Shopify SEO: The Guide to Optimizing Shopify [Updated for 2022]

 A trend we’ve been noticing at Go Fish Digital is that more and more of our clients have been using the Shopify platform. While we initially thought this was just a coincidence, we can see that the data tells a different story:

The Shopify platform has been steadily rising in popularity throughout the years. Looking at BuiltWith usage statistics, we can see that usage of the CMS has more than doubled since October 2017. Currently, 4.24 of the top 10,000 sites and 3.02% of the top 100,000 are using Shopify.

Since we’ve worked with a good amount of Shopify stores, we wanted to share our process for common SEO improvements we help our clients with. The guide below should outline some common adjustments we make on Shopify stores.

What is Shopify SEO?

Shopify SEO is a set of  SEO adjustments that are unique to the Shopify platform. While Shopify stores come with some useful things for SEO, such as a blog and the ability to redirect, it can also create SEO issues such as duplicate content. 

Some of the most common Shopify SEO recommendations are:

1. Remove duplicate URLs from internal linking architecture

2. Remove duplicate paginated URLs

3. Create blog content for keywords with informational intent

4. Add “Product,” “Article,” & “BreadcrumbList” structured data

5. Determine how to handle product variant pages

6. Compress images using crush.pics

7. Remove unnecessary Shopify apps

We’ll go into how we handle each of these recommendations below:

Duplicate content

In terms of SEO, duplicate content is the highest priority issue we’ve seen created by Shopify. Duplicate content occurs when either duplicate or similar content exists on two separate URLs. This creates issues for search engines as they might not be able to determine which of the two pages should be the canonical version. On top of this, often times link signals are split between the pages.

We’ve seen Shopify create duplicate content in several different ways:

1. Duplicate product pages

2. Duplicate collections pages through pagination

Duplicate product pages

Shopify creates this issue within their product pages. By default, Shopify stores allow their /products/ pages to render at two different URL paths:

• Canonical URL path: /products/

• Non-canonical URL path: /collections/.*/products/

Shopify accounts for this by ensuring that all /collections/.*/products/ pages include a canonical tag to the associated /products/ page. Notice how the URL in the address differs from the “canonical” field:

While this certainly helps Google consolidate the duplicate content, a more alarming issue occurs when you look at the internal linking structure. By default, Shopify will link to the non-canonical version of all of your product pages.

As well, we’ve also seen Shopify link to the non-canonical versions of URLs when websites utilize “swatch” internal links that point to other color variants.

Thus, Shopify creates your entire site architecture around non-canonical links by default. This creates a high-priority SEO issue because the website is sending Google conflicting signals:

1. “Here are the pages we internally link to the most often”

2. “However, the pages we link to the most often are not the URLs we actually want to be ranking in Google. Please index these other URLs with few internal links”

While canonical tags are usually respected, remember Google does treat these as hints instead of directives. This means that you’re relying on Google to make a judgement about whether or not the content is duplicate each time that it crawls these pages. We prefer not to leave this up to chance, especially when dealing with content at scale.

Adjusting internal linking structure

Fortunately, there is a relatively easy fix for this. We’ve been able to work with our dev team to adjust the code in the product.grid-item.liquid file. Following those instructions will allow your Shopify site’s collections pages to point to the canonical /product/ URLs.

Duplicate collections pages

As well, we’ve seen many Shopify sites that create duplicate content through the site’s pagination. More specifically, a duplicate is created of the first collections page in a particular series. This is because once you're on a paginated URL in a series, the link to the first page will contain “?page=1”:

However, this will almost always be a duplicate page. A URL with “?page=1” will almost always contain the same content as the original non-parameterized URL. Once again, we recommend having a developer adjust the internal linking structure so that the first paginated result points to the canonical page.

Product variant pages

While this is technically an extension of Shopify’s duplicate content from above, we thought this warranted its own section because this isn’t necessarily always an SEO issue.

It’s not uncommon to see Shopify stores where multiple product URLs are created for the same product with slight variations. In this case, this can create duplicate content issues as often times the core product is the same, but only a slight attribute (color for instance) changes. This means that multiple pages can exist with duplicate/similar product descriptions and images. Here is an example of duplicate pages created by a variant: https://recordit.co/x6YRPkCDqG

If left alone, this once again creates an instance of duplicate content. However, variant URLs do not have to be an SEO issue. In fact, some sites could benefit from these URLs as they allow you to have indexable pages that could be optimized for very specific terms. Whether or not these are beneficial is going to differ on every site. Some key questions to ask yourself are:

• Do your customers perform queries based on variant phrases?

• Do you have the resources to create unique content for all of your product variants?

• Is this content unique enough to stand on its own?

For a more in-depth guide, Jenny Halasz wrote a great article on determining the best course of action for product variations. If your Shopify store contains product variants, than it’s worth determining early on whether or not these pages should exist at a separate URL. If they should, then you should create unique content for every one and optimize each for that variant’s target keywords.

Crawling and indexing

After analyzing quite a few Shopify stores, we’ve found some SEO items that are unique to Shopify when it comes to crawling and indexing. Since this is very often an important component of e-commerce SEO, we thought it would be good to share the ones that apply to Shopify.

Robots.txt file

By default, Shopify creates a robots.txt file for your store with quite a few prewritten “Disallow” commands. We find that in most cases, Shopify’s default robots.txt rules are good enough for most store owners. You can see an example of Shopify’s default robots.txt rules here:

Here are some sections of the site that Shopify will disallow crawling in:

• Admin area

• Checkout

• Orders

• Shopping cart

• Internal search

• Policies page

However, as Shopify stores get bigger and more customized, there’s a greater chance that you might need to adjust the robots.txt file. Fortunately, as of June 2021, Shopify now let’s you update the robots.txt file. 

In order to edit the Shopify robots.txt file, store owners must create a robots.txt.liquid file and then create custom rules to specify any changes.

In order to create a robots.txt.liquid file, store owners can perform the following steps:

1. Login to your Shopify admin area

2. In the left sidebar, go to Online Store > Themes

3. Choose Actions > Edit code

4. In “Templates”, select the “Add a new template” link

5. Find the left-most dropdown and choose “robots.txt”

6. Choose “Create template”

This should create your Shopify robots.txt.liquid file. You can then add rules to your robots.txt.liquid file by adding liquid code. Fortunately, this code isn’t too difficult to add, and Shopify does a good job of highlighting how to do it in their official documentation. Following these steps should allow you to have much more control over which URLs are crawled in your Shopify site.

Sitemap.xml

By default, Shopify will generate a sitemap.xml index file at the URL path “domain.com/sitemap.xml”. Shopify’s sitemap.xml index file will automatically create links to child sitemaps that contain URLs of the following page types:

1. Product Pages (sitemap_products_1.xml)

2. Collection Pages (sitemap_collections_1.xml)

3. Blog Posts (sitemap_blogs_1.xml)

4. Marketing Pages (sitemap_pages_1.xml)

This sitemap.xml file will dynamically update as new pages are added/removed from to the site. Generally, the Shopify sitemap.xml is good to go out of the box and doesn’t need to be adjusted.

One thing to be aware of is that Shopify will include any published pages in the sitemap.xml file. The most common issue we see is that legacy pages that are published but no longer linked to on the site get included in the sitemap.xml file. It’s worth crawling your sitemap.xml to find any instances of published pages that are included in the sitemap but are not important for search engines to crawl.

Adding the “noindex” tag

While you cannot adjust the robots.txt, Shopify does allow you to add the “noindex” tag. You can exclude a specific page from the index by adding the following code to your theme.liquid file.

