How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit (Updated for 2022)

“Why is that business outranking mine?”

This has to be the commonest local search FAQ, and a worthwhile answer to it will always require real analysis. 

Today, I’ll teach you to assess 50+ factors and provide you with a free, copyable spreadsheet to fill out to help you discover how the business you’re marketing can reach the level of its top local  competitor. I’ll provide an illustrated tutorial of each field in the sheet, and I’ll also cover how to use what you learn to create strategy, differentiation, and a philosophy for competition that exists within the positive framework of localism. 

How to use the local business competitive audit spreadsheet

You’ll find four columns you can fill out within the sheet: one for the business you’re marketing, one for its competitor, one for wins, and one for notes. 

Use the “wins” column like this: when both businesses are doing equally well for a specific factor, leave this column blank, but if one is doing better than the other, put their name in that column. This way, at the end of the audit, you can count up the wins of the winner and have a detailed record of which factors are likely to be giving them an advantage. Use the “notes” field to document interesting findings along the way.

Now you’re ready to begin with your copy of the spreadsheet, using the following as a key to each field:

Multi-sampled local finder rank

Your audit kicks off with these first, essential steps to orient yourself within a local market.

1. Identify a keyword phrase for which you most want to achieve high local visibility. You can follow this workflow for each of your important search phrases, but start with just one to acquaint yourself with the process. Enter that keyword phrase in the top field of the spreadsheet.

2. While located at the place of business, search on Google for that phrase and click on the local pack to be taken to the full local search results, called the “local finder”. If you are doing this audit on behalf of a client, have them perform the searches and send you the data.

3. Jot down the name and address of the business coming up in the top non-paid spot (ignore any paid ads that come up) of the local finder.

4. Scroll through the local finder until you see your business. Jot down its position.

5. Now repeat this process of searching and note-taking from different locations around your town or city. This is how you get multi-sampled data. You will likely notice that the rankings change as you change location, because Google personalizes results based on the location of your device. You may go to just one or two additional locales, or many, depending on the size of your community and your competitive goals. 

6. At the end of this process, you will have a list of competitors from which you can determine the dominant player. You can perform a competitive audit for each major local competitor, but to get started, just pick the one you saw come up in the top local finder position most often.

7. Finally, enter the rank, name, and address of the business you’re marketing and the top competitor in the first three fields of the spreadsheet.

An alternative to manual multi-sampling of local rankings is to use a local rank tracker that emulates searching from multiple locations, with the understanding that the data you get may not be quite as accurate as what you’ll get from feet on the street. Do what works for you.

Name

Now that you’ve filled out the name field of the business you’re marketing and its top competitor, evaluate how the actual words in the name could be impacting rankings. Google has historically given a ranking boost to businesses with names containing keywords. For example, if our search phrase was “Breakfast San Rafael”, then a business named “Delish Breakfast” or “Good Morning San Rafael” might have some advantage over one named “Joe’s Place”. 

However, in late 2021, Google rolled out an update commonly known as the "Vicinity Update" which appeared to significantly reduce the impact of keywords in the business name. In early 2022, they issued a second presumed update which may have softened Vicinity, meaning that keywords in the business name may still be giving a competitor an advantage to some degree.  Write the competitor’s name in the “wins” column of the spreadsheet if their business name contains keywords and yours doesn’t, or vice versa. If neither or both businesses have keywords in their business name, leave the “wins” column blank. 

Address, centroids, proximity, and maps

Now, take the address in row 5 and do some searches to fill out rows 6 and 7. 

First, look up the city you’re investigating by searching for it on Google and clicking on the map. See if both businesses fall within the red border Google throws around your city. It’s typically harder to rank within any city when a business isn’t located inside of the perimeter. 

Next, look at where Google is placing the name of the city in its knowledge panel. That is considered the “centroid” of the city. Estimate the distance each of the two businesses is from the centroid.  You can do so by looking up directions between the business address and the approximate address of the town name on the map. 

When you multi-sampled the market, you may have discovered that the dominant competitor was coming up regardless of where you moved around town. Perhaps they are located in part of town, like an auto row, that Google appears to strongly associate with an industry, or they are in the densely-populated center of town, while your business is located on the outskirts or even beyond the mapped borders of the city. 

Note down if one business is inside the border while the other isn’t, and if one is closer to the centroid than the other.

GBP categories

Now, get the free GBP Spy Chrome Extension and look at the categories both businesses have chosen. If your competitor has categories that you don’t, mark a win for them and make a note of any categories you are missing. Correct categorization is key to local search rankings, and the category you choose as your primary/first category is believed to have the strongest impact.

Co-location

You already know whether the company you’re marketing is sharing a location with other businesses in the same industry. Look up your competitor’s address and zoom in on the map to see if any other businesses within the same industry are at that location. This matters because businesses in the same category at the same address may experience Google filtering them out of the results. This behavior has been especially noted since the 2016 Possum update. It’s important to understand that if the brand you’re marketing is in a shared space with another with the same category and you are not able to see your business on the local finder map unless you zoom in, Possum may be to blame. 

Next, examine the surroundings within a few blocks of both businesses to see if any other companies with the same categories are on the map and note this down, as filtering can sometimes occur in this scenario, too. If either of the two businesses you’re investigating has no competition for a few blocks around them, note that as a win for them in row 11.

Domain Address

Next, notate the website URL of each business. As with keywords in the Google Business Profile title, having the search term in the domain name may give the business a bit of a boost. 

Google Business Profile Landing Page URL

Now, click through on the website link on the Google Business Profile for each business and record that address. Often, businesses link from their profile directly to their website homepage, but it’s also common to see some types of businesses linking to a different landing page on their site. If you’re linking to a landing page but the competitor is linking to their homepage, mark it as a win for them, because the homepage is usually the strongest page on a website.

GBP name, address, phone matches NAP info on website?

Next up, check to see whether the NAP (name, address, phone number) on the websites of you and your competitor exactly match what’s on the Google Business Profile. Small discrepancies like “street” vs. “st.” don’t matter, but a difference in the business name, its street address, or phone number can make Google feel less “trusting” about the identity of the company, possibly decreasing its visibility. 

Google Business Profile reviews

Here, we dive into the many powerful aspects of reviews to fill out rows 15-21 of our sheet.

Begin by looking at the oldest review to estimate how old the Google Business Profile is. It’s debatable whether listing age is a local ranking factor, but it’s unquestionable that an older listing has had more time to accrue reviews, photos, and other important elements.

Then, note down the overall star rating for each competitor. Star ratings are a major conversion factor because consumers look at them as a way to decide whether or not to patronize a business.

Next, record the total number of reviews each business has earned. 

Then, analyze the sentiment of the two bodies of reviews and note down whether reviews are mostly positive, neutral, or negative. While you are doing so, look at the place topics labeled “People often mention” (see screenshot, above) and write those down to see if your competitor is earning good mentions of aspects of their business which you have yet to earn.

Write down the date of the most recent review each business has received, as recency may be  a ranking factor.

Finally estimate the percentage of reviews to which each business has responded, as owner responses are key to local search marketing. 

GBP Web Results links

Examine the links to third parties that Google is surfacing in the “Web Results” section of the listings. Write down your competitor’s links in the “notes” section of your spreadsheet, and evaluate whether the websites linking to your competitor are more prestigious than those linking to you.

Date of last Google Post

Look at each profile and record the date on which each business last wrote a Google Post. Though not a direct ranking factor, posts are a good signal of how actively and comprehensively a competitor is managing their Google Business Profile. Give the business with the most recent post a “win”. 

Google Q&A count

Record the number of questions each business has received. In our screenshot, the business has received four total questions. Mark a “win” for the business with the most questions, because their audience is the most engaged with this feature. 

