Title Tag Rewrites: 7 Months Later

Back in August, we analyzed 10,000 SERPs and found that Google was rewriting 58% of the title tags we were able to track. In September, after some serious objections from the SEO community, Google released the following statement:

Based on your feedback, we made changes to our system which means that title elements are now used around 87% of the time, rather than around 80% before.

This immediately raises two questions. First, has the situation improved? Second, why the huge mismatch between our numbers (and similar numbers by others in the community)?

Rewrites by the numbers

We collected new data on March 2, 2022 from the MozCast 10,000-keyword tracking set. Here are the basic stats, which are very similar to what we found in August 2021:

• 84,639 page-one results

• 71,265 unique URLs

• 57,832 <title> tags

• 33,733 rewrites

So, let’s compare the August 2021 rewrites to the March 2022 rewrites:

Technically, the numbers did go down, but this probably isn’t the news you had hoped to hear. If 57% of titles in our study were rewritten, then — I think we can all agree with this math — 43% did not get rewritten. So, how do we reconcile our 43% with Google’s 87%?

Truncation, from simple to …

First off, our definition of “rewrite” is extremely broad, and it covers truncation, where Google just runs out of physical space. In August, I took a pretty simplistic view of truncation, but let’s try to give Google some benefit of the doubt. I’m going to dig into three forms of truncation, starting with the simplest:

1) Simple truncation

The simplest form of truncation is when Google cuts off a long title but preserves the original text from the beginning. For example:

No one is doing anything wrong here — the IRS’s <title> is accurate and descriptive, but Google ran out of space. They didn’t take any liberties with the text.

2) Midstream truncation

Let’s review another form of truncation, with this example from the Linksys website:

Again, Google truncated a long <title>, but here they removed the branded text from the beginning and started with the more unique, descriptive text. Is this a rewrite? Technically, yes, but it’s a direct excerpt and the “...” clearly implies truncation to searchers.

3) Excerpt truncation

Finally, we have situations where Google uses a portion of the <title> tag, but they don’t clearly indicate truncation with an ellipsis (“...”). Here’s an example from Congress.gov, a site Google is unlikely to view as spammy or in need of editorial revisions:

I don’t think Google’s trying to hide the truncation here by removing the ellipsis — the truncated title is a complete thought/phrase within the original title. In some cases, is this the excerpt the creator would have chosen? Maybe not, but I would still generally call this truncation.

All told, these three forms of truncation accounted for almost exactly one-third of the “rewrites” that we observed. These forms were distinct enough that we could separate them. From here on out, it gets a bit more complicated.

Title additions (brand & local)

In addition to truncating long titles, Google sometimes adds information they deem relevant to the end of a display title. The most common addition is “brand” information (using the term loosely) that wasn’t present in the original <title> tag. For example:

I kind of love this title, and you should definitely ride Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point if you’re a coaster fan, but notice here how Google has appended “Touring Ohio” to the end of the display title. This kind of add-on is very common, occurring in almost 14% of our observed rewrites.

In some cases, adding the brand text caused Google to truncate the title prior to the addition. See this example from Goodreads …

While the rewrite here is intended to be beneficial, this can cause problems with long brand names. Anecdotally, though, Google seems to be doing a better job of this in the past few months, and most brand identifiers are of reasonable length.

Finally, in a few cases, Google appended location information. For example:

It’s not clear what situations trigger this added location information, but it does show that Google is considering appending other forms of relevant information that could drive future rewrites and go beyond brand tagging.

Capital-R Rewrite examples

We can argue about whether truncation and addition are real, Capital-R Rewrites, so how about the situations where Google is clearly making substantial changes? Some of these situations — even working with a moderately-sized data set — are hard to classify, but I’ll cover some major categories.

1) Maximum verbosity

I almost said “keyword stuffing,” but that’s a judgment call and isn’t always fair in these cases. Granted, there are legitimate cases of keyword stuffing, like this example:

Prior to August 2021, Google might’ve just truncated this title, but now they’re saying “Yeah, no” and replacing the entire mess. Other cases aren’t so clear, though. Consider this one:

AMC hasn’t really done anything spammy here — this <title> tag is likely a direct reflection of their site architecture. In this case, though, Google has gone beyond truncation and rewritten the title, including replacing pipes with hyphens, removing “Movie Times” (which is arguably redundant with “Showtimes”) and pushing the site/brand up.

