Atomic Media

Your exclusive look at the SMX Next agenda is here

Written on October 7, 2024 at 3:15 pm, by admin

Next month, thousands of seasoned search marketers will gather online to learn next-level SEO, PPC, and generative AI tactics, get in-depth answers to specific questions, and connect with like-minded community members and subject experts.

Are you ready to join them?

Your free SMX Next pass is just a few clicks away, and we can’t wait to host you online, November 13-14. The agenda is now live and ready for you to explore!

It’s all hand-crafted by the Search Engine Land programming committee, including Danny Goodwin, Barry Schwartz, Anu Adegbola, Brad Geddes, Eric Enge, and Greg Finn. Here’s a look at everything you get:

• Two keynote conversations about 2025 SEO and PPC trends, plus live Q&A.
• Actionable sessions on GEO, GenAI, N-E-E-A-T-T, and other critical search topics.
• Coffee Talk meetups with like-minded marketers and subject matter experts.
• Live Q&A with speakers including Amy Hebdon, Fred Vallaeys, Melissa Mackey, and more.
• Instant on-demand access for 180 days so you can watch and rewatch at your own pace.
• A personalized certificate of attendance to showcase your knowledge of the latest in search.

For nearly 20 years, more than 200,000 search marketers from around the world have attended SMX to learn game-changing tactics and make career-defining connections.

Don’t miss your final opportunity in 2024 to join them online for the only training event programmed by Search Engine Land, the industry publication you trust to stay competitive. Grab your free pass now!

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Visual content and SEO: How to use images and videos in 2025

Written on October 7, 2024 at 3:15 pm, by admin

Many businesses are finding their digital marketing efforts falling flat despite producing content regularly. The culprit? 

An outdated approach that neglects the growing importance of visual content in SEO.

With tech giants like Google and Apple prioritizing AI-powered visual search, companies that don’t adapt risk losing visibility and relevance.

Many enterprises lack the centralized strategies and governance needed to effectively manage visual assets across departments.

This article outlines a seven-step process to futureproof your visual content and SEO for 2025.

By implementing these strategies, you can leverage the latest trends, optimize for AI-powered search and significantly boost your online presence and engagement.

How are major giants pivoting features to embrace visual search? 

Google is now integrating video and image content, primarily from YouTube, websites and third-party sites, into the Top Insights section of product and AI-generated search results pages. 

This change provides users a richer, more engaging experience by offering a diverse range of information beyond text-based results and reviews. 

It also allows brands to leverage image and video content to boost visibility and engagement. 

Similarly, Apple has released Visual Intelligence with Vision 3, offering new features such as image segmentation and object detection. 

These new capabilities allow developers to build more sophisticated and powerful applications that utilize visual information.

Why are visual content and SEO challenging for enterprises and SMEs?

The biggest challenges in visual content and SEO include a lack of centralization, inconsistent policies, governance and knowledge across departments.

Search is multimodal, meaning content creation should focus on customer intent, considering images, videos, PDFs and all other touchpoints and channels. 

It is evolving beyond text to include diverse visual content. This shift requires a customer-centric approach that prioritizes intent and experience. Many companies struggle with implementing consistent best practices for visual assets across departments.  

With the rise of AI-powered search, it becomes even more critical to centralize all visual assets, ensure they are optimized and consistently distribute them across all channels.

Dig deeper: Visual optimization must-haves for AI-powered search

Top trends in visual content and SEO

Featured images and interactive short-form videos

• These elements are critical for enhancing user experience, as consumers are seeking app-like interactions. 
• Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels have popularized short, engaging videos, making them essential for reaching audiences. 
• Overall, video content helps in engagement and improve conversions and saturating SERPs. 

Personalization

• Tailoring experiences based on audience, journey, demographics, location and intent is vital for brands to succeed. 

Mobile dominance

• Since most images and videos are consumed on mobile devices, it is crucial to ensure that your UI, UX and assets are optimized for mobile.

In-video interaction

• Brands are exploring interactive video formats that allow viewers to choose their own path or engage in features like a 360-degree view and zooming.
• Incorporating polls and quizzes can create a more immersive and engaging experience.

---

7-step process to futureproof your visual content and SEO in 2025

Well-chosen featured images or videos significantly boost a website’s click-through rate (CTR) and encourage user engagement. 

It is important to follow best practices such as image relevance to content, high quality, appropriate file size and format and mobile optimization.

1. Curate

Compile a list of all channels, vendors, departments and touchpoints where visual content is created and consumed.

