYL guidelines. As an SEO content writer, you should bear this in mind when managing your strategy deadlines.

A strategy for SEO in the insurance sector

Speaking of strategies, I’m now going to take you through all the key steps to include in your plan for insurance SEO.

1. Do your keyword research

First and foremost, you guessed it – keywords. This is a critical initial stage to any effective insurance SEO strategy. 

Examine the opportunity of keywords and phrases to what you’re targeting, determining which are most searched. Start by brainstorming keywords relevant to your demographic, and supplement this with use of tools like Keyword Planner and Ahrefs. These tools help you both with finding the words, and organising how you are going to map them.

Another key aspect of keyword research is optimising it for local search. In their 2019 insights report, Google shared that customers are increasingly searching locally for their insurance. They reported that mobile queries that contain “insurance near me” have grown by over 100% in the past two years. I recommend optimising your website for local search through using geographically targeted keywords in the page’s content and URLs.

Remember to then prioritise working on getting those keywords in naturally – gone are the days of inorganic keyword-stuffing. Looking for a more detailed run-down of how to find and implement your keywords? Take a look at our blogpost giving you the complete keyword low-down.

Source: Google

Competitor analysis

As part of your keyword research, make sure you understand your competition. This is another great place to start with your SEO strategy as it helps you gain an initial grasp of where you’re sitting in the insurance market.

Tools like Moz and Semrush can be used to analyse your competitors’ website performance, in comparison to your online presence.

2. High-quality content is high-performing

Source: Allianz

It really is all you can E-E-A-T when it comes to insurance SEO. When it comes to writing content for YMYL pages, writing content that’s of good quality is crucial.

Here are some quick tips to achieve that illusive high-quality content:

• Never provide false information, remember Google loves a trusty source
• Keep your content up to date – you’re writing in a sector that changes frequently
• Proof, proof and proof again – expertise isn’t demonstrated through grammatical mistakes!
• Do your research. You want your content to have adequate depth
• Don’t forget the author bio and quotes from experts, for that good old authoritativeness 
• Be descriptive but not flowery. Your writing needs to be clear.

3. Quantity *and* quality

Not only does content for insurance websites need to be high-quality, it is also beneficial to prioritise quantity.

BKA Content found that articles with more than 3,000 words receive an average of 77 percent more backlinks than shorter articles. This might be because good E-E-A-T content includes a certain level of depth and authority, which really needs at least 1,000 words to be achieved.

Also, a longer piece of content will allow you to get your keywords in more naturally, and thoroughly dissect your topic with multiple headings. Side note: this will help it appeal to Natural Language Processing algorithms! 

4. Site structure makes all the difference

Source: Ripe Insurance

In your strategy for insurance SEO, it’s important to include a step dedicated to website structure. Carry out a site audit, checking for broken links and assessing your URL structures. Any broken elements will make for an unenjoyable user experience, and this won’t help your authoritativeness either.

On the other hand, a fully functioning site, with user-friendly design will reduce bounce rate and help the users to navigate through your pages. Also, search engines will find it easier to crawl your pages if the code and architecture is frequently reviewed.

Another top tip is that large images can affect your ranking. Keep them compressed so your website loads quickly. Google takes load speed into account when it chooses which pages to place on page 1. (You can also keep the loading time down by optimising your website’s code).

Have a look at this comprehensive guide for website structure if your pages are looking a little jumbled.

5. Prioritise reviews and a positive online reputation

Reviews are a fundamental part of insurance SEO. They help build up a good reputation, which you’ll remember was key for the T of E-E-A-T. Google specifically states in their guidelines that “for a YMYL website, a mixed reputation is cause for a Low rating.” This also refers to independent rating websites; prioritise obtaining good reviews both on and off your site.

Here’s an example of Ripe Insurance effectively using Trustpilot reviews on their landing page:

Source: Ripe Insurance

Through verified reviews, you will increase your website traffic, and boost your rankings. Reviews are also useful because they increase the amount of content on your page, and, as we know, Google loves quantity. What’s not to like?

Offline reputation is also important!

These online efforts at showing trustworthiness can be supported by Digital PR and outreach. Securing quality links will further ramp up your page traffic. So, make sure to devote time in your SEO strategy to both your online and offline reputation.

