SEO & Core Algorithms: How to Address, Analyze, and Affect

Core algorithm updates can be the bane of an SEO’s existence. The number of unknowns coming out of an update keeps people on their feet, as Google seemingly sits back and watches them scramble to address the changes.

Given how cryptic Google typically is about core updates — and even regular updates, for that matter — it can often seem like we’re at the mercy of the algorithm, with no legitimate measures of our own to employ. Google itself has even stated repeatedly that website owners shouldn’t view updates as something they are fighting against.

With all that said, do we just throw our hands up in defeat? The answer is no — there are ample tactics at our disposal, but as with anything in SEO, it’s a more nuanced, longer-term play. Throughout this article, we’ll explore how to address, analyze, and affect the outcomes of core algorithm updates.

How to address Google core algorithm updates

First and foremost, it’s important that we properly calibrate how we think about core algorithm updates. As previously mentioned, Google has confirmed that there is no “fix” that website owners should enact in response, tweeting the following after a previous core update:

The reason for this lack of an easy “fix” is because websites are evaluated over a period of time. Essentially, this can be viewed as a single, aggregated report card that is then used to inform decisions to reward, punish, or maintain a site’s current status.

Continuing with this metaphor, in order to earn good marks at the end of the school year, we should ensure that we are doing our very best throughout the semester rather than constantly skipping class and cramming right ahead of the final. In the same vein, it’s important to mention that many SEOs have identified a trend where website changes in the weeks leading up to a core update are largely disregarded. This finding does make sense in the context of websites being evaluated on changes made over a longer period of time rather than within just a couple of weeks. In the rare event where Google is kind enough to give us advanced notice of an update, that should not be the signal for us to implement a barrage of changes sitewide.

In an attempt to provide some semblance of concrete data that we can actually use to better understand timing, below are some takeaways using the launch dates of past core updates. The “Brackets” Core Update seems to mark the beginning of when the concept of “core algorithm updates” became more popularized. So, with that in mind, we can glean the following insights from past core updates since “Brackets” in March of 2018.

Core Algorithm Updates Since 2018

• Yearly frequency: Three per year with the exception of 2021.

  • Most common quarter: Q2 with four updates in total.

  • We’ve only seen 2 updates in Q4 (Google is probably enjoying the holidays).

• Most common month: March and June with 2 updates taking place in those months.

  • Most common time of month: Nine out of twelve updates have taken place in the first half of the month (prior to the 15th). More than half of the updates have taken place within the first four days of a month (maybe Google runs on monthly sprints).

To some extent, we can leverage this data. The average time in between Google Core Algorithm updates is 120 days, which falls in line with our finding that core algorithms updates typically happen three times a year. This can generally be used as a gauge to understand the amount of time we have in between core updates to prompt recovery or algorithmic gains.

How to analyze Google core algorithm updates

Now that we understand the possible timing of core updates, we now need to properly analyze website performance after an update has been rolled out. Within recent years, Google has been slightly more transparent about changes to their algorithm. One piece of information they’ve shared is how long the roll-out period lasts: one to two weeks.

Although everyone will be eager to check trend lines as the rollout is occurring, a deeper analysis should really only be conducted two weeks after the initial launch date, or after Google has indicated that the update has finished rolling out. This will help to mitigate multiple rounds of post-update analysis.

I’ve found that STAT’s Competitive Landscape tab is one of the best methods to get an initial gauge of website performance fluctuations. The reason for this is because STAT is capable of providing possibly the most accurate depiction of website visibility around keywords you care about most, because you yourself are able to determine the keywords that are being tracked. Alternatively, however, if you are tracking a small subset of keywords or if you’ve just recently added keywords, STAT may not be the most insightful, as you’ll likely want a set of keywords large enough to mitigate outliers, and STAT is unable to provide historical data retroactively.

Assuming that you have a large enough keyword set, you’ll want to navigate to the “Competitive Landscape” tab of STAT, as shown below.

You will then see a chart which shows trend lines of the top 10 sites by share of voice. In STAT, share of voice measures the visibility of a given keyword set on Google:

Share of voice = Total click-throughs (520) / Total search volume (10,100) = 5.15%

By leveraging this tool, we’re able to understand SERP volatility to the top 10 competitors. Every seven days, STAT does a simple tally of the sites that appeared the most frequently in the top 10 search results for your selected keyword set. This is how those top 10 competitors are selected.

Some of the many insights we can glean in the context of a Core Algorithm Update are the following:

• Changes in visibility within the general space of your keyword set: Gains or losses to an industry as a whole may indicate a number of things, such as a general increase in demand or reduction of Google SERP features.

• Changes in visibility to your website: Gains in visibility to your site after an update indicate that your site was positively impacted, and losses indicate that your site was negatively impacted. Inverse relationships in visibility between your site and competitors can indicate who the winners and losers are after a major update.

• Changes in visibility to Google: Typically, if Google shows a higher level of visibility after a Core Algorithm Update, it is likely the case that they’ve introduced additional SERP features that effectively shifts visibility from your website or competitors.

Based on your visibility around a given keyword set, your own website may or may not be automatically included within the view. Below is how to add your website into the Competitive Landscape tab, if not automatically included.

1. Select a site in your Data Views pane, in the Site Tools pane, click Settings.

2. Select the Share of Voice tab.

3. Enter the site domain:

   • Domains are matched exactly, so “www.example.com” does not include “example.com” or “shop.example.com.”

   • Do not include schemes (“http://” or “https://”) or directory paths (“www.example.com/blog/”).

4. Click Add.

5. Click Save.

6. Click Yes to confirm.

Your pinned site will now appear in your share of voice charts and tables (as shown in the bottom left of the above screenshot) . It may take up to 24 hours for this data to be calculated. Pinned sites are identified with an asterisk.

Whether you find that your website was impacted or not, as a next step, I like to use Search Analytics for Sheets, which is a Google Sheets add-on that allows you to request and backup data from Webmaster Tools. This tool is basically an enhanced Google Search Console. It allows you to segment multiple data points (date, query, page, etc.) to get a much higher level of granularity than can be achieved on Search Console’s standard web frontend.

Let’s take a look at a website that was positively impacted by the June 2021 core update and use this tool to understand possible algorithmic changes.

Our date range should be relatively small, but ensuring that it incorporates the entirety of the roll out period, a few days before, and as many days after as available. Including days prior will help you understand standard pre-update performance and can be a point of comparison. The days after will, of course, help you to understand post-update changes.

Given the rollout period was from June 2 – June 12, I’ve elected to use a 22-day date range 5/30 – 6/20. Next, using the “Group By:” field, add the date. Ensure that all branded keywords are excluded by using the “Filter” fields. Lastly, click “Request Data” in blue at the very bottom of the side panel.

Once the data has been generated, there is quite a bit of data manipulation that can be applied in order to glean insight. Generally speaking, absolute changes ([current period] – [prior period]) and relative percent changes ( ([current period] / [prior period]) – 1) are great formulas to understand movement. Below is an example of what this might ultimately look like:

Based on this data, we now have a general understanding of the following trends:

• My website appears to have been positively impacted by the core update:

• Average daily clicks appear to be at a higher level

• Average daily impressions appear to be at a higher level

• Average ranking positions appear to have improved

As mentioned, while there may be other factors at play to consider, such as other Google updates, day of the week, website migrations, technical website changes, etc., the above will be directionally helpful for website owners to be able to answer the question, “was my website affected?”

