Beyond Title Tags: 5 Worthwhile SEO Tests that Seem “Untestworthy”

Is it testworthy, or is it untestworthy?

There’s a fine line between optimizations and experiments. Testing something is an exercise in curiosity, whereas optimizing a thing is an act of certainty.

If we know the outcome of a given activity before we perform that activity, we’re in optimization territory. For example, if you’ve discovered a load of orphaned pages, then the act of internally linking to those pages is highly likely to result in a positive outcome. We can deem this scenario, “untestworthy” (yes, I know that’s actually a word).

But, as we’ll discuss here, SEO includes a vast array of activities where the outcomes of our work are either uncertain or difficult to predict. Think about the last time you experienced a site migration. Were you certain that the new site would perform better than the original? This might be a scenario that we’ll deem, “testworthy.”

In short, a testworthy activity is one where we don’t know the ending until we measure our outcomes with data.

Measuring our SEO tests

The step-by-step measurement processes and techniques for conducting SEO experiments fall outside the scope of this article, so if you’re reading this and asking yourself, “how exactly do I run an SEO experiment from start to finish?”, here are a couple links to resources that can assist you in learning the nitty-gritty specifics of setting up and measuring SEO experiments:

• How to Start Running SEO Tests

• Your First Three SEO Tests

For each of the experiments below, I will assume a time-based measurement technique. Although some of the ideas here can be tested using an A/B split testing technique, not all of them can.

Curious about time-based techniques? I cover them in detail in this guide.

A word on statistical significance

One final note to remember. Statistical significance, i.e. when your results can be confidently attributed to your testing criteria, is a sexy concept, but one sobering reality of SEO testing is that statistical significance can only be achieved through rigorously advanced split testing.

Time-based SEO experiments provide us with directional learnings, not absolute conclusions. Advantages of experimenting in this way include the ability to react more quickly, use up fewer resources, and the flexibility to experiment in nearly all search environments where split testing cannot.

Here’s one way to visualize how non-significant tests remain valuable. On the left end of the spectrum, there are the crapshoot experiments: low confidence, low investment initiatives that provide less reliable insights. Further to the right, we can begin categorizing experiments according to higher confidence intervals and higher resource investments. Somewhere in the middle, there are a great many SEO tests that provide directional insights, even when our directional insights aren’t guaranteed with the promise of scientific certainty.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a list of five inconspicuous SEO tests that appear “untestworthy,” but are actually SEO tests disguised as optimizations.

Test in disguise #1: URL switching

A URL switch test is really very similar to SEO title testing. The idea behind URL switch tests is simple: like page titles, we know that URLs are heavily weighted ranking factors, so if we find that there are URLs that look under-optimized or misaligned with our target terms and search intents, then we can build a hypotheses for testing a new URL and redirecting the original URL.

Some of you might be silently blowing a fuse right about now, and for good reason. URL switch tests can be very risky. If your original URL has already generated a substantial number of links (internal or external) I would exercise extreme caution before running a URL switch test.

As you probably know by now, redirects have the potential to backfire, and if your test fails, cannot be rolled back to the original URL variant as easily as a title test can be rolled back.

But this shouldn’t scare you if you are running a URL switch test in lower-risk scenarios. I have seen many successful URL switch tests in scenarios where the target URL was either freshly-launched, had too few links pointing to it, or where the URL was so ineffective that an experiment was justifiably worth the risk.

How to run a URL switch test

1. Check the URL’s current traffic levels. Higher traffic levels = higher risk.

2. Check the URL’s internal and external links. Internal links can be updated, but external links can still lose strength as you pass them through a 302/301.

3. If the risk is within your level of tolerability, clarify what your new hypothesis and URL test variation will be.

   • Example hypothesis: Changing the URL string from a partial match string to an exact match string will align our page more closely with the target keyword and increase rankings and clicks for the target keyword.

4. Change the URL from the control URL to the variation URL.

5. Add a 302 temporary redirect from the control to the variation, submit the URL for re-indexation in Google Search Console (GSC), and benchmark the date that this is completed on.

6. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs. clicks after for equal time durations and days of the week in GSC.

   • For example: If your measurement period (after data) begins on a Thursday and ends on a Sunday, then I recommend comparing with an equivalent time duration in GSC that also begins on a Tuesday and ends on a Sunday just prior to the experiment launch date (before data). For most websites, the click patterns on weekends will be lower than on weekdays. Using the same days of the week and time durations allows you to control for these differences in daily click patterns.

   • The optimal time-range is situation-dependent. Pages that generate high click volumes can be measured closer to the two-week time-frame, while pages that generate lower click-volumes will need to run longer.

   • Caution: If the risk to this page is high, you may want to check in periodically during the first few days to make sure that performance doesn’t drop unexpectedly.

7. When measuring performance, use the “compare URLs” feature in GSC. This lets you check both the control URL and the variation URL simultaneously.
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8. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:
   

9. • If the new variation performed better: Change the 302 temporary redirect to a 301 permanent redirect and update all internal links to reflect the new URL.

   • If the original control URL performed better: Remove the 302 redirect. [Optional: you may want to add a new redirect from the failed variation URL back to the original control URL to speed up the re-indexation process.]

10. Resubmit the final URL in Google Search Console and periodically monitor the performance after the test has ended to ensure that performance remains positive.

Test in disguise #2: Content refreshes

Isn’t a content refresh a given? We know that refreshing content is good for SEO, so why does it need testing? 

Yes, content refreshes are incredibly important and this is an activity that has been proven successful time and time again. However, not every content refresh yields positive results.

Even though it isn’t the norm, content refresh projects can occasionally result in traffic losses, and perhaps equally frustrating, many refresh projects can turn out neutral results. This means that all of that precious time and energy that we spent rewriting and republishing a piece of content failed to produce the outcome that we intended.

For these reasons, it’s important to figure out if our investments in these projects have achieved their desired positive outcomes or not. That’s where SEO testing comes into play.   

How to run a content refresh SEO test

1. Perform your content refresh project exactly as you otherwise would, according to your own content team’s workflow. Make sure to save all of the original files, in case you need to revert back to the original content.

2. On the date of republication, submit the page URL to Google Search Console to be re-indexed and benchmark the date.

3. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs. clicks after in GSC.

   • Once again, keep in mind that the best time duration will vary based on the click volumes that each page receives.

4. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:

   • If the variation performed better: Congrats! Report the results to your team and keep the change.

   • If the control performed better: Reinstate the original content and files. Then, re-index the page and continue monitoring performance to look for rebounding traffic.

Test in disguise #3: Section rearrangement

A section rearrange test is just what it sounds like. The hypothesis for these experiments is that if we can reprioritize some of the on-page content, elements, or components, then we might be able to influence the page’s rankings and traffic coming in.

