Join Lazarina in this Whiteboard Friday where she discusses the critical skills and elements involved in data storytelling. Learn about data analysis, and data visualization, as well as how to communicate wins and balance relationships with stakeholders.
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Video Transcription
Hi there. Today we're going to talk about data storytelling. Throughout history, we humans have used stories to communicate information, to cross boundaries, and to also relate to one another. So today we're going to talk about data storytelling and how that can be used as part of an SEO or a marketing consultant's role.
We're going to talk about the four main components of data storytelling and the skills that you need in order to create beautiful data stories.
Data Science
So the first component of data storytelling is data science. So data science is all about knowing what insights you want to extract from your data, but it's also about the technical skills that you need as a consultant or a marketer in order to extract that data.
So it combines a little bit of data analysis. It combines a little bit of data engineering. But it's all about knowing what data you need in order to tell a good story.
Data Visualization
The second component of data storytelling is data visualization. So data visualization is all about knowing how to visualize the data that you have at hand based on the insights that you want to communicate.
It's also about choosing the visuals that help you communicate the narrative that you want to your stakeholders better. So this means if you have a particular data type, whether it's numeric or text-based, it means choosing the visuals or otherwise the charts, the graphs, or tables that will help you to communicate those insights to your stakeholders better.
The Narrative
The third component is the narrative. So the narrative is all about how do you convey insights to your audience. What is most important here is that you learn how to communicate wins, how to evoke emotions in your stakeholders, how to maybe create some urgency with the stories that you are saying, and also how to communicate the relationships between the projects that you're working on and the outcomes that you are seeing within the data.
What is also very important here is to show the cause and impact relationship between the data points, the projects that you're working on, and what the outcomes of these are.
Relationships
The fourth component, the big circle here that typically people don't really consider in data storytelling is actually the relationships.
So when we talk about relationships, it's all about the relationships that you have with your stakeholders. This is something that typically you will need to work on as you are working with your stakeholders. But what is most important here is to understand your stakeholders. Who are they?
What are their hidden motivations? Who are they reporting in to? Or what is the most important outcome for them for this particular project? It's also very important for you to know before you create a report or any sort of data story what success looks like for that particular person and how you can best bridge the gap between the current performance and their ideal performance through the story that you tell.
So now that we have all of these different skills that you need to know, we can see the three main components of a successful data story, and that is first of all the data. We know that the data should be accurate. It should be reliable. So what is most important, when you are looking at your data, is to understand specifically whether there is any sampling applied, whether this is a reliable data source, whether the data is complete.
So these are the kind of questions that you should be asking yourself whenever you are analyzing the data that you want to present to your client. The second very important component and what we have learned is that you need to have a very compelling narrative. So the narrative is a combination between your ability to bridge the gaps between the data and the projects that you're working on.
But it's also a combination between who you are reporting in to. So depending on who your audience is, your narrative is likely going to change even though you are reporting the same data. The third component is actually the visuals that you are going to use. Whenever you are choosing visuals, always think about whether this is the most appropriate way to present the information that you have to that particular audience, because even though sometimes you might prefer to present to the audience in a certain way, like let's say, for instance, a dashboard, that might not be the ideal vessel for this data and for this narrative for the particular person.
Whenever you are choosing your visuals, it's very important not only to think about the platform where you are storing your reports and how you are building them, but it's also important to think about whether you are choosing the most appropriate graphs and charts in order to help the audience understand quickly what the desired actions after the report should be.
So whenever you are thinking about your data, your narrative, and your visuals, click on the link within the blog post because there will be a checklist there to help you through different questions about how to best organize these three elements when you're building your data story. With all of that, we have covered a lesson for data storytelling components and skills that you need to succeed.
Our jobs are changing. Each day, Google Ads relies on a combination of AI & machine learning to manage more of the hands-on work we used to do as campaign managers. This means the future of our work is going to be very different.
We are no longer on the court playing basketball. We are now the coach guiding our team to the finals. Our team, in this case, is Google Ads now. Our job is about guiding the machines and technology and ensuring we are headed in the right direction. If we are not headed in the right direction, we are going to be off course and won’t be successful.
For people who loved pushing buttons and getting their hands dirty in the ad account, this transformation and seismic shift is going to be very hard on you. However, you can harness and strengthen your other skills and make your future very bright. Even brand owners can leverage what they know about their business to be successful with Google ads today.
The key to success today is about prioritizing your ecommerce data and the inputs you provide Google Ads. Google Ads, and all ad platforms, work off data inside your ad account, and the data you provide them. The better the data you provide, the more likely you are to be successful and bring in profitable revenue for your business.
Google Ads does not care about data in your ad account from last year or 6 months ago. The data you have from the previous 30 days is what is key. This means you always need to ensure you are maintaining high quality data signals and make sure you are headed in the right direction.
I will cover 5 ways to prioritize your e-commerce data and give the machines what they want. Are you ready to take your data to the next level?
Conversion Data
Data is worth its weight in gold. However, not all conversion data is created equal. We have seen brands use page views, add to cart, and even button clicks as conversion goals. However, some brands may find a unique use case to look at these metrics. They should not be your primary conversion goal when managing campaigns in Google.
Your primary conversion goal in Google Ads is what Google’s AI technology is going to optimize towards in your ad account. Suppose you set your primary conversion goal as someone buying a product on your site. That means Google will then look at which customers convert on your site and try to show your advertising to people who are more likely to convert. Google’s AI tech looks at everyone searching on Google and tries to match your site to the best people possible. All of this happens in a split second in the background when someone makes a search.
This is why you want to focus on purchases as your primary conversion goal and ensure the data for this conversion goal is accurate. You also want to make sure that you have dynamic revenue being pulled into Google Ads. We have seen ad accounts where someone set up a static conversion value, which is problematic for providing good-quality data. If the static conversion value was set to $100, but some people make a purchase worth $50, and others make a purchase worth $200, then we won’t be giving Google correct conversion values and the correct data around which people buy what products.
Every time you shop online, ad platforms track what you buy, from where, and how much you spend. That way, they can help understand what you are into and try to accurately help serve ads that relate to products you might be into in the future.
Having the wrong conversion data can set you back weeks or even months because you have to start collecting the right data from scratch. If you are running Google Ads, I highly recommend using Google Ads conversion tracking tag, as well as setting up enhanced conversions. Once Google removes all cookies from the Chrome browser, enhanced conversion tracking will be important in continuing to feed conversion data to Google Ads.