Business response to Q&A percentage

Estimate the percentage of questions that have received a direct response from the business owner, as shown in the above screenshot. The owner with the highest percentage of responses wins, because the alternative is ignoring customer service opportunities and leaving a customer to the vagaries of receiving public responses of uncertain quality, or no response at all. 

GBP attributes

There are multiple types of attributes which can appear in different areas of the Google Business Profile, in profile overlays, and on Google Maps. For example, our screenshot shows safety and service attributes, but other possibilities include attributes like “Black-owned”, “Wheelchair accessible” or “Late-night food”. Attributes can be the result of information a business has given directly to Google in creating their listing, or feedback Google intakes from the public. Rather than this row in your spreadsheet having a clear winner, use the notes section to record any positive attributes your top competitor has that you would also like to have. 

While you are looking at attributes, include the “$” price attribute, and make a note of how this metric is representing your business vs. the competitor. For example, note it down if you feel that having a greater or lesser price attribute than the competitor could be impacting public perception of the business you’re marketing. 

GBP photos

Fill out rows 27 and 28 in your spreadsheet by counting the number of photos each business has, calculating the percentage of them that have been uploaded by the owner (see the identity of the uploader in the upper left of the larger dessert photo), and make a judgment of the overall quality of the photo set. For example, has your business or the competitor uploaded images more recently, and are those images of high quality? These are your basic checks.

Photos have become one of the most important and powerful elements of listings. For a more advanced audit of these assets, read Mike Blumenthal’s three-part series on visual search to learn about the “find places by photos” feature, multisearch, Google’s Cloud Vision AI, Google Lens and all the other developments that are making it clearer every year that visual media will play an increasing role in local searching and shopping.

Menu link

Next, note whether either business has taken the time to enhance their listing with a menu, be that a traditional restaurant menu or a menu of services. In the case of the former category, I also like to record the URL that the menu link is pointing to in order to understand whether a business is hosting their own menu or linking to a third-party service which they don’t directly own. 

Hours of operation and popular times

There are four tasks here. Record the hours for both businesses and note whether the competitor is open at different or more hours, which might be giving Google extra reasons to make their listing visible more often. Second, verify that the hours of operation listed on the profile match those displayed on the website. Third, assess whether the display of hours meets Google’s guidelines; for example, business models which operate by appointment only are not supposed to list their hours (see guidelines for more examples). 

Finally, look at how your popular times compare with those of the competitor, and assess whether your hours of operation and patterns of foot traffic might need to be remodeled if you want to compete in the same time slots as the top competitor. 

Use of GBP Products and other shopping features

Like photos, shopping is one of those areas of SEO audits that just keeps expanding. At a basic level, check to see if either business has taken the time to add products to their listing. 

At a more advanced level in appropriate industries, Google Business Profiles and the Google Merchant Center are becoming increasingly linked. If your competitor has taken the steps to set up a Pointy feed of inventory and is enjoying the resultant “See What’s in Store” section on their listing, this is a big win for them which you may need to replicate if you’ve not yet fully “transactionalized” your listing.

Justifications appearing on listing for query language

As I’ve covered in-depth here in my column, justifications are a big deal and you can influence them. If the query you’re investigating is triggering justifications on either your listing or your competitors, write down the exact language and source. Justifications come in many flavors, including website, review, sold here, services, menu, in-stock and posts. In the above example, in a local search for “fiestaware”, Google’s display of a website-based justification is a strong signal to us of just how highly they associate this entity with our search term. Mark a “win” for the competitor if they are earning a justification, and you are not.  

Any obvious signs of GBP spam? (Name spam, fake address, fake reviews, etc.)

This can be one of the more skillful areas of a local business competitive audit because you may need a practiced eye to spot spam. Increase your abilities via a careful study of the guidelines for representing your business on Google and the review guidelines. What you are trying to diagnose is whether a competitor is attaining their top position with any help from prohibited practices. For example, they may be stuffing keywords in their business name, using a string of employees’ homes as fictitious business locations, or some of their reviews may appear to stem from incentivized reviewers or be the product of review gating. 

In some cases, guideline violations are so obvious that they’ll be easy to recognize once you know the rules and reporting them to Google may even result in the removal of elements that have been giving a competitor an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, in many other cases, certain types of spam can be hard to see and prove, and difficult to get Google to act on. For the purpose of a basic audit, simply record if you see anything overtly suspicious on either listing and mark a “win” for either business if you believe spam may be contributing to their success. 

Percentage of Local Finder spam

While you are sleuthing for spam, take a few minutes to dive deeper. Look at all of the listings that stand between you and the top competitor in the Local Finder, and do a basic estimate of the percentage that feature obvious spam tactics. If you’ve never done this before, read my column on Simple Spam Fighting: The Easiest Local Rankings You’ll Ever Earn. While this exercise is not a direct assessment of the distance between your business and its top competitor, it is an evaluation of the muck you will have to wade through to move up in the local search rankings.

DA, PA, and links

Domain Authority (DA) is a Moz metric for predicting how likely a website is to rank in the search engine results. Page Authority (PA) evaluates the same scenario, but for a single page on a website. Top Linking Domains are based on the DA of the websites doing the linking from one site to another and how those links may contribute to rankings. 

Moz Pro customers can do an advanced audit of all these factors in their paid dashboard, but if you’re not yet a customer, use Moz’s Free Domain Analysis tool for a basic audit and to fill out the next several fields in your spreadsheet. *Note that if the GBP landing page is different than the domain and is not revealed by this tool as one of the top pages of the site, you can download the free Moz Bar or use Moz Link Explorer to find that information about any page. I’ve linked to a variety of free resources in this section of the spreadsheet for ease of discovery. Fill out fields 39-43 regarding DA, PA, and links on your sheet and evaluate whether a competitor’s better metrics may be supporting their win.

Age of domain

There are many free tools like this one that will let you quickly look up the age of your domain and that of your competitor. Google reps have repeatedly stated that domain age is not a ranking factor, but I look at it anyway, to let me know how long a competitor has had to work on their website and build its authority. While it’s absolutely correct that a brand new website can outrank an old one with a great campaign, mark a win for the older domain in this row of your sheet, regardless of ranking.

Organic rank for search phrase

Look at the organic (not local) results for your search phrase. Subtract the listings that aren’t for actual businesses (in our above example, theculturetrip.com is lifestyle site rather than a restaurant) and record the true organic rank of your site and your competitor’s. Mark a win for whichever business has the highest organic rank.

Search phrase in title tag of GBP landing page?

Is the complete or partial search phrase present in the title tag of the page being linked to from the Google Business Profile? Note it down and mark a win if one business has it but the other doesn’t. Pay attention to how this language may be supporting rank for this keyword phrase.

Search phrase in main body content of GBP landing page?

While you are on the GBP landing page, check to see if the complete or partial search phrase is mentioned on it. Mark a win for whichever business is remembering to include their keywords in their copywriting. If both are, don’t mark a win here, but do write down what you observe in the “notes” section. You might also like to notate how the search phrase is incorporated. For example, is it in the headings or subheadings of the page?

GBP landing page content quality at-a-glance (weak, medium, strong)

An advanced content audit will typically be a project of its own. For now, do a quick review of the GBP landing page for both businesses to grade the effort that has been put into publishing useful, optimized multi-media content. Some things to look for would be complete and accurate contact information, helpful text that incorporates many appropriate phrases related to the search term in natural language, excellent spelling and grammar, photos, videos, reviews and review requests, maps, directions, social media links, a strong internal linking structure, and a strong call-to-action. Make notes on your observations and grade the efforts present on the two pages as “weak”, “medium”, or “strong to find your winner.