This can work particularly well, if the page section that addresses our audiences’ main search intents is either buried deep below the fold, or if it requires extra steps for the user to access that content.

For simplicity's sake, let’s use the example keyword: “email ideas for cold outreach.”

This keyword appears to have a lot of demand from users who are looking for specific email templates and phrasings that they can use in their outreach campaigns.

Now, let's assume that you’ve got a blog post on this exact topic, but the exact email templates and scripts that users are searching for are buried at the end of your posts, well past a dozen other sections of content that don’t satisfy their search demand. This might be a great case for running a section rearrange test.

The idea is, if you can reprioritize those pieces of information that users are looking for from the bottom of your page to the top of your page, Google is likely to notice the prioritized content as a better match for users to quickly access the information they want. Thus, rankings and traffic may improve in the same way they might improve with a content refresh project.

Added bonus: it’s faster than rewriting new content!

How to run a section rearrange SEO test

1. Look for pages that are underperforming, and that have addressed a users’ primary search intent somewhere deep within the page.

2. Rearrange the page sections in a way that might create a better experience or flow for the readers.

3. Launch the new page (but remember to save the original control page files), re-index in Google Search Console, and benchmark the date.

4. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs. clicks after in GSC.

   • Again, keep in mind that the best time duration will vary based on the click volumes that each page receives.

5. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:

   • If the variation performed better: Congrats! Report the results to your team and keep the changes.

   • If the control performed better: Reinstate the original content and files. Then, re-index the page and continue monitoring performance to look for rebounding traffic.

Test in disguise #4: Content removal

This test is the SEO-equivalent of what CRO professionals call “a takeaway test.”

In digital marketing, there are times when less really is more, so the idea for this experiment is, if we just trim out certain items — whether those might be page elements, or less-helpful content sections — then the removal process could lend itself to creating a tighter, stronger webpage.

In a CRO-driven takeaway experiment, a CRO professional might notice certain elements that distract users or get in the way of a conversion path.

This concept works just a little bit differently for SEO if our goal is to improve rankings and traffic performance. For SEO, content removal experiments are just a matter of “trimming the fat” from our content and page elements.

When analyzing your top pages, ask yourself if you see any sections, paragraphs, or sentences which deviate from the information that the search audience really came for. You might be surprised to see how much of the content we create is actually worthless for our users.

How to run a content removal SEO test

Scan for high-value pages and posts that may be hitting a wall with rankings and traffic performance.

1. Make sure to analyze the top keywords and SERPs so that you can get very clear on which primary and secondary search intents the users predominantly wish to see and read about.

2. Scan your page’s content with a dose of radical honesty to look for content that diverges from the information that you might want to see if you were a reader.

3. If your investigation turns up content and/or elements that don’t help the users, remove them and make sure to save the original control page files, just in case the experiment results are negative.

4. Launch the new page, re-index in Google Search Console, and benchmark the date.

5. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs clicks after in GSC.

   • Again, keep in mind that the best time duration will vary based on the click volumes that each page receives.

6. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:

   • If the variation performed better: Congrats! Report the results to your team and keep the changes.

   • If the control performed better: Reinstate the original content and files. Then, re-index the page and continue monitoring performance to look for rebounding traffic.

Test in disguise #5: Featured snippets

This activity is one of my all-time favorites.

Treating our featured snippet answers like an SEO test is one of the ways that my teams have been able to accrue competitively high volumes of traffic and clicks in recent years.

When our team began to treat our featured snippets as experiments, rather than optimizations, we were able to learn much more about how to write better answers, and we were able to create processes for scaling up to higher quantities of featured snippet experiments. This meant more “at bats” for acquiring the answer box rankings, which meant faster traffic growth.

Much has already been covered about how to optimize for featured snippets. I’ll simply add a process for testing your featured snippet copy.

What’s more, featured snippet tests are one of the rare instances where statistical significance is undeniably attainable because the success measurement is binary. Either your experiment resulted in acquiring the featured snippet, or it did not. (Caveat: Some longer tail featured snippets may also be impacted by your experiments, but the impacts are generally negligible if you are targeting a strong primary keyword.)

How to run featured snippet tests

1. Identify opportunities where featured snippets are appearing in the SERPs, and where one of your pages ranks within the top 5 positions but is not occupying the answer box. (Tip: some of the current rank tracking solutions such as STAT make featured snippet identification much easier.)

2. Sort and prioritize featured snippet opportunities according to the opportunities that represent the highest value to your website. I recommend considering the traffic’s audience and conversion potential alongside the potential search volume.

3. Rewrite the portion of your article where the featured snippet is being targeted. This step is another one where the full context of featured snippet practices span outside the scope of this article, so you may want to check out resources like this if you’re not already familiar with featured snippet rewriting.

4. Periodically check in on your target answer box(s) and traffic over the next several weeks.

5. If at first you don’t succeed, test again! The great part about answer box testing is that you rarely need to revert to your control, and you can keep swinging until you hit the home run. In some cases, we’ve had to make as many as ten or more rewrite attempts before successfully capturing the featured snippet.

6. Repeat this process to run more experiments the remaining featured snippet opportunities that were identified in step one.

More SEO tests in disguise

This list is far from exhaustive.

As I alluded to earlier in the piece, I think that just about anything which requires measurement is a form of testing to some degree, regardless of whether or not this activity can be measured to true statistical significance.

If your team is investing any serious resources into activities like core web vitals, internal linking, E-A-T enhancements, site migrations, Schema markup, or UX changes, it’s usually wise to do a retrospective before and after analysis on whether or not that investment yielded a positive payoff.

Stacking up those experiments to figure out where your bets are paying off, versus where they are not paying off will start to steer your strategy and SEO knowledge toward more profitable outcomes.

Beginner's Guide to Google Business Profiles: What Are They, How To Use Them, and Why

Google Business Profile is both a free tool and a suite of interfaces that encompasses a dashboard, in-SERP editing, local business profiles, and a volunteer-driven support forum with this branding. Google Business Profiles and the associated Google Maps make up the core of Google’s free local search marketing options for eligible local businesses.

Today, we’re doing foundational learning! Share this simple, comprehensive article with incoming clients and team members to get off on the right foot with this important local business digital asset.

An introduction to the basics of Google Business Profiles

First, let’s get on the same page regarding what Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business) are and how to be part of it.

What is Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile (GBP) is the branding of a multi-layered platform that enables you to submit information about local businesses, to manage interactive features like reviews and questions, and to publish a variety of media like photos, posts, and videos.

What is GBP eligibility?

Eligibility to be listed within the Google Business Profile setting is governed by the Guidelines for representing your business on Google, which is a living document that undergoes frequent changes. Before listing any business, you should consult the guidelines to avoid violations that can result in penalties or the removal of your listings.

You need a Google account to get started

You will need a Google account to use Google’s products and can create one here, if you don’t already have one. It’s best for each local business to have its own company account, instead of marketing agencies using their accounts to manage clients’ local business profiles.