2. Centralize

Establish policies to organize your content. Ensure all images and videos reside in a digital asset management (DAM) system and are accessible via a content delivery network (CDN). 

All channels should access images directly from the DAM, avoiding multiple copies of the same image or video sitting in file folders.  

3. Optimize

Use high-quality, relevant images with appropriate file formats, image tags, sitemaps and structured data to enhance discovery and visibility. 

Leverage Google NLP to check for content marked as inappropriate and prioritize images relevant to the search query. 

Ensure visual content doesn’t affect site speed by using next-gen image formats and implementing lazy loading.

4. Distribute

Ensure content is consumed from one central location. Use cloud infrastructure and a CDN to host and distribute your assets efficiently. 

5. Application, experience and infrastructure

Leverage entity search to gain a competitive edge by implementing a clear visual hierarchy and enhancing content scannability. 

Well-structured, topical pages with relevant images and videos perform better. Develop snackable videos for your unique selling proposition (USP) and customer reviews. 

Create content suitable for visual snippets, such as how-to guides and recipes. The goal is to optimize for Google’s multisearch feature, which combines image, video and text searches. 

Infrastructure is one of the biggest gaps most businesses face. 

Most DAM systems are designed only to store images and lack the capability to optimize them easily. 

Having a DAM that provides real-time scoring of your asset quality and connects seamlessly with your websites and other channels is essential. 

Dig deeper: Future-proofing digital experience in AI-first semantic search

6. Governance and checklist

Establish robust governance and checklists around quality, consistency and usage across all departments. 

Continuously test which images are performing well in SERPs and conversions to refine your checklist.

7. Metrics and KPIs

Develop metrics to track SERP and rich snippet saturation, presence in AI overviews, overall click-through rates (CTR), clicks from visual search, engagement rates and page bounce rates.

As Google and other search engines incorporate conversational AI, short videos, images, and social media posts into search results – shifting away from traditional website listings – these strategies will help you effectively use visual content in 2025. 

Success stories

Using the seven-step process as mentioned above, our clients were able to drive phenomenal success for their images on search. 

A popular hotel in Georgetown saw a 104% increase in the number of times images appeared in search results versus the previous period. 

Search results appearances lift: 

A Massachusetts Resort and Spa saw a staggering lift in its visual search performance:

• + 871% increase in the number of times images appeared in search results versus the previous period.
• + 101% increase in overall image impressions versus the previous period.

Search results appearances lift: 

Impressions lift: 

Dominate visual search with well-optimized images and videos

Video and images are powerful tools for enhancing SEO and boosting online visibility. As LLMs become increasingly skilled at understanding and generating both text and visuals, you must prepare for more integrated visual-textual content creation and optimization strategies. 

By prioritizing these areas, you can stay ahead of the curve in visual content and SEO for 2025. Embracing the latest technologies and features released by major tech companies will enable you to enhance your online presence and improve searchability.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Structured data and SEO: What you need to know in 2025

Written on October 7, 2024 at 3:15 pm, by admin

Many search engines rely on structured data to enhance user experiences – and this trend will likely intensify in 2025. 

For this reason, structured data is no longer a “nice-to-have” but an essential part of any SEO strategy. 

Here’s what you need to know about structured data, including why it matters, important trends, key schema types, advanced techniques and more. 

What is structured data?

Structured data is a standardized format for organizing and labeling page content that helps search engines understand it more effectively. 

Google uses structured data to create enhanced listings, rich results and various features in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Being included in these features can boost your website’s visibility and organic reach, especially in entity-based searches.

Vocabulary

The most commonly used vocabulary for structured data is Schema.org, an open-source framework that provides an extensive library of types and properties. 

Schema.org includes hundreds of predefined types, such as Product, Event or Person and properties like name, price and description. 

Format

The preferred format for implementing structured data is JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data), which is endorsed by Google and other search engines. 

JSON-LD encapsulates structured data within a <script> tag, keeping it separate from the core HTML. 

This approach makes it more flexible, easier to implement and less intrusive. JSON-LD is particularly useful for dynamic content on larger websites.

Validation

Correct implementation of structured data is essential to be eligible for rich results. 

To verify that structured data is properly implemented and can be processed by search engines, use tools like: 

• Google’s Rich Results Test.
• Schema Markup Validator. 

These tools check for errors or omissions in the schema, ensuring the markup is valid and effective.

Dig deeper: What is technical SEO?

Why structured data matters more than ever

Structured data enables search engines to interpret website content more deeply, enhancing how pages are indexed and presented in search results. 