2) Minimum verbosity

Some people have too much to say, and some people are too quiet (I’m afraid I know which side I fall on). Here’s a case where the title didn’t quite provide enough information:

In many of these cases, like displaying just the brand name, a generic placeholder like “Home”, or – in one notable case – a code placeholder (“”), it’s likely the culprit is an overzealous CMS default setting. These are clearly Capital-R Rewrites, but I would argue that Google is generally adding value in these situations by rewriting.

3) Excessive superlatives

Sometimes, we marketers get a little carried away with colorful language (in this case, the family-friendly kind). Google still seems to be disproportionately rewriting <title> tags with certain superlatives, even when they may not seem excessive. Take this example:

This is a case where Google replaced the <title> with the contents of an <h1> — while it’s not a bad rewrite, it does feel aggressive to me. It’s hard to see how “21 Best Brunch Recipes” is wildly over the top or how “21 Easy Brunch Recipes” is a major improvement.

4) Miscellaneous nonsense

It’s hard to measure the real head-scratchers, but anecdotally, it does appear that Google’s rewrite engine has improved since August 2021, in terms of the truly bizarre edge cases. Here’s a funny one, though, from Google.com itself:

Even Google thinks that Google said “Google” too many times in this <title> tag. I suspect the rewrite engine flagged the word “Google” as redundant, but I’d definitely call this a misfire.

A more nuanced pie chart

I made myself a to-do of creating a “pie chart with nuance,” and I now realize that’s impossible. So, here’s a pie chart that’s slightly less misleading. Many rewrites are hard to categorize and count, but let’s take a look at the data if we carve out the truncation scenarios (all three) and the additions:

Separating truncations and additions, we’re left with about 30% of <title> tags being rewritten in our data set. Keep in mind that many of these rewrites are minor and some probably involve forms of truncation and/or addition that were difficult to detect programmatically.

Flipping this around, we have 70% of titles not being rewritten. How do we reconcile that with Google’s 87%? It could just be a function of the data set, but let’s carefully re-read that quote from the beginning of the post:

Based on your feedback, we made changes to our system which means that title elements are now used around 87% of the time, rather than around 80% before.

Note the highlighted text — Google is specifically saying that they used the <title> element/tag 87% of the time. They may have subtracted from, added to, or slightly modified that original data (they don’t really say). So, the 13% of cases here is likely only when Google is pulling the display title in search from some other area of the page (body content, headers, etc.).

As to the bigger question of how much Google toned down rewrites after the initial outcry, it’s difficult to measure precisely, but I’d say “Not very much.” It does appear that some edge cases — including mishandling of parentheses and brackets — did improve, and I think Google turned down the volume a bit overall, but changes to titles remain fairly common and the reasons for these changes are similar to August 2021.

How Social Media Trends Can Influence Your SEO

Whether it’s participating in the latest challenge, using a trending TikTok sound, or putting your own spin on a viral recipe, we all know social media trends provide a great opportunity to spread brand awareness and grow your brand’s social media following. But they can also be utilized to boost search engine results, driving traffic and sales to your website.

If taking advantage of social media trends in one way or another isn’t a part of your brand’s digital marketing strategy just yet, read on. This article will show why it’s important to jump on board and provide you with a list of actionable steps to ace the game.

Examples of search results influenced by social media trends

If we compile a list of social media trends from the last couple of years and search for their related terms on Google Trends, we can spot a recurring pattern — search results for related terms increasing at the time of their social media trends going viral. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Little Moons

@melika_zaidi Omg look how many flavours! #littlemoons#LetsGetBackOnTrack#mochi#littlemoonsmochi#foodie#foodreview♬ Butter - 방탄소년단 (BTS)

Little Moons mochi ice cream has been around for over a decade, but it wasn’t until January 2021 that their popularity truly exploded. All thanks to an organic, mid-lockdown viral trend prompted by a couple of TikTok creators.

