E-E-A-T contributes to a high quality web page, which is extremely important for Google and therefore extremely important for SEO. E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust and in terms of Google, these are the elements that they think make a high quality web page and in order to rank and gain organic traffic, your web page needs to demonstrate all four of these factors.
E-E-A-T is a set of guidelines used by Google’s Search Quality Raters to ensure search results are relevant, useful and trustworthy for the users. Updating E-A-T to E-E-A-T helps Google to maintain the quality of their search results. By demonstrating experience, expertise, authority and trust, you are improving the quality of your website which is extremely important for Google. So, by incorporating E-E-A-T and improving the quality of your website, you are creating a better user experience which is what Google is looking for so this could lead to higher rankings and a more engaged audience.
Let’s take a closer look at what the acronym E-E-A-T actually means for SEO and how it will impact your web page.
Experience
As we have discussed. The new “E” that stands for experience was rolled out in 2022 and this means that Google wants to see if the content that has been written demonstrates that it was produced with some degree of experience. For example, having actually used a product, or having actually visited a place. Google realises that there are some situations when users are searching and the most valuable content is content that has been produced by someone who has first hand experience on the topic that they are writing about. Google wants valuable experience to be included in your content because it is making sure that the content on the search engine is reliable and useful so that the results on the search engine are providing searchers with what they are looking for.
Expertise
The second “E” stands for expertise and this refers to the level of knowledge and skills that the author of the website has in the subject matter they are presenting on the web page. The level of expertise can be demonstrated through the quality of the content that has been written by the author. The depth of the information that has been provided by the author, the use of authoritative sources and the author’s credentials and qualifications can all factor into the expertise of the web page. In order to establish expertise, the author and the website must demonstrate a high level of knowledge and understanding of the topic that they are presenting. This can help to build trust with the user and will establish the author or website as a credible source of information in their specific field.
Authority
The “A” in E-E-A-T stands for authority and this refers to the level of authority and reputation that the author or website has in the subject matter that they are presenting. The level of authoritativeness of a page can also be demonstrated by the quality and depth of the content and the author’s credentials but the amount of engagement and shares the content has received can also demonstrate authoritativeness. Any signals that indicate that the content is widely respected and trusted in the field will prove authoritativeness. For example, if a medical website is written by a team of qualified doctors and the content is cited from other reputable medical websites, it will be considered an authoritative web page.
Trust
The “T” in E-E-A-T stands for trust and it is key for Google to understand whether your website is trustworthy for its users. The trustworthiness of a page refers to the level of reliability, accuracy and transparency that the content on the website has. The level of trustworthiness on a website can be demonstrated through various factors such as the use of reputable sources, gaining great backlinks and reviews. By establishing trustworthiness, the author or website can build trust with the user and can establish themselves as a credible and reliable source in their specific field.
Why is E-E-A-T important?
When it comes to E-E-A-T, all areas are extremely important, but in the search quality rater guidelines, Google regards trust as the most important member of the E-E-A-T family.
Google’s ultimate goal is to provide users with relevant, accurate and trustworthy information. By evaluating the E-E-A-T on your website, Google will be able to determine the quality and credibility of the content on your website and will therefore rank it accordingly. And although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor for Google like page speed or mobile-friendliness, the concept of E-E-A-T will be used by Google to evaluate the quality and credibility of websites, which they consider to be an extremely important factor of your web page, so will in turn affect the ranking of your web pages because the if the quality of your website is high then it is making for a better overall user experience.
Google’s quality rater guidelines explicitly state that evaluators should consider E-E-A-T when they are assessing the quality of websites. Pages with a low level of E-E-A-T will be regarded as a low quality page and pages with a high level of E-E-A-T will therefore be regarded as a high quality web page. Pages with high levels of E-E-A-T are more likely to rank well but it is important to remember that this is just one of the many factors that Google uses to determine their search rankings.
As well as promoting a high quality web page to Google, optimising your E-E-A-T signals will help to improve the user experience on your website. Websites with a high level of E-E-A-T are more likely to engage users and encourage them to spend more time on their website. This can in turn lead to increased traffic, higher engagement and ultimately, a better SEO experience.
It is therefore extremely important for website owners to focus on improving E-E-A-T signals by producing high-quality content that is based on experience and that is informative, accurate and trustworthy and, by establishing the author’s authoritativeness and trustworthiness in their specific field.
How to improve E-E-A-T on your website
Having now discussed the importance of E-E-A-T for SEO, you can see that improving your E-E-A-T can have a big impact on your web page’s rankings because it is directly linked to improving the user experience. So, here are some things you can do to improve the E-E-A-T of your website.
➡️ Write high quality content
➡️ Provide accurate information that covers the topic in depth
➡️ Include the author’s first hand experience relating to the topic
➡️ Include tips and hacks that demonstrate first hand experience of the subject
➡️ Review and update your content regularly
➡️ Cite reputable sources
➡️ Earn backlinks from other reputable sources in the same field
➡️ Include reviews on your website
➡️ Include the author’s credentials and qualifications
➡️ Include an ‘About Us’ section on your website including credentials and qualifications
By improving these areas, you can improve the E-E-A-T of your website and this can lead to a better user experience for your users, and therefore a higher ranking because Google will see your web pages as more valuable for the users.
E-E-A-T for YMYL pages
E-E-A-T is especially important for YMYL (your money or your life) web pages, which include content that provides information that could significantly impact a person’s health, finances or safety. Google holds these web pages to a higher standard of quality and accuracy because the information that is included on these pages can have a significant impact on people’s lives. Therefore, Google uses E-E-A-T as a critical factor when they are evaluating these pages. YMYL pages that demonstrate high levels of E-E-A-T are more likely to rank higher in the SERPs because Google knows that the quality of these pages will be extremely high.
For YMYL content, E-E-A-T is extremely important, Google will expect the authors of these pages to have relevant expertise, education and experience in the specific area that they are providing information on. Additionally, Google will look for authoritative sources to support the YMYL content and the websites must have a high level of trust throughout the website.
YMYL websites that do not meet the E-E-A-T standards are less likely to rank for these types of queries so it is crucial for these websites to focus on E-E-A-T factors when creating YMYL content to ensure it meets the quality rater standards and provides accurate and reliable information to the users.
Summary
To summarise, E-E-A-T is an important concept to understand when it comes to SEO. By demonstrating experience, expertise, authority and trust, you can improve the quality of your website and content, which will therefore provide users with helpful content, which in turn can help your website to rank better.
It is extremely important to optimise your E-E-A-T signals when it comes to SEO because ultimately, providing high quality content is going to improve your users’ experience which is highly important for Google. Hopefully, this blog has helped you to understand E-E-A-T and how you can improve it for your website so that you can create that better user experience.
We’re delighted to announce that our Director Amanda Walls will be speaking at the April Brighton SEO event in front of an audience of thousands talking everything SEO & Digital PR.
Amanda will be speaking on the Wednesday afternoon at the Online PR Show with her talk discussing “Using Digital PR To Enhance Your EEAT Signals” – a great talk for anyone looking to use digital PR to enhance their overall SEO – or for anyone who particularly works in a YMYL industry, where this is held to an even higher standard – to get a better understanding of how they can utilise digital PR in this way.
The talk will have:
💥 Lots of great Case Studies which show how digital PR can help boost your SEO
💥 Great ideas on how to think outside of the box when it comes to newsjacking & thought leadership
💥Insight into why digital PR matters for EEAT
💥 Ideas on how to get journalists to come to you!
So if that sounds of interest get yourself booked on or check the talk out online when an online version of the conference day is released the week after.
In my opinion, log file analysis is one of the most underrated pieces of SEO analysis you can conduct – a fairly bold statement for sure – but if you have the ability to see how Google is actually crawling and understanding your website, as opposed to “emulating it” through tools like Screaming Frog, then this data is one of the most valuable insights that you can have to really understanding how Google views your website and more importantly how it sees the different sections connecting together.
Now I’m not saying there isn’t value in emulation tools, there’s a lot, and over the years I’ve used them significantly to help uncover potential technical issues across websites with great success – but in recent years I’ve really come to understand the value of Google’s direct crawl data and how when used properly, it can really help you to uncover potential blockers, issues and challenges on the website, in addition to understanding how to overcome these – that’s why I think that log file file analysis is an essential element of any complete technical audit.
What Is Log File Analysis?
Log file analysis for SEO is a process of examining the server log files to gain insights into how search engine crawlers and bots interact with a website. When a search engine crawls a website, it records the activity in the server log files, which can provide valuable information about how the site is being crawled, what pages are being visited, and how often. By analyzing these log files, SEO professionals can uncover issues that may be hindering the site’s performance in search engine results pages (SERPs) and identify opportunities to improve it.
Log file analysis involves a range of tasks, including identifying the search engine bots that are crawling the site, analyzing the frequency and duration of their visits, and monitoring the crawl budget allocated to the site. Additionally, log file analysis can help identify crawl errors, such as broken links or pages that return a 404 error, and ensure that search engine bots are able to access and crawl all of the site’s important pages. By using log file analysis to optimize a website for search engines, SEO professionals can help ensure that the site is easily discoverable by search engines and ultimately improve its visibility and rankings in SERPs.
Why Do I Need Log File Analysis?
Log file analysis is valuable for SEO for several reasons:
💡 Discovering crawl issues: Log files can help SEO professionals identify crawl issues that may be preventing search engine bots from discovering and indexing important pages on the site. This includes identifying broken links, pages returning a 404 error, or pages that are too slow to load, among other issues.
💡 Understanding crawl behavior: By analyzing log files, SEO professionals can gain insights into how search engine bots are crawling the site, such as which pages are being crawled most frequently, how often the site is being crawled, and which bots are crawling the site. This information can help inform SEO strategies and optimize the site for better search engine visibility.
💡 Improving crawl efficiency: Log file analysis can help optimize crawl budget by identifying pages that are being crawled unnecessarily or too frequently. This allows SEO professionals to prioritize the crawling of important pages, ensuring that they are crawled and indexed by search engines.
It provides valuable insights that you can’t get elsewhere and as a result, can help you uncover errors which might have previously been missed.
What Do I Need For A Log File Analysis?
To perform log file analysis, you will need access to the server log files that record the activity on your website. There are different types of log files that can be used for log file analysis, depending on the server and the software used to generate the logs. The most common types of log files are:
💡Apache log files: Apache is a popular web server software, and Apache log files are commonly used for log file analysis. Apache log files are typically stored in a plain text format and contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
💡NGINX log files: NGINX is another popular web server software, and NGINX log files are similar to Apache log files. NGINX log files typically contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
💡IIS log files: IIS is a web server software developed by Microsoft, and IIS log files are commonly used on Windows-based servers. IIS log files typically contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
Regardless of the type of log file, it is important to ensure that the log files contain the necessary information for log file analysis. This typically includes the user agent string, which identifies the search engine bots that are crawling the site, and the referrer, which identifies the source of the request (such as a search engine results page or a backlink).
What Should I Use For Log File Analysis?
There are several log file analysis tools available that can help you efficiently and effectively analyze your server log files. The choice of which tool to use will depend on your specific needs and preferences. Here are a few popular options:
💡Google Search Console: Google Search Console provides a range of SEO tools, including log file analysis. The log file analysis feature allows you to upload your server log files and view reports on how Google crawls your site. You can see which pages are being crawled most frequently, identify crawl errors, and optimize your crawl budget.
