So, you’ve landed your first role specialising in search engine optimisation (SEO), or you want to further develop your business’ digital marketing efforts by targeting organic search, and have spent some time learning the basics of SEO. Once you’ve formalised your grip on the basics, it’s important to understand how to get ahead and keep up with this ever-changing but exciting marketing channel.
To help with that journey, we’ve compiled our top pieces of advice on getting the most out of your strategies and how you can keep up with this ever-evolving sector.
These tips are based on my own experience as an SEO professional and the things I found most useful when entering the industry as a beginner.
1. Optimise content for the user first
One of the most important things to consider when making content optimisations or reviewing a site is the overall usability and user experience.
Google is constantly evolving and adapting to make search engine result pages (SERPs) the best possible by including quality content that real-life users actually want to view. For example, Google recently announced the Helpful Content Update which will target sites that have content ‘made for search engines.’ It is thought that sites with poor quality content or overly optimised copy will be penalised and could lose their rankings in the SERPs. This highlights the importance of creating readable content designed for a user rather than creating copy to try and ‘trick’ a search engine into ranking your site highly.
Old-school tactics (or, simply, bad SEO!) were more focused on trying to ‘trick’ search engines into ranking their landing pages higher. Tactics, such as keyword stuffing, and having thin content creates a poor user experience and it is, as you can imagine, not something that search engines are fond of either. It is of course important to include the keywords that you want to rank for, however, these should only be used in a natural way where it makes sense within the context.
2. Create Quality Content
Essentially, to create quality content, you have to know what the user is searching for and which information they will value most. This means relevant and factually correct content that isn’t a carbon copy of another website or one that is noticeably optimised for search engines. This type of SEO focuses on the concept of expertise, authority and trust, or E-A-T. You can help users to trust your sites by displaying your expertise in your industry, and providing accurate and original information that answers a searcher’s query fully.
A great piece of written content will answer the user-query and beyond; not only will this prevent the user from clicking off the page to find any additional information, but if they find all of the information they need they may click on your site first in the future.
3. Build relevant links
Link building is an important factor in increasing your site’s authority and improving your domain ratings. The more relevant the links are to your site, the better signals it sends to search engines.
Backlinks, or links pointing from an external website to your site, can send great signals to a search engine depending on the quantity of quality links from relevant external sources. Relevancy is very important here. When an external source links to your site, the source should be a publication or brand that aligns well with your industry or speciality and is of a similar nature. Not only will this send quality customers or leads to your website, but these relevant links showcase what your site is about and help to display your expertise within a certain sector.
Would you rather have 1,000 poor quality, irrelevant sites linking to your pages or 10 relevant sites with a high domain rating?
10 relevant sites with a high domain rating linking to your website would be a strong indicator to Google, or any search engine, that you could be considered an industry leader and that your expertise is valued. Combined with a strong SEO strategy, this puts you in a good position to rank higher, receive more quality traffic and achieve more conversions or goals.
This also goes for internal linking on your website. When linking internally, only provide links to relevant pages. For example, if a page on a Veterinary website focuses on dog breeds, they could include internal links to another page on their site about the diets of certain dog breeds.
4. Keep up to date with the latest SEO news
One of the best pieces of advice I was given when I started in the industry was to set up a dedicated Twitter account and follow a variety of thought leaders within the SEO-world. From the likes of SEO-expert Dr. Marie Haynes to Google’s Danny Sullivan, the digital marketing communities on Twitter can be an insightful and easy way of keeping up to date with the latest tactics or changes, including Google algorithm updates.
As well as Twitter, there are heaps of informative podcasts and subscription newsletters with discussions on the future of digital marketing and analysing best practices. There are also amazing learning resources on YouTube, including video series from Google Search Central, which help to gain a wider understanding of what search engines are looking for when it comes to organic search.
By consistently updating yourself on the newest tactics or the latest news, you’re developing a well-rounded knowledge base of SEO and its workings. This puts you in a great position to discuss changes with clients if you work for an agency or to explain strategy decisions to board members.
5. Always measure your results
Without measuring your results, it can be difficult to know which of your optimisations are succeeding and which ones just aren’t working (it happens and that’s okay). Identifying any drops in performance after a recent optimisation can signal that a search engine bot has reassessed the page or site and believes that the page is no longer valuable for a specific query. If you’re able to monitor and identify these issues early, you have a better chance of trialling a different approach to regain rankings or lost traffic.
I would recommend tracking your targeted keywords in a dedicated tool such as AHRefs, SEMrush or SEO monitor to identify any increases or declines over time. This can also help you to identify any potential ranking fluctuations that could be due to a Google algorithm update. If you then spot any patterns or losses in the position of your keywords, you can likely locate the cause and take action.
6. Keep Learning
Outside of best practices when doing actual optimisations and audits, it’s important to be aware of the wider SEO world to best understand it. This marketing channel is constantly evolving with new algorithm updates and changes happening all the time. It’s therefore crucial that you stay ahead, or alongside, the curve to really make the most of your optimisation efforts. The above tips are definitely a great way to monitor this!
In August, Google updated its Page Quality Rater Guidelines. This is something it does from time to time to reinforce the key principles it looks for when evaluating the quality of a page. In SEO circles, these Quality Rater Guidelines are somewhat of a bible. Although most SEOs won’t have read them from start to finish (there’s over 300 pages!) many will take excerpts from them as a way of trying to understand what Google is looking for. They can then use this information to determine how they should present their websites to make them more ‘SEO-friendly’.