When a local business you’re marketing has a large in-house marketing department or works with third party agencies, Google Business Profile permits you to add and remove listing owners and managers so that multiple people can be given a variety of permissions to contribute to listings management.

How to create and claim/verify a Google Business Profile

Once the business you’re marketing has a Google account and has determined that it’s eligible for Google Business Profile inclusion, you can create a single local business profile by starting here, using Google’s walkthrough wizard to get listed.

Fill out as many fields as possible in creating your profile. This guide will help you understand how best to fill out many of the fields and utilize many of the features. Once you’ve provided as much information as you can, you’ll be given options to verify your listing so that you can control and edit it going forward.

Alternatively, if you need to list 10+ locations of a business all at the same time, you can do a bulk upload via spreadsheet and then request bulk verification.

Where your Google Business Profile information can display

Once your data has been accepted into the GBP system, it will begin showing up in a variety of Google’s local search displays, including the mobile and desktop versions of:

Google Business Profiles

Your comprehensive Google Business Profile (GBP) will most typically appear when you search for a business by its brand name, often with a city name included in your search language (e.g. “Amy’s Drive Thru Corte Madera”). In some cases, GBPs will show for non-branded searches as well (e.g. “vegan burger near me”). This can happen if there is low competition for a search term, or if Google believes (rightly or wrongly) that a search phrase has the intent of finding a specific brand instead of a variety of results.

Google Business Profiles are extremely lengthy, but a truncated view looks something like this, located to the right of the organic search engine results:

Google Local Packs

Local packs are one of the chief displays Google uses to rank and present the local business information in their index. Local packs are shown any time Google believes a search phrase has a local intent (e.g. “best vegan burger near me”, “plant-based burger in corte madera”, “onion rings downtown”). The searcher does not have to include geographic terms in their phrase for Google to presume the intent is local.

Most typically these days, a local pack is made up of three business listings, with the option to click on a map or a “view all” button to see further listings. On occasion, local packs may feature fewer than three listings, and the types of information Google presents in them varies.

Local pack results look something like this on desktop search, generally located above the organic search results:

Google Local Finders

When a searcher clicks through on the map or the “view all” link in a local pack, they will be taken to the display commonly known as the Local Finder. Here, many listings can be displayed, typically paginated in groups of ten, and the searcher can zoom in and out on the map to see their options change.

The URL of this type of result begins google.com/search. Some industries, like hospitality have unique displays, but most local business categories will have a local finder display that looks like this, with the ranked list of results to the left and the map to the right:

Google Maps

Google Maps is the default display on Android mobile phones, and desktop users can also choose to search via this interface instead of through Google’s general search. You’ll notice a “maps” link at the top of Google’s desktop display, like this:

Searches made via Google Maps yield results that look rather similar to the local finder results, though there are some differences. It’s a distinct possibility that Google could, at some point, consolidate the user experience and have local packs default to Google Maps instead of the local finder.

The URL of these results begins google.com/maps instead of google.com/search and on desktop, Google’s ranked Maps’ display looks like this:

In-SERP vs. Dashboard GBP Management

Until quite recently, the majority of Google-based local business listings were managed via the interface formerly known as the Google Business Profile Manager Dashboard, which looks like this:

However, small businesses with only one or a few locations are now likely to see this prompt when logging into the dashboard:

If you choose the “stay here” button, hopefully Google will continue to let you manage your listings within the traditional dashboard, though this dynamic is in flux and could change at any time. If, instead, you choose the “manage on search” button, you will have to search Google for the phrase “my business” or the name of your business, and then manage all of your Google Business Profile functions within search, like this:

Google is currently testing a variety of in-SERP prompts like the following to guide business owners through the process of editing their listings in the absence of a convenient dashboard:

It’s my feeling that Google has made this unnecessary complicated, treating small businesses unequally by not giving them the same dedicated dashboard that larger brands enjoy. If you prefer having all your GBP-related assets in a very convenient and organized single dashboard, check out Moz Local.

GBP Insights

The GBP dashboard also hosts the analytical features called GBP Insights. It’s a very useful interface, though the titles and functions of some of its components can be opaque. Some of the data you’ll see in GBP Insights includes:

• How many impressions happened surrounding searches for your business name or location (called Direct), general searches that don’t specify your company by name but relate to what you offer (called Discovery), and searches relating to brands your business carries (called Branded).

• Customer actions, like website visits, phone calls, messaging, and requests for driving directions.

• Search terms people used that resulted in an impression of your business.

There are multiple other GBP Insights features, and I highly recommend this tutorial by Joy Hawkins for a next-level understanding of why reporting from this interface can be conflicting and confusing. There’s really important data in GBP Insights, but interpreting it properly deserves a post of its own and a bit of patience with some imperfections.

If you’ve lost your dashboard and are now managing your listing in-SERPs, you can still get to insights from the prompt within search that is labeled “promote”, and what you see will look something like this:

When things go wrong with Google Business Profile

When engaging in GBP marketing, you’re bound to encounter problems and find that all kinds of questions arise from your day-to-day work. Google relies heavily on volunteer support in their Google Business Profile Help Community Forum and you can post most issues there in hopes of a reply from the general public or from volunteer contributors titled Gold Product Experts.

In some cases, however, problems with your listings will necessitate speaking directly with Google or filling out forms. Download the free Local SEO Cheat Sheet for robust documentation of your various GBP support options.

How to use Google Business Profile as a digital marketing tool

Let’s gain a quick, no-frills understanding of how GBP can be used as one of your most important local marketing tools.

How to drive local business growth with Google’s local features

While each local business will need to take a nuanced approach to using Google Business Profile and Google Maps to market itself, most brands will maximize their growth potential on these platforms by following these seven basic steps:

1) Determine the business model (brick-and-mortar, service area business, home-based business, or hybrid). Need help? Try this guide.

2) Based on the business model, determine Google Business Profile eligibility and follow the attendant rules laid out in the Guidelines for representing your business on Google.

3) Before you create GBP profiles, be certain you are working from a canonical source of data that has been vetted by all relevant parties at the business you’re marketing. This means that you’ve checked and double-checked that the name, address, phone number, hours of operation, business categories and other data you have about the company you are listing is 100% accurate.

4) Create and claim a profile for each of the locations you’re marketing. Depending on the business model, you may also be eligible for additional listings for practitioners at the business or multiple departments at a location. Some models, like car dealerships, are even allowed multiple listings for the car makes they sell. Consult the guidelines. Provide as much high quality, accurate, and complete information as possible in creating your profiles.

5) Once your listings are live, it’s time to begin managing them on an ongoing basis. Management tasks will include:

• Analyzing chosen categories on an ongoing basis to be sure you’ve selected the best and most influential ones, and know of any new categories that appear over time for your industry.

