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A Guide To SEO In The Insurance Sector

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.

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A Guide To Google’s Natural Language Processing For SEO

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
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What I’ve Learnt In My First Six Months In SEO

In January 2023, I entered the world of SEO when I became a Junior SEO Executive at Cedarwood Digital, and it’s safe to say that I have learnt a lot. In this blog, I will be sharing all of the valuable things that I have learnt in the exciting world of Search Engine Optimisation, ways to learn and how I will move forwards. 

What I Have Learnt: 

SEO Takes Time

One of the most important things that I have learnt is that SEO is a long-term process. Building organic visibility and improving search rankings will take time, it will not happen overnight. SEO takes time, patience and consistent effort, and it is crucial to set realistic expectations. By focusing on longer term strategies, producing high quality content, optimising your website structure and gaining authoritative backlinks, you can steadily improve your website’s performance in the SERPs and establish a solid foundation for long term success. 

Keeping Up To Date Is Vital 

Staying up to date with any SEO news is extremely important for SEO professionals. SEO is constantly evolving and search engines like Google frequently release algorithm updates which can significantly impact website rankings and visibility. By staying informed about the latest updates and news, you are able to adapt your strategies accordingly and anticipate any potential changes. Having a good understanding of algorithm updates and what they mean for SEO allows you to make necessary adjustments to your website and content and ensure that your website is aligning with the current ranking factors and guidelines. Failing to keep up with the latest SEO news and updates can result in missed opportunities and potentially a decline in the SERPs, therefore resulting in a loss of organic traffic. Ultimately, staying up to date is extremely important as it allows SEO professionals to stay ahead of the curve and achieve long term success.

Keyword Research 

Keyword research is the foundation of SEO and without it, you can not expect to gain organic visibility. SEO is about finding opportunities online and gaining relevant traffic to your website through visibility in the SERPs. Keyword research is at the heart of helping you to capitalise on any relevant traffic. 

Keyword research is the process of finding words and phrases that users are searching for. This is so that you can then optimise your website according to keywords that are relevant to your service/ product. By optimising your website and including the correct keywords, Google will be able to understand what your website is about and that it is related to the keywords users are searching for. If your website is matching user intent for those keywords, Google will then rank your website accordingly. 

One of the first things I learnt was that effective keyword research is essential for all SEO strategies. Without it, it will be extremely difficult to know what your users are searching for and it also plays a key role in ensuring that you are not targeting keywords that users are not searching for. By conducting keyword research, and then optimising your website accordingly, you are more likely to rank for relevant keywords and gain the right type of organic traffic to your website. 

Content Optimisations 

Content is key. Content optimisation plays a vital role in SEO as it can directly impact a website’s visibility, relevance and user experience. Without content, search engines like Google, will not be able to understand what your website is about, and therefore will not be able to rank your website on the SERPs. This means that your website will not be seen organically. By optimising the content on your website, you can ensure that all of your web pages align with what users are looking for. When done effectively, content optimisation can help search engines understand the context of your website, and this can help lead to improved rankings. Additionally, having optimised content will likely increase the engagement of your users; providing them with valuable information will increase the likelihood of them staying on your website for longer. It can also help Google to draw links between different themes on your website and different pieces of content, which helps to establish and showcase your E-E-A-T signals which is one of the most important elements of trust for Google. Fundamentally, content optimisation ensures that your website is providing valuable and helpful content for users and search engines, with the hope of increasing rankings and organic traffic.

On-Page Optimisations

On-page optimisations are a crucial part of SEO as they can also directly impact a website’s visibility and overall ranking potential. On-page optimisation refers to the process of optimising various different elements on a webpage in order to improve the user experience. This includes optimising title tags, URL structures, page structure and internal linking, as well as optimising the content on the web page. By implementing effective on-page optimisations, websites can provide search engines with clear signals about the content’s relevance and importance, therefore, potentially increasing the likelihood of higher rankings in the SERPs. Plus, these optimisations will also enhance the user experience by making the content more accessible, readable and engaging, which is also important for rankings as Google prioritises websites that are made for the user first. Overall, on-page optimisations are fundamental to SEO strategies; ensuring that your website is well structured, user friendly and easily discoverable will likely result in improved organic visibility and an overall better SEO performance. 

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is a fundamental part of any SEO strategy and it involves focusing on the technical aspects of a website that can affect the visibility and performance in the SERPs. By optimising the technical elements of your website such as website speed, mobile-friendliness, and indexing, you can ensure that search engines are crawling your website effectively and ranking it accordingly. Technical SEO plays a crucial role in improving website usability and user experience. Ignoring technical SEO can result in poor website performance and decreased visibility, and in some instances, great content optimisation and link building approaches can be lost because there is a fundamental crawl issue on the website, therefore meaning that Google isn’t seeing the content it needs to return – in most cases, a simple fix can have substantial consequences for the website. It is extremely important to have the fundamentals in place and have your website working properly in order for the on page optimisations to be effective. It is therefore extremely important to prioritise technical SEO in order to maximise your website’s potential for ranking highly in the SERPs, and for improving the overall user experience. 

How You Can Learn About SEO 

Learning new things about SEO is an ongoing process that requires a continuous effort. I have learnt a lot of things in my first 6 months in SEO but there is still so much more to learn. There are so many ways to expand your knowledge and stay updated in the ever evolving industry. One of the ways that I have learnt is through reading various different blogs. There are many websites that regularly publish valuable information and updates on SEO practices and it is a great way to find out new information. Following reputable SEO experts on social media platforms can also provide you with a wealth of information and keep you informed about all of the latest trends. Participating in webinars and online courses that are led by experts can also deepen your understanding of SEO and help you to acquire new skills. Attending SEO conferences and networking events will help you to deepen your knowledge and it enables you to connect with other SEO professionals and gain outsider insights that can broaden your knowledge.Listening to podcasts can also be extremely beneficial and there are quite a few across the SEO sector, these podcasts can be extremely handy for SEO professionals who are commuting to work. Finally, experimenting with different SEO techniques and conducting your own research can massively contribute to learning new things.

I have used all of the above methods to expand my SEO knowledge and I can safely say that they all work. By combining all of these approaches, you can continuously learn and improve your skills and stay up to date in the dynamic world of SEO. 

Moving Forwards

6 months on from when I first entered the world of SEO, I have learnt an enormous amount of different SEO techniques and stayed up to date with all of the latest algorithm updates. I have delved into many different SEO projects including both on-page optimisations and technical SEO. Overall, my journey in SEO has been an invaluable learning experience which has equipped me with a diverse set of skills and the ability to optimise websites for better search engine visibility and organic growth. SEO is a very wide topic and I am excited to continuously learn more and more every day by staying up to date and learning new skills.  

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Leveraging Google Ads and SEO for Enhanced Online Visibility

Leveraging Google Ads and SEO for Enhanced Online Visibility.

 

In the ever-evolving digital landscape, gaining organic visibility for your brand can be a challenging endeavour. However, with the right strategies, such as utilising Google Ads and optimising for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you can bridge gaps where organic visibility may be lacking. In this blog post, we will explore how leveraging Google Ads can enhance short-term visibility, especially against dominant competitors in the organic SERPs. Additionally, we will discuss how SEO can save costs for high-cost-per-click (CPC) keywords. By combining both PPC and SEO, businesses can establish a powerful and cost-effective marketing strategy.

 

Part 1: Using Google Ads to Cover Organic Visibility Gaps

 

1.1 Filling Organic Visibility Gaps:

When there are certain keywords or search queries where your client’s website lacks organic visibility, Google Ads can come to the rescue. By targeting these specific keywords through pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, you can ensure that your client’s ads appear prominently on relevant search engine results pages (SERPs). This allows you to reach a wider audience and gain immediate visibility, driving more traffic to your client’s website.

 

1.2 Overcoming Dominant Competitors:

In highly competitive industries where larger competitors with high domain authority dominate the organic SERPs, it can be difficult for smaller businesses to break through. However, Google Ads can provide a level playing field by enabling you to bid on keywords that your competitors are targeting organically. By strategically outbidding them, you can position your client’s ads above their organic listings, gaining increased visibility and effectively challenging their dominance.

