How to Future-Proof Your Brand with SEO

The digital landscape is evolving quickly, and businesses must adjust their marketing techniques to maintain a competitive edge. You need to be able to transform how you operate your business and engage with your customers.

If you’re aiming for long-term success, you should learn how to future-proof your brand. This is no longer an option but a necessity. You’ll need to adopt a forward-thinking and strategic plan to be ready for the future to maintain your market share and remain relevant in the ever-changing search landscape.

SEO has become an essential building block to securing your brand’s future. Customers have turned to search engines to discover products and services, empowering brands to improve their online visibility, organic rankings, and the ability to attract and retain customers.

So, how can you make sure that you future-proof your brand?

Let’s explore how SEO can help your business establish credibility and authority, setting yourself up for growth and prosperity. Learn how to equip your brand for the future while leaving a lasting impression on your target audience.

The role of SEO in ensuring the long-term success of brands

SEO plays a big role in ensuring your website reaches your target audience. I like to compare SEO to a compass guiding brands in the right direction. Imagine it being a secret ingredient that will help your business to survive and thrive online.

So, how exactly does SEO do this?

It does the magic of making your brand visible to the right audience. Imagine having your business on a main street with heavy human traffic and selling a product everyone needs. You are nearly guaranteed daily sales. This is the same thing SEO does for your business.

According to Brian Njogu, the founder of SmartProfitsHub:

“SEO is about building a foundation for your business that will help you attract new customers, grow your online presence, and achieve your goals.”

SEO is not about appearing in search engine results. It’s about appearing on the first page and attracting valuable traffic.

Here’s an example: You are planning a lunch date, and you search for the “best restaurant in London.” You will most likely click on the top results on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This is how SEO helps businesses attain the top slots on the SERPs, helping them earn more clicks and visibility.

The best thing about SEO is that it’s a long-term investment. You will still experience results years after implementation. This means getting a steady traffic flow to your website without straining your marketing budget.

SEO also brings about brand credibility. When your website ranks high on the SERPs, your brand becomes more credible and authoritative. Who wouldn’t want that?

For your SEO to work, you don’t need just an SEO strategy. You also need the right mindset and commitment to play the long-term game.

8 Steps to future-proof your brand with SEO

Every business owner's dream is to have a business that will last and run in the foreseeable future. But, the ever-changing digital landscape makes it difficult to promise this. Here is where SEO comes in. It has the potential to offer success now while setting your business up to thrive in the future.

Let's look at the steps you can take in future-proofing your brand with SEO.

1. Understand the evolving SEO landscape

SEO is evolving, and techniques that used to work may no longer work. To keep on track, it would help if you understood the latest SEO trends and know how they affect your brand.

User intent optimization is one of the best techniques you can adapt for your brand. It involves selecting keywords that match the user's search intent and answering their questions with relevant content.

The best SEO practice for this is searching your query on Google and seeing how it interprets the intent.

The image below shows the intent of the keyword “premium pet food,” which is commercial.

The mobile-first indexing is another Google practice that you should be aware of. It ensures your website is responsive on smartphones while saving traffic that comes on mobile. You’ll want to ensure that the navigation of your website is smooth on mobile. Also, ensure all buttons are easy to click, the text is readable, and the images load correctly. Research by Statista shows that mobile online usage has increased significantly, so you should make your website mobile-responsive.

To keep up with SEO's evolving landscape, you must keep track of the ever-changing algorithms or risk losing your rankings overnight.

You must also understand user behavior to keep up with the competition.

Machine learning and AI have also had a great influence on search engine algorithms. This technology analyzes how users interact with content to deliver relevant results. Search engines are built in a way in which they learn user behaviors and serve up what they need. This is why learning how they work will help you secure a future for your brand.

2. Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit

When future-proofing your business, it is important to understand your position, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to stand a chance against your competition.

Every successful SEO journey demands a thorough self-assessment. It would be best to understand what is working, what isn't, and what needs improvement. Think of it as a digital health check-up. For example, identifying your high-performing keywords will help you create relevant content that resonates with your audience, and you can do this with Moz’s Keyword Explorer.

You should also check your SEO technical health. Even if you have quality content on your website, your SEO technical health needs to be checked, as it will affect your performance and ranking.

Use tools like Screaming Frog and Site Bulb to check your technical SEO health, Google Search Console to check your website's performance, and Moz Pro to identify common on-page issues. Using tools will help you identify your website's SEO technical health, keyword performance, and traffic.

The screenshot below shows a website performance on Google Search Console.

In your SEO strategy, be sure to conduct a thorough competitor analysis. This will help you examine your competitor's SEO strategies, keyword choices, backlinks, and content tactics. Use this information to build a better strategy to help you outrank your competitors and secure your brand's future.

3. Establish a solid SEO foundation

Establishing a strong SEO foundation is a sure way to future-proof your brand for SEO. You should identify target keywords, optimize your pages, and craft content that resonates with your target audience.

Picture the keywords you choose as the pillar of your SEO strategy. Relevant keywords will help you understand your audience and what they seek. You should work with keywords with a decent search volume and that match with the searchers' intent. This is where all the gold is buried.

The image below shows a keyword I researched via Moz’s Keyword Explorer tool. These keyword metrics can help you to understand how difficult it may be to rank for a keyword, as well as how you might like to prioritize it.

According to Louis Smith, the founder of Louis Smith E-commerce SEO:

"An effective Keyword research process is the foundation of organic growth campaigns, driving the discovery and attraction of a larger audience. It unveils the language and intent of your target audience, guiding you to create content that resonates and enhances visibility in search engine results."

You also need to work on your on-page optimization. Once you’ve completed your keyword research, you should optimize your meta descriptions and titles with your chosen primary and secondary keywords. Let them act like breadcrumbs for search engines.

Having high-quality content is a gateway to future-proofing your brand. It makes your visitors stick around much longer and get the urge to share it with their connections. This helps increase traffic and conversions. Quality content on your website will bring you closer to future-proofing your brand. Great content acts like a digital feast that keeps your audience returning for more. When writing your content, address your audience's needs by answering their questions. Optimize it by using relevant keywords and distributing them naturally in your content.

Different audiences love to consume content differently. Therefore, feel free to experiment with a variety of content formats like videos, infographics and podcasts to reach a bigger audience.

Also, you should have a strategic internal linking strategy in place throughout your content. This will help search engine crawlers navigate and index your web pages effectively while also providing greater context to your web pages.

Having user-friendly URLs improves user experience, leading to improved SEO, so make sure to think thoroughly about the URLs you are publishing. Lastly, pay attention to your site structure. A website with a good structure helps visitors navigate your website easily. This helps them to engage with your content more, increasing the dwell time.

4. Adapt to algorithm updates and industry changes

To survive in the digital landscape, you must keep up with algorithm updates and industrial shifts. Algorithms reshape the way search engines crawl, index, and rank search results. Website owners are, therefore, forced to adapt to these changes.

So, how can you survive these sudden changes?