First-party Data
First-party data and conversion data go together like grilled seafood and a glass of freshly squeezed juice. It’s a pairing that was made for each out. You just need to know how you can harness this data for Google ads.
What is first-party data? This is the data you have collected about your customers and anyone who has come to your site or purchased from your e-commerce business over the years. How much first-party data each company has will be different, but every company has it.
Google takes your first-party data and wraps it inside a feature called Customer Match. There are many types of customer data, but the most basic kind of data someone would use is our email address. Just make sure you format your data, and Google will gladly take it.
However, you can also use first names, last names, phone numbers, and country of residence. You can also include someone’s address, but you have to include the following information, or Google won’t count the address: country code, postal/zip code, hashed first name, and last name. You can even add conversion values from purchases people made.
The reason you want to provide more than an email address is so Google can match that customer and their data to the data Google already has about that person. The more Google knows about your customers, the better job their AI technology can make sure you rank for the right searches and help you get more customers who match the people already buying from you.
If you are not uploading and using your first-party customer data when running campaigns across Google and other ad platforms. Then you are missing out on the opportunity to provide some of the highest quality data your ecommerce store has access to.
When it comes to your customer’s data and taking it from one platform to another, even if that platform is an internal one at your company, you want to ensure that your customer data is kept safe and encrypted whenever possible. This means being GDPR compliant in Europe, and you have The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California, which other USA states are looking at adopting and or implementing in various jurisdictions.
Google Product Images
We live in a visual world. I know it. Google knows it. Google’s Performance Max and standard shopping campaigns are based on the visuals of your products. However, many brands are sleeping on a great way to leverage this data. Yes, your product images are data signals in the eyes of Google.
Many people don’t always realize that Google scans your product images using their AI technology. This allows Google to look at your shopping feed and try to understand what your products and stock-keeping units (SKUs) are about.
Suppose you sell a pair of black Adidas shoes and forget to include the color black in your shopping feed. Google is going to try and rank you for this search involving black shoes based on your images.
What does this mean for your e-commerce business? Beyond using the image attribute in your shopping feed. You should always use the additional image attribute and ensure you show off your product from different angles as one example. You can also do the following:
Include product staging that shows your product in use
Highlight parts of your product without showing the entire product
If your product is part of a bundle, then you can show parts of a bundle instead of showing all products in the bundle
Having high quality-images that show off your product and the different use cases for your product means you can feed Google more data that they can use to help you rank in SERPs. If you want to take things up a notch, start adding video to your product pages.
Google Product Titles & Descriptions
Your shopping feed is not a one-and-done task. Think of your shopping feed as an organic matter that should be updated and changed as it makes sense for the business. The big reason is that people change, and how we search changes over time. You want to ensure your shopping feed stays up-to-date with those changes. The more data in your shopping feed that you can provide to Google, the easier time Google’s AI is going to have to try to understand what you sell, and match your products to the right searches people are making on Google.
Let's say you sell a product that some people buy for a holiday in your country. Maybe not everyone in your country thinks about buying your product during this holiday season. One thing you should be doing is updating your product title and product description for the products people would buy during the holiday season.
For example, people typically buy certain products from your inventory for Mother’s Day. You can update the shopping feed to capture the traffic and conversions for searches around products to buy for Mother’s Day, you’ll be ahead of the curve. Additionally, Google now knows more about your product and the type of searches you should appear for. Google’s technology is sadly not a mind reader, yet… so we need to make sure we feed all the data points we can.
This seems like a small opportunity, but when you leverage all of these real-time moments across a calendar year, you start to pick up traffic and conversions you were not getting before. This also means you have more customers to market to during Q4 and the holy trinity that is Black Friday, Christmas, and the holiday season in Q4.
From experience, I can tell you that most people don’t work on building a proper custom shopping feed. Let alone updating it throughout the year for a brand. If you are willing to do the work others won’t, you can come out ahead and win.
Google Shopping Feed
We discussed product images, titles, and descriptions, which are all essential attributes for your shopping feed. However, you don’t want to stop there. This is just the beginning and not the end of building out a shopping feed that will help you win against competitors.
Depending on what you sell on your site. There are different attributes you can fill out in your shopping feed. I would look at filling out these attributes as they are the basic ones that every brand needs to do:
Brand
SKU ID
Product Title
Product Description
Link
Image Link
Additional Image Link
Price
Availability
Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)
Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)
Condition
Google Product Category
If you want to give Google even more data, then the following attributes are what you should fill out and do the work everyone else won’t do to help scale your business. These are optional attributes, but most brands don’t fill them out and then miss out on search traffic and conversions.
Age Group
Gender
Color
Pattern
Material
Custom Labels 0 - 4
Product Details
Product Highlights
Product Type
Size System & Type
You can find more information about each shopping feed attribute above in Google’s own product data specification, which is a treasure trove of information to help you build the best shopping feed possible. Remember, each attribute is another data point you can feed Google’s AI technology and help them understand what you sell and what type of searches and customers you want to rank for.
Filling out the shopping feed attributes isn’t enough. You want to tailor your shopping feed based on how your customers search for your products and the intent behind their search. Similar to writing a best selling novel, putting words down on page doesn’t mean it’s a best seller. In both cases, you need to put in the work to make it a winner.
Google Merchant Center - automatic improvements
Automatic update is a set of features and settings within your Google Merchant Center account that lets you use Google’s technology to ensure your shopping feed data is as up-to-date as possible. Fair warning, this technology is not perfect, and you should always double-check what the update in your shopping feed looks like after Google is done. Sometimes they get it wrong.
Even though you can use automatic improvements for shopping feed attributes like price, condition, and availability, the one most brands should focus on is image improvements. That way, your brand can put its best foot forward when ranking in the SERPs. Google is not a fan of promotional overlays, text, or logos on images and anything that takes away from your product being front and center.
You can see which images have had promotional overlays removed by checking the warnings in the diagnostics section in your Google Merchant Center account. Look for the title ‘Improved image quality’ in the ‘Issue’ column of the table. On the product detail pages of affected products, you can see the improved and originally uploaded images. If you don’t like the improved image, you can also upload a new image to use in your shopping feed.
Ensuring your shopping feed is updated and stays current with your site data is essential to make sure Google is happy with your brand.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the ways you can use your e-commerce data and help Google Ads run better campaigns:
Feeding Google high-quality conversion data
Uploading first-party data to Google Ads to drive better results
Continuously update your product title & description based on how customer search
Making sure your product Images tell a story
Building a custom shopping feed for your brand
Even setting up your Google Merchant Center account plays a role
Google will take all your data points above and run it through their AI technology, which is going to help them find you even more customers who look like your best customer type. For Google’s AI technology to do this work, you need to make sure you feed the machines high-quality data. Data today is truly worth its weight in gold as all AI technology uses the data they have access to in your ad account to help make better decisions.