It allows brands to reach audiences in less competitive areas of search, such as voice and image search, allowing sites to drive traffic and engagement outside of traditional SEO. 

Zero-click search and brand authority

More and more SERP features, like knowledge panels and featured snippets, depend on structured data to provide answers directly in search results. This means users can get information without clicking through the publisher’s site.

This rise of so-called zero-click searches, has made structured data even more indispensable in SEO. 

While these features offer limited opportunity to drive visits, they can boost organic impressions, enhance brand recognition and maintain user interaction with the brand. 

Being regularly shown in the rich results reinforce top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) – and in the E-E-A-T world, a trusted and authoritative brand is crucial for success in SEO.

Key schema types to use in 2025

While new schema types emerge regularly and should be tested where relevant, several “evergreen” types have proven their effectiveness over time.

Ecommerce

Product schema (often used together with Offer and Review schema) is essential for ecommerce, providing details about products, such as price, availability and reviews. 

This schema powers rich snippets like product carousels and review stars in SERPs, significantly improving click-through rates. 

Merchant listings (a combination of Product and Offer schema) can be a great way for new ecommerce sites to gain early visibility and traffic through Google Shopping.

AggregateOffer schema is ideal for marketplace websites, as it enables multiple vendors’ offers to be represented for the same product, allowing users to compare prices and options.

Informational

FAQ schema allows websites to present common questions and answers directly in the search results. 

It is highly effective for improving user engagement by providing concise answers for conversational queries and can appear in rich results and voice search.

Q&A schema is designed for pages where users can submit questions and multiple answers are provided and is often found in forums or community-based platforms. 

It powers a Q&A carousel that features both questions and answers directly in the SERP, increasing visibility and CTR for long-tail queries and conversational searches.

Article and WebPage schema can boost visibility in Google News, Discover and top stories carousels and get exposure in voice search.

Events

Event schema is used to mark up details about virtual or physical events, such as concerts, conferences, webinars or local meetups. 

It provides specifics like the date, location, start and end times, ticket availability, and performers. This information can be included in Google’s event listings, enhancing visibility in local or event-related searches.

Newly supported properties for BroadcastEvent and ScreeningEvent enhance how live events and screenings are presented in search.

Dig deeper: How to deploy advanced schema at scale

---

How to use structured data in 2025

While the applications below are not entirely new, their importance is set to increase through 2025 as user behaviors continue to shift.

Entity-based search

Entity-based search is where search engines prioritize entities – people, places, things and concepts – over individual keywords. 

Instead of focusing on isolated words and relationships between them, search engines now better understand connections between entities and how they fit into a broader context. 

Structured data like Person, Organization or Place schema can clearly define relevant entities, enhancing their visibility in Knowledge Graphs and entity-based results. 

Likewsie, SameAs schema can be used to help search engines understand that an entity mentioned on one page is the same as an entity mentioned elsewhere. 

By marking up an entity with SameAs and linking it to trusted external sources, such as Wikidata, Wikipedia or authoritative social media profiles, it’s possible to reinforce the association and improve its recognition and reach in Knowledge Graphs and rich search results. 

Dig deeper: How to use entities in schema to improve Google’s understanding of your content

Speakable

Speakable schema (in beta at Google) is an important tool for optimizing content for voice search results. 

It helps search engines identify which sections of a webpage are best suited for audio playback, including Google Assistant-enabled devices using TTS. 

The goal is to provide concise, clear answers to users’ questions in spoken format. This is especially useful for news websites and publishers, as they can mark up critical content to be featured in voice responses. 

Multimodal search

Multimodal search allows users to query search engines using various forms of input, such as text, images and voice, sometimes combined in a single query. 

This is largely driven by AI models designed to process multiple data types simultaneously. 

Structured data like VideoObject and ImageObject ensure that multimedia content is properly understood, indexed and ranked. 

Schema nesting

Schema nesting allows for the representation of more complex relationships within structured data.

By nesting one schema type within another – such as a Product schema within an Offer schema, further nested within a LocalBusiness schema – it’s possible to communicate layered information about product availability, pricing and location. 

This enables search engines to understand not just individual data points but how they are connected, leading to more contextually rich search results, like specific local availability and offers tied to individual businesses. 

Another example might be a Recipe schema nested within a HowTo schema, further nested within a Person schema. 

This communicates that a specific person (author or chef) created the recipe, which in turn contains step-by-step instructions on how to prepare the dish. 

• Person schema would include the chef’s name, bio and social profiles. 
• HowTo schema would describe the cooking process, including the steps and required materials.
• Recipe schema provides details like the list of ingredients, preparation time and nutritional information. 