To survive algorithm updates, you should stay informed, continue learning, and become flexible in your SEO approach. Join communities or have a network that can provide valuable insights into new algorithm updates.

When new algorithm updates are released, adapt quickly and look at them as opportunities for growth. Algorithm penalties can be a big blow. Think of them as being given a second chance to fix what is broken. To sort out the penalties, you’ll need to analyze the issue causing the penalty, fix it accordingly, and appeal for reconsideration. Imagine them as a ticket to getting back on track.

Search engine algorithms will keep on evolving. Therefore, your SEO strategy should be flexible, with room for the potential of new algorithm updates. You can only keep up with algorithms by continuously learning, adapting to change, and understanding user behavior and new trends.

5. Build a strong backlink profile

To successfully future-proof your brand, having a strong backlink profile is vital. It acts as a vouch of confidence by other users, and having one helps you rank and build digital credibility. This will help you now and in the future. I like to compare backlinks to positive online recommendations that influence your search rankings and Domain Authority. Your website becomes more credible and trustworthy with a great backlink profile.

Keep in mind — not all backlinks are good. Good backlinks are from trusted sources and are relevant to your content. On the other hand, bad links can be from spammy websites or perhaps are irrelevant to your content and are not worth paying attention to.

You need relevant, high-quality backlinks to future-proof your brand for SEO. Here are ways you can acquire backlinks for your brand:

• Write guest posts for reputable brands.

• Write high-quality content that others may want to reference.

• Network with influencers, bloggers, and industry leaders — this can lead to opportunities for collaboration.

• Reach out to websites to explore link building opportunities.

• Share your content with communities. If people like it, they will share it with their network, which could possibly lead to more backlinks.

Always inspect your backlink profile and remove any bad backlinks. Moz Link Explorer is a great tool to explore and track the health of your profile. Google Search Console is a free tool that can also help you see an overview of your website’s backlinks.

6. Leverage user experience for SEO success

A great SEO strategy that aims to optimize user experience (UX) is key to securing a digital future for your brand. Great user experience influences search engine rankings and how users interact with your website.

A well-designed and user-friendly website will attract visitors and encourage them to interact with your content and stay longer on your website. When your website’s user experience and SEO are in harmony, they can help you boost your SEO rankings.

Having a user-friendly website design is the secret recipe to enriching your user experience. The design should be clean, have straightforward navigation, and have a reasonable font size to foster user satisfaction.

Also, you should consider having a responsive design to cater to user browsing using different devices. Taking this approach will boost engagement and lead to longer dwell times.

Never underestimate your website’s loading speed. A website that loads fast and can be accessed on mobile is vital in determining how well you rank. Today, speed and mobile friendliness are ranking factors that Google uses to rank websites.

To optimize for seed, you should:

• Optimize your images

• Minify CSS and Java script-codes

• Reduce the number of redirects on your website

• Use content delivery networks

Use Google Analytics to inspect bounce rates and dwell time to understand user interaction, among much more. Low bounce rates and high dwell time indicate quality and relevance.

7. Monitor and analyze your SEO performance

The journey to future-proofing your business with SEO is more than developing and executing a content strategy. It requires you to monitor and track your SEO performance and make data-driven decisions.

You need to understand that analytics in SEO is not all about numbers but the stories those numbers tell. For this to become successful, keep an eye on your progress.

SEO tools like Google Analytics can help you monitor traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates. On the other hand, tools like Moz Pro can help with keyword tracking, competitor analysis, and backlink insights. These tools will help you pinpoint what is working and what is not.

To make data-driven decisions, you should configure your analytics platform. Understand your goals, such as tracking form submissions or e-commerce transactions as your performance indicators. Check out Preeti Gupta’s article on creating custom reports in GA4 to learn more.

Track your keyword rankings, traffic, and conversion rates. Organic traffic will tell you how many people are finding your website on Google, keyword rankings will show you how effective your SEO efforts are, and conversions will show you how many visitors have become paying customers.

Understanding these metrics will help you understand the efficiency of your SEO efforts and identify areas to improve.

Make a point to regularly look at your data to spot and remove unwanted weeds to keep your SEO efforts in check.

8. Embrace emerging SEO opportunities and technologies

Are you doing some digging to find out the latest trends affecting your business? If you haven’t adapted to AI and generative technology, it is high time you did. This will give you a competitive edge that will help you future-proof your brand.

AI can help you work more efficiently. You can use tools such as ChatGPT to analyze data to find relevant keywords to make you stay competitive, among much more. Generative AI will help you shift your focus from keyword-based optimization to semantic search. This will help your website rank higher in search results by providing visitors with more relevant and accurate information.

Voice search is another trend that is getting more attention today. Most people are finding it easier to talk more than to type more. Voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant have taken over, and people are talking to their devices more than ever. This is why your website should adapt to this trend by being mobile-responsive.

Failing to optimize your website for voice search can be a missed opportunity. So, how do you optimize your website for voice search? The first thing is to learn how to speak like your customers. Use more natural phrases that they could use when speaking. Focus on answering the questions “why,” “what,” "who," “where,” and “how” in your content.

Valuable content is another trend you shouldn’t ignore. Always make sure your content answers the questions of your audience and meets the E-E-A-T guidelines.

Schema markup is another critical aspect of SEO that you should take note of. It helps search engines understand your content type and what it’s about. Schema markup is code added to key elements like product reviews, ratings, events, blogs, FAQs, and web pages to provide extra context, helping your website to stand out in the crowd. Implementing schema on your website can lead to more traffic and clicks.

Wrap up

So, there you have it. You are one step closer to future-proofing your brand with SEO. Use these strategies as your secret weapon to stay ahead in your SEO game.

Always remember to keep your eyes peeled for any industry twists and fine-tune your online presence. Doing this will not only help you future-proof your brand but also carve a permanent spot online. So, put on your armor, adapt, and enjoy the ride to your digital success.

August 18 Algo Update: The Cyclone Before The Storm

Around August 18, just prior to the August Core Update announcement, MozCast recorded extremely high temperatures, peaking at 127°F. This stood out even compared to August’s unusually high ranking-volatility and the Core Update itself (so far).

While it’s easy to lump this volatility into the August Core Update, we recorded a distinct and probably unrelated event — a massive drop in indented results on page-one SERPs.

Indented results drop 50%

An indented result in Google is any organic result that’s grouped under another, higher-ranking result from the same domain. For example, below is a screenshot of a search for “Excalibur” that pulls up Wikipedia pages for both the sword and the film.

Between August 17-19, the percentage of page-one Google SERPs with indented results in the MozCast 10K tracking set dropped from 24.10% to 12.04%, as shown below.

Half (almost exactly 50%) of SERPs with indented results lost them over this two-day period, and that loss has not recovered as of the writing of this post.

Indented = Promoted organic

Here’s why this matters and why this change shook up the SERPs: Indented results are often (not always) promoted from lower-ranking organic results. Consider this indented result from a search for “banquet halls” in Portland, Oregon, on August 17.