💡Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer: Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer is a desktop application that allows you to analyze log files from multiple sources, including Apache, NGINX, and IIS. The tool provides detailed reports on crawl behavior, including the frequency and duration of bot visits, and allows you to identify crawl issues and optimize crawl budget.
💡Logz.io: Logz.io is a cloud-based log management platform that offers log file analysis as part of its suite of features. The tool allows you to collect and analyze log data from multiple sources, including web servers and applications, and provides advanced analysis and visualization features, such as machine learning-powered anomaly detection and customizable dashboards.
💡ELK Stack: ELK Stack is an open-source log management platform that includes Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. The platform allows you to collect, analyze, and visualize log data from multiple sources, including web servers, applications, and network devices. The ELK Stack offers advanced analysis and visualization features, such as machine learning-powered anomaly detection and real-time data monitoring.
These are just a few examples of the many log file analysis tools available. When choosing a log file analysis tool, consider factors such as your budget, the size of your log files, the complexity of the analysis you need to perform, and the level of technical expertise required to use the tool.
Can I Use Excel To Analyse Log Files?
Yes, Excel can be used to perform log file analysis, although it may not be the most efficient or scalable solution for large log files. Excel can be used to open and sort log files, filter data based on specific criteria, and perform basic calculations and analysis.
To get started with log file analysis in Excel, you can open the log file in Excel and use the “Text to Columns” feature to separate the data into different columns based on delimiters such as spaces or tabs. You can then use Excel’s filtering and sorting features to isolate specific data, such as search engine bot activity or crawl errors.
However, keep in mind that Excel has some limitations when it comes to handling large log files, such as performance issues and the potential for data loss or errors. For larger log files, it may be more efficient to use specialized log file analysis tools that are designed for handling large amounts of data and providing more advanced analysis and visualization features.
What Are The Main Things I Should Look For In Log File Analysis?
When analyzing server log files, there are several key metrics and insights that you should look for to optimize your website’s SEO performance. Here are some of the main things to look for in a log file analysis:
⚡️ Crawl frequency: Look at how often search engine bots are crawling your site, and which pages are being crawled most frequently. This can help you identify pages that are being crawled too frequently or not frequently enough, and optimize your crawl budget accordingly.
⚡️ Crawl errors: Identify any crawl errors or issues that search engine bots are encountering when crawling your site. This can include broken links, server errors, or blocked pages.
⚡️ Internal linking: Analyze the internal linking structure of your site by looking at which pages are linking to each other and how often. This can help you identify pages that may need more internal links to improve their SEO performance.
⚡️ Response codes: Look at the response codes in your log files to identify any pages that are returning errors or redirects. This can help you identify pages that may need to be fixed or redirected to improve your site’s user experience and SEO performance.
⚡️ User agents: Identify the user agents in your log files to see which search engines and bots are crawling your site. This can help you optimize your site for specific search engines and understand how different bots interact with your site.
⚡️ Referrers: Look at the referrers in your log files to see where your traffic is coming from, such as search engines, social media, or other websites. This can help you identify which sources are driving the most traffic to your site and optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.
These are just a few examples of the main things to look for in a log file analysis. Depending on your specific needs and goals, you may also want to analyze other metrics, such as page load times, click-through rates, or conversion rates.
How Much Time Does It Usually Take?
The time it takes to analyze log files for SEO purposes can also vary depending on various factors such as the size of the log files, the complexity of the website or application, the level of detail required, and the tools and methods used.
For smaller websites, log file analysis for SEO purposes may only take a few hours or a day. However, for larger and more complex websites or applications, the analysis may take several days or even weeks.
In addition, the level of detail required in the analysis will also affect the time it takes to complete. A high-level analysis that provides a general overview of website traffic and user behavior may take less time than a detailed analysis that requires deeper insights into specific user actions and behavior.
It’s also worth noting that log file analysis for SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and analysis. As such, the time it takes to complete the analysis may depend on the frequency and extent of analysis required for your specific needs.
How Many Files Do I Need?
The number of log files you need for log file analysis for SEO will depend on the size of your website or application, the volume of traffic and user interactions, and the level of detail you require in your analysis.
Ideally, you should analyze all the log files generated by your web server to get a comprehensive view of user behavior and traffic on your site. However, this may not be practical or necessary for all websites.
In general, it’s recommended to analyze at least a few weeks’ worth of log files to get a good understanding of user behavior and traffic patterns. This will help identify any issues or opportunities for improvement in your website’s SEO performance.
You can also consider filtering the log files to focus on specific sections of your website or specific types of user behavior, which can help reduce the volume of data you need to analyze and make the analysis process more manageable.
Ultimately, the number of log files you need for log file analysis for SEO will depend on your specific needs and goals. It’s important to work with a knowledgeable SEO professional or use reliable SEO tools to help you determine the best approach for your website or application.
How Do I Get Started?
If after reading the above you want to get started on log file analysis then get in touch with your web developers (or your clients!) to get the files you need and get started. This valuable insight can really help you to identify any potential issues within the crawl and most importantly help to ensure that Google is crawling the website in an efficient manner – and getting to the pages that you need it to!
To find out more about log file analysis or for help with your SEO get in touch!
If you have an ecommerce store, then chances are that SEO will be close to the top of your priority list. After all, getting traffic – and more importantly, high intent traffic to your website plays an important role in driving sales and the success of your store.
Tackling SEO for ecommerce websites, particularly those with thousands of individual products can be a challenge especially when you add in elements like filters, faceted navigation and infinite scroll – so if you are looking to put your best foot forward and get ahead of your ecommerce SEO, we’ve put together a handy checklist for you below to help you improve your SEO performance and drive those all important sales to your website.
Here are the top things that you need to review to ensure that your ecommerce website has the best possible chance at SEO performance:
Crawl & Indexation
Effective crawl and indexation is one of the most important elements of an ecommerce SEO strategy as if your website or its content isn’t in Google’s index then it won’t be found by users who are searching. Ensuring that your website is indexed and then checking that Google can effectively crawl your pages is important to ensuring that your content is available to Google and has the best possible chance of returning in the search results. To help with this you can use the following:
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a really effective way to check on the indexation of your website and it has a super easy to use interface which can show you how your website is being indexed in the eyes of Google.
The “Page indexing” functionality shows how many pages are indexed and any potential indexation issues for the website, this can include pages which are excluded by “noindex” tags, pages which are canonicalised any other potential indexation issues.
The report can be a great way of understanding any potential indexation issues or evaluating why pages haven’t appeared within Google’s index – in particular, the “Crawled – currently not indexed” column highlights pages which Google has accessed but not indexed as it has chosen to exclude these pages from the index – this is often valuable insight for an ecommerce store as in many cases product variations such as colours, flavours, sizes etc… can be seen as duplication so by reviewing this you can identify the best way to index this content.
Log File Analysis
Log File Analysis is a great way to evaluate how Google is actually crawling your website and to identify any potential pain points or areas that Google can’t crawl (alternately also looking at which pages Google is crawling too frequently) – it can also help you identify if you have any orphaned content or content which has become unlinked from your main website and could therefore be problematic.
To do a thorough log file analysis we recommend at least 2-4 weeks of log files and to do them over several months to really understand how Google is crawling your website. Spider data is useful, but log files will really allow you to see what’s going on.
Crawl Analysis
In addition to log file analysis we’d also recommend undertaking a crawl analysis to evaluate how Google is crawling and indexing the website through an external tool such as Screaming Frog. By undertaking crawl analysis you can emulate the Google crawl, understanding how it reaches different pages and also the internal link value and structure of these pages – this approach can also help to identify any dead ends or issues where the Googlebot might not be able to get through.
Crawl analysis through a tool like Screaming Frog will help you to understand how effectively your website is being crawled and if there are any potential crawl issues which could be hampering your website from being effectively indexed and returned within the search results. It can also give you a good insight into the website’s crawl behaviours and if there’s any updates that you need to make to the internal linking to help improve the crawl path.
2. Page Titles & Headings
Page titles and headings are a hugely important part of your on-site SEO as they play an important role in signposting what content is on your website and what the content is about – think of them as a synopsis of the page. If you are trying to rank for “SEO agency” on Google then having a page title “SEO agency” with the heading “SEO agency” will definitely help to showcase to Google that that page exists on your website.
Page titles and headings should be clear and only focus on 1-2 keywords max – and there’s no harm in creating new pages for products that have reasonable search volume – in fact this is a great approach, especially when it comes to having a super-targeted page for specific categories or products. Undertaking fresh keyword research to identify where there is the opportunity to target new pages, and also undertaking research to evaluate if you are targeting the right keywords (i.e. should it be a cashmere “hat” or “beanie” based on product and search volume) will allow you to maximise the reach of your website and also ensure that you are gaining as much visibility as possible for your brand.
3. Page Copy
Page copy is incredibly important as it tells Google and the user about your products, brands or even your services. Ensure your copy is unique but also make it as helpful as possible – put yourselves in the shoes of the user to understand what it is that the user is looking for – have you answered their questions? Have you given them the chance to compare products? Have you given a guide to help them buy a particular product? These are all questions that the user will likely have so ensure that you are on hand to help them out.
As Google says in section 3.2 of the Page Quality Rater Guidelines, the “quality of the MC (main content) is one of the most important considerations for PQ (page quality) rating. Put simply, content is king and the quality of the content that you are putting onto your website, in addition to the reputation of the writer and the website that it’s published on, all play a key role in ensuring that your website is seen as trustworthy in Google’s eyes.
Google recently updated its Page Quality Rater Guidance to introduce the concept of E-E-A-T and at the centre of it all, was trust. Well-written content which is factually accurate and links out to good sources is a key component of trust on a website, so take the time to invest in creating effective content which is well-researched and factually backed, to ensure that you are giving yourself the best possible chance of adhering to strong on-page E-E-A-T.
4. About Us / Clear & Satisying Website Information
In the Page Quality Rater Guidelines one of the things that Google encourages raters to do is to look at a company’s “About Us” page to find out more about the company and the people who are behind the content on the website. Customer service is also an important aspect – particularly for an ecommerce website – and when it talks about “clear & satisfying website information” that means ensuring that a user can contact you if they need to – do you have a clear way for users to contact you? (either through a clear Contact Us page on the website or through a phone number in the top right hand corner) – are they able to get in touch if they need help or to return a product? Being able to offer effective customer service plays an important element in the trust of an ecommerce store, so ensuring that you offer “clear and satisfying website information” isn’t important only to Google, but also to your users.
5. Returns & Shipping Information
Which brings me onto the next point about returns and shipping information. While this is a staple on many ecommerce websites, ensuring that your returns & shipping information is clear and easily digestible is an important part of giving the user what they need.
Do you offer international shipping? Let your users know. What is your returns process like? By showcasing the information to Google and users you are not only giving them the “helpful” information that they need, you are also helping to build trust in your brand. Make sure this information is displayed clearly and easily accessible from both the main navigation of your website and also on specific product pages – pop outs can also help to detract users away from their user journey and this can also play an important role in boosting conversion rate.
6. Internal Linking
In our opinion one of the most under-rated SEO optimisation opportunities, internal linking, plays a key role in telling Google about your most important pages and ensuring that the Googlebot can effectively crawl through your pages, in addition to linking your content together semantically so that Google can understand what your pages are about and any supplementary content that you might have around them.