• Uploading high quality photos that reflect inventory, services, seasonality, premises, and other features.

• Acquiring and responding to all reviews as a core component of your customer service policy.

• Committing to a Google Posts schedule, publishing micro-blog-style content on an ongoing basis to increase awareness about products, services, events, and news surrounding the locations you’re marketing.

• Populating Google Questions & Answers with company FAQs, providing simple replies to queries your staff receives all the time. Then, answer any incoming questions from the public on an ongoing basis.

• Adding video to your listings. Check out how even a brand on a budget can create a cool, free video pulled from features of the GBP listing.

• Commiting to keeping your basic information up-to-date, including any changes in contact info and hours, and adding special hours for holidays or other events and circumstances.

• Investigating and utilizing additional features that could be relevant to the model you’re marketing, like menus for goods and services, product listings, booking functionality, and so much more!

• Analyzing listing performance by reviewing Google Business Profile Insights in your dashboard, and using tactics like UTM tagging to track how the public is interacting with your listings.

Need help? Moz Local is Moz’s software that helps with ongoing management of your listings not just on Google, but across multiple local business platforms.

6) Ongoing education is key to maintaining awareness of Google rolling out new features, altering platforms, and adjusting how they weight different local ranking factors. Follow local SEO experts on social media, subscribe to local SEO newsletters, and tune in to professional and street level industry surveys to continuously evaluate which factors appear to be facilitating maximum visibility and growth.

7) In addition to managing your own local business profiles, you’ll need to learn to view them in the dynamic context of competitive local markets. You’ll have competitors for each search phrase for which you want to increase your visibility and your customers will see different pack, finder, and maps results based on their locations at the time of search. Don’t get stuck on the goal of being #1, but do learn to do basic local competitive audits so that you can identify patterns of how dominant competitors are winning.

In sum, providing Google with great and appropriate data at the outset, following up with ongoing management of all relevant GBP features, and making a commitment to ongoing local SEO education is the right recipe for creating a growth engine that’s a top asset for the local brands you market.

How to optimize Google Business Profile listings

This SEO forum FAQ is actually a bit tricky, because so many resources talk about GBP optimization without enough context. Let’s get a handle on this topic together.

Google uses calculations known as “algorithms” to determine the order in which they list businesses for public viewing. Local SEOs and local business owners are always working to better understand the secret ranking factors in Google’s local algorithm so that the locations they’re marketing can achieve maximum visibility in packs, finders, and maps.

Many local SEO experts feel that there are very few fields you can fill out in a Google Business Profile that actually have any impact on ranking. While most experts agree that it’s pretty evident the business name field, the primary chosen category, the linked website URL, and some aspects of reviews may be ranking factors, the Internet is full of confusing advice about “optimizing” service radii, business descriptions, and other features with no evidence that these elements influence rank.

My personal take is that this conversation about GBP optimization matters, but I prefer to think more holistically about the features working in concert to drive visibility, conversions, and growth, rather than speculating too much about how an individual feature may or may not impact rank.

Whether answering a GBP Q&A query delivers a direct lead, or writing a post moves a searcher further along the buyer journey, or choosing a different primary category boosts visibility for certain searches, or responding to a review to demonstrate empathy wins back an unhappy customer, you want it all. If it contributes to business growth, it matters.

Why Google Business Profile plays a major role in local search marketing strategy

As of mid-2020, Google’s global search engine market share was at 92.16%. While other search engines like Bing or Yahoo still have a role to play, their share is simply tiny, compared to Google’s. We could see a shift of this dynamic with the rumored development of an Apple search engine, but for now, Google has a near-monopoly on search.

Within Google’s massive share of search, a company representative stated in 2018 that 46% of queries have a local intent. It’s been estimated that Google processes 5.8 billion global daily queries. By my calculation, this would mean that roughly 2.7 billion searches are being done every day by people seeking nearby goods, services, and resources. It’s also good to know that, according to Google, searches with the intent of supporting local business increased 20,000% in 2020.

Local businesses seeking to capture the share they need of these queries to become visible in their geographic markets must know how to incorporate Google Business Profile marketing into their local SEO campaigns.

A definition of local search engine optimization (local SEO)

Local SEO is the practice of optimizing a business’s web presence for increased visibility in local and localized organic search engine results. It’s core to providing modern customer service, ensuring today’s businesses can be found and chosen on the internet. Small and local businesses make up the largest business sector in the United States, making local SEO the most prevalent form of SEO.

Local SEO and Google Business Profile marketing are not the same thing, but learning to utilize GBP as a tool and asset is key to driving local business growth, because of Google’s near monopoly.

A complete local SEO campaign will include management of the many components of the Google Business Profile profile, as well as managing listings on other location data and review platforms, social media publication, image and video production and distribution, and a strong focus on the organic and local optimization of the company website. Comprehensive local search marketing campaigns also encompass all the offline efforts a business makes to be found and chosen.

When trying to prioritize, it can help to think of the website as the #1 digital asset of most brands you’ll market, but that GBP marketing will be #2. And within the local search marketing framework, it’s the customer and their satisfaction that must be centered at every stage of on-and-offline promotion.

Focus on GBP but diversify beyond Google

Every aspect of marketing a brand contains plusses, minuses and pitfalls. Google Business Profile is no exception. Let’s categorize this scenario into four parts for a realistic take on the terrain.

1) The positive

The most positive aspect of GBP is that it meets our criteria as owners and marketers of helping local businesses get found and chosen. At the end of the day, this is the goal of nearly all marketing tactics, and Google’s huge market share makes their platforms a peerless place to compete for the attention of and selection by customers.

What Google has developed is a wonder of technology. With modest effort on your part, GBP lets you digitize a business so that it can be ever-present to communities, facilitate conversations with the public which generate loyalty and underpin everything from inventory development to quality control, and build the kind of online reputation that makes brands local household names in the offline world.

2) The negative

The most obvious negative aspects of GBP are that its very dominance has cut Google too much slack in letting issues like listing and review spam undermine results quality. Without a real competitor, Google hasn’t demonstrated the internal will to solve problems like these that have real-world impacts on local brands and communities.

Meanwhile, a dry-eyed appraisal of Google’s local strategy observes that the company is increasingly monetizing their results. For now, GBP profiles are free, but expanding programs like Local Service Ads point the way to a more costly local SEO future for small businesses on tight budgets

Finally, local brands and marketers (as well as Google’s own employees) are finding themselves increasingly confronted with ethical concerns surrounding Google that have made them the subject of company walkouts, public protests, major lawsuits, and government investigations. If you’re devoting your professional life to building diverse, inclusive local communities that cherish human rights, you may sometimes encounter a fundamental disconnect between your goals and Google’s.

3) The pitfall

Managing your Google-based assets takes time, but don’t let it take all of your time. Because local businesses owners are so busy and Google is so omnipresent, a pitfall has developed where it can appear that GBP is the only game in town.