This setup would enable search engines to display rich snippets that include the recipe’s creator, ingredients and cooking instructions in a clear and organized manner.

While the primary benefits of schema nesting include improved contextual understanding and enhanced rich results, nesting also adds flexibility for meeting different search intents, allowing search engines to prioritize information based on the query. 

Maximize your search visibility with structured data

Structured data is already a critical driver of SEO success for many websites, both large and small. 

With hundreds of schema types, dozens of Google SERP features and increasing applications in AI and voice search, its importance will only continue to grow in 2025. 

As Google and other search platforms continue to change, carefully and creatively leveraged structured data can provide a significant competitive edge, allowing to gain visibility in existing features and prepare for future opportunities. 

Dig deeper: How schema markup establishes trust and boosts information gain

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

The art of AI-enhanced content: 8 ways to keep human creativity front and center

Written on October 7, 2024 at 3:15 pm, by admin

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into content creation, it’s easy to feel like the human element of writing might be overshadowed. 

While AI offers powerful tools that enhance productivity, streamline workflows and even generate content, it’s essential to retain your personal touch to create engaging and authentic material. 

This article explores how you can balance AI with your creativity, ensuring your unique voice shines through.

1. Understand AI’s role in content creation

AI tools can help generate ideas, draft content, edit and optimize for search, making content creation faster and more efficient. 

However, AI lacks the nuanced understanding of human emotions, context and cultural insights that come naturally to humans. 

Recognizing AI’s limitations is the first step in using it as a supportive tool rather than a replacement for human creativity.

Use AI for repetitive tasks, not original thought

AI excels at handling repetitive tasks, but it falls short when it comes to the subtleties of original thought, humor and storytelling. 

By delegating routine tasks to AI, you can free up valuable time to focus on the creative elements that rely on human intuition and personal experience.

• Automate research and data analysis: Use AI to gather information, analyze trends or compile statistics, allowing you to spend more time crafting a compelling narrative.
• Draft assistance: Let AI provide you with a starting point or outline for your content, but take the lead in shaping it into something uniquely yours.

Dig deeper: AI content creation: A beginner’s guide

2. Use AI as a creative partner, not your replacement

Think of AI as a co-creator. It’s there to assist, suggest and optimize – not to replace your unique voice.

AI can provide a structural backbone or help refine your content, but your ideas, insights and personal experiences are what will set your work apart.

Refine AI outputs with human insight

AI-generated content often needs a human touch to make it relatable and engaging.

Review and edit AI suggestions to align them with your voice, adding personal anecdotes, humor and insights that reflect your expertise and personality.

• Inject personal experiences: Add stories, examples or perspectives that only you can provide. This personal touch creates a connection with your audience that AI cannot replicate.
• Adjust for tone and style: AI can mimic various tones but often produces content that lacks warmth or emotional depth. Edit to include the subtleties of language that resonate with your readers.

Dig deeper: How to make your AI-generated content sound more human

3. Customize AI to match your voice

Many AI tools offer customization features that allow you to adjust settings to match your preferred tone, style and language. This ensures that AI outputs align more closely with your established brand voice.

Define your voice

To ensure consistency, take time to define your writing style. Are you formal, conversational, witty or authoritative? 

Establish guidelines that reflect your voice and regularly tweak AI settings to match these preferences.

• Set clear parameters: Provide the AI with detailed prompts that include your desired tone, target audience and any specific stylistic nuances. The more context you provide, the better the AI can tailor its outputs to your needs.
• Iterate and refine: Use the feedback loop to your advantage. If the AI-generated content feels off, refine the prompts and give feedback to nudge the tool closer to your style.

Dig deeper: 3 ways to add a human touch to AI-generated content

4. Provide clear prompts and feedback to AI

AI relies heavily on the quality of the instructions it receives. 

Vague prompts can lead to generic content, while detailed, contextual prompts can produce outputs that better reflect your intentions.

Give context-rich prompts

Instead of generic commands, offer AI tools with specific guidelines. 

Don’t just ask AI to “Write an article introduction.” 

Try “Write an engaging introduction for a blog post about sustainable fashion, targeted at eco-conscious millennials, in a friendly and approachable tone.”

• Focus on audience needs: When directing AI, always keep your audience in mind. Prompt AI to address their pain points, preferences and language style to create content that speaks directly to them.
• Refine outputs with detailed feedback: If AI’s first attempt isn’t quite right, refine it by tweaking prompts or adding more detailed instructions. This iterative process helps align AI-generated content with your vision.