How to affect the outcome of Google core algorithm updates

Last but not least, we want to explore the types of website changes that may be slightly more valuable in the context of core algorithm updates. While there is no limit to the types of tactics that we can leverage to try to prompt favorable algorithmic responses, we can make some educated guesses based on Google’s historical primary focus areas.

Since the Medic Update of August 2018, Google has cracked down on sites that are categorized as “Y-M-Y-L” (Your Money Your Life). YMYL sites are ones that fall within the medical, health, financial, and news fields, and can be considered sites that have the ability to impact someone’s livelihood. Google introduced this concept and a higher degree of scrutiny as a means of combating the spread of false information at that time.

Since August 2018, YMYL websites have notoriously been a consistent target of Google updates. From 2018 – 2020, trendlines of websites likely categorized as YMYL would frequently experience steep hills and plummeting valleys in the aftermath of a core update.

Even if your website does not fall within these areas, it is likely that Google is still evaluating the same type of criteria on all sites, although to a slightly lesser extent. So, with this in mind, a general strategy is to preemptively make sweeping updates to your website’s signals of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). The concept of E-A-T was born out of the necessity to meet Google’s increasingly rigorous standards.

Given all that background, and using recurring themes from Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (what human quality raters use to evaluate websites and SERPs), below are 10 specific website updates that can elevate your website’s E-A-T signals. This list is typically where I would start when trying to prompt recovery after declines coming out of a core update:

1. Cite your sources and ensure accuracy of claims

2. Kill, redirect, or refresh thin content

3. Canonicalize, kill, or redirect duplicate content

4. Include author bylines, bios, and author pages by listing specific credentials and awards

5. Maintain off-page reputation by updating your Wikipedia page and other informational sources

6. Showcase business reputation through testimonials and reviews on-site

7. Ensure accuracy and sufficient information on social pages

8. Improve and expand upon brand informational pages:

   • About us

   • Contact us

   • Mission statement

9. Remove overly aggressive or invasive advertising

10. Offer clear and satisfying customer service information

E-A-T aside, though, general technical issues are a high contender for priority website fixes. Using Google Search Console’s indexation report and Deep Crawl, there are no shortage of technical fixes to rectify for any type of website.

Conclusion

In summary, you, the website owner, are in fact armed with a number of tools to fend off harmful algorithmic declines – as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. By better understanding how to address, analyze, and affect the outcomes of core algorithm updates, you can be better prepared for the inevitable turbulence on a triannual basis! Are you ready for the next core algorithm update?

NEW SEO Competitive Analysis Certification: Build a Strategy to Take On the Competition

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – our community continues to blow us away with eagerness to learn and hunger for new content. Your feedback and interest in new certifications and coursework through Moz Academy has been super helpful in guiding the development of our learning resources.

In assessing the topic area for our next certification, it struck us just how darned competitive SEO feels these days. Competitive research and analysis still feel like an uphill battle – wouldn’t it be nice if an SEO just had a competitive roadmap to follow?

It sure would. And now, it’s here!

We’re so excited to announce the launch of our brand-new SEO Competitive Analysis Certification. It joins the SEO Essentials Certification and Technical SEO Certification in our Moz Academy course catalog, focused on getting you certified in competitive analysis and research.

Let’s get started!

What’s included in the SEO Competitive Analysis Certification?

The SEO Competitive Analysis Certification is a six-part series focused on competitive research and analysis. Complete with 3 hours of video lessons, tasks, and activities, you’ll be able to test your understanding and apply important concepts throughout. At the end of the series, you’ll take a final exam and receive your certificate and LinkedIn badge.

The certification was built to help you look holistically at the concept of competitive research as part of your greater SEO strategy. From thinking about how the competition fits into the sales funnel to how search intent drives your audience, you can begin to assess the landscape and build a comprehensive strategy – one that will help you take on the competition with ease.

The certification is organized into six sections:

1. Competitive Analysis 101

2. Identify Your True Competitors

3. Analyze Your Competitors' On-Page Success

4. Evaluate Your Competitors' Off-Page Activity

5. Explore Competitive Specialties

6. Final Exam

Learn more about the coursework below:

1. Competitive Analysis 101

The first course of the series lays the groundwork for the rest of the certification curriculum, beginning with a discussion of why competitive analysis matters and what it looks like.

Our instructor discusses how you and your competition fit into the sales funnel, how the competition fulfills search intent, and a framework for conducting competitive analysis. In addition to an introduction to core concepts and methods, you’ll get set up with a worksheet to use throughout the certification.

You’ll learn the top reasons why you need to keep your eye on the competition, what competitive analysis is and is not, classic research methods, and a roadmap that we’ll use in later sections.

2. Identify Your True Competitors

Now that we’ve established the purpose of competitive analysis and how it fits into your larger SEO strategy, it’s time to dig in: Who are your competitors? This next section helps to distinguish online from offline competitors, primary from secondary competitors, and competitors across multiple products or spaces.

You’ll learn how to analyze the SERP with a critical eye (with both qualitative and quantitative approaches), key ways to identify competitors, types of competitive advantages, and how audience research fits in. Taking these important steps will help you to narrow your list of true SERP competitors and move you further along toward your competitive strategy.

By the end of this section, you’ll be able to list your top competitors, identify who you shouldn’t compete with, and make a distinction between your primary and secondary competitors.

3. Analyze Your Competitors' On-Page Success

This part of the course walks through the process of how to analyze your competitors when it comes to their on-page strategy and efforts.

This section dives in deep to address keyword gap analysis, content analysis, and technical gap analysis. With each step of the process, you’ll learn tips and tricks on how to spot opportunities based on what you know about the competition. The analyses about their on-page activities can help to inform your strategy and make decisions on your own site.

By knowing what to look for and how to assess your competitors based on their on-site optimization, you can craft a strategy for your own site that is well-informed and thorough. Your instructor will demonstrate across a number of different tools how to conduct these analyses and document your learnings in the worksheet you received earlier in the course.

4. Evaluate Your Competitors' Off-Page Activity

You will have just learned about on-page strategy, so now it’s time to move into the off-page portion of our competitive analysis framework. In this portion of the course, we’ll focus in on off-site activities such as link profile research, social media analysis, and more – and don't forget about reporting on all of the above!

You’ll learn all about how to conduct a link gap analysis to understand how the competition is approaching their link profile (and strategies to consider!). Additionally, your instructor will dig into the details of a social media analysis and how to examine your competitors’ social presence.

Another critical piece of the entire competitive analysis process is that of tracking and reporting. You’ll be guided through best practices for how to track your competition as well as your own benchmarks.

5. Explore Competitive Specialties

Now that we’ve talked through the competitive analysis process and you’ve got a good feel for the steps to take, it’s time to discuss a few other lenses through which you can view this process.

In this section, you’ll learn more about what approaches to consider if you work for either a B2B business or a local business. When it comes to B2B, your instructor will discuss a variety of methods for competitive research that work particularly well. Conducting competitive analysis for B2B can look a bit different when it comes to keywords, content, links, and social media.