 

Part 2: Harnessing SEO to Save Costs for High CPC Keywords

 

2.1 Utilising Organic Visibility for High CPC Keywords:

If your client has strong organic visibility for high-cost-per-click keywords, they can save significant advertising costs. By leveraging their existing organic visibility through SEO efforts, they can capitalise on the traffic they are already receiving without having to pay for every click. This strategic approach enables your client to allocate their budget to other marketing initiatives or expand their online presence without incurring additional expenses.

 

2.2 Maximising Long-Term Growth:

SEO plays a crucial role in building sustainable organic visibility over time. By investing in optimising your website’s content, architecture, and backlink profile, you can improve organic rankings and drive continuous organic traffic. As a result, your reliance on paid advertising for high CPC keywords decreases, resulting in substantial cost savings in the long run. SEO acts as a foundation for consistent visibility and ongoing growth without solely depending on PPC campaigns.

 

Conclusion:

 

In the dynamic world of digital marketing, it’s essential to adapt and utilise the available tools to maximise your client’s visibility. By leveraging Google Ads to cover organic visibility gaps and utilising SEO to save costs for high CPC keywords, businesses can establish a comprehensive and cost-effective marketing strategy. Google Ads helps overcome organic limitations and effectively compete against dominant competitors in the digital landscape. On the other hand, SEO offers a sustainable approach, minimising dependence on paid advertising for high-cost keywords. Integrating both PPC and SEO ensures enhanced online visibility, targeted traffic, and optimised marketing budgets, leading to long-term success in a competitive market.

 
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How You Can Use Google Search Console Reports For SEO

Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google and it can help anyone who has a website understand how they are performing on Google Search. There are many different features and reports that can be used to monitor performance and it also provides valuable insights into how you can improve your appearance on Google search in order to bring more relevant traffic to your website. Using Google Search Console provides invaluable information for SEO performance and in this blog we will be discussing how you can use the reports featured in Search Console to improve your SEO strategy. 

What is Google Search Console? 

According to Google, “Search Console is a tool from Google that can help anyone with a website to understand how they are performing on Google Search, and what they can do to improve their appearance on search to bring more relevant traffic to their websites.” It is a free tool that all website owners/ SEO professionals can use to monitor and optimise their website’s performance. There are a wide range of tools and reports available in Google Search Console that users can utilise to understand how their website is perceived and indexed by Google. It offers valuable insights into how Google crawls, indexes and displays web pages and by utilising the reports provided by Search Console, users are able to identify and resolve any issues that are potentially hindering their websites performance in Google search results. 

Reports Within Google Search Console

Google Search Console offers a wide range of reports that can help you to monitor and optimise your website’s performance on Google search. The most helpful reports will depend on the focus of your work but below are some reports that can help to inform your SEO strategy.

Page Indexing Report

The page indexing report within Google Search Console allows you to see which pages Google is able to find and index on your site, you can also learn about any indexing issues that have been encountered. When you open the index report, you will see a chart that displays the number of pages that are indexed, highlighted in green, and the number of pages that are not indexed, highlighted in grey. 

By analysing the data within the page indexing report, you can clearly identify any potential problems that may prevent your pages from appearing in the search results. However, it is important to remember that not all no indexed pages are a problem, but it is important to determine why the pages are not indexed to understand whether or not there is a problem. Google Search Console will provide the reasons why pages have not been included in the index in the “Why pages aren’t indexed” section. 

This section of the report will provide you with valuable insight into why pages are not appearing in Google search results and why they may not be getting organic search results. Some of these reasons could be due to: 

  • ➡️ Redirect errors – if Google experiences a redirect error, they will not index the page.
  • ➡️ URL blocked by robots.txt – if a page was blocked by your website’s robots.txt file, Google may not index the page.
  • ➡️ Not found (404) – if Google discovers a page that returns a 404 error, it may not be indexed.
  • ➡️ Crawled – currently not indexed – this means that the page was crawled by Google but they have not indexed it. This does not mean that it will never be indexed, Google may recrawl this and index the page in the future. 
  • ➡️ Discovered – currently not indexed – this means that the page was found by Google but it was not crawled yet and therefore not indexed.
  • ➡️ Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user – this occurs when Google thinks that another URL makes a better canonical than the one that you have provided. Google will index the page that they consider canonical instead.

By analysing this report, you can ensure that all necessary and relevant pages are indexed correctly and you can solve any indexing errors. This will allow you to maximise the visibility of all of your webpages in the search results, ultimately driving more organic traffic to your website. 

Mobile Usability Report 

The mobile usability report shows which pages in your website have any usability problems when they are viewed on mobile devices. The top report will show how many pages within your property have usability issues.

Google Search Console will then provide you with specific issues that are affecting the mobile usability. 

When clicking on the specific issues, you will be able to see which pages are affected, specific issue details, and information about how you can fix these issues. By rectifying these mobile usability issues, you can enhance your website’s mobile experience and deliver a seamless experience to mobile users. This can in turn help to improve your rankings for these pages. 

Core Web Vitals Report 

The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console will show you how your pages are performing based on real world data. Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that are used to measure the speed, responsiveness and visual stability of a webpage. The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console will be based on the following four metrics:

  • ➡️ Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – how quickly the main content of the web page loads. The optimal LCP measurement is under 2.5 seconds. 
  • ➡️ Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – this is a measure of how much a webpage unexpectedly shifts during the loading phase. A layout shift occurs when a visible element shifts position from one rendered frame to the next. CLS is extremely important because if a page element shifts when a user is trying to interact, it creates a bad user experience. The optimal CLS measurement is a score under 0.1.
  • ➡️ First Input Delay (FID) –  this measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site (when they click a link/ tap a button) to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction. The optimal measurement for FID is under 100ms.
  • ➡️ Interaction To Next Paint (INP) – this metric assesses a page’s overall responsiveness to user’s actions. It will observe the time that it takes for the page to respond to interactions that occur throughout the user’s visit to a page.

The report will show the URL performance and they will be grouped by status, either poor, need improvement or good:

The core web vitals report will show you a chart of general trends and you can also look at both mobile and desktop platforms in detail by clicking on ‘open report’. The report will show you how all of the URLs on your website are performing based on historical user data and it will provide you with information about why the URLs are either poor or need improvement. By using this report, you can understand why your website is not performing well and how you can improve the speed and responsiveness of your website. 

Sitemaps Report 

Submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console is a fundamental step to ensure that your website’s structure and content are properly understood by Google. A sitemap is a file that you provide to Google and it will include information about the pages and files that are on your website, and the relationships between these pages. This is important so that Google can read your file and crawl your website efficiently. 

The sitemaps report in Google Search Console will provide you with information about how many pages from your sitemap are indexed and by reviewing this data you will be able to confirm that the pages you have included in the sitemap are indexed correctly and, you can detect any potential issues with your sitemap, such as broken links. Regularly monitoring the sitemaps report will help you to be informed about the pages in your sitemap and therefore, you will be able to optimise your web pages in order to maintain a good website structure and improve your website’s discoverability in the search results. 

Search Performance Report

The performance report in Google Search Console shows important metrics about how your website performs in Google search. Examples of what you can see in the performance report include: 

  • ➡️ Looking at how your traffic changes over time 
  • ➡️ Seeing which pages have the highest and lowest click through rates 
  • ➡️ Looking at impressions for top search queries 

The search performance report provides a wealth of data, including impressions, clicks, click-through rates and average positions. All of this data allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO strategy and how well it is working in Google search. By analysing and understanding this report, you will be able to identify high-performing keywords, understand your users behaviours and then optimise your SEO strategy accordingly. Additionally, this performance allows you to compare your organic performance over time, therefore meaning you can track the impact of any SEO changes that you have made on your website and further identify any areas for improvement. 

Summary 

Google Search Console is an extremely valuable tool for anyone who owns a website and any SEO professionals who are looking to optimise their websites’ performance in Google search results. It allows you to gain valuable insights into how your website is perceived by Google, and you can therefore adapt your SEO strategy accordingly. The reports allow you to make data driven decisions, address issues promptly and drive more organic traffic to your website. From monitoring your page indexing and mobile usability to managing sitemaps and analysing your search performance, Google Search Console provides you with the tools and insights that you need in order to refine your SEO strategy, drive organic traffic and improve overall SEO performance. 