If this sounds like a lot of work, you are right. This means you need to have the right person in the driver’s seat to ensure you are headed in the right direction. Putting the wrong person or agency in that seat means you can set your brand back for months (or even years). Making up for that lost time, money, and business growth is not easy.
Get the right person or agency in charge of your financial success by asking the right questions and assessing people based on the qualities that matter when running paid advertising today. Luckily you can catch my MozCon talk: ‘Hiring The “Perfect” Agency: How To Avoid Getting Burned’ to cover this very topic.
There are more ad agencies and freelancers offering services today than in 2019. Hiring is a skill, and we are going to give you the skills during my talk to hire that next agency. This talk is will cover interviewing, pricing, and onboarding with an agency to make your experience as a brand the best one possible. Plus, I have a few other cool topics I will cover… but you have to be at MozCon August 7th & 8th, 2023 to hear everything.
Duane will be speaking at MozCon 2023 this August in Seattle! Join us for inspiring sessions with our incredible lineup of speakers.
We hope you're as excited as we are for August 7th and 8th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven't grabbed your ticket yet and need help making a case we have a handy template to convince your boss!
Most of the discourse surrounding the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on SEO has been about content creation. This makes perfect sense. Large language models (LLMs) have fundamentally changed the speed at which businesses and individuals can produce blog posts, marketing copy, social media posts and much more.
I am not the first to provide the caveat that while AI tools can help you speed up your writing process, they can also open up your site to a variety of SEO risks including duplicate content, violations of Google’s E-E-A-T Guidelines, generally robotic copywriting that is devoid of brand voice and personality, and a host of other issues.
AI content generation is certainly something that can help SEOs and businesses in moderation. Google itself has essentially okayed the use of AI, as long as it is with intent to produce “helpful content”. This can be easier said than done.
In this article, I want to highlight some ways that free AI tools like ChatGPT can help SEO’s with all sorts of other tasks, other than creating content. There are a wide range of things that SEOs do everyday that can significantly be sped up or even completely done by free AI tools like ChatGPT. These can range from On-Page SEO optimizations to Technical SEO projects.
Let’s get into it.
1. Create Schema markup
Perhaps the most straightforward way in which tools like ChatGPT can simplify our work as SEOs is by writing schema markup for us. I will keep this section short, as the process in itself is fairly straightforward.
How to Use AI to Create Schema Markup
Write a ChatGPT prompt that describes the schema you want to create, and for which page.
QA the results and run them through a Schema validating tool.
Implement the schema. Submit your URL to Google.
That’s it!
Remember, ChatGPT typically will not visit a URL for you, so you will need to paste the entire text of your page in the prompt.
The response is a block of schema code that you can paste into a validator. Note that the response was not 100% perfect, hence the need to QA. ChatGPT missed the name of the publisher organization. Before dropping this code onto the published page in our CMS, I would change the name of the organization from “Example” to “Moz.”
2. Keyword clustering (sample python code)
Another time-saving SEO task that you can jumpstart with ChatGPT is the semantic grouping and categorization of keywords. This can be done within the user interface (UI) of GPT, or through a python script that utilizes OpenAI’s API.
Using the UI, I have had success grouping around 100 keywords at a time. The output will typically be an indented, bulleted list of all your terms categorized into buckets.
A python script gives you more flexibility to increase your number of max tokens and allow you to work with longer lists of keywords.
Below is an extremely simple python script that prompts OpenAI to come up with categories for a list of keywords.
import openai
# Set up OpenAI API key and model ID
openai.api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"
model_id = "text-davinci-003"
# Define the prompt to use with the OpenAI API
prompt = """
classify the following keywords into semantically related groups:
apple
london
banana
train
car
pizza
sicily
pasta
"""
# Use OpenAI's API to generate text based on the prompt
response = openai.Completion.create(
engine=model_id,
prompt=prompt,
max_tokens=1024,
n=1,
stop=None,
temperature=0.7,
)
# Extract the generated text from the response
generated_text = response.choices[0].text
# Print the generated text to the console
print(generated_text)
The output will look like something like this. You can use this output to modify groupings in your keyword tracking tool of choice, such as Moz Pro. If you are familiar with using Pandas, you can turn the generated_text output into a dataframe for an easy CSV export.
Fruits: Apple, Banana
Cities: London, Sicily
Transportation: Train, Car
Food: Pizza, Pasta
3. Generate meta descriptions
ChatGPT is exceedingly good at taking large amounts of text input and summarizing it. What better way for SEOs to utilize AI’s summarization capabilities than generating meta descriptions? Since meta descriptions are inherently summaries of pages, natural language processing (NLP) models do a good job of extracting the main ideas from multiple paragraphs of text and condensing them into one.
When feeding ChatGPT with text to summarize, you can also include a few keywords that you want it to include in its output. This is another instance where you will need outside data from a tool such as Moz Keyword Explorer to help you find focus keywords. Once you have an idea of the main keyword(s) of the page you want to optimize, you can include those in your meta description prompt. That prompt may look something like this:
“
Summarize the following text in 60 words, and include the following keywords: seo, content strategy
[full page text]
”
In my experience, however, ChatGPT is not very good at limiting its responses to a certain word or character length. You may get something like this, and need to change or remove a few sentences.
Still, this simple task could potentially have saved you 10–15 minutes of working with a blank page (or CMS field) and given you a starting point for your meta description.
4. Create FAQs (and tag them with schema)
Another task that leverages ChatGPT’s summarization capabilities is the creation of frequently asked questions (FAQs).
Prompt GPT to create FAQs for a section of page copy that you paste into the tool, and AI will generate some sample FAQs for you. The responses it gives tends to be brief, which is ideal for tagging them with FAQ schema.
After you’ve reviewed and edited the FAQ suggestions that ChatGPT provides, circle back to tip #1 and paste them back into ChatGPT to generate FAQ schema that you can add to your page.
5. Topical research
While OpenAI’s free ChatGPT tool does not provide Keyword Volume or other important SEO keyword metrics, it can still be an effective engine for generating content ideas related to a given keyword.
Begin the process as you would normally approach keyword research. Identify a list of keywords that you want to include in your page. Then, ask ChatGPT to create topic ideas related to these terms.