The old adage about eggs in baskets comes into play every time Google has a frustrating bug, monetizes a formerly-free business category, or lets competitors and lead generators park their advertising in what you felt was your space. Sometimes, Google’s vision of local simply doesn’t match real-world realities, and something like a missing category or an undeveloped feature you need is standing in the way of fully communicating what your business offers.

The pitfall is that Google’s walls can be so high that the limits and limitations of their platforms can be mistaken as all there is to local search marketing.

4) The path to success

My article on how to feed, fight, and flip Google was one of the most-read here on the Moz blog in 2020. With nearly 14,000 unique page views, this message is one I am doubling down on in 2021:

• Feed Google everything they need to view the businesses you’re marketing as the most relevant answers to people in close proximity to brand locations so that the companies you promote become the prominent local resources in Google’s index.

• Fight spam in the communities you’re marketing to so that you’re weeding out fake and ineligible competitors and protecting neighbors from scams, and take principled stands on the issues that matter to you and your customers, building affinity with the public and a better future where you work and live.

• Flip the online scenario where Google controls so much local business fate into a one-on-one environment in which you have full control over creating customer experiences exceptional enough to win repeat business and WOM recommendations, outside the GBP loop. Turn every customer Google sends you into a keeper who comes directly to you — not Google — for multiple transactions.

GBP is vital, but there’s so much to see beyond it! Get listed on multiple platforms and deeply engage in your reviews across them. Add generous value to neighborhood sites Nextdoor, or on old school fora that nobody but locals use. Forge B2B alliances and join the Buy Local movement to become a local business advocate and community sponsor. Help a Reporter Out. Evaluate whether image, video, or podcasting media could boost your brand to local fame. Profoundly grow your email base. Be part of the home delivery revival, fill the hungry longing for bygone quality and expertise, or invest in your website like never before and make the leap into digital sales. The options and opportunities are enticing and there’s a right fit for every local brand.

Key takeaway: don’t get stuck in Google’s world — build your own with your customers from a place of openness to possibilities.

A glance at the future of Google Business Profile

By now, you’ve likely decided that investing time and resources into your GBP assets is a basic necessity to marketing a local business. But will your efforts pay off for a long time to come? Is GBP built to last, and where is Google heading with their vision of local?

Barring unforeseen circumstances, yes, Google Business Profile is here to stay, though it could be rebranded, as Google has often rebranded their local features in the past. Here are eight developments I believe we could see over the next half decade:

1. As mentioned above, Google could default local packs to Maps instead of the local finder, making their network a bit tidier. This is a good time to learn more about Google Maps, because some aspects of it are quite different.

2. Pay-to-play visibility will become increasingly prevalent in packs, organic, and Maps, including lead generation features and trust badges.

3. If Apple Maps manages to make Google feel anxious, they may determine to invest in better spam filters for both listings and reviews to defend the quality of their index.

4. Location-based image filters and search features will grow, so photograph your inventory.

5. Google will make further strides into local commerce by surfacing, and possibly even beginning to take commissions from, sales of real time inventory. The brands you market will need to decide whether to sell via Google, via their own company websites, or both.

6. Google could release a feature depicting the mapped delivery radii of brick-and-mortar brands. Home delivery is here to stay, and if it’s relevant to brands you market, now is the time to dive in.

7. Google has a limited time window to see if they can drive adoption of Google Messaging as a major brand-to-consumer communications platform. The next five years will be telling, in this regard, and brands you market should discuss whether they wish to invite Google into their conversations with customers.

8. Google could add public commenting on Google Posts to increase their interactivity and push brands into greater use of this feature. Nextdoor has this functionality on their posts and it’s a bit of a surprise that Google doesn’t yet.

What I’m not seeing on the near horizon is a real commitment to better one-on-one support for the local business owners whose data makes up Google’s vast and profitable local index. While the company has substantially increased the amount of automated communications it sends GBP listing owners, Google’s vision of local as an open-source, DIY free-for-all appears to continue to be where they’re at with this evolving venture.

Your job, then, is to be vigilant about both the best and worst aspects of the fascinating Google Business Profile platform, taking as much control as you can of how customers experience your brand in Google’s territory. This is no easy task, but with ongoing education, supporting tools, and a primary focus on serving the customer, your investment in Google Business Profile marketing can yield exceptional rewards!

Ready to continue your local SEO education? Read: The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.

How to Get Buy-In for Your SEO Projects — Whiteboard Friday

In this week’s Whiteboard Friday episode, Shawn walks you through four steps to overcome the challenge of gaining prioritization for your SEO projects, and how to connect your initiatives with a business’s timelines and goals.

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

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to this week's version of Whiteboard Friday. I am your host this week, Shawn Huber. Currently my role is Director of SEO at Trellis Law, but previously I was a senior manager of SEO at T-Mobile and that's why we're here today to talk about my experiences while at T-Mobile.

That brings me to our topic of this week — How to Get Buy-in for Your SEO Projects. If you go back a few weeks, you can catch a really awesome episode of Whiteboard Friday from Kavi, that talks about the ROI of SEO. I highly recommend you watch that so that way it helps you with this next step here. All right.

In the SEO world, you know we're full of challenges. One of them is the fact that we're super dependent on other teams. I know at T-Mobile I was very dependent on my engineering partners, and so getting any project prioritized wasn't always an easy feat, especially because my goals and timelines don't align with theirs because they have other teams and leaders and departments of the org that need their services as well.

So I'm going to walk through how to gain that prioritization for your projects and how to connect our initiatives with their timelines and goals. 

1. Identify motivations and goals

So the first step you want to identify their motivations and goals. Remember different teams have different needs. So you've got to figure out what matters to each of those teams. Sometimes it's as simple as just educating and letting them know that really it's not that much work for your SEO projects, and sometimes that helps.

Sometimes you don't have a complete picture. You might be missing some data points. So try to find any other ones that might be relevant to that specific audience you're trying to sell this to. Then lastly, figure out how does your data align with what they care about. 

Now I was working on a project that was going to help save T-Mobile a few million dollars. But that only hit the SEO bottom line. The engineering team that I needed very heavily to push through this project, it didn't matter to them. Even though the company was saving money, at the end of the day that didn't align to his goals. So I had to figure out how can I help him help me. It turns out, obviously, they're resource strapped, and so I was able to make a deal with them and say, "Hey, you give me this little bit of time and resources, SEO won't need you anymore for this type of project."

So that helped get that project green-lighted. 

2. Build a data-informed business case

Now once you have all that awesome information that you've collected, it's time to build that data-informed business case. You put all that together and make sure you customize or tailor it for each of the different audiences that you'll be presenting to. Yes, that means you're going to have to build a few decks along the way, but it's going to pay off in the end because you're making it relevant to them to help sell why they should help you.