It snowballed into thousands of Little Moons-themed TikTok videos of people searching for and trying their products, which ended up generating over 500 million views. Little Moons became the most sought-after ice cream in the UK, with their sales skyrocketing by 2,000%. At the height of the virality, product, brand, related unbranded, as well as retail searches on Google have increased drastically too, as seen below.

The significant drop in searches after the initial spike indicates that the trend has eventually died out, which is a consequence of social media content – viral or not – having a short shelf life. Brands can keep the momentum going by tapping into influencer marketing themselves, starting new trends and reaching new audiences.

Emily Mariko’s salmon rice

@emilymariko

Best lunch of the week!

♬ original sound - Emily Mariko

Another great example is Emily Mariko, a food and lifestyle content creator, whose leftover salmon rice “recipe” blew up on TikTok back in October of 2021. She went from 70,000 to 7 million followers within a few weeks, while everyone else’s follow-up salmon rice videos gathered over 800 million views so far. The Google Trends report shows us people were searching for Emily Mariko’s salmon rice on Google as well, which gave plenty of other creators, brands, and media outlets an opportunity to capitalize on it, since she didn’t utilize those searches herself.

With her newly amassed follower base, Emily Mariko continues to create viral trends and influence search results, as can be seen with a recent surge in “Emily Mariko toaster oven” searches below. This really goes to show that the power of influencer/REALfluencer marketing shouldn’t be underestimated.

Tax the rich

While the following case isn’t the most common way to go about it, there’s no denying that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posting her “tax the rich” Met Gala dress on Instagram is a very clever example of how a post on social media can not only sell, but help spread awareness about a cause. On September 14, 2021, when the post went live, searches for “tax the rich” jumped to new heights. Of course the media frenzy surrounding the event gave them an extra boost.

How brands can take advantage of existing social media trends to drive traffic to their website

Recreate trending content

One way to interject your brand into culturally relevant moments is to recreate a trending piece of content on your brand’s social media account. By putting your own spin on it, you can get your product or message out there in a very authentic way.

A great place to find trends is through TikTok’s discovery tab, where trending hashtags and audios will give you plenty of ideas for content. Do make sure to include a call to action at the end of your piece of reactive social media content, and paste an appropriate link in your profile’s bio to drive traffic off the platform straight to your website.

Create supporting content off social media

At this stage, most brands are doing the above, but what many brands and creators still aren’t doing is providing supporting content off of social media platforms. As we’ve seen, viral social media trends often transcend their original platform. Google Trends tells us people are searching for trending items on Google in conjunction with those trends taking off. It’s a missed opportunity to ignore the search boosts resulting from viral social media trends or organic influencers’ mentions.

Despite your brand or product not being explicitly featured in the original viral post, there are many ways to put your keyword optimized website content in front of the eyes of this new audience.

Let’s take Emily Mariko’s toaster oven searches to explore the opportunity. If you’re a brand or a retailer selling kitchen appliances, you can create a shoppable landing page featuring Emily Mariko’s most-loved kitchen appliances. Diving into her TikTok videos will show you she’s also a fan of rice cookers, aesthetic non-stick cookware, stove gap covers, blenders… All of these items are being searched for by Emily Mariko’s fans, so you can kill many birds with one stone.

Another piece of content to support toaster oven searches could be “5 toaster oven recipes even Emily Mariko would approve of” — an evergreen article with a trending angle. The list of ideas is endless and a list of brands that can jump on board is too.

You can even give digital PR a go and pitch a piece of trending content like the article above to journalists, essentially providing them with a story for a chance to gain quality backlinks and a potential influx of new customers.

Speaking of publishers and bloggers, they, too, can benefit from creating reactive pieces of content — by increasing website views and putting affiliate links to good use.

As viral social media trends can rarely be predicted and come in and out of style rather fast, it’s important to stay on top of the game, follow what’s going on in the social media space, and react quickly.

How brands can utilize influencer marketing to increase searches and demand

Collaborating with influencers to showcase your brand or product while participating in a trend is another great way to create awareness and increase searches for your product or brand. Not only do influencers have an advantage of an existing loyal audience. Many times, content creators will do a much better job at speaking the unpolished language of social media and your potential new customers, resulting in higher conversions.

