Should You Make the Move? An SEO’s Journey from Agency to In-House

I’ve heard over and over from fellow SEOs that they just “fell into” the industry and didn’t know much about it beforehand. Well, I am no exception. I searched far and wide for a marketing job prior to graduating college in 2018, but it was my sister who introduced me to the concept of SEO. She suggested I apply to the agency she worked at, so I quickly started Googling to learn more about the concept. After my brief research and a few interviews, I found myself at a large digital marketing agency.

I loved working at the agency with its fast-paced work day and continuous opportunities to learn, but after nearly three years of working with clients, managing roadmaps, and compiling deliverables, I was ready for a change. I know many people who left agencies to work in-house, and I wanted to know what the other side looked like.

Now, as I write this piece, I find myself at a high-growth media holding company, still driving SEO strategy, but with all of my focus on a single brand. With the Great Resignation still in full force, I wanted to step up and share some of my learnings from my transition from agency to internal SEO. Hopefully, if you’re considering a career shake-up, this will help you in your journey.

Similarities

While my day-to-day looks pretty different in my in-house role, some things never change. Below is a snapshot of the biggest similarities between the roles — at least from my experience.

Same SEO knowledge

Surprise, surprise! You still need the same SEO knowledge in-house and at an agency. From evaluating a robots.txt file to optimizing on-page content to recommending site speed improvements to boost Core Web Vitals, the SEO skills I need have remained the same.

Keep in mind that this may not be true for everyone, depending on the nature of your company and your daily responsibilities. For example, if you work at an agency that primarily focuses on local SEO, you may see a very different day-to-day if you were to transition to an in-house role at a large corporation. However, if you’ve taken the time to build up your content, technical, local, and international SEO skills, then you can take that knowledge and apply it in any SEO position. Being well-rounded serves you well during a career transition.

Same tools

At the agency, we had access to an array of platforms, so I really had the opportunity to pick my go-to lineup and learn those tools inside and out.

For example, we had access to at least five different keyword research tools, three different site crawlers, and multiple analytics platforms. Although there were some situations when I had no option as to what platform to use (like when working with a client’s analytics), I typically got my pick of the SEO tools.

While I’ve found that the number of tools I have access to is smaller in-house, they’re all familiar favorites. I’ve lucked out in that my favorite keyword research and crawling tools are still the norm in my day-to-day, but keep in mind that, if you are transitioning, you may have to familiarize yourself with new interfaces based on your company’s subscriptions.

Even if your company uses slightly different tools, they all serve generally the same purposes, like keyword research, rank tracking, crawling, and analytics. At the end of the day, even if an internal company has absolutely no paid tools, you can always rely on good ole Google Search Console to come through.

If you happen to be the first SEO hire and get your selection of which tools to use, I’d recommend checking out Moz, SEMRush, and Screaming Frog as a great starting point.

Same need to synthesize information

At the agency, I learned the valuable skill of taking SEO information and synthesizing it down for non-SEOs to understand – i.e. the “why” and the “how” behind your analyses and recommendations. For example, your point of contact may be a product marketing manager who doesn’t know the importance of creating top of funnel content because, in their eyes, users convert (aka bring in revenue) from bottom of funnel content. They may think to themselves, “Why would you ever want to create content that does not directly lead to a conversion?” While you may be thinking, “Why wouldn’t they want to grow their topical authority with top of funnel information that builds trust with users and search engines alike?” That’s when the value of providing the “why” behind your recommendations is so, so important.

Even though I’m no longer working with clients day in and day out, I’m constantly communicating with other stakeholders who aren’t as familiar with SEO as I am, and may not understand why top of funnel content, for example, is such a priority. Being able to synthesize data, explain its importance, and show how it fits into the larger picture is a skill that is just as necessary internally as it is at an agency.

Differences

The differences were some of the most surprising and exciting opportunities to learn during my transition. Every role and company is going to present their own learning curves, but below were some of the largest differences I noticed in my experience.

More collaboration with other teams

While I worked with other SEOs frequently at the agency, I didn’t spend much time collaborating with other departments. I had an understanding of other channels, like SEM and display, but oftentimes I didn’t get the chance to work together on a holistic strategy.