In recent years, a number of key concepts have come out of the Quality Rater Guidelines, with perhaps the most significant one being the concept of E-A-T or Expertise, Authority and Trust. While the principle of this has been around for years, it’s only in the last few that SEOs have started to look towards it as a way of ‘optimising’ a website and putting it as a key focus for their SEO campaigns. The little known sibling of E-A-T is the acronym Y-M-Y-L, otherwise known as Your Money or Your Life. There is far less conversation about YMYL but, in many cases, it is significantly, if not more, important than the concept of E-A-T. In this blog we are going to look at what YMYL is and how you can apply the principles to your website to benefit your SEO.
What Is Your Money Your Life?
Let’s start with a simple definition and understanding of what YMYL is and how it applies to websites. The concept of Your Money or Your Life was defined by Google to highlight websites which fall into a specific category; that is, websites which impact either your money or your life. As these websites and the topics within them could have a substantial impact on a person, their pages, and the website as a whole, are held to a much higher standard within the Quality Rater Guidelines. If there is an issue with any of the content on a YMYL website, it can have a significant and detrimental impact on an individual.
With the recent update to the guidelines Google has aimed to simplify what it designates as a YMYL website. They have supplied the following guidance and examples, and whilst there are no hard and fast rules, this information helps to demonstrate what might fall into the YMYL category and what might not:
As you can see from the guidance, YMYL really refers to websites which give information that could impact an individual’s money or life. Therefore, if your website or one of your clients’ websites fall into this category, then you need to get to grips with the Quality Rater Guidelines and start understanding what YMYL is really all about.
So How Do I Optimise For YMYL?
Optimising your website for YMYL focuses around creating great quality, trustworthy content. This content should show Google that your website is a trustworthy place for users to come for information, and to convert and potentially engage in your services or buy your product. There are a number of factors that come into play when it comes to optimising for this, and we will go through them in the guide, but one of the best places to start is to look frankly at your website and ask these questions:
Does my website answer or fulfil the user’s purpose?
Do I have well-written authoritative content on my website?
Is it clear who has written my content and what their expertise is?
You can conceptualise these questions into three key areas:
By taking the above approach we can see three key consistent themes across YMYL:
Have we matched User Intent? Are we giving clear information and expertise early on in the piece, and are we also giving reassurance of expertise throughout the content
Does the website have a clearly defined purpose? Can users reach what they need to and is the content up to date?
Who has created the content and what are their credentials? What is their reputation and the reputation of the website as a whole?
With these concepts and ideas in mind you can set about creating a practical SEO strategy with these key themes at the forefront.
Google backs up this approach in section 3.1 of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. This outlines the most important information that Page Quality Raters should be looking for in this category:
On-Page SEO For YMYL
On-page SEO is a great place to start on your path to YMYL greatness and is also one of the most important areas when it comes to sending the right signals to Google. It is a key area where Google will be looking for you to showcase your expertise and trust, as on-site content is likely where users will start to get an understanding of your brand. Effective on-page SEO is a mix of content with a solid structure that has been created with the user in mind. It is not written for search engines. So, it’s important to remember throughout your on-page optimisation that you are writing to gain the trust of the user and, as a result of this, Google will look to trust your website too.
Matching User Intent
Matching user intent and purpose is a key element of the YMYL concept. While this is also a part of E-A-T, its role in showcasing a website’s trust and being able to answer the users’ questions confidently is very important here. Definitions and FAQs, alongside a clear and concise demonstration of your expertise, will go a long way to matching user intent. To bolster this you should create a website which is easy to navigate and makes it clear how users can contact you should they need more information.
When creating your key pages, such as product or category landing pages, always keep user intent in mind. This can guide how you lay out your content and in which order. It’s worth remembering that users don’t always scroll to the bottom of your page and so Google might not either. Therefore, ensure that you are matching as much user intent and relevancy as you can at the top of the page, to maximise the benefit.
We’ve recently done a project with one of our legal clients on matching user intent. As a client that sits firmly within the YMYL category we know it is important that they demonstrate to Google that their site is a trusted source able to answer user queries. In this case, it was something as simple as identifying that high performing competitors had a clear definition at the start of their content and were, therefore, directly answering the user’s query. We were then able to optimise our content accordingly.
Authoring Your Content
A key concept of YMYL has always been about who has authored your content. In the most recent update, Google has gone even further to highlight how important the concept of authorship is and, additionally, the reputation of the author. This is a clear signal to show how trustworthy a piece of content or a page is
Authoring content became popular in the SEO community after the Medic update, where we saw a good uplift for content which was well authored by experts. Google now stipulates clearly within the Quality Rater Guidelines that it wants to understand not only who the expert is that has written the content, but also their credentials. Google wants to know what makes this person an expert in the field and do they have the level of trust and expertise to be giving out this information?
It’s not enough to just add a ‘Written By’ with the name and photo of your expert, you now need to qualify this expert. This could be with a short snippet or excerpt of information on the page, or a link through to an expert profile with further details and information. This expert profile could include qualifications, industry accreditations or the number of years’ experience. To further qualify this, external links pointing out to trusted websites, such as accreditation boards or websites where they have contributed expert opinion, allows Google to see from trusted third party sources that the person in question is an expert in the field.
By taking the time to build out author profiles, you’re not only showcasing to Google the level of expertise that your business has, you’re also showing it to your potential audience. This can be a significant benefit from a CRO perspective, in addition to boosting your YMYL signals.
Refreshing Your Content Regularly
Up-to-date content and statistics are a great way to showcase your expertise. If you have content on your website which is out of date, even by just a few years, this can cause issues from a YMYL perspective. Worse still is content that contains information that is now incorrect because it is so out of date.
It’s not practical to be consistently updating your content, especially if you have quite a large website. Refreshing key elements of it, including statistics, expert information, relevancy and commentary will go a long way to ensuring that the information on your website is fresh and correct. Auditing your content regularly to ensure that the data is up to date and adding in new external links to data sources (as they become relevant) is a great way to prevent your content from becoming outdated. Additionally, identifying your top 5-10 traffic pages & putting in place a plan to optimise these regularly is well worth it. If they are driving traffic they likely have rankings that you want to maintain. So, prioritising the update and refresh of content on these pages will go a long way to keeping you where you need to be.