This is how Popsockets, a brand known for their phone grips, took advantage of an already existing “Emoji Outfit Challenge”, a challenge in which people filmed themselves matching their outfits to popular emojis. They activated eight of their ambassadors to participate in the challenge by incorporating their product, and reached two million viewers.

If a popular influencer from your niche is already featuring a generic product you sell in a trending piece of content that could translate into follow-up content, or generally creates the type of content your product could be seamlessly incorporated in, don’t sleep on it. Reach out to them for a product placement and use the power of word-of-mouth marketing.You can find influencers in each and every niche or even look beyond your niche. With the right creative spin, even seemingly mismatched pairings can yield successful results these days, as long as there’s still an overlap in the target audience.

Grace Wells, a content creator sharing videography tricks, is a great example. She may not be the first person to come to mind for a promotion of a skincare product or an energy drink, but in her case, such collaborations are very successful. Her viral “making epic commercials for random objects” series on TikTok landed her many brand deals and is now successfully helping brands go viral.

@gracewellsphoto if you’d told me a year ago that I’d be throwing fruit around my house for a living... 😅🎥 #videographer#videomagic#celsiuspartner @CelsiusOfficial ♬ original sound - Grace Wells

Tips on creating an effective influencer marketing campaign

Launching a campaign on social media and trying to make it go viral yourself is where working with influencers across your niche comes especially handy. It helps your campaign gain that initial momentum it needs for it to start trending, generating views and eventually also additional reactive organic content, searches and clicks to your website.

If influencer marketing isn’t something your brand has dabbled in already, here’s some tips on what to keep in mind when creating a campaign that converts before or after you’ve identified a social media trend you want to get involved in.

Define campaign goals and target audience

Before even coming up with a creative angle, always start by defining your campaign goals and target audience. One of the biggest mistakes new as well as established brands make is choosing influencers solely based on popularity or how many followers they have. Your target audience has to overlap and the collaboration has to come across authentic to truly resonate with the audience.

Having your campaign goals clearly defined from the get-go will also help you identify the right influencers to work with and choose the right social media platform(s) for your campaign. Are you looking for brand exposure or do you want to boost sales for a particular product? Even within a single platform like Instagram, there are lots of nuances between what kind of content works on the feed verses on stories. If you wish a high volume of clicks to your site immediately, having an influencer promote your product on their Instagram feed might not be the best option. You’ll need a way for their audience to access a clickable link without having to take additional steps, so a feature on the influencer’s Instagram Story would be a better option. When you find the influencers who can help you achieve your goal, don’t forget to then share your campaign goals with them too, so they can optimize the content for your desired results.

Avoid one-off collaborations

Jumping on trends can mislead brands into chasing one-off features, but to allow the influencer’s audience to truly develop a relationship with your product, collaborations that stretch through a longer period of time and include regular, organic product incorporations are much more effective.

Work with a range of influencers

Since influencers often don’t share a fan base despite operating in the same niche, working with several different influencers rather than designing your entire campaign around only one is highly recommended. This will give you an opportunity to tap into different audiences and increase your campaign’s reach. And don’t forget about smaller-sized creators as well! Their engagement rates tend to be higher, a connection and trust they share with their audience deeper, plus they’re more affordable.

Give influencers creative control over their content

Let influencers promote your product in their own unique way, suitable for their personal brand and audience. Authenticity should always be at the forefront. Designing a campaign that will force them to follow a script is a no-go. Instead, create an open-ended brief. Give them rough guidelines on what you want to communicate with your campaign and let them come back to you with their own ideas. The collaboration has to come across organic, not sound like a blatant ad.

Start a social media challenge

Starting a challenge is one of the most popular and effective tactics of influencer marketing. Unlike with typical ambassador campaigns, the point of starting a trend is that anyone can jump in and create their own spin on it, stretching the reach of your campaign and building a sense of exclusivity and community within those participating.

To promote their Cinco de Mayo deal, Chipotle started a #LidFlip TikTok challenge in 2020, asking participants to record themselves attempting to flip the lid onto the bowl without using their hands. It was a fun way to boost awareness of their deal and engage with their community. The videos using the hashtag ended up generating over 700 thousand views.

If you're creating a hashtag to go along with the challenge, just make sure it hasn’t already been used and do a thorough research to avoid any negative connotations that may arise and end up portraying your brand in a negative way.