Internal linking is important to creating content clusters and pillar posts which help to group together your content themes – allowing Google to see that you have a depth of knowledge and trust about a particular topic when it comes to ranking you for it. Additionally, given that ecommerce websites often contain such a large amount of pages, internal linking can help to indicate which of these pages are most important, so if you are selling garden benches for example, linking different content such as bench buying guides, product launches and brand information into your key garden benches page, plays an important role in helping you to showcase your expertise around garden benches.
You can utilise Screaming Frog and other tools to help you gather a list of pages where there are internal linking opportunities – often blog content or category pages where you mention particular products, brands or categories but don’t link – and utilise this to pull together a linking strategy to help boost your internal navigation and link signals.
7. Schema Mark-up
Another invaluable SEO technique for ecommerce stores is the use and implementation of Schema and structured data mark-up, particularly product mark-up across products that are for sale in your store. The utilisation of schema helps Google to understand what is on your page and the implementation of key schema such as product mark-up and FAQ mark-up can also help you to pull key information about your products and services through to the search results.
FAQ schema is one of the most popular types of schema implementation and involves marking up questions or FAQ content on your pages. Including FAQs across category and product pages is a great way to give users additional information about your product or category range while also providing effective “helpful content”, by marking these up with FAQs you can also give Google the opportunity to present them within the search results as such:
By allowing you to see the FAQs within the search result you can get an understanding of the level of experience of a particular brand and their expertise.
Product schema is another great option if you are an ecommerce store or if you are selling a product online and in addition to giving valuable information to the user, this can also help to advise Google around important information pertaining to your products, this can include:
Price
Availability
Offers
Reviews
By implementing schema correctly, Google can pull this information through into the SERPs which can allow it to be displayed effectively and help to encourage users through to your website – especially if you are competitively priced and they have a price in mind.
Schema implementation can be relatively straightforward but it plays an important role in helping Google and users to understand more about your website and can be a real value add.
8. JavaScript & Code
Understanding how Google sees the JavaScript and code on your website plays a really important role in ensuring that your website is correctly indexed and that both Google and the user can understand what the page is about
In particular there have been a number of situations with JavaScript that has been incorrectly implemented has caused problems for Google across both crawl and indexation, most specifically this happens when JavaScript is implemented in a way that it blocks Google’s crawlers from effectively accessing the content therefore leading to Google not being able to see the content and therefore not valuing it as part of the page.
If you are unsure how Google is viewing the JavaScript on your website there are a number of ways that you can evaluate this in particular one very effective way is through using a tool to fetch and render your website in the way that Google would so that you can see if there are any render-blocking resources within your JavaScript which might be blocking the Googlebot from accessing your website. JavaScript can play an important role in the function of your website so it’s important to consider the impact that might have on your SEO when utilising it within the code, by using fetch and render it allows you to understand how Google sees this and allows you to ensure that your content can be effectively crawled and indexed.
9. Site Speed
Site speed plays an important role in your user experience and as such it plays a very important role and how effective the SEO on your website is. Google has for many years spoken about how important site speed is and in many cases it used to be true that if a website took over three seconds to load 50% of users would leave, this obviously isn’t ideal if you’re looking to attract and retain users on your website.
If you aren’t sure how your site speed currently performs then you can use the Google page speed insights tool to really understand how your website stacks up and a number of different speed metrics. The pagespeed insights tool also explains how your website performs on the core web vitals test, this is an important metric to Google and they have an algorithm update which specifically looks at how well websites perform against the core web vitals – we’ll talk about this a little bit more in next section.
Ultimately site speed plays a key role in user satisfaction so it’s important that you try and make your website as fast as possible so you’re delivering a good user experience as well as adhering to Google’s guidelines.
10. Core Web Vitals
Core web vitals playing important role in understanding how Google sees your website from a user experience perspective. There are three key considerations – LCP – that is how long it takes the largest element on your website to load CLS – that is looking at any images or areas of content on the website which is subject to shift when the user moves throughout the page and FID – that’s looking at how long it takes for the website to load from the first point of load.
A number of years ago Google introduced an algorithm update which was designed to ensure that websites performed well on the core web vitals test. The main purpose behind this algorithm was to encourage webmasters to create websites that drove a good user experience, had decent page speed and also ensured that when a user moved throughout the website the experience was seamless.
Although initially the majority of websites failed the core web vitals test, we are starting to see more and more websites take this seriously and as such, a higher percentage of websites pass this test than ever before. As a result, if you are building a new e-commerce store or you’re simply looking to upgrade your existing e-commerce store, then looking into core web vitals and how you can optimise to pass this test is an important SEO consideration
11. Image SEO
Image SEO is an important but often overlooked facet of effective SEO performance. This involves looking at the imagery in on your website and understanding how we could optimise this to appear within the Google image search and can be particularly useful if the product that you’re selling is driven by great image or if users are often searching for images on your website subject or topic.
To optimise for image SEO, one of the most important elements is the image alt text, this piece of code that often sits behind the image is the one descriptor that enables you to tell Google what that image is about. remember Google doesn’t always understand what an image is so we need to tell it in plain text form. The image alt text is a great way to tell Google what the image is about so make sure that you make your alt text as keyword rich and clear and concise as possible.
Another way that you can improve your Image SEO is through the naming of the images that you upload to your website. This doesn’t often have a huge impact but it can add to your Image SEO optimisation. As a result, when you’re uploading an image to the website we do recommend that you name the image with a keyword friendly format that again is clearly descriptive in plain text form of what is inside the image.
12. Sitemap
Sitemaps play an important role in helping Google to understand the structure of our website which can be very important when it comes to delivering an effective crawl. By creating an XML sitemap we are able to submit the sitemap to Google Search console and have Google effectively crawl the sitemap that we have created.
Submitting an XML sitemap to Google can also help us to identify where there are pages within the sitemap that haven’t been indexed or even pages in the sitemap which shouldn’t be indexed – this is really valuable in enabling us to give Google a really effective crawl and making sure that we maximise our crawl budget.
A sitemap will usually be created dynamically by the webmaster or the website itself and if you have an e-commerce store where you are frequently changing products or products might be going in and out stock, we would recommend setting up a dynamic type which refreshes at midnight each day, to ensure that the information that you’re sending to Google is relevant and correct.
13. Robots.txt
The robots.txt file on a website is one of the most important files that you can have to give guidance to Google and how you want it to crawl your website. within this file you can give guidance to the Googlebot to understand how it needs to crawl your website, this can include files and folders that you would like it to avoid crawling, or it can include areas of the website that you would like to block from the crawl altogether.
This particular file is very valuable for e-commerce stores who may have a filtering system in place such as faceted navigation – in this instance Google will naturally crawl every link that is created and that could be thousands and thousands of variations of a product such as size, colour, shape etc… and this could lead to a significant waste and crawl budget and it may also mean that Google doesn’t reach the most important pages on your website as frequently as it should. In this instance we would recommend implementing a robots.txt file to ensure that Google is crawling the right areas of your website and to prevent it from wasting crawl budget in areas that you would prefer it to avoid.
14. Product Information
Your product information pages are some of the most important pages that you’ll have on an e-commerce website. these pages give your users the information that they need to understand what type of product you’re selling, what the particular features of that product are and also important elements like what that product is made of and what size it is available in.
It’s important to be clear and concise with your product information and to make sure that you make as much information available as possible to the user to help them to make an informed decision. At the end of the day we want the user to purchase the products when they are on our website, rather than going to a competitor, so it’s important that we are giving them all of the information that they need to make an informed purchase.
Where possible try and make your product descriptions unique as this can help to add value to the user and avoid the duplication of many other retailers who will be selling the same products. Although we do understand that in many instances it’s difficult to do this and in some cases you will need to use the manufacturer’s copy on your website. If this is the case then try to add a unique element to your website in another way, this could be looking at implementing FAQs or pulling in some USPs of using your shop against a competitor.
15. FAQs
We mentioned FAQs in the last point as one of the most important ways to add unique content onto your website, but more than this they have the ability to answer your user’s questions and easily match your user purpose and intent, this is an important element in Google’s quality rater guidelines and something that you should be looking to add to your e-commerce store.
If you aren’t sure where to start with FAQs then looking at the types of questions that people are searching for using keyword research tools to understand conversational queries is a great place to start. In addition, you could look at the people also ask section at the bottom of the Google Search results to get an idea of what other users have been searching for related to your specific product or category group.
Once you have an idea of the questions that people are asking, you can then start to generate great copy that answers those questions directly and put it into faq format to fit into the website. We also recommend implementing FAQ schema which can help Google to understand that your content is in FAQ format and also that it’s answering a user’s question which is always super valuable to the content of the page.
16. Clear Titles & Headings
Clear targeting plays an important role in helping Google to understand what your e-commerce pages are about, this means ensuring that all product and category pages are clearly labeled with clear titles and clear headings telling the user what is on that page. We generally recommend that you only focus each page with one or two maximum keywords to ensure that those pages are seen as super relevant for that term and additionally this helps Google to understand that you are relevant for that term and may help you to perform better in the search results.
If you aren’t sure where to start with titles and headings then undertaking keyword research to understand what uses are searching for and the types of search volumes around those keywords can help you to choose the right keyword for that page. In many instances we see the e-commerce pages are set up to target the wrong keyword and in this instance they could be missing out on a great deal of opportunity. An example of this could be targeting a cashmere sweaters page with the keyword cashmere knitwear – on review we might find the cashmere sweaters has a higher search volume than cashmere knitwear, but as we have chosen to target it with the latter we are missing out on the opportunity to capitalise on that search volume. This is a great example of a situation where looking at how we are targeting the page and page title is important to ensure that we’re maximising the visibility for our website.
17. Product Information
Most e-commerce stores will have a mega nav or a main menu with very clean navigation and this allows Google to understand what the main pages on that website are and when it usually lands on the homepage, it helps to direct Google through the website to ensure that it lands on some of the most important pages on the site first.
This is one of the main reasons why having a good main navigation is so important – and much time and detail should be put into researching the right pages to go into the navigation, to ensure that you’re really maximising the opportunity here both from the user and an internal link equity perspective.
If you aren’t sure where to start with evaluating your navigation and your crawl, then a great place to start is with a log file analysis. Log file analysis allows you to understand how Google is crawling through your website and to identify which pages are most frequently called and which pages perhaps aren’t getting much of a visit at all. Once you’ve undertaken a log analysis you can have a really good idea of where you might need to improve the internal navigation of your website. If some of the most important pages aren’t being reached very frequently or there are a number of pages which are being repeatedly crawled perhaps indicating that Google is stuck on those pages, then updating your main navigation will help to ensure that Google can continue one it’s way and that the appropriate pages on your website are getting indexed as they should be.
18. Internal Linking
Internal linking plays a very important role in allowing Google to move through your website. Connecting your pages together and allowing the Googlebot to move effectively throughout the website without getting stuck in a particular area or without missing out on key pages plays an important role in ensuring that your website is effectively crawled and indexed giving it the best possible chance to return well within the search results. Internal linking also helps Google to understand what the most important pages on your website are, and building an effective internal linking structure can help to send positive page signals to ensure that Google understands which pages they need to consider as most significant on your website.