As well, if you want to exclude an entire template, you can use this code:

Redirects

Shopify does allow you to implement redirects out-of-the-box, which is great. You can use this for consolidating old/expired pages or any other content that no longer exists. You can do this by going to:

1. Online Store

2. Navigation

3. URL Redirects

The big thing to keep in mind is that you will need to delete a page before you can implement a redirect on Shopify. This means that you’ll want to be really sure you’re not going to use the page in the future. To make this process a little less stressful, we recommend implementing the “Rewind Backups” app.

Log files

As of now, Shopify does not allow you to access log files directly through the platform. This has been confirmed by Shopify support.

Fast Simon implementation

Fast Simon is an enterprise solution that adds robust personalization features to your Shopify store, and is becoming increasingly popular. If your Shopify site is utilizing the Fast Simon technology, you’ll want to be sure that you’re taking steps to adjust any potential indexing issues from an improper implementation. 

Confirm that Fast Simon is pre-rendering your website’s content so that Google doesn’t run into crawling and indexing issues. This will give Googlebot a server-side, rendered version of your site that will make it easier for it to interpret the content. For more details, you can read our case study here. 

Structured data

Product structured data

Overall, Shopify does a pretty good job with structured data. Many Shopify themes should contain “Product” markup out-of-the-box that provides Google with key information such as your product’s name, description, price etc. This is probably the highest priority structured data to have on any e-commerce site, so it’s great that many themes do this for you.

Shopify sites might also benefit from expanding the Product structured data to collections pages as well. This involves adding the Product structured data to define each individual product link in a product listing page. The good folks at Distilled recommend including this structured data on category pages.

Article structured data

As well, if you use Shopify’s blog functionality, you should use “Article” structured data. This is a fantastic schema type that lets Google know that your blog content is more editorial in nature. Of all of the informational content schema, “Article” seems to be the one that Google may prefer since that’s what’s referenced in their official documentation. However, “BlogPosting” schema is also another type of structured data you could add to your Shopify blog

BreadcrumbList structured data

One addition that we routinely add to Shopify sites are breadcrumb internal links with BreadcrumbList structured data. We believe breadcrumbs are crucial to any e-commerce site, as they provide users with easy-to-use internal links that indicate where they’re at within the hierarchy of a website. As well, these breadcrumbs can help Google better understand the website’s structure. We typically suggest adding site breadcrumbs to Shopify sites and marking those up with BreadcrumbList structured data to help Google better understand those internal links.

Implementing structured data on Shopify

If you want to implement structured data and have a developer on hand, it can be good to have them add the above structured data types. This ensures that these schema elements will always be present on your site.

However, if your development resources are more limited, we find that Schema App Total Schema Markup is a great option. This will incorporate structured data types such as Product and BlogPosting schema on the proper pages of the site. As well, it will even add OfferCatalog schema to mark up every single product within a category page. Their support is also fantastic as they’re team helps you with any technical issues you might encounter.

Improving Shopify site speed

One of the biggest complaints we hear about Shopify is that it suffers from slower speeds. However, compared to other e-commerce platforms, we find that Shopify performs quite well. Out of the box, Shopify uses the Fastly CDN and leverages browser caching which gives you a solid performance foundation. In the past, we’ve actually benchmarked the average speed metrics of 400+ Shopify sites. Below are the average performance metrics of the Shopify sites we tested in our dataset.

• First Contentful Paint: 3.8 seconds

• Time To Interactive: 22.1 seconds

• Total Page Size: 4.41 MB

• Total Image Assets: 2.1 MB

• Requests: 171

In terms of improving performance, below are the things we’ll generally advise our clients to do:

• Lazy load images with the lazysizes library

• Automatically compress images using Crush.pics

• Eliminate any low usage Shopify apps

• Manually resize and compress large images on high priority pages

• Migrate tracking codes to Google Tag Manager

Keyword research

Performing keyword research for Shopify stores will be very similar to the research you would perform for other e-commerce stores.

Some general ways to generate keywords are:

• Export your keyword data from Google AdWords. Track and optimize for those that generate the most revenue for the site.

• Research your AdWords keywords that have high conversion rates. Even if the volume is lower, a high conversion rate indicates that this keyword is more transactional.

• Review the keywords the site currently gets clicks/impressions for in Google Search Console.

• Research your high priority keywords and generate new ideas using Moz’s Keyword Explorer.

• Run your competitors through tools like Ahrefs. Using the “Content Gap” report, you can find keyword opportunities where competitor sites are ranking but yours is not.

• If you have keywords that use similar modifiers, you can use MergeWords to automatically generate a large variety of keyword variations.

Keyword optimization

Similar to Yoast SEO, Shopify does allow you to optimize key elements such as your title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs. Where possible, you should be using your target keywords in these elements.

To adjust these elements, you simply need to navigate to the page you wish to adjust and scroll down to “Search Engine Listing Preview”:

Adding content to product pages

If you decide that each individual product should be indexed, ideally you’ll want to add unique content to each page. Initially, your Shopify products may not have unique on-page content associated with them. This is a common issue for Shopify stores, as oftentimes the same descriptions are used across multiple products or no descriptions are present. Adding product descriptions with on-page best practices will give your products the best chance of ranking in the SERPs.

However, we understand that it’s time-consuming to create unique content for every product that you offer. With clients in the past, we’ve taken a targeted approach as to which products to optimize first. We like to use the “Sales By Product” report which can help prioritize which are the most important products to start adding content to. You can find this report in Analytics > Dashboard > Top Products By Units Sold.

By taking this approach, we can quickly identify some of the highest priority pages in the store to optimize. We can then work with a copywriter to start creating content for each individual product. Also, keep in mind that your product descriptions should always be written from a user-focused view. Writing about the features of the product they care about the most will give your site the best chance at improving both conversions and SEO.

Shopify blog

Shopify does include the ability to create a blog, but we often see this missing from a large number of Shopify stores. It makes sense, as revenue is the primary goal of an e-commerce site, so the initial build of the site is product-focused.

However, we live in an era where it’s getting harder and harder to rank product pages in Google. For instance, the below screenshot illustrates the top 3 organic results for the term “cloth diapers”:

While many would assume that this is primarily a transactional query, we’re seeing Google is ranking two articles and a single product listing page in the top three results. This is just one instance of a major trend we’ve seen where Google is starting to prefer to rank more informational content above transactional.

By excluding a blog from a Shopify store, we think this results in a huge missed opportunity for many businesses. The inclusion of a blog allows you to have a natural place where you can create this informational content. If you’re seeing that Google is ranking more blog/article types of content for the keywords mapped to your Shopify store, your best bet is to go out and create that content yourself.

If you run a Shopify store (or any e-commerce site), we would urge you to take the following few steps:

1. Identify your highest priority keywords

2. Manually perform a Google query for each one

3. Make note of the types of content Google is ranking on the first page. Is it primarily informational, transactional, or a mix of both?

4. If you’re seeing primarily mixed or informational content, evaluate your own content to see if you have any that matches the user intent. If so, improve the quality and optimize.

5. If you do not have this content, consider creating new blog content around informational topics that seems to fulfill the user intent

As an example, we have a client that was interested in ranking for the term “CRM software,” an extremely competitive keyword. When analyzing the SERPs, we found that Google was ranking primarily informational pages about “What Is CRM Software?” Since they only had a product page that highlighted their specific CRM, we suggested the client create a more informational page that talked generally about what CRM software is and the benefits it provides. After creating and optimizing the page, we soon saw a significant increase in organic traffic (credit to Ally Mickler):

The issue that we see on many Shopify sites is that there is very little focus on informational pages despite the fact that those perform well in the search engines. Most Shopify sites should be using the blogging platform, as this will provide an avenue to create informational content that will result in organic traffic and revenue.