Be prepared for the influx of searches and purchases

It is important to have everything ready on your brand’s end before the collaboration goes live. From optimized landing pages (to catch the incoming direct and search traffic), to making sure you have enough product stock for a campaign of your size. Though adding a FOMO element can sometimes play to your advantage — as was the case with Little Moons.

Support influencer marketing campaigns with paid advertising

Running UGC ads on your brand’s accounts alongside an active influencer campaign, whether that’s on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, will add further momentum and exposure to your brand.

For more on how to work with influencers to support your SEO, watch Andy Crestodina's Whiteboard Friday:

Conclusion

Utilizing social media trends and influencer marketing to boost brand awareness, search results and sales is an extremely viable marketing hack brands of all sizes can take advantage of right now. TikTok has completely changed the game — in a good way. As of right now, it’s still a platform where not only paid, but organic content can reach millions, so it’s fairly easy even for new and small brands to join the game of co-creating viral trends and/or producing optimized supporting content to capitalize on searches. And with the rise of social commerce, it will become an even more important tactic.

Case Study: The ROI of Re-optimizing Content (Plus Bonus How-To)

We’ve been re-optimizing Brafton's blog content consistently since 2018. It’s been one of the main SEO strategies we’ve used to increase our blog traffic from 20,000 to 200,000 monthly visitors over the last three years, and we’re continuing with this strategy into 2022 (and probably beyond).

For the purpose of this study, we wanted to answer the question, “How well does content re-optimization work, and is it worth your time?”

But first, let’s back up and get some definitions out of the way.

What is content re-optimization?

In its simplest form, content re-optimization is the process of updating existing content with new material in order to add value to the original piece.

There are many ways content can be updated. Here are some methods we’ve used over the years:

• Adding new visual content, like an infographic, to an existing blog to appeal to readers who are more visual learners.

• Adding a video tutorial to help elaborate on a topic we’re covering.

• Replacing outdated examples featured in a roundup blog post with better, more recent examples.

• Adding missing topic gaps that our competitors are covering but we aren’t.

• Completely re-writing the content in favor of a better target topic (a very drastic measure).

In all instances, we’re adjusting existing content in some way to make it better for our audience. Ideally, that content will also perform better in organic search.

Why re-optimize content?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably invested significant time and energy into creating awesome content for your brand — and just like me, you know exactly how much effort goes into every single word published. There’s the planning, the research, the writing, the rounds of review, the copyediting, the proofing, the curation of helpful visuals, and finally clicking “Publish” once you’re done. All of this takes time and participation from multiple stakeholders.

It’s exhausting. And expensive.

It’s in your best interests to protect the time and monetary investment you’ve put into every single piece of content you create for your brand, and make sure it keeps performing at or beyond your expectations. This is why we re-optimize our content at Brafton. Because we’ve found it’s an incredibly cost-effective way to keep our content competitive and generate the business results we expect from our website.

Why this study was conducted

We know that our content re-optimization efforts can take credit for a portion of the organic traffic results we’ve seen on our website. For this analysis, my goal was to calculate the exact impact content re-optimization was making on our blog performance.

Let’s get into it!

Methodology

I focused strictly on written content updates that had been made to our blog posts between January 1, 2021, and October 31, 2021. Using this timeframe, I was able to use all 16 months’ worth of Search Console data for the metrics analyzed:

• 41 articles were analyzed.

• The articles had been republished with written content updates — their publish dates were updated at the time of the re-optimization.

• Each article had a unique keyword target.

• Primary tools used:

  • Search Console. I compared the three-month timeframe before the republish date with the three-month timeframe after the republish date.

  • Ahrefs. I took a snapshot of the data from three months pre- and post-re-optimization.

• Each article selected had been indexed for a minimum of three months before being re-optimized, with a subsequent three months of data to evaluate.

• Metrics evaluated (and which we were looking to improve with re-optimization):

  • Clicks to the URL from the target keyword.

  • All organic clicks to the URL.

  • Total number of page-one keywords each URL ranks for.

  • Target keyword position for the URL.

  • Total organic impressions for the URL.