Including External Links
Many people are reluctant to include external links across their website as they feel it sends their valuable ‘link equity’ to another website. While links do pass equity the amount is often nominal, and is far offset by the value of having your website point to other reputable websites and information sources. Linking out to external sources can help to back up your expertise and qualify a lot of what you are saying, as you are linking to sources that can verify the point you are making. As a result it can actually enhance the overall expertise and trust level of your website.
If you are externally linking to other websites, the only caveat is that you need to ensure that the content that you are linking out to is relevant, current and that it doesn’t end up as a broken link. A simple crawl which checks your external links is a great way to keep on top of this.
Digital PR For YMYL
Enhancing YMYL signals on the website doesn’t just stop at traditional on-site SEO and content. To give a proper level of authority and trust this should be extolled throughout the whole website and also the inbound link profile. Strong Digital PR should play an important role in amplifying these signals & helping to drive expertise-driven links into your website, while improving your overall website authority.
Although in many instances Digital PR is about driving high quality links, there are cases where agencies will build links for links sake and this doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t benefit the reader as what they are reading about may be unrelated to your website and so there is low user intent. It also doesn’t benefit you, as the links that you are drawing to the website don’t have that all-important element of relevancy.
Digital PR for YMYL websites should look to really drive relevancy and expertise where it can. That means choosing topics which are closely linked to your website’s purpose, product or service. Then ensuring that any coverage or Digital PR, that you are putting out to garner links back to the website, are related to this.
In addition, you should be utilising your Digital PR where you can to extoll the virtues of your expertise. This can be done in a number of ways from thought leadership through to product-led campaigns. Whatever you choose, this strategy can be a very effective way to continue building those all-important off-site trust signals which Google really values.
If you’re looking for inspiration for Digital PR that fits well with YMYL, you’ll find some examples of recent expertise-led coverage that we’ve landed for our clients. These links are great value; not only because they are from trustworthy websites, but also because they showcase our client’s expertise on an external source, thus delivering great overall value to their campaigns.
Check out some of our most recent Thought Leadership campaigns for our client Hayes Garden World here:
Although technical SEO isn’t always seen as effective as on-site content or Digital PR for sending good YMYL signals to Google, it still has a role to play. Good technical SEO means Google can effectively and efficiently crawl your site, and clearly and easily recognise the trust signals. This ensures the reputation of your website remains strong.
Optimising your website technically for YMYL follows a lot of the traditional technical SEO elements, but with an emphasis on ensuring that what Google is seeing on your website reflects a good reputation and authority.
Schema Mark-Up
Schema Mark-Up is a really nice way to tell Google about factors which enhance your reputation, such as on-site FAQs or reviews. This can be a really nice way to help Google easily and concisely interpret your reputation information.
There is a wide range of Schema Mark-Up options that you can use to help Google understand your trust signals, from product and organisation information to reviews and FAQ mark-up. While each of these is valuable, we would recommend undertaking a schema audit to really understand what information you have available and how you can effectively mark-up.
Not sure where to start? If you’re new to Schema Mark-up and haven’t done it before, we’ve included below a couple of ideas to get you started:
FAQ Schema – This is a great way to showcase your expertise which is a key element of YMYL. Whether it’s product or information pages, FAQs are a great way to show that you are matching and answering user intent. Mark these up with some delicious FAQ Schema and show Google that your website knows what its talking about!
Review Schema – Product reviews? Business reviews? Trusted external third party reviews? Whatever you have you should be telling Google about it! External reviews are a really great way to validate the expertise and trust in your business so why not shout about them? If you display reviews on your website you can utilise Review Schema to mark these up and let Google know all about it.
If you’re not sure how to check the schema that is already in place on the website, or you want to audit it, then a great place to start is with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. By using the tool you can evaluate your existing Schema implementation, check that it’s all correctly implemented and identify areas where further schema can be placed.
Log File Analysis
Log File Analysis plays a key role in ensuring that your website is YMYL friendly. While traditional crawlers will help you to gather trends around how Google crawls your website, log file analysis will allow you to see how Google is actually crawling your website. This helps you to identify any issues or pain points which might not have been picked up by your regular crawler.
Log Analysis allows you to conduct a deep dive into the way that the Googlebot and other crawlers are moving through your website. This means you are able to analyse which pages are being most heavily crawled and, therefore, which pages Google is potentially looking towards to gain trust signals. It also points you towards any crawl errors, such as broken pages or redirects, which could be impacting crawl efficiency and wasting crawl budget. Crawl errors will send poor quality signals to Google which is, of course, something we are keen to avoid.
We often find during a log analysis that crawl budget is being wasted and if crawl budget spends too much time on pages which don’t add value to your website then it’s likely that Google starts to view your website as this as a whole, so it’s critical that every signal you send Google is a good one and analysing log analysis to see what signals you might be sending is a good place to start.
An effective Log Analysis should allow you to review the crawl across your website and make updates, so that you are left feeling confident about how the reputation of your website is shown to Google. You can even do it with as few as seven days log files. Get asking your server host for those log files and do some digging into that data to analyse how effectively Google is crawling your website!
Summary
YMYL is a key consideration for a lot of websites. Yet there are still people within SEO who focus on the pillars of Technical, Content & Links. They are potentially missing out on clearly defining the underlying principles within their strategy and understanding what Google is really looking for from a trust perspective.
Hopefully you have found the above useful. If you’d like to find out more about how you can utilise YMYL for SEO, or if you website falls into this category and you’d like some help optimising it for SEO, then get in touch!