These two results effectively ranked 1st and 2nd. On August 20, the indented result (now a stand-alone organic result) dropped to 4th place, with a Places Pack and People Also Ask feature between 3rd and 4th, resulting in a substantial vertical drop.

And below is a set of indented results from a search for “green card renewal” on August 17.

These results effectively occupied the 1st through 3rd positions. As of August 25, these results were split into 1st, 3rd, and 5th, with a People Also Ask feature before the 5th result.

Long-term trends (18 months)

While we can’t predict the future, this drop is consistent with a long-term trend. The graph below shows the percentage of page-one Google SERPs with indented results over the past 18 months.

The most recent drop is squeezed at the very end, but there was also a sizable drop at the end of July 2022 and a steady decline in the year since then. Keep in mind that Google had only reinstated indented results a few months earlier (at the end of 2021). This trend could reverse, of course, but my hunch is that Google’s initial roll-out was too aggressive.

Since this is effectively a re-ranking layer and doesn’t seem to be connected to the quality of individual results, there’s not much you can do about it. It’s like the car next to you at the stoplight turning down their music. Whether you like the song or not, they control the volume.

The volatility itself can be frustrating and adds to the noise of an already loud summer, but this shake-up should not impact your primary ranking for any affected SERPs. In some cases, if you were ranking below someone else’s intended results, you may even see minor gains. As always, keep your eyes open, monitor your organic search traffic, and try not to panic.

Why Should SEOs Measure Brand? — Whiteboard Friday

In this Whiteboard Friday, Tom discusses why SEOs should measure their brand, with specific reference to Moz’s new metric, Brand Authority.

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

Video Transcription

Happy Friday. I'm Tom Capper, Senior Search Scientist at Moz. Recently at MozCon we launched a new metric, Brand Authority, and in this Whiteboard Friday I just want to briefly explain why we think this is important, why we think that going forward SEOs are going to care more and more about measuring brand.

Why SEOs should care

This is something that I personally have been thinking about for quite a long time. This is a study I put out in 2021, which hopefully will be linked below. This is just showing that in terms of domain level ranking correlation, branded search volume, which is not the same as Brand Authority but is a simpler metric that I had available at the time, branded search volume was actually nearly as well correlated with rankings as Domain Authority and certainly more so than links to domain.

This is interesting to me, and I've been doing studies like this since around 2017. Although I didn't work at Moz back in 2017, but little did I know at the time there were people at Moz thinking about this too, and this is something that Moz has actually had in the works for a very long time. Even when I started at Moz about two and a half years ago, there was already a prototype of this metric, and it was something that we were thinking about and sort of improving on and iterating on.

Now the reason why I think this is interesting is that there are a few reasons why this could be the case. Well, why is it that a simple, somewhat silly metric, like branded search volume, can be nearly as well correlated with rankings as Domain Authority? How does that happen? Well, one answer that a lot of SEOs will jump to is, oh, maybe it's a ranking factor.

I don't think so. I'm a bit of a pedant. Personally, for something to be a ranking factor, I think that needs to be a metric which is a direct input into Google's ranking systems. I can't be certain. I don't work at Google. I don't think that branded search volume is a ranking factor. But there are a bunch of other ways that it might play into rankings, which I think are interesting or should be interesting to SEOs.

One of them is that most of us agree and I certainly think links are a ranking factor. Brand and links have a lot of interplay. If you think about the things that you might do to build links, a lot of them will also result in increased interest in your brand. You think about things like digital PR. Similarly, a lot of the things that you might do as brand marketing result in you getting links.

The better established you are in the industry, the more people are talking about you, these are the things that you would do as brand marketing, right, those will result in people linking to you because you're an authority or because you're mentioned in their campaign or whatever it might be. SERP signals I think is another potential factor here. Now this is a controversial one. A lot of people don't believe that Google takes into account SERP behavior, or maybe it does it indirectly or something like that.

I think SERP signals probably do play some sort of role in Google's algorithm. I've written about that elsewhere. I won't get into it now. But having a strong brand will definitely impact things like click-through rate from the SERP. Even if you don't think that affects ranking, you probably do care about click-through rate from the SERP. So if people get to a SERP, they see three sites, and they've heard of one of them, which one are they clicking?

It's quite simple, right? Then lastly, obviously we've been talking a lot in the last few years about E-A-T and now E-E-A-T, expertise, authority, and trust. This is kind of what Google originally set out to measure with links. But brand, however they might want to measure that, is very relevant. If you're talking about expertise, authority, and trust, that's all related to brand.

So these are sort of some of the big reasons why I think that SEOs should care about brand at least.

How to approach your job as an SEO

If we think about how these translate, there are a lot of things that once you start recognizing that brand might influence rankings, it might change how you approach some other parts of your job as an SEO. So, for example, if you work with other marketing channels, well, it's going to help you to talk to them and to get buy-in for what you're doing and then to get buy-in for what they're doing if you can recognize that there are a lot of these positive side effects.

If you're working on a brand campaign, it might influence SEO. If you're working on SEO, it might influence brand, this kind of thing. Obviously, for you to leverage this, you do need to be able to measure it. Then also a lot of SEOs have been thinking about the role of links. Now I saw a survey I think most recently last year from [indecipherable]. I've seen a few of them over time.

In recent years, most SEOs, when polled, think that links either are of declining importance or will be of declining importance in the future. Now, obviously, this is speculation. But we can all agree that links are not what they were in the early days of SEO. They're not the be-all and end-all anymore. You can't do links alone as SEO.

So if you're thinking about links maybe having a gradually declining value, then you might want to think about, well, what would Google replace that with as an authority signal. Again, I think brand is a pretty good answer, or at the very least it's correlated with a lot of things which are a pretty good answer. Lastly, I think there are many other use cases here, but one of the ones that's most exciting to me is sort of competitive analysis or strategy work, where you're trying to position yourself within your industry and figure out what's important, how you relate to competitors, this kind of thing.

Compare Brand Authority to Domain Authority

So this is a visualization that we have in Moz Pro at the moment, where you can put in your site on Domain Overview, and it will show you how you compare on both BA and DA to some competitors. So I've done this here for autotrader.com. I should say right now Brand Authority, it's in beta. It's currently quite U.S. leaning in the results it will give you.

That will change over time, probably very soon. But right now, it's quite U.S. leaning. So this is autotrader.com, not, for example, autotrader.co.uk. They are different companies weirdly. So auotrader.com, it turns out they have a stronger brand but a slightly weaker domain than their competitor Edmunds. That tells them something about where they might want to focus their efforts, what might be causing them to do better or worse in certain scenarios, this kind of thing.

Then if you compare it with a site like cars.com, they can see, okay, they've got a quite similar level of Brand Authority, but a much stronger domain. So if they're being outcompeted by cars.com, then maybe links wouldn't be the focus area, for example. You can have your own theories.

You'll know your own competitor space. You'll know how you'll use this information. But I think being able to show a C-level or show your manager or show your clients this kind of contextual data can be really useful both in setting expectations and in thinking about what your priorities might be as a brand. Anyway, I hope that gave you some food for thought.