I find that prompting the tool for around 50 topics gives you a good sample of page ideas without repetition.
The results are not all going to be perfect titles for you to copy and paste into your CMS without reviewing them, but they can rapidly (and I mean RAPIDLY) give you a sense of direction for your editorial calendar, content marketing strategy or even social media posts. Each of the concepts identified here about SEO, focusing on the specified keywords, has the makings of a well-intentioned blog post topic.
6. SEO content briefs
Once you have done your keyword research and compiled terms that you would like to include into a new page on your website, try asking ChatGPT to use them to create a page outline for you, along with a possible page title.
This can serve as a great jumping-off-point for your editorial team (or you) to work with to write your full article. An outline or content brief for a page about keyword research may look something like this:
As is a recurring theme with the use of AI for SEO, the results are not perfect, but they can generate ideas for you to take and run with. For example, you may realize that this outline does not get into the concepts of Search Volume or Keyword Difficulty, which you wanted to address on your page. You can tweak your prompt to specify a few additional keywords that you’d like to include, or manually edit ChatGPT’s output to suit your needs.
My guess is as good as any regarding the direction AI will steer the digital marketing industry, and more specifically SEO. What I do know is that right now, there are so many ways in which AI can make tedious aspects of my job less time consuming, so I can focus my attention on more strategic and big-picture problems. Hopefully this list helps you do the same.
This is the final installment of the three-part series of Whiteboard Fridays with Helen Pollitt on how to work better with folks within your company.
There are a lot of similarities between SEOs and UX designers, and we often have the same goals. How can we work to understand more of the UX designers' priorities and help to communicate our priorities to them? Learn all about how SEOs and UX designers can work better together in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
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Video Transcription
Hi, I'm Helen, head of SEO at Car & Classic, and today we are looking at how SEOs and UX designers can work better together. Now, UX designers are a lot like SEOs. No one in the office quite understands their specialism. No one really knows whether they should be in the engineering department, the product team, the marketing team, and they too have probably given up trying to explain their jobs to their family members.
So if there's a lot of similarities between SEO and UX designers, why do we need to have a Whiteboard Friday on how to work better with them? Well, on first blush, actually there's a lot of places that SEO and UX actually overlaps, but oftentimes we're kind of in disagreement about how things should progress. You have spent days looking at the best links to have on your top menu navigation, you have carefully sculpted the pages that should be linked to from that great source of links, and then the UX designer comes to the meeting and asks to cut their menu in half.
You're there terrified about your internal link equity, and they're there terrified that none of the users can ever find the stuff that they're looking for on your website. But actually, oftentimes we have the same end goal. We want visitors to get to the website and be able to access the pages and the products and the stuff that's on that site well and enjoy the process of being there.
So actually, our end goals are fairly similar. So how can we work to understand more of the UX designers' priorities and help to communicate our priorities to them?
Understand UX and design principles
Well, first off, I would suggest we need to start by understanding some UX and design principles. Get familiar with things like visual hierarchy and context and understand what it is that UX designers are looking to do when they are making changes to the website.
If you do that and upskill yourself, then you are going to find you understand where they're coming from a lot more, and that's going to help you to communicate the reasons why something could be a great idea from an SEO perspective and then find the compromises when it's not going to be. Also, talk to them, get their wish lists of things that they want to see happen on the website. Now, this is easier to do if you work in-house because you can just go and talk to your UX designers.
If you work freelance or for an agency, it's a bit harder to do. But if you go and ask your client if you can spend a day with their UX design team, you're probably going to win a lot of favors from them, and it could be a day out of the office, so win-win. But when you've got an idea of what their wish list is, all the stuff that they would love to see happen to the website, you are better equipped to then tell them about things like issues and problems that there might be.
So for example, if the UX designer says that they want to take your 20,000 product e-commerce store and distill it down to a single web page, you can tell them why that might be an issue, and if it goes ahead, well, at least the redirect mapping will be simple. You also should get yourself involved in the kind of conversations that your UX designers are having. So go to the meetings that they're in.
Get involved in product team decisions, so that you are there when these kind of things are first being suggested and talked about. So if there is anyone talking about the possibility of changing your website and making it into a single web page, you can be there saying, "Actually, that's probably not the best idea," before the plans and things that get set into motion are too far along.
Train your UX team in SEO
Next, you want to look at training your UX team.
So this is really important because you want to make sure that the UX team understands SEO principles as well as you understanding UX principles. So talk about things like navigation elements. Why are they important to SEO? What are the risks associated with them removing things from the navigation? What is link mapping? What is it all about the hierarchy of the website?
Try to explain to them these concepts so they understand why you might be saying no to some of their recommendations, and again, you can try to compromise and find a solution. That goes for links in general. Actually, the way that the UX team might want to implement a link and make it work could be great for users, it might look great, but it could have some underlying SEO issues with it. So talk about what SEO needs from links, what makes a link SEO friendly and allows the bots to crawl it, so that the UX team can make decisions and recommendations based on that data.
Talk to them about things like Core Web Vitals and actually the overlap between what we're looking for from an SEO perspective and actually what they want for users, because a lot of the time that's quite aligned. So for example, explain how having a banner load in after the rest of the page is loaded could be a problem for cumulative layout shift, and tell them that scrolling banners are always a bad idea, not necessarily because they're any worse from an SEO perspective, but they just look terrible, and I'd like them to just stop if they could.
Talk to them about things like copy and why we do need copy on a page. We don't need copy on every page because not every page is important from an SEO perspective, but for those that are, we do need to have copy. But that doesn't mean we have to have reams and reams of copy that a user has to scroll through on their mobile before they actually get to the list of products that you sell. That there are ways that we can implement copy on a page that's a lot more friendly for users.
So we can look at things like tabs or concertinas, things that reveal the copy when an interaction is made. That means that users aren't having to look at all of the history of somebody's recipe and why it was that they decided to bake an apple crumble because of their grandmother and how their grandmother loved apples and that it fell from an apple tree, and you know all the kind of good stuff that you always have to scroll through when you're just trying to find a simple recipe on these recipe websites.
You don't have to do that in order for SEO to be considered for that page. You can look at things like teaching them about the risks of them making a change to a website. So yes, okay, maybe we do want to redesign the nav. But what do we need to do as SEOs? What do we need to understand before we can say, "Yeah, let's do it"? So talk to them about the risks involved with them making simple changes.