Apps

Similar to WordPress’s plugins, Shopify offers “Apps” that allow you to add advanced functionality to your site without having to manually adjust the code. However, unlike WordPress, most of the Shopify Apps you’ll find are paid. This will require either a one-time or monthly fee.

Shopify apps for SEO

While your best bet is likely teaming up with a developer who's comfortable with Shopify, here are some Shopify apps that can help improve the SEO of your site.

• Crush.pics: A great automated way of compressing large image files. Crucial for most Shopify sites as many of these sites are heavily image-based.

• Schema App Total Schema Markup: This app may be used if you do not have a Shopify developer who is able to add custom structured data to your site.

• Smart SEO: An app that can add meta tags, alt tags, & JSON-LD

• Yotpo Reviews: This app can help you add product reviews to your site, making your content eligible for rich review stars in the SERPs.

• Rewind Backups: Creates backups of your site. Great to implement before making development changes or adding redirects.

Is Yoast SEO available for Shopify?

Yoast SEO is exclusively a WordPress plugin. There is currently no Yoast SEO Shopify App.

Limiting your Shopify apps

Similar to WordPress plugins, Shopify apps will inject additional code onto your site. This means that adding a large number of apps can slow down the site. Shopify sites are especially susceptible to bloat, as many apps are focused on improving conversions. Often times, these apps will add more JavaScript and CSS files which can hurt page load times. You’ll want to be sure that you regularly audit the apps you’re using and remove any that are not adding value or being utilized by the site.

Client results

We’ve seen pretty good success in our clients that use Shopify stores. Below you can find some of the results we’ve been able to achieve for them. However, please note that these case studies do not just include the recommendations above. For these clients, we have used a combination of some of the recommendations outlined above as well as other SEO initiatives.

In one example, we worked with a Shopify store that was interested in ranking for very competitive terms surrounding the main product their store focused on. We evaluated their top performing products in the “Sales by product” report. This resulted in a large effort to work with the client to add new content to their product pages as they were not initially optimized. This combined with other initiatives has helped improve their first page rankings by 113 keywords (credit to Jennifer Wright & LaRhonda Sparrow).

In another instance, a client came to us with an issue that they were not ranking for their branded keywords. Instead, third-party retailers that also carried their products were often outranking them. We worked with them to adjust their internal linking structure to point to the canonical pages instead of the duplicate pages created by Shopify. We also optimized their content to better utilize the branded terminology on relevant pages. As a result, they’ve seen a nice increase in overall rankings in just several months time.

Moving forward

As Shopify usage continues to grow, it will be increasingly important to understand the SEO implications that come with the platform. Hopefully, this guide has provided you with additional knowledge that will help make your Shopify store stronger in the search engines. If you’re interested in learning more about Shopify, you can also check out our Shopify SEO Learning Center.

Influencer Marketing for SEO and Authority

Please welcome back guest host, Andy Crestodina, for an episode all about the connection between people, relationships, and SEO outcomes. Specifically, how influencer marketing can drive SEO and authority.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. This is Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media Studios here in Chicago, and I want to explain something that I love very much and that is kind of a familiar theme if you've been following the Moz content. It's about the relationship between people, relationships, and SEO outcomes. Specifically I want to talk about how influencer marketing can drive SEO and authority. 

There's a lot of approaches to building links and building authority. Cold outreach, can we please stop doing that? This is what my inbox looks like. It's a mess. Yeah, okay, so let's just pause that and try something different.

Link swaps? Interesting. It doesn't feel like we're adding a lot of value to the world, but okay, maybe.

Guest blogging, a lot of work for a little outcome. Depending on the audience, it could have lots of other benefits. So not necessarily a fan. I'm still a guest blogger, have been forever. 

But link attraction, how does that work? Is it possible to do something in marketing that will spontaneously lead to like new links from high authority sites on a regular basis? There is. It is possible. It happens all the time. It's something that we do here. In fact, it's our main approach to growing authority.

Link attraction

So I'm going to break it all down starting with the outcome. Starting with the lead, demand. This is the goal. That's the point of digital marketing, right, is to build a bridge from a traffic source to your thank you page. That's what we're all doing here, right?

So to do that you need two things. What are they? Traffic and a conversion rate. Traffic times conversion rate equals demand. Conversion rate, that means having a web page that is persuasive, it's compelling, it's filled with social proof, it's addressing objections, it's answering questions. It has clear, specific calls to action. That times the number of qualified visitors to that page equals success.

So traffic, where does traffic come from? Well, there's a lot of sources of traffic. I'm a digital marketer that uses more than just search. We'll set those aside for now. But search traffic, how does that happen? That's driven from ranking for relevant, commercial intent key phrases. What are those? That happens when you have two main things, two main search ranking factors, which are basically authority and relevance, as in links and keyword focused content. So now we're going to set aside relevance.

I'm going ask one of the most important questions in all of digital marketing, which is, "Why do people link to things? Why does that happen? How do we make that happen organically on a regular basis all the time?" That's what I want to address here, and I'm going to do it by combining two different things — influencers and content, relationships with people who create content and therefore create links and also link worthy content, content that's worthy of that citation, content that ends up in their bibliography, content that is something that when people see it they say, "Wow, this is supporting something that I'm working on. Therefore, if I link to this, it will make the thing I'm making more credible." Otherwise, without your content, what they're making is just going to be kind of unsupported. So we want to make content and we want to combine that with influencers. Let's break that down.

What attracts links? 

What kind of content attracts links? There's play of research on this, much of it conducted by Moz, which comes down to two main things — original research and strong opinion. That's basically it. When you put those together, you have the main ingredients for legit thought leadership. We hold high standards for that label.

But original research literally supports what they're creating. Therefore, by making it, you are giving people ways to add evidence to the things that they're creating. So new, original data points, kind of sound bites, kind of new statistics for the world. 

Fundamentally, there are two kinds of content programs — content programs that create new, original data and everybody else. If I was doing a content audit for a brand, I would probably look at that first and say, "Is there anything for which this website is the primary source?" Very different. It feels different. It feels different when you make it. It feels different when they read it. It feels different when they come across it later and they think they might publish it, something that references it.

Who creates links? 

So who are they? Who creates links? Who are the content marketers or who are the people on the internet? It's sometimes called the 1% rule. Ninety-nine percent of people consume content. They're sort of lurkers. They're just consumers of content. The 1% of us actually make stuff. They press that Record button or they type and they hit the Publish button. They are bloggers, obviously, editors, clearly, journalists, researchers, podcasters, even event producers. All these people make stuff, therefore they're adding new content, new URLs to the internet, and when they do, they often look for things to support their assertions, in other words original research. Or they're responding to someone who planted a flag out there and adding their voice to some strong opinion that was put out.

Influencer marketing

So basically these are the two key ingredients. That's really all you need. This is how it really happens. Original research combined with relationships with people who create content and links on the internet. So let's go a little deeper on that and I want to talk about specifically how to make that happen and what it looks like.

Step 1: Network, connect

Step 1, network, connect. Start a conversation. That's why I don't like cold outreach. I keep drawing X's here. Cold outreach fails to just take that first step and warm it up a little bit. You didn't have to do that to my inbox. Why don't we start a conversation? Why don't you like, comment, share, interact, engage, ask, thank, connect? So that's Step 1. It's a networking thing. It really benefits people that value relationships and are playing the long game.

Step 2: Polite request

Then the polite request. "Hey, I'm making something. Would you like to be part of this thing that I'm making?" 

Step 3: Include them

Then actually include that person in the thing that you are making. I've got a little example over here, look. Their face, that person that I one day hope to build a relationship with, I'm giving them the thing that I hope to get from them one day, by literally their face, their name, a link to them. Their quote, their insights, their added value is in my piece.