Additionally, I usually communicated directly with my points of contact (with the occasional dev team on the line to discuss the most technical implementations), so I rarely had the chance to discuss things like content creation directly with editorial teams or content promotion with social teams.

Now, working in my internal role at a high-growth company, I work with these other teams daily. Not only with other marketing channels, like email, but also with editorial, video, social, and design teams, resulting in more opportunities to have our content do double (and even triple!) duty.

So, what do these differences look like in action? Let’s say I want to get a blog page created because I identified a strong keyword opportunity that fit into the pillar of content the team was already working to build out. At the agency, I would recommend creating a blog page to rank in organic search, and promoting it on owned channels. However, because I didn’t work directly with those teams, I rarely saw the content promoted across other channels, meaning its potential was limited.

In my internal role, I’ll recommend creating a piece of content for SEO purposes that’s also a strong video opportunity, and communicate this to the video team. That video can be added to YouTube, embedded on the web page, and be spliced up and added to TikTok and Instagram Reels. Additionally, I can include a link to the final blog page in the upcoming email newsletter to reach an even wider audience. Essentially, because I’m in-house with these other teams and in constant communication with them, it’s easier to get the most value from our content that we possibly can via collaboration.

Fewer hard deadlines

One of the most surprising differences I noticed when I moved from my agency role was a greater need to prioritize projects as a result of having fewer hard deadlines. At the agency, I had weekly meetings with my clients to discuss deliverables, issues, and performance, meaning I always knew when I needed to get my work done by: before that meeting.

However, in my position internally, I set my own pace. Yes, occasionally I’ll have deadlines to meet for other stakeholders, but I’m primarily setting and meeting my own goals. As someone who’s organized but has a lot of areas that pique my interest, I had to really sharpen my prioritization skills. This new freedom, which is by far my favorite thing about being in an internal role, means that I have to work harder to focus on balancing the effort and impact of projects in my day-to-day work.

More SEO-adjacent work

As I mentioned above, my favorite part of working internally is the freedom I have in my role. This may partially be due to the nature of my new company, but I now have the opportunity to learn more about how other departments function and dip my toes into SEO-adjacent projects.

For example, rather than spending most of my time knee deep in audits, SOPs, and deliverables, I get to spend more time thinking about how to better engage the users that we get from organic search via UX improvements. I get to ideate with our Customer Experience team to plan A/B tests, plan out qualitative user tests, and experiment with new content formats. I get to go directly into the CMS to add FAQs (and don’t forget the corresponding Schema!) to help rank for long-tailed keywords. And I get to learn new platforms, like AWeber for email, because we didn’t already have a dedicated team upon my joining.

I absolutely love how much flexibility I have, and I was surprised by how many areas of the site I could touch when I was the one directly responsible for its success.

Takeaways for other SEOs

Some people may have gotten to this point in the article and are wondering “But is agency or in-house better?” And my answer, in classic SEO fashion, is: “It depends.”

Both roles have their unique opportunities, and one is going to be more likely to help you build certain skills than the other. Below is a summary of what I’ve learned from each position that will hopefully help you get a better idea of what to expect and how to prepare.

Learnings

• Agencies are great to build an SEO foundation as they’re more likely to have an established training program to help you build up your skills. If you’re just starting in the industry, this could be a great option to fast-track your abilities.

• Agencies help you develop incredible communication and presentation skills as you work with clients regularly, and those skills are highly transferable to an internal role. My suggestion is to take every opportunity you can to present, since that experience is valuable anywhere.

• Working in-house can be more flexible, which creates a greater need to prioritize tasks and stay focused. Effort vs. impact analyses and writing out my daily priorities to share with my team have helped me stay accountable and on track.

• There’s more frequent reporting internally as leadership wants to have a pulse on business performance. We focused primarily on monthly reporting at my agency, and we provide weekly reporting at my current job. When doing these types of reports, keep in mind who is seeing the data to determine how in-depth or high-level you should be.