Mobile friendliness

Run both domains through Google’s free mobile-friendliness test tool. Mobile and local are inextricably linked, and if one domain is performing properly on people’s cell phones while the other isn’t, you have a clear winner.

Secure HTTPs

In 2018, Google began marking domains that hadn’t made the move from HTTP to HTTPS as “insecure”. SEOs had been touting the benefits of secure sites for some years, but if your site is displaying that warning and your competitor’s is not, you are likely losing customers as well as ranking opportunities. 

Moz Check Presence Score

Now, evaluate the health of citations across the local search ecosystem by looking up your business and your competitor in Moz’s free Check Presence tool. In just seconds, you will be able to see whether the distribution of local business information to a variety of listing platforms is contributing to your competitor’s win. 

Yelp ranking, rating, and review count

It’s likely that Google looks at Yelp as part of its assessment of local business authority, so we’ll finish up our audit by looking there, too. Document where you and your competitor rank for your search phrase in Yelp, what your respective ratings are, and how many reviews each of you has earned. The winner is typically easy to see, in all three rows.

Now you’re ready to total up the wins!

Congratulations, you’ve just made it through the audit. Your last step is to count up the wins for each business name you entered in the “wins” column (your top competitor will typically have more of them), make your own list of the fields in which they won, and pair this with the notes you took to understand the efforts that are likely contributing to their top visibility. For example, you may have discovered that reviews, content, and mobile-friendliness are clearly underpinning the exemplary performance of your peer.

It’s from gleanings like these that you’ll create an informed strategy for the business you’re marketing, to get its metrics up to a competitive level. There are some factors, like location, that you can’t typically control, but with most of your findings, a to-do list will have surfaced from the audit process. The more experience you accrue working in local SEO, the better you’ll get at prioritizing the factors on that list, based on each client and market.

Bear in mind that the purpose of a competitive audit isn’t solely to show you how to match and surpass a peer’s metrics. Examine your notes and findings for clues on how to differentiate yourself within your market. For example, your audit may have enabled you to realize that reviews indicate a local desire for something your competitor either doesn’t provide, or doesn’t do well. You could fill that gap. Or, maybe you’ve just realized that a change in hours of operation could make the business your marketing the go-to spot on Mondays and Tuesdays when its competitor is closed. A good audit shouldn’t generate a mere carbon copy - it should point the way to creating a uniquely powerful local identity.  

Whew, if this was a basic local competitive business audit, what would an advanced one cover?

We’ve hinted at this throughout the basic audit, but typically, a more advanced audit is likely to dive more deeply into factors like:

• Analytics data

• On-page SEO

• Link building

• Technical SEO

• Image SEO and visual search

• Reputation and business intelligence

• Market and consumer research

A full advanced audit could also incorporate investigation of elements not mentioned in the basic audit, including:

• Website accessibility and inclusion

• Social media performance

• Video optimization

• Evaluation of current communications strategy, including live chat, SMS, messaging, Google messaging, email, forms and more
  

• Assessment of e-commerce and other digital shopping functionality

• Assessment of offline performance and opportunities including in-store metrics, traditional media, policy and more

• Other areas that are specific to the industry or market of the business you’re promoting

Final thoughts on local competition

Most local businesses you market can’t reach their full potential without achieving a competitive level of visibility in Google’s local packs. But how we think about competition and, more specifically, about the people who are our competitors, matters. 

I haven’t been able to shake the memory of a marketer I heard boasting about helping one local business put another out of business. For me, the conversation conjured up stark images of a small business owner and their staff thrown into unemployment amid the desperate insecurity of the pandemic and an already-harsh economic structure. This type of swagger may have become normalized in parts of the business sector, but it’s antithetical to localism, which seeks to offer a diversity of options and resources for everyone within a community with the goal of human well-being. 

The point of learning to perform a competitive local business audit does not have to be to analyze and destroy the livelihood of your esteemed neighbor down the road; rather, it can be a study of how they have succeeded in the SERPs so that you can create an informed strategy for finding your own strong niche on the nearby business scene. This is a healthy and caring mindset local business owners can share with their marketers and vice versa - one that can make the work you do more fulfilling because it’s contributive instead of merely extractive. Good luck in bringing a new level of attention to something great within a community, with your professional skills! 

How to Know When You Need a Dedicated Paid Landing Page

The average SEO-focused product page converts at only 2.9 percent, which is among the reasons many companies pursue paid advertising traffic to achieve their goals and KPIs.

But creating custom, campaign-specific landing pages is resource-intensive, and not every team has the necessary tools, expertise, or personnel to build the content. So, how do you know if you need a custom page or if you can safely send paid traffic to an organic page and still achieve your KPIs? This three-step, data-driven evaluation helps answer this question.

Paid vs. SEO landing pages — why have both?

Before diving into the evaluation process, you need to understand why having paid and organic pages is crucial and some of the drawbacks when you send paid traffic to your organic pages without analyzing them beforehand.

First, search intentions often differ between paid and organic users, and each group will have different content needs. We can classify these users into two groups based on whether they use high-intent or low-intent keywords.

Per WordStream’s definition, people who use high intent keywords like “best” want to conduct a transaction or perform an action, such as inquiring about a service, which can lead to an eventual conversion. This behavior aligns with the motivations of paid users, 75% of whom engage with ads because they believe landing pages make it easier to find their desired information.

In comparison, WordStream defines low intent keywords as navigational or informational in nature instead of transactional.

For example, somebody who wants to learn about a specific topic is more likely to use a longtail keyword and less likely to commit to a purchase because they’re gathering information rather than making a decision. Organic results are better suited for longtail terms, so the user will more likely engage with the organic SERP result rather than an ad.

These behavioral differences create a challenging situation for users and content creators.

Because organic content must play by Google’s rules, paid users are forced to sift through irrelevant information, which can increase bounce and exit rates and decrease conversion rates. And sadly, you can’t simply remove the extra information from the page because organic users and search algorithms need it.

Second, mixing paid and organic traffic on the same page makes it difficult to separate and track audience-specific user behavior, content performance, and conversion rationale. Without data clarity like closed-loop analytics, you can quickly get a misleading picture of content performance and miss crucial KPIs because of your clouded judgment.

Consequently, in most cases, directing the paid traffic to a custom-built, campaign-specific landing page produces higher quality conversions. You can ignore all SEO rules, which empowers you to accommodate user intentions and elicit specific user behaviors.

With the forewarning out of the way, let’s break down how organic page performance can determine if you need custom landing pages to achieve your goals.

Step 1: Gather and analyze performance baselines from multiple data sources

The first task is to gather and analyze a lot of data — from multiple sources — that shows you exactly how well your organic page is performing. Ideally, you want to scrounge up analytics data, user behavior insights, and keyword rankings. Even if you wind up making a custom paid page, this effort still pays dividends by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of your organic content.

Analytics data

You’ll start by collecting a smattering of classic analytics data points from your preferred analytics platform to gain insights about page performance over time.

If your content is old enough, gather the following data in three-month, six-month, and one-year intervals. The breadth of data makes it easier to spot recurring themes and create a more educated guess about what will happen if you send paid traffic to the page.

Remember to filter the metrics so you’re only getting data from organic traffic sources.

Pageviews and unique pageviews

Imagine you have a well-optimized product page that converts with organic visitors at an even three percent. However, you need the equivalent of a five percent monthly conversion rate to reach the year’s KPIs and maintain a healthy company.

You can use pageview data to calculate how much missing traffic you need to conjure, either targeting new keywords or starting a paid campaign. For example, suppose you currently get 100 pageviews every month and three conversions. In that case, you’ll roughly need an additional 67 pageviews per month to get five conversions at the three percent conversion rate.

If that traffic growth is not feasible with new or improved keyword rankings, then paid traffic is a solution to consider.