Please do go and try out the metric. There will be lots of links below I'm sure. Thank you very much.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

GA4: Leverage the Power of Custom Reports to Enhance Your Reporting

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is officially here. If you’re not familiar yet, GA4 is the next generation of analytics.

While it offers a bunch of new features and benefits, it can be a little daunting to learn how to use it effectively. There are numerous new reports, and finding the data you care about can take a lot of time.

In this post, I will show you a great way by which you can leverage the power of GA4 to enhance your reporting by using custom reports.

What is the need for Custom Reports?

Don’t get me wrong, the standard reports are great. They provide a lot of data. And that’s the problem. They provide a lot of data that you might not need.

1. The default reports don’t provide you with important data: The default reports in GA4 provide a good overview of everything about your website. For example, it will tell you how many new users you’ve acquired. Or how many sessions your website had in a given timeframe. However, they may not give you the specific information you’re looking for in your SEO campaigns. To find something like how many users are coming from specific countries that are coming from organic mediums, you would have to go through a lot of reports. But if you make custom reports, on the other hand, this work would be much easier.

2. Finding key metrics and organizing data can be challenging: Every business has different goals. Some might focus more on getting new users, and others might focus on a specific channel, while some may focus more on increasing the views on particular pages. Finding and keeping track of different metrics for different businesses is difficult in the default reports. Suppose you’re a SEO consultant handling 25 different GA4 accounts, and you need to prepare reports that will highlight the key metrics that you’re tracking. Gathering the data from default reports will take you dozens of hours and a lot of brain power.

3. Presenting this data to stakeholders and ensuring your SEO suggestions are implemented can be tricky: The default reports are designed to show the general overview of data. This means that it will not provide you with the specific data that your stakeholders are interested in. The next thing is that the default reports have a ton of data in them. This makes the reports hard to understand. Stakeholders must understand the data because if they don’t feel confident about the data, it can be really hard to get your SEO recommendations implemented.

A great way to get the most out of your analytics data is to make custom detailed reports.

What are Custom Reports?

Custom detailed reports are like default reports, except you make them using a template or entirely from scratch. Here, you can add any dimension or metric, filters, and more.

Making custom detailed reports is a great way to get deeper insights into your analytics data, and they can help you make informed decisions, which you can learn more about in my new GA4 course.

How can Custom Reports help you get the data you care about?

Custom detailed reports can help you be more productive by organizing all your important metrics in one place. This means that if you handle more than one GA4 account, it will help you analyze and understand data better in less time.

1. Helps you focus on important metrics: GA4 allows you to create custom reports that help you focus on metrics you care about. You can add your preferred dimensions, metrics, filters, and charts. These will help you to customize the report according to your needs. So, for example, if your business is focusing on getting organic traffic from a specific country, then you can make a report that will show you this data. This will save you time, and you can focus on the metrics you care about.

2. Get an accurate picture of your campaigns: By making custom reports, you can get granular data for a single or a group of pages. By tracking specific metrics and dimensions, you can identify trends and data that you might not get otherwise. This will help you understand what’s working and what's not. This would mean that you can focus on making your campaigns better.

3. Takes less time to set up and access compared to standard reports: If you were to get the specific data from the standard report, it would take you a lot of time. Making custom reports can take a few minutes to a few hours, depending on how many reports you want to make. And once your reports are made, you can publish them, and then you can access them from the sidebar. This will allow you to access important metrics quickly.

4. Make better decisions with the data: When you have access to custom reports, you can understand what aspect of your campaign is performing best, and what’s not. What pages get more engagement, and which pages get the most views? Having access to this data means that you are making data-based decisions and not shooting in the dark. This will help your campaigns to perform well, and you can fix the issues you’re encountering.

5. Feel confident in getting your recommendations implemented: When you make custom reports, you only include a few metrics. This will make your stakeholders understand the data better. And as they can understand what needs to improve, you can feel confident that your SEO recommendations are getting implemented.

Steps to create custom reports

Here’s how you can create a custom report:

1. From the left menu, click Reports

2. Navigate to Library, and click it (Note that you should be an editor or administrator to access the library option)

3. In the reports section, click on “Create new Report”

4. Click “Create Detail Report”

5. Here, you have two options. You can either create a report entirely from scratch or use any template.

6. Add your desired metrics, dimensions, filters, and click save

For example, your SEO campaign is focusing on generating organic traffic. And your goal is to find out what countries are generating the most amount of organic traffic.

You can do this by creating a report from the demographics template. When you click the demographics detail template, you will see a lot of data that is optional for you.

You can remove extra dimensions and metrics that are not important.

For this particular example, we want to keep the dimension as “country” and the metric as “total users.” This will give us all sorts of data like organic and referral. So, we will make a filter that specifies the session medium as organic.

This will only show us the total users coming from different countries from the organic medium.

But what if you want to know what those organic websites are? What if you want to know whether your traffic is coming from Google, Bing, or any other organic medium?

The second dimension can help you here. Click the little “+” icon on the right of the first dimension, “Country.”

Select traffic source and then select session source.

This will give you specific data about the total users coming from:

1. Different countries

2. By a particular organic medium

You can add additional metrics to understand the data better.

As you can see, there will be two different charts, one is a line chart, and the other one is a bar chart. Whichever suits your needs, you can choose it.

You can also create summary cards according to the report so that you can see them in the overview reports.

This particular report will help you understand a specific metric. It will ensure that you and your stakeholders can make informed decisions.

When you have published a report, you can do things like:

• Change the data range to find data over a period of time

• Do MoM or YoY comparisons

• Build a comparison to compare the data against other dimensions

• Add filters to include or exclude a dimension

• Share your reports with your teammates or stakeholders.

How to add metrics and dimensions to Custom Reports?

If you’re working with a template, then you will have predefined metrics and dimensions present in the report.

In every custom report, you can access the dimensions and metrics from here:

For example, the above image shows the demographics detail template. To check the dimensions, we will click on ’Dimensions’ and we will then be able to see all the default dimensions, which will look like this:

You have the freedom to choose any dimension and metric you want. When you’re making custom reports, you won’t require all dimensions and metrics, it depends on your goals and what you actually want to see in a report. You can remove and add any dimension from the ‘Add dimension’ dropdown.

If you want to make any dimension a default, then you can click the three dots to the right and choose “Set as default”. This will make it the default dimension in the report.

In the above example, we only want the ‘Country’ as our dimension. So you can remove all other dimensions by clicking the three dots and selecting “Remove”.

Similarly, when you click on metrics, you will get all the default metrics like:

As you saw above, we want to choose ‘total users’ as the main metric, but we don’t see it in the default metrics list. To find the total users, you can click on “Add metric,” and from there, you can select total users and add it to the list.

You’ll see that there’s a small arrow beside the ‘Users’ metric. This means that this is the primary metric, and, by default, it will sort the data from highest to lowest. If you want to make another metric as the default, then you can just click on that metric, and it will become the default one. And if you click on it again, it will sort from lowest to highest.