Similarly, you’ll learn how to tweak your competitive analysis approach if you work for a local business with brick-and-mortar locations. Keywords and content should be much more localized, and links, local citations, and social presence are also critical pieces of that puzzle.

And there you have it! Following the courses on these five core competency areas, you’ll take a final exam, consisting of 50 multiple-choice questions, to test your knowledge. In addition to a certificate and shiny LinkedIn badge, you’ll be ready to implement a competitive analysis roadmap to propel your SEO strategy forward.

SEO Competitive Analysis Certification FAQs

How do I get certified?

The SEO Competitive Analysis Certification is available now on Moz Academy. Simply access the series from the course catalog, register, and get started! Once you’ve completed the series and passed the final exam, you’ll receive an official certificate and a badge for your LinkedIn profile.

How long will the series take to complete?

The certification series includes three hours of instructor-led curriculum, in addition to activities to test your understanding and the final exam. With all of that in mind, you can expect your time commitment to be about four-five hours in total.

How long is the Competitive Analysis Certification valid? Do my credentials expire?

No, your Competitive Analysis Certification credentials will not expire.

I don't have a Moz Pro subscription – is the SEO Competitive Analysis Certification still relevant for me?

Yes! We do use Moz Pro, in addition to various other tools, to apply certain concepts throughout the certification series. That being said, having a Moz Pro subscription is not a requirement, and you’ll learn how to apply the concepts regardless of which tools you use. The concepts and activities throughout the certification are generally tool-agnostic.

Let’s get started!

How to Ace Your Marketing Interview Project Proposal

It’s a great time to be a marketer. LinkedIn reported a 63% increase in marketing jobs, and the Great Resignation has led more marketers and SEOs to look for better work opportunities, benefits, and of course, pay.

To help companies better evaluate job candidates, marketing interviews typically include a “take-home assignment.” You’re given a prompt and asked to do a short presentation. This is your chance to showcase how you approach problems and how you communicate your solution to key stakeholders.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the steps that I took to create a marketing pitch and ace this part of my interview, which landed me my current job as an SEO specialist.

Ask the hiring manager thoughtful questions

First off, congratulations on making it to this stage of the hiring process! Now it’s time to really show them what you got.

When you receive your prompt, read it over and jot down questions that come to mind. Sometimes, prompts are vague on purpose to see whether or not you ask questions, and to evaluate the types of questions that you ask.

For the questions you wrote down, can you easily find the answer on Google? If so, you know what to do for those.

If there are questions that only the team you’re interviewing for would know, don’t be afraid to ask them and get clarification. This not only helps you avoid shooting in the dark, but it also shows the hiring manager that you genuinely care about doing a good job.

A good pitch starts with understanding the audience and the goals of the project. Here are a few questions you might want to ask, depending on the prompt:

• Who will you be pitching to?

• How long should the pitch be?

• How will they measure the project’s success?

• What has/hasn’t worked for the company?

• Are there any companies that they look up to? (this can be a source for inspiration later)

Research and brainstorm project ideas

Now that you have the background information you need, it’s time to do some brainstorming for the project. For my project, I was asked to propose a backlink campaign idea.

To get the ideas flowing, I first looked at what our (Dialpad’s) competitors have done, and identified what worked or didn’t. I took a screenshot from Moz Pro’s Compare Link Profiles feature and included it in my deck to provide context for what Dialpad was up against at the time.

For a content marketing role, you may be looking at content or keyword gaps.

You should also think about projects you’ve worked on and whether or not it’d be feasible to do something similar for the company you’re interviewing for — or perhaps there are some success factors that you can apply to your project proposal.

Be sure to tap into your network, too. If you know anyone at the company or who’s a current customer there, you can also reach out to them to get ideas for potential campaigns.

Remember that at this stage, you want to gather as many ideas as you can for inspiration. In the next step, we’ll narrow these down.

Score your ideas and choose a winner

After my brainstorm, I came up with 11 backlink building tactics and a few ideas about how I’d approach each tactic. To help narrow things down, I assigned an impact, confidence, and ease (ICE) score for each. This means rating each idea on the three areas, from 1-10:

• Impact: How much of a positive impact will this have on the goals?

• Confidence: How confident am I that this idea will reach the end goal?

• Ease: How easy would it be to successfully run the project?

Here’s a screenshot of how my scorecard looked, which I also included in my slide deck:

My top two ideas actually had the same ICE score, and I went with the first one since I’d seen the most success with that tactic.

I then had a second brainstorm on potential topics for the data-backed report, and my mind kept going back to an idea that I was very passionate about: the recent growth in video conferencing. I built my project around that idea, and after joining Dialpad, I was able to turn my pitch into reality by publishing the State of Video Conferencing report.

As you score your ideas, keep in mind that the ICE score is just a guideline. There are other frameworks you can use for prioritization, such as PIE (potential, importance, and ease), or you can go with the project idea you’d truly be excited about.

Create a slide deck their team would be proud of

Now that you have your project idea, it’s time to put together the pitch.

It’s easy to throw a bunch of words onto your slides and, honestly, I’m guilty of this, too. But if you’ve attended marketing conferences like MozCon or watched TED talks, you’ll notice that most presenters only have one key idea on each slide, so keep your slides simple. Too much text makes you susceptible to reading the slides, which isn’t very helpful.

Here are other things to keep in mind when creating your slides:

What to include

• A quick self-intro

• Why you chose this idea

• Potential KPIs

• Projected impact

• Potential obstacles

What not to include

• Your complete work history or resume

• Excessive use of animations or GIFs that distract from the main idea

Bonus points: Look for the company’s style or branding guide to see what are their main and secondary colors, and customize your deck accordingly. If you’re able to find a slide deck their team has used, you can also use that as design inspiration.

Practice your presentation out loud

If you’re not a fan of presentations, I completely understand. Even more reason why you’ll need to practice. I like to run my presentation in my head a few times, but I can assure you that it sounds different when you actually say everything out loud.

Ask a friend or a peer (such as a former colleague) to listen to your presentation. Get feedback on your slides, and also things like how fast you’re speaking.

If you receive suggestions for your slide deck, you should take those into consideration. Remember, though, that they’re not the decision-makers. It’s impossible to please everyone, so make sure to always keep your final audience in mind when making changes to your slides.

Give it your best shot

Pitching a marketing project to a team you’ve barely met can be intimidating, but if you really are the best person for this job, it’s a great way to show them. To wrap up, here are a few more pointers to help you prepare:

• Anticipate the questions that they may ask, and have answers ready

• If there’s an important point you want to highlight, repeat it more than once

• Take deep breaths and talk slowly

Like Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, said, “there are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

Good luck out there!

Commercial vs. Functional vs. Emotional: A Case Study on Page Title SEO Testing

My dad used to tell me that the one thing you invest in for your car is the tires. I had a habit of asking the garage for the cheapest tires they had, but my dad would say “that rubber is the only thing between you and the road”. He had a point, and today I invest in those tires to get me to my destination safer.

There’s a similar trap that search marketers and SEOs can easily fall into. In our fast-paced day-to-day lives, we can often underestimate the power of copy, even though, like my tires and the road, it’s the only thing between our business and our customers. Much like my tires, if you don’t invest in it, you’re in for a bad time.