Should you decide to send paid traffic to that page, you can also calculate the difference between pageviews and unique pageviews to estimate how many returning users you can effectively target in a PPC retargeting campaign.

Time on page and bounce rate

Paid landing pages are designed to be simple, straightforward, and action-oriented. The following image is an excellent example of this concept:

Lengthy or complex paid pages generally suffer from high bounce rates and low conversions. If people are spending more than one or two minutes on the page without converting, it’s a sign the content isn’t convincing enough to convert, and it needs alterations.

On the contrary, organic pages can thrive with relevant content, internal links, and other information to capture rankings and keep people interested.

You want a high time on page because that means people care about the content you provide, which sends positive ranking signals to search engines.

If you’re seeing an average time on page three minutes or more from your organic page, it’s likely not a good fit for paid users. You can always redesign or reorganize the page to accommodate paid traffic, but you risk isolating your organic users by being pushy with conversion-focused information so early.

Previous page path and conversions

Among the most challenging aspects of organic conversions is understanding what stage of the buyer’s journey somebody is in.

Are you converting with high-funnel users? Or do your users first view a case study or blog post and then visit the product page, only to leave and return later? Knowing the answer lets you see what type of content matters most from a conversion standpoint and helps determine if your content is reaching the right people at the correct time.

If your organic conversions rely heavily on return visits or high page depth, sending paid traffic to the page likely will not improve your conversions. Paid users will lack the previous knowledge and feel overwhelmed or dissatisfied, with many bouncing from the page.

Event and goal tracking data

Event and goal tracking are two types of user behavior insights you can use to determine what content users care about the most. This process also illuminates what content users often disregard, which can then be removed from the page. Knowing this information helps you determine if time-starved paid users will be interested in your existing content.

Set up the following metrics as events or goals in your analytics tool to lay the groundwork.

Hyperlinks

Do you know how many clicks each hyperlink on your page gets? If not, how do you know users find them helpful?

Traditionally, paid pages don’t have any engagement options that take people away from a conversion point. However, most organic pages do.

So, if you’re going to use an organic page for paid traffic, you’ll need to only provide internal links that add significant value and actively engage users. Otherwise, if paid users stick around, they may get lost down the rabbit hole and then abandon the site without converting.

Videos and completion rates

If you have video content, particularly content that explains your product or service, it’s crucial to know how well that video performs and how often people complete it.

If the video has high engagement and completion rates, it’s useful to include it high up on organic and paid pages. However, if most users only watch 25 percent or less of the video, then pushing it further down the organic page and omitting it from a paid page is a smarter choice.

Forms

Forms are often a high-friction page element that can easily frustrate users, especially when visiting a page with conversion intentions. Your forms need to be flawless.

If you’re noticing that users get stuck on a form or abandon it, you need to rework the form. Paid users expect forms to be simple, only require absolutely necessary information, and take very little effort. If your organic forms can’t do that, either replace the form or build a custom paid page with a bare-bones version.

CTAs

CTA location, text, and purpose dictate a lot of your page’s conversion potential. If your organic page has multiple CTAs, you need to accurately track which one gets the most engagement. If you choose to send paid traffic to the page, then the highest-engagement CTA should be the first CTA option shown.

Additionally, every CTA should be:

• Visually distinct

• Above the fold (in most instances)

• Actionable with precise copy

• Avoiding generic statements like “learn more,” “buy now,” or “subscribe”

• Giving users an idea of what happens after interacting with the CTA

If you have too many competing CTAs, or for whatever reason, your organic page can’t meet these requirements, then you need to create a custom paid page instead.

Navigation interaction

Most paid pages include a link back to the main website but not full navigation options. Organic content doesn't have this luxury. Knowing how many of your users interact with the navigation after landing on the organic page in question is crucial to predicting what a paid user may do.

For example, suppose your page gets 2,500 organic visitors per month and 1,963 of them leave the page via navigation options. In that case, that’s a great sign that the page is either lacking conversion intent or doesn’t have enough information to convince users to convert. Either way, it’s not the behavior you want to see from paid traffic.

Heat mapping and click-tracking data

Once you’ve gathered your analytics data and set up event tracking, the next step is to collect and analyze data from a heat mapping tool like Hotjar or Mouseflow. The goal is to discover how users interact with the existing page, notice troublesome areas, and determine if those behaviors align with paid landing page best practices.

Let’s break down the types of information you’ll want to collect and how to evaluate it.

Heat mapping and scroll depth

Do you know how much of your organic page is seen by the average user before they leave the page or convert? Heat maps will tell you.

Paid pages are purposefully short so users don’t have opportunities to get distracted or disappointed by the content. If your scroll depth is deep enough that more than 75 percent of users see the most important content on the page, then the page layout and content priority may be okay for a paid user. However, if you’re seeing 30-plus percent of users leaving after scrolling just past the hero region, then paid users will most likely follow suit and you’ll either need to design a new page or alter the existing one.

Click tracking

Click tracking is a great way to visualize and confirm the event tracking data you set up previously. The maps can also pinpoint engagement issues or opportunities you may have overlooked.

The goal of click tracking is to figure out what content users care about the most. If you can naturally surface that information at the top of the page, then your paid users will be more likely to stick around. If that’s not possible, then you can design a paid page using the most popular organic page elements as inspiration.

Mouse flow

Mouse flow lets you observe the mouse movement of your users. Sometimes users hit friction points that we can’t detect by monitoring scroll depth, clicks, or other common engagement factors. These scenarios are where mouse flow reigns supreme.

While a mouse flow report is often an erratic mess of multi-colored blobs and squiggly lines, you can use it to understand what content your users may spend more time looking at or read more carefully based on where the mouse moves.

For example, in the following image, the mouse flow shows that more users hover their cursor in the “Inner Circle Guide to Next-Generation Customer Contact” section than any other content block.

Although the CTA associated with this section isn’t showing a high click density, the mouse flow report determines that users have some level of interest in the topic. If this example was on your website, you could shuffle the content order to prioritize the popular content or run A/B tests to determine if the language or information needs to be changed or simplified for a paid user’s short attention span.

Session recording

Watching actual users interact with your organic page is by far the most valuable way to determine what does and doesn’t work about your content. Most heat mapping tools let you set up recordings based on triggered events, such as clicking into a form.

You can observe the user’s entire interaction with your page and determine if the behavior is consistent among converting customers. If the behavior is consistent, it’s feasible that paid users may act the same way. However, if the recording behavior is erratic (and it likely will be), then you’ll want to build a custom page to provide a more “hand-held” experience.

Step 2: Map user behavior data to your KPIs

Now that you’ve collected and analyzed all of your data, it’s time to start looking for patterns and mapping the desired user behavior to the actual user behavior your data shows. If the two align, you’re in a great position to send paid traffic to your organic page and hopefully reap more conversions.

However, suppose there is a discrepancy between the desired and actual behaviors. In that case, you’ll need to map user behavior with specific stages of the customer journey and sales funnel, and then build a paid page that amplifies the desired behavior based on how you see users interacting with your organic page.

Let’s break down an example.

Recently, one of Portent’s clients chose to design a PPC version of an organic product page because the page wasn’t converting at their desired rate — despite already funneling paid traffic to it.

Before the client could design the new campaign content, they needed to determine what conversion-focused information users engage with most on the organic page. Otherwise, they risk supplying users with unnecessary information and wasting ad spend.

I analyzed three months of event tracking data from Google Analytics and Hotjar to determine exactly how users interacted with the product page. To narrow the results, I only focused on page elements with a call to action or internal link to pages that may lead to a conversion, such as the client’s demo page or case study archive.

Once I established which page elements get the most attention, I then isolated the users’ behaviors by using Hotjar’s filters to watch session recordings that contain the chosen events.