19. E- E-A-T
Last but not least we have the concept of expertise authority and trust, these words are perhaps some of the most mentioned words when we talk about SEO and the three of the most important elements when it comes to Google evaluating how your website performs in the search results. Google has told us time and time again how important it is for websites to showcase expertise, authority and trust through everything that they do both on-site and off-site and it’s no different for e-commerce stores which are often held to a higher standard due to the transactional nature of the website.
E-A-T can come in a number of different formats and there’s a number of things that you can do on your website to really push and exude these key signals, but in general on e-commerce stores there’s two areas that we focus on the most, these are the About Us page and the Contact Us page – as they both showcase important information to the user and to Google regarding who is behind the website and how they can be contacted if an issue arises.
Your About Us page should do what it says on the tin and that is it should tell people about you, it should tell people about your brand, your background, your expertise and why they can trust to make a purchase from you. This is also a place to talk about any achievements, awards, accreditations or other recommendations that you’ve had that can help to add to that trust side of the business. It’s also nice to include a meet the team page so that people can understand the names and faces behind the brand that they are purchasing from.
Your Contact Us page is also important – this provides your customers with the ability to connect with you if there’s a problem with the order or if they need to ask a question and this plays an important role in matching user purpose and intent and allowing the users to make an informed decision before they make their purchase. It gives them peace of mind if they do make the purchase and there’s an issue with it that they are able to resolve it quickly and easily so having a clearly visible contact us page with a number of ways to communicate with you effectively is always a bonus here. From an SEO perspective this is a big tick in both the authority and the trust boxes as it helps to build trust with the user knowing that they can communicate with you if there is an issue.
20. Mobile Optimisation
Mobile optimisation is critical, as the majority of e-commerce traffic often comes from mobile devices. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, has a responsive design, and is optimised for mobile search. Check the mobile usability report in Google Search Console to identify any issues and ensure a smooth user experience.
21. Canonical Tags
E-commerce websites often have multiple URLs for similar or identical content (e.g., product variations). Use canonical tags to avoid duplication issues and tell search engines which version of a page to prioritise. Proper implementation of canonical tags can help consolidate link equity and avoid keyword cannibalisation.
22. Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumb navigation is a great way to help both users and search engines understand the structure of your website. It aids user experience by providing a clear path back to previous pages, and search engines can better grasp your site’s hierarchy. Implement breadcrumb navigation, especially on category and product pages, to improve crawlability and SEO.
23. User-Generated Content
Encourage and showcase user-generated content, such as product reviews, testimonials, and ratings. This not only builds trust with potential customers but also creates fresh, unique content that Google values. Ensure that reviews are crawlable and well-structured, potentially using review schema markup.
24. HTTPS For Security
If you haven’t already, make sure your website uses HTTPS. Google prioritises secure websites, and customers are more likely to trust and complete transactions on secure sites. An HTTPS certificate improves your SEO and provides a safer experience for your users.
25. Pagination
E-commerce sites with large product ranges often require pagination. Make sure your paginated pages are properly indexed and optimised. Use the rel="prev" and rel="next" tags to inform Google about paginated content, and ensure that the most important category pages are easily accessible by both users and search engines.
26. Optimised URLs
Ensure your URLs are short, descriptive, and keyword-rich. Avoid dynamically generated URLs with lots of unnecessary characters. Instead, opt for clean, static URLs that describe the content of the page, such as www.example.com/mens-sneakers instead of www.example.com/category?id=123&product=456. This improves click-through rates and SEO visibility.
27. Content Silos
Group your e-commerce content into silos by creating well-organised categories and subcategories. This not only helps users navigate the site but also allows search engines to understand the relationship between your products and categories. A well-organised silo structure can improve your site’s relevance for specific search queries.
28. Alt Tags For Images
Ensure that all images on your website, particularly product images, have relevant and descriptive alt tags. Alt tags help search engines understand the context of the image, improving your chances of appearing in image search results. Descriptive alt text also improves accessibility for users with disabilities.
29. Local SEO For Ecommerce
If your e-commerce store has a physical presence or if you offer local services (e.g., store pick-up), consider local SEO optimisation. Create a Google My Business profile, ensure your NAP (name, address, phone number) details are consistent across the web, and optimise product listings for localised keywords to capture local search intent.
30. Social Proof Integration
Integrate social proof, such as customer testimonials, influencer endorsements, and social media engagement, into your product pages. This not only increases trust with potential customers but also contributes to SEO by encouraging users to engage with your site and share content, which can generate backlinks.
Summary
SEO is hugely important for e-commerce websites but in order to get the most out of your website it’s important to follow the right guidance and to understand what you need to do to get the most out of the search engine results. So if you are working with an e-commerce store or if you’re planning to launch one in the near future, take time to invest in understanding how you can get SEO to work for you and it will pay off in the long run. If you’d like to know more about how we can help you with your SEO for an e-commerce store then please get in touch!
Alternately if you are looking to approach ecommerce with a more immediate return then you may want to consider looking for a Google Shopping agency to support you with your product listing ads.
Search engines such as Google and Bing crawl billions of pages in order to discover and organise the content that appears on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). They exist to understand content in order to give users on their SERP the most relevant results to answer the questions that users are asking. Understanding how search engines work is crucial for SEO because if your website can not be found then it will not show up on the SERP and users will not be able to find your website.
Customers are increasingly searching online for products and services and it is now more common for users to access a website through a search engine rather than just searching for a web address. It is therefore important to be ranking highly on the search engine results pages and in order to do this it is important to understand how search engines work so that you can optimise your website for SEO and get ranking on SERPs so that you can increase the amount of visitors to your site.
What Are Search Engines?
So firstly, let’s look at what a search engine actually is. A search engine is a software program that allows users to find information that they are looking for based on keywords or phrases. They are able to return results extremely quickly by constantly crawling websites and indexing every page that they find. They will then rank these websites based on their algorithms so that when users search for keywords, the most relevant and helpful websites will come up first.
Webmasters will need to optimise their SEO to help search engines recognise their website as helpful in order for it to rank when users are searching for a particular keyword.
One of the most popular search engines is Google and it has over 200 ranking factors in its algorithm. The algorithms are an extremely complex system which are used to retrieve data from its search index and deliver the best results for a query instantly. Google uses a combination of algorithms and makes thousands of changes to these algorithms every year. Most of these changes are very small so will go unnoticed, however, Google occasionally rolls out major updates that will significantly impact the SERP, so companies will need to alter their website in order to keep ranking on the SERP. It is important to keep up with all of Google’s algorithm updates so that you can keep your website optimised at all times. Below you will find a list of search ranking updates that Google released in 2022:
Search engines go through three main stages so that the best search results will be shown on the SERP, these three stages are crawling, indexing and ranking. Unfortunately, not all web pages will make it through each stage.
Search Engine Crawling:
Crawling is the process of finding out what web pages exist on the web. Google will use automated crawlers, known as spiders, to download text, images and videos from web pages that it has found on the internet. There is no registry of all web pages, so Google has to constantly look for new and updated pages and add them to it’s list of already known web pages, when Google finds a new web page, it is called URL discovery. Google will be able to discover new pages by following links from already known pages or they can be discovered if you submit a list of pages, known as a sitemap, for Google to crawl.
Google will not only just crawl new URLs but they will also crawl pages that are already known by Google to check for any updates that have been made to the page since they last crawled it. If they detect a change on the page then they will update the page on their index so that search results are up to date when users are searching for information. Google will use their algorithms to determine how often they crawl a page and how many pages on the website will be indexed. It is likely that pages that are often updated and changed will be crawled more frequently than pages that are rarely updated.
Search Engine Indexing:
After Google has crawled a page, it then tries to understand what the web page is actually about so that they are able to answer users’ queries. Google will analyse text, images and video files on the web page and then store that information in the Google index. The Google Index will contain billions of web pages on thousands of machines so that when a user searches for a query, the web pages are already indexed and they will be able to instantly return those web pages on the SERP.
The index will include all of the URLs that Google has discovered and indexed, and all of the relevant information about the content of the URLs. This will include the keywords of the page, telling Google what the page is about, the type of content that is included on the page, the freshness of the page – when it was last updated, and the previous user engagement of the page.
Google will not index all of the URLs that it finds and this can be due to a number of reasons:
➡️There could be signs on your web page telling Google not to index a particular page – this is where a noindex tag will be signalled on your web page – this is telling Google not to index this page even if there are links pointing towards it.
➡️Google could deem the page to be of low quality and they will therefore not index the page.
➡️The URL could return an error page, for example 404 not found. If this occurs then Google will not index the page.
If you want your web page to gain organic traffic, then it needs to be indexed by Google, so you need to make sure that you optimise your web page for SEO and ensure that none of the above things that we have talked about are happening. We will go into more detail about how to make your web pages more search engine friendly below.
Search Engine Ranking:
When a user searches for a keyword on Google, Google will look through their index for content that is relevant to that keyword in the hope that they will answer the user’s query. They will rank the content with the content that they think is the most relevant at the top, so, it is likely that the higher a website is ranking, the more relevant Google thinks that website is in relation to the keyword/ query.
This is where Google’s algorithms come into play. Search algorithms are systems that are used to rank data from the search index and deliver the most relevant web pages for a query. Google uses many ranking factors in its algorithms to ensure the most relevant web pages will be ranking highest on the SERPs:
➡️Backlinks – Backlinks are links from one web page to another and they are a very strong ranking factor. Having quality backlinks will tell Google that your web page is trustworthy and will give users accurate information. When it comes to backlinks it’s important to remember that quality always wins over quantity – one super relevant backlink which really showcases your expertise will be far more beneficial to the authority of your website than a number of backlinks from irrelevant sources
➡️Relevance of content – Google will analyse the content of a web page to assess whether it will contain the information that a user is searching for. One of the basic ways in which Google does this is by looking whether the content and the search term contain the same keywords. Beyond keywords, Google will analyse the content in other ways such as using aggregated and anonymised interaction data to see whether or not the content is relevant to the search term and whether other users have found it useful.
➡️Usability of web pages – Google will consider the usability of the web page and how easy it is to navigate. Aspects that they will look at include page speed, whether it is mobile and desktop friendly, and how quickly the content loads. The Core Web Vitals algorithm also plays into this and further reinforces how important on-page user experience is to Google.
When ranking web pages, Google will also use the user’s location, language, previous search history and what device they are using to personalise the results and make them more relevant to individual users.
How To Make Your Website Search Engine Friendly
From the above, you can see that Google prioritises certain factors in order to provide users with the best overall experience when they are using their search engine. This is great, as it means that you can optimise your website in order to allow Google to, firstly, crawl your web page, secondly, index your web page and thirdly, rank your web page. So, here are some points to make sure your website is search engine friendly:
➡️Create and submit a sitemap – submitting a sitemap will ensure Google crawls all of your web pages.
➡️Ensure your website is indexable
➡️Target the relevant keywords – when choosing your keywords, you should make sure that it is what users are searching for, you can find this out by looking at the volume of any keywords on AHrefs.
➡️Include your keywords in your content, headers and URLs – once you have chosen a keyword to target, you need to make sure that you include it in your website, use the keyword as part of your sentences but make sure you avoid keyword stuffing. You can also use semantics – look at keywords that are related to the keywords you are trying to focus on to add value and expertise
➡️Ensure your content is useful
➡️Ensure your website includes internal and external links
➡️Ensure your site loads fast
➡️Ensure your website is optimised for mobile and desktop browsers
Summary
To summarise, search engines exist to give users the most relevant information when they are searching for a query. Search engines will crawl and index your web pages and then rank them based on the key ranking factors.