Having worked in the medical negligence industry where CPCs can be as high as £40 or £50, I’m very familiar with how valuable utilising competition graphs to find those lower volume cheaper – but equally as effective – CPCs can be. When we’re talking CPCs as high as the ones I’ve just mentioned it’s easy to burn through budget, even with a great Conversion Rate, so finding those gems within the lower volumes becomes even more critical, especially when it comes to building out campaigns or trying to find more areas to cover.
It’s not just PPC where competition graphs can be a valuable addition & today I want to look at how we can utilise these very popular Excel graphs within SEO strategy, to understand where the opportunities lie to drive growth/visibility across both SEO & Digital PR.
Fortunately, there are a number of different ways that you can work with Excel & data from some of our favourite digital marketing tools to really understand what’s available in the market & where the opportunities might lie.
Let’s take an example…
A few months back I was drafted in to pull together a proposal for a promotional products company. This company specialised in a wide range of different promotional products, & one of the tasks I undertook as part of the proposal process was to identify key areas of opportunity so we could see where the value lay for our clients. This would form the foundation of not only our SEO strategy but also guide our Digital PR strategy when it came to link acquisition & where we wanted to focus our efforts.
I reference the Excel spreadsheet below – pulled together with data just from AHRefs & plotted on a three axis graph, by overlaying CPC data with Search Volume & Difficulty.
Now this graph can be utilised for both SEO & PPC – for SEO it’s even more useful as you can use AHRefs “competition metric,” which for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, judges how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword given the number of higher Domain Rank websites that currently rank above that term. Essentially, it gives an overview of the volumes of specific keywords mapped against keyword difficulty to give you an idea of how achievable it might be to rank for that given keyword.
From the data above we can quite clearly see a number of significant trends. Initially, we can see that the market place has high search volume for branded pens, but also that this has super high competition & trying to rank on this term might be quite difficult. By contrast, if we look at other branded products such as lanyards, umbrellas or notebooks we can see a similar search volume level but a much lower level of keyword difficulty – an area of opportunity.
From utilising a simple graph above (and there’s many more products that we can populate in there) we are able to draw deductions around how to create an effective SEO/Digital PR strategy to maximise opportunity for the client, while still keeping in mind commercial intent & ensuring we are also applying adequate focus to commercially important terms.
Now we’ve seen this work for branded promotional products, how does it work for higher CPC terms like “medical negligence?”
In this example we can see a far more pronounced difference for the high volume terms – but again we have some great areas of opportunity. We can see from this data that the popular “medical compensation” term is, in fact, low search volume for very high competition, compared to something we perhaps wouldn’t target, such as “medical negligence nhs” or even “medical negligence lawyer” which despite still having reasonable keyword difficulty has a much more established search volume (or reward!) to match.
All in all the graphs above are very simple to produce & incredibly easy to pull together utilising the following steps:
Login to your AHREfs account
Navigate to the “Keywords Explorer” tab & input your list of targeted keywords
Download the Spreadsheet
Remove all columns except “Keyword” “KD” & “Search Volume” & pull these into Excel using a multi-touchpoint graph
And there you go… a quick & easy way to pull together an effective graph which allows you to easily identify areas of opportunity, quick wins or perhaps more long-term gains for your clients which ties in with real-word metrics (search volume) to see achievable gains.
Content Executive, Emma Stretton, explains why you need more than just keywords if you want to rank.
SEO is not just keywords
There was a time when you could come up with 57 synonyms for ‘washing machine’ and have your appliance business fly up the SERPs. That was back when search engines were rudimentary at best but, as with everything, when we know better, we do better; and keyword stuffing is just another sorry search engine tale millennials laugh about.
Nowadays, it isn’t enough to shoehorn single keywords into on-page content or write a blog filled with spam links. Not only does Google update their algorithms regularly to weed out such behaviour, but the way we use the internet has changed too.
Organic search and our behaviour
Data from SEO website AHRefs, shows that of the 1.9 billion keywords in the AHrefs database, 92% of them get ten searches per month or less. Which basically means that people aren’t simply searching for the most obvious phrases anymore, they’re talking to search engines like a friend and asking them for very fine tuned, specific information. Think about it, in 2006 when the internet was burgeoning, it was enough that we could look for, and find, ‘shoes’ just by typing into a search bar. Now, with mobile technology, GPRS and a tech savvy generation, we think nothing of asking for ‘size 4 black western boots’ (or whichever shoe style takes your fancy). We can even use voice search to essentially have a conversation with our search engines, and can narrow down our dinner choices as close to home as we want.
Google Updates
Nowadays, it’s more important than ever to make sure the content you provide gives real value to the people looking for it. In 2013, Google ran the ‘Hummingbird update’ which is known as the semantic update. It figured out that when someone searches for something, there could be various meanings behind that search. So, to go back to our earlier example of the shoes, someone searching for ‘black western boots’ could just as well want to know about the history of them as much as wanting to buy a pair. The Hummingbird update allowed for this nuance and started crawling websites not just for the most obvious keywords but for the content that could be closest to what the searcher wanted. Yeah, it blows our minds a bit too.
Several more updates, improved technology and conversational search have now made Google’s processes even tighter. There are roughly 40,000 search queries per second; that’s a lot of people wanting to know a lot of things, and search engines want to return the best results. If you’re creating content for your website, it needs to signal expertise, authority and trust; which means writing for humans and human behaviour, not what you think Google wants to hear.
Think content, not crawling
People want to take in information that genuinely helps them and that they can believe in. They want to be engaged and informed, and not bored. No one wants 15 versions of the same word shouted at them and in a world that thrives on a faster pace, you’ve got to get to the point. We can’t teach you how to write the perfect copy (although we could do it for you), but here’s a few hints and tips we try to live by:
Remember that content ranks – don’t get caught up in keyword hype. That’s why we wrote this article, to remind you that Google wants quality not quantity.