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Five Key Tips To Create An Effective Digital PR Campaign

Digital PR has been a buzzword in the world of online marketing for quite a while now and it’s a popular marketing approach for businesses who are looking to grow their online profile while also landing important links back to their website. 

Here at Cedarwood, digital PR has always been an important part of our service offering, not just for the visibility that it garners for our clients, but also for the positive impact it can have on SEO campaigns and as a result we have a lot of experience (over seven years direct experience in fact!) in rolling out effective digital PR campaigns. 

Although it is one of the more popular approaches within the SEO mix, digital PR is something which if not done properly can fail to have the desired impact – so below we’ve included some top tips on how you can go about creating an effective digital PR campaign.

The importance of Digital PR

Before we dive into five key tips to creating an effective digital PR campaign, let’s first look at why digital PR is important and how it can help you to achieve your goals across both SEO and also improving overall awareness.

Digital PR is important because it can help businesses achieve a number of goals, including:

➡️ Increase brand awareness: When your brand is featured in high-quality, relevant publications, it can help to raise awareness of your company and its products or services. This can lead to increased traffic to your website, more leads, and ultimately, more sales.

➡️ Generate leads: A well-executed digital PR campaign can also help to generate leads for your business. When journalists and other influencers write about your company, they often include a call to action, such as a link to your website or a way to sign up for your email list. This can help you to capture the contact information of potential customers who are interested in learning more about what you have to offer.

➡️ Improve SEO: When your brand is mentioned in high-quality, relevant publications, it can help to improve your website’s search engine ranking. This is because search engines take into account the number and quality of backlinks to a website when ranking it in search results.

➡️ Build relationships with journalists and influencers: Digital PR can also help you to build relationships with journalists and other influencers in your industry. These relationships can be valuable assets for your business, as they can help you to get your company featured in the media and reach a wider audience.

There’s a lot of value that you can add to your overall marketing mix with digital PR but it’s important to understand how it fits in with a broader marketing mix, so that you can understand how to utilise it effectively.

Five Key Tips

  1. Start With Your Strategy

Strategy plays a key role within your digital PR campaigns and understanding your client’s audience, the current landscape and the type of content that will resonate with your audience (and journalists!) is important to driving success. 

So let’s start off with some key considerations and questions to ask around your digital PR strategy:

➡️ Your target audience: Who are you trying to reach with your digital PR campaign? What are their interests? What are their pain points?

➡️ Your goals: What do you want to achieve with your digital PR campaign? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Generate leads? Improve SEO?

➡️ Your key messages: What are the key messages you want to communicate with your digital PR campaign? What do you want journalists and influencers to take away from your story?

➡️Your content: What type of content will you create for your digital PR campaign? Will you write blog posts? Create infographics? Produce videos?

➡️Your distribution strategy: How will you distribute your content? Will you share it on social media? Submit it to media outlets? Pitch it to influencers?

➡️ Your measurement strategy: How will you measure the success of your digital PR campaign? Will you track website traffic? Leads generated? SEO ranking?

It might seem like a lot, but putting time into understanding your target audience, goals and distribution strategy will save you a lot of time further down the line so invest the time early on to ensure you are driving maximum efficiency through your campaigns. 

2. Do You Research

Undertaking research at the start of a digital PR campaign is another way to ensure you save time further down the line, don’t repeat stories which have already been covered and really maximise your outreach capacity and capabilities. 

When you’re doing your research for a digital PR campaign, there are a few key things to keep in mind:

➡️ Identify your target audience: Who are you trying to reach with your campaign? What are their interests? What publications do they read? What influencers do they follow?

➡️ Identify the right publications and influencers: Once you know who your target audience is, you can start to identify the right publications and influencers to reach out to. Consider the following factors when making your selection:

➡️ Relevance: The publication or influencer should be relevant to your target audience.

➡️ Reach: The publication or influencer should have a large enough audience to reach your target audience.

➡️ Credibility: The publication or influencer should be credible and respected by your target audience.

➡️Find out what they’ve written about in the past: Take a look at the publications and influencers you’ve identified and see what they’ve written about in the past. This will give you a good idea of their style, their interests, and the types of stories they’re interested in.

➡️ Find out how to contact them: Once you’ve identified the right publications and influencers, you need to find out how to contact them. This may involve finding their email address, phone number, or social media profiles.

By doing your research, you can increase your chances of success with your digital PR campaign.

Here are some additional tips for doing your research:

➡️ Use online tools: There are a number of online tools that can help you with your research, such as Google News, Cision, and Meltwater. These tools can help you to find relevant publications, influencers, and stories.

➡️ Talk to people in your industry: Talk to people in your industry who are familiar with digital PR. They can share their insights and advice with you.

➡️ Attend industry events: Attending industry events is a great way to meet journalists and influencers and learn more about their needs.

Taking additional time to thoroughly research all of the above and build your contact list can really help when it comes to outreaching the campaigns, so make sure you put the groundwork in before you start building the campaigns to maximise the success.

3. Create High Quality Content

If you want journalists to link to your website then you need to generate great content which gives them a reason to link to it. So whether it’s a data piece, a piece of thought leadership or just something of genuine interest to the user, make sure that the content you create is relevant, up to date and most importantly, within the user interest. 

Great content for Digital PR comes in a number of different formats and can include:

➡️ Data-driven content: This type of content uses data and statistics to tell a story. It can be very persuasive and can help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. For example, you could create a blog post that analyzes industry trends or a report that provides insights into your target audience.

➡️ Compelling visuals: Images, infographics, and videos can be very effective at engaging your audience and driving traffic to your website. Make sure your visuals are high-quality and relevant to your content.

➡️ Interviews and thought leadership pieces: Interviews with experts in your industry can be a great way to generate backlinks and establish yourself as a thought leader. You could also write thought leadership pieces that share your insights on industry trends or best practices.

➡️ Case studies: Case studies can be a great way to demonstrate the value of your products or services. They can also help you generate leads and build relationships with potential customers.

➡️ Trendjacking: Trendjacking is the practice of capitalizing on current trends to create content that is relevant and timely. This can be a great way to generate buzz for your brand and attract new customers.

Undertaking the first two steps will help you to better understand the audience and it’s important to keep this in mind when creating high quality content to ensure that when you outreach it to journalists it’s going to be relevant to both their audience and yours.

4. Promote Your Content

In the simplest terms promoting your content is essentially outreaching it – getting it in front of journalists to ensure that you get the right level of coverage for your client, at the right time. The promotion of the content is almost as important as the quality of the content if not more so, as it doesn’t matter how great your content is, if no one sees it then it will have no impact on your overall marketing efforts! 

When outreaching to journalists the first step is to create an effective media list – remember – you don’t have to include everyone on your media list, rather focus on the contacts that count, people who are likely to cover your story or who have a genuine interest in what you are doing. 

Here are some top tips to land coverage with journalists:

➡️ Do your research. Before you reach out to any journalists, take the time to learn about their work and their audience. What kind of stories do they typically write? What are their interests? Once you have a good understanding of their needs, you can tailor your pitch accordingly.

➡️ Make a great first impression. Your subject line is the first thing a journalist will see, so make sure it’s clear, concise, and attention-grabbing. The body of your email should also be well-written and engaging. Get to the point quickly and clearly, and make sure your pitch is relevant to the journalist’s interests.

➡️ Be helpful and responsive. If a journalist is interested in your story, be prepared to provide them with all the information they need. This includes high-quality images, videos, and other supporting materials. Be responsive to their questions and requests, and make sure they have everything they need to move forward with the story.

➡️ Be patient. It takes time to build relationships with journalists. Don’t expect to get a response from every pitch you send out. Just keep pitching good stories, and eventually you’ll start to get results.

You won’t always get it right first time, but taking your time to build out media lists & prepare them effectively will play a key role in ensuring that you are maximising the most of your opportunity. 

It’s also important to stand out – in a crowded area where journalists receive hundreds of PR pitches each day, how do you make sure that you stand out from the crowd?

➡️ Personalize your pitches. Don’t just send out a generic email to a list of journalists. Take the time to address each journalist by name and tailor your pitch to their specific interests.

➡️ Offer exclusive content. If you can offer journalists exclusive content, they’ll be more likely to take a look at your pitch. This could be a press release, a white paper, or even an interview with an expert.

➡️Be persistent. If you don’t hear back from a journalist right away, don’t give up. Follow up with them a few days later to see if they have any questions.