By optimising the SEO on your web page, you will ensure that Google and other search engines can easily crawl your website, make sure that your content will be indexed for the right keywords, and finally it will help you to rank higher on search engine results pages and therefore gain more organic visitors to your site.
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google considers important in a website’s overall user experience, it is an extremely important aspect of SEO because it ensures a great user experience, which in turn helps to improve overall page quality. The Core Web Vitals algorithm update was rolled out in 2021 by Google and it is used to measure and evaluate the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of websites. This was then incorporated into a broader Page Experience update which rolled out in 2022.
There are three main metrics of Core Web Vitals:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – this is how quickly the main content of your web page loads.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – this is a measure of how much your webpage will unexpectedly shift during the loading phase. A layout shift occurs when a visible element shifts position from one rendered frame to another.
First Input Delay (FID) – this will measure the time from when a user first interacts with your website to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction.
There are also some non-Core Web Vitals that are included:
➡️First Contentful Paint (FCP)
➡️Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
➡️Time to First Byte (TTFB)
It is important that all of these metrics are optimised for your website in order to improve the user’s experience and increase organic rankings. In particular, optimising TTFB plays a key role in ensuring that you have a good page load speed – if TTFB is slow then it slows down the entire loading process which can cover LCP and FID – causing issues for your Core Web Vitals performance, optimising this from the start can help to put your Core Web Vitals on a strong standing.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is one of the Core Web Vitals metrics and it is a measurement of how long it takes for the main content of a web page to load. The largest image or textblock that is visible to the user is what is measured.
In order to provide a good user experience, the LCP should have a measurement of under 2.5 seconds.
Typical elements that are considered for LCP are:
➡️Images
➡️Video poster images
➡️Background images
➡️Block level text
LCP is one of the key metrics for the Core Web Vitals because it can accurately measure how fast your website can be used by users. The speed of a website is very important to users so Google wants to make sure that web pages are loading fast enough for the users. Google states that 53% of visits are abandoned if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, as such having a good load time across both mobile and desktop is very important.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a website, it is the unexpected shift of webpage elements while the webpage is loading. The metric will measure how often users of a website are experiencing an unexpected layout shift.
In order to provide a good user experience, the CLS should have a score of 0.1 or under.
Minimising CLS is extremely important because if a user experiences a lot of pages shifting around the page, it will lead to a bad user experience.
If your website has a poor CLS score, it is likely due to a coding issue that can be solved by your web developer.
According to Google, the main reasons that your website has a poor CLS will be due to:
➡️Images that do not have dimensions
➡️Ads, embeds, and iframes that do not have dimensions
➡️Dynamically injected content
➡️Web Fonts causing FIOT/ FOUT
➡️Actions waiting for a network response before updating DOM
CLS is one of the key metrics for the Core Web Vitals because having poor CLS will mean that your users are having a bad experience on your website which could lead to users leaving your webpage and not returning. It could also lead to frustration among users who might not be able to find what they are looking for.
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay (FID) is the measurement of how long it takes for your browser to respond to your user’s first interaction with the page. An example of an interaction can be clicking on a link in the website’s navigation, choosing an option from a menu or entering your email into a field. FID is important because it is taking into account how real-life users are interacting with your website.
In order to provide a good user experience for your website, the FID should have a measurement of under 100ms.
One of the main reasons for having a poor FID score is due to your browser’s main thread being busy parsing and executing JavaScript code. This causes a poor FID score because the main thread is unable to respond to users’ interactions if it is busy.
FID is one of the key metrics for the Core Web Vitals because speed is one of the main aspects Google considers when they are ranking your website because they know that it is a top priority for their users. So, having a good FID score will improve the overall user experience of your website.
Why are Core Web Vitals Important for SEO?
Google has over 200 ranking factors, with page experience and page speed both being in the top eight, so this probably tells you that Core Web Vitals are extremely important when it comes to SEO. The first impression of your website could be the difference between a user becoming loyal or never returning to your website again, it is important that this first impression is a good one so that you are gaining loyal users that will return to your website over and over. This first impression starts with all 3 Core Web Vitals because the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a website will likely be the first things that your users will notice when clicking onto your site.
Research conducted by Google shows that users prefer to use websites that have a great page experience. So, Google sees the page experience as a priority when they are ranking websites.
Optimising your Core Web Vitals will inevitably improve the user’s experience of your website and it is likely that you will have fewer users returning to the SERP because they are satisfied and happy with your website. If you improve the user experience, you will likely have happier users and this could lead to more conversions for your website.
How Do I Measure My Website’s Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals show how your website performs based on a set of real-world, user centered metrics that will quantify key aspects of your user’s experience.
In order to pass your Core Web Vitals assessment, you need to score ‘Good’ in all three metrics. So, how do you find out if you have passed?
PageSpeed Insights:
In order to find out if you have passed your Core Web Vitals assessment, you need to go to PageSpeed Insights and enter the URL for your web page:
PageSpeed Insights will then show what your real users are experiencing. You will receive an assessment for your webpage and it will look something like this, showing whether or not your website has passed or failed the assessment:
From this report, you will be able to see if you have passed or failed each metric, in order to pass your Core Web Vitals assessment, LCP, FID and CLS must all score ‘Good’. As you can see in the above example, this webpage has failed the assessment because the only section that is currently good is the FID.
You will receive an assessment for both mobile and desktop browsers and these will have different results based on the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of each browser.
PageSpeed Insights will also suggest improvements that you can make on your website in order to pass the Core Web Vitals assessment. These improvement suggestions can be found under ‘Opportunities’ and ‘Diagnostics’:
Using PageSpeed Insights will allow you to see if you have passed or failed the Core Web Vitals assessment for your website for both mobile and desktop. This will then allow you to investigate the main factors that could be causing the Core Web Vitals to fail and how they can be improved. PageSpeed Insights will give you recommendations on how to improve all three metrics, even if you pass one or two of the metrics, there will still be suggested improvements to help you improve your score, therefore improving the overall page experience even further.
Looker Studio:
If you want a more in depth and visual review of your Core Web Vitals, Looker Studio is great. Looker Studio will give you a detailed and visual report of your website’s Core Web Vitals and it makes it very easy to see how your website is performing. You will clearly be able to see if your website is doing well for a particular metric.
The main overview page will give you a visual report of all three main metrics:
You can also go deeper into each metric to understand how your website is performing for each one, you can do this by going into the dashboard on the left hand side of the page:
Another great feature of the Looker Studio report is being able to look at your Core Web Vitals for different months, this enables you to see whether or not your vitals are improving or not and whether you need to make any changes. You can do this by clicking on the dropdown in the top right hand corner:
Summary
To summarise, Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google considers very important for a webpage’s overall experience. As I’m sure you can see, Core Web Vitals are a very important part of your website and improving them will improve the overall experience for your users.
Google will determine whether or not you have passed or failed your Core Web Vitals assessment based on real-world data. You will be able to see this data in PageSpeed Insights, and it will provide suggested recommendations on how to improve the three main metrics for your website for both mobile and desktop.
Understanding the Core Web Vitals for your website will allow you to create a more optimised web page for your users and will lead to happier users and increased organic traffic.
On-site content is a crucial aspect of SEO, without content, users and search engines will not be able to understand what your website is about, meaning that your website will not rank on search engine results pages so it will not be seen organically. If your content is well optimised for your users, you will rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and your website will get more organic traffic.
What is On-Site Content for SEO?
On-site content for SEO is any content that is created for your website with the goal of better matching your user’s intent and increasing your ranking on search engine results pages in order to gain traffic to your website and boost your website’s trust and authority. The content on your website needs to be user friendly content so that search engines can easily understand what it is about and so that it satisfies the users intent.
There can be many different types of content that you include on your website:
➡️Blog posts – sharing information through blogs
➡️Guides – longer pieces of content that contain information about a particular topic
➡️Product pages – defines the products that you sell and allows customers to find out everything about that product
➡️Static pages – these pages will stay the same for all users of the website – for example an About Us page
➡️Landing pages – this is the first page that users land on when they go onto your website
The overall goal when optimising your on-site content for SEO is to write user friendly content that will fully answer your reader’s question or solve their problem – it should provide them with a specific answer but also it needs to be easily understandable by both the user and the search engine.
How to Optimise your On-Site Content for SEO
Keyword Research
On-site content starts with carrying out keyword research as it will give you the direction of what content should be on your website – you can read our guide to keyword research to find out more about what this is and how to carry it out. Knowing what keywords your target audience are searching for will allow you to identify the specific things users are looking for relating to your website and you can then generate content for your website based on these keywords.
Include Keywords in your Content
When you have found your keywords, it is important to include these keywords from your keyword research in your on-site content so that Google knows what your content is about so that they are able to rank you on search engine results pages. You should use your keywords and long-tail keywords in the title, headings and body of your content, it’s also worth using keywords and topics which are closely related to your key page topic, or semantically linked. When using your keywords, it is important for them to occur naturally throughout your content, do not use lots of keywords where they do not occur naturally as Google may peanalise you for this and it will not be optimised for the user. Always remember that Google wants you to create content that matches the user intent.
Long-Type Content
When writing your content, it’s worth considering writing long-type content. There are many studies that show long-type content performs very well in search engine results pages.
SerpIQ ran a study charting the top 10 results in a search engine results page by content length. The result in first position contained 2,416 words and the result in 10th position contained 2,032 words:
This study is showing that Google prefers longer content. However, this does not just mean that you should write over 2,000 words and think that you will rank higher. The content itself is a lot more significant than the quantity of the content. If your content completely matches the user’s needs and is not over 2,000 words then it will still rank even if there are other posts that are longer in length.
It’s important to consider user intent here and not just write content for content’s sake – while chances are that longer articles are more likely to answer any questions that a user has, short-form content can be equally as effective if it quickly matches user intent and answers their purpose in short, effective language – something to keep in mind.
Add Internal Links
Including internal links in your on -site content will help to improve your SEO performance as it helps to identify which are the key focus areas on your website and to cluster topical content together to showcase your expertise on a particular vertical or topic.. An internal link is any link on your website that links to another page on your own website. Internal links are important because they will connect your website and make it a lot easier for users on your site to navigate and find the information that they are looking for. Internal links will also help when Google and other search engines are crawling your site because it will show them new pages that they can rank. They are always looking for new pages that they can rank for users but sometimes they will miss pages that you have on your site, internal linking will make sure that this doesn’t happen, because if Google is crawling one of your existing pages and they find an internal link, they will also crawl the linked page as well.
When Google is crawling your website, any page that has a high amount of internal linking will be seen as important. So, it is likely that your website will have a main page that will focus on a particular topic and then this will be surrounded with other shorter articles that will go into more detail, these shorter articles should all link back to the main page so that Google knows that is the main page. As this main page starts to improve, it will also improve the ranking of the other pages that are linking to that main page, therefore improving the overall performance of your content.
Add External Links
External links are links that are used to direct users to another website. External links can be inbound or outbound. Inbound links are the links that come from other websites and outbound links are the links that are included on your website that direct your users to another website.
If you are correctly including outbound external links in your content, this can help to back up your expertise as well as linking your website to other credible sources – it will improve the credibility of your website. If you add relevant and trustworthy links to your website, Google will know that your content is trustworthy and credible so they are more likely to rank your site because they know that it will answer users’ queries correctly.