Dig deeper: Advanced AI prompt engineering strategies for SEO

---

5. Enhance emotional resonance with AI content

AI-generated content can often feel sterile or detached. 

While AI is good at generating logical and coherent text, it struggles to evoke emotions. Enhancing content with emotional resonance is where human creativity comes into play.

Add emotion, empathy and authenticity

After the AI generates content, go through it with a fine-tooth comb to add emotional elements that AI might miss. Infuse the text with empathy, humor, passion or urgency to make it more engaging.

• Use relatable language: Replace formal or robotic language with conversational and relatable phrases. Address your readers as if you’re speaking directly to them, making your content feel more personal.
• Connect through storytelling: Share personal stories, case studies or real-world examples that illustrate key points. These elements help bridge the gap between AI’s capabilities and human touch.

6. Personalize content for your audience

AI can analyze data to personalize content suggestions based on user preferences, but it’s your understanding of your audience that will make your content truly resonate. Use AI’s insights as a guide, but rely on your knowledge of your readers to fine-tune the final product.

Blend data-driven insights with human understanding

AI can highlight what topics are trending or what keywords to focus on, but only you can interpret this data in a way that speaks directly to your audience’s needs and values.

• Craft tailored messages: Use AI to segment your audience and suggest tailored content, but ensure the final message reflects your understanding of their motivations and desires.
• Maintain authenticity: Even when personalizing at scale, keep your brand’s authenticity intact. Avoid overly automated responses that can feel impersonal or generic.

Dig deeper: How to build and retain brand trust in the age of AI

7. Keep your creative process transparent

Transparency about your content creation process can actually enhance trust with your audience. 

Letting readers know that AI aids in content creation while emphasizing the human touch reinforces the value of your insights and creativity.

Share behind-the-scenes insights

Consider sharing how you blend AI and human creativity in your workflow. This transparency can build a connection with your audience, showing them that while you use advanced tools, your unique voice remains at the core.

• Educate your audience: If AI tools are a part of your content process, explain how they help improve your work. This can position you as a forward-thinking creator who values both innovation and authenticity.
• Highlight human contributions: When presenting AI-assisted content, highlight the areas where your personal input was most significant, whether in crafting the narrative, adding context or injecting personality.

Dig deeper: AI-generated content: To label or not to label?

8. Embrace AI without losing yourself

The ultimate goal of integrating AI into content creation is to enhance your capabilities, not replace your essence. Remember that AI is a tool – an incredibly advanced and helpful one – but your creativity, judgment and personal touch are irreplaceable.

Stay true to your voice

Regularly revisit your content to ensure it aligns with your personal or brand voice. AI should amplify what makes your writing special, not dilute it.

By staying true to your style, you ensure that your audience connects with the real you, even in an AI-enhanced world.

• Continual earning and adaptation: Stay curious about how AI can improve your process, but remain committed to your core principles as a creator. Adapt your use of AI as it evolves, but always keep your voice at the forefront.

Crafting authentic content in the AI era

Balancing AI with human creativity requires a thoughtful approach that leverages technology’s strengths while preserving your authentic voice.

You can achieve the best of both worlds by treating AI as a creative partner, offering clear guidance and incorporating personal insights.

AI can enhance efficiency, improve accuracy, and spark new ideas, but it’s your creativity, empathy and unique touch that will truly resonate with your audience.

Use AI strategically, ensuring your authentic voice remains the highlight of your content. After all, while AI is here to stay, it’s human intelligence that drives meaningful connections.

Dig deeper: Future of AI in content marketing: Key trends and 7 predictions

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

SEO grew up, a lot of SEOs didn’t

Written on October 5, 2024 at 9:14 am, by admin

When we were young, we all wanted to sit at the adult’s table. But we couldn’t, often, because of our behavior.

Growing up, we often thought we were cool, but we weren’t. Look back at your past. There are probably photos or things you did that you find questionable today.

This is exactly how we SEOs should be looking at our work. SEO has grown up a lot; we SEOs didn’t. 

Our mindset is a problem when tackling challenges like needing a strong brand or satisfying users the most.

What we do:

• Faking first-hand experience and looking for things we can leave out “because Google cannot measure that.”
• Buying (terrible) links (no one clicks), a practice that will be sketchy.

This is the wrong approach. 

What we should be doing: 

• Proving our experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
• Creating the best content possible that is worth linking to or mentioning.

To finally grow up, we have to look into the mirror. We have to change.