For them, they might think that just changing the wording on a button won't have any impact, but for us, we know that anchor text does have some importance. So how can we educate our UX designers so they understand that when they're making changes, some of them will need to be run past the SEO team first? Finally, why are we always going on about designing things mobile first? Explain that to your team so they understand why you really need to see how things are going to look on a mobile design as well as a desktop, because actually we need to see if there's parity between the two.
We need to see whether the mobile version of the website has everything that it needs for Google to understand the context and the relevancy of the page. That's really important, but it's not always something that the UX team have had communicated to them. So make sure you do that.
Create guidelines for your UX team
Next, try to create some guidelines for your UX team. So rather than continually telling them all these things, perhaps you can actually document it so they have a source to go back to.
Look at how they manage to document their own internal design decisions. So if they have a way of doing things, how do they document it? Is it in a central workspace? Or do they have some guidelines that they actually send out to every member of the team? How do they document them? See if you can start copying that method and making sure your UX designers are familiar with the ways that you need things to happen on the website for SEO reasons.
Also, maybe you can input on their design system because most websites will have a set way of doing things from a design perspective, and some of those might have some SEO impacts, things like links and buttons and that kind of stuff. So can you actually have a say in the design system that's been created for the website?
Get buy-in from your UX designers
Lastly, you want to get buy-in from your UX designers so that they enjoy working with you and they look forward to hearing your recommendations and thoughts, and they don't constantly see you as a source of no.
So show them where SEO helps UX. So things like usability, load speed, how actually if a search engine is able to get through your website, well, it probably means a user is able to get through the web website well as well. So you're helping the UX end goal by making sure that SEO is incorporated into those kind of decisions. Talk to them about the importance of conversion rate for SEO.
That actually, we don't just want to see traffic land on a web page and we don't care where it goes after that. We are just as concerned about how users use a website as they are. We want to make sure that they are able to complete the goals on the website, that they can buy the product, that they can find the information, because that's essentially why we've driven traffic to that page in the first place. So do try and reinforce that you and your UX team have got very similar goals.
Finally, give them access to data and try and share some of the data that they have as well, because they will be monitoring things. They'll be looking at stuff that we just don't have the software to monitor. So can you share data with each other that helps both sides understand a little bit more about what's going on? Thank you so much for listening.
I'm going to go off and try to find a way of explaining my job to my family members, and hopefully I can tell that to the UX team as well.
Call me a hopeless romantic, but I delight in extending the enjoyment of travel by writing reviews of the places I’ve been after returning home. It’s almost like typing a mini travelog, remembering the new experiences, for good or not-so-good, I had along the road.
I know that when I write a positive review of a local business or public amenity, it will give a lift to online reputation, rankings, and revenue. If I write a judicious critique of something that wasn’t so great, it can help business owners make improvements that should build up their metrics and success over time. And while pursuit of the great outdoors is often the search for silence, quiet is the one thing no local business owner should ever hope for in their online review profiles.
If you and your town depend on tourism for part of your economic health, today’s column is for you. I’ve got an original poll, stats, and tips to help your local business earn more reviews from travelers.
How many reviews do travelers write?
Image credit: MiriamEllis.com
"Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place where nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.” - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
For a long time, I’ve wanted to know if Jane Austen and I were alone in loving to write about our travels through Derbyshire and, you know, Peanut, California. Does anyone else re-live the inns and parks and restaurants and shops and public places visited like we do, by jotting it all down, I wondered. So, I did what any lady of wit and intelligence would do and took a Twitter poll to ask how many local business reviews other people write as the result of a trip. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond so that we can all see the data:
It’s good to know that 37.5% of people write at least 1-3 reviews as a result of travel, and that 13.8% find even more pleasure in writing as many as 4-6 reviews, and those who find themselves equal to penning 7-10 reviews are praiseworthy local business supporters, indeed. All told, 52.6% of wayfarers write at least some reviews. All good news!
But on the other hand, the fact that nearly half (47.5%) of vacationers and travelers write zero reviews about their experiences on the road or abroad is ill news, because of the lost opportunity this represents for local brands. In fact, it’s not just ill news…it’s familiar ill news. As we shall see.
Why don’t travelers write reviews? Stats tell the story.
Image credit: Nik Gaffney
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” - Doctor Seuss
From a previous large-scale Moz survey, we know that only 14% of US adults never write reviews and that is quite a different figure than the 47.5% of travelers who never write reviews:
We also know that over half of US adults will either always or usually leave a review if asked to do so by the local business:
But, unfortunately, 39% of respondents simply haven’t been asked by anyone to review a local business in the past five years. That number deserves its own graphic:
So not asking customers, including travelers, to write reviews could be a significant reason why your business isn’t getting the maximum benefits it could be enjoying from earning more reviews. But do you know what the #1 reason is that visitors to your town aren’t reviewing you on the road or when they get back home again? Forgetfulness.
The dominant 38% of respondents simply don’t remember to write you a review when they have free time. You can easily imagine this scenario. The vacationer has returned from touring Derbyshire (or Peanut) and they are sunburned, and their offspring and dogs are covered in sand, and they have to unpack the traveling coach, and they discover the power was shut off in their absence and now their refrigerator smells otherworldly. It’s probably the last thing on their mind right now, or even this week, to sit down and review the B&Bs, shops, state parks, and carriage rental service they enjoyed on the trip.
In order to win reviews from passers-by, your best bet will be to capture their text number or email address at the time of service and remind them.
But when should you do that?
Thank you Near Media (and university researchers) for answering my question
It’s been a standard best practice recommendation for many years to send local business review requests shortly after the time of service. Common wisdom has asserted that you should collect a customer’s email address or text line when they make a purchase from you and then follow up with them quickly with an email or text mentioning how much you would appreciate their review. This seems logical, but recent research from the University of Nevada and Arizona State calls this whole timeline into question. As highlighted in a must-read article from Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal at Near Media, this survey found that:
In the first 5 days following a transaction, customers leave more reviews if you don’t ask for them!
However, once 9 days have elapsed since the transaction, customers start leaving fewer reviews unless your business asks for them.
The window of time that results in the most reviews earned via solicitation appears to be between 9-14 days post-transaction.
The university researchers speculated that review requests that appear too quickly can feel pushy or annoying, whereas those which are received later feel like friendly reminders.
These findings are both novel and surprising, and this new suggested review request timeline strikes me as ideally adapted for businesses that depend, in part, on tourism. Travel, however much it may be enjoyed, is generally a bit of an ordeal. There are well-known memes about needing time to rest from the rest you were supposed to have on vacation.