I watched 20 recorded user sessions to see what information people interacted with first and which they ignored, how long they took to digest the content, friction-causing UX elements, and what additional pages or resources they viewed. I then took these learnings and built a PPC campaign page that told the client’s story in the order converting users demonstrated.

The client is still building the page, so I can’t report on how well it performed. However, in theory, they should earn higher conversion rates on the paid campaign page because I isolated the content that converting users interacted with, which eliminated any non-esstial information.

Step 3: Make your choice

Now that you understand how your users interact with your organic page and some of the restrictions and considerations that come when sending paid traffic to organic content, you can choose. Invest the time and resources into building a custom paid campaign, or modify your organic content to try and target two user groups in one fell swoop?

Creating the paid page will likely give you better and more consistent results, but there is also little harm in trying your organic page first if you think it’s good enough. Run a small test, say 20 percent of your advertising budget for this project, and see if the page performance improves. If it doesn’t, then you have a definitive answer and you’re prepared with the resources you need to build a stellar paid landing page.

Level-Up Your Search Strategy with the Professional’s Guide to SEO

Over 14 million people have cut their SEO teeth on our Beginner's Guide to SEO, learning the ins and outs of search engine optimization from scratch. For 16 years, it's been the go-to resource that kicked off careers and page-one rankings the world over. And now, for the first time, we're introducing the next-step resource to take you from practicing SEO to preaching it — from pupil to pro.

Read the guide!

Who should read the Professional's Guide to SEO?

You don't have to know the entire SEO Glossary by heart or get a perfect score on the SEO Expert Quiz to dive into this guide. If any of the following apply to you:

• You've done SEO work, officially or unofficially, as a component of your day job;

• Your title involves the words "digital marketer" or something similar;

• You've read The Beginner's Guide to SEO, Moz SEO Learning Center articles, taken our SEO Essentials certification course, subscribed to the Moz Blog, and are thirsty for more;

• You're ready for the next step in your SEO career;

...then this is the next-level SEO guide for you!

This resource exists to help level-up anyone comfortable with the basics of SEO, who have some experience practicing it professionally, and who crave the challenge and reward of moving from intermediacy toward mastery.

How much of this guide do I need to read?

If you're serious about mastering advanced SEO techniques and being able to apply them in a professional setting, we recommend reading the Professional’s Guide to SEO front-to-back. We've tried to make it as concise and easy to understand as possible so you can learn at your own pace.

The guide has nine chapters focused on actionable tips and insights for a successful career in SEO, including:

1. Advanced SEO Strategy:

2. All About Google: The Algorithm

3. All About Google: The SERPs

4. Keywords & Content:

5. Link Building & Link Earning Tactics

6. Technical SEO

7. Competitive SEO

8. Measuring and Tracking SEO

9. Working in SEO

If you want to take a more organized approach to learning SEO or training your entire team, check out the Moz Academy Technical SEO Certification. We've consolidated all the resources you need to learn and apply advanced technical SEO techniques alongside unique learning strategies, task lessons and quizzes to test your knowledge. You can also display your knowledge with your LinkedIn Moz SEO Essentials certification badge.

Getting excited yet? You should be! Search engine marketing is a fascinating field and mastering advanced techniques will take your professional skills to the next level. We're looking forward to you coming on this journey with us!

Read the guide!

The MozCon 2022 Final Agenda Is Here!

Hold on to your bucket hats, this year's MozCon is right around the corner, and we couldn't be more excited to be back in-person in Seattle!

On July 11th, 12th, and 13th, join Ranger Roger at camp MozCon for insights and tactical presentations from industry leaders, plus the opportunity to connect and network with fellow attendees!

And since we know budgets are tighter than ever, we’re extending our early bird pricing through June 30! Tickets are just $1,099 for Moz subscribers. Can’t make the in-person event? Grab yourself a Livestream pass for $449. Both options include access to the professionally produced video bundle (a $300 value!), providing incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Save my spot at MozCon!

We’ve been hinting at the lineup of talks with our Initial Agenda drop in April and our Community Speaker reveal and today, we’re ready to share the full and complete Final Agenda. With the schedule set and our speakers putting the final polish on their presentations, here’s a look at the three action-packed days we have planned.

Sunday, July 10th

12:00pm–4:00pm – Optional early registration & badge pick up

Arriving in Seattle early and want to get a jump on picking up your badge? Drop by registration to check in and pick up your badge. 

Monday, July 11th

7:30am – Breakfast & registration

9:00am – Welcome to MozCon 2022!

Cheryl Draper

Our own MozCon Event Manager will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, introducing our Emcees and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning.

9:15am – SERP Strategies

Andy Crestodina

Every key-phrase is a competition. But the best competitor for that competition depends on what you see in the SERP. Getting your page to rank organically is only one of the many possible strategies. In this talk, Andy will explain big picture strategies in the context of ever-more crowded search results pages.

9:50am – Search What You See: Visual Search Tactics, Tools, and Optimizations

Crystal Carter

Visual search has been at the forefront of Google’s search and product innovations in the last year. Join this talk for “search what you see” optimizations via Google Lens and more.

10:25am – Morning break

10:50am – Unlocking the Hidden Potential of Product Listing Pages

Areej AbuAli

E-commerce website product listing pages contain hidden potential. This talk is all about unlocking the magic of your listing pages by making the most out of filters and internal linking. Instead of being fixated on those landing page head terms, let’s turn our attention to the indexability of long-tail pages with high conversion. Whether you work in e-commerce or not, we’ll also cover how to embed yourself within tech teams and analyze impactful changes.

11:25am – Community Speaker – Get Your Local SEO Recipe Right with Content & Schema

Emily Brady

Local SEO can be so much more than off-site listings, so let’s talk about it! By using content and schema on local landing pages, businesses can create unique value that satisfies customers and search engines.

11:45am – SEO Gap Analysis: Leverage Your Competitor's Performance

Lidia Infante

Ranking is as easy or as hard as doing better than your competitors. For that, you have to benchmark the sites on your search landscape, meet them where they are, and gain an edge. In this talk, Lidia will share how she built SEO strategies off the back of a gap analysis, along with her templates and success stories.

12:20pm – Birds of a Feather lunch discussion tables

1:50pm – The Future of Link Building: What Got Us Here, Won’t Get Us There

Paddy Moogan

Ten years ago, Paddy stood on stage at MozCon and shared 35 ways to build links in 35 minutes. This year, he is going to talk about lessons he has learned during the last 10 years, some reflections on what he got right and wrong, along with what the future holds for link building.

2:25pm – Community Speaker – How to Capitalize on the Link Potential of a Research Report

Debbie Chu

There are many types of link magnets, but there's one that'll never go out of style: data-backed research reports. When done well, you're creating a piece of content that helps your E-A-T, drives backlinks, and is genuinely interesting content for your target audience. This talk will cover the different steps needed not just to create a research report, but to create one that can get links.

2:55pm – Breaking into new areas with Topic Maps

Miracle Inameti-Archibong

In this talk we'll go beyond keyword research to explore how to build topic maps, and internal linking maps (that align with Google's understanding) to help you conquer new SERPS and win more budget from stakeholders along the way.

3:30pm – Afternoon break

3:55pm – Moneyball is the Future of SEO

Will Critchlow

Advanced statistical analysis has changed the face of professional sports, and similar insights are changing the way we do SEO. In this talk, Will is going to share the approaches he's seeing from the most forward-looking SEO teams, as well as the lessons learned from their analysis of what's working and what's not.