To that end, I’ve used SEO Testing to trial different copy types in product page titles, and want to share the results of that test.

The hypothesis

Customers are more likely to click organic search engine results featuring content that is commercially focused, using language like “free” or “best value”.

Every good test starts with a hypothesis. It’s nothing more than an idea that I want to test and learn from. While there’s an outcome I expect, the data is all I really care about. That’s where SEO Testing comes in.

The test

The test itself had some simple steps. I was updating page titles across a range of mobile phone product pages, so that these would appear in the SERPs in front of our customers. To measure success, the primary KPI was CTR, observed in Google Search Console.

The test would run across all phones on the Three website for six weeks. The control CTR data was collected from the six weeks prior to updating the page titles.

Instead of simply changing page titles to commercial content, I decided to hedge my bets a little and cover the spread with some additional test parameters. If commercial copy didn’t work, what copy did connect with our customers the best?

In addition to a bucket of page titles focused on commercial content, I also added two “backup buckets” for functional and emotional copy.

I used the new SEO Testing Group Test functionality to create three groups:

• Commercial content page titles

• Functional content page titles

• Emotional content page titles

Commercial content focused on appealing to the financial aspects of a purchase decision. Functional copy stuck to the facts and just simply said what you would be finding on the page you clicked through to. Emotional took a softer and “fluffier” approach.

Here are some examples of the content we used:

• Commercial: iPhone 12 Pro Max | Buy Now At Our Best Ever Price | Three

• Functional: Samsung Galaxy A02s | A Powerful Entry Level Phone | Three

• Emotional: iPhone 11 | Get The iPhone You Always Wanted | Three

Google being Google

Just as this test was ending, Google started to use their AI-power to rewrite page titles, steering away from using the provided page titles less and less. Fortunately, this test was finishing at the same time Google was rolling this functionality out, and to the best of my knowledge, the test was not impacted by the update. I was running the test in the Irish market, which had seen very few page title re-writes at the time.

Regardless, at the core of this test is consumer psychology. Even if Google never pulls in another page title that I write for the rest of my days, the reason people clicked, or didn’t click, on content during the test matters. It’s a data-based example of how your potential customers respond to the words you put on your page, and why it’s important you invest in them — just like your tires.

The results

You shouldn’t run a test and then check it every day. Just hit start and do your best to forget about it.

I ignored my own advice and regularly checked the data.

In the early stages the hypothesis held up, but after a few more days a clear trend emerged. What did I learn here? The start date of the test isn’t necessarily the date the page titles change. It takes time for Google to crawl and re-index the new content.

After a few more days, the trends started to change completely and by the end of the six-week test period, the hypothesis failed. And that’s okay. In fact, that’s exciting, especially because contingency was baked into the test.

Customers responded best to the simple functional copy group, evident through a 9% increase in CTR for this group. Customers also emphatically rejected copy with a softer, emotional focus, the clearest outcome of the test with a 31% reduction in CTR (which is, for me, the most interesting result).

If I had just run the commercial group, I would have been left with very few learnings thanks to a paltry 1% increase in CTR.

It’s an important side note to include that this test was being carried out after a CMS migration, which led to automated page titles being generated and pulled into Google. It was an unfortunate by-product of an otherwise successful migration that took some time to resolve. Organic CTR did drop by approximately 21% on monitored product pages for a period of time immediately after the migration, due to the automatically generated page titles appearing spammy.

So, this test was more than a test, it was also a fix.

But that meant the control copy feeding into Google was automatically generated and uniform. Despite this, emotional copy led to a further 31% drop in click through rate. I was shocked by this finding. It meant that the automatically generated page titles that needed a fix and already led to a drop, were performing better than the emotional page title content.

The key takeaway

This test taught me a lot, but I want to focus on the most transferable elements instead of the vertical-specific.

Content matters. Whether it’s a landing page, a page title or a search ad, the words you choose will be read by someone at some stage, and impact their decision-making. We so often focus on sales conversion, that we forget the micro-conversions along the way that turn a searcher into a customer.

Test everything. I could have just trusted my gut, said focus on the sales language, and been done. But instead, I opted to test a few ideas out at once to find what worked in the real world, not just what I felt or thought would work.

Check your tires. Just a friendly reminder that it’s worth checking your tires and investing in good ones.

QRG Clues to How Google Evaluates Local Business Reputation

Image credit: Maura Boswell

Well, I actually read through the 172-page Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, with all of its memorable examples featuring jungle gyms, Tom Cruise, and the Utopia Animal Hospital.

I waded through this dense midge-water marsh of information hoping to enhance my comprehension of how Google understands local business reputation. I did it so you might not have to, and today’s column summarizes the clues I found amid the reeds as well as checking in with Dr. Marie Haynes for her algorithm update expertise.

For local brands, reputation is everything. It’s an always-on sales force, quality control, and a business intelligence methodology when creatively managed. It’s renown or infamy, a source of pride or a signal that improvements are required. It’s a multi-faceted local search engine ranking factor and it’s also a key component in how Google views entities. Today, we’ll take a swift trek through top takeaways from one enormous .pdf which just might inspire you to seek out many new ways of proving to Google and the public that the local businesses you market are the best in town.

The purpose of quality raters: somewhat clearer than mud!

Image Credit: Stan Lupo

Google employs 10,000+ people, referred to as “raters” or “evaluators” to judge webpages on the basis of the Search Quality Evaluator guidelines (sometimes referred to as the QRG). What sometimes confuses folks, though, is that these evaluations do not directly impact the rankings of the entities being reviewed. Rather, Google’s simplified explanation of the the purpose of this large human network is to:

“Help make sure Search is returning relevant results from the most reliable sources available”

How this works is that the raters are supposed to act as checks on whether Google’s ongoing algorithmic updates are producing better or worse results. For example, a quality rater might be tasked with looking at a set of results for the query “lead-free garden hose” before a Google update, and then compare that to the results for the same search after Google has made an adjustment. Did the adjustment produce better results, according to the principles in the guidelines? That’s the kind of question the rater is there to answer. As Google explains:

“They help us measure how well our systems are working to deliver great content.”

I like to think of the evaluators as a big flock of wading birds, probing the muddy sands of search for what they’ve been trained to think of as delicious. And why do we care what is on their menu? Because the guidelines tell us, in advance, something about how Google views search quality, and insights into their take on a good reputation are especially relevant to local business owners and their marketers.

Talking QRG + reputation with Dr. Marie Hanyes

When it comes to exploring the morass of Google’s algorithms, author and speaker Dr. Marie Haynes’ work is among the most respected in the industry and I’ve come to rely on her expertise. She has written extensively about the QRG and what it tells us about Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) and about Your-Money-or-Your-Life (YMYL) business models, and I particularly value the thoughts she shared with me about Google’s vision of reputation:

While Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines are not an exact representation of what Google’s algorithms do, we know that what’s in the QRG represents what Google is trying to accomplish in their algorithms. The QRG speaks several times about the importance of reputation. Google does not want to rank websites that are untrustworthy. What I found the most interesting in the QRG is how the raters are told to find different types of reputation information depending on the nature of the business they are researching. The guidelines say, “A website's reputation is based on the experience of real users, as well as the opinion of people who are experts in the topic of the website.”