6. After implementing these steps … measure and analyse your own strategy

Utilise SEO analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Search console to frequently assess which methods are improving your site’s performance. Keep tracking your rankings, your metrics like Salience, and which of your pages are most frequently visited. 

Through keeping an eye on your analytics, you will then have a heads up on which tactics are getting your pages crawled, and what needs to be adjusted to optimise your rankings.

A final extra tip

Having an FAQ page on your insurance website is a failsafe way to optimise your SEO. It shows Google that you are doubling down on satisfying user intent, and have a thorough understanding of your subject areas.

Source: MoneySuperMarket 

To sum up

LSA found that for many insurance customers, search is their first step when assessing their options – 69% ran a search before scheduling an appointment. This blog has explained how and why SEO is specifically so important in the insurance sector. With the high level of competition, and YMYL category guidelines, developing a thorough SEO strategy is crucial to improve your rankings and traffic.

Hopefully, this guide will help you build a strong online presence to attract new customers. You’ll be insurance SEO-savvy in no time.

Natural Language Processing is here, and it’s here to stay. With algorithms like BERT and MUM, Google’s understanding of search queries has never been better and those of us in SEO need to draw level.

We’ve assessed how useful NLP really is and are here to tell you how it can be implemented to create effective, high-ranking content. 

Keep reading to find out how NLP is more than just a techy term for SEOs. Used in the right way, it’s the key to those sweet first-page spots.

So, what is NLP?

Natural Language Processing applications, in short, help computers better understand human language. Users are evermore specific about what they want to find, and Google has had to adjust and improve to meet this. 15% of search queries are used for the first time, and now, users can even use voice-search to get their query across. NLP helps Google to decipher the request, no matter how bizarrely-worded. Site Centre shared these stats showing us just how much Voice Search is taking off:

Source: Site Centre 

NLP isn’t particularly new. In 2015 Google launched RankBrain, their first artificial intelligence method for understanding queries. But in the past few years, there has been an influx in new NLP applications. It’s now pretty much everywhere, on your search engines, translators, the Alexa you have at home. We’ve got Word2Vec, CBOW, MUM, BERT and countless other efforts to make sense of human lingo. 

I’m going to take you quickly through BERT and MUM, and how they can change your SEO game. Launched in 2019 by Google, BERT immediately impacted 10% of all search queries and is said to be the most critical advancement in search in many years. It is an NLP technique and the first to rely completely on self-attention mechanisms.

In their report, Google used this example to demonstrate how BERT is helping them grasp the nuances of users’ queries:

Source: Google’s report on BERT

As you can see, NLP means that Google can now work out that this search is about a Brazilian traveling to the US, not the other way round. BERT just means that those little words like ‘to’ don’t get lost anymore when interpreting a query.  

In May 2021, Google introduced MUM as a 1000 times more powerful evolution of BERT. It’s not quite as scary as it sounds, essentially it just makes Google search even more semantic and context-based. It’s specifically looking to improve international search, and improves on BERT by being trained in 75 languages. For more information about the MUM update, see this article.

How to implement NLP for SEO:

So this is all well and good but how can we utilize these exciting new algorithms for our clients? To make this guide nice and easy to follow, I’m going to break it down into a few top tips:

Write content for users (it’s not me, it’s you)

NLP means that Google is getting better at understanding natural language. Writing content for users has always been important for SEO but it is now more important than ever. 

Your content needs to be simple and clear to be optimized for these algorithms, and deliver a good user experience. When you’ve finished writing, take a step back and check that it all makes sense. Determine what a searcher’s intent is and write content to match. This article will give you some hacks about how to go about this.

But…keep it specific (a matter of semantics)

With BERT and other NLP applications, Google has attention to next words, previous words, and related words in a sentence, in something called Semantic Search. Google understands the tonality now, and the specificity of the query. Alongside this, we are seeing a rise in long-tail keywords, because of things like Siri. Therefore, get more specific and descriptive with your content, whilst keeping it simple.

Check out this diagram showing the dominance of the long-tail search.

Source: Semrush

Think back to the last thing you typed into Google – it was probably a long-tail wasn’t it? Essentially, Google is understanding these descriptive queries to a much greater extent now, so our content needs to be equally as specific. 

Structure is key

Coherently written copy is useless without a clear structure. Once you’ve written your information, make sure it’s structured in a way that allows NLP to understand it. This article on Google’s Knowledge Graph explains how it’s easier for Google to understand structured data, than unstructured.