Get to the point – Readers tend to skim read content if it’s overfacing. Say what you need to say in as few words as possible. Then reread it and take out some more.
Think about your E-A-T – Expertise, authority and trust are huge factors for ranking. Make sure your content hits these cornerstones. Basically, don’t just spout a load of nonsense for the sake of making content, because search engines will know.
Do your research – make sure what you’re actually saying is factually correct, and that the keywords you do use are relevant.
Do you enjoy reading it? When we’ve finished a piece we go back over it and see if we actually enjoyed reading it. Even the less exciting topics, when well written, should hold your attention.
Often, marketers get bogged down with how to ‘write for search engines’, when really, it’s quite simple; content that serves the user well, serves search engines well. Ultimately, search engines want to give their users the best experience when they use their platform, so if they type in “history of black western boots” and land on your well-researched guide to black western boots, featuring a detailed timeline, pictures, sources and even quotes from cowboys through out history trailblazing the benefits of boots, then the reader has everything they need. And a happy reader = a happy Google. So, focus on content that offers value and Google will do the rest.
Many are based solely online meaning that getting traffic to the website is the only way to make sales. And with lockdown further fueling an eCommerce revolution, it’s more important than ever to rank well on Google to steer customers towards your website.
In the SEO world, it’s undisputed that building high-quality links to your site is a proven way to improve your website’s position in the search engine results (read more on this here). It’s also widely accepted that the best way to earn links is through online PR, more commonly referred to as Digital PR.
So how are fast fashion retailers earning high-quality links? We investigated four online-only brands to get the lowdown.
The four brands investigated are:
In The Style
Missguided
Boohoo
Sosander
Product placement is key
Fast fashion brands have one huge benefit when it comes to link building – the product. Ecommerce stores have the opportunity to offer product reviews and feature in gift guides, both of which are published frequently in online newspapers, magazines and blogs alike.
What are the benefits of link building through product placements?
The benefits of landing product placements are threefold:
They get your product and brand seen by a focused audience which can lead to sales.
They usually only cost the amount of product being gifted to the publication.
A link is guaranteed. Journalists know that readers want to click through the article to buy the product they’ve just been sold.
*Link Building Tip: When pushing out products to journalists, be sure to send them everything they need in your initial email. This includes correct pricing, timescales on deals, and hi-res images in a Dropbox link.
Gift guides
Gift guides are a fast fashion retailer’s bread and butter. They are easy for brands to capitalise on and they’re predictable. Retailers should have gift guides prepared for all annual buying holidays – Christmas, Father’s Day, festival season, you name it.
*Link Building Tip: Create a PR calendar for the year to make sure you’re capitalising on key retail dates.
As fast fashion retailers can quickly turn around new products in light of seasonal events, it makes it even easier for them to provide relevant products to journalists. We saw this trend in many fast fashion retailers – for example, In The Style who landed coverage in numerous seasonal gift guides for their Halloween pyjamas (Source).
Fast fashion brands can also quickly and easily create new ranges to target different audiences and use this as a way to generate links. For example, Boohoo launched a maternity range which opened up opportunities to gain links from completely new domains in a new industry – parenting publications (Source).
*Link Building Fact: Getting links from domains that you haven’t ranked on before is excellent for your website’s rankings. Your website will rank better if you have one link per website on a variety of websites, rather than lots of links from three select websites.
Tapping into popular culture
When it comes to link building, you need to know about popular culture trends as soon as they’re on the rise and use them to your advantage. Journalists will want to weigh in on them to create current and shareable content – so if you can provide them with a new angle on a trend, you’ve hit the jackpot.
Fast fashion retailers use this technique, and use it well.
One successful example was from Missguided. They saw memes about “jeans and a nice top” becoming the default answer when women ask each other what they’re wearing, and used this to create a new product page for the phenomenon (Source).
The brilliant thing about this link building stunt was the simplicity. All it needed was a category page built into the site, but made waves in the media as it put a new twist on a viral trend.
*Link Building Tip: Social media is a great place to find rising trends. Particularly keep an eye out for anything that you can tie your product into (think H&M and Joe Black’s Drag Race dress – if you know, you know).
TV, specifically Netflix, is also a very newsworthy topic that fast fashion retailers use to promote their products. For example, when the hit show Emily In Paris sparked discussion about her impressive wardrobe, In The Style were quick to promote clothes to replicate her looks (Source).
Deals for days
Outreaching deals, particularly around Black Friday, is a staple link building technique for fast fashion retailers.
Customers are hungry for deals, and journalists are keen to provide. Therefore it’s crucial to get your discounts seen and included in round-ups which will earn some great links. We have seen this mirrored across all fast fashion and eCommerce businesses (Source), and more so each year as the demand for amazing deals around Black Friday increases.
PR stunts
PR stunts are a high-risk, high-reward technique for gaining press coverage.
We know that fast fashion retailers can turn around a product quickly, and Boohoo used this to their advantage when creating miniature Christmas wreaths for your nipples. This stunt successfully coupled sex with a seasonal slant to create a product that earnt them a lot of links (Source).
The expression doesn’t lie – sex sells.
Celebrity promotions
Many media outlets have a team of journalists dedicated to reporting on celebrity news.
Fast fashion retailers capitalise on this demand for celebrity news in two ways:
1. Celebrity partnerships Launching a clothing line with a celebrity will not only lead to sales from fans, but earn lots of media attention about the launch – including those important links. In The Style introducing an edit with a Love Island star is a perfect example of this, and one which is very on-brand for their customers (Source).