3. Pitch and evangelize

Now that you have all those decks and everything put together, it's time to pitch and evangelize why your project needs to be prioritized over others. These are the elements that should be in that deck to help sell your project: a really awesome executive summary that says what they're going to get; what you're asking of them; why you're asking of them; the problem we have today and what it's going to look like tomorrow when your project is implemented; any test results, white papers, case studies, anything like that that you gather along the way to help prove why it's important; a very nice roadmap that talks about timelines and how long you expect this project to last; and obviously very great next steps.

You want to really focus on making sure you customize it to your audience. I know I've said it before, but it's super important, as I learned at my time at T-Mobile, that different departments have different needs. Keep it very concise because you know as it starts to bubble up and gets to senior leaders, they don't have a ton of time to go through a big deck.

Make sure you have clear next steps. Those leaders love to know what to expect each step of the way. Then include as much visualizations as possible. Make sure that you put them in brand colors and things like that because leaders love when you take that extra minute to finesse it so that it looks like you care about it and it helps them to care that you care.

4. Follow through and follow up

Then lastly, follow through and follow up. Always establish and come through on your reporting, timelines, statuses, things of that nature because that's going to help make it easier to establish the proof of value that SEO is bringing, and it fosters trust so that next time when you come knocking on the door saying, "Hey, I need your help to create this next project," or whatever, they're going to be like, "Hey, the SEO team always delivers. It makes me look good. I'll green-light whatever you want."

So in the end, our keys for ensuring program success are collaborating with all those different departments, figuring out what's valuable to them and what's important to them, and aligning it to your SEO goals and what's important to you. Thank you for watching this week's episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Have a good day.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

How to Apply Semantic SEO to Different Niches

Search engine optimization is ever-changing as search engines are continuously evolving. A semantic SEO strategy can help you to carve out a competitive advantage. As search engines adapt to provide the best results to conversation queries, your web content should adapt too.

Once you understand the principles, you can apply semantic SEO writing to any niche. In this post, I’ll outline some of the successful strategies I’ve used across different types of sites along with some insights into the results they have achieved.

Let’s start by explaining a little more about semantic search and content before we examine some useful applications and tips.

How does semantic search work?

Semantic search provides the best results for user queries by understanding user intent and language. Through machine learning and artificial intelligence, search engines have gained a deep knowledge of the semantics (or meaning) of words and phrases, and how they link to each other. Google understands entities and topics, and groups them using The Knowledge Graph.

This is a much more sophisticated approach than the keyword matching that was used by search algorithms in their early days. Today, the semantic search engine is continuously refining its understanding of language so that it can serve the most relevant and helpful results to any given query. This requires an appreciation of the search intent, and the intent of the content being served up to the user.

What are the benefits of semantic search?

The benefits of semantic search are many.

For users:

• They get a better user experience using search engines because the results they receive are of higher quality.

• They can get to the information they need faster, and sometimes even answer their next question before they’ve asked it.

• They can search on different devices, in different ways, and still receive qualified results.

For search engines:

• They can handle the increase in conversational search queries from devices like smartphones and smart home devices (often through voice search).

• They are providing a really useful service, making the general public even more likely to use their search engine, in turn giving them more data to help them learn about human language.

What is semantic content?

In linguistics, semantics refers to the study of meaning. So in this context, semantic content looks to use words, phrases, and sentences to construct a piece of writing with a certain meaning.

A piece of semantic writing aims to utilize the relationships between words, phrases, concepts, and sentences to create a really valuable resource on a certain topic. It’s paying attention to the detail in your piece of content, from sentence structure to overall page structure and everything in between.

In slightly more relatable terms, it’s writing well for humans and following linguistic rules. It’s keeping things clear, concise, and easy to read. It’s using semantically related keywords to contextualize your topics and removing unnecessary words. You don’t need complex language or convoluted text. But you do need in-depth content.

In SEO, this is vital when writing content that you'd like to rank. Natural Language Processing (or NLP) is used by search engines to understand our content, and this process is assessing the words we’ve used, and the relationships between them.

A semantic approach to improving e-commerce SEO

So, with semantics being all about words, how does that apply to selling products? Is it purely for journalists, publishers, and blog sites? Not at all. Semantic SEO is important for all web pages on any website.

You shouldn’t assume semantic SEO isn’t for you if you run an e-commerce site. In fact, it can be really effective in an e-commerce environment. When you're writing category, product, and landing page copy, you should still think about phrase-based indexing, writing for NLP, content structure, and readability.

Review category and product page content

Make sure all your content is top-notch by making it unique, helpful, detailed, and well-structured. Research the entities that relate to your products and include them on the relevant category, subcategory, and product pages.

Provide in-depth information about your products and product ranges. Consider their benefits and key selling points. This is all helpful for the user experience as well as search engines, so keep your audience in mind and make sure your copy serves a purpose.

Working with one of my e-commerce clients, I focused on NLP terms and entities to create semantic content on over 200 categories, subcategories, product, and information pages. Going beyond basic search term research, we focused on content structure, co-occurrence, entities, synonyms, and the relationship between terms to craft high-performing content.

Here’s an example of a subcategory page that was optimised in this way:

Source: Express Doors Direct

Over a twelve-month period, the brand saw the following results:

• Increased non-blog organic sessions: +495.97%

• Increased organic transactions: +365.58%

• Increased organic revenue: +415.30%

Examine keyword clusters and missing category pages

Using a keyword gap analysis, you can start to uncover the areas your e-commerce store isn’t ranking for in comparison with your closest competitors. You can then use this to lead your strategy for category and subcategory creation. You’re likely to find clusters of keywords on one topic that you don’t have a page to satisfy, so you can create one.

This might cover:

• a different way of grouping your products (e.g. by color or style rather than by material)

• a supporting guide that you’re missing

• a type of product that you don’t sell but could

Examine the common themes in your keyword gap analysis and create a plan for new website pages by grouping these into keyword clusters. Collate the products for a page if necessary, and write the copy carefully, optimizing for multiple keywords in your cluster, combining concepts and ideas to contextualize your overall topic.

Source: SEMRush

I’ve seen a client’s search rankings and traffic soar when they added a key page to fulfill one of their biggest keyword gaps. Overall, the unique keywords they rank for have increased by 47.92% during 2022, and 79.4% since we started working on their new and existing content using this semantic approach:

First place rankings have also increased, by 59.43% during 2022 and staggeringly, by 627.58% since starting work with a semantic approach:

Source: Big Metrics, linked with client’s Google Search Console account

Covering multiple keyword clusters also captures more search traffic and can genuinely help customers who often shop in different ways.

Research and plan supporting content

Create content to support your website visitors' needs, centered around common product questions and guides. Rather than housing these on your blog or in a resources section, add them to the category or product pages they support.