When you are including external links in your content, it is important that the links are relevant to the topic that you are discussing on your page. If the content is relevant, then you are improving the overall experience for your users as you are allowing them to find out more information about their desired topic.
Optimise Readability
When writing content for your website, readability is extremely important, this refers to how easy it is to read and understand your content. If your content is easy to read and understand then you are improving the overall experience for the user and it is more likely that your users will be more engaged and potentially spend a longer amount of time on your website. This is an extremely positive sign for Google and other search engines because they will be tracking the behavior of your users and how long they spend on your website. If users are spending a long time on your website, it is indicating to Google that your website has high-quality content that users are interacting with easily so they are likely to rank your website higher, knowing that it will match the users intent. When considering the readability of your content, there are a few things to consider:
➡️Use legible fonts
➡️Ensure your font is big enough
➡️Use short sentences
➡️Use headings for your paragraphs
➡️Use visual content such as images
Why is On-Site Content Important for SEO?
Google and other search engines want to rank websites that are valuable and relevant to what users are searching for. Google often updates their algorithms so that their users are receiving the most relevant and useful information, an example of this is the helpful content update that was designed to help users find high quality content. One of the main aspects that Google will be looking at when ranking websites is the on-site content and whether or not it is useful for the users that are searching for specific information, so it is important that your content is optimised for your users. Optimising your on-site content is extremely important for SEO:
➡️It will improve your users overall experience – creating high quality content will provide your users with the information that they need and will be easy for those users to navigate your website.
➡️Targeting keywords – when you are generating content for your website, this is the only way that you will be able to include your keywords onto your website and make sure that your site is found on search engine results pages when users are searching for your products/ services.
➡️Improve online visibility – if you are creating content that is optimised for your users and it is useful content, it is likely that Google and other search engines will increase your rankings and your website is more likely to be found by potential customers.
Optimising your on-site content is crucial for SEO in order to create user-friendly content for your users and for search engines. By creating content that is providing a better user experience, you are showing Google that your website is optimised for your users and this will in turn allow you to rank higher on search engine results pages.
Keyword research is a vital part of creating an SEO campaign and it is one of the first steps that you should take. In order to rank well on search engine results pages and to attract organic traffic, you need to conduct thorough keyword research. If you do not conduct keyword research and no one is searching for what you’re writing about, you will not get the right type of organic traffic from Google or potentially any at all – and that means you won’t be driving customers who are looking to engage with your product or service, it’s that simple.
What is Keyword Research?
So, what actually is keyword research? Keyword research involves researching and selecting key words or phrases that relate to a specific topic that users will be searching for. The process of keyword research is done in order to optimise websites. By having an optimised website, and the correct keywords, Google will be able to understand the content on that website and they will understand that you have pages that focus specifically around the user query and you are therefore able to effectively match user intent, this will mean that the site will have more of an opportunity to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Why is Keyword Research Important?
Keyword research has a vital impact to your business, here are some reasons why:
➡️By doing targeted keyword research, it will enable you to know and understand what types of keywords and phrases people are searching for when trying to find your type of product or service. This will then allow you to create content that matches what the users are searching for. This will mean that your website is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages and it will also help to attract more users to your site.
➡️Keyword research can also give you valuable information about which keywords are easy to rank for, which keywords your competitors rank for, search volume of keywords and where your website is ranking for keywords.
➡️Keyword research will tell you exactly what users are searching for, allowing you to optimise your website accordingly.
Keyword research is one of the first steps when it comes to an SEO campaign, however, you should not just leave it there. Keyword research should be an ongoing process to see how well your website is ranking for keywords compared to your competitors. This will allow you to see what you need to improve in order to better match the user intent and rank higher on search engine results pages to gain organic search traffic.
According to AHrefs, 90.63% of websites get no organic search traffic from Google. Keyword research will help to ensure that there will be a search demand for whatever you are writing about in your website. So, if your website ends up ranking well in Google for a keyword, you are more likely to get a stream of targeted users landing on your website and not be part of that 90.63% of websites.
How to Carry Out Keyword Research
So now you know how important keyword research is for your website, you need to know how to actually do it. The first step that you need to take is to think about your business and what you are trying to sell, then start writing an initial list of ‘seed keywords’ that are related to your business. This would be a good time to think about what you want to be found for – what are your main products/ services and what is it that you want users to be searching for when they find your website to ensure they are the right kind of user to convert.
Think about what users you want to be landing on your website and what would they be searching for when looking for your product/service. Your keywords will shape the direction of your content and ensure that the content you are producing is relevant and easily searchable on Google. Strong keyword research will enable you to optimise your website to ensure you are matching user intent and giving users exactly what they are looking for.
Once you have compiled a list of seed keywords, it is time to use keyword research tools to refine your keywords. Using an online tool, type in one of your keywords from your list of seed keywords, the tool will generate specific keywords and tell you the search volumes for those keywords. This will allow you to see what users looking for your product/ service are searching for which will then allow you to form your content for your website based on these keywords.
There are many tools you can use when conducting your keyword research but here are some free tools to use:
➡️Google Trends
➡️Keyword generator
➡️Keyword sheeter
➡️Answer the public
Or if you want to use a paid tool then here are some paid tools to use:
➡️AHrefs
➡️SEMrush
➡️SEO profiler
The tools above will help you to find high-traffic keywords that relate to your business and that have relatively low competition so that you have more chance ranking for them in search engine results pages. This will also allow you to make a decision over which keywords you want to prioritise first. You won’t be able to target them all in one go, so understanding the levels of competition around each keyword can help you to put priorities in place to ensure that your time is being most effectively spent.
When you have found a few potential keywords, it is a good idea to do further research on these keywords to see if they will be a good fit for your website. A way of doing this is by searching for those keywords and looking at what type of websites rank on the results pages. This will allow you to see what types of websites are ranking for those keywords and if they would be suitable for your website.
It is then a good idea to compile a list of keywords that you think will work for your website and that you will be able to rank for on search engine results pages. This will allow you to refer back to this list so you don’t forget those important keywords!
You should now have a useful list of keywords to use for your website in order to get your website ranking. Remember to regularly review these keywords as search patterns and search volumes do change and it is important to stay on top of your users search habits so that you can keep your website up to date and keep ranking.
How to Use Your Keyword Research
So, you have now carried out your keyword research, how do you use it in order to rank on search engine results pages? Well, once you have finalised your list of keywords, it is important to use them in your website so that Google knows what your content is about. Ensure that your keywords are in the following:
➡️Meta title
➡️Meta descriptions
➡️Headings (H1)
➡️The main content of your website
➡️Images (alt text)
It is important to include your keywords in your website, however, don’t use too many and think that you will automatically rank! This is known as keyword stuffing and Google could penalise you for this. Only include your keywords where they will naturally occur in order to improve your visibility of the website. Remember that Google wants you to create content that is for the user and not for Google – as such it has implemented a number of algorithm updates including the recent Helpful Content Update which are designed to encourage websites to create content that leaves the user satisfied and provides a better overall user experience.
Summary of Keyword Research
So we have now realised just how important keyword research is, it is an extremely valuable activity for your business. Ranking for the right keywords is imperative for your website, if you don’t rank, it can have a significant impact on your business as you may not get the right type of traffic to have an impact on your sales and leads. By researching your keyword demand and including those keywords strategically on your website, it will help you to firstly, rank on search engine results pages and secondly, bring the right kind of visitors to your website. In order to rank successfully on search engine results pages, keyword research is a must, it is a fundamental aspect of SEO.
We all know that Digital PR plays an important role in any solid SEO strategy. Whether it’s chasing after valuable high-quality links, improving the external reputation of your business, or trying to build credible, expertise-driven connections between your website and other trusted sources, doing it in a sustainable and consistent way is a key pillar of SEO success.
Although there are many ways to do Digital PR effectively (think newsjacking, thought leadership, product placements), data-led campaigns have grown in popularity as journalists look for interesting, data-driven stories to entertain their audience.
When data-led campaigns started a lot of them were based around surveys. In some cases, these were expensive to commission (upwards of £3,000 per survey) and it took a while to get the data back. Although these are still a popular option among many SEO agencies, the rise of freely available data sources has paved the way for cheaper and quicker turnaround pieces, for example newsjacking with a data-led campaign. Yet they are also equally as effective for targeted news stories, thus creating a great recipe for effective Digital PR. This has led to a big rise in smaller data-led campaigns, which are a favourite among many agencies, including the team here at Cedarwood.
To help out on your hunt for free data we’ve collated some of the best free data resources available to Digital PR professionals right now. All you need to do is go in and grab your data, find an angle and perfect that pitch. Data-driven Digital PR campaigns are a great way to enhance those all important E-A-T signals, adding real value to your SEO campaigns. So what are you waiting for? Get started by having a read through our list below:
One of the biggest portals of available data, Statista holds data from over 170 industries across 150+ countries so, if you’re looking for data, this is a great place to start. With a super easy to use interface you just input your search query to find relevant results. For example, if I wanted to know more about the 2022 FIFA World Cup I could input that exact query:
If I wanted more of a summary, I have the option to only select the most important facts, for example, the transfer value of each of the country’s teams in the World Cup. I could then drill down further:
Utilising data like this is a really valuable way to quickly analyse and pull together a newsworthy story. An example of the above would be looking at how likely a team is to win the World Cup based on their transfer value – a very timely, topical and data-driven piece of content from a very effective free data platform.
Google Ads Keyword Planner is a highly effective way of gathering data around key trending topics and search volumes, to draw an analysis piece. The tool allows you to view current data (up to the previous month), data for related searches and even historical data for a few years, allowing you to analyse year on year comparisons.
In the above image we can see the variety of information that Google Ads Keyword Planner makes available to us, including search volume per month for that keyword, level of competition, change YOY etc… We’re also able to split that out by device (mobile or desktop), and drill down by a specific country, region or even city, enabling us to make comparisons at a very granular level. With this level of detail freely available, you can probably already imagine the types of angles and stories that can be developed just from accessing this data.
We recently used data in this way to pull together an effective Digital PR campaign for our client, Mist E Liquid, looking at which date users would give up their new year’s resolutions (based on search data). This landed some great coverage including a link from Yahoo!. If you are looking for a great option for data analysis then the Google Ads Keyword Planner is a good place to start.
Google Trends is another great tool that Google offers that provides you with the option to undertake free data analysis around trending topics. You can analyse something that is incredibly topical and compare it over time, by location and against other trending topics, to once again draw conclusions for an effective digital PR piece.
Google Trends allows you to analyse the performance of particular trending topics over time, as well as compared to one another:
In addition, it has a drill down option where you can compare the performance of those trending topics in specific areas; for example, looking at how trends for Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian differ based on US States:
Similar to the Google Ads Keyword Planner, Google Trends can be quite granular with its dataset, so it’s down to you to understand which data you are looking for and how you want to evaluate it. If you are looking for up-to-date data on topics that are currently trending, or even just for ideas on which topics are actually trending, then this is a great place to start.
NHS Digital is an online platform where you can freely access data that the NHS holds, and reports that they frequently publish online. The data they cover ranges from statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services to workforce statistics, maternity services, GP appointments and so on and so forth. It can be used as a data source for news stories closely relevant to the medical and technology sectors.