2. Steal their style Retailers can capitalise on press coverage of celebrities’ fabulous outfits by offering suggestions to journalists of how to steal their style – whether that’s with the exact piece of clothing or a duplicate. Sosander has mastered this technique incredibly well, focusing on celebs who are aspirational to their demographic, such as Holly Willoughby, Amanda Holden and Kate Middleton (Source).
Karma-based link building
Gaining links as a result of promoting your company’s charitable work is called karma-based link building.
Fast fashion retailers don’t always have the best reputation when it comes to corporate responsibility. Therefore charity partnerships and products which fundraise will earn you some positive press whilst giving back. For example, Boohoo released a hoodie with all proceeds from the sale donated to Manchester Foundation Trust Charity’s NHS Staff Appeal (Source) which earned them some positive press and great links.
However fast fashion retailers must tread carefully. On the contrary, Boohoo was slammed for their “For the future campaign” (Source) which many argued contradicted their business model and got press coverage for all the wrong reasons.
Conclusions
From our investigation, it’s clear that fast fashion retailer’s link building strategies have a heavy product focus. This is no surprise given the threefold benefits listed earlier, as well as the fact that these brands can have new and topical products made up for PR purposes at the drop of a hat. Though not all companies have this at their disposal, there are still many techniques here that can inspire link building strategies for eCommerce clients of all natures.
Our Director, Amanda Walls, set up Cedarwood Digital after working in digital marketing for several years. Having created training courses for Google and training thousands of individuals through Facebook’s Digital Skills Program, she knows more about SEO than most people know about themselves. After travelling all over the world, Amanda tied her flag to Manchester’s mast and decided to start her own digital marketing company.
A different SEO agency
It’s the norm nowadays to have account managers who are assigned to individual clients. Common belief is that they tie things up neatly and ensure one point of contact. But what if the norm isn’t necessarily the best way?
At Cedarwood, we take a unique, hands-on approach. Every team member works with every client and gets to know them as a person, not an account number – becoming an extension of your in-house team. So, if your DPR needs a push, you speak to our PR expert, and if you’re interested in Google Ads, our PPC whizz is at the end of the phone (or video chat). No matter where you’re located, we’re here to help. Our clients are based all over the UK and we build personal, lasting relationships with every client. It’s what sets Cedarwood apart.
We’re based in Linley House, in the heart of Manchester
Where We Work
Our office is located well and truly in the heart of the city – just seconds from the Palace Theatre, and minutes from St Peter’s Square. We share a building with other SMEs which brings a strong sense of community and people bringing in their dogs is also an unexpected perk. Amanda chose Clockwise in Manchester because it’s the right mix of work and play, and gives us the space we need to be creative and focus on growing.
Manchester also plays host to several digital marketing award ceremonies. We’re proud to have been finalists in many of them, including The Northern Digital Awards. Obviously there’s friendly rivalry and we find a bit of competition is a great motivator, but it’s also great to be able to celebrate the achievements of the numerous digital marketing agencies in Manchester. There are over 200 in fact, and the city’s thriving business scene makes it a real hub for marketers. There’s always a networking event to attend or industry talk to learn from. It’s a bustling city known for its vibrant culture and we can’t forget the impressive number of choices for after-work drinks.
Our team comes from the North, the South and even Australia but we all agree that Manchester’s booming SEO sector offers the perfect place for us.
A kitchenette in the Clockwise office
The growth of e-commerce and the turn towards a much more digital world makes working in SEO and digital marketing challenging but exciting. We never want to rest on our laurels and being in the cut and thrust of a thriving city, in an industry that continues to grow, is more than worth the early morning tram ride and occasional rainy day.
Google loves content that helps its users find what they’re looking for. So, by creating blogs on topics that your target customer is interested in, you can drive traffic back to your website through search rankings.
Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website than those who don’t (Hub Spot). Plus, the more useful and valuable your content is, the more likely people are to share it within their own content or social media channels.
2. Highlight your expertise
Let’s be honest, it’s pretty easy for anyone with an internet connection to set up a website these days. So why should your target customer buy from you? Because you have a wealth of authoritative, well-written content on your blog that showcases your expertise (amongst other awesome trust signals).
Consumers rarely make a purchase instantly. 53% of consumers consume 3-5 pieces of media before making a purchase or speaking to someone from that company (EliseDopson). Customers want to shop with credible, authoritative businesses online that they know they can trust with their money – so don’t make it hard for them. Tell them why you’re the best. Or better, show them with great content.
3. To give your company a voice
As business guru, Seth Godin, once said “People do not buy goods & services. They buy relations, stories & magic.” And with consumer trust wavering, it’s more important than ever to get real with your customers.
Blogs are a great way to show the human element of your business and the thoughts, feelings and stories of the people behind your brand. Be authentic, honest and strip back the corporate jargon. Show your customers the people that their custom impacts.
4. Engage with your audience
Speak your customer’s language! Show them that your company is interested in the topics they’re interested in, you know their concerns, you understand them. All through great blog content.
Engagement isn’t just about social media. Open up the comments on your blog, ask readers direct questions or even publish customer reviews or opinion pieces to create conversation and a community with your customers.
5. Blogging has long-term results…
Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog (DemandMetric). Blogs are not just a one-off, they are a long-term strategy that continually provides value to your consumers.
6. … and can beat paid advertising
70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements (DemandMetric). Blogs are a trustworthy source of information for consumers that acts as free advertising for your company.
Oh, and one more thing…
Did we mention that its FREE?!
Many businesses don’t realise that they often have the skills, expertise and customer understanding to produce high-quality blogs in-house. All it takes is investing in a little bit of time. But if you want to speed up the process, then a marketing agency can give you direction on which are the best topics to write about, keywords to include and even produce the content for you in the tone of voice of your business.