Use headings such as H1 and H2, using similar keywords in both. Then, utilise subcategories to further break up the content. This will all make the information easily scannable, and ranking better as a result. We’ve got more in-depth information here about structure, if you’re looking for a blog to help you tackle on-page SEO specifically.

It’s time to get sentimental

A key feature of BERT is its analysis of the Sentiment of a query or a webpage. Sentiment is the undertone of the content and it can be positive, negative, or neutral. It also exists on a -1 to +1 scale.

-so in layman’s terms, positive sentiment would be positive words like “the medicine is awesome, it really works, it alleviates pain, and it’s affordable too.”

Source: Monkeylearn

Why should we care about Sentiment in SEO?  Well, if all the results on page 1 are offering positive sentiment and your page has mostly negative vibes, there is a strong chance Google will not consider the page relevant to what the user is looking for. So no high-ranks for you! When optimising content for your clients, you need to make sure that you’ve done your sentiment analysis. It can be used to create more relevant content that lines up with the user’s expectations. Google has a useful tutorial here for Sentiment Analysis.

On the other hand, it can be used to identify any negative or neutral content on the website that might be turning off potential visitors. This information can then be used to strategise updates for the content – improving user experience and search engine ranking. For example, one particular product might be getting lots of bad reviews and sentiment analysis can help you detect this.

Links, links, links

Thanks to NLP, link structure and placement are even more crucial. As mentioned above, content needs to be relevant and equally, you can’t just place a link randomly on a page. Every link needs to make sense to the content. I know we all love our links in SEO, but they can’t just be shoe-horned in. Make your anchor text contextually relevant to the page – with the right context it will have full value.

If there is additional information about something elsewhere, it’s a great idea to link to it because this gives your page extra validity. However, with NLP it is super important to avoid non-descriptive anchor text. Aim to include a range of natural keyword variations and natural language pointing to your target page. Of course, you also want other pages to link to your page, so, once again, keep that content relevant!

Take a look at this guide we put together explaining how to create an effective internal linking strategy for SEO.

Ask away

Information from Google Patents states that your content is more likely to be selected for the ‘People Also Ask’ answers if it’s presented as a question and answer.

Think about it, NLP is making Google better at understanding human queries. These queries often include questions, so we need to use this language in our content. Ask the questions in your copy that the user would ask, and then answer them straight after.

By using complete questions in your SEO content, you signal that your website is providing comprehensive answers to a specific question. So now you understand my use of questions in the article you’ve just read!

Keep your friends close but your *competitors* closer

Steve Bailey, Head of Technical SEO at Spike Digital, says that “the biggest risk with focusing on NLP is not doing your research”. Whilst analysing your page is vital, it is equally important to scope out the competitor pages. This helps you build a more well-rounded sense of the impact NLP is having on your sector.

You can use NLP to analyse the top ranking pages and the metrics that now matter (like sentiment, entities and salience). Make sure that your on-page content is similar and then you can expect to rank just as high. 

Google’s API Demo

On the subject of analysis, Google’s natural language API demo can examine any text for free. It comes back with a whole heap of data for you, which can then be compared to the highest-ranking pages.

Here’s an example of the API demo in action, you’ll see that it identifies ‘entities’ for you.

An entity is a word or phrase that represents an object which can be identified, classified, and categorised. For example, this might be a person, event or number. NLP selects and evaluates entities, scoring their salience (how important they are in the text).

So, by taking a look at analysis of entities and salience in your content, and that of your competitors, you can determine how your content can be optimised.

To summarise

With NLP taking off, we need to work more than ever to match user intent in our SEO. Semantic search is an absolute game changer. We need to keep NLP in the back of our minds at all times as SEO content writers  -it’s here to stay but it should be embraced. The traditional ranking factors like keywords still matter, but new factors like sentiment must be considered.

Now that you know about Google’s new metric system, use it to your advantage. Go away and analyse your pages, your competitors pages and even our pages if you’d like!

I’ll leave you with a final run down of how to make that content completely irresistible to NLP:

1. Keep it specific and coherent
2. Use structure to your advantage
3. Match user sentiment
4. Employ internal and external links
5. Anticipate the user’s questions
6. Get analysing