Semantic SEO is about relationships, and that goes beyond the terms used on a single page or a single piece of content. It covers the way in which pages and topics are clustered together. If you demonstrate that you not only sell a product, but you provide a whole host of expert advice relating to that product, you will demonstrate topical authority.

Internal links

Consider the use of semantic relationships within and between your pages. You can build a really powerful resource using a series of great pages with strong connections to each other. Use a clear internal linking strategy to get this right.

A hub and spoke approach using a key category page as the center of the hub (or the pillar page) can be especially effective. A large e-commerce client we work with made almost 2% of their revenue from assisted and last click conversions through hub content in a twelve-month period. This might not sound like a large percentage, but when the overall revenue is high, an extra 2% equates to quite a sum.

Here’s a hub and spoke strategy in action, organizing help and advice on washing machines around a central washing machine category page:

Source: Appliance City

Apply schema markup or structured data

Use schema markup or structured data to help signpost your products, FAQs, and other aspects of a given page. It’s also known as semantic markup for a reason! This adds an additional level of information that helps search engines really understand your content.

For example, the below image shows product search results for UK retailers Currys and Argos displaying prices, images, and review ratings:

Source: Google SERPS

Adding structured data can help you generate rich snippets because you’re helping Google to organize your content and display it creatively. This can get you more real estate in the SERPs and therefore generate more qualified traffic.

Keep the quality high and helpful

When you've built up performance with great quality semantic content, you can still lose ground if you subsequently release a lot of unhelpful, thin, or badly written content.

In Google’s latest documentation about the helpful content update, they explicitly say:

“Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that's better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.” - Source: Google

This goes to show that even if you create fantastic content, it will still suffer if there aren’t enough pages of high-quality content on your website.

When you’re managing a busy e-commerce site and adding lots of new products, it’s easy to let thin, badly written, or even duplicate content slip through the net. But if you do, it can have a knock-on effect and actually harm the progress you’ve been making.

Working with e-commerce clients, I’ve seen this happen. Overall progress has taken a dip when nothing on our top-performing pages has changed. But digging into the data, I’ve often found that a large batch of products has been added to the site with low-quality, rushed descriptions. This has likely had an influence on the overall website content quality and tipped the balance in the wrong direction. If these descriptions had been carefully written for semantic SEO, taking entities, related phrases, and good structure into account, the addition of new products could have increased results across the site rather than hindered progress on key pages.

Once you start creating higher-quality content for semantic search (and your users) it’s really important to keep it up. Consistency is key. If you can, have a plan for every new page that hits the site and make sure it’s as good as it can be within the time restrictions you have.

B2B service and creative industries

Service and creative industries often have quite lengthy, text-rich pages that are ideal for optimizing with a semantic approach.

Content is key

Many B2B service websites and creative industry sites only have a small number of key pages. Unlike e-commerce sites that have hundreds — maybe thousands — of subcategories and product pages, you might have a limited number of options when it comes to your services.

This is where your informational content can play a pivotal role in the success of your site. Through the addition of informative and FAQ content, we increased an e-commerce website’s informational search queries by 75%. But even so, they only account for 12% of their total keyword rankings.

In contrast, for a service site that I work on, informational queries make up 76% of their total keyword rankings. These information pages help to make semantic connections by providing further context around the subjects a service provider specializes in. Without these supporting pages, they wouldn’t be able to display their depth of knowledge or expertise on a topic.

Source: Sistrix

Information pages also help to bring your target audience in at the top of the funnel. Perhaps they’re just starting out in an industry and looking for answers. If you are present in the search results and provide a helpful resource, your brand will be associated with their learning. When they try to think of an expert to help them with a problem later down the line, you’ll stand a good chance of being the one that springs to mind and winning their business.

Structure your content well

As service and creative sites are often quite wordy, it’s vital to use structure to your advantage. This helps out search engines and users alike.

Use clear headings and subheadings to signpost different areas and group common themes within an article or page. Bullet points and bold text can help certain aspects stand out. Proximity within the text can indicate the strength of relationships between phrases and entities.

On the Boom Online website, we structure our content with clear formatting to make text-heavy service pages easier to read:

Source: Boom Online

This is helpful for both search engines and users because relevant information can be located quickly and efficiently.

Don’t forget to use synonyms and close variants

When reviewing service sites, I often find that they stick with one way of saying something for consistency. Perhaps they do it just because that’s how they refer to a certain thing internally. But when you’re optimizing for semantic search, it’s much more beneficial to consider the variety of different ways you can refer to something and use them appropriately.

Let’s look at a digital marketing example: PPC can also be called pay-per-click, sponsored search, keyword auction, paid search, or search advertising. If you stay with just one of these options, you’re likely to be missing out on opportunities for traffic and chances to add context to the meaning of your page.

Here’s a good example of some content about “meet the team” pages. Because synonyms and close variants have been included, it ranks for similar terms like team bios, our team page, team profiles, and many more:

Source: Search Console

So, research these varied options for your page and use them in a suitable way. Don’t just add them for the sake of it, but add any that make sense. You’ll probably find your page is much more readable due to the variety of language you’ve used, and it will perform better in search too.

Keep your eye on the detail

If you’re using statistics to back up a point or referring to prices or facts, review these regularly. Update your pages to show the most recent stats and research and review pricing changes. Search engines don’t like out-of-date or incorrect information, and they can identify it because they understand the meaning and context they are displayed in.

Creating semantic content in the home & DIY sector

If you’re working in the home and DIY sector, you might be selling high-ticket items or services that require a little extra persuasion to close the sale. The average consumer might not have all the DIY knowledge they need to tackle their project, and is likely to be searching for additional information before they make a purchase.

You can address these sales barriers by creating semantic content that not only helps users but also drives search traffic and increases your chances of becoming a topical authority.

On-page FAQs

One useful application to consider is adding on-page FAQs that tackle some of the queries consumers might have before they purchase. Not only is this helpful for UX, but it’s also powerful for semantic SEO.

The answers to FAQs enrich your category pages, allowing you to add related entities and complete phrases to support phrase-based indexing.

Keep answers short and succinct, use schema markup, and link to more detailed articles where required.

Source: Climadoor

Implementing this across a DIY client’s site has resulted in a 44% increase in keyword rankings with informational intent since January 2022, from 2.5k informational keywords ranking in Jan 2022 to 3.6k in October 2022.

Keywords by intent Oct 2022:

Keywords by intent Oct 2022:

Detailed guides

Working with a lot of home improvement and DIY clients, there’s plenty of scope in this sector for creating detailed how-to and informational guides. This type of content offers an abundance of helpful information to potential customers, and it helps you to rank too.

How-to and other informational guides can bring a wealth of relevant organic traffic, capture featured snippets, and demonstrate your expertise in a topic area. They can also help to drive your target customers through your sales funnel, getting them closer to the buying phase.