If you have any questions regarding creating the perfect blog, then get in touch with us by emailing [email protected]
If you think voice search is just a gimmick, think again. According to the Comscore, half of all online searches will be made through voice in 2020.
So, with the use of voice search on the rise, now is the time to lay foundations for a strong voice search strategy.
What is Voice Search?
Voice Search is a tool that allows users to search through speech rather than by typing a query on a desktop or mobile device. As the trend for voice search increases, queries must adapt to reflect the style of language used for voice search.
How to Optimise for Voice Search
Voice Search is more conversational and natural than searches made by typing in one or two keywords. So, whilst a user might search for ‘best restaurant in Manchester’ using google on their desktop, they’re more likely to a ask this as a question – ‘which are the best restaurants in Manchester?’ when conducting a voice search. This means that voice search queries are longer than typical keyword search queries.
Target conversational search terms
To optimise for this change in search queries, businesses should target more long-tail keywords on their websites. When carrying out keyword research, it is important to consider more conversational search terms and to think about how people talk and ask questions. Think about the questions that customers ask when they call your business and make a note of the queries that you receive. If there are common queries then it would be useful to start targeting them on the website for your business by creating articles in the blog section with the long-tail keyword being the main focus.
Featured Snippets
It is common for a business to focus on ranking first in the search results, however, this can be very difficult to achieve in a competitive market. Aiming to answer long-tail keywords within your content will also help to obtain a Featured Snippet. Additionally, making small changes such as stating and answering a question consicely, including bullet points and tables will help to gain a feature snippet for a given search query. This can be more valuable than ranking first as this content will be above every other search result.
Create FAQ pages
Most businesses have FAQs pages on their website – which is great news. FAQs pages are a strong way to target conversational terms that are likely to be popular voice searches. And they’re really easy to set up. Try focusing on question words such as Where, How and What as to target relevant question-based searches. What do does the business do? What are the main opening hours? A sports clothing retailer might sell running trainers and these pages could have an FAQ section where common questions can be answered. But don’t just stick to questions directly related to your business – branch out to common queries. For example, Search terms such as ‘What are the best running trainers for wet weather’ can be targeted along with a list of recommendations.
The pursuit of featured snippets is well-practised across the SEO industry and has helped to shape onsite content development in recent years. This guide will run through the latest developments surrounding featured snippets, most notably touching on Google’s January algorithm update and whether pursuing a featured snippet is the best use of your (or your agencies) time. Here’s a quick snippet of what we’ll run through:
What is a Featured Snippet?
Benefits of a Featured Snippet in 2020?
How do I get a Featured Snippet?
How can I opt-out of a Featured Snippet?
What is a Featured Snippet?
A featured snippet is a Google search engine result that appears when Google deems a snippet of information to be helpful in response to a certain search query. Often referred to as ‘position 0’, A featured snippet provides the user with information at the top of the organic results, without the need to visit a website to satisfy their query. This information is pulled from web search listings and can appear in three different formats: Paragraph, List and Table snippets. SEJ (2017) reported that paragraph snippets are by far the most common type of snippet, with 81% of featured snippets pulling through as a paragraph snippet. See an example of a paragraph snippet below:
Benefits of a Featured Snippet in 2020?
The measurable benefits of a featured snippet have somewhat changed in recent months since Google’s update. Before January, it was possible for a website to rank organically in position #1, whilst additionally holding ownership of a featured snippet in position #0. This was, in some sense, the crème de la crème of organic search optimisation, as a single domain could dominate the SERPs for a given search term.
In January, Danny Sullivan announced that there will no longer be duplication of search results. If a web page listing appears as a featured snippet, then its organic position is relocated off the first page.
If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results. This declutters the results & helps users locate relevant information more easily. Featured snippets count as one of the ten web page listings we show.
As you may expect, this came as a huge surprise and was met with an extremely mixed response in the SEO industry. Although there is a variety of reported statistics on the benefits of a featured snippet, it’s generally accepted that having a featured snippet is beneficial for capturing search traffic. However, an alternative argument is that Google is transitioning to keeping people on the SERPs for longer. They can use snippets to answer voice searches on smart devices, as well as answer queries to questions without the user ever visiting the web page that’s providing the answer. Some may say that this relationship works in harmony, Google uses your snippet and you appear at the top of the SERPs. You both benefit, correct?
For many in the SEO industry, there is a fear that by having no organic presence on the first page, outside of the featured snippet, it would negate all of the hard work put in to achieve an organic #1 – such as years of link acquisition practices. Google’s take on the matter is that you would have an organic presence – it’s the featured snippet!
Irrelevant of the disagreements, it appears as though Google are steadfast in their transition so it’s now a waiting game to see how organic click-through may change over time. Many are now looking to opt-out of allowing their data to pull through as a featured snippet to favour the strategy of ranking organically as a standard web listing. We’ve detailed how to opt-out in our section below: How can I opt-out of a Featured Snippet?
How Do I Get A Featured Snippet?
The acquisition of a featured snippet can be a difficult process, as there are several factors that likely go into securing a snippet. However, we’ve outlined a few tips that we’ve picked up along the way:
One of the key factors is your current organic ranking. Although there is a range of different speculated assumptions as to where you need to be positioned, it’s fair to say you need to be on the first page of search results – #1-10 – in order to pull through as a featured snippet.
Follow the best practice of the current snippet owner! If the snippet is a list snippet, ensure that the content that you’re trying to rank is in a list format and is eligible to be pulled through as a list with the relevant tag in place (<li>).
Answer the question. Google is constantly tweaking the SERPs to match results for relevance. We’ve had circumstances whereby a very small tweak in content has secured us the snippet. An interesting report from Moz (2019) suggested that if the snippet is constantly changing, then Google may be testing several links to find the most relevant answer to a search query.