If you are writing on YMYL topics, then I believe that in order to rank you need to have information that is backed up by experts in your field. For many sites, improving E-A-T can start with responding to reviews, rectifying negative reviews and fixing the business issues that lead to users leaving those negative reviews. In section 2.6.1 of the QRG, it says, “For YMYL informational topics, the reputation of a website or content creator should be judged by what experts in the field have to say. Recommendations from expert sources, such as professional societies, are strong evidence of a very positive reputation.”

But even if you are not writing on YMYL topics, reputation is important! The guidelines say, “For example, customer ratings and reviews may be helpful for reputation research of online stores, but much less so for medical information websites.” And also, “For some topics, such as humor or recipes, less formal expertise is OK. For these topics, popularity, user engagement, and user reviews can be considered evidence of reputation. For topics that need less formal expertise, websites can be considered to have a positive reputation if they are highly popular and well-loved for their topic or content type, and are focused on helping users.

Real users, formal and less-formal experts, and a variety of independent sources, then, all come into play when it comes to raters identifying reputations. Thank you, Dr. Haynes!

What makes for a good or bad reputation, according to Google’s Guidelines?

To start with, it’s interesting to note that Google sets an extremely low bar for many local businesses when it comes to their reputation. Nota bene:

Many small, local businesses or community organizations have a small “web presence” and rely on word of mouth, not online reviews. For these smaller businesses and organizations, lack of reputation should not be considered an indication of low page quality.

I find this quote fascinating for three reasons:

1. On the one hand, Moz readers will know that I am a very strong proponent of local businesses investing seriously in earning amazing word of mouth and a large body of positive reviews. Doing so should be table stakes for every local brand, no matter how small and no matter what Google thinks!

2. On the other hand, the fact that Google’s SMB expectations are so modest may lend a welcome note of ease to players just jumping into the local search marketing game; you need to become the best in town, but you’re not up against Google’s index of the whole world!

3. Finally, the foregoing excerpt from the guidelines is useful, because it illustrates how Google conceptualizes reputation in the context of overall page quality. In a nutshell, raters are looking around the web for proof of reputation to help them determine whether a web page deserves to be considered high or low quality.

Google’s document contains multiple examples of signs of a good or bad reputation, which I’ll pare down to just two:

Bad Reputation

Google points to a business selling jungle gyms that is the subject of multiple reviews claiming to have been ripped off and also of news articles citing fraud.

Good Reputation

Google mentions a medical facility which Wikipedia and news articles from respected sources name as one of the top four hospitals in the US.

The difference is easy to see, and your job in marketing a local business is to make it very obvious to the raters into which category your brand falls!

Where to build a reputational beacon any rater can see

Think of those thousands of raters in a boggy maze and learn to construct signals of reputation which handily guide them to a true and good quality assessment. Google lists all of the following as your options for this work:

Customer reviews

The local businesses you market will all make claims on their websites about offering top quality goods and services, but the QRG goes out of its way to instruct raters to disregard this sentiment in favor of the independent evaluations captured in actual customer reviews. Raters can examine your review corpus to see if the public feels the brand is meeting expectations. Famous brands may need to care most about reviews that judge whether a business is living up to hype, but every local company should implement a review acquisition and management strategy which seeks to prove to both the community and the raters that a high-quality reputation is being won via excellent customer service.

Professional reviews/ratings

If your industry includes a professional review site or network, make it a goal to earn this press. In the restaurant space, I’ve learned that most professional review sites don’t accept solicitations. Rather, an eatery must take the indirect approach of building up enough local word-of-mouth buzz to catch the attention of the professional reviewer. If your vertical lends itself to this type of notice, know that Google’s quality raters can closely examine this type of content for signals of brand quality.

Blog posts

If the community you serve is lucky enough to have one or more dedicated local blogs, their authors should be neighbors you get to know. Avoid a hard sell in your outreach. Rather, discover a meaningful way to start talking about your shared love of your city; local bloggers tend to be serious community advocates, and if you can prove that your business shares such aesthetics, you’re taking the first steps to becoming blog-worthy. If Google’s raters can find nearby writers speaking well of the brands you market, it can go far towards validating a good reputation.

Magazine articles

Many online magazines have a small business focus, and while you may need to work hard to achieve the level of fame that would win mentions of the brands you market in a publication like Entrepreneur or Fast Company, smaller concerns like Small Business Trends Magazine regularly spotlight SMBs. Columnists and editors are always looking for a good story, and while the inquiry and submission policies for each magazine will be different, thoughtful outreach on your part with an interesting business anecdote from which peers can derive takeaways is another great way to prove to the raters that a company is growing its good reputation.

News stories

From years of reading local business news stories, I’ve realized that the best way to earn inclusion is through simple helpfulness to the community. Whether that’s providing straight-up relief in a time of crisis, as in the above store of a disaster remediation company who did free work for a resident when her apartment was flooded, or from being a participant in or sponsor of events, teams, conferences, and movements, a local business can build a substantial reputation for good though its support of its neighbors. Sometimes, local stories are even of such considerable human interest that they become syndicated. Actively seek opportunities to become a business that’s known for helping others.

Forum discussions

Local business owners may sometimes wonder whether fora are too old school to be relevant. Google says no, and instructs its raters to check them for discussions of brand quality. If the community you serve has a forum, like the forum of the West Seattle Blog, where neighbors are asking one another about a restaurant, it’s a good thing to be mentioned there. Nextdoor would be another obvious option for local talk about your business. Most fora prohibit self-promotion, but if you become a member of a community hub like these, there may be opportunities for you to increase the visibility of your participation in your town or city and to respond when your company is mentioned and you’ll be offering a very positive impression for Google’s raters to consider.

Awards

I’ve served local business owners who are humble and shy of blowing their own horn, but in the quest for a glowing reputation, there is nothing to stop you from applying for prestigious awards or vying for local ones issued on a smaller scale, like the “best of the county” honors offered by this publication. Not only will it provide a strong signal of public trust on your website, Google Business Profile, and other online assets if you can say “voted best dentist in X in 2022” but the quality raters will encounter these awards and go further along their journey of believing your brand is truly earning a great reputation.

One last tip for reputation growth

Image credit: Steven Christenson

Google’s QRG is quite clear about wanting raters to rely mainly on independent sources to evaluate reputation. This is why it’s so important to get bloggers, columnists, reporters, communities, and organizations talking about the local businesses you market. You want your brands on their domains.

But don’t let a mention earned exist in one place only. When you earn press, reviews, awards, and other fame, repurpose that content on your website, local business listings, and social media profiles. Write some Google posts, shoot a video, craft a blog post, or an Instagram story. This will not only provide multiple paths for a Google search quality evaluator to discover your fame, but it will be remarketing positive messaging to the audience that matters more than any other: your customers!

The ancient Greek playwright Euripides said, “Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.” Local business owners have already built up an impressive store of sagacity simply by running their operations; taking the next step of learning to see reputation as Google does is a habit of success they can easily adopt. Always continue to think customer-first, but thinking search engine-second when it comes to building online renown is surely a tactic for the wise.

How to Measure the Impact of Content Based on Intent

When it comes to measuring the impact of content, you might think of KPIs like “sitewide conversion rate”, or picture an upward graph that shows an increase in traffic.