A 9-14 day window gives visitors a recovery period, by which point they will also have strayed into the forgetfulness territory identified in Moz’s own survey. Your request in this slot could be just what is needed to remind the customer and warmly invite them to relive the good memories they made on their trip by writing them down in review format.
Near Media urges you to experiment, of course, with the behaviors and preferences of your own customers. Their activity may or may not match the findings of the university research, but to get an accurate reading on this, please look again at this statistic:
The #2 contributor to lack of reviews (coming in right behind forgetfulness amid busy-ness) is that the process of leaving a review is confusing and difficult. In our survey, we found that the younger your customers are, the more help they may need in leaving a review. Be sure your email or text includes instructions and a link to your Google review profile. You can get that link by looking up your business in Google (while logged into your account that governs your Google Business Profile) and then clicking on the “Ask for reviews” tab in the New Merchant Experience interface, as shown here:
You’ll see this popup generating the link to review your business:
You can copy that link and paste it into your texts and emails. By making it easier for customers to review you, you’ll get a more accurate picture of what the ideal time window is for requests in the community you serve.
A station wagon load of other tips for earning vacationers’ reviews
In addition to experimenting with your request timeframes, give these tips a try to maximize the number of reviews your business is receiving:
Respond to all your reviews. The #3 reason people don’t write reviews (as shown above) is that they don’t believe the business will care enough to read their sentiment. Indicate that you care a ton by responding authentically to what other customers have written.
Use space in your physical premises to clearly message that you want reviews. Windows, interior and exterior walls, front desks, tables, night stands, shelves, fences, business vehicles and other surfaces can all be places where you can put up a large or small sign letting patrons know how much their review will be appreciated.
Use print to further your messaging. Menus, receipts, mailers, bags, and packaging can all include review requests.
Train staff to request reviews at their discretion. I don’t recommend making employees repeat the same message to every customer that comes through a checkout. It sounds robotic and inauthentic as the line moves along. But when valued staff are encouraged to see review opportunities in more personalized interactions, a direct request from a helpful team member to a happy customer could add to your review count over time.
Avoid negative reviews by ongoing management of your local business listings across the local search ecosystem. A vacation can really go sour when inaccurate information about locations, hours, and phone numbers is live on your profiles. Manually update all of your listings any time there is a change, or use a helpful service like Moz Local to update your listings across the major platforms in a few clicks.
Use social media for storytelling about the role reviews are playing in the success of your local business. Most reviewers are unlikely to realize on their own how profoundly aspects of reviews impact the rankings of small brands that serve local communities. By talking on social profiles about how earning new reviews might enable your business to afford some beautiful new chairs for the dining patio or switch to an electric vehicle for delivery, it makes customers’ actions a powerful part of your story. Just be careful that you are not incentivizing reviews. Don’t offer gifts, perks, or money in exchange for reviews.
Don’t forget that Google is not the only review game in town. Diversify your review requests to ask customers to review you on their favorite platforms. Our survey showed that while 66% of US adults spend the most time writing reviews on Google, others spend lots of time on Yelp, Facebook, TripAdvisor, Nextdoor and a variety of additional platforms. Google has a habit of losing reviews periodically, and by having your customers’ sentiment visible in multiple online places, you’ll be sure that visitors can read about you around the web, even when your Google Business Profile is experiencing a bug.
Finally, if this article is motivating you, take some time this week to think about visitors to your town. Hospitality business owners spend part of every day strategizing around making guests welcome, and this kind of care can apply to almost any kind of business located in a town or city that hosts lots of travelers. What kind of special welcome are you offering newcomers to your community? What are you doing to make them love their time with you, want to come back to you if they are ever in your area again, tell their traveling friends and family about you, and take the time to review your business?
Maybe you offer a vacationer’s special. Maybe you have a pretty sign in your window warmly welcoming tourists and asking them to stop in to ask your staff about fun things happening in the community. Maybe it's your shop with the bench outside for footsore walkers around your downtown, or your porch that has the dog watering station for people vacationing with their pets.
In a popular place near me, a community has signs posted asking visitors to tune their car radios to a particular station for information about the area. That’s an idea your town could take and run with, and I know listening to that station makes me have a special feeling of being considered and included in local life. Little things mean a lot.
One of the nicest aspects of local business reviews is that they are a lengthy novel rather than a short story. Whether you are operating in Derbyshire or Peanut, what you seek is a modest and ever-running stream of fresh reviews across time. Time to experiment, to try new things, to adjust your strategy on the basis of new data like we’ve seen today. 96% of US adults read reviews and 86% write them. It’s a form of content people can really enjoy under the right circumstances. With a little well-timed encouragement, more of your traveling customers will put their creative writing skills to work for your business, gifting you with better local search rankings, a persuasive reputation, and a lucrative upward trend in transactions.
Eager for more local business review tips? It is a truth universally acknowledged thatMoz’s review surveyis worth reading!
Are you sure you’re ready for that? The only reason I ask is because, well, GA4 is a bit of a beast with tons of hidden settings that need to be addressed for optimal data collection.
In the admin section of GA4 you will see two columns: Account and Property. The Property column is where the majority of important setting options are hiding.
1. Timezone
Your property timezone can be set under the Property Settings section of the Property column. (Yes, this is very meta.)
This one may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s an easy one to overlook.
When you created your GA4 property, you had the option to set your timezone. If you’re anything like me, you probably just hit the “next” button.
But not so fast! You need to double check this setting.
We already know that different platforms track differently so we aren’t tracking apples to oranges, but if we aren’t even using the same time zones for reporting, well we may as well be tracking apples to cucumbers.
The TL;DR: Using the same timezone everywhere allows you to compare data a bit more easily.
2. Currency
Turns out, there is more than one thing to touch in that Property Settings section in column two.
In the same place you set up your timezone, you have the option to change your currency.
By default Google sets the currency to USD for all reporting.
Note: If you’re doing business with multiple currencies, Google will do the conversions on the backend to continue to report in USD.
3. Enhanced measurement
Enhanced measurement is perhaps one of the biggest changes with Google Analytics 4.
If you’re not sure what enhanced measurement is, it’s essentially pre-built event tracking. Which is actually great, except when it tracks things incorrectly.
You can view all of the automatically collected events in the Data Streams section once you click on your desired data stream.
Now don’t worry, most of these events and parameters will be tracked just fine, but there are a few instances that may require additional debugging.