Results: More clicks to URL from target keyword

Our primary goal with re-optimization is to increase the number of clicks each page is generating. The first thing I wanted to look at was how well this works for each blog’s specific target keyword (with the understanding that these aren’t the only keywords these blogs will get clicks from — more on that in a bit).

Using Search Console, I looked at how total clicks have changed/improved after each individual blog’s republication:

Clicks to the blog post for the target keyword “creative content.”

According to the data pulled from Search Console, 41.46% of the articles had more clicks to their URL for their target term after being re-optimized. In aggregate, all articles saw a 5.89% increase in clicks to their target keyword after we re-optimized them.

Results: More total clicks to re-optimized content

re-optimized blog posts also rank for more keywords related to the target keyword — and I wanted to track that change not only for our target keywords, but for all the keywords these blogs rank for. This is because, when we do written content updates, we are often filling in topic gaps to make the piece more comprehensive. With more mentions of these related topics, there’s more chance to rank for related keywords as well. This then drives up the total number of clicks to the page.

Here’s an example of what that looks like:

Increase in total clicks to URL post-re-optimization for a blog about structuring a marketing team.

Data from Search Console showed that 85.37% of the articles had more total clicks from all keywords in the time period after they were re-optimized. In aggregate, the re-optimized articles received 29% more clicks after they were updated and republished:

Bonus: The data shows a 0.96 correlation between re-optimization and total clicks generated — a near-perfect correlation.

I could end my study right here and walk away perfectly happy with our decision to continue with our re-optimization strategy in 2022. But there’s more to the story…

Results: More page-one keyword rankings from variant keywords

As an added benefit, many of the blogs we re-optimized started ranking on page one for other terms related to our target keyword:

Total Page 1 keyword rankings for the keyword “creative content.”

Our data shows 43.9% of the re-optimized articles had more page-one keyword rankings after their republish date. In aggregate, all articles ranked for 36.45% more page-one keywords after they were re-optimized.

Results: Target keyword position changes

For this part of the analysis, I looked at how the blog’s ranking position changed for its target keyword — comparing the timeframes from before and after the article’s republication.

With Search Console, I can see a three-month average position for our target keyword and can compare those numbers pre- and post-re-optimization.

Example of improved rank positioning in Search Console, for the keyword “paid search marketing.”

73.17% of the articles had a better average ranking position for their target keyword after being re-optimized, according to Search Console data:

56.1% of the re-optimized articles had improved target keyword positioning after the re-optimization, according to Ahrefs:

Results: More organic search impressions

As far as results go, I’m more interested in the clicks coming to the blog, but it’s important to look at changes in click behavior in the context of search impressions. After all, a searcher can’t click on your result if you’re not even appearing in the SERP.

By looking at the change to impressions from before and after the re-optimization, we can get a better understanding of the impact of ranking for more of these related keywords.

Example of how total impressions have changed after a blog post about sales enablement content was re-optimized.

This is also where we saw the most impressive return for our efforts — every single article we re-optimized had more organic search impressions after it was republished.

100% of the re-optimized articles generated more impressions after they were updated and republished, according to Search Console data. In aggregate, the re-optimized articles generated 62.35% more impressions after their updates.

Insights: Why re-optimization matters for SEO

The main reason for re-optimizing content is to drive more qualified traffic to your website. By re-optimizing existing content, you’re enhancing a blog post or a landing page that’s already working for your audience.

In addition:

1. Google rewards fresher content

Each time we re-optimize a blog post, we update its publish date to reflect the time the changes were made. We also manually submit the article to Google for reindexing so there’s a higher chance Google will notice our content updates as quickly as possible.

Now, I’m not saying you can achieve the same results simply by changing the publish date to an article and not changing anything else, but a more recent publish date is likely a signal to Google — and searchers — that your content is fresh and probably contains useful and relevant information. They may be more likely to click on your content.

From a behavioral standpoint, when I perform a Google search, out of habit, I change the search filter to only see results from the last year (and sometimes I’ll only look at content if it’s published within the last month). I’m picky, and I can imagine other searchers are, too. Have you ever glanced at the publish date of the top results and chosen to click on the newest one?

Updating the content’s publication date at the same time we re-optimize it is our attempt to better serve the behavior of searchers and encourage more clicks.