Timing is also key – ensuring that you outreach at the right time to the right person plays a key role in getting the coverage that you are looking for.

5. Measure Results

Measuring results and evaluating your digital PR campaigns plays a key role in ensuring that you get the most out of them and that you can take learnings to continue to evolve and improve your offering. Digital PR is constantly changing and evolving, so staying on top of your game is key and ensuring that your clients understand the value of what you are offering plays a key role in ensuring that you’re showcasing the value that you are bringing.

To start with, you need to be clear about what you want to measure, approaches here include:

➡️ Set clear goals: Before you launch your campaign, set clear goals for what you want to achieve. This will help you track your progress and measure your success.

➡️ Use a variety of metrics: Don’t rely on just one metric to measure the impact of your campaign. Use a variety of metrics to get a more complete picture of your results.

➡️Track your results over time: Don’t just measure the impact of your campaign at the end. Track your results over time to see how your campaign is performing.

➡️Make adjustments as needed: If you’re not seeing the results you want, make adjustments to your campaign strategy.

Don’t be afraid to make updates and changes as you need – this will help you to ensure you keep firmly fixed on the overall goal of delivering value to your clients and the reach/coverage that they want. 

You can use a number of different ways to measure from a metric perspective, but here are some of the most common metrics:

➡️ Media coverage: This is the most basic metric, and it simply measures the number of articles, blog posts, and other pieces of media that mention your brand.

➡️ Link building: This metric measures the number of links to your website from other websites. Links are important for SEO, so this metric can give you an idea of how well your campaign is helping to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

➡️Social media engagement: This metric measures the number of likes, shares, and comments on your social media posts. It’s a good way to measure how well your campaign is resonating with your target audience.

➡️Brand awareness: This metric measures how well people know your brand. You can measure brand awareness through surveys, polls, and social media analytics.

➡️Website traffic: This metric measures the number of people who visit your website. It’s a good way to measure the overall impact of your campaign, as more traffic means more people are learning about your brand.

Whichever you use, it’s important to remember that you always need to be linking it back to revenue and results for your client – these are there key business metrics, so make sure to keep in mind how it closely links back to what your client is looking to achieve.

Final Thoughts

In addition to everything that we have mentioned above, at the end of the day an effective digital PR campaign all comes down to whether the user consumes it, engages with it and feels something for it – after all we are trying to create something which sits within the human interest angle. 

Keeping this in mind, additional elements which will play in to the success of your campaigns include:

  • The quality of your relationships with journalists
  • Your ability to generate buzz and excitement around your content
  • Your ability to adapt your strategy as the campaign progresses.

Each of these play their own important role in ensuring that your campaigns get off the ground, so in addition to some great planning and activation make sure you take the time to build the relationships and research the impact of your content – this is essential to gaining that all important coverage!

To find out more about how we can help you with your digital PR campaigns, get in touch! 

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Google Generative AI And What It Means For SEO

Over the past few years, AI has been a big topic of conversation and in May 2023, Google announced that they are bringing a cutting-edge generative AI to Google Search. Google are starting to experiment with Search Generative Experience (SGE) which, according to Google, is “an early step in transforming the Search experience with generative AI.” In this blog, we will be discussing what SGE is and what it means for SEO.   

What Is SGE?

Google has recently announced a new feature that is coming to the SERPs, this is called Search Generative Experience (SGE) and it uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) to organise web results in a new way in order to help users to get more from their search. With SGE, users on Google will be able to: 

  • ➡️Ask new, more in depth questions that search could not answer before 
  • ➡️Ask follow up questions to Google in a conversational mode 
  • ➡️Gain information about a topic quickly with links to relevant results in order to explore the topic further 
  • ➡️Get more done easily, for example generate creative ideas in Search
  • ➡️Shop for products more easily

Google’s generative AI is designed to to simplify complex search tasks and provide overview snapshots of search queries. SGE will be able to answer more detailed search queries and will also enhance the online shopping experience for users. 

What Will The Google Search Generative Experience Look Like? 

The new Google SGE will likely display an AI generated answer above the search results. The answer will be labelled as generative AI and it will provide an answer to the search query. 

The answer will be in a box and it will provide links to the websites that it has used to generate the answer, users will then be able to click on these sites in order to find out more about the topic. Below the AI answer, there will also be an option to ask a follow up question to gain more information. 

Source: Google

How SGE Works 

Google will be using generative AI which is an extremely powerful tool that can generate human-like content. In Google’s search, they will be using generative AI in order to provide useful information to users more easily and it will provide a more comprehensive overview to complex queries. 

  1. Firstly, Google will analyse the user’s search query; they will understand the intent of the query and use keywords to understand what the user wants to find out. 
  2. When appropriate, Google will then use its AI to scan the web for relevant websites that will help to answer the query. When it is scanning the web, it will be looking at the content on websites and the number of high quality links that are pointing towards the website. 
  3. Google’s AI will then generate a summary of the websites, this will help users get an overview and will serve as a “jumping-off point”, Google will also include links to the websites that it has used to gain the information so that users are able to find out more information if they wish. The summary will be displayed in a conversational format, making it easier for users to gain information and they will also be able to ask follow up questions which Google’s AI will answer.

Search Generative Experience is designed to help users search more easily; it can help to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints and get things done more easily. Instead of asking Google a few different questions to get the answer you are looking for, you will now be able to ask one long question and it should provide you with all the information that you need in one place. 

Generative AI Shopping Experience

Google is also using AI to help users shop. According to Google, “With generative AI in Search, we can help you understand the full picture when you’re shopping, making even the most considered and complex purchase decisions faster and much easier.” 

The new generative AI shopping experience is built on Google’s shopping graph, which is a machine learning powered, real time data set of the world’s products and sellers. It stores billions of product listings and specific information about those products. 

With the AI shopping experience, when you are searching for a product on Google, you will be provided with a snapshot of noteworthy factors that you should consider when purchasing the product and it will also provide you with product descriptions that include relevant and up to date reviews, prices and product images. 

For example, if you are searching “Bluetooth speaker for a pool party”, Google’s generative AI will provide you with important considerations for that product, like, is it water resistant or does it have a good battery life. It will also provide you with a range of products to choose from with product descriptions, prices and reviews, making it extremely easy to find the perfect product that you are looking for!

Source: Google

Known Limitations Of SGE 

Google’s Search Generative Experience is currently in the experimental stage, and whilst it is built with a range of protections, there are some known limitations. Whilst Google have been testing SGE, they have noticed some of the following limitations, however they have said that in many cases they have already made improvements and they expect to make further progress as SGE develops. Some of the limitations currently are: 

  • ➡️Misinterpretation during corroboration – there have been some instances where SGE has identified the correct information in order to form its snapshot, however there has been a slight misinterpretation of the language which has, in turn, changed the meaning of the output.
  • ➡️Hallucination – SGE may sometimes misinterpret facts or identify insights inaccurately. 
  • ➡️Bias – SGE is trained to corroborate responses with high quality resources, these high quality resources are results that are highly ranked, and it may therefore show a snapshot that reflects a smaller range of perspectives than what is available on the internet. Therefore, potentially reflecting biases in the results.
  • ➡️Opinionated content implying persona – SGE is designed to reflect a neutral tone when it is generating output, however there may be instances where the output that it is providing reflects opinions that exist on the internet, potentially giving the impression that the model is displaying a persona.
  • ➡️Duplication or contradiction with existing search features – SGE is integrated into search alongside other results, and because of this, it is possible for the output of SGE to contradict the information from other results. This is because SGE is representing a perspective that it has gained from a range of results, whereas featured snippets, for example, will only be highlighting the perspective from one single source. 

How SGE Will Impact SEO

The integration of generative AI in Google’s search is a significant change that has the potential to impact SEO in a number of ways. SGE will take the top position in the SERPs which can be unnerving to hear if you work in SEO, however, Google’s generative AI, SGE, will be using information from websites to provide the snapshot of information and Google will be providing links to relevant websites. So, if Google provides a link to your website in their SGE snapshot, this could be great for your website and could even provide you with more organic traffic. 