I do this all the time. In fact, I would never publish a piece of content without putting contributors in it. Journalists don't write articles without including a source. Why do content marketers keep creating content without adding contributor quotes? It's a missed opportunity. Your content is, in fact, one of your best networking tools.

So literally I'm linking to the people that I'm hoping to one day get a link from. I'm learning while I'm creating my own content. This happened to me yesterday. I was working on an article, reached out to some experts, they gave me their insights, and I have new ideas based on their input. I learn by creating my own blog. That's kind of magical, right, and very cool.

Step 4: Stay in touch

Then, obviously, really the long game, like I said, we're going to keep in touch. We're going to follow up. We're going to offer to help them if they're making something. We're going to keep that conversation going because we care. Really, the ultimate form of influencer marketing is called friendship, real, legit relationships, to the extent you get to the point where if you really need a link to something, you could actually just send them a quick text message and they'll probably help you out right away, the way I do for people that I'm trying to help. We all do this all the time. In other words, empathy in your relationships and quality in the stuff you create when combined lead to link attraction, and as we saw that's going to connect every dot down to demand.

Hope this was helpful. Really fun to make. Thank you, thank you, Moz, for the opportunity to create another Whiteboard Friday video. We hope this is helpful. If you find someone who keeps like spamming you, maybe just send them this. Maybe they'll leave you alone. Maybe you can just reach out and start a conversation and make a friend.

Again, Andy from Orbit and we'll see you next time.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

How Contextualizing Topics can Lead to Press-worthy Content for Your Brand

More brands than ever are investing and producing quality journalism to drive their earned media strategy. They recognize that it’s a valuable channel for simultaneously building authority while finding and connecting with customers where they consume news.

But producing and distributing great content is no easy feat.

At Stacker and our brand-partnership model Stacker Studio, our team has mastered how to create newsworthy, data-driven stories for our newswire. Since 2017, we’ve placed thousands of stories across the most authoritative news outlets in the country, including MSN, Newsweek, SFGate, and Chicago Tribune.

Certain approaches have yielded a high hit rate (i.e., pick up), and one of our most successful tactics is helping add context to what’s going on in the world. (I mentioned this as a tactic in my Whiteboard Friday, How to Make Newsworthy Content: Part 2.)

Contextualizing topics, statistics, and events serves as a core part of our content ideation process. Today, I’m going to share our strategy so you can create content that has real news value, and that can resonate with newsroom editors.

Make a list of facts and insights

You likely have a list of general topics relevant to your brand, but these subject areas are often too general as a launching point for productive brainstorming. Starting with “personal finance,” for example, leaves almost too much white space to truly explore and refine story ideas.

Instead, it’s better to hone in on an upcoming event, data set, or particular news cycle. What is newsworthy and specifically happening that’s aligned with your general audience?

At the time of writing this, Jack Dorsey recently stepped down as CEO of Twitter. That was breaking news and hardly something a brand would expect to cover.

But take the event and try contextualizing it. In general, what’s the average tenure of founders before stepping down? What’s the difference in public market success for founder-led companies? In regard to Parag Agrawal stepping into the CEO role, what is the percentage of non-white CEOs in American companies?

As you can see, when you contextualize, it unlocks promising avenues for creative storyboarding.

Here are some questions to guide this process.

Question 1: How does this compare to similar events/statistics?

Comparison is one of the most effective ways to contextualize. It’s hard to know the true impact of a fact when it exists stand alone or in a vacuum.

Let’s consider hurricane season as an example. There’s a ton of stories around current hurricane seasons, whether it’s highlighting the worst hurricanes of all time or getting a sense of a particular hurricane’s scope of destruction or impact on a community.

But we decided to compare it another way. What if we asked readers to consider what hurricane seasons were like the year they were born?

This approach prompts a personal experience for the readers to compare what hurricane seasons are like now compared to a more specific “then” — one that feels particularly relevant and relatable.

I’ll talk more about time-based comparisons in the next section, but you can also compare:

• Across industries/topics (How much damage do hurricanes do compared to tidal waves?)

• Across geographic areas (Which part of the ocean is responsible for the most destructive hurricanes? Where has the most damage been done around the world?)

• Across demographics (Which generation is most frightened of hurricanes?)

There are dozens of possibilities, so allow yourself to freely explore all potential angles.

Question 2: What are the implications on a local level?

In some cases, events or topics are discussed online without the details of how they’re impacting individual people or communities. We might know what something means for a general audience, but is there a deeper impact or implication that’s not being explored?

One of the best ways to do this is through localization, which involves taking a national trend and evaluating how it’s reflected and/or impacts specific areas. Newspapers do this constantly, but brands can do it, too.

For example, there are countless stories about climate change, but taking a localized approach can help make the phenomenon feel “closer to home.”

We put together a piece that illustrated significant ways climate change has affected each state (increased flooding in Arkansas, the Colorado River drying up, sea levels rising off South Carolina, etc.). You could take this a step further and look at a particular city or community if you had supporting data or research.

If you serve particular markets, it’s easy to implement this strategy. Orchard, for example, does a great job publishing real estate market trend reports in the areas they serve.

But if you’re a national or international brand that doesn’t cater to specific regions, try using data sets that have information for all countries, states, cities, ZIP codes, etc., and present all of it, allowing readers to identify data points that matter to them. When readers can filter data or interact with your content, it allows them to have a more personalized reading experience.

Question 3: What sides of the conversation have we not fully heard yet?

The best way to tap into the missing pieces of a story is to consider how other topics/subject areas interact with that story.

I’ll stick with our climate change theme. We did the story above on how climate change has impacted every state, which feels comprehensive about the topic, but there’s more to dive into.

Outside of just thinking how climate change is impacting geographic areas, we asked ourselves: How is it affecting different industries?

Now we have a look at a more specific angle that’s fascinating — how climate change has impacted the wine industry.

When you have a topic and want to uncover less-explored angles, ask yourself a set of questions that’s similar to the compare/contrast model:

• How does this topic impact different regions? (E.g. What is wine’s cultural role in various countries?)

• How does this topic impact different demographics of people? (E.g. Who profits most from wine making?)

• How does this topic impact different industries? (E.g. How have wineries/vineyards impacted tourism?)

• How is this topic impacted by these various things? (E.g. How is the flavor of wine impacted by region? Who buys the most wine, and where do they live?)

This should create a good brainstorming foundation to identify interesting hooks that aren’t often explored about a really common topic.

Conclusion

Not only will taking the approach of contextualizing differentiate your story from everything else out there, it will also allow you to re-promote it when a similar event occurs or the topic trends again in the future. Contextualized content is often this perfect blend of timeliness and evergreen that’s really difficult to achieve otherwise.

Page Experience is Here to Stay: Moz Launches Performance Metrics Suite

Way back in April 2021, I had the honor of announcing a new beta Moz product: Performance Metrics. It arrived just in time for SEOs to track and improve their sites through the anticipated May launch of Google’s Page Experience update. We uniquely offered at-scale tracking and issue identification against Core Web Vital metrics for hundreds of URLs per campaign, rather than the handful of URLs available in competing tools at the time.

Back then, we (correctly) anticipated a minimal initial impact from the update, but even we didn’t foresee Google’s delay of the full rollout until August. However, sites are now seeing a real world impact from Core Web Vitals, as our recent study showed back in October. Google is talking about extending that impact to desktop from February or March 2022 (something that our tool has always allowed you to compare cohesively in one campaign), and it seems likely that the importance of these ranking factors will only increase.