You don’t want to show every single metric in your custom report, so you can remove the ones you don’t want by clicking the cross on the right of the metric.

Standard reports in GA4 are only made to show general data. Finding and accessing important metrics can take some time, especially when you’re handling a lot of projects. Also, getting your SEO recommendations implemented is not always guaranteed with standard reports, as it can be hard for executives and stakeholders to understand the data correctly.

That’s where custom reports come in. You can add all of your important dimensions, metrics, filters, and more to get the data you care about. This will aid you in making informed decisions, and stakeholders will be also able to understand the data better, as it will be organized and presented in a better way.

How to Earn Topical Authority in 2023 and Beyond

This was originally published on June 8, 2022, and has been refreshed with new and important information and images.

Topical authority isn’t a new concept, but as Google’s drive for helpful content is showing no signs of slowing down, topic authority is not something to ignore.

Topical authority is closely linked to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust), and as of May 2023, it’s confirmed: topical authority is a system Google uses to determine which experts are most helpful to a searcher's news query.

You can expect topical authority to weigh into your chances of ranking. Whether you’re reporting on the news or not, there are a lot of crucial takeaways for all sites on the subject of authority and how to rank higher. So, read on as we deep dive into topical authority: what it is, a step-by-step guide on how to earn it, and how you can measure success to get buy-in to your new SEO strategy. Plus, in the end, I put everything together into a quick case study in a highly competitive niche.

This is a comprehensive guide, and my goal is for you to feel highly confident in the power and execution of topic authority by the time you’ve read it.

Let’s get into it!

What is topical authority?

Topical authority is a system used by Google to determine which experts or publications have the expertise to cover news-related queries in niches such as health, politics, or finance.

Topical authority is a system used by Google to determine which experts or publications have the expertise to cover news-related queries in niches such as health, politics, or finance.

While topic authority is related to news-type queries, you want to consider building it no matter what you cover. If Google is using the topic authority system for news, there’s every chance they’re using it for other queries. Plus, becoming an authority on a subject (and proving it) just makes sense. You want your buyers to trust you, right? Showcasing authority helps them do exactly that.

How topical authority works in 2023

Through proven expertise, you build authority and trust in your field. You can showcase expertise and trust by publishing high-quality, informative content, refining your internal linking strategy, citing authoritative sources, and receiving high-quality, relevant backlinks.

Topical authority makes sense. We all want to buy from the best and most authoritative sources in the real world, right? The goal is for your site to be perceived as a trusted source of information on a particular topic.

Let’s look at content, links, and authorship to see how each element plays into topical authority.

Content clusters

To be topically authoritative, you need to focus on content clusters. These content pieces should be written by - or at least cite - highly qualified sources.

Your website must serve your web users, answer all their questions, and provide high-quality content at every step of the buyer journey.

To secure ranks, you need to showcase authority on your site's subject. Google needs to trust you before it sends traffic to your site. We know this because Google is committed to showing its users the most helpful content and uses site-wide signals to gauge helpfulness.

For example, if you’re selling skincare products, it’s not enough to put products on your site and expect to rank for keywords like ‘skincare,’ ‘skincare products,’ or ‘skincare for dry skin.’

If you want to showcase authority, you should cover all the questions your audience is asking. You might also cover topics such as:

• Use cases or success stories

• Skincare routines for various skin types

• Ingredients and how they benefit the skin

• Tips and guides for using various skincare products

The list could go on and on. You want to develop a content strategy that aims to cover every type of query or question related to your topic. This topic coverage shows Google you know what you’re talking about. Better than that, it provides your brand with content that helps your user build their trust, and it’s something to share within other marketing channels, too.

We’ll get into the step-by-step guide to building topical authority later, but for now, know that you can use Moz Pro to identify all the queries your users are searching for, which can help you decide what to write in order to build topical authority.

If you were a skincare brand, you might start answering some of the queries discovered by Moz Pro above. And there’s a lot more where that came from, too!

In his video, Louis Smith explains the power of topical clusters for e-commerce brands.

Topical clusters are not limited to e-commerce sites; whatever your site, you need to build authority.

Internal linking

Internal linking is what groups your clusters together. Remember, you want Google to know you’re an authority on your website’s topic. You want Google Bot to crawl relevant pages after relevant pages on your site.

Internal linking is how you achieve that.

Most likely, you’ll naturally internally link your website content as in many cases, it just makes sense!

You want to be mindful of your clusters and where you want to link as you’re writing articles. Sticking with the skincare example from above, if you wrote an article on a skincare routine, you might link to another article titled, ‘The Benefits of a Skincare Routine.’

You can link in-line (within the body text of your article), you might showcase a particular article in a banner style, or you could add a ‘you may also like’ section at the end of your article. Within this section, you’d feature articles related to the topic. Take a look at the example from Moz’s blog.

In the screenshot above, taken from Moz’s article titled, ‘TikTok SEO: Understanding the TikTok Algorithm,’ you can see the ‘Read Next’ section with three related articles. The ‘Understanding the TikTok Algorithm’ article is clearly part of a social media cluster, so three relevant articles include content around Twitter, more on TikTok, and social media.

Repeat internal linking strategies just like this on your website!

Authoritative authors

Doesn’t it make sense that the most authoritative authors get the top ranks on Google? When you’re researching, you want to hear from the people who know what they’re talking about, don’t you?

Google wants to make its users’ lives easier, and it does that by putting the most helpful results at the top of Google.

Additionally, Google and other search engines are constantly trying to identify true authoritative sources from those that are not (for example, AI-generated content).

To help Google identify an authoritative author, try:

• Adding author credentials

• Adding an author name and bio

• Creating an author page like my author page on Moz

• Using person schema to drive more data to Google.

From the latest update on the Google Search Central Blog, we know that source reputation weighs into topic authority, so don’t hold back; show that your author is authoritative and reputable.

Cite authoritative sources

You might not have the best of the best author writing for your site when it comes to authority, and even the most successful thought leaders don’t know it all. Thankfully, you can still bring some authority into your articles by showing, through citations and external links, that you’ve done your homework.

If you researched to write an article, say that and link to it—link only to authoritative sources that you (and your readers) can trust. Don’t be nervous about external links; they help you and add value to your readers.

Get backlinks

Unlike Domain Authority (DA), a third-party measure of website authority, topical authority is more of a quantitative measure of how authoritative a site may be.

DA looks primarily at backlinks and the number of high-quality, relevant backlinks. Topical authority is proven expertise built over time by accurately covering the breadth and depth of a topic with reliable sources.

However, backlinks will still play a role in your success in earning topic authority. We can see that in the Google Search Central Blog.

Influence and original reporting result in a ‘highly cited’ label. And how does Google know that a page is highly cited? You got it, backlinks.

The takeaway here is that you want to create content that is so good, informative, and useful that other people will cite and link to you.

Why is building topical relevance important for SEO?