2. Topic comprehensiveness (not word count) leads to more clicks

When we set out to re-optimize a blog post or a landing page, we’re not just looking to beef up its word count and call it a day. A longer word count doesn’t always equal more clicks.

Instead, we strive for topic comprehensiveness, and often that means we are building on what’s already there. But not always. Sometimes we’ll remove sections that are no longer relevant.

What’s important is that we’re comparing our content to competitors in the space, and finding ways to improve on what we’re missing. And we’re doing all this to serve our audience with the best content we possibly can. As a result, our content covers more ground and gets more impressions and then, ultimately, more clicks.

Conclusion

By honing your message around a target topic and adding value to your content with a re-optimization, you’re giving Google more reasons to serve your content to its users.

In a perfect re-optimization scenario, Google notices you’ve provided more useful information, your content will rank higher in search for your target keyword, and you’ll get more clicks to your page. And best of all, those clicks will be visitors that are highly interested in what your business has to offer!

Adding more information to an existing blog post or landing page makes your content more comprehensive. You cover a broader range of related topics, and therefore there are more chances to rank for those variant keywords. This is what helps extend your reach beyond just that initial set of target keywords.

And the more chances you have to rank for these variant topics, the better. The more often you show up in search, the more users will start recognizing your brand. They might even start searching for your brand name directly.

Bonus: Re-optimize your own content and analyze your results

Checklist: How to determine which content to re-optimize

If you’re sold on content re-optimization — great! — but you’re also probably wondering where to start.

I’ve created a checklist that I use for the Brafton blog to help me decide whether or not I should spend time (and money) to re-optimize a piece:

1. Look for pages that have had a dip in ranking position or estimated traffic. This will be the first flag that you might want to re-optimize your content.

2. Check the current content’s score in a TF-IDF tool (I recommend MarketMuse or Clearscope) to see if there is room for improvement. If your content score is lower than the tool’s recommended score, it’s a hint that you probably have some missing topics to cover.

3. Check ranking changes/SERP-rank volatility to see what’s changed on page one. Take a look at the top 10 ranking positions and how those results have changed over time. A SERP with a lot of volatility or new competitors coming onto the first page is a good sign that you’ll need to improve your content to stay competitive.

4. Look at the current results on page one and determine if you can still realistically rank there. If you’ve been outranked for a SERP and you can’t reasonably get back onto the first page, your efforts might be better spent elsewhere.

5. Estimate the traffic you might gain from your page-one ranking. Don’t forget that clicks decline the farther down the page you rank.

6. Ask yourself: Is this good enough? If yes, then proceed to the re-optimization!

Walkthrough: How to tie content re-optimization to ROI

Now for the fun part — diving into your own data to find out if your updates made a meaningful impact on your business goals.

Speaking of goals, you’ll want to make sure to determine the goals that make the most sense to your business and what you’re trying to accomplish with organic search before starting on this re-optimization strategy.

Some examples:

• More clicks to the blog, year-over-year.

• More website conversions from organic traffic.

• Better brand awareness in search.

If you’re just starting to re-optimize your content, I recommend bookmarking this article and coming back to this section later. While it’s true that performing updates to your content may have an immediate impact on your content — a jump in keyword position, perhaps — you’ll want a decent chunk of data to perform your analysis. And the only way you’ll get that is with time.

Step 1: Choose content to analyze

Once you’ve got a few months of data to work with, you can start your analysis. Say you re-optimized a few blog posts three months ago (and these blogs have been live on your website for at least six months). Add those URLs to a spreadsheet. Here’s the template I used for my study if you want to start there.

Step 2: Note publication date, and determine timeframes for analysis

Log your republish date for each article in the sheet. Then determine the timeframe for three months before your republish date and three months after (not including the actual republish date). 

Tip: You can search this in Google Search for an accurate answer, no calculator or calendar required:

Step 3: Pull your data

For each metric you’re looking to measure, pull the data from the two separate timeframes:

Step 4: Analyze your data

It might look like steps 1-3 are quick and easy, but they’re surprisingly time-consuming and tedious. Once you’re done you’ll have a lovely block of data to analyze. Calculate the changes for each article individually, and in aggregate, to see how your optimization efforts paid off.

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!