Now is the time, then, for us to bring Performance Metrics out of beta and help our customers prepare for the next stage of Google’s Page Experience update this spring. Today, we’re announcing the full launch of Performance Metrics, including a host of new features and improvements based on the feedback we’ve received from early adopters, as well as our own experts and data.

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What’s new

Many users have already been enjoying the bulk analysis, issue identification, and tailored, tactical advice we’ve been offering in Performance Metrics. However, since the beta launch, customers have consistently asked for automated, scheduled testing of lists of URLs, and displays of page performance over time. This makes total sense to us — tracking improvements to see the fruits of your efforts, and identifying when any issues appear, are both great uses for the tool. As such, we’ve included both of these features in the full launch.

Of course, the on-demand analysis you might have already been enjoying in the beta is still there, but with some UI improvements along the way. In particular, you can now re-test the same page multiple times per day, if you want to take some new changes for a quick spin.

Last but not least, as this tool is no longer in beta, you can now also track all of this alongside metrics like visibility, DA, Spam Score and any and all other Moz Pro data in custom scheduled reports.

Why now?

Core Web Vitals are for life, not just for Christmas. Yes, the update finally arrived in August 2021, but that was only the start of the journey — we can and should expect Google to ramp up the importance of these metrics as they gain confidence in the quality and coverage of their own data, and in the health of affected websites.

There’s also the desktop rollout this spring that I mentioned above. Lastly, there may be two new metrics coming — which we’ll of course be integrating into our product once they’re confirmed — probably relating to smoothness and responsiveness. Google has previously indicated an annual cadence of updates to Core Web Vitals, so as an industry we shouldn’t be surprised by this.

As a reminder, by late last year we were already seeing slower pages suffer in rankings, and Google’s methodology of using CrUX data means that sites will often be judged by their most highly trafficked pages.

Our Performance Metrics tool, even in beta, was designed to help marketers prioritize pages to work on, and then issues to address, within this paradigm — we let you sort pages by traffic or ranking or PA, analyze or track whichever ones interest you without limiting you to one page at a time, then see which pages are failing in which areas, and what specific issues and elements are causing those problems. Which might be leaving you wondering…

How to use Performance Metrics in Moz Pro

When you log into Performance Metrics (Moz Pro -> Campaigns -> Site Crawl), you’ll now see there are two tabs in the overview:

The second tab shows URLs which will be automatically tracked over time. You can add to this list using the same filters and menu that you might be familiar with from the beta. Just scroll down on the first tab, and you’ll see a table like this:

Here you can add URLs in bulk or individually to analyze, track, or perform other actions.

To make things even easier, you can filter the table and charts even further, to include only your top ranking, top traffic, or top Page Authority pages:

Within the tracked tab, you’ll then gradually start to see charts form like this one:

And, when you inspect the individual URLs, you can see their own performance over time, as well as specific changes to individual metrics, and tailored advice on what to improve - down to individual resources or elements that need to be addressed, and jargon-free tips from the Moz team.

There’s more detailed guidance available over at the help section, and of course our customer support team is there for you with any questions.

Focus for 2021

There’s more to SEO than Core Web Vitals, but that doesn’t mean you can take your eye off the ball. Focus on a holistic user experience that will be robust to future metrics and tweaks from Google, and particularly on your high traffic pages that are more likely to be the basis for any judgment cast on your site. Lastly, remember your competitors aren’t standing still — they may even be reading this very blog post and using our Performance Metrics suite. The goal posts march inexorably forth.

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How to Improve Organic Clickthrough for Your Content

Google search result pages are becoming more diverse and even interactive, which makes any clickthrough study out there much less reliable, because no two sets of search results are the same.

But how much control do writers and content creators have over how their content is represented in search? As it turns out, they do have quite a few options when it comes to optimizing their search snippets!

The anatomy of a standard search snippet

The standard Google search snippet has changed over the years, but in essence all the key elements are still there:

• The clickable title or headline of the snippet (in blue)

• The description of that page (about two lines long — it was lengthened for no particular reason a few years ago, but now seems to be back to two lines)

• The URL path (used to be in green, now it is black)

On a mobile device, there’s also a tiny logo next to the URL:

Here’s how much control you have over these standard elements of your search snippet (in the order they currently appear):

Logo

Google will use your site favicon when deciding which image to show next to your URL. This means that you have full control over this part of the search snippet.

URL path

These days, Google will do its best to show the meaningful URL path (almost like a breadcrumb) instead of simply the URL of the page. This consists of:

• The domain: I don’t have any research to support this, but I personally always scan domain names when choosing what to click. That being said, your choice of a domain name may somewhat impact your clickthrough (if you do a particularly good job picking a snappy domain name that intrigues) and you do have full control over this part of the snippet. Tools like Namify specialize in finding exactly that type of domains that are short, memorable, and witty.

• The breadcrumb or the truncated URL: You can use breadcrumb schema to force Google to use breadcrumb instead of the URL, and watch your Search Console to see if that helped clickthrough:

Title

Google used to rely on the page title to generate the title of the search snippet, but it has been rewriting that part more and more often recently.

That being said, it is still recommended to optimize your title to include keywords and entice more clicks — and hope Google will keep it intact.

Description

Google has been generating the search snippet description for years without using the associated meta description: recent studies show that Google ignores meta descriptions in about 70% of cases.

You may still want to create meta descriptions in case Google needs some clues, but expect them to figure this part out on their own.

Another way to try and trick Google into using your chosen snippet description is to create concise summaries of the content and add it at the beginning of the article. Using semantic analysis tools like Text Optimizer, you can also ensure these summaries are semantically relevant to the topic:

Now, let’s see how we can enhance that standard search snippet to let it stand out and attract more clicks.

Rich snippets for content-based pages

Rich snippets are search snippets enhanced with some additional details. Web publishers can control rich snippets by adding schema markup, so they are thus under website owners’ control.

Here are the types of rich snippets that will work for content-based pages:

FAQ page

Your page doesn’t have to be FAQ to qualify for this rich snippet. All you need to do is answer two or more subsequent questions somewhere on that page to use the code. There are several Wordpress plugins — including this one — that help you code that section.

HowTo schema

The HowTo schema was introduced for the DIY niche as a way to feature snippets that include step-by-step instructions.

These days, I see HowTo rich snippets implemented for just about any tutorial:

Video schema

More often than not, these rich snippets show up only on mobile devices, but they seem to be very common. A video rich snippet includes a video thumbnail:

Video schema will help you ensure the rich snippet is indeed generated, although I’ve seen dozens of cases when Google creates a rich snippet once you simply embed a video on the page, no schema required.

That being said, using the rich code won’t hurt, especially given there’s an easy video schema generator for you to create a code easily.

Structured snippets

Structured snippets are less popular than rich snippets, even though they are very common on search.

Structured snippets import tabular data to formulate a more informative search snippet:

All it takes to qualify for this type of a snippet is to create an HTML table. It is a good idea to use tables for summaries, feature comparisons, lists, etc.

Image thumbnails

Image thumbnails are very rare on desktop. Yet on mobile devices, images show up inside most search snippets:

There’s no particular optimization tactic here, but there are best practices that may or may not help:

• Obviously, make sure there’s at least one image on your landing page (make it featured on Wordpress).

• Compress your image to make it load faster.

• Specify the thumbnail using the meta tag.

Dates

Google shows dates within a search snippet when they think this may be useful to a searcher. Obviously, dates may have a big impact on clicking patterns: Based on the research by Ignite Visibility, about half of searchers claim that dates in search snippets are either “important” or “very important” clickthrough factors.

• People may feel willing to click on a search snippet with a more recent date.

• They can scroll past an older date even when the page ranks on top.

Google has clear guidelines as to how web publishers can keep those dates fresh:

• Don’t try to hide dates, because they are useful.