But are those metrics really meaningful? In this piece, I’ll argue that, no, they’re not. Instead, let’s focus on getting you actionable insights that can help your content flourish, by measuring its impact in a meaningful way.

The problem with sitewide conversion rates

Unless your website is a one-pager, the likelihood is that not all of your pages have the same intent. So why do we still measure conversion rates across an entire site?

The quick and honest answer here is that we do this because it’s easy and because that’s the way it’s always been done. But in reality, measuring your conversion rate across an entire site doesn’t give you any actionable insight - even when used in conjunction with volume of traffic.

It’s an oversimplification.

Using a sitewide conversion rate neglects to consider pages where the intent isn’t to buy something. Think about your blog pages, customer services or FAQ pages. A growth in traffic to these sections won’t directly lead to an increase in sales. But what it will do is drop your sitewide conversion rate. That’s not a bad thing, it just means that using sitewide conversion rates on their own isn’t the best way of measuring performance here.

The answer instead, is to make sure you can report on the intent of your pages to be able to understand what’s performing well and what’s not in their own right.

How can you do this? Well… we separate the pages in our reports based on their intent.

Separate pages based on their intent for reporting

Separating out pages based on their intent for reporting might sound like a pain, but there are ways you can automate this.

The biggest trick you can use is the URL structure. If you have a neat hierarchy, then this can work wonders to help you to group your pages in a way that makes sense to you.

Once they’re set up, you’ll be ready to report on your performance in a flash next time!

Here’s how you can do this in Google Analytics, Data Studio and in Excel/Google Sheets.

How to create segments in Universal Google Analytics

Creating custom segments in Universal Google Analytics allows you to pull out your data in a way that makes sense to you. It also allows you to quickly pull these segments into other reports, saving you countless hours.

What about GA4? “Segments” aren’t available in standard reports in GA4. An alternative called “Comparisons” are, but they can’t be saved once you exit the report. The key mechanics of how Comparisons work is similar to Segments, but can only be used as a quick review rather than an in-depth report. For in-depth reports that use Segments in GA4, you’ll need to visit “Explore” from the left hand tab and set up a new report.

If you haven’t used segments yet in Universal Analytics, you’ll find these by clicking on the blue circle of “All Users”. You’ll also see a button for “Choose segment from list” when looking at virtually any report in Google Analytics.

In Universal Analytics, you’ll see a list of segments that have already been created for you. But for now, these aren’t the ones we want to use. We want to create our own almighty segments.

So go ahead and click the big red button of “+ New Segment”.

Now you’ll need to give your segment a name that will help you find it again later.

Here you can segment your data in pretty much any way you can think of. But for the purposes of today, we’re looking to create a segment to work out your conversion rate based on the intent of the page they landed on. For that, we need to head over to the “Advanced” section under “Conditions”.

This is the place where the magic happens.

You can first choose whether you want to filter based on sessions or users. As we want to find sessions that started on a particular section of your site, you’ll want to keep this filter to “Sessions” and “Include”.

Next, you need to think about what section of the site you want to look at. One of the easiest ones you can start with is blog traffic, especially if you have /blog/, /news/ or similar as the defining hierarchy in your URLs.

If you have both sections, then you can lump these together by using the “OR” function of the filter. This will then show you all of the data based on landing pages that contained either the /blog/ or /news/ in the hierarchy.

One tip: be careful which match condition you use. If you choose “exact match”, then this data might not include ALL of your data, as it won’t include any page landings where parameters were appended. Equally, if you have a hierarchy where the URL you’re looking to match is also used in other pages, then you might have to add exclusions to your filter.

When setting up your segment, always double check your data against your expected raw data in Google Analytics to check for accuracy. Small differences in the way you’ve set up your segments can impact the reliability of your data as you could either under- or over-estimate the volume of traffic, conversions or goals by assuming that your segment is giving you an accurate view. So, manually checking the raw data output against your logic can help to find any holes (or you could even create counter-segments using the reverse logic to check that you’ve covered 100% of your raw data).

When you save your segment, you’ll be able to review your subset of data in seconds, and pull them into other external reports.

Here’s an example of what you’ll typically find when you’re looking at a conversion rate for all users, alongside your segments for commercial pages and blog pages.Your ‘true’ conversion rate for the pages that are designed to convert is much higher than your sitewide conversion rate. You’ll also see that your blog traffic (that might not be designed to convert) has a lower conversion rate - which has impacted your sitewide conversion rate, skewing your outlook on how they’re actually performing.

How to create segments in GA4

To use segments in GA4, you’ll need to visit the “Explore” section. Here, you’ll be able to create your own custom reports and delve deeper into your segmented data. If you’re new to GA4, it’s worth reading Google’s guide to Explorations.

In Explore, segments can be found when setting up your report — you can even add a separate comparative segment to benchmark your data against.

To add a new segment, click on the “Segments” section shown below on the left.

You’ll then be given options to “Include” and “Exclude” your dimensions based on metric values.

As the naming conventions of dimensions in GA4 are different to Universal, you’ll need to include sessions where the “Page location” (URL to me and you) contains “/blog/”. You can add “Or” statements here too if needed.

Once you’ve set up your report, with Explore, you can customize the metrics to view in your reports and choose how to visualize it, unlike Universal Analytics. The world is your oyster to create custom content-based reports here!

How to create Data Studio filters

I love using Google Data Studio. I think it’s an underused tool for content management. Sure, it’s used a lot for top-level reporting, but I’m talking about the real juicy, actionable reports.

When it comes to making deep-diving reports, using Data Studio saves time and allows you to bring together data from different sources like Google Sheets, Search Console, and Google Analytics.

When setting up your data sources from Google Analytics, you’ll be given the option of adding a Google Analytics segment (you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom of your data tab). Here you can import any segment you’ve already made. I’ve imported one of my brand’s Google Analytics segments:Staysure blog.

As well as being able to import segments, you can also create your own filters when you click on “Add a filter”. Doing this prompts this box:

Here you can give your filter a name. This isn’t saved back to Google Analytics, and will only ever be found in the Google Data Studio report that you’re working on, so if you want to work on something particularly complex that you want to reuse, it’s worth adding your conditions as a segment in GA.

Above, I’ve replicated the segment in GA to show you what it would look like if I only wanted to create that filter in Data Studio.

Another benefit of using Data Studio for reporting rather than Google Analytics is that you can layer your filters and blend data together to build in-depth reports that you can jump into without having to dig through data time and time again.

So, if I wanted to find out what percentage of organic landings my page contributed to, that answer’s pretty hard to find in GA without writing down numbers somewhere else, or scrolling through a full dataset.

Instead, in Data Studio, you can use the organic segment from GA and add on a custom filter to look at just the page you want to review. To get your magic number, blend the data to pull through:

• Left hand side: All organic traffic: Dimension: Page, Metric: entrances (+ add a filter for organic)

• Right hand side: Your new ‘page only’ segment: Dimension: Landing page (to act as the key match), Metric: entrances .

To make life easier, rename the fields by clicking on the “ABC” or “AUT” box next to the field name so that it’s something different…

Once you’ve blended your data, you’ll need to create a new field. To do this, click on the Metric title that’s used for your new blended data chart - this then expands to show you data from table 1, table 2 and a new option at the bottom with a plus mark and “Create Field”. Click this to see this pop up:

Here you can create your own formulas based off of your datasets. So this is where we do SUM(my chosen page entrances)/ SUM(all organic landings). It’s important to add the “SUM” when adding calculations to blended datasets to amalgamate the data.