So, how do you get SGE to provide a link to your website? Well, it is important that your website is optimised for SGE, below are some of the considerations that you need to consider:

  • ➡️Content – with generative AI, Google will likely be favouring websites that have high quality and in depth content. SGE will be using websites to provide information to users and it will more than likely use websites that provide high quality content that provides in depth information that it will then be able to synthesise into a snapshot on the search results. This means that websites that offer in depth, valuable content will likely be favoured and thin content, which Google already doesn’t like, will likely get penalised even further! In terms of SEO, it is therefore extremely important to provide high quality content across your website so that Google can use it for SGE. Plus, if Google is using the content on your website, they may include a link to your website, and this will be great for SEO if it is sitting at the very top of the SERPs. 
  • ➡️User experience – user experience will also be key. As SGE will offer the ability to ask follow up questions, it is important that your site offers an excellent user experience with easy navigation. If Google is providing a link to your website, it is important that the user experience, when they land on your website, is optimal as this could lead to users spending more time on your website. Another reason as to why it is important to have great user experience is for Google; if users are asking a follow up question and your site has the answer and it is easily accessible for Google to find, they may suggest viewing your site to gain more information on a related topic and this will provide more traffic to your website.   
  • ➡️Relevance – making sure that the information on your website is relevant and up to date is crucial. Google’s generative AI will be providing users with useful information and they will want to ensure that the information is correct. By updating the content on your website, it will help to ensure that your website is being seen as relevant and up to date. 

Google’s Search Generative Experience is a very different search experience from what we have seen before, however Google is going to be linking to websites with the goal of driving traffic to websites. Google stated “As we bring generative AI into Search, we’re committed to continue sending valuable traffic to sites across the web.” 

Whilst these generative AI changes that are coming to Google search may seem daunting, it is important to remember that SGE is in the early stages of development and it is expected that Google will listen to all feedback and recommendations and adjust SGE accordingly before fully launching it on Google. 

As an SEO professional, it is important to keep up to date with any developments that arise with SGE, as with any other updates in SEO (we all know that there are a lot), it is important to understand the implications that will come with generative AI and be prepared to adapt your SEO strategy accordingly. With the introduction of generative AI into Google Search, it is important to remember that a successful SEO strategy will still be about providing useful information and content to users, and this will not be changing any time soon. 

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Ways To Set Up GA4 Conversion Tracking

Recently, Universal Analytics has been transitioning into GA4 and from 1st July 2023, you will no longer be able to collect data with Universal Analytics. If you work in SEO, then I’m sure you are aware that Universal Analytics uses goals to track conversions, whereas GA4 uses events which can be marked as conversions. In this blog, we will be discussing how to set up conversion tracking in GA4 and the different types of conversion tracking that you can set up in GA4. 


About GA4 Conversions 

According to Google “A conversion is any user action that’s valuable to your business; for example, a user purchasing from your store or subscribing to your newsletter are examples of common conversions.” 

A conversion in GA4 is what you consider to be an important action that you want your users to complete on your website. Any action or engagement that happens on your website can be tracked in GA4 as a conversion event. Examples of these events can include: 

  • ➡️Scroll depth 
  • ➡️Form submissions 
  • ➡️Clicks 

You are also able to custom create events in your GA4 account to ensure that you are tracking any conversions that are important for your business. 

In GA4, conversion tracking is achieved by setting up conversion events; these are automatically collected, recommended, or custom events and any of these can be marked as a conversion. By setting up conversions in your GA4 account, you will be able to see the actions that are most important to your business by using the Acquisition, Engagement, and Advertising reports. This will allow you to then optimise your website for SEO purposes. 

Tracking your conversions will let you see the total number of times that important actions have taken place on your website, and with custom events, you are able to track whatever is important specifically for your website. GA4 uses a flexible data model and this will allow you to send a wide variety of information to your reports. And once you have your events in GA4, you can easily track these events as conversions. 

How Is Conversion Tracking In GA4 Different From Universal Analytics? 

Google states that “In Universal Analytics, you measure conversions by setting up goals and e-commerce transactions. In Google Analytics 4, there is no distinction between goals and ecommerce; you measure all conversions via GA4 events.” The events in GA4 will be triggered when a user interacts with your website. 

Conversions were known as goals in Universal Analytics and both are ways of tracking user interactions that are very valuable to your business, however, there is alot to like about conversion events in GA4; they are easy to set up, you are allowed up to 30 conversion events per property and they offer a lot of flexibility in what you are able to track as a conversion event. 

Below, we will discuss the different ways to set up conversions within GA4. 

Toggling Existing Events As Conversions 

In order to mark an existing event as a conversion, go to the Events page and this will list all of the existing events that are being collected on your site, to mark these events as conversions, you can simply click on the toggle on the right hand side of the page under ‘Mark as conversion’. 

Once you have clicked this toggle, you can go to the Conversions page and your new conversions will be listed there. 

Creating Custom Events To Use As Conversions 

If you want to create a custom event to use as a conversion, you will firstly need to make sure you have administrator permission for the GA4 property, otherwise, you will not be able to create new events or mark any conversions. If you do have administrator permissions, you can follow the below steps in order to create custom events to use as conversions: 

  1. Go to Configure – Events and click Create Event 
  2. Click create 
  3. Enter a custom event name (for example sign_up, page_view or generate_lead)
  1. You then need to add some conditions, when the conditions have all been met, your event will then trigger. The first condition is “event_name equals page_view” (the value can be changed depending on the condition, for example, if it was based on a click, it would be “event_name equals click”
  1. Click Add Condition, the second condition will indicate that the event should only trigger for a specific page. This condition should be “page_location – contains – part of the URL” for example “page_location contains /contact/thank-you”
  1. Select ‘Copy parameters from the source event’
  1. Click Create in the top right-hand corner 

You have now created your custom event, however it may take up to 24 hours for it to appear on your events page meaning you will not be able to toggle it as a conversion yet, however there is another way to add this new event to your conversions. 

  1. Go to Configure – Conversions 
  2. Click New conversion event 
  3. In the New event name box, enter the name of the custom event that you created earlier, for example “generate_lead” 
  4. Click Save 

Your custom event will now be tracking any conversions in your GA4 property!

Different Types Of Conversions You Can Track In GA4 

In Google Analytics 4, there are many conversions that can be tracked in order to gain valuable insights into user behaviour and website performance. GA4 uses a flexible model with a wide range of tracking capabilities, therefore allowing businesses and websites to measure and track many different types of conversions across both websites and apps. 

Within GA4, there are micro and macro conversions – micro conversions measure the important steps that lead to completing a macro conversion. A macro conversion measures important interactions that will directly impact the success of your business. 

Examples of micro conversions: 

  • ➡️Subscribing to a newsletter 
  • ➡️Scrolling to 90% of a blog post or article 
  • ➡️Completing a registration form 

Examples of macro conversions: 

  • ➡️Registering for a service 
  • ➡️Purchasing a product

As already discussed, GA4 is extremely flexible and allows businesses to track conversions that are valuable to their business. By providing the ability to track automatically collected, recommended and custom events as conversions, it is giving businesses and websites the ability to track and measure conversions that align with specific goals and objectives and therefore giving insight into how to improve their website. GA4 provides comprehensive tracking capabilities allowing businesses to gain deep insights into its customers’ user journey. 

Why Is Conversion Tracking Important For SEO?

Now that you have set up your conversions, you will be able to look at your conversion data in GA4 reports. By going to Reports – Engagement – Conversions, you will be able to see your conversion data over time. 

The Conversions report in GA4 will show you which conversion actions that you have are most common, how many users are performing each action and how much revenue is associated with each action. 

By tracking conversions in GA4, it can help you to gather meaningful data and insights into how your users are behaving on your website. By tracking the actions that are most valuable to your business, you will be able to then optimise your website for SEO purposes which can help to improve user experience and engagement. Conversions are very valuable to your business and tracking your conversions will help you to connect your SEO and sales processes. 

In GA4, you will be able to customise your conversion report and this will give you more insight into what your organic visitors are doing on your website and what is driving sales. By seeing the users conversions, you are able to determine the user journey and see which areas of your website need optimising for SEO. 

Summary 

Conversion tracking in GA4 can be extremely useful for SEO purposes, by tracking actions that are important to your business such as scroll tracking, page views and clicks, you are able to see how users are interacting with your website and this will then help to understand where to optimise the website and create a better user experience. By tracking these actions, you are able to better support SEO performance. 