• When updating a piece, re-publish it on a new date only when you’ve basically rewritten it.(I.e., don’t redirect, better to update the old piece and change the publish date).

• Include an “Updated on” note on top of the article if you updated it (Google will pick up on that date).

• Using schema “datePublished” and “dateModified” is not required but will be helpful.

Google will understand all of the following date formats:

• Published December 4, 2019

• Posted Dec 4, 2020

• Last updated: Dec 14, 2018

• Updated Dec 14, 2021 8pm ET

Mini sitelinks

Mini sitelinks are probably the most unpredictable element of a search snippet. Google may randomly pick links from navigation, tag, or category links, etc. There’s also no way to tell Google they made a poor choice.

Unlike sitelinks, which usually show up for the top-ranking result and mostly for branded searches, mini sitelinks can be generated for just about any result out there.

Mini sitelinks represent a very useful feature, though, because they increase your odds that your search snippet will get a click (by adding more clickable links to your snippet).

One way to increase your chances that Google will show mini sitelinks within your search snippet is to use an on-page table of contents (which is powered by HTML anchor links).

Here’s an example of the table of contents:

And here are the mini sitelinks they generate:

Featured snippets

As of January 2020, featured snippets were officially considered the #1 organic result (previously they were “position zero” — appearing before the top organic result).

It still remains a big question whether they get clicked more than “normal looking” search results, or whether they are comprehensive enough to get fewer clicks. However, recent research suggests they’re still important for SEO.

With that being said, featured snippets are not easy to predict, but if you choose to optimize for them, be sure to check my older Moz column that is still very valid: How to Optimize for Featured Snippets. Just don’t forget to monitor your clickthrough to ensure getting featured didn’t hurt.

Indented results

Showing intended results is a relatively new trend. So far it is not clear how exactly to get that type of search snippet, but you can track them in tools like STAT.

Complementing your product page with how-to content on the same topic may be a good idea (Google may decide to rank both as indented results). At least this is something to experiment with.

Monitoring and measuring

While rank monitoring is pretty straightforward, this kind of optimization is harder to monitor because your rankings remain the same. Here are two tools you can use:

1. Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides clear clickthrough data that can help you signal of positive or negative impact of your optimization efforts:

In the Performance tab, click in the date range filter (it usually defaults to three months), go to “Compare” tab and select “Compare last 3 months year over year”:

From there, you can click to “Pages” or “Queries” tab to identify pages or search queries that have lost organic traffic from the past year (especially if there was no substantial position change):

2. WebCEO

WebCEO provides a more convenient way to keep an eye on your keywords that are losing clicks. The tool has a separate tag and a notification system alerting you of any queries that see a decline in clicks:

3. Visualping

Another useful tool here is Visualping that you can set to monitor your exact search snippet to be alerted when it changes:

This is a great way to correlate your optimization with the actual change that happened (and then clickthrough change).

Using SiteChecker’s website monitoring tool you can also monitor your competitors’ pages and correlate their edits to an improved search snippet:

Conclusion

Whether it is good or bad news, organic traffic is no longer about rankings. In fact, you may well be ranking #1 (i.e. get featured) and notice a decrease in clickthrough once your page is promoted. But, you can experiment with all kinds of ways to improve your organic clickthrough without investing more into your rankings, even though organic CTR is much harder to predict these days.

Adding STAT Reports to Google Sheets Using App Scripts

The team at MacMillan Search has generated a lot of value by combining automated STAT reports with Google Sheets. From adding ranking details to other tool’s outputs, to giving the content teams up-to-date “People Also Ask” reports, the end result has proven to be a great time-saver in our week-to-week SEO workflows by reducing manual work and providing standard outputs that easily integrate with any spreadsheet.

Why did we create this script?

STAT’s wealth of keyword rankings details is very useful for enterprise SEOs to understand both the macro and micro details of their rankings. Google Sheets is one of the most common cloud-based spreadsheets platforms, and is easy to share between teams and organizations. That’s why SEOs use both of these tools regularly when analyzing keyword data.

Despite this, documentation on how to integrate STAT into Google Sheets is limited. To address this gap, we created our own script!

It’s proven useful for several reasons:

1. Not everyone likes CSVs: We leverage the STAT reports to provide clients with direction. Having to download a CSV and open it every week isn’t for everyone. With this script, you can set a weekly ticket with a link to the spreadsheet, and review the output regularly.

2. It saved us time: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. When we identify an opportunity, there is ongoing work that will have us reviewing reports regularly. The weekly ticket approach to review a spreadsheet shaves some time off of each task, and over the course of the engagement, this saved time adds up.

3. Cleaner output: Using Vlookups, Uniques, etc., you can create a summary page of this information, highlighting what clients and/or readers care about. You can also integrate this information with other data sources.

4. Create automation without using an API: Automation, when done correctly, saves time. Using this script with triggers opens the door to automation.

How to implement this script

1) Create a report in STAT

The STAT knowledge base has a great resource on reports. The only thing we would get specific on is the naming of the report and the recipient email.

Naming

What you name your report is not as important as keeping it clear and concise. This makes scaling to other projects with similar reports cleaner and easier. You will also use this report name as one of the variables in the scripts.

We also suggest placing the company or project name at the end of the report name in parentheses (e.g. “(MacMillan Search)”). This makes it easier to find the report in your email.

Recipient email

It’s important to use a Gmail-enabled email for the account where you’ll be building the sheet. This way, Google has an easier time getting the app script to extract the CSV from the email.

Scheduling

For our clients, weekly data is the most useful — enough detail to spot trends, but not so much that it becomes just noise to be ignored. For reports with limited fluctuations (e.g. People Also Ask), monthly might be satisfactory.

Timing

Select “Run this report immediately” to confirm that your report works, right after creating the script. This way, you’re ready to set your triggers and let the data flow.

The rest of the settings are specific to what details you want from your report.

2) Create a Google Sheet and add the script

Create a new sheet in Google Drive under the account associated with your report’s recipient email. Then you’re ready to add the script:

1. Under the menu “Tools”, select “<> Script editor”

2. Paste the script below into the “Script editor”.

3. A few things will need to be edited to work with your data:

• var COMPANY_NAME updated to the company or project name you used while creating the STAT Report

• var REPORT_NAME updated to the name of your report minus the company name and parentheses

• var SHEET_NAME updated to the name of the sheet in the spreadsheet

4. Confirm the Script works by saving it, refreshing the sheet, and when the menu “Manual Update” loads, select “Import Keywords”.

5. The first time you run this you will get an “Authorization Required” pop-up:

Select “Continue”, follow the steps, and select “Import Keywords” under the menu again.

Your spreadsheet should now be populated with all of the details from your CSV.

3) Automate the population with triggers

Setting this sheet up to automatically update as the report comes out is very easy using Apps Script “Triggers”. To set up the triggers:

1. Go back into the “Script Editor”

2. Select the “alarm” icon “Triggers”

3. Select “Add Trigger”

4. Select the function “importKws”

5. Select event source “Time-driven”

6. Select type of time-based trigger “Week Timer” for weekly reports, “Month Timer” for monthly reports, etc.

7. In our time zone, our reports usually come out late Sunday, so we pick early Monday morning:

8. Click “Save”

The result is a spreadsheet that regularly updates, populated by an emailed STAT report.

We’ve found many uses for this script — anywhere we reference rank. And, since a project might take time to get implemented, we can provide current ranking information without leveraging the API.

We’re curious to learn how you leverage it as well. If you find the script useful, reach out to us on LinkedIn and let us know what you’re using it for.

Click here to copy the script! 