This most pertinent issue for users revolves around form interactions, especially for those who have the Meta pixel on their site. False form interactions tend to be triggered by Facebook pixels because Facebook uses a “form submission” to pass data from your site to theirs.
I highly suggest using the GA4 debug tool or by looking at your real time analytics to double check that the “form_destination” is correct.
Another major pain point in enhanced measurement is that it relies on site searches passing one of the following parameters into the url: q, s, search, query, keyword. Should you use a different parameter, it can be defined in this enhanced measurement section by clicking the gear icon next to the events.
4. Events
The Events section is a great place for a tracking gut check.
This is basically just a massive list of all of the events being tracked and how often they are being fired. If you don’t see your events here or the numbers seem low, you may need to go check your setup.
Also, new in GA4, you can create and modify your events directly in the platform.
If you were a destination goal type person in Universal Analytics, this is the section that allows you to create events based on page location.
Tons of other changes can be made using the modify event tool like reconciling event names, creating sub events from collected events, etc.
5. Conversions
Much like the Events section, this Conversion section is the best place to do a quick gut check and make sure the most important things are being tracked on your site.
If you don’t see one of your conversions on this screen, you will need to head back to the Events sections and click the toggle to the right of the event name.
(Yeah, it really is that easy to create conversions in GA4. Thank goodness.)
If you do see your conversions, but the numbers look odd, you may want to click the three dots to the right of the conversion to see the counting method.
By default, Google counts conversions for each event completion. However, you may only want to count conversions once per session. If that is the case, click on those three dots and change the counting method to “Once per session.”
6. Define domains
For all of my friends out there using different domains for their stores, their courses, their main site, and/or their blog - your time has come.
The good news is, cross-domain tracking in GA4 is much easier than it was in UA. The bad news is that this is only true if you know where to find the setup widget.
To define all of your domains, navigate to Data streams > select data stream > Configure tag settings > Configure your domains.
Taking this step is especially important in GA4 because outbound clicks are tracked using Enhanced Measurement. Thus, not defining all of your domains can lead to false “click” counts.
7. Internal traffic
Ah, now this is a question I’ve been asked over a dozen times. Yes, you can filter out internal traffic.
To filter internal traffic by IP address, you will need to go to Data streams > select data stream > Configure tag settings > Show all > Define internal traffic.
Unfortunately, in the GA4 platform, this is currently the only way to define internal traffic.
8. Unwanted referrals
E-commerce folks, this one's for you.
If you’re using a third-party payment processor like Stripe or Paypal, this is a big one.
Unless you want all of your purchases to be attributed to your payment processors, you have to specify to Google that there are unwanted referrers.
If you’re not sure if you have sites you need to mark as unwanted referrals, check your Traffic Acquisition report and change the primary dimension to Session Source/Medium.
9. Custom dimensions
If you’re anything like me, and send 80% of your events using Google Tag Manager, you’re going to want to listen up!
Most of the time, people use GTM to send extra data with their events in the form of event or user parameters. GA4 does collect and process these parameters, but it DOES NOT retain this data unless you’ve defined the dimensions.
So if you want to be able to see your parameters, you need to create a custom dimension for each one. It’s pretty easy, you just name the dimension and select the coordinating parameter.
10. Data retention
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, you are going to want to extend your data retention window.
This is perhaps one of the most important but most overlooked settings.
In the property column, you’ll navigate to Data settings > Data retention. Once you’re here you will find that by default GA4 properties are only set to retain event data for 2 months.
That’s just 60 days. That’s not even a whole season of Big Brother.
The good news is that you can change this from 2 months to 14 months with three clicks of a button.
A quick note: Any changes made under this Data settings section should be discussed with a privacy expert or lawyer. Many of these changes have the possibility to affect your compliance status with GDPR and other privacy legislation.
You’ve got this!
It seems like a lot. And it is. But you’ve got this.
GA4 is a monster, but if you’re here, you’re already tackling it. Way to go!
Now, go triple check all of those properties you created a year or two ago… We’re gonna do the same.
Brie will be speaking at MozCon 2023 this August in Seattle! Join us for inspiring sessions with our incredible lineup of speakers.
We hope you're as excited as we are for August 7th and 8th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven't grabbed your ticket yet and need help making a case we have a handy template to convince your boss!
This is part two of a three-part series of Whiteboard Fridays with Helen Pollitt on how to work better with folks within your company.
Learn all about how SEOs and content writers can work better together. By working more closely and more effectively, you can create great content that ultimately converts and drives traffic.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hello, I'm Helen, head of SEO at Car & Classic, and today we're looking at how SEOs and content writers can work better together. "SEO copy," it's one of the worst phrases that you can possibly hear in any office environment alongside, "Oh, the website? Yeah, we migrated that last week."
Or, "I'm really sorry, but the coffee machine is broken. Will instant do?" The reason that "SEO copy" is such a terrible phrase is because it just makes the content writers think that all we're after is a bunch of words to be put on a page for the sake of a robot and not a human visitor. As SEOs, we'll flatly deny that that's the reason that we want content on a page because it's against Google's guidelines, isn't it?
But hands up if you have ever just thrown a bunch of keywords at a copywriter, wished them well, and then slunk off back to your Core Web Vitals audit. But really, we need our content writers to feel respected and empowered to be their brilliant, creative selves because at the end of the day, we know that it's really important for good content, for our users and for the search engines.
So how can we go about making our content writers understand why we need content on the page for SEO purposes, but also why that shouldn't be limiting their creativity? I think we've got a bit of a work to do, and also, at the same time, maybe we can just ban "SEO copy" from our vocabulary. So where do we start?
How to create good briefs
Well, first off, really we need to be looking at how we can create good briefs. So start off by really thinking about what is the purpose of the page, and no, it's not so that Google really likes your website. That is not the purpose of the page. You need to reinforce that to the copywriters that actually the reason for this page is because we want conversions, or actually we want to inform and educate about something, or we want to enlighten and engage for some reason.
But there should be a reason behind that page, and it shouldn't just be so that Google thinks it's highly relevant for a search phrase and lands more organic traffic on it. Next up, we need to think about what the key message is, and we really have to communicate this to the content writers so, again, they understand the full purpose of the page. What is it that you want readers to go away with?
Because essentially that's the key message that the search engines will go away with as well when they're looking at the relevancy of the page. Also, start talking about things like keyword clusters and try and move content writers away from thinking that SEO means shoving one particular keyword onto a page just over and over again and trying to make it look natural. But actually, we look at more of a total topical relevancy for a page, and we're looking at things like keyword clusters.