Skills

While I generally use the same skills in each role, I’ve found that some skills are more important to have in certain positions. Below are my top three soft skills for SEOs considering either agency or in-house work:

Agency

• Client communication (written and verbal)

• PowerPoint and presentation creation

• Storytelling

In-House

• Business strategy

• Project prioritization

• Comfort with a looser structure (there are less formal audits and SOPs)

Additionally, below are the top three skills I’d recommend building for success at either type of company:

• Ability to effectively communicate SEO information to non-SEOs

• Roadmap building

• Agility and adaptability

As I’ve mentioned, everyone is going to have different experiences, no matter where they are, but hopefully you have a clearer picture of what to expect prior to transitioning from one role to another. Both roles have been valuable in building my SEO career, and I wish you luck in your journey!

A Little Irish Wisdom for Your Local SEO

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to the Moz community! We’re always looking for new ways to set our readers and customers up for success, and today, we’re going to take a look at the inspiring tale of how a whole nation has built a path to real human progress for its people, with takeaways that can be applied to your own business and community.

A first century well spent

Last year, the Republic of Ireland turned 100, and according to author Dan Henry, the Irish have accomplished all of the following in their first century:

• Living longer and easier — death rates have been halved due to vaccinations for major diseases of the 20th century.

• Eating and being healthier — there is a strong focus on local foods, eating more plant-based foods, and Irish residents are entitled to health care.

• Creating better lives for women and children — the maternal death rate in Ireland in 2019 was zero, and all Irish children are entitled not only to health care, but to an educational system that has resulted in 58% of young people achieving higher education, compared to an EU average of 45%, and just 37% in the US.

• Earning more and helping more — today’s Irish earn five times as much as their grandparents did, and they have been named the most generous people in the world in terms of national and international charitable giving.

• Being happier — 96% of the Irish are satisfied with their lives.

Multinationals are well aware of Irish opportunity

Foreign investors know all about the Irish success story, and firms like IDA consider Ireland one of the best bets on the planet for their clients because:

• Ireland has the youngest population in Europe and one of the most educated workforces in the world. Its National Skills and Strategy Action Plan has the goal of making Ireland’s educational system the best in the EU in the next five years.

• Pro-climate government policy is making Ireland a hub of the green economy, with its wind and solar production already being the second-best in Europe, and its financial commitments to research and development making it an attractive environment for business growth compared to nations shackled to the dead-end fossil fuel industry.

• Nine out of the top 10 multinational tech companies have set up offices in Ireland, as have all of the top five global software brands. At Moz, we’re very proud of our own Irish team.

But my own interest in understanding the success of Ireland goes deeper than the profit margins of big business. It goes right to the heart of how the Irish people are embracing national and local economics.

The wisdom of Mother Éire

I’m a US citizen, but as is the case for many of my 31.5 million Irish-American cousins, Éire remains Mother, and I keep in regular contact with her via media. I’ve noticed that you cannot open an Irish newspaper or watch Irish television today without encountering a national mindset bent on uplifting the whole people to a sustainable future in which everyone thrives.

A single RTÉ program, Nationwide, perfectly encapsulates a country that is determined to eat locally, buy everyday goods from its own nearby producers, celebrate the arts, and restore its damaged environment. Meanwhile, listening to Irish talk radio makes it clear that nearly everyone in the country, from schoolchildren to elders, is notably community-minded and in search of a good, green future for all. The educated opinions of the callers are interspersed with ads for EVs and Irish-made goods. From gorgeous greenways for pedestrians and cyclists, to redeveloping wildflower meadows for pollinators, to amazing grants, fairs, and basic income for the country’s beloved artists and artisans, Ireland is doing the considerable work of creating a society rich in hope and happiness. As a local SEO who is deeply tied to the principles of localism, I can tell you that such talk makes me giddy with the possibilities of a fine life for everybody.

And it has made me wonder if there is anything in Irish culture that predisposes the people, as a whole, towards that magic ingredient many say is essential to all successful movements: sharing a vision. I think there may be clues that all of us can learn from, and apply to our own community-building work of local SEO, in some very old sayings with which many Irish people are familiar from their formative years.

Seanfhocal: 10 Irish proverbs for doing good local SEO

Seanfhocal is Irish for “old word”, and these time-honored sayings may come in handy in helping your business or clients contribute to re-building our communities into places of peace and plenty for all.