If you are pressed on time, here’s a quick rundown of what I suggest you should start doing today:

• Embrace change as an opportunity to grow by making yourself familiar with it and turn obstacles on their head. 
• Do what is rational, logical and repeatable, study the Search Quality Rater Guidelines (SQRG) to understand what Google wants and invest in preparation, not prediction.
• Stop cheating or manipulating and start building something extraordinary. Start taking responsibility for your actions and stop blaming others for your failures. Save your energy to fight for positive outcomes, instead of wasting your energy on a negative candy rush.
• Communicate, understand and execute SEO the right way: As a growth engine, leading to limitless growth, not marginal improvements. Favor building over optimizing and fixing. Find your real competitive advantage and don’t buy into snake oil, cookie-cutter strategies or get-rich-quick schemes.

Disclaimer: This is not a purely tactical guide. My goal is to make you think. Motivate you to ask yourself tough questions and provide you with the necessary mindset to fill out the shoes of adolescence. If you get one good thought from this I’m more than happy.

Let’s get into the trenches: This is how we grow up!

Embrace change as an opportunity to grow

When we were children, we didn’t want to accept that change was inevitable. As we grow up, we realize it’s much easier to accept the world for what it is than to strive for what it should be. 

“You don’t get to dictate the course of events. And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.”

– Oliver Burkeman, “Four Thousand Weeks”

The same should apply to our SEO mindset.

Change can be old tactics no longer working (like putting white text on a white background; I only mention this because some website owners still do this today) or new things appearing on the horizon, like generative AI.

Many of our SEO playbooks are outdated, and forces are pulling on us to change. Here are two examples:

We often don’t have a crawl budget problem, but an indexing problem

Indexing is becoming harder. 

From what we know, the size of Google’s index seems to be more or less static (about 400 billion documents). Due to AI, we are:

• Producing more (good and bad) content.
• The bar for content quality has a new, higher baseline.

More content of a higher quality baseline vs. same index size = it’s harder to get indexed. 

Google is allergic to technical issues and low-quality content.

Google’s fierce changes in ecommerce searches

Google is under pressure to become a shopping engine.

• Around 50% of product searches start on Amazon, not Google.
• 61-74% of European shoppers search products on Amazon, not Google.

As a result, Google renovated the SERPs for commercial queries. 

In 2023, Google started to push a new feature: product grids.

Categorized as “Merchant Listings,” these grids appear in commercial searches at Position 1 more and more often. 

Based on my research for German SERPs, depending on the industry, product grids appear in position 1 between 15-45% of the time.

Thanks to some research done by Kevin Indig for the U.S., we know Google changed the rate of them appearing in Position 1 more often than in Position 3 around March 2024.

If your domain doesn’t play a role in product grids but your competitors do, you are in for a tough time.

The solution: Reframing problems as opportunities

Problems are what make life worth living. A problem can be reframed as a challenge or an opportunity. The cards are shuffled again, doors are opening up, and we are all new to these things. 

Here’s a practical reframing example from a talk by Carrie Rose I heard this year: 

• You are an ecommerce shop and lack authority in your niche
• The ranking domains are strong digital publishers, duh
• Instead of putting your head into the sand, you can put the obstacle on its head
• Don’t try to beat them, join them
• How? By giving them content they don’t have that is worth linking to
• Example: Internal searches showed an extreme increase in searches for White Vans
• They figured out faster than everyone else it was due to the series Squid Game on Netflix and pitched an article to news outlets
• Result: High-quality backlinks, traffic and additional revenue

Main takeaways: 

• Embrace change, make yourself familiar with new developments, tools and technology (start with an hour a week). 
• Strive to deliver “best in the world content,” not just “fine content.”
• Reframe problems into opportunities.

Double down on things that never change

On the one hand, we don’t want to change our behavior. On the other hand, our brain craves novelty, constantly looking for a dopamine hit. 

I know it’s very easy to be sucked in. New trends like AI chatbots, AI phones, AI toothbrushes. All good. But you have to avoid the shiny toy syndrome and embrace what will always matter.

If you focus on the things that never change, you can predict the future.

There lies great power in what you can’t measure

It will always pay off to do what is logical and rational. 

Google of 2004 is not Google of 2024. Just because Google cannot measure something right now doesn’t mean it cannot in the future. One example is having author bios and pages.

Due to the leak, we have our answers now, but having author bios and pages just because Google “wants” them didn’t make sense.

Things that cannot be measured are often underestimated and easily ignored. Fun fact: A metric is often more useful if it is harder to measure.