If you reach out to someone for a service or product and they speak confidently and passionately about their offering, answer all of your questions, and understand your needs, then you’re more likely to trust them.

Why should the internet be any different?

Your buyers are drawn to your offering, your expertise, and your passion. Buyers also want to know you can help serve them and that you understand them.

In the digital world, content is how you nurture buyers. Where Google is concerned, topical relevance proves to search engines that you’re trustworthy and knowledgeable. We all know that Google wants to show its users the best possible content from the most credible sources.

If you reach out to someone for a service or product and they speak confidently and passionately about their offering, answer all your questions, and understand your needs, then you’re more likely to trust them.

Why should the Internet be any different?

Your buyers are drawn to your offering, expertise, and passion. Buyers also want to know you can help serve them and that you understand them.

In the digital world, content is how you nurture buyers. Where Google is concerned, topical relevance proves that you’re trustworthy and knowledgeable to search engines. We all know that Google wants to show its users the best possible content from the most credible sources.

You know a thing or two about your product or service, so prove it to Google through content. Cover related topics, hit keywords, and present information in a way that’s easy for your user (and Google) to understand.

A step-by-step guide to building topical authority

Topical authority allows you to showcase why someone should buy from you. In doing this, you build trust and authority with Google, encouraging the search engine to see you and your site as the subject authority that deserves to rank.

To be the most authoritative site, you must cover everything your competitor is and some more. Plus, you want to create different types of content to appeal to your audience (videos, guides, etc.) This is why you’ll find long-form content, many headings, images, and video in this article.

Once your site starts looking more authoritative and helpful, why would Google prioritize a competitor site when it perceives your site to have the most helpful information?

There’s one key thing to remember: when ranking on Google and earning favor in the algorithm, you need to use keywords in your content. As you center your strategy around creating high-quality articles, you must be cautious of keyword cannibalization.

There's also what I call topical cannibalization. To build topical authority strategically, you need to know how to build out your content architecture effectively. I’m going to walk you through that now, step by step.

1. Research your topic.

Before you can build out your content strategy, you need to research your topic. You’re looking for the search terms your buyers are typing into Google to solve their problems.

Here, you can turn to keyword tools like Moz’s keyword explorer. Type in a keyword (or your topic) and see what’s suggested. You will find exactly what terms are being searched in Google so you can use them within your content and rank for them.

Let’s use the subject of knitting to illustrate this.

Moz shares keyword suggestions, many of which can form part of your content strategy. Remember: covering all relevant topics helps build topical authority.

Social media sites like Quora and Reddit are also helpful. Within these sites, you can see what discussions your audience is having. You’ll likely encounter their pain points, queries, and buyer apprehensions that you can solve, answer, or soothe within your content.

Finally, my favorite, people also ask (PAA). Want to know what your audience is asking? There’s a trove of information in there!

Tools like AlsoAsked make light work of PAA, allowing you to view PAA data in a visually appealing, hierarchical structure. There’s a lot of opportunity to build topical authority in any niche. Just take a look at knitting as an example!

2. Create pillars and clusters

When researching your topic, map out every single piece of content that you want to create based on what your audience is searching or looking for. I like to do this in a large Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets.

Take note of the content you will create in one cell; next to it, list the focus keyword and all supporting keywords.

You’re going to cover every single query or question within your content.

Then, you’re going to work on assigning keywords to the pieces. This is the crucial step that prevents keyword and - as I call it - topical cannibalization.

3. Map keywords to content pieces using SERP analysis.

When mapping keywords, it’s easy to assume that every keyword needs its own page. Take the knitting example: if you dig around in the keyword suggestions, you can find 'what is knitting' (590 searches/month) and 'history of knitting' (480 searches/month).

A quick analysis of the SERPs shows that these two keywords can perform well in SERPs used on the same page. You don’t need to write two articles. Two articles could result in what I call topical cannibalization.

Here’s a screenshot from the SERPs when searching ‘what is knitting.’

The Sustainable Fashion Collection has a rank two position, likely the best rank they can achieve considering they’re competing with Wikipedia. From the title tag, we can see the article targets keywords ‘what is knitting’ and ‘history of knitting.’

The screenshot below shows they’ve successfully done so, too.

The article ranks successfully for both keywords. The point is that you don’t have to create articles for every single keyword or query. You can create long-form articles, which brings me to my next step nicely.

4. Write high-quality, well-researched content.

When planning your content, look for opportunities to write quality, well-researched, long-form articles instead of just trying to publish as many as possible.

Instead of writing two articles, consider writing one more in-depth article like sustainablefashioncollective.com did. As we’ve established, their article features high up on the SERPs for ‘what is knitting’ and has a featured snippet for 'history of knitting.’ It’s also on page one for 'knitting uses' (20 searches), plus 28 other keywords.

5. Share it with your audience.

There’s no need to wait for your page one rank before you get eyes on your article or page. Share it with your audience, use social media, and present content to your subscribers through email. Try repurposing content and creating videos.

Using your content in this way can prove its value to decision-makers, too. I’ve gone into this in some detail below. Check out the section, ‘Measuring the impact of your authoritative content.’

A brief history of authority in Google SERPs

Although topical authority has been a buzzword with increasing interest since 2022 (see trend below), it’s not a new concept. Since its inception, Google has been refining SERPs through algorithm changes to provide authoritative sources.

Let’s look at the clues through SERP history that show that topic authority is a big deal when it comes to ranking.

2023: Topic authority system and news

This is where we are right now and exactly what we’re talking about in this article. Google uses a topic authority system to determine the most trustworthy sources to report and rank for newsy queries.

2018: Medic and topical authority

Google’s desire to present only the most useful information was made clear (if it wasn’t already) in 2018 through the medic update. In 2018, the medic update impacted all verticals, predominantly health.

It was a positive update, encouraging everyone to improve content production. The update meant that instead of writing content in isolation and expecting it to rank well, content needed to showcase experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

And it makes sense for this standard to be upheld across the web, especially when we consider that more pieces of content are being published than ever before. In short: post only the most well-written, well-informed articles on your website if you want to stay competitive.

What we learned from medic relating to topic authority: Though medic focused primarily on medical content, it impacted all verticals. Your site should showcase authority through E-E-A-T.

2013: Hummingbird

Hummingbird took inbound links and keywords into account; this update emphasized content relevance and authority. It marked a shift away from keyword stuffing and towards the importance of the quality and relevance of content.

What we learned from Hummingbird relating to topic authority: Create content in clusters and link them together. Top tip: Where natural, use the keyword you want the linked-to page to rank for in the anchor text.

2012: Google launched Penguin

Penguin launched on April 24, 2012, and impacted around 3% of searches. This new and impactful algorithm tackled webspam, including keyword stuffing and backlinks.

The backlink layer of this algorithm update is most related to topic authority; it wasn’t enough to have a high number of backlinks after Penguin launched. Instead, web admins needed high-quality, relevant links to prove their site authority.