The reports are easily digestible and come with two main formats. Initially they give an overview of the key findings from the report, highlighting key pieces of analysis and themes that have come out of it; these are usually broken down into three or four boxes similar to this:
Following on from the headlines you then have a range of datasets which are broken down into both charts and Excel spreadsheets, to easily digest and manipulate/evaluate the data. This is where you can start to draw comparisons and identify angles which may be newsworthy or relevant for your client.
The data above allows you to draw topical analysis around the report, i.e. in this instance you could look to compare how many people have tried to quit smoking in a specific region vs the population of that region to understand which region of the UK is most likely to quit smoking. It’s a quick and simple piece of analysis that could be seeded to regional media with a local interest.
NHS data is often very topical and trending. A great example of this is how the recent NHS report into appointments in general practice (October 2022) was picked up and turned into a news story on The Daily Mail. The piece highlighted which of the country’s NHS practices had the least in-person GP appointments as per the report. It was, and still is, a very topical issue that has gained great coverage, and is a good example of how a free data report from NHS Digital can be turned into a successful Digital PR piece.
The ONS or the Office For National Statistics is another hub of free information. You can access a range of data sources, from employment rates and inflation (very topical at the moment!), to GDP and population/census data. In addition to standard reports it also offers several interactive features, such as interactive maps, graphs and diagrams of the economy, and indexes that cover areas like health.
On diving deeper into the websites you can see an extensive level of reporting on each of the aforementioned areas, with graphs and statistics updated on a regular basis.
Within each section you will benefit from an initial summary which governs the top level figures of each report and summarises them into a neat table. This is often complemented by a short dot point summary that outlines the key takeaways.
Some more in-depth graphs usually follow, which evaluate both the three month change and trends over time, so that you can quickly and easily draw data analysis and conclusions.
The ONS publishes a wide range of reports on a regular basis, so it’s always worth keeping on top of any new reports that are coming up. They also have a huge ‘Time Series’ section, which archives any reports that have previously been created; doing a search here (with over 55,000 reports) is likely to bring up something relevant to your query.
Additionally, the ONS has a release calendar where they feature already published releases and list any upcoming releases. This allows you to plan ahead and check if there are any reports coming up that are relevant to you. You can therefore set some time in your schedule to evaluate and create a great Digital PR story from said reports.
Centre For Cities is a website dedicated to providing a range of data sources broken down by cities and towns across the UK. It’s great if you are looking for data about a specific region or are going for a local angle for a piece of coverage.
The website is incredibly user friendly and interactive. It features data in a number of different ways, including dashboard information that allows you to see a summary overview of how different towns and cities fare on key topics, such as energy bills and cost of living:
There is also the option to break down this information in more detail, giving facts and figures to back up the data and looking at it in a more granular format:
This data can be especially valuable if you are looking to evaluate something in a particular town or city, or regionally. The clear visualisation boards can help with data analysis too, so if you are looking to source data on a regional level this is a great place to start.
Google Public Data Sets are publicly available data boards that contain a broad range of information from around the world. Information included in these datasets can be GDP, Word Development Indicators, Agriculture, Domestic Government, Education, Energy, Health, Infrastructure and so much more…
The interactive data sets allow you to evaluate growth over time and even helps to predict growth factors into the future. In addition, you are able to add and remove countries as you need which allows you to compare countries against each other – another valuable comparison metric.
The Google Public Data Sets launched back in 2018 to provide a search engine strictly for data. Keep this in mind and if there’s something specific that you are looking for, you’ll likely have the ability within this dataset to drill down and find it. It’s also very intuitive, with an easy to use interface, clear description of the data, and even a summary in some sections, so you’ll know if you have an angle on your data or not.
If you know the type of data you are looking for then this is a valuable resource to pull that data together before adding it into your Digital PR strategy.
Data.gov.uk is one of the UK’s largest sources of open data, which has been published by either local authorities, public bodies or the central government. Topics that you can find data on include
Business And Economy
Government
Transport
Defence
Crime And Justice
Health and Education
The information available is very in-depth and can offer good granularity into a sector. For example, if we look at the travel sector we can find over 824 relevant publications, including GB Road Traffic Counts, GM Accessibility Levels, Transport Statistics by region, Metrolink data, Speed Camera data and more. With new publications being added every few days, or even multiple times a day, this information archive is kept well up to date with the latest information.
The database is quite user friendly and allows you to search by publisher, topic or format, as well as allowing you to sort by the most recent or most relevant topic. You can also do a general search if there is a specific data set that you are looking for. The data sets provided are extensive and, in addition to a standard summary, include a mixture of csv, pdf and zip files containing further information for your data analysis.
If you are looking to undertake a data analysis piece specific to one of the general topics listed above then this is a good data hub and place to start your research. The depth of the data lends itself well to regional analysis if you are looking to expand the reach of your content.
If you’re working with European clients then Eurostat will be one of your go-to data platforms. An official website of the European Union, this website is home to wide ranging data about the EU, including inflation rates, GDP growth, house prices, unemployment rates, population data and much more.
The website offers a vast amount of reports and data visualisations that are handy for data analysis. This covers everything from key facts broken down at country level, through to key figures that cover Europe as a whole. Eurostat also has an API section which lets you draw data directly from the source. This is invaluable when you are working with large datasets and can allow you to use a more enterprise approach to data analysis.
There are interactive dashboards where you can create your own datasets to analyse specific country’s data against the EU and Euro area as a whole. The below example shows where you can interactively check the information you are interested in and the information you are looking to compare together in a dashboard. This allows you to see the country data side by side and can lend itself quite well to effective data analysis.
Similar to many other data sources, Eurostat has a release calendar which you can use effectively for proactive newsjacking. It comes in a really easily digestible and aesthetically pleasing format:
If you want to create stories that involve data from the EU this is an excellent source of information and a great place to start. You can also use the handy calendar function to plan your campaigns in advance when you know key data is being released.
The US Bureau Of Data Statistics is home to a range of data information sources about the US. It includes census data and information about the economy, demographics and population. It’s a central hub for all information relating to the US and is an official website of the United States government.
In addition to publishing relevant data, the US Bureau Of Data Statistics also provides a list of useful links to other Federal Government data, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Transportation. This allows you to visit the respective sections if you are looking for more granular information about a specific sector.
There are links through to sections for specific states and local governments too. So if you are looking to analyse data specific to a certain state or local area then utilising the websites provided here is a valuable place to start.
The website also has a maps section, covering topics such as environment data and water resources, current weather, recreation and agricultural information by commodity. If you are planning to analyse any of these in more detail, the website can give you information as granular as crop and plant yield and livestock/animal information.
If you’re working on some US Digital PR campaigns, then the US Bureau Of Data Statistics can provide you with the data and insight you need for those juicy data-led campaigns.
Now that you have your free data sources you are well on your way to creating some high quality, data-driven Digital PR content. So, what are you waiting for? Start jumping on those trends, analysing great data and producing juicy angles to get your coverage front and centre in the press, delivering those all valuable links back to your client’s (or your own!) website.
Want to find out more about how you can use free data-led sources for your Digital PR campaigns? Get in touch with our Digital PR team today!
Digital PR has become a huge buzzword in the digital marketing industry over the last few years. We’ve increasingly seen companies look to leverage an online presence in the PR industry and gain those all important links back to their websites. For the most part, Digital PR has been seen as a more effective alternative to link building but, in actual fact, it is so much more than that. Away from the traditional “link building” title, Digital PR dials right into the key SEO elements of improving reputation, building relevant links and showcasing expertise across a range of external websites. Alongside all of this, it helps to enhance important E-E-A-T signals too.
If you’re looking to find out more about Digital PR and how it can support your SEO campaigns and, moreover, why it should be a significant factor in doing so, then read below to find out our five key reasons why Digital PR should play an important role in your SEO campaigns:
1. Reputation
No, I’m not talking about the Taylor Swift album (although I did go to her tour), I’m talking about section 3.1 of Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, which talks to us about how important reputation is to a page’s quality rating – for reference you can find it here:
Reputation is important. Google and users want to know what your website’s reputation is and the reputation of the person who is responsible for creating the main content. So, where do they go to source this information? Yes, most likely they will start with your website, but chances are they will also go looking around the web to see if they can find out more information about you; that’s where Digital PR comes in. Demonstrating that your website has a good reputation, or giving information about the reputation of the person responsible for your content, is one of the main benefits of a strong Digital PR campaign.
Digital PR has the ability to really build out your reputation by growing your brand presence and expertise on external websites. A solid Digital PR campaign should use a range of techniques (newsjacking, thought leadership, data analysis) to build you a brand presence online. If done well, then it shouldn’t be hard for users or Google to find out about you and your reputation.
For many brands PR is seen as more of a personal branding exercise, but in the SEO space it’s about much more than that. Yes, it will help to build those high quality links into the website and, yes, it may lead to referral traffic if you get your product or services in front of the right audience, but more than that, it is your personality out there on the web. In short, it’s the way that you present yourself in front of an external audience.
2. Because It IS Important
Having an online PR presence is a great way to drive your brand in a market that is powered by journalists sourcing data online, and by the rise of social media. Heard of HARO? #prrequest and #journorequest? These are all ways that journalists look online for PRs and brands to help them out with their stories. Having a strong Digital PR function allows you to push your brand to these journalists at the exact time they are looking for information, therefore putting you at the front and centre of the conversation.
According to Cision’s State Of The Market report press releases are still a trusted source of information for around 54% of journalists in the UK. This means that if you are sending them something that is in the public interest there’s a good chance you’ll get it in front of the right audience. In fact, 73% of journalists go online to find press releases, so being able to connect with journalists who are looking for information that you or your client might possess is a very valuable skill.
It’s not just journalists who value Digital PR either. Even in the realms of SEO it is a highly regarded approach that helps to build on the key elements of a successful SEO campaign; namely expertise, authority and trust. Within Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines these three elements are highlighted within the report numerous times, and an effective Digital PR strategy will naturally weave these throughout.
Also, who could forget what John Mueller said about Digital PR? I feel like I’ve seen this quote so many times now, but it really does reinforce the way that Digital PR is viewed across the SEO spectrum, and the power it can wield in terms of driving solid results for a brand:
Digital PR has worked hard to distance itself from spammy link building tactics, as this method requires you to have a genuine piece of expertise-rich content or an article that is in the public interest (which is essential for it to be covered in the first place). That’s one of the main reasons it works so well for SEO; by its very nature it has to have that level of expertise, relevancy and trust, all of which are key signals for a solid SEO campaign.
3. Referrals
Great Digital PR isn’t just about building high quality links or getting your super relevant expertise covered. It’s about being able to put your product or service in front of the right audience, in order to drive referral traffic and/or leads or sales through to your website. Referrals help to build momentum, drive more traffic through your content and product pages, and help more people to find out about your brand. In turn, this can lead to an increase in positive signals to your website as well as a lot more people talking about your brand and, of course, the ultimate goal: sales!
Digital PR is a really effective way to drive referral traffic to your website, in fact, every type of Digital PR campaign can drive referral traffic if it’s angled in the right way. Product placements are perhaps one of the best examples of where you can drive traffic. Product placements mean getting your products put in front of your target audience to drive referral sales.
We’ve had a lot of success placing some of our client’s most important products in front of their key target audience, such as this coverage in the Independent:
Product placements are an excellent way to get in front of your audience. They also drive high quality links back to your website, thus building valuable E-E-A-T signals. Which, as we know, can help towards improving your website’s SEO performance.