Prefer the repeatability in the present over the luck of the past

Luck is something positive that is not predictable. Repeatable means puzzle pieces falling into place like they used to. They are not the same.

In SEO, we love to look at what others did and you should. But focus on what is repeatable, not what was lucky.

You cannot follow in the footsteps of Amazon or HubSpot, as their operating conditions fundamentally changed. However, there are things worth learning from them.

• You can learn from HubSpot that it’s worth investing strategically in new channels/formats. 
• You can learn from Amazon that it’s worth investing in what customers will always value: Good prices and fast delivery.

Do what is repeatable; don’t try to emulate what was lucky.

Some more things that will never change

To draw on the Amazon example, Google will always need users to be satisfied with their search product. At least as long as this is their biggest revenue source.

One of your goals, in this case, should always be to have “best in the world content,” not good content.

In the SQRG, Google tells us exactly what they want. They have been doing so for years:

• Have author pages when it makes sense for your target audience.
• Don’t just copy the content of others, as high content quality is signaled by effort and originality.
• Auto-generated content (think AI or any programmatic plays) has more obstacles in its way to being rated Highest in terms of page quality.

Make no mistake: The next update is coming. The next disruption of the SERPs you operate in is coming as well.

It’s much better to invest in preparation over prediction. What we can’t see coming hits us the hardest.

Main takeaways:

• Do what is rational and logical, even if you or Google can’t measure it (yet).
• Copy what is repeatable today, not what was lucky yesterday.
• Study the SQRG to see what Google wants.
• Invest in preparation, not prediction.

---

Stop manipulating, start taking responsibility

Do you remember that when you were a kid, you often tried to manipulate and cheat in games?

In Germany, there is a game called “Mensch ärger dich nicht,” which roughly translates to “man, don’t be angry.”

I took chances to roll the dice again because someone “distracted me,” for example. This also happens often in golf and is known as a “mulligan,” so you get a pass and can take another shot.

At times, SEOs are like children who don’t want to accept the rules, cheat when no one is looking and love to blame others for our failures.

Examples of SEO manipulation practices

SEO is a breeding ground for manipulative tactics, and everyone knows the good old tales. Here are a few classics and recent ones:

• Terminated agencies updating the disallow file, so the work of the new agency gets tanked
• Content stealing, like the SEO heist
  • Purely AI-generated content is neither a competitive advantage nor a strategy. Even if it does work short-term, it is not something you can rely on in the future. We advocate investing in a long-term channel, but we are so greedy and in a hurry that we fall for get-rich-quick schemes like Gollum in his pursuit of his precious.
• Link buying, which sounds like exchanging drugs on a backyard
  • In some countries this is not just against Google’s official guidelines, but even problematic due to the law (in Germany we have the “Wettbewerbsrecht” for example).
• Affiliate link spam
  • Someone created thousands of domains, all just containing affiliate links to all kinds of ecommerce sites in Germany to earn a quick affiliate buck. This is literally a resource waste which makes the internet a huge garbage hole. Please stop.
  • Here’s an example domain that got spammed with these affiliate domains:

If you want to be taken seriously in SEO, don’t take shortcuts. Like Sonia Simone said, they take too long.

Why Google can’t tell us the truth

It’s easy to point fingers at Google. To call them liars and whatnot. Anyone with a clear mind has to understand that they cannot tell us exactly what is going on behind the curtain. If they did, at least a small group of SEO goblins would do everything in their power to ruin the game for everyone else.

SEO is the perfect example of the tragedy of commons. 

“Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.”

– Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”

Some of us just can’t behave properly and break the system for everyone else.

Yet here we are, proud of engaging in our questionable get-rich-quick schemes, which no one would publicly endorse as employees of a real brand or big company.

Incentives beat intentions, unfortunately

Recently a guide on how to manipulate Reddit got a lot of traction. I understand what the intentions of the author were: Make things better. But I don’t agree with the approach and methods used to do it.

This is not an ad hominem case as this is not an individual problem.

Firstly, Google is blamed for creating incentives to spam Reddit. However, the article itself promoted incentives to do the same with the actual manual on a silver platter.

Publicly sharing the techniques to spam Reddit is promoting to spam Reddit even more, no matter how you put it. And it was never wise to fight fire with fire.

Also, people generally like Reddit and find the answers helpful. It’s no coincidence that they have these numbers: 

• There were 32 billion search queries in 2023 containing “reddit”.
• There were 3,102 billion search queries worldwide in 2023.
• = Reddit appears in 1% of all search queries.