In this blog, we have discussed how to mark events as conversions and how to create custom events and mark those as conversions. By following these steps in your GA4 property, you will be able to start tracking the actions that are important to your business and optimise your website accordingly. 

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Cedarwood Wins Two European Search Awards!

We were absolutely delighted to take home TWO awards at the European Search Awards in Lisbon last night! Hosted at the beautiful Patio De Gale it was great to see everyone come together in a celebration of search across Europe!

On the night we took home:

📣 Best Small Integrated Agency
📣 Best Use Of PR In Search

Absolutely delighted to take home two awards to showcase the great year that Cedarwood has had and was lovely to catch up with other agencies & brands during the night! 

On page SEO blog image

Five Tips To Improve Your On-Page SEO

On-page SEO, sometimes referred to as on-site SEO, refers to the practice of optimising your website in order for it to improve your user’s experience, rank higher in the SERPs and to gain more organic traffic. On-page SEO can include many different aspects including updating content, updating the structure of your page, using internal links and many more. When you are optimising your on-page SEO, you are aiming to improve the user experience by providing valuable and relevant content to your visitors, in addition to improving the page’s relevance and salience and showcasing your expertise on a given topic. By improving your on-page SEO, it will help to improve your visibility and traffic. In this blog, we will be discussing tips that you can use to improve your on-page SEO. 

What Is On-Page SEO?  

On-page SEO is an extremely important aspect of search engine optimisation and it involves optimising your web pages in order to rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) so that you can attract more traffic to your website. Unlike off-page SEO, which involves external factors such as gaining backlinks into your website, on-page SEO is about making improvements directly on your website. There are many elements of on-page SEO that can help you to improve your rankings by creating a better user experience. 

Why Is On-Page SEO So Important?

Improving your on-page SEO is incredibly important because it will help to improve search visibility and increase the amount of traffic to your website. According to a study by Backlinko who analysed the click through rate data across 1,312,881 pages and 12,166,560 search queries, it found that the website in position 1 in Google’s organic search results has an average click through rate of 27.6%, this was the highest click through rate by far, a sharp drop off then started on the 2nd page of the results. 

Source: Backlinko

This shows that being on the first page of the SERPs will help you to gain more traffic. Another statistic that further implies this, is that only 0.63% of Google searchers clicked on a link from the second page of the SERPs.

Source: Backlinko

The figures and statistics above show the importance of improving your website’s rankings, and improving your on-page SEO will play a key role in helping Google to recognise what your website is about and the value of it, therefore putting you in a better position to rank. So, now that we know the importance of improving on-page SEO for your website, let’s dive into how you can do this. 

  1. Review the salience and relevance of the content on your website

In the world of SEO, the content that is on your website is extremely important. The content is what drives traffic to your website, what engages your users and what can also convert users into customers. It is therefore essential to regularly review the salience and relevance of the content on your website. 

Salience refers to how relevant the content on your website is, relating to your target audience. If the content on your website is not relevant to your users, they will be unlikely to engage with it or even visit your website in the first place. It is therefore important to regularly ensure that the salience of your content is to a high level to ensure you are providing users with the most relevant helpful content. It is also important to make sure that your content aligns with what users are searching for because, if your content is not relevant to keywords that users are searching for in Google, it is unlikely that your website will appear in the SERPs, therefore meaning that you could be missing out on a significant amount of organic traffic. 

By regularly reviewing the salience and relevance of the content on your website, you will be able to identify gaps that you have within your content and then make any necessary changes and amendments. By updating your content, you will be able to improve the salience of your content and make it more useful to users, and more visible in the SERPs.

In order to review the salience of the content on your website, you can either do it manually or with a range of tools that are available on the web. These tools use machine learning powered Natural Language Understanding technology and they will measure the relevance of your content. They can also see how relevant your landing pages are for your target keywords and you can measure the impact of any content changes by using a text comparison tool to understand how any changes that you have made to your content have impacted its relevance. 

Using salience tools will allow you to see how relevant your content is, and because they use machine learning, they will also be able to show the way that search engines are understanding your content. By seeing the relevance of your content, you are able to know, as a website owner, if the content on your website is relevant to your target audience, you will then be able to improve your content and see how the salience has improved. Once you have reviewed the content, you will be able to come up with a content strategy which will help to improve user experience, improve rankings and increase the traffic to your website. 

  1. Optimise your on-site content for SEO

Once you have reviewed the salience and relevance of your content, it is now time to improve the content on your website. Updating the content on your website can have many benefits, it can improve the users overall experience, by creating high quality content, you will be providing users with the information that they want. Another benefit is that you will be able to target your specific keywords by including them in your content, meaning that you will increase your likelihood of being featured highly in the SERPs and therefore will likely increase your organic traffic, therefore also increasing your online visibility. If you are creating high quality content for your users, it is more likely that Google will place your website higher up on the SERP. So, how do you create this high quality content? 

Firstly, you need to make sure that you are targeting your keywords, it is important to carry out keyword research so that you know what users are searching for, you then need to include these keywords naturally within your content so that Google knows what your web page is about. It is also important to include words that are semantically related to your targeted keywords to improve the salience of your page. You also need to ensure that the content is valuable and engaging for your users, this can be done by using subheadings, bullet points, short paragraphs and other formatting techniques to make sure that the content is easily readable for the users. 

Overall, your content should be helpful for your users, Google’s helpful content update states that if content doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations, it will not perform as well. It is therefore extremely important that your content is predominantly made for your users, as this is the best way to improve your rankings and therefore increase your visibility. According to Google “People-first content creators focus on creating satisfying content, while also utilising SEO best practices to bring searchers additional value.” 

  1. Review the structure of your webpage 

Reviewing the structure and layout of your webpage is crucial for user experience, and therefore is crucial for SEO. The structure of your webpage refers to how your content is organised and presented on your page. Having a well structured web page can improve your user’s experience and can make it easier for those users to navigate through your website and find the information that they are looking for. This can also be beneficial for search engines, as having a well structured website will make it easier to crawl your web pages and find the important information. The layout of your website therefore matters if you want to ensure that you are gaining a high level of traffic from organic searches. 

When you are reviewing the structure of your web pages there are certain things you can do to improve user experience and engagement: 

  • ➡️Use headings and subheadings 
  • ➡️Put the most important information at the top of the page 
  • ➡️Include features such as bullet points and infographics 
  • ➡️Include images throughout the page 
  • ➡️Include internal links and a call to action if relevant
  • ➡️Include reviews to promote E-E-A-T signals 

By ensuring that you are including these bullet points, it will make sure that your website is user friendly, by providing clear headings and subheadings, it will indicate to users what they are going to find on the page. By optimising your website so that it is user friendly, it is likely that your user engagement will increase, you can boost your traffic and potentially convert more leads. Additionally, by creating a better user experience on your website, you can create a positive brand image and create return users. Making sure that you are reviewing the structure of your webpage is therefore extremely important and should be an integral part of your SEO strategy. 

  1. Create a strong internal linking profile

Another aspect of improving your on-page SEO is to create a strong internal linking profile. An internal link is any link that is pointing from one page on your website to another page on your website. Internal linking can help to improve the user experience as it can make it easier for users to navigate through your website and find the information that they are looking for. Additionally, it also helps to distribute link equity throughout your website and establish the importance of particular pages. 

As well as improving the user experience, having a strong internal linking profile can help improve the crawlability and indexability of your website. By linking from one page to another page, you are creating a clear path for search engines to follow when they are crawling and navigating your website. This is extremely important as it will help to ensure that all of your pages are getting crawled, and they are easily discoverable. If search engines can not crawl your pages, they will not be indexed and will therefore not end up in the search results. By having a strong internal linking profile, your pages are more likely to be crawled and indexed so that they can then rank. 

Another benefit of having a strong internal linking profile is that it can help to establish the importance of your web pages. By linking from lower level pages, such as blogs, to higher level pages, you can signal to search engines which pages are the most important and which pages you want to be returning in the SERPs. By sending internal links to the more important pages of your website, you can improve the ranking potential of these pages.  

Overall, internal linking can be extremely impactful for SEO purposes, it can help search engines to crawl and index your pages, and it can help to improve the user experience by making it easier for users to navigate your website. Also, by linking to related pages and content, you are more likely to keep your users engaged and spend more time on your website. 