1. No matter how many rooms you have in your house, you’re only able to sleep in one bed

Instead of basing a society on greed and hoarding, localism recognizes that we all have the same basic, inherent needs and rights.

2. It’s not a delay to stop and sharpen the scythe

Take every opportunity you can to become educated about your community’s needs and about how to communicate via today’s media; what you learn will serve both you and everyone around you. And fair play to you for already being here, studying SEO, so that you can become an effective communicator of solutions to local needs!

3. You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind

Once you’ve put in the study, be bold and start doing! Take action to get the word out about the local businesses you’re marketing because you’ve as much right to success as anyone else. Your efforts won’t be perfect, but you can learn from every mistake. Speaking of which…

4. An old broom knows the dirty corners best

Wisdom comes from learned experience. SEO is an experimental environment and your openness to ongoing testing will serve you well. Already have years of learning under your belt of how to market local brands? Consider joining a Buy Local association to help share your knowledge with new brooms.

5. Don’t fear an ill wind if your haystacks are tied down

Our industry can seem like one in which everyone lives in fear of the next Google update, but time has shown that those who put in the work to implement good, human-centric practices tend to come out fine, time and again.

6. While a person is out, their food goes cold

You’ve got to keep at it in local SEO. Neglected local business listings end up with wrong information on them. Neglected reviews create a slow leak of reputation and revenue. Neglected websites get hacked. Make local search marketing part of your daily activities for the long haul and use tools and software to create a manageable workflow for all this maintenance.

7. An empty sack does not stand

Don’t base a local SEO campaign on fake listings and fake reviews. You can’t build lasting success on shortcuts.

8. A lamb’s bleat is often more telling than a dog’s bark

Perfect for social media and marketing, in general — a humble and helpful approach to communication will go a lot farther in most industries than self-serving braggadocio. Run a local business that shares, supports, contributes, aids, and stands in solidarity with its community.

9. Anyone can lose their hat in a fairy wind

Some things are beyond our control. Throughout the pandemic, local business owners have learned to do the best they can, all things considered. Few situations are ideal, and a reality-based optimism is a balanced approach to both running a business and running a life.

10. However long the day, the evening will come

Bad times don’t last forever, my friends. Take this as encouragement to persist in your efforts, to keep learning from others, and loving your life. I know — it isn’t easy — but don’t let anything steal your best visions for how good things could be.

While we can’t all live in Ireland (more’s the pity!), and though we’re all dwelling in different countries and circumstances, there’s much to be learned from Éire’s ancient sagacity as well as the Republic’s young and experimental first hundred years. If we find takeaways in what the Irish have been working so hard to achieve and apply them wherever we happen to be, many can benefit. Wishing you a future of shared health, common prosperity, and a bit of good luck on this special day!

How to Prep Your SEO Strategy for a New Website

From web development to branding and design, there are plenty of moving parts when launching a new website, but your SEO strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought.

In fact, your SEO strategy should be one of the primary considerations before you even start your website. To take things a step further, the best case scenario would be that your website structure is fully built based on the SEO strategy you already have in place. Doing this from the get-go saves lots of headaches for things like web development, content formatting and design, URL structures, and more.

So instead of fighting to make your website SEO-ready later on (which, trust me, is always an uphill battle), start with this holistic SEO checklist for new websites and save yourself valuable time and resources, and experience the beauty of good SEO (i.e. revenue) in a fraction of the time.

Why is SEO valuable for new websites?

New websites are like infants. They can’t comprehend language yet (no indexed pages), they don’t have many friends (no backlinks), and thus also have no authority (aka they can’t do much for society, yet).

As time presses on, Google starts to sniff out and apply changes as your website matures (assuming the SEO strategy is done right), and you’ll soon see that there are some big kids on the playground to contend with.

But don’t be afraid, all you need is a clever SEO strategy.

A baby website can start by focusing on longtail, low-competition keywords until it works its way up to toddler, then teenager, then full-fledged adult. Over time, with some tender SEO love and care, your new website can grow to compete and even overtake the strongest of competition.

So, if you’re ready to fast forward your baby website to an adult and beat the competition, just follow this SEO checklist for new websites!