4:25pm – Titans of Tech: A Campfireside Interview

Vivek Shah & Special Guest

5:25pm – Day 1 Presentations conclude

7:00pm – Monday Night Welcome Party

Join us at Optimism Brewing in Capitol Hill. Meet with fellow attendees and speakers over light refreshments and snacks, music, and catching sun on the patio. We look forward to bringing our community together to kick off MozCon 2022 on this special night. See you there!

Tuesday, July 12th

7:30am – Breakfast & registration

9:00am – Day 2 Opening Remarks

9:10am – More Than Pageviews: Evaluating Content Success & Correcting Content Failure

Dana DiTomaso

Throw that tired pageview- and-bounce-rate-heavy report right out the (virtual) window — we can do better than that! Dana will peel back the layers on measuring content success. You'll learn which metrics will actually tell you if your content is doing what it's supposed to be doing, and how to link these metrics to your SEO strategies and tactics.

9:45am – Trash in, garbage out: A guide to non-catastrophic keyword research

Tom Capper

Keyword research is one of the first and most basic tasks that SEOs learn. And yet, it's strewn with pitfalls and ubiquitous errors, even for experienced practitioners. In this talk, Tom will talk you through the various ways the wrong data can lead you astray, and how to leverage the right techniques for the right tasks

10:20am – Morning break

10:45am – SEO In the Enterprise: Tips and Tricks for Growing Organic Traffic at Scale

Jakie Chu

In this talk, Jackie will show us how to identify, prioritize and get buy-in on large-scale SEO campaigns to drive traffic and revenue.

11:20am – The Future of Local Landing Pages

Amanda Jordan

Visual search has been at the forefront of Google’s search and product innovations in the last year. Join this talk for “search what you see” optimizations via Google Lens and more.

11:55am – Birds of a Feather lunch discussion tables

1:30pm – Community Speaker – How Marketing Data Intelligence Skyrocketed Our B2B Conversions

Tina Fleming

If you want to geek out on data, you've come to the right session. And we're not talking about Google Analytics or your plain old CRM data. We're talking about de-anonymizing your website traffic, providing one-on-one personalized user experiences, shortening your lead forms without missing out on valuable information, and doing everything you can to get to that SQL. In this presentation, Tina will demystify the basics of marketing data intelligence, reveal actionable strategies for your day-to-day conversion marketing, and share real examples of how her agency has skyrocketed B2B conversions with the addition of marketing intelligence.

1:50pm – Achieve Accessibility Goals with Machine Learning

Noah Learner

3.8 million U.S. adults aged 21-64 have a visual impairment, but 98% of the world’s top 1 million websites don’t offer full accessibility (despite legislation to encourage this). This leads to 1 in 3 baskets being abandoned, leaving an estimated 13 trillion up for grabs. One of the top issues is image alt text. This text is essential for making images accessible - however it isn’t always a priority when it comes to SEO strategy, due to the challenges of implementing it on a wider scale. This session walks you through easy, scalable alt text generation - an intuitive and easy to understand tutorial, with most of the heavy lifting already done for you.

2:25pm – Community Speaker – How True Leaders Transform a Marketing Department into a Dream Team

Paxton Gray

There are hidden, structural factors holding stellar marketers (and their teams) back‚ and it's not their fault. Discover what these factors are, how to root them out, and how to help your existing team members reach their potential.

2:45pm – Afternoon break

3:10pm – Myths, Misconceptions, & Mistakes (Lessons Learned from a Decade in Digital PR)

Hannah Smith

For more than 11 years, Hannah’s been tasked with coming up with content ideas that people will share and journalists will write about. In this session, she’ll be sharing some of the most important lessons she’s learned along the way.

3:45pm – E-Commerce SEO Horror Stories: How to tackle the most common issues at scale and avoid an SEO nightmare

Aleyda Solis

Between a dynamic inventory, complex categorization and filtering options, lack of unique product descriptions, and well-established global and local competitors, e-commerce sites are known to be amongst the most challenging types of sites when it comes to doing SEO, and often result in some pretty frightening horror story scenarios. But, it doesn't have to be that terrifying. In this session, Aleyda will take us through the most common issues, and show how to effectively address them at scale, before they become real nightmares.

4:30pm – Day 2 Presentations conclude

Wednesday, July 13th

7:30am – Breakfast & registration

9:00am – Day 3 Opening Remarks

9:10am – Why Real Expertise is the Most Important Ranctor Factor of Them All

Lily Ray

In this presentation, Lily will use real data to demonstrate how the rise of E-A-T has led to Google prioritizing expertise and authority above all else.

9:45am – To Be Announced

Amanda Natividad

10:20am – Morning break

10:45am – Rabbit Holes: How Google Pushes Us Down The Funnel

Dr. Peter Meyers

As an SEO, you've probably fallen down the rabbit hole of "organic" results that lead to more Google SERPs. If you map that rabbit hole, you'll see a systematic effort to push searchers down the funnel to commercial results. Why is Google doing this, what does it mean for SEO, and what can we learn about our own customers' journeys?

11:20am – Community Speaker – Beyond the Button: Tests that Actually Move the Needle

Karen Hopper

In a world that has a million different options for every creative element... where do you start? How do you know this or that element is where you'll see an impact big enough to make a difference for your bottom line? This is the number one question CRO strategists get asked, and the answer every time is: it depends! This session will walk through how to understand your testing opportunities, generate test ideas, and measure your results with scientific accuracy.

11:40am – Understanding Key Performance Factors: Using Data to Make Smart Decisions for Organic Search

Joe Hall

What KPIs are actually key? In this talk, Joe shows how organizations can use their own data to ascertain what’s relevant for actionable insights, in the hopes of helping you to develop smart SEO strategies.

12:15pm – Birds of a Feather lunch discussion tables

1:50pm – Leadership and Community in Search MarketingL Strong Teams, Better Results

Amalia Fowler

As search marketers, we spend a lot of time optimizing our campaigns, but don't have the same time to put into nurturing our teams. This is especially true when faced with things like a global pandemic, the great resignation, increased competition and the whims of Google. It's easy to forget that taking purposeful action in our working relationships can help lead us to better results. In this practical and actionable talk, we'll bust the myth that you have to be a manager to have influence, discuss the importance of leadership and community, identify three key characteristics strong teams have in common, get tips on fostering those characteristics regardless of your role, and discuss how taking the time to do this serves all of us, clients included.

2:15pm – Community Speaker – Things I Learned from Sales Teams that Every SEO Should Know

Petra Kis-Herczegh

Whether you're trying to build a business case or get buy-in for your SEO project, some of the core challenges will come down to the same thing: How well can you sell it? As SEOs, we often forget that, even though we spend our day-to-day analyzing data and optimizing content and websites for bots, at the end of the day, we are working with human beings — and some of those people have decision-making power over what we can and can't achieve in our roles. This is where learning a good set of sales skills becomes crucial. In this talk, Petra will explore some of the key skills and methods sales teams use, and how you can apply these to your SEO work.

2:35pm – The Untapped Power of Content Syndication

Amanda Milligan

Many marketers have long wondered whether syndicated content has SEO value. To help provide an answer, Amanda walks through case studies that illustrate the significant impact syndicated content strategies can have on your site's authority, rankings, and traffic.

3:10pm – Afternoon break

3:40pm – Community Speaker – Advanced On-Page Optimization

Chris Long

Take your on-page optimizations to the next-level using advanced tactics for one of the most common SEO tasks. This presentation goes beyond simply adding keywords. Chris will show you how to utilize tools such as IBM's Natural Language Understanding to find semantic entities of competitor pages, how Google's EAT guidelines apply to content, and what actionable steps you can take to improve content, perform on-page content experiments, and measure the impact of those tests.

4:00pm – Keyword Research for Thanks Instead of Ranks

Wil Reynolds

Seer Interactive has used keyword research methods to uncover ways to help clients understand their customers better. From diversity and inclusion, to hopes and fears, customers are leaving clues in their long tail searches. Wil demonstrates why you should spend the time to find them.