So what are the synonyms? What are the other high-trafficked keywords? What is it that you are wanting your reader to really engage with on that page? Because if they've searched for it and landed on the page and seen it on the page, that's going to help them understand that page is relevant for them. So try to communicate that to your content writers, but also relieve them of that fear that it's got to be formulaic and there's some kind of formula for how often you need a keyword to appear and all that kind of garbage that we've probably all grown up on.
Really, it's a case of trying to undo some wrong thinking. So content writers have probably heard from other SEOs or they've misunderstood some stuff that they've been told in the past that means that their approach to writing, when an SEO is involved, is different if they were just left to get on with it themselves. We kind of don't want that to be the case. We want them to be empowered and given data to help them with their writing, but not really limited by us as SEOs.
Train content writers in the ways of SEO
What we need to do is try and train them in the ways of SEO and how it actually complements the work they're doing and doesn't detract from it. So things like how search works. Have you ever actually tried to talk to your content writers about how search works and not just how you should put keywords on a page and page relevancy and all that kind of stuff, but actually the real broad, top level about how search engines understand pages, how they crawl them, all that kind of stuff?
Give them the context so that they can understand what their part is within the whole ecosphere of making a website really good for search. Look at things like the importance of relevancy. So no, it's not just about keywords and keyword density and all of that kind of stuff, but it's about making that entire page sing about a particular topic, but whilst also understanding the intent behind a person who's landing on that page and making sure that it is relevant to them.
Give them access to keyword research tools and actually give them a bit of training in how to use them so they can do a little bit of research themselves, because it will probably help them to really understand the topic more if they're given access to the kind of data around what people are looking for when they are landing on that particular page. It just helps to inform them about the style, the tone, what sort of things they might like to include on the page.
So don't just tell them what those things are, but actually give them the access to the data themselves so they can do a bit of extra research for you. Give them an idea of how to identify what search intent is. So suggest that they maybe want to have a bit of a search around Google themselves so they can understand a little bit about what is ranking on the SERPs already and what kind of content it is.
Is it informational? Is it commercial? What is already ranking in the search engines so that they can take that information and try to use it to inform their own writing. This is the big one, EE, EE, EEAT. I'm just future-proofing the video in case Google adds some more Es before it gets published.
EE, EEAT is really important for writers because they need to understand that actually their writing style really impacts how the search engines, in particular Google, are going to understand the experience, the expertise, the authoritativeness, and the trustworthiness of the website. It's all about what they are saying and who they are themselves as writers. That's really important.
Hopefully, that kind of information, that enlightening will really empower the content writers to see how important their work is for the success of your organic traffic. AI, most content writers I've come across are either really excited about how AI is going to help them with their work, or slightly terrified that it's going to take their jobs. So let's not shy away from it.
Let's start those discussions now. Let's talk about how to use AI well within content writing and the sorts of things that we need to avoid so that we don't end up with our content writers trying to pass off a load of AI-generated work as their own, but that they're also not completely afraid of using AI where it's appropriate. So how can they use it well, and what kind of safeguards do we need to put in place to make sure that they're not overly reliant on AI to a detrimental way?
Look at editorial and user-generated content
So we also need to look at editorial and user-generated content. Now, this is going to have a big impact on EEAT because, let's be honest, it's all about people's opinions, it's all about their experience of something, their knowledge, and their authority in the subject. Editorial is great for that because it's a place where people, that your content writers can really go to show off their knowledge and their expertise about your product or your service or your industry.
That's great for demonstrating EEAT. User-generated content, on the other hand, has a similar impact in that it can really demonstrate the relevancy of a page to the topic that people are searching for. It can give other opinions and experiences. Reviews, for example, that's great. That's a great sign of EEAT because it's showing people's experience of your actual product or service.
But people on the internet aren't always incredibly well-behaved. Just fire up your social media platform of choice and just take a bit of a scroll. People can't always be trusted with the things that they are saying on your website. So you do need to have some moderation and guides in place. So moderation can be that actually your content team are really informed about how to respond to negative reviews or they are given the equipment to be able to moderate comments in any kind of comment section that you have on the website, but they just need to know about the risks and rewards of having user- generated content on the website.
Maybe some guides. Maybe some guides for people who are adding that content to your website, so the users themselves. Give them some tips about how if they are adding a question to a forum, they can write that question in a way that's likely to get more organic visibility and therefore more answers for them. So you can actually help teach your users how best to write for the web through those kind of prompts and guides that you're putting in your user- generated sections.
Get buy-in from your content writing team
Finally, you want to get buy-in from your content writing team. You want them to see that actually you should be working really closely together. So let's start by just dismissing the idea of SEO copy entirely. It's not about the bots, because if you're writing copy for the bots and people land on your website because you've made it really relevant to the search engines, they're there because they want information or they want to be able to do something.
So that copy really has to meet their needs first, because otherwise, what's the point of sending traffic to that page? So this kind of concept has to be really communicated to your content writers, because they've probably been told that actually copy written for the purposes of search is really boring, formulaic, and just full of keywords. So we need to kind of dispel that myth.
But it is really good to help them to understand what sort of copy does need a little bit of SEO input. So not all of the words on a website need an SEO to look over them and optimize them. Your terms and conditions probably don't need to be looked at by an SEO. Your directions to the office probably don't need to be looked at by an SEO. But your landing pages, your core content, your guides, and your how-tos, they do probably need to have at least a passing glance from an SEO who can say, "Actually, this kind of content is really important for us. We'd love to work closely with you on it."
Or, "Actually, this stuff isn't as important for our purposes. We don't really need to collaborate with you on it." But helping your content writers to know when you do want to be involved and you don't need to be involved will help their processes. Try to give them a bit of an overview as to the impact of their work. Give them data. Show them how their work has had an impact on your organic rankings or your traffic or conversion rates even.
Now, a lot of content writers don't necessarily have a digital marketing background, so they might not be familiar with how to use things like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics or other tracking and measurement tools. But why don't you be a pal and make them a little dashboard so that they can see how their latest article performed or how the landing page tweaks that they've made have actually impacted conversion?
Give them that information so that they can see that the work they're doing is really paying off in a big way and they don't feel so siloed from the rest of the company. SEO should empower content writers. It should give them more data. It should give them more insights into users. It should give them the tools they need to make really informing, engaging, brilliant content.
So let's remind them of that and help them to see that. That allows us to work a lot closer with them and hopefully end up with some really good content that converts and drives traffic. I really want a coffee now I've said all of that. Thanks for listening.