1. Pick the right domain name (you can’t change it after!)

The right domain name is associated with SEO equity, so aligning your company and brand name with your domain name is critical. When you have a new domain, you’re essentially starting your SEO from scratch.

So, how do you find a domain name?

Here are some popular options to check if the domain you’d like to purchase is available:

• Godaddy.com

• Bluehost.com

• Domain.com

Bonus points if your brand has a keyword similar to what you do as a business. It’s helpful, although not a must. If in doubt, choose a smooth brand name over a keyword.

2. Choose a high-speed website hosting provider

I personally recommend Siteground for its 100% uptime reliability, quick page time loads, and support (specifically for Wordpress users). The host’s quality has a gigantic impact on your site's performance, especially when it comes to a dedicated IP, SSD, HDD or other forms of storing, processor, and operational systems.

And, let’s be honest, the average Joe won’t wait longer than three seconds for a website to load, so ensuring an excellent host is the first step of your SEO strategy.

3. Set up Google Search Console

Google Search Console is like your SEO fairy godmother. It’ll provide you with tons of that that you need to achieve SEO success. With Google Search Console, you can check things like:

• Page speed issues

• Organic keywords that bring in website clicks

• Your average click through rate (CTR)

• Sitemap submission

• Crawl and index errors

• Page performance

…and much more!

But before we get too ahead of ourselves, make sure to verify your website in Google Search Console, so that it starts to collect data. You’ve got a few options to do this, which are outlined here.

Once you buy your domain name, Google Search Console is up and running, and you’ve got a speedy host, you’ve built the bare minimum for a website, and it’s now time to focus on developing your SEO strategy.

Quick note: at this stage, you may want to also consider adding Google Analytics to your website, as that is often the starter database for all of your marketing data. However, with recent updates regarding data privacy changes in the EU, I suggest not to rely too heavily on it and check for an analytics platform that matches your country’s customer data privacy laws.

4. Study your SEO competition

Once you’ve completed the essentials for your website, it's time to study the competition. When analyzing and making a list of your competitors consider these questions:

• How is their company similar to yours? How is it different? Check out their unique selling points.

• What topics do they write about?

• What keywords are they already ranking for?

One super important thing to consider here is your true “SEO competitors”. Every business has product and service competitors (people who sell similar stuff), but that doesn’t mean they have an SEO strategy that’s worth trying to outperform. The key here is to identify who sells similar stuff, writes similar content, and is piling up top keyword rankings. Those are your “SEO competitors”, and they’re who you want to beat.

Once you’ve identified your SEO competitors, it’s time to perform a keyword gap analysis. A keyword gap analysis uncovers the keywords you need to rank for in comparison to competitors, in order to close the gap. And with a bit of intentional filtering, you can indeed use this information to soon outrank them.

Here’s a snackable checklist to perform a keyword gap analysis:

1. Add your root domain versus your chosen competitor root domains into an SEO tool like Moz.

2. Review the competitor overlap and shared keywords.

3. Export that into a spreadsheet and filter for the keywords that are relevant for your website (this is where the manual work comes into play, but it’s time that’s extremely well spent, especially because it helps you build your keyword map).

For more information on how to perform a keyword gap analysis with Moz, check out this guide and free template.

5. Research keywords and create your keyword map

Keywords are at the center of your SEO strategy, because they’re what connects search queries to your content listed in the SERPs.

Google’s goal is to use the keywords used in search queries to identify and present the most valuable information to searchers, otherwise known as “search intent”.

For example, let’s say you live in Los Angeles and you want to order delivery pizza, so you Google “pizza delivery Los Angeles”. Something similar to the image below pops up (though it can vary based on your search history and IP address):

As the searcher, Google has understood that your “search intent” was to order delivery pizza from businesses in Los Angeles, so the SERPs directly show businesses that match that criteria. Google uses that concept to match keywords with content all day, every day, no matter whether someone wants to buy pizza, compare CRM software, or find socks for their boyfriend.

A keyword is only as powerful as the search intent it matches.

Say you want to make some vegetarian dishes, but you don’t have all the time in the world to do it so you type “quick vegetarian dishes” into Google.

You tap the first one and find it takes two hours to make.

“Ugh! That’s not the one” you think to yourself.