Referrals don’t just come from product placements. You can also drive leads by creating really relevant case studies and data-led pieces, which include a clear call to action at the end that encourages users to visit the website or get in touch if they need more information.
Referral traffic is a great way to supplement your sales and leads too. If you can generate both of these from sources outside of direct SEO, for example through Digital PR, then it gives the campaign a really well-rounded approach. As an added bonus, it can drive extra sales and leads for your client or business too, making it highly valuable as a branding exercise, and for the bottom line.
4. Boosting E-E-A-T Signals
Perhaps one of the most important reasons for having Digital PR in your campaigns is boosting essential E-E-A-T signals. These are a major player when it comes to Google’s ranking factors, and your off-site signals can play a key role in helping Google to understand more about your website. In addition, they help to build trust and credibility among your audience, encouraging conversions and customer retention.
E-E-A-T is perhaps one of the most used acronyms in the digital marketing space. A simple Google search of it will produce the following results…
… indicating how much people in the digital space are talking about E-E-A-T – and this is just a snapshot of the discussions that are happening. Since the Google Medic Update everyone has been busy trying to improve their overall Expertise, Authority and Trust signals and Digital PR has been one of the most effective ways to do that.
So how does Digital PR boost E-E-A-T signals? By definition, whatever approach you are taking, whether it’s newsjacking, data analysis or thought leadership you’re going to be showcasing the expertise and relevance of your brand.
Thought leadership: showcasing and utilising your expertise to give valuable information to an audience.
Newsjacking: adding your expert opinion and commentary to a trending topic which also allows you to showcase your expertise.
Data: showcasing your expertise (or your brand data) to demonstrate an outcome, or alternately adding an expert comment to your data findings.
Each of these approaches is demonstrating your expertise and knowledge on a relevant topic on external websites, thus enhancing your E-E-A-T.
High quality links are a good ranking factor for Google but it’s not enough for these links to be good quality, they also need to be relevant. Topical, relevant links from a high domain ranking website (think national publications, regional dailies and publications that are super relevant to your niche) are a great way to help build those key E-E-A-T signals, while also strengthening your website’s link profile.
In addition to building topical links into your website you can also strengthen the E-E-A-T of certain sections of your website by building targeted links into key service and product pages. This can be achieved through a more targeted Digital PR campaign which, in turn, can help to build topical authority across these areas. You’ll also be embedding the authority and trust, and boosting external ranking signals to key areas of your website.
5. To Create Topical Authority
When used correctly, relevant Digital PR has the ability to boost and create topical and semantic authority, which we know is crucial to building a well-structured SEO campaign. Many SEO practitioners work hard to build on-site topical clusters, pillars or semantic posts (depending on what you call it), but they forget to supplement this with strong off-site linking around a specific topic. In doing so you can really showcase your expertise and authority around a particular vertical or topic area, and back up your valuable on-site content pillaring with solid off-site Digital PR links. All of which will give a strong boost to your business reputation in that vertical.
Digital PR campaigns can be structured to drive topical authority by organising the campaign to target specific subsections of the website or specific themes. Thought leadership, data-led analysis and newsjacking techniques can all be adapted to work with certain sectors of the market, and to target relevant audiences and publications on topics that marry closely to your website content. This is a great way to give an extra little boost to an already solid on-site topic cluster and it can help to bolster general external trust signals in the process.
There’s a lot of discussion in the SEO industry around the importance of link relevance and the role that it plays within topical authority. In this article, Paddy Moogan discusses the concept of link relevance vs content relevance for link building. He concludes that the relevance of the content is more important than where you get your link from. This backs up our key message of how link building can further improve your topical authority, and how you can use Digital PR to supplement this.
Whether you’re looking to build reputation, increase referrals, enhance key E-E-A-T signals or to improve topical authority, Digital PR plays an important role in building out and supporting your SEO campaigns. To find out more about how we can help you with this view our SEO and Digital PR pages here.
If you’ve landed on this blog, or on the website, then chances are you are looking at your options for online marketing and, more specifically, SEO. As one of the most hotly debated forms of digital marketing, SEO often gets a bad rap. The lack of regulation in the industry doesn’t help but, when done correctly, SEO can be an incredibly powerful tool to grow your audience, sales and leads. In this article we’re going to look at how effective SEO can really help to grow and develop your business offering.
What Is Search Engine Optimisation?
Before we get started on why it’s important, let’s look at what SEO actually is. In general, SEO is defined as optimising your website with the aim of improving the overall quantity and quality of the traffic. There are a number of different ways that you can do this and, with Google having over 400 ranking factors, different SEOs approach it in different ways. For the most part, the main elements include improving your key expertise, authority and trust signals, answering user intent and purpose, and building a strong reputation.
Why Is SEO Important For My Business?
Often when we meet clients for the first time they aren’t sure which marketing mix is right for their business. They look to us primarily for advice and honesty as not one size fits all. When considering which type of marketing strategy to utilise, a lot of people look straight to PPC for instant returns, overlooking the long-term benefits a solid SEO strategy can provide. That said, if you’re on the fence about whether or not to go with SEO, here are five reasons why SEO is so important to grow your business:
It targets all areas of the funnel
Unlike other marketing channels which tend to focus predominantly on one section of the funnel, the beauty of SEO is that it has the ability to target users at each stage of the funnel. So whether you are looking to be visible for a very specific high volume search term, or you are looking to increase your overall brand awareness by targeting a range of long-tail keywords, SEO has the ability to do all of this and more.
When we take into account a typical marketing funnel it looks something like this. As we can see, at each stage of the funnel there is an opportunity to target users through an effective SEO strategy:
By targeting users in this way you are also helping to ensure that your brand is visible at all target touchpoints. In fact, according to Hubspot it takes around eight touchpoints before you make a sale. So, reaching users at every stage of the funnel will help to get this number up a lot quicker. SEO isn’t always an easy sale because it’s harder to measure the direct ROAS (return on ad spend). However, by putting yourself in front of your audience at each touchpoint you are giving yourself the best possible chance to attract them at the exact time they are searching for your product or service.
2. It’s the gift that keeps on giving
SEO isn’t a one stop shop, and while many people refer to PPC as a tap that you can switch on and off, the beauty of SEO is that it really is the gift that keeps on giving. Once you have a campaign that is working effectively it creates a long-term sustainable method of marketing that will drive traffic to your website at all stages of the funnel.
Take for example one of our long-term clients that has been investing in SEO since 2015:
By creating a sustained and effective SEO strategy with continued investment (even during COVID) we’ve seen great growth across their marketing performance. It has continued to grow YOY and provided a consistent and sustained level of traffic (and leads), which has really underpinned the growth of this brand.
SEO also generates a buildable income. What I mean by that is you are building incremental leads and sales rather than paying for them on a monthly basis. For example, if you spend £10k per month on PPC for 12 months and each lead costs £1k, you’ll generate a consistent £1k per month unless you either spend more or make substantial efficiencies. By contrast, if you spend £10k per month on SEO and generate 10 leads but then you grow incrementally, the resulting traffic may result in 12 leads the next month and 14 leads the month after for the same monthly cost. So, again, you can scale without necessarily having to increase your overall investment.
3. It puts you in front of your audience when they are searching for you
Search is one of the most effective forms of marketing because it has the unique ability to put your website in front of an audience at the time they are actively searching for you. Imagine you’re a Digital PR agency and someone is searching for a “Digital PR Agency In Manchester.” As a Digital PR agency that’s exactly the type of user that you want to get in front of at the time they are searching. Therefore, appearing in the search results for that term, specifically in the top three positions, puts you front and centre:
SEO is very effective at targeting users with high intent. These users have indicated they are looking for a particular product or service as they are actively searching for it. Therefore, the type of customers you bring to your website through SEO tend to be a little more engaged and go on to convert. Essentially, investing in this channel can bring you users that have a good level of engagement and are likely already in the market for your brand/service.
SEO does work best for brands and services where there is already search volume. If you are a DTC brand selling a very specific product then there’s a high chance you’ll need to generate some awareness before you use SEO as a strategy. That said, it’s still a valuable long-tail proposition, which allows you to get in front of an audience that might be researching and wanting to find out more about your product.
4. Good SEO will naturally build trust and credibility – enhancing your CRO
By their very nature, SEO strategies, when done properly, will help you to build natural trust and credibility for your website. This doesn’t just enhance your external reputation, it can also help to build all important on-site trust signals which can help to naturally grow your conversion rate. The core principles of good SEO relate to E-A-T (expertise, authority and trust). This means looking at the website’s authority and trust as well as the expertise that it conveys. By enhancing each of these signals you will naturally boost the trust of your audience.
Matching user intent and purpose is another key SEO principle. By updating your content, to ensure you match user intent and purpose, you will naturally create better content that is more engaging. It will also give the user more of the information they need to make an informed decision. Implementing faqs and other additions which further boost the expertise of the content will add to this further. Thereby helping to establish a better overall user experience, and giving users an insight into your expertise at the same time.
Finally, one of the biggest elements of SEO is trust and reputation. By nature of building this through SEO campaigns you will enhance the trust signals your users get in the form of better reputation content and reviews. Research shows that users spend a lot of time researching reviews and reputation before choosing a brand to go with – especially with so many options now on the market. Enhancing these signals from an SEO perspective can add a lot of value to your overall user experience and conversion rate.
5. It will be around for a while
Although technology is constantly evolving, SEO, in the main part, is here to stay. People will always search online, and though the search engine they use might change and the way that they search might change (cue the rise of voice search), the basic concept of looking for something online and placing your business in front of the user at this time is here to stay.
PPC, paid social and other advertising platforms are constantly evolving with new products, updates and changes to advertising structure. Although these other methods have been somewhat consistent over the last decade, SEO has remained virtually unchanged. With the exception of some small additions to the search results and some additional ads at the top lowering the organic visibility levels, the way SEO operates remains the same, and will likely continue to do so.
SEO is a long term investment, but with the stability of the search results you know that your investment is unlikely to change or go away. When you’re investing in SEO you are looking for a long term benefit and return, and once you get there it will most definitely be worth it.
Finally – How Do I Measure SEO?
Measurement in SEO is key. A lot of people give up on SEO or don’t consider it because they don’t see an immediate return. Good SEO takes time, but being able to measure it incrementally plays an important role in proving why it’s a solid investment.
According to HubSpots State Of Marketing Report 2021 around 50% of marketers said keyword rankings and organic traffic are the top ways they measure the success of their SEO strategies. However, this is missing a key ingredient: leads. You can bring all the traffic in the world to a website, but if it doesn’t convert then the value is zero. SEO isn’t just about traffic and keywords, it’s about making real world ROI, which is where the value in an effective SEO campaign really kicks in.
To measure SEO effectively you need to take into account business goals first; what is the business trying to achieve, what generates revenue and what goals do they need to hit? Once you’ve established this, you can turn it into online goals and targets where you can set incremental improvements. These could start with raising overall visibility, acquiring a certain number of high quality, relevant links or simply completing certain pieces of work. By measuring incrementally you are able to effectively measure impact vs return – something that’s important for any marketing strategy.
Before you start work on your SEO campaign, have a clear measurement strategy in place with your agency. This will help to ensure that you’re aligned on what you are trying to achieve and that you have assigned clear values on how you can prove SEO ROI.
Still unsure about whether SEO is right for your business? Get in touch with our team today to find out more about how it could work for you!
Shopping Basket
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