What we learned from Penguin relating to topic authority: Focus on quality link building - just write linkable content - instead of focusing on quantity or poor quality links.

2011: Google launched Panda

Panda launched on February 23, 2011. The new algo targeted low-quality sites that lacked authoritative content. Sites with thin, duplicate, or plagiarized content suffered, while those with in-depth, valuable, and unique content were rewarded. Some things never change; Google always wants quality content that provides genuine value to the reader.

What we learned from Panda relating to topic authority: Aim to write long-form content that helps your user. Avoid writing short web pages for the sake of it.

These algo updates are just a handful in a long and complex history. But from just these updates, you can see that authority is a pretty big deal, right?

Measuring the impact of your authoritative content

As an SEO reading this article, you might think about how you will

1. Sell in increased content production to decision-makers.

2. Prove it works.

Naturally, topic authority isn’t a majestic strategy that’ll work overnight. Still, it is crucial and powerful for ranking, building trust (with Google and your audience), and getting qualified traffic to your site.

With SEO being a slow mover, you need to get creative with how you can measure the impact of your authoritative content before you start earning clicks and conversions.

Increased visibility in SERPs

Look for increased visibility in SERPs using Google Search Console. You can gauge how much visibility your site is getting by looking at impressions. Generally, in content strategy, impressions is the fastest metric to move. You increase impressions before you earn clicks. An upward impression trend is a strong indicator that your content strategy is working. As you increase content production and authority, you can expect clicks to follow the impression trend eventually.

The screenshot above is taken from my blog, Road to Frame, a small website with low authority. It’ll be a while before the site earns many clicks, but the upward trending impressions, albeit small, indicate that the site is on the right path to earning more clicks for the head keyword. This was achieved through content production and working in clusters.

Assists in conversions

Businesses need to make money, and SEO can help them do that. Proving the role of SEO in sales will help you tremendously if you need to convince decision-makers to invest in SEO and content production for topic authority. With SEO tied directly to revenue, you’ll have an easier time convincing decision-makers to invest in SEO.

I like the landing page report to demonstrate how content contributes to revenue.

Note: This will only be effective if people buy directly from SEO efforts; if they’re not, Segment Overlap can be good. I’ve demonstrated this in the case study below.

In my anonymous client’s Google Analytics, you can see how revenue, particularly between 2021 and 2022, increased with traffic. Blogs (not all of them ranking well) used as part of other marketing strategies (e.g. email or social media) had a direct impact on revenue. People who landed on a blog also bought an item. Any blogs that ranked, did so for keywords outside of brand keywords, meaning the revenue was directly attributed to SEO efforts.

While you build your authority for ranks on Google, you can prove the value of content in other ways. Sales from quality content are an indicator that the content built trust in the user.

Check your backlink profile

High-quality content will eventually earn backlinks from credible sources. You can use Moz Pro to take a look at which content is getting the most backlinks and also prove that credible websites are linking to your brand.

After the homepage, Moz’s most linked page is the link explorer. You can click the magnifying glass to view the links. There are some highly authoritative sites linking to Moz here! See HubSpot, Search Engine Journal, Shopify, and DreamHost.

Top tip: you can take this measure a step further by proving traffic increases or revenue direct from the users sent to your site through your high-quality links.

Topic authority case study

Let’s put all of this together by looking at a real-world example using my client, Kineon. In the red light therapy market, Kineon’s competition is high. The site was new, with a low DA, in a niche that’s leaning into medical.

Ranking was going to be tough, but through topical authority, we were able to achieve improved ranks; in less than six months, the blog went from earning zero clicks to 1,280 and one cluster contributed to 7% of overall revenue. The screenshot below demonstrates the continuous success despite market and website challenges.

We achieved this by:

• Using Google Search Console to identify where the site, although small, already had authority. We found the site was getting the most clicks for queries related to the knee and red light therapy.

• We researched as many queries and questions as we could find on this subject. We used Quora, Reddit, and People Also Ask.

• We created a keyword map and assigned keywords to pages.

• An in-house writer created content.

• Content was linked together where natural and using a ‘you may also like’ section at the end of each article.

While SEO was taking its time to work, we measured the value of the content by using a segment overlap report in G4.

I have blurred the revenue to protect client data, but you can see the overlap between people who viewed a blog on the subject of the knee (the smaller circle) at 7% of the size of overall purchasers (the larger circle). This graph is for July 2023 only.

To support SEO efforts, we started an intentional and high-quality backlinking campaign, resulting in backlinks from highly relevant sites. Backlinks drive traffic and revenue.

Quick tips for earning topical authority

The steps above briefly detail the steps you can take to help build topical authority over time. Here are some final steps to integrate into your content plan:

• Identify new trends and write about them.

• Cluster your keywords and cover a topic in full based on SERP analysis.

• Keep up with current events related to your topic and cover them timely.

• Don’t be afraid to share something new — just because it’s not on the SERPs doesn’t mean you can’t be the first to say it.

• Don’t be afraid to link out to trusted sources. Referencing other materials is a great way to show you’ve done your research.

• Update your content to keep it fresh. For example, if a page is dated with 2022 data, it might be time to update it and make that article relevant to 2023 and beyond.

How can you tell if a website is authoritative?

There are many ways to work out if a website is authoritative. You can use the following ways to tell if a website is authoritative:

• Check the Domain Authority

• Check your Brand Authority

• Look out for indented SERPs

• Check organic keywords

• Strong internal link profile

• Well-written, informed content

Check the Domain Authority

An SEO favorite is Domain Authority (DA). Although we’re focusing on topical authority here, Domain Authority is still a measure of an authoritative website. The DA score is a number between 1 and 100 which indicates the website’s strength in search engine results pages. There are several factors that feed into this algorithm, and backlinks are one of them.

Simply put, the more high-quality, relevant backlinks a site or content piece has earned, the higher your domain’s authority will likely be. After all, other websites tend to link to highly authoritative websites.

Check your Brand Authority™

Brand Authority is Moz’s new metric that can measure a brand’s strength, on a scale of 1 to 100, showing how authoritative your brand is online. Using Google’s rich results and brand signals, a wide variety of brand terms are detected to understand how often people are looking for your brand, and thus a score is computed.

Where Domain Authority measures your website’s ability to rank on search engines, Brand Authority measures your broader influence across marketing channels.

Look out for indented SERPs

Indented SERPs are a strong indicator that a site is topically relevant. If you search a keyword such as: ‘landscape design tips’ (90 searches/month), you might find housebeautiful.com and its indented search results.

Indented SERPs are where similar topics that exist on one website are grouped together, giving the site more prominence in search results.

Check organic keywords

Generally, the more keywords a site ranks for on a topic, the more topically authoritative it will be.

SEO tools provide some insights into what your competitors are ranking for. They can also share topic ideas for how you can close the gap by covering the same topics.

If you do cover the same topics, remember to add more detail, more media, or a unique perspective.

Strong internal link profile

Assuming a site is using internal linking well, a strong internal link profile should demonstrate that a site is authoritative on a subject.