22 Smart Google SEO Tips for 2022

We're back with a brand new season of Whiteboard Friday episodes for your viewing pleasure. First up: SEO expert Cyrus Shepard shares his top 22 tips for successful Google SEO in 2022. Watch to find out what to prioritize and what to look out for in the year ahead!

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday, a very special edition, our annual SEO tips of the year edition. This year it is 22 smart SEO tips for 2022. I'm going to be talking about some of the most talked about things in the SEO industry over the past year plus a few tips from last year that we wanted to pull over because they were just that important.

Because we've got 22 of them and we don't want this video to take forever, we're going to be going through these pretty quick, but for you we've linked to some resources in the transcript below so you can explore all of these topics further if you want. All right. Without further ado, let's get started. 

On-page SEO tips for 2022

1. A/B testing

I'm going to start with some on-page topics. Tip number one, A/B testing or simply testing.

We've seen a lot more testing tools pop up in the last couple of years, which is awesome because SEO is not make a decision and implement it and you're done. SEO is implement, evaluate, and then make decisions or sometimes course corrections.

Is this something we need to pull back? Did C perform better than D? Which one would we choose? All the tips we're talking about today can apply to this testing mentality. SEO is incredibly complex, and the old-school idea of best practices just doesn't cut it anymore. So in '22, develop a testing mentality with your SEO.

2. Author pages

Number two, author pages. I really love this because Google this year updated some of their advice around author pages and their schema markup. It's an important part of my strategy and a lot of websites that I use. A good quality author page helps Google evaluate your authors, which can be used for E-A-T and other things, and helps link them with their expertise.

So linking your articles to a good author page usually includes links to other websites, author profiles, links to the articles they wrote, some biographical information. It can help establish your authors as expertise in a certain space. So take a look at your author pages and try to improve them and make this a task. 

3. Google title rewrites

Google title rewrites, number three. I don't think there is any topic more discussed in 2022 than Google rewriting titles. A lot of studies, including one I did, showing Google rewriting 60%, 70% or 80% of a site's titles. It can be frustrating. But what we're finding is a lot of people aren't evaluating those Google title rewrites. When you do, you can learn a lot about your own titles.

Why is Google rewriting it? Is my title too long? Am I missing important keywords? Do I have fluff in there that Google doesn't like? Or in some cases you can go back and try to correct the title that Google rewrote if they're doing just a terrible job. So Google title rewriting, do an audit of those Google titles and learn what you can do.

5. Nuke the "fluff"

Speaking of fluff, this may be the year that you want to nuke the SEO fluff. You know what I'm talking about with SEO fluff. It's those flowery keywords. It's those descriptions and it's recipe pages. "Oh, I was walking along the Irish countryside thinking about my bread and biscuits." That is your fluff. We're finding that it may not be necessary, and it may even be detrimental to your SEO.

Glenn Gabe wrote a great case study where they reduced a lot of their fluff on category descriptions and they actually saw an increase. Google is removing fluff from title tags. So this marketing, flowery, SEO writing stuff, it may not be helping you, and, in fact, it may be hurting you. Today Google is rewarding sites or seems to be rewarding sites that provide quick answers and more direct engagement.

Better engagement, it's usually better for your customers as well. So experiment with losing the fluff in 2022. 

5. FAQ schema

Number five, FAQ schema. So last year we talked a lot about different schema types, how-to schema, FAQ scheme, different things. If there was a clear winner in 2022, it was FAQ. The reason FAQ is the winner is because so many sites can qualify for it, it's easy to implement, and if you win a FAQ schema in SERPs, you can gain a lot of Google real estate.

So there are a lot of articles that talk about how to optimize for FAQs. You can get links, deep links in FAQs. There are a lot of things you can do. We'll link to those in the transcript below. But take a look at your FAQ schema if you're not currently using it: 

• How to Optimize Your FAQ Schema to Maximize Positive Outcomes
• What Google’s FAQ Schema Update Means For Your SEO Strategy

6. Tabbed content

Last year we talked about tabbed content, bringing your content that is in tabs, in navigation and bringing it out. This year, we're getting a little more advanced.

Our friends at Merj did a study about types of tabbed content and how easily Google can extract and render and index different tabbed content. So if you still have content in tabs, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to take everything out, but you should research if Google is able to index and rank those appropriately. There are better resources this year to try to do that.

So take a look at your tabbed content. 

7. Faceted navigation

Along the same lines, faceted navigation. We've been talking about faceted navigation for years, but this is the year to get a little more strategic with it. In certain ways, faceted navigation has always been like a set of rules, like if it has green dress, we are not going to index this or crawl it, but if it is size 12 or higher, we will index it.

Today, smart SEOs are getting a lot more savvy about what they index, don't index, and crawl with faceted navigation, and these tools are becoming increasingly available for sites like WordPress and things like that, where you can actually look at the traffic each page receives and index, crawl, faceted navigation on a page by page level, and these broad rules aren't necessarily as necessary.

You can get down to the nitty-gritty and increase your traffic that way, with fine-grained tools. So both tabbed content and faceted navigation, old-school concepts, but we're getting much more sophisticated with them in 2022. 

Link building tips for 2022

All right, let's talk about everybody's favorite subject, links, because you need links to rank in SEO. But what a lot of smart SEOs know and talk about is you need links to rank in SEO, but you probably don't need as many as you think.

8. Internal link optimization

If you only have a few good external links, one of the best ways to leverage that is optimize your internal link optimization. We've seen a number of new tools and processes talking about internal link optimization. We're talking about pages that have too few links, under optimized anchor text, pages that have great opportunities that aren't ranking that should.

So if you haven't done an internal link optimization audit in a while, this is the year to do it and this is the way to leverage those internal links that you're getting. 

9. Deep linking

Speaking of which, deep linking. In the old days, if you linked to a page, you just linked to the URL. But we're seeing an increase in deep linking, linking to specific passages, text fragments, things like that, navigation, jump links.

This is increasingly becoming a popular strategy to get people deeper into the page and give Google and other search engines signals about very specific parts of pages. This seems relevant as Google has recently introduced passage ranking, where they're not just evaluating the whole page. They can understand individual passages as well.

So making deep linking part of your strategy, as opposed to just linking to the URL, seems to be a great way of moving forward. 

10. High ROI link building

High ROI link building. I watched a great presentation from Ross Simmonds this year, the Coolest Cool, on link building with assets and determining the ROI of each of them, because everything you build links with, whether it be a tool, a blog post, a free PDF, it has a cost and that cost has an ROI.

Ross found that certain things have higher ROIs than others. Tools have an incredibly high ROI, but they're also expensive to create. Pages with stats on them, not that expensive to create, but also a really high ROI. 

I'm going to link to that video. It might be a paid subscription. I apologize about that. But it's awesome. It was voted number one at MozCon. If you do link building, it's definitely worth watching and definitely worth the cost. High ROI link building, know the cost of everything you're producing and how much value you're getting out of it.

11. Reduce redirects

Let's go old school again. Our friend Nick LeRoy tweeted not too long ago about reducing redirects. This is really old school, but a lot of people are forgetting it these days. If you have a large site and you have thousands or millions of redirects all sending confusing signals, 301 jumps to a 302 jumps to a 404, what is that? 

Looking at your redirect chains and reducing them to a single redirect with a clear directive can help reduce canonicalization errors. It can improve crawling efficiency, and at scale it can influence your rankings. So if you have a large site or even a small site with a lot of redirects, this is the year you want to do a redirect audit. Get on it. Audit, on it.

12. SEO for affiliate links

How about SEO for affiliate links? We don't talk a lot about affiliate links here at Moz, and Google traditionally hasn't talked a lot about it either.