Acquiring a featured snippet can take time. As there are so many factors that will go into which result works for the snippet, it’s sometimes difficult to know where to allocate resource. One way this can be managed is by focusing time on long-tail search terms with a healthy search volume. From there, analyse the current snippet owner (if there is one!) and see whether you think it answers the query well.
Additionally, the snippet owners domain rating and link profile will also factor into the equation. We’ve found that competing with domains such as Wikipedia can be an extremely difficult process and poor allocation of your time. Instead, focus on snippets where you genuinely believe that your content is better suited. Focused on answering the question and matching the users intent, whilst playing the format game that Google is using as a part of their relevance matching process.
How can I opt-out of a Featured Snippet?
As mentioned above, some in the SEO industry are choosing to remove the ability for their content to be pulled through as a featured snippet. This is easily done by using a ‘data-nosnippet’ tag. For example:
<p> This content can be pulled through to the SERPs
<span data-nosnippet> Whereas this content cannot. </span></p>
If you’re in the digital marketing world, you’ve undoubtedly heard that getting backlinks from other websites is crucial for SEO. It’s important to utilise anything that can help to boost your website’s search ranking, so we’ll shed some light on why links are so important and teach you how to build them yourself.
Why are links important for SEO?
Building backlinks to your website (getting other websites to link back to yours) sends out a trust signal to Google that your website has good authority, and therefore should be ranked higher. However, this depends on the type and quality of the website that posts the link. Essentially, if a quality website which Google trusts links back to your site, Google determines that you too are a quality website, so should be ranked higher. You can work out the quality of a website by checking its domain rating on websites such as Ahrefs or Moz: the higher score the better.
However, Google can also penalise for backlinks which it sees as unnatural. For example, spamming forums, creating tonnes of directory listings, paying bloggers on fiver to link to your website are unnatural ways to build links, which in turn will lower your position on Google. It is far better for SEO to secure a few strong links a month than to build hundreds of low-quality backlinks in a short space of time.
Hence, you should always ensure that links have a natural connection to your business, which you can achieve with the following techniques.
Brand reclamation
It’s always great exposure when a publisher features your brand in their article, though sometimes they will mention a brand without linking back to the brand’s website. Whilst this can be frustrating, it’s easy to maximise this opportunity and secure a link from a high-quality website. Most of the hard work has already been done because a journalist has already noticed and written about your brand. Simply drop them an email thanking them for featuring your business and request a link to your website be added to the page in case their readers want to find out more.
Tracking brand mentions online is very easy to set up so that you don’t miss these opportunities. There are several web-monitoring tools that help you do this, such as Google Alerts (free), Ahrefs alerts and Gorkana. Some publications may have editorial policies not to include external links, but it’s always best to email and check.
Media tools
Now that GDPR is in place, media databases with opted-in contact details of journalists are more important than ever for sourcing good quality PR opportunities and contacts. There are a variety of tools you can pay for, as well as free databases that scrape public email addresses from across the web.
One relatively cost-effective way to find feature opportunities is through journalist alerts. These are email alerts that journalists send out to source contacts or information for the features that they are writing. You can then respond to queries that are relevant to your brand, offering information, images, product reviews or quotes. Not only do these tools allow you to effectively build links in a natural way, but they also allow you to develop relationships with key journalists in your market without the need of a pricey media database. Building your own database of journalists that you have successfully worked with makes it easier to work with them again in the future, as you can either contact them with valuable content or they may contact you with relevant upcoming features to you.
Local links
Big-budget content campaigns can bring in a lot of high quality links, but exploring your local link opportunities can also be a good cost-effective way to build links on a smaller scale. Investigate whether you have any current connections that you could source a link from. Is your Managing Director an alumni of a prestigious university? If so, perhaps they could make a donation or share their business expertise on their website. Is there a local charity you could work with? Or a local group linked to your industry? Explore current connections that your staff and management have to see if there are any natural links that could be secured by sending an email.
Competitor analysis
If a key competitor outranks you for several of your keywords, performing an analysis of where their links are coming from is a great way to see what kind of outreach work they are undertaking. Tools such as Ahrefs enable you to identify which publications your competitors are receiving links from, as well as spark ideas for potential outreach content.
Are there any high quality review websites that your competitor has a link on? If they do and your brand doesn’t, then this can be an area to explore. Do they have any links from high quality bloggers? Again, if they do then you can contact the blogger who wrote the article to introduce your brand and highlight what you can offer them, should they be planning any articles which you could contribute to.
Google has confirmed that a small algorithm update occurred on the 27th September to coincide with Google’s birthday. It has been described as being smaller than the update that took place in August, as experts report that it has not impacted as many websites as the August update.
It is important to be aware of and monitor Google Algorithm updates because they can lead to significant changes in traffic levels.
How do I check if my site has been affected?
Tracking tools such as SEM Rush help to identify if traffic levels have seen a positive or negative change. If no change is identified, then It is also possible that this recent update hasn’t had any impact on your website – which can only be seen as a positive.
As always, there are varying opinions on the impact of the update. Several industry experts are questioning whether this update has been a reversal of the “Medic” algorithm update that occurred in August, as some websites have experienced positive impacts.
lost 50% on organic traffic after Google Birthday update 27 Sep never ever did anything wrong and followed the guidelines. Our content is unique, website is fast, SSL, Mobile etc. This is just insane! Why Google? sites that rank better now are spammy with very bad quality content
More examples of the “small update” we saw starting on 9/26. 🙂 Not so small for the sites impacted. Again, seeing impact across verticals, including health/medical (some big swings there), ecommerce, games, how-to, entertainment, coupons, and more. pic.twitter.com/wc41FjxqFW
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