  1. Undertake a competitor analysis 

Undertaking a competitor analysis can be a valuable way to improve your on-page SEO, by researching your main competitors, you will be able to gain inspiration and leverage the competitive landscape to your advantage. 

To conduct a competitor analysis, you should start by identifying your main competitors in the market (ideally ones that are ranking relatively well), you can then analyse their website structure, their content and the keywords that they are targeting. If they are incorporating things into their website that you do not have, this could be something that you can then improve. For example, if they are including related articles and reviews on their page and you are not, this could show that they are portraying better E-E-A-T signals than you and could be a reason as to why they are ranking higher. Or, if they have a lot more useful content and information for their users, it could mean that you need to include more helpful content relating to your topic on your website. 

You can then use NLP tools to evaluate your content against your competitors to understand where they might be outperforming you and where you might need to improve the content on your website.

By undertaking a competitor analysis, you are able to continuously improve your on-page SEO and stay ahead of your competitors. But keep in mind that whilst it is important to learn from your competitors, it is just as important to keep your brand values and USPs at the forefront of your SEO strategy. You should use the insights that you have gained from the competitor analysis to improve your on-page SEO whilst ensuring that your website is remaining authentic to your brand. 

Summary 

When improving your on-page SEO, you will be optimising your web pages in order to improve user experience, and to increase your visibility and traffic. Improving your on-page SEO can involve various elements including optimising your page structure, internal linking profile and content, all of these improvements will help to make your website more user friendly and will therefore have an impact on the websites rankings and visibility. 

To find out more about how you can improve your on-page SEO or for help with implementing these improvements, get in touch today!

Photograph of Brighton Pier framed by the sea

Brighton SEO April 2023: Key Takeaways

Last month myself and the SEO team attended Thursday and Friday events at BrightonSEO. For me, this was my first time attending the event in person and actually my first time ever visiting Brighton! 

Having attended the online conferences previously, I already knew that the talks would be super insightful and full of useful tips that can be integrated into our SEO strategies and inspire us to think outside the box. The in-person talks did not disappoint and I came away with my knowledge of SEO enhanced. 

For those who might be interested, below, I have outlined the 3 talks that stood out to me the most and have listed some of the key takeaways and actionable insights from these: 

Entity SEO – Genie Jones

Genie gave such an interesting (and entertaining) talk on the power of using the SameAs tag in your schema. Genie talked us through how to mark up entities within schema using the SameAs tag and how topical authority can be achieved through using these. 

Throughout the talk Genie linked schema back to psycholinguistics to provide outside context to better describe entities and schema (which, as a Linguistics graduate, was really useful to contextualise this!)

We learnt that creating entities through schema helps to disambiguate information, helping crawlers to better understand what the site and its pages are about and the connections between these pages to help build up a Knowledge Graph filled with all of this information. 

Genie recommended using the SameAs tag to clearly demonstrate entities on your pages. This could be marking up a specific element/entity and providing a link to a clear definition of what that element/entity is. For example, for a page about farm animals, you might want to provide a SameAs tag to show that you are talking about an animal and this is the exact animal that you are talking about. E.g., marking up ‘pig’ with a link to ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig’ to tell a crawler that the pig you are talking about is the same as the animal described on Wikipedia. 

This is definitely something that I will be exploring further within our strategies to provide clarity on different entities that might appear ambiguous and are therefore not being viewed or ranked well as a result. 

The SERP Multiverse – Jon Earnshaw 

Talking about SEO success and the future of SEO, Jon’s talk surrounded how to optimise for the ‘SERP multiverse,’ looking at intent on the SERP landscape, leveraging competitor analysis and looking into what the future of SEO might look like. 

Jon looked at the different SERP landscapes of what would appear to be two related queries at face value were actually completely different when we looked deeper into the pages returned, showing the importance of user intent when considering the keywords that we are targeting. 

My key takeaways from this talk were as follows: 

⭐️ The future of SEO could look more into voice search so, in some cases, it could be a good idea to target the answer card or featured snippet so that virtual assistants such as Siri will be more likely to return information from your site.

⭐️ When looking at a competitor analysis, take your keywords and assess who was on the SERPs 12 months ago, are they still there or have they dipped? Why? 

⭐️ You can use ChatGPT as a resource when considering voice search to optimise for these queries. Jon suggested asking AI to return a list of potential voice queries for a certain keyword. You can even ask the AI to take on different personas depending on your target audience.

This was certainly an interesting talk that allowed us to look outside of just search engines and consider the future of SEO, where things could be changing and how to optimise your content to better match this intent where relevant.

Featured Snippets – Niki Mosier 

In this talk, Niki explored the value of featured snippets and how we can structure our SEO efforts to be better positioned to win these in the SERPs. This is an area that is important when it comes to trying to gain enhanced visibility within the search results. 

Featured snippets are the results that you sometimes see on a search results page that aims to answer your search query as soon as possible by taking the most relevant content from a ranking page.

Here are my key takeaways from Niki’s talk: 

⭐️ To be in with a chance of winning a featured snippet, it’s important that you already rank within the first few results on page 1 for that specific search query.

⭐️ Appearing in multiple featured snippets for related search queries can help to increase your authority on the subject matter. This is particularly important for sites covering YMYL topics. 

⭐️ 77% of search results with featured snippets come from search queries that start with ‘Why’ and using Google Search Console is a great way of helping you to find these question-type queries that you already perform well on and could be targeting ‘Position 0’ (the featured snippet).

For some more tips and tricks picked up from this talk and a dive into some other insightful talks, check out Marcy’s BrightonSEO review! 

As you can see above, there were some really valuable takeaways from very experienced SEOs and it was great to learn it all in person.  

We really enjoyed our time at BrightonSEO and would recommend it to anyone in the world of search marketing who wants to learn more, no matter your experience level there will be something that you can takeaway. With SEO, there is an abundance of information and things to learn and it’s great to hear and learn from other professionals who have their own case studies for issues that haven’t yet experienced on your site!

What’s more, you’ll also get to visit sunny Brighton and whilst you’re there I’d definitely recommend trying the Belgian fries!

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SEO – Five Great Features of GA4

If you are working within the world of SEO then you are probably very familiar with Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s web analytics platform. It was first introduced in October 2022 and on 1st July 2023, Universal Analytics will no longer process data, all new data will be processed through GA4.

Google states that “GA4 is a new kind of property designed for the future of measurement” and it has several new features and improvements compared to Universal Analytics. GA4 is an essential tool for monitoring website traffic and user behaviour and provides valuable insights that can help businesses to optimise their online presence. In this blog, we will be discussing and exploring five great features of GA4 that can benefit Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

  1. Enhanced Measurement

Enhanced measurement is one of the many great features of GA4 that allows you to collect more out of the box data. It automatically tracks events and lets you measure interactions with your content by enabling events in the Google Analytics interface, and you do not have to make any changes to your code, as soon as you enable the options in your GA4 interface, your Google Analytics tag will start sending these events straight away. 

If you go to Admin, then Data Streams and select the web data stream, you will be able to see a section called Enhanced measurement and this will show you all of the events that you have set up for your website. You can then filter these based on your specific website needs. 

Enhanced measurement is a great feature of GA4 that can be extremely beneficial for SEO purposes. By using the enhanced measurement feature, website owners can effectively track user engagement, such as video engagement and scroll tracking, this feature can then help businesses to optimise their website and create a better user experience, which is therefore supporting SEO performance. 

Below are the events that can be measured in GA4:

  • ➡️Page views – this event is triggered each time the page loads of the browser history state is changed by the active site. This event is collected automatically and cannot be turned off in GA4. 
  • ➡️Scrolls – this event is triggered when a user scrolls down more than 90% of the page for the first time.
  • ➡️Outbound clicks – this event is triggered each time a user clicks a link that is leading away from the current domain.
  • ➡️Site search – this event is triggered each time a user is presented with a search results page, as indicated by the presence of a URL query parameter, this enables you to see how users are searching your site. It lets you understand the extent to which users are using your site’s search function, which search terms they entered and how effectively the search results gave the user a deeper site engagement. 
  • ➡️Video engagement – for videos that are embedded within your website that have JS API support enabled, when the video starts playing, when the video progresses past 10%, 25%, 50% and 75% duration time and when the video ends will all be triggered in GA4. 
  • ➡️File downloads – this event will be triggered when a user clicks to a file which contains a common file extension (these include documents, text, executable, presentation, compressed file, video and audio). 
  • ➡️Form interactions – this event will be triggered for two occasions – form_start will be triggered the first time a user interacts with a form in a session and form_submit will be triggered when the user submits a form.  