But this year we saw Google introduce specific guidance for affiliate sites, which is something they really haven't done before. Specifically for review sites, Google talking about what a good review looks like, talking about the good and the bad part of the product, the fact that you should link to multiple merchants so consumers have a choice.

We haven't seen this from Google before. So if you do SEO for affiliate sites, you do review sites, this is the year to review those Google documentations and make sure you're creating sites that Google rewards and actually following Google's guidance on it, which is something in past years I didn't think I would be able to say about that. So it's awesome to see.

Google SEO tips for 2022

13. Reputation research

All right, moving on to different topics, reputation research. My friend Lily Ray talks about reputation research a lot in terms of E-A-T. The idea that Google can evaluate your site based on what other people say about you. So if you're Dr. Mercola and an anti-vaxxer and everybody is saying all these terrible things about you on other websites, Google can disappear you from search.

Reviews, what are other websites saying about you in terms of reviews? Google quality raters often look at other websites to get reputation research, and it's supposedly believed that Google can do the same thing algorithmically. So making reputation research part of your SEO audit process, what are other sites saying about you, is it incredibly positive, is it incredibly negative, this is especially important for your money or your life sites, sites that are going to be more impacted by E-A-T algorithms.

So if you sell things or dispense medical advice, reputation research is a little bit more important for those sites. 

14. Core Web Vitals — minimums

Boy, last year we talked about Core Web Vitals a lot. One of my happiest things is that we are talking about it much less. Google announced a big update. It was a big hooplala. It didn't quite work out the way Google kind of explained that it might.

What happened was Google released Core Web Vitals, and some sites saw a boost, other sites saw a decrease, but it wasn't as intense as we thought it might be. A lot of sites did improve. But we're finding in 2022 maybe we don't need to worry about it as much as we thought.

My colleague Tom Capper did a study that showed that slow sites were still ranking and fast sites were ranking even higher, but the effect wasn't as much. The one thing Tom did find though, that was important, was sites that failed all three Core Web Vital requirements were definitely in the dumps. So we should optimize for speed always, but perhaps in 2022 we don't need to obsess over it as much as possible, based on Google advice.

Speed is awesome. You should make your sites as fast as you can. But Core Web Vitals, don't sweat it as much as we were in 2021.

15. Ditch AMP?

Other things we might want to consider not sweating, AMP. 2021 was the year that we've seen a lot sites start to ditch their AMP. This is because Google no longer requires it as a ranking factor in their top stories. It does provide some speed benefits. It's kind of a neat technology. We know people who work on it. It's really cool. But a lot of companies were stressing out trying to maintain two different versions of their website to get that ranking boost. A lot of sites are starting to like, "Well, we don't want to have two different versions. It's a lot of overhead. It's a lot of engineers. What if we just got rid of it?"

They're finding it really doesn't make a difference. They can just work with one platform and still get as much rankings as they want. So if your company is struggling with AMP, this might be a year to experiment with ditching it. Or keep it if you like. It's great, but a lot of people seem to be walking away. 

16. Google Discover

On the flipside, a lot of people are flocking to Google Discover.

Google Discover is interesting. It's not traditional SEO traffic, where you research a keyword and people are converting. It's a little bit more like social media traffic. In fact, social media sharing seems to be one of the ranking factors that can influence how much traffic you get from Google Discover. 

But what we've seen in the last year is some publishers are optimizing for Google Discover, publishing those stories, and seeing huge amounts of traffic for that. Great for like news sites, blogs, popular things, things that talk about popular topics. 

We've gotten some Google Discover traffic here at Moz. We're going to link to a couple of articles to show you how to optimize for Google Discover. But if you haven't tried it yet, it may be a channel for you to explore in 2022. 

17. Local SEO GBP categories

We've got to squeeze in one local SEO tip. We're doing this for our friend Darren Shaw, who publishes the Local Search SEO Ranking Factors every year, doing an awesome job at it. If you have a local site and you just have five minutes to do one thing, the number one SEO tip for 2022, get your GBP categories in order. Ranking factors studies show that it is the number one thing that can influence rankings.

Do an audit of your Google Business Profile categories. Darren has a lot of tips over there with that Local SEO Ranking Factors. I would encourage you to look at it. Also Joy Hawkins is doing a lot with experimentations. I'd encourage you to look at her site as well. 

18. Favicon review

My tip, the tip that I'm going to die on this hill — favicon optimization. Why favicon optimization?

I talked about this last year, but I don't think people took me seriously enough. Over 50% of search results take place on a mobile phone where your favicon shows, and people are not optimizing those favicons. A good favicon can draw attention. It can zero you in on a very busy SERP, and it does it with just a few pixels.

A good favicon can raise your click-through conversion rate one or two percent, which is awesome. How does it work? What do you notice on this screen? You notice the tip with a favicon. A good favicon is usually bright, it's usually high contrast, and it draws your attention to your search results. So optimize your favicon, folks. I'm dying on that hill.

SEO career tips for 2022

All right. So I want to spend a few tips on talking about your SEO career, because I don't think we talk about this enough. What should you be learning this year, aside from Python because everybody loves Python? 

19. Learn GA4

This might be the year that you want to finally familiarize yourself with GA4. GA4 is the product that's replacing traditional Google Analytics.

You're going to see it in a lot more client accounts. It can be a little confusing to people. Some of the metrics aren't there. It's got some cool things in it admittedly, like they basically got rid of bounce rate and replaced it with engagement metrics, which is great because a lot of SEOs are a little too focused on bounce rate and engagement may be more representative, a holistic way that Google views your website.

Our friend Dana DiTomaso has a course on LinkedIn that you can check out. But familiarize yourself with GA4 so you can walk into those meetings and you can present those reports and know what you are talking about. 

20. Attend virtual conferences

Conferences. COVID moved a lot of conferences virtually online. People attended them.

A lot of people are getting burnt out on virtual conferences. But looking back at all the virtual conferences of 2021, there's some great value there. Here at Moz, we had MozCon. We had some tremendous speeches. It also makes it more affordable for people all over the world. Traditional conferences, you pay $1,000 to $2,000 just to attend the conference plus travel and all that.

But with virtual conferences, oftentimes they're free or just $100 or $200. You can attend virtually and focus on the content and the learning and advance your career, and do the networking, reach out to the speakers. There are lots of opportunities there. So I would commit in 2022 to attending two or three virtual conferences and make that part of your career advancement.

21. Charge more

Finally, the last tip on the career, charge more. 2022 is the year to charge more for your SEO services. Our friend John Doherty at Get Credo publishes his annual salary report or agency fee report. If you're an independent consultant or agent, you can check to see what you're charging compared to your peers.

But, in general, SEO services are in high demand all over the world, especially high-quality SEO services. The power is in your hands to charge what you are worth, not undermining yourself. If you're working in-house, it might be time to evaluate your salary and make sure you're getting paid what you deserve, especially if you're not getting paid as much as your colleagues or you're part of an underrepresented group.

Charge more in 2022. Make more money. 

And finally...

22. Be the last click

Final tip of 2022, this was the final tip of 2021. It's my favorite SEO tip of all time. Be the last click. That means satisfy your users. When someone is searching Google or any other search engine and they're presented with a list of results, they're clicking around, looking for what they want to be, make sure you are the last site that they click.

Why? Because when they clicked to your site, they found what they were looking for. You satisfied them so much that when they see your site again, you're going to be the first one that they click on because you gave them the answer. Provide awesome experiences for your users. Think of them first. Give them everything they want. Give Google no excuse not to rank you number one in the search result.

All right, 22 tips for 2022. That's all I've got. I would love to hear your tips. Please leave them in the comments below. Reach out to me on social media. If you liked this video, please share it. Thanks, everybody. It's been fun.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com