4:45pm – Day 3 Thank you & Farewell

7:00pm–10:00pm — Wednesday Night Bash

Bowling: check! Karaoke: check! Photo booth: check! Join us for one last hurrah as we take over the Garage. You won't want to miss this closing night bash — we'll have plenty of games, food, and fun as we mix and mingle, say "see ya soon" to friends new and old, and reminisce over our favorite lessons from the past three days.

See you there?

Chatting with speakers, connecting with peers and potential partners in Birds of a Feather lunch tables, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! Get your ticket now and we'll see you in July!

5 Surprising SEO Test Results

SEO testing expert Emily Potter joins us once again to wrap up this season of Whiteboard Friday! Today, she takes you through a few tests that generated unexpected results for her team at SearchPilot, and what those results mean for SEO strategy.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for the next season of Whiteboard Friday episodes, expected later this summer!

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

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. I'm Emily Potter. I'm Head of Customer Success at SearchPilot. If you haven't heard of us before, we're an SEO A/B testing platform. We run large-scale SEO tests on enterprise websites.

So that's websites in industries like travel, e-commerce, or listing websites, anything that has lots of traffic and lots of templated pages. Today I'm here to share with you five of our most surprising test results that we've run at SearchPilot. Part of a successful SEO testing program is getting used to being surprised a heck of a lot, whether that's because something you really thought was going to work ends up not, an SEO best practice test that ends up actually hurting your organic traffic, or something that you've tested just because you could that ends up being a winner.

All of our customers and us as well get surprised all the time at SearchPilot, but that's what makes testing so important. If you're a large enterprise website, then testing is what gives you a competitive edge. It helps you find those things that your competitors maybe wouldn't, especially if they're not testing, and it helps you stop yourself from rolling out changes that would harm your organic traffic that you maybe would have had you not been able to test them.

Or sometimes it's as simple as giving you a business case to get the backing that you need to roll out something on your website that you were going to do anyway but maybe didn't have the buy-in from other stakeholders. If you want to learn more about how we run tests at SearchPilot and how we control for things like seasonality, algorithm updates, and all that, go to our website and there's lots of resources there.

1. Using 'data-nosnippet' to force Google to show custom meta descriptions

Okay, the first test I'm going to share with you today is a customer that used the data-nosnippet attribute to force Google to respect its meta descriptions. As you probably know, Google now overwrites meta descriptions as well as title tags, and this can be really frustrating. In the case of meta descriptions, sometimes it brings in text that's strung together with ellipses, it's not very readable, it doesn't have good grammar, and a lot of SEOs find this frustrating.

So to get Google to show our meta descriptions instead, our customer added the data-nosnippet attribute to the body tag. What the data-nosnippet attribute does is it tells robots, like Googlebot, I don't want you to scrape any of this content. So by putting it on the body tag, we effectively forced Google to use what was in the head, i.e., the meta description.

As you can see, this was negative. It led to a 3% loss in organic traffic. As far as SEO tests go, that's actually a pretty small loss, but that's still not something you want to deploy and why would you lose any traffic at all if you know that's something going to hurt. So in this case, it turns out Google maybe is actually better at writing meta descriptions than we are.

So maybe meta descriptions aren't a thing we should be spending so much time on as SEOs. Meta descriptions we're finding at SearchPilot are very hard to ever come up with something that's positive, and oftentimes, we've run this a couple times on different industries and different websites, actually Google is better at writing them than we are anyway.

So maybe let's just let the robots do the work. 

2. Increasing the number of related article links

Our second test was on an e-commerce website. This was on the blog portion of their website, where they had blog content related to their products. At the bottom of every article, there were two related article links. In this test, we increased that from two to four.

Now running internal linking experiments is complicated because we're impacting both the pages where we're adding the links and we're impacting the pages that receive the links. So we have to make sure that we're controlling for both. Again, if you want to learn more about how we do that, you can check out our website or follow up with me after. Now, in this case, this was an 11% increase in organic traffic, which maybe doesn't seem surprising because it's links, we know that they work.

Why do I have this included on five surprising test results then? I have this included because actually this was to the donor pages. So by that I mean the pages where we added the links. The pages that were receiving the links, actually we didn't see any detectable impact for organic traffic. That was really surprising, and it goes to show that links do more than just pass on link equity.

They actually help robots understand your page better. They can be a way to associate different bits of content together. So they actually might have benefit to both pages. This is also why it's so important to make a controlled experiment if you're doing internal linking tests. One, if we were just measuring the impact on the pages that were receiving them, we wouldn't have found this one at all.

Or oftentimes, not often but sometimes at SearchPilot we've actually seen this be positive for one group and negative for another. So it's really important to find out the net impact. 

3. Localizing product content on U.S. e-commerce website

Our third test that I'm going to share with you today is when we localize content on product pages for an e-commerce website in the U.S.

So that was changing things like trousers to pants. This was a website that was originally based in the UK. They rolled out in the U.S. market, and they just kept the UK content when they did that. So we wanted to figure out what would happen if we updated that and made it actually fit the market that we were in. This was a 24% increase in organic traffic.

Now, to me, that was surprising the magnitude of how much of a difference that made. But I suppose that isn't surprising if you think about it. If trousers doesn't get very many searches per month in the U.S. but pants does, then I guess you would expect localizing that content to improve your organic traffic.

So places where this content existed was like the meta title, the meta description, H1, and things like that. If nothing else, this is just a nice indication that sometimes normal SEO recommendations actually work, and this was a great example of one that they were able to make a business case to get their devs to implement a change that they might not have been able to convince them was very important otherwise.

4. Adding prices to title tags

Test number four, adding prices to the titles. Again, an e-commerce website. You would think best practice recommendation have the price in the title. That's something users want to see. But, as you can see here, this was actually negative, and it was a 15% drop to organic traffic, so pretty substantial.

Important context here though. One of our hypotheses was our competitors in the SERP weren't using prices in the title tag but instead had price snippets that were coming from structured markup. So maybe users just didn't respond well to seeing something different to what other competitors had in the SERP.

It's also possible that our prices weren't as competitive, and putting them front and center in our title tag didn't help us because it made it clear that some of the other search competitors we had had better prices. In any case, we didn't deploy this change. But this is an important lesson in no two websites are the same.

We've run this test a lot of times at SearchPilot, and we've seen positive, we've seen negative, and we've seen inconclusive results with this. So there is no one-size-fits-all approach with SEO, and there's nothing that's an absolute truth and even something as simple as adding prices to your title tags.

5. Adding keyword-rich alt text

The final test I'm going to share with you today was when we added keyword rich alt text to images on the product page. As you can see, this had no detectable impact, which this is a common SEO recommendation. This is a common thing that comes up in things like tech audits or big deliverables that you give to a potential new customer.

Here, we found it actually didn't have much of an impact. That suggests that alt text doesn't have much impact on rankings. However, there are other really important reasons we would implement alt text, and we decided to deploy this anyway. Number one being accessibility.

Alt text helps your images become more accessible for those that maybe can't see them, and it helps bots be able to explain what's on the page. Or if something is just not rendering, then it helps people be able to still know what they're looking at. So alt text, although maybe not a big winner for SEO traffic, is still an important implementation and not something we want to forget about.

That's all that I have to share with you today. If you thought this was interesting and you want to get more case studies like these, you can sign up to our case study email list, which every two weeks we release a case study email and that includes a different case study. You can also find all the ones that we've done in the past on our website. So even if you can't run SEO tests or you're not a large enterprise website, you can still use the learnings that we have to help you make some business cases at your company.