Take ‘beginners guide to SEO (480 searches/month) as an example. For this keyword, Moz is in position one.

A quick internal link analysis tells me there are 26 links within content pointing to this page. Links are coming from pages such as On-Page Ranking Factors in the ‘learn’ section of the website. This is a highly relevant topic for beginner guide SEO.

Well-written informed content

If you’re on a website and you’re discovering well-written, high-quality, original pieces of writing, then it shows that the site has some topical authority.

If the site is also updating this high-level content regularly, it’s probably earning topical relevance.

Do backlinks still count toward website authority?

Yes, backlinks still contribute to website authority. We can also predict that backlinks will continue to be helpful toward SERP rankings — but they’re not everything.

Backlinks needn’t be your goal when it comes to topical relevance. They will happen naturally as you earn visibility in SERPs and write high-quality, linkable content. Authoritative sites will continue to earn backlinks at a higher rate than non-authoritative sites. Plus, having topical authority can only help you attract links from other websites.

Final thoughts on topical authority

Building authority on a subject should come easily. After all, this is the topic you loved so much you built a website to share your expertise on it, right?

Reach out to your subject matter experts, ask them questions, and get to writing.

Be creative with what you put out there, repurpose your content, answer questions, and nurture your buyer.

Follow my steps above, and don’t be afraid to inject some new information into the SERPs. Your buyer wants to know you and your business! The extra efforts go a long way when it comes to content.

Remember, content and topical authority in a digital world often replace face-to-face interactions. Show your buyer why you’re an expert, what you know about your subject and all the reasons why they should trust you.

If you’ve still got questions, feel free to drop me a message on LinkedIn.

Map Your Keywords to the Buyer's Journey and User Intent — Whiteboard Friday

Rejoice takes you through how to map your keywords to both the buyer’s purchasing journey and the relative user intent.

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

Video Transcription

Hi. So I'm Rejoice. I'm an SEO account manager for SEO Sherpa, and welcome to this edition of Whiteboard Friday. So I will be talking to you about how to map your keywords to your user intent and the buyer's journey, so showing you a good framework to use when you're building out your strategy, doing your keyword research, and sort of want to give that extra added value to your clients so they fully understand the whole point of keyword research.

So I'll be taking you through the diagram. So we understand that we have the buyer's journey, which is the journey the buyer takes from the start to the end in terms of how they can sort of build and create and solve their problems.

Awareness Stage

So if we start with awareness, we all understand that awareness is when your buyer identifies that they have a problem.

So they become aware that they have a problem, and they need to find a solution. So within awareness, essentially any content you make or any keyword research you are doing, you want to find the type of keywords that would help your users or your users might search for them to either explain or be informed about something.

So what kind of keywords can we sort of look into? So there are something called keyword modifiers. Now we all know keywords can be short-tail, it can be long-tail, but the modifiers are sort of what helps us figure out the intent of a keyword or the purpose. So within awareness, the modifiers that we can have are what, how, where, and who.

So these can be modified to let us know that the buyer is within the awareness stage because that's the type of keywords that they're using. But furthermore, the intent behind it would be informational, because we all know informational keywords are utilized when users sort of want to be informed about something, again going back to the purpose of awareness.

So that's informational- based keywords. Now we don't necessarily always talk about the goal. Of course, we definitely know that awareness brings about explaining, brings about the informational intent behind it. But if we want to talk about the goals in which the user wants, we can classify it as Know and Know Simple. So Know just means your users are trying to know an information.

Know Simple would be those queries that they want the answers quickly. So what is Beyoncé's age? That would be a Know Simple query because Google will just bring up her actual age without the user having to go into any website to look at that. So that is awareness. So it's pretty simple, pretty basic, very easy to understand.

Consideration Stage

But when our buyer moves across to consideration, now consideration is why they're in this stage is because they know their problem. So they have a better understanding of what the problem could be, but they're just trying to find the best solution for it. So that's why it's called consideration. They're considering their options.

Again, in this stage, you will still need to explain to them what their options are, and sometimes you might have to demonstrate because this is where your users are going to look for options. So here we can maybe see content such as explainer videos or comparison guides as such. So the keyword modifiers that you tend to find are the best foundation for dry skin, or a review about Canon cameras versus this, or a review about iPhone versus iPad, all of those things.

You might start to see affordable. So now they know what the problems are, they might be looking for the best affordable option. So they might do a cost comparison. So these are the kind of modifiers that you can see and look up and know that, okay, these are what we need to serve to our users' user intent. We come down to it being commercial because they might be looking to investigate further into products and services.

That is why they're sort of trying to consider their options. So it would be commercial. But what's the goal? The goal can be they want to be led to the right site. So a goal of sites just means that they are looking for that particular site that will help them, I guess, decide, help them move across to the decision stage.

But the whole point of this is you want to kind of create the kind of content that are sort of making sure that you're targeting that user intent, that query that they're looking for. So our buyer, they have the options. They're looking at it, and they've picked the one best solution. So, of course, the next stage is going to be the decision stage.

Decision Stage

So in the decision stage, they want to, again, just find the best price. I know what provider I want. I know where I need to sort of go to to get this one solution. So again, you're still going to explain. You're still going to demonstrate. But how can you demonstrate within the decision stage? That's easy -- FAQs.

So we have FAQ pages answering key questions. So they land on your site. They know I want you to be that service provider for my problem. So I need FAQs. I need maybe case studies for me to read about other people's things. I need reviews. I want to review products.

I actually want to see what people's experiences are. So for that keyword modifiers, don't be surprised when you start to see deals. When people know the products they want to find, they want discount codes. I do it all the time when I know I want to shop in like ASOS, so I want to find an ASOS discount code. Thus, I've already made my decision.

So you might see test. You might see, if you're a service-based client, book now, so they want to book a particular service with this particular site. That intent will be transactional because they're looking to either make a purchase, sign up, book a service, buy, or download something. So they're already at the stage where that's their final decision. I've picked you, so there will be a transactional intent.

Then we call this, in terms of goal-wise, Do. So they're ready to take an action. Across all of these stages, you can absolutely put different calls to action. So awareness you can do, if it's a blog for awareness, read more, discover more. Those are calls to action. Consideration, it would be still explore more because you have that explainer guide.

Here, it could be sign up, buy now. All of those things are calls to action that you can attribute across different stages. So when you're creating your strategy, this is a very clear way to sort of tell your clients or explain to managers how you've kind of gone about to map out all these keywords, put them into the right categories, and explain it. I think that way you start to track and understand consumer behavior better because you now know the purpose why your consumers are utilizing certain keywords and where they exactly are within the buyer's journey.

Even if you have to take a wild guess, categorizing it this way just provides a lot more clarity for you. So that is essentially how you map your keywords to the buyer's journey and then back to the user intent. So I hope this helps and gives you a better idea of how to sort do it and how to play about it and build your Excel sheet and build your strategy to kind of help you.

So thank you, and hope to see you soon again on another Whiteboard Friday.

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