Finish by naming your field and boom. You now know - for any date range you’ve chosen, what proportion of organic traffic that page accounts for.

If you want to get really fancy, you can even add a comparison date range to see how this percentage changes over time.

Creating segments in Google Sheets/Excel

If you want to go old-school, you can even filter pages in Google Sheets, or Excel.

Without manually going through each of your data points, you can create a new column and use a nested “if” statement mixed with a “regexmatch” statement.

This formula has been used on some dummy data to show how you can speed up the categorization of pages based on URL mapping:

=if(REGEXMATCH(A2,"travel-insurance/"),"commercial",if(regexmatch(A2,"news|blog"),"blog",if(regexmatch(A2,"/customer-services/"),"customer services","other")))

You can then use pivot tables to compile your data into segments.

Here, I’ve created a new pivot table using the above data, using the “Group” as the rows, and “Traffic” as the values. I’ve then changed the traffic values to show as a percentage of the column instead of as a sum. This now shows me, in a quick snapshot, how much traffic is attributed to each page type. Using this method can help to segment your data and see how your pages perform based on their intent. Add metrics like conversion rates, phone calls and softer metrics to really understand what makes these pages tick.

What to do if your URLs aren’t clear when intent mapping

If the structure of your site doesn’t make it easy for you to map your intent easily, then you might need to create a master sheet of intent.

This can then be referred to via a VLookup in sheets, or to be used as a blended dataset in Google Data Studio against your other data.

If you want to get really fancy, you can tag your content data in Google Analytics by using a data import into a custom dimension. But you’ll still need to do the hard work in mapping your intent yourself.

Introduction to attribution modeling

Now you know how to review the impact of your content based on its intent, it’s time to make the story a bit more complicated.

Although measures of success with informational intent pages are seen as smaller wins, these pages can also help attribute to sales — eventually. Or, sessions to commercial pages that didn’t convert on a first hit might eventually lead to a sale a while later.

By only reviewing direct conversions in Google Analytics (which is the native metric that’s used), we run the risk of missing opportunities and not seeing the bigger picture of how people use our sites. This could lead to making decisions like culling content that’s actually helpful.

We know that people don’t live in a linear world. We don’t see a product we love and buy it immediately. (Okay, sure, I will put my hand up and admit that SOMETIMES, that’s how the world works.)

But most of the time, we hem and haw over decisions, shop around, look at various sites on our mobiles, searching via Google, social and asking our friends and family for input. We swap devices before we decide what to buy, or we might even walk into a real life shop and talk to someone about it.

To measure this kind of behavior is called multi-channel attribution modeling. It’s an understanding that people don’t simply visit and then buy in a linear way. Their decisions are multifaceted and that means our analytics should reflect that, and attribute leads or sales accordingly. There’s a great introduction to multi-channel attribution modeling by Avinash Kaushik if you fancy wandering down a rabbit hole of discovery there.

You’ll find loads of information on how to use attribution modeling in Google Analytics on a channel basis, but what you often won’t find is how you can do this on a landing page basis.

A search for “attribution modelling” “google analytics” gave me only 17,300 results on Google, suggesting it’s a pretty niche area in itself. Yet adding “landing page” in there, delivered only 2,790 results.

So, not a lot of people are talking about this super powerful report. The reason why they aren’t talking about it isn’t because it’s a secret. It’s because it’s really hard to find.

Assisted conversions by landing page

To get to your assisted conversions by landing page report in Google Analytics, you’ll need to go to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions.

Here, you’ll see a report that shows all of your assisted conversions, based on all of your goals.

Before we get too distracted like a kid in Disney World, let’s set this report up properly with the intention of finding out assisted conversions by landing page.

1. Change the conversions this report sees as a goal from “all” to sales, leads, etc. — whatever you deem as a conversion and are actively tracking. If you don’t change this setting, you’ll also be viewing all of your micro conversions that you’ve set as goals like video views or time on site.

2. Change your lookback window to something meaningful for your business. You can set this at any number of days up to 90.

3. The report you’ll see will automatically be set to channel groupings. The suggested options for the primary dimension are all focused on channel breakdowns like Source/Medium. To change this, go to “other” and select “landing page URL”.

What does the assisted conversion report by landing page show me?

Now you’ve got your data, it’s time to learn what you’re looking at.

• Assisted conversions: shows you how many times that landing page helped someone to convert (but not in that session).

• Assisted conversion value: if you’ve attributed a goal value, this column will show you its value.

• Last Click or Direct Conversions: these are the conversions that you’d typically see in other GA reports that were part of the final converting session.

• Last click or Direct Conversions value: again, if you’ve added a goal value, you’ll see this here.

• Assisted/Last Click or Direct Conversions: this shows you a percentage of assisted conversions versus those that were part of the session that converted. The higher the number, the more important that page is as part of the journey to convert rather than a direct contributor.

How can I use the assisted conversion by landing page report?

You can use the assisted conversion report by landing page to:

• Search for the impact of blog pages as part of a converting journey.

• Use it to decide if landing pages can be removed without impacting conversion.

• Understand the role that different pages have in converting visitors.

In summary:

We’ve learnt that:

• Site-wide conversion rates don’t give us actionable insights by themselves.

• The impact of a page should be measured based on its intent: informational, customer service, and commercial.

• The intent of pages can be segmented using Google Analytics, Google Data Studio or Google Sheets, to give you a top level picture of how they’re performing as a whole towards a common aim.

• Before you make any judgment on how a page is performing and whether it should be removed, consider its wider impact and use attribution modeling to better understand its performance.

I really hope you’ve found this useful and you’re now armed to make your own intent-based reports using whatever toolset you feel comfortable with.

The Four Pillars of Relevancy: How Digital PR Campaigns Can Lead to Gains in Every Sector

Relevance continues to be a hot topic in search, especially since John Mueller broke the internet last year by saying that the “number of links doesn't matter at all”, and that relevant content trumps the quantity of content.

I head up the team at JBH the Digital PR Agency, and whilst growing the team and working with a huge range of brands over the last four years, I've realized that we wear many, many different hats.

For some of our clients, we are their link building agency. We achieve specific links that adhere to specific criteria to support SEO objectives. For other clients, we’re there to help build their brand, create thought leaders, and develop beautiful, shareable content. For those clients, SEO is secondary.

And for other brands, we’re somewhere in the middle.

What has become overwhelmingly clear is that the relevance of the links we build sits under each of these hats, and it’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time working on at JBH, in order to improve our delivery all around.

Who cares about relevance anyway?

If you’ve ever had your content outranked by a tiny, hyper-niche site, then you’ll definitely care about relevance. Even Google prioritizes relevance when deciding where to rank pages.

The good news is that we can learn from this, and apply certain processes to our own activity. In this post, you’ll see how the team here at JBH bakes the principles of topical relevance into our content, outreach, and link building strategies.