You're onto the next one and then the next.

Finally the third link down only takes 15 minutes to make.

“Okay, now we’re talking!”

If there are enough people intending to find a quick vegetarian meal and discover that the third option delivers on that “quick” part, then chances are that page will rank higher for intent and keyword matches and eventually overtake the first option.

Let’s now put this into context for your SEO strategy.

Search intent and the buyer journey

If you can uncover longtail, low competition keywords that exactly match what you’re selling, that’s your direct path to ensuring SEO has a major impact on your revenue and long-term profitability.

Understanding search intent plays a major role with buyer journey stages, so ensuring that you’re crafting content that’s appropriate for buyers in the awareness, consideration, and decision stage is crucial to carrying out the most effective SEO plan.

I often create SEO strategies for the B2B world, so understanding where the reader is in their decision-making process is crucial. If someone searches “what is marketing automation”, you wouldn’t want to give them a full-blown software landing page, because they’re probably not even ready to buy it yet. They just want to understand what marketing automation is. That’s where SEO comes into play and provides that informational content in order to build up brand credibility — emphasis on the “informational” part there. When done correctly, that same reader will come back to you when they’re ready to buy.

As with all things in marketing, being helpful is always more successful than aggressively trying to sell something to someone who isn’t ready.

So when choosing keywords, you’ll need to consider both search intent and the buyer journey by asking questions like:

• Does the keyword truly match my product or service?

• Does the keyword match questions that customers have asked (or might ask) throughout their buying journey?

• What is the keyword’s difficulty? (level of competition to rank for that keyword)

• What is the search volume of the keyword?

• What page types appear in the SERPs for this keyword? (blog vs landing page vs home page)

The number one SEO strategy essential: your keyword map

At AS Marketing, we make this keyword selection process simple by using an SEO playbook to create a keyword map, which ultimately becomes the content strategy for new websites:

Step 1: We review where the website is now in terms of what’s ranking, what the top pages are, and create benchmarks for key SEO and website engagement stats. With a brand new baby website, this probably zero, but that’s ok, because this playbook also turns SEO zeros to heroes!

Step 2: We do a keyword gap analysis based on top SEO competitors, expand on the keyword list with our own keyword research, and then create a website structure that can achieve the desired business goals. If we know where the website is versus where it wants to be, we can strategize to make that happen. We also consider how users will find content coming from Google organic search as well when searching around on the website, so we always strive to find a balance.

Step 3: We then build a thorough keyword list that spans across the entire buyer journey, including all relevant product or service keywords and organize that into the main content verticals (content that scales and compounds organic search volume over time). Content verticals are often website sections such as industry pages, the blog, use case pages, product pages, and more.

Step 4: Now it’s time for the keyword map - the most important part of your SEO strategy. When creating this map, we cluster keywords (put related keywords into groups), so we know exactly what pages to create in terms of landing pages, blog articles, services pages, or collections and products. Importantly, we’re also getting aligned on the most efficient keyword for a website to try and rank for. Once we know this, we write out the URLs, headings, meta data, and more.

To give you a better idea, here’s an example of a keyword map in a spreadsheet:

Now comes the fun part, building out your content calendar and breathing life into your website.

6. Build a strategic content calendar (and keep posting)

When done consistently and with intention, a strategic content calendar naturally attracts customers and helps you rank for keywords.

Here’s how to build such a content plan:

1. Prioritize sections of your keyword map: You might well end up with a keyword map that spans 100+ pages. This is actually a good thing, as it means you have a lot of space to accumulate organic traffic (remember, even multi-million monthly traffic websites like HubSpot began with zero!). To start, you’ll want to prioritize pages that your website needs right away, such as product or service pages, as those have the highest likelihood to result in conversions and generate revenue for your business.

2. Optimize your content: Writing content that ranks does take some best practice flex. Don’t forget to use keywords in the H1, URL, and metadata. If you’ve truly matched keywords with search intent, this comes naturally through writing anyways - keyword stuffing be gone!

3. Track your keyword rankings: Once you publish content, keep an eye on how it’s performing. Even if you start out way down at the bottom, content can absolutely move up over time as Google perceives your content to be trustworthy, you provide a good user experience, and your Domain Authority increases. Patience is a virtue here!