One of the great benefits of enhanced measurement is the ability to track scroll tracking, which can give website owners insights into how users are engaging with their content. By measuring if a user is scrolling to over 90% of their web page, website owners can use this data to understand which sections of the content on their website are more engaging and therefore optimise their content accordingly. This data can be used to see how many users are scrolling to the bottom of the page and can therefore identify any areas where content needs improvement and can help businesses create content that is providing a better user experience. This can also help to ensure that users are not missing any key information on the page and can help to inform the placement of conversion actions. 

Another great feature of enhanced measurement is video engagement tracking, this feature allows website owners and businesses to measure how users are engaging with the video content that is embedded within their site. By tracking play rate, engagement rate and completion rate, you are able to determine which videos on your website are most engaging for users and then optimise your video content to improve user engagement and retention on your site. 

Overall, the enhanced measurement feature in GA4 provides website owners with a better understanding of user engagement across their site which will therefore allow you to devise a stronger SEO strategy by optimising your website based on data from your real users. By tracking user behaviour more accurately and precisely, you are able to make informed decisions about your content and web page and create an overall better user experience for your visitors. This can ultimately lead to more traffic, better engagement and therefore, better SEO results.  

  1. Better cross-device tracking  

In GA4, cross-device tracking is a feature that allows you to track your users’ interactions with your website across different devices. This means that as website owners, you are able to better understand how users are interacting with your website and what devices they are using. This feature provides website owners with data that gives valuable insights that can help to optimise website design and content for different devices. 

GA4 can measure activity across platforms with User-ID and this feature lets you provide your users with your own identifiers so that you can connect their behaviour across different sessions and on multiple devices and platforms. GA4 will then interpret each user ID as a separate user and can provide you with more accurate user counts and a more holistic story about a user’s relationship with your business. When a user logs into your website, for example, GA4 will track and combine the user’s behaviour across all of their devices, therefore giving website owners a more complete picture of how individual users are interacting with their website. 

Another feature that GA4 uses for cross-device tracking is Google signals, Google signals are session data from sites and apps that Google associates with users who have signed into their Google account. This data that is provided from GA4 enables cross-device reporting, remarketing and conversion export. For example, if a user started their buying process on their laptop and then completed their purchase on their mobile device logged into the same Google account, GA4 tracking would see this as one user. 

For SEO purposes, better cross-device tracking can provide website owners with valuable insights into how users are interacting with their website, regardless of the device that they are using. This is providing you with a more complete picture of your user’s behaviour and by tracking the types of devices that they are using and how they move between them will allow you to see the full picture rather than just the interactions on one device. This can then help you to understand your users’ behaviour and optimise your website accordingly. 

As well as understanding your users’ behaviours, cross-device tracking can also help website owners identify any areas of their website that are not performing well on different devices. By seeing how users are engaging with your website on different devices, you are able to optimise your website to provide a better user experience based on what devices users are using your website through. For example, if most of your users are converting on mobile devices rather than desktop, it is extremely important to optimise your website so that it is mobile friendly. 

Overall, cross-device tracking is an extremely important feature in GA4 for SEO because by understanding how users interact with your website across different devices, website owners can optimise their website design and content to provide a better user experience on all devices and this could potentially lead to more traffic and better engagement which will in turn help your website rank highly. 

  1. Creating custom reports 

Another of the many great features of GA4 is that you can customise detail reports to make them more relevant to your business. 

To create a new detail report, from the left hand menu click Reports, then Library (if you don’t see Library, it means that you do not have permission to create a report as you have to be an editor or an administrator), then click Create new report, Create detail report. You can then either create a blank report or start from a template, then click save. 

When you are customising a detail report, you are able to: 

  • ➡️Change the metrics
  • ➡️Change the charts
  • ➡️Save a filter to the report 
  • ➡️Create a summary card
  • ➡️Link or unlink the report 
  • ➡️Delete the report   

Each property in GA4 can have up to 150 custom reports and these can be extremely beneficial for SEO purposes. By customising a detail report in GA4, businesses are able to focus on the metrics that are most important and most impactful for their business. They are then easily able to gain accurate insights into their users’ behaviours and identify where the website needs improving in order to boost their SEO. 

Creating a customised report can also help website owners to measure and track the success of their SEO efforts, by tracking specific metrics in one report, it will be very clear to see any changes that have occurred in user behaviour and this will show the impact that their SEO practices have been having over time. This also allows you to drill down to align your reporting with your client’s business goals, which is important to proving a strong ROI on your SEO campaigns.  

  1. Behavioural modelling for consent mode

Another great feature of Google Analytics 4 is that it is able to interpret data without solely relying on cookies. Cookies are small text files that are sent to your browser by the website that you visit in order to collect information about their website behaviour. However, with increasing privacy concerns, there are more users that are now blocking cookies and this is making it difficult for website owners to collect data about their users. 

GA4 has incorporated a feature called behavioural modelling for consent mode and this uses machine learning to model the behaviour of any users who have declined cookies. This data will be based on the behaviour of any similar users who have accepted analytics cookies. This modelled data allows you to gain useful insights about how your users are interacting with your website while still respecting their privacy. 

There are many benefits of behavioural modelling for consent mode for SEO, firstly, by predicting how users would behave if they had given their consent, website owners are able to gain insights into their users’ behaviour that would have otherwise been lost due to data protection regulations. This means that you are able to get a complete overview of user behaviour and then tailor your SEO strategy accordingly. 

The insights that you will be able to gain from GA4 due to behaviour modelling can be used to optimise your website based on your customers as a whole. By gaining insight on all of your customers, you are able to understand more accurate insights which can then be used to create a website that has improved user experience. 

  1. Advanced Analysis reports 

The final feature of GA4 that we will be discussing is explorations. Explorations is a collection of advanced techniques that are much more detailed than standard reports and they will help you to uncover deeper insights regarding your customers behaviour. 

To access explorations, click Explore on the left hand navigation of your GA4 property. 

The default reports in Google Analytics will help you to monitor your key business metrics, however explorations will give you access to data and analytical techniques that are not available in those standard reports. You can use explorations as a tool that will allow you to explore your data in depth and answer complex questions about it. Once you have created an exploration there are many aspects that you can add/ change to provide in depth insights:

  • ➡️Add techniques – techniques will control the way in which the data is analysed, you are able to add tabs with many different techniques 
  • ➡️Add dimensions, metrics and segments to variables – the term variable refers to the dimensions, metrics and segments that come from your Google Analytics account. You are able to add more variables to make them available for use and to preload the data for faster visualisation 
  • ➡️Adjust the time frame – by default GA4 properties retain 2 months of data, you are able to adjust this so that you can see either a wider or smaller time frame
  • ➡️Share and export your exploration – when you create an exploration, you are able to share your insights with colleagues so that they can also view the insights

The explorations feature is an extremely powerful tool that can have great benefits for allowing you to improve your website’s SEO. One of the main benefits of using this feature is that it allows you to perform ad-hoc analysis on your website data. This means that you are able to quickly and easily explore your data and answer specific questions or identify patterns and trends in your users’ behaviours. 

Another benefit of explorations is that you are able to create custom metrics and dimensions which can be extremely useful for tracking your organic traffic for SEO. For example, you can create a custom metric that measures the engagement level of your users or you can create a custom dimension that tracks the organic performance of specific landing pages on your website. By creating custom dimensions and metrics that are specific to your website, you are able to more easily and accurately gain insights into your website’s performance and from this you can identify any opportunities to improve your SEO performance. 

Summary 

Universal Analytics changing to GA4 may be daunting however, there are many great new features that are coming with this change. By utilising GA4, you will be able to track and monitor your website and users and specifically for SEO, it will give great insights into your users’ behaviours. This will then allow you to optimise your website for SEO purposes which can help to improve user experience for your visitors and therefore increase your traffic, improve website visibility and lead to higher rankings in the search engine. It is therefore very important to understand GA4 and how it can help you to monitor and form your SEO strategy.