I ran a (very scientific) poll on Twitter earlier in the year — presenting my network with four different options, and asking them to select which one they cared most about when it comes to linked coverage. And the results were super interesting

Out of these four options, what do you care about the most when it comes to linked coverage for your clients/brands/sites? (I know it is all of them! But what's the most important for ✨YOU✨)

— Rebecca Moss (@bexmoss) January 17, 2022

Turns out we ALL care about relevance — more than the topic being newsworthy, and interestingly, more than keywords!

It was a trick question, really, as these are the four factors that we benchmark our content and ideas against. Nonetheless, it was quite telling that keywords were (ironically) bottom of the rankings.

What does relevance really mean in the context of digital PR?

Relevance means different things to different people. So, I decided to create a framework through which to run every single idea — with the aim of ensuring said idea sits somewhere on the spectrum of relevance for our clients.

Above, you’ll see the graphic we created to check our ideas against what we believe to be the four key pillars of relevance. As long as our ideas fit into one of the quarters, and as close to the middle as possible, we know we’re on the right track.

The key pillars of the JBH Relevance Spectrum

1. Audience — would my client or brand's audience be interested in this content?

2. Authority — is my client or brand an authority on the subject? Could they be interviewed about it?

3. Keywords — does it contain keywords that we want to rank for, and do we have a page on the site that makes sense to link to?

4. Newsworthiness — will journalists care about what we are saying? What are we adding to the conversation?

Relevant content drives links to key commercial pages

When done right, digital PR work that focuses on relevance can deliver so much more than just links — and brands are catching on to its commercial impact.

In the last 12 months, I've been inundated with requests from brands looking for links to their commercial pages, compared to links from larger creative content campaigns. The digital PR industry has come full circle, and we’re going back to the basics of content marketing.

But don’t get me wrong, building links to commercial content is really hard. Now, we dig deep into the business, the sector, and the website itself to understand how to develop our link acquisition strategy to get the best results for the brand. Instead of having a link-first mindset, we challenged ourselves to have a research-first mindset.

Relevance sits at the heart of this effort, and the impact of this work drives true commercial value — but how do we make this work for brands in different industries and sectors?

Step 1: We ask the right questions

From the second we sign a contract with a new brand, we’re on a journey of discovery. We need to know about the business, their goals, and what success looks like for them through the medium of digital PR. We stop being link builders and become intrinsically involved with the business we’re representing.

Step 2: We give ourselves clear boundaries before tackling ideation

Ideation can sometimes be a free-for-all, but setting boundaries around what topics and themes we can ideate around can be so helpful in guiding the way to a truly relevant idea that can be angled towards a prioritized landing page.

Step 3: We forget formats and let the idea guide us to a creative solution

Our creative solutions are always backed by data, but we let the idea guide us as to how the data will be presented. We never have a “type” of campaign in mind when we approach ideation.

Step 4: We use the relevance spectrum to stress test our ideas

Before sharing ideas with the client or brand, we’ll stress-test our ideas against the relevance spectrum to ensure we’re content that our ideas truly match the client and how they want to be presented.

Case study: How this process drove traffic and increased visibility for a private medical center in the UK

By following the framework outlined above, we were able to increase visibility for a healthcare brand in a very competitive market by over 300%. Here’s how we hit all of the key elements of the relevance spectrum, plus the impact and outcomes of following this approach:

Authority — is my client or brand an authority on the subject? Could they be interviewed about it?

We met with the founders of the facility to discuss their key campaign objectives. Much like our Twitter poll, relevance was top priority — along with showcasing the expertise of the team and their innovative approach to recovery.

We left the meeting understanding what they were willing to talk about, in addition to the topics they were not so comfortable with — helping us to keep our ideas within their boundaries.

Audience — would my client or brand's audience be interested in this content?

We also spoke with their admissions team, who were able to tell us more about the most common or frequent questions they are asked by service users. We then used this insight to help us develop campaigns or pitch ideas that answered said queries.

In addition to this, we looked more broadly at the publications the service users and their families were likely to read, and analyzed topics that might fit those outlets.

Keywords — does it contain keywords that we want to rank for, and do we have a page on the site that makes sense to link to?

We then met with their SEO team, who were able to give us an onsite content roadmap, target keywords, and a prioritized list of landing pages mapped to those keywords, as well as a timeline for those pages to be published, so we could plan our digital PR stories in advance.

They also gave us information on the competition, including how aggressive they were being with link acquisition across the board. This helped us with benchmarking, providing us with a really solid base for our activity.

Newsworthiness — will journalists care about what we are saying? What are we adding to the conversation?

With all of this information at our disposal, we were in a great place to start thinking about campaign ideas, but we needed to absorb plenty of information about the sector first so we understood what we were dealing with.

We set up media alerts for key phrases, and brand alerts for the competition, so we could see exactly what was being published. Looking closely at the competition, we learned what was working well for them — and crucially, what wasn't working quite so well.

We set up RSS feeds to deliver news relating to the priority keywords and read it each day, helping us become attuned to the newsworthy topics relating to addiction recovery.

From this, we watched out for which journalists were covering topically relevant stories, and added them to our prospecting list. We then set to work coming up with ideas that aligned with all of the above information.

The impact — high authority links to commercial pages

By following this approach, we found that we were able to secure highly relevant links and coverage — all while remaining in sync with the SEO team working on the site.

As the content we produced was so relevant to the brand, it made sense for the journalists to link to key service pages. This is how we achieved the following commercial gains as a result of pitching topically relevant content for the brand:

• Traffic was up more than 200% year-on-year

• Over half (56%) of the links built pointed to a key service page

• Organic traffic to their commercial pages increased by 500%

• 167% more keywords were on the first page of Google

This five-step checklist ensures relevance is prioritized in every digital PR campaign

In order to make this work cross-industry, we’ve developed a five-point checklist to ensure that relevance is prioritized at every stage. Depending on the brand and the sector, we’ll follow some or all of the points below to ensure that we’re considering the relevance of our digital PR campaign ideas above all else.

1. Research the industry in which your brand operates

• How well-established is the industry?

• Who are the key players you’ll be competing against?

• How competitive are the keywords that you need to rank for the brand?

• What PR and SEO activity are the key players doing? And how much?

2. Understand the business you’ve been tasked to build links to

• How well-established is the brand in relation to the competition?

• What products or services do they want to push?

• What is working well, and what isn’t working quite so well?

• Where are their overall marketing efforts being concentrated?

• What markets and/or territories are important to them?

3. Understand the website you’ve been tasked to build links to

• How well-established is the website?

• How many links or referring domains do your commercial pages have right now?

• How does that compare to the key players outlined above?

• Are there any content gaps that need to be filled?

4. Analyze the competition

• Identify competing pages and analyze how they are working well

• What links do the competition have that you don’t?

• How aggressive is their link acquisition?

• What content topics are your competitors covering?

5. Keywords and landing pages

• What are they? Do they have a corresponding landing page?

• Does your client agree with your priorities?

• What is the intent of the keywords?

• How competitive are those keywords?

This framework can be followed to achieve results for brands in most sectors — but the setup is key

It is so easy to get relevance wrong in the context of digital PR. Branded campaigns aren’t needed in order to be relevant. We now need to look more closely at target audiences and produce content that appeals both to them AND the publications that they read.

By stepping away from the link-first mindset and applying some research-led common sense we can produce more relevant campaigns that achieve measurable results against SEO metrics.