4. Post consistently: In order to improve those last three points, you need a consistent publishing schedule. There’s no one exact number, but I often recommend at least 4 new website pages per month. Remember that SEO has a compounding effect, so the more individual pages rank, the more likely it is that content across your entire domain ranks.

7. Ensure an optimized URL structure

I mentioned putting keywords in your URL briefly above in the content calendar section, but I’ll mention it again, because it is super important for ensuring that your content is being set up properly.

Here’s how this works with a fictional website:

1. www.catsinabag.com is your official domain

2. www.catsinabag.com/blog/ is the URL for your blog, in which /blog is the parent page

3. www.catsinabag.com/blog/cat-food-for-cats is the URL for a blog article focused on ranking for the keyword “cat food for cats”

In the words of Rand Fishkin, “if there’s other keywords you haven’t used, or URLs you haven’t targeted with certain keywords, you do so during this process. This way you’re covering your tracks, making certain there are words and phrases that are covered early on.”

Also remember that URLs are permanent, so changing one is like starting any SEO attached to that URL from scratch. It's always best to choose a URL-friendly system and stick with it to avoid any sudden drop in organic traffic or rankings. And if you have to update them, be sure to redirect the old URL to the new one, so any backlinks attached to it don’t disappear.

8. Review Core Web Vitals and page experience

Just like you go to check your core vitals at the doctor, you should do the same for your website to steer clear of any unnecessary issues.

Why does this matter?

Here’s my two cents as a seasoned SEO plus a bit of information from Google on their related algorithm update:

SEO has been around for a while. There’s tons and tons of content out there and more is being published every day. This means that Google is having an increasingly tough time differentiating who to give the top spots, so CWV and page experience are a way to differentiate the SEO winners and losers. SEO is no longer just about putting keywords in the right places, it now also involves content format, design, page load speed, as well as user behavior — like time on page and bounce rates.

In a nutshell, sustainable SEO success no longer ends with the click, you have to wholeheartedly satisfy your readers while they’re on the page in order to consistently rank.

The simplest way to review your website’s Core Web Vitals and site speed chops is to pop your domain into PageSpeed Insights.

While this is an extremely technical part of SEO, PageSpeed Insights quickly identifies errors and suggests how to fix them in plain English.

Here’s an example of what the results might look like:

If you have a score that comes up as yellow or red, you’ll see suggestions you can show to your developer in order to improve.

9. Observe accessibility

Accessibility simply means how easy it is for users (and search engines) to access the information on your website. This element is taken into consideration as a ranking factor. You want an accessible site for everyone, right? Of course, you’ll want to make sure that your content is being indexed and crawled correctly, but you can also take these steps to ensure that happens:

• Optimize alt text in images (for screen readers)

• Use enough contrast (make sure your colors are easy on the eye)

• Correctly label elements like buttons

• Make your font size big enough to read

10. Promote, promote, promote

Whether for SEO or not, your website content shouldn’t just be published and sit there. The phrase “build it and they will come” is completely untrue when it comes to SEO.

You have put in the effort to create your content, so it deserves to be shown to your audience. Think about where you already have a strong presence and harness that. Maybe it's on social media, YouTube, or your email list. Whatever the case may be, think about how you can use other channels to drive even more traffic to your website. This in turn improves your SEO, because the more people who spend time on your website, the more Google identifies that you have trustworthy content.

And if you aren’t getting the traction you hoped for when all your SEO efforts are said and done, you may even think about paid traffic for the first few months (after all, Google loves their money, and rewards those who pay). Doing this will help you to test your website design and content with pay per click visitors, so you can use this data to quickly adjust your SEO accordingly!

Now you’re set for SEO success

Ultimately, SEO is a marathon, and not a sprint. Your overall focus point should be laying down a strong website structure from the get-go, so you can scale easily and accumulate monthly organic traffic.

As you move along with your SEO strategy, continue to monitor and update so you can optimize for the best results. With ever-changing competitor strategies and trends, your SEO strategy should never be put in autopilot. Consistent hard work brings in consistent results.

Bam! There you have it – a bulletproof SEO checklist for new websites!

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.