If you’re creating this type of content, take the time to make it really detailed, rich, and useful. Add unique images, video content, expert opinions, and more. Think about what it takes to really bring the topic to life, making it an interesting and helpful read. If competitors are doing the same thing, try to set your resource apart as the best by including some media or original insight that they have missed.

Source: Express Doors Direct

Don’t forget to execute a hub and spoke strategy. This can be really powerful if you position key category pages as hub centers, and create spokes to support them. I’ve talked more about this in the e-commerce section.

The technology sector

Selling a very technical product or service presents its own challenges for semantic SEO. Website copy is often written by subject matter experts to maintain accuracy, but this doesn’t always produce the best search results.

Create content that search users want

This is SEO 101, right? But it isn’t always that obvious. Sometimes technical providers can get carried away with explaining the intricacies of what their product or service can do, without thinking about how a user would search for that information.

To succeed with semantic SEO, go back to your keyword research. Re-focus on the relevant search queries, and then match their intent with suitable content. This might mean reworking some existing content to support the relevant keywords or the creation of new content.

For example, the below content fulfills a multitude of search queries about a specific technology in a simple format.

Source: GeoSLAM

Follow the longtail

When I’ve been working in technical niches, search queries are often very specific and have low to zero search volume in many of the common tools. But longtail keywords can still be really valuable if they are relevant to your users.

Don’t be afraid to create great content to satisfy “zero volume” phrases. Group these phrases together to create a detailed resource and as always, research the related entities and phrases to strengthen your content. Group a series of these very specific articles together for even more semantic SEO power. The search traffic you receive might not be huge, but it will be extremely relevant and qualified.

This recently published article based on a series of longtail, very low-volume queries has generated 18.3K impressions and 816 clicks in the last four months:

Source: Search Console

Reduce jargon and improve readability

Technical sites can often use a lot of industry jargon and long, winding sentences. Whilst technical subjects do tend to have higher reading difficulty scores, they shouldn’t be impossible to comprehend.

Very long and complex sentences make it difficult for Google to understand the links between words, reducing its confidence in the meaning of that sentence. It’s important to be precise, concise and clear no matter what the subject.

You can test this theory out by using Google’s NLP Tool.

For this complex sentence, there are a lot of dependency “hops” between words:

Google sees the most salient entities as “products” and “front”.

But I am talking about reaching an audience using advertising. So when we simplify the language as below:

You can instantly see the dependency “hops” reduce. And the overall result is a sentence that retains meaning, while the most salient entities “audience” and “advertising” have a much higher salience score showing they are understood as more important or central to the text:

Re-focus your content for clarity and readability. It’s absolutely possible to do this for technical subjects. Don’t try to baffle your readers with science or technology. Making things clear and succinct will help search engines and users alike process your language and extract the meaning.

If specific industry terms are necessary, define them where possible. A great definition will reinforce your expertise, and could also pick up other relevant queries and featured snippets.

Working on all of the above with a technical client across their blog content has yielded a 43.42% increase in organic traffic landing on blog pages, and a 24.92% increase in goal completions so far in 2022:

General tips for semantic SEO

No matter what type of website you work on, you can apply semantic principles to make your content perform better. Here are some general tips for semantic SEO success:

Use it as a competitive advantage

Don’t assume that you can’t rank well enough for competitive terms without a strong link profile. Links are only one part of the picture. If you are an expert in a field and can create great content on the topic, it’s certainly worth considering. Plan the content carefully, provide high-quality, unique insights and give it a shot. You might be surprised by the results.

I have helped clients to outrank really well-known brands with strong backlink profiles for competitive search terms by using a semantic approach. It required plenty of time and effort to research the topic, related phrases, and entities. Equal care and attention have gone into writing the copy and optimizing it at a later date, but allowing for attention to detail has really been worthwhile.

Don’t forget your link-building strategy

If you create quality content using semantic search it can rank well. High-ranking content can attract some valuable backlinks. A client of ours picked up one from the New York Times in this manner.

Don’t forget to include your semantic content in your link-building plans. Share it with others, and use social media and email marketing to get it noticed. If you’ve done a really great job for semantic search, you’ve probably nailed your content for users too. And this is the kind of content that other publications would choose to share or link to, which will only add to its success.

Always stay relevant to your topics and relationships

The way to build things up with this approach is by gaining ground in your topic area. Broader topics will have little use, so it’s best to stick to what you know.

Carry out a content audit to see what’s working for your website. Use this to define your areas of strength and relevance. When you have a clear focus, thoroughly research your topic area, and stick to it. Make sure irrelevant content doesn't creep in - you must stick to your strategy.

I worked with a client who used to add broader blog content for interest and color, assuming that people didn’t want to know about their product area as much because it didn’t seem exciting. But after a content audit uncovered that their successful content was all very closely related to their product area, we refined their strategy in early 2022.

Now, most of their blog content is very tightly related to their products, and each new post ranks well and brings in qualified traffic. The site as a whole is seeing the benefit, and the visibility for blog content has been steadily increasing:

Source: Sistrix

Give it time

Don't try to optimize too early. Give your pieces at least three months before reviewing performance. Some really well-written pieces can rank in weeks. Others can take months. If you start to change them before you’ve really seen what they can do, you risk harming their performance.

Lots of the content myself and my team have worked on in the first half of 2022 has seen some really positive gains after the May 2022 Google Core Update, so you might even need to wait for algorithm updates to really know what’s paying off.

Here’s an example of a specific content piece that was published in January, and saw virtually no visibility for just over three months. Things started to take hold and really ramp up after the May core update (marker B) with no significant changes made to the content.

Source: Sistrix

Keep optimizing

Whilst you shouldn’t start optimizing too soon after releasing a piece of content, the landscape keeps changing. You should always keep optimizing and improving your content once you’ve given it some time to get established.

This new, key sales page was added to a client’s site in December 2020. It took hold quite quickly, so was further optimized in March 2021, and visibility increased massively from then on.

Source: Sistrix

The content quality was reviewed again when things began to dip in December 2021, which brought about recovery.

Create an optimization plan so you don't forget to come back to key pages. Review important pages again if you see a dip in traffic, or if things change after a core update.

Balance quality with quantity

Whilst you need to keep a close eye on the quality of each page you publish, it’s more effective to focus on quality over perfection. Ten articles that are well optimized with a semantic SEO approach will be more powerful than one article that contains all the entities possible. This is because the relationships between pages are important too, and as mentioned earlier, a larger proportion of higher quality, helpful content on your site is beneficial to the whole site.

Whatever your niche, you can take a semantic approach

You can use semantic SEO to get results in any niche. Whilst the things you focus on will be different for each, the general principles always apply. Take time over your writing, consider the words you use and the relationships between them. Create clear, structured writing, and make sure you review and optimize as the search landscape changes. Enjoy creating content that’s topically relevant and you’ll see the results!