Thanks for having me. Bye, Moz.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

How to Use Product Synonyms to Build Use Case Awareness & Scale SEO

Let’s move back in time to your third grade English class — lesson of the day: synonyms.

Synonyms (not to be confused with cinnamon) are words that have a similar or the same meaning as another word.

But, you already know this. What you might not know is how synonyms help you build use case awareness.

It all comes down to talking about your product in multiple ways, all of which are useful to your target audience. By expanding the ways you talk about your product, you attract more users, which in return scales your SEO strategy by giving you more relevant keywords to rank for (ideally even with high purchase intent – yes please!)

In fact, by finding and targeting product synonyms, you can even tap into a new unique selling point for your target market.

Let’s find out product-led SEO with synonyms can slingshot your growth forward.

What is the value of synonyms for SEO?

First off, using synonyms is a common SEO best practice recommended by Google.

SEO guru and webmaster trend analyst, John Mueller, explains how synonyms work, particularly in connection with search intent and context:

“...especially when you’re looking at something like ‘edit video’ versus ‘video editor,’ the expectations from the user side are a little bit different. On the one hand you want to edit a video. On the other hand you might want to download a video editor. And it seems very similar but… the things that the users want there are slightly different.”

So, when it comes to using product synonyms to scale your SEO strategy, the key is to align user search intent with a product use case that helps them.

I’d like to highlight how well this works not just for e-commerce, but also B2B, because those are the businesses that often struggle the most with low product-related search volume, making it seem like SEO just isn’t worth it. To add to that, there’s often a gap between what your audience calls your product and what you call it internally, so this strategy ensures both angles are covered.

Do this over and over again and not only will it expand your brand awareness, but it’ll also take a niche product with low search volume and turn it into a lead and sale generator — all from compounding hundreds of thousands of organic monthly searches (or more, depending on the topic).

Let’s go over some examples.

Examples of product synonyms for SEO

A use case (or a roadmap for how your audience will interact with a product) is a fantastic way to apply product synonyms. If people learn how they can use your product, the more likely they’ll feel it’s relevant to them. The more detailed the use case, the more personal it feels to the reader.

Examples of product synonyms in e-commerce

Product synonyms for e-commerce are pretty straightforward. For example, “occasionwear,” “wedding guest wear,” and “party wear” are all product synonyms that can be found as focus keywords at a made-to-order men’s suits store.

An online sport store may use synonyms such as “tennis shoes,” “sneakers,” and “trainers” to capture all target markets, for different levels of athletic wear.

Now let’s put it into practice.

What product synonyms would you use for “webcam” and “Bluetooth headphones”?

Maybe, “streaming camera,” “e-meeting camera,” or “Zoom camera”?

For Bluetooth headphones, what about “impermeable headphones” or “running headphones”?

It’s all about the use case that matches the same search intent.

Examples of product synonyms in B2B

In B2B, use cases become even more relevant, because one of the most common questions in the buying cycle is: “Is this truly relevant for my particular business?”

Take a look at these phrases:

• Conversational AI chatbot

• Customer support automation

• Product recommendation software

• Omnichannel engagement platform

Even though these have vastly different use cases and are semantically different, the technology used produces the same outcome as what each phrase describes. In fact, it’s actually the exact same product (in this case a chatbot), only described with a different phrase. 

The trick in this particular example is to talk about how the main product, the chatbot, relates to all the above phrases. Rinse and repeat and now you’ve gone from a niche product with limited search volume to HubSpot level organic traffic — all of which is highly relevant for your target audience.

How to find & rank for product synonyms

Finding synonym opportunities for products requires a deep understanding of the market and the search behavior of buyer personas. In other words, learn what your audience wants and explain how your product gives them that in multiple ways.

Understand your product use cases

Let’s start with your product use cases. Where should you begin?

First, compile all related brand themes and then build topic clusters based on that.

Let’s say you sell eco-friendly swimsuits for all types of bodies and your topic clusters focus on eco-friendliness and swimsuits per body type. All topic cluster pages are connected to the central brand themes and your products, but talked about from different angles.

In B2B, it’s common to cluster product use cases by industry or method. For example, the “conversational AI chatbot” mentioned earlier might target e-commerce managers, while “customer support automation” is a use case aimed at customer success. In the same way, “product recommendation software” grabs attention from a product team and an “omnichannel engagement platform” captures the marketing team.

With only these few keywords, we’ve described how nearly an entire business benefits from using a chatbot — sales here we come!

Benchmark competitors

Aside from generally making note of words that are being used on their website, it's helpful to perform a competitor keyword gap analysis. This helps you determine words they’re ranking for that you aren’t (yet), which helps inspire new use cases.

Understand the language of your audience

Do some research to see how your target audience refers to your products in their own words. Often in B2B there is a big gap between their descriptions and yours. Take note of the words, phrases, and any other insights pertaining to the language being used.

Some places to poke around include Slack communities, social media (especially LinkedIn), and Reddit. Don’t shy away from in-person events, too! When you talk like your audience talks, you’ll resonate with them because your products are simple to understand. Walk their walk, and talk their talk!

Pro tip: Talk to your customers on a regular basis! Ask to set up a 15 minute feedback session and record it. It’ll bring you massive insights about how they talk about and use your product.

If your business is big on social media, then social monitoring and listening tools will be crucial for compiling lots of information quickly. Social monitoring obtains information that has already happened in the past, while social listening keeps an ear out for current conversations about your brand. Hootsuite offers an extensive social monitoring tool to "dive deep beneath the surface", while Talkwalker offers social listening so you can keep up in real time.

Review People Also Ask and related searches

Google SERP features are a treasure trove of synonym opportunities. If you’re looking for “shoes”, you’ll probably see people are also searching for “sneakers”, “tennis shoes”, etc. You can use this feature to understand user search intent (which will help you find more aligned synonyms) and ensure you create the right type of content based on what’s already ranking.

The People Also Ask feature is similar to the "related searches" at the bottom of the SERP, and you can also use this to curate synonyms. 

Last but not least, utilize the auto-complete feature that suggests what you might type in the search bar:

Pro tip: Use AlsoAsked to dig a bit deeper into the People Also Ask questions from your potential consumers, and export the data graphically and in bulk. Answer all those questions and that’s a clear path toward SEO scalability!

Do keyword research

Without keyword research, creating your content and optimizing for SEO is like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping that it sticks. Use a keyword research tool like Moz to find keywords based on use cases. This ensures the keywords are relevant, have search volume, and have relatively low competition. For a more in-depth guide on keyword research, be sure to check out this guide!

Once you’ve finished keyword research, turn the semantically-related keyword groups into clusters to create individual content pieces for each cluster. 

Differentiate keyword placement based on your site structure

All websites have core product pages, so the exact match of high-purchase-intent keywords should go on those to maximize the potential for sales.

Product synonyms that are semantically unrelated, but still have a relevant use case, can go in an area like the blog, where you can explain them more thoroughly and then link back to your core product pages to incentivize conversions.

To go back to the chatbot example, “conversational AI chatbot” works best on an evergreen product page, while “product recommendation software” might make more sense in the blog, because you’ve got to give some explanation about how the two are connected.

Let us wrap this up with a quick recap

First off: why use product synonyms? Synonyms for SEO increase the relevancy of your product pages for a specific search query. At the same time, they can also help you scale out content strategies in the future, thus strengthening your SEO game and brand awareness.

But never forget, first you must understand your product use cases. How do your customers use your product? How do they describe it? Go deep into this process to get those granular details. Look around to see what language your customers are using, scope out your competitors for inspiration, and do some extensive keyword research. Review the People Also Ask feature and related searches to gather more information and ensure you differentiate your keyword placement based on your specific site structure.

Now you've got the basics of using product synonyms to build use case awareness. Class dismissed!