I’m not saying there is no spam. But we don’t know the denominator here. If you seek a needle in a hay stack you will find one.

Secondly, Google is blamed 100% for the consequences of the Reddit spam. I don’t agree.

If you would look at the chain of responsibility through the eyes of several great philosophers, like Kant, Aristotle or Sartre, you would come to the conclusion that users taking advantage of the spam techniques are to blame first, then the platform (= Reddit) and then Google (= the middleman).

FYI: Others cheating doesn’t give you permission to do the same. Enabling and incentivizing these tactics is not a free ticket to cheat, either.

Look into the mirror: If spammers wouldn’t spam there would be no problem, so the root cause is our sometimes unbearable human nature.

The blame is (also) on us, not (just) the others

It’s more comfortable to blame others than to check on ourselves. 

“Google got worse” is one on the trendiest topics of 2023 and 2024. 

“Before Content Marketing was a thing, idiots did not publish content. You wouldn’t write encyclopedia articles without knowing anything. Now, we created a perverse incentive for any idiot to write about anything. We sit in a mountain of garbage.”

– Peep Laja, CEO, Wynter

What if Google didn’t get worse, but the ratio of good to bad content shifted?

If you fill a glass with more water (bad content) than wine (good content), the relative amount of wine in the glass decreases, even if the quality of the wine itself is good. It becomes harder to serve good content.

Google is responsible for their search results, but we are responsible for the mountains of garbage we produce.

A German study presumably claimed Google got worse. Their argument, only focusing on a small query subset in a specific niche, is insufficient to make such claims. It’s not even what they said but what people want to believe.

According to Statista, users are once again slightly more satisfied with Google search. And yes, according to the 286-pager on Google being a monopoly, Google tried to devaluate search quality to test the impact on revenue. But that test only lasted three months. 

No one can predict if there wouldn’t be a negative impact on revenue in the long term, which is all that matters.

Let’s assume for a moment that this was true: Google got worse and our domains were demoted in favor of some big digital publishers. How would the confirmation of this bias actually help me?

It doesn’t.

Yes, I can and should be vocal about it. But a lot of time and energy goes into being negative. Negativity is like a candy rush. It distracts us, so you need to avoid it.

Author Ryan Holiday hit the nail on the head with this quote: 

“In our own lives, we aren’t content to deal with things as they happen. We have to dive endlessly into what everything “means,” whether something is “fair” or not, what’s “behind” this or that and what everyone else is doing. Then we wonder why we don’t have the energy to actually deal with our problems.”

We need this energy wasted being negative in working on achieving positive outcomes, like crafting the best content out there or being the most helpful resource for our target audience.

Loopholes are risky short-term arbitrage opportunities, not long-term safe bets

A loophole is not a real competitive advantage, but a short-term arbitrage technique that brings a lot of risk with it. If revealed to the outside, there can be grave consequences. 

I loved this from Alex Birkett recently LinkedIn:

“Shortcuts in SEO often bring a sugar high, but they also come with a crash. […] If you treat it like a get-rich-quick scheme, you’ll need to ‘fix the plumbing’ later.”

Some things, like reputation, are not worth risiking, no matter how much there is to gain. Think of Sports Illustrated for example. 

Building a good reputation takes years. Setting it on fire can happen in seconds. 

Main takeaways: 

• Stop cheating or manipulating and start building something extraordinary.
• Start taking responsibility for your actions and stop blaming others for your failures.
• Save your energy to fight for positive outcomes, instead of wasting your energy on a negative candy rush.

Communicate und understand SEO as a growth engine, not as routine maintenance/polishing the edges

The grand finale: SEO has gotten a lot bigger.

Keeping SEO small and limited might be a way to avoid change. Could this be why many SEOs were reluctant to admit that Google uses user signals in their ranking algorithms?

Less change = SEO is smaller = more comfortable + less risky.

As outlined at the beginning, change is an opportunity. We walk into the fire of discomfort only to step out of it stronger, wiser and better.

SEO in 2024 is nothing like it was in 2004 or 2014. The fundamenta principles are the same, but we are driving a much different vehicle now with much more horsepower under the hood.

SEO is the wrong word for what we are actually doing

Digital publishers often get two-thirds or more of their traffic through SEO. A lot of companies rely heavily on organic traffic.

Some examples like Hardbacon had to file for bankruptcy as a result of the HCU and other updates. Some are or were on the cusp of it, like HouseFresh, Retro Dodo and Healthy Framework.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. But 70% or more of traffic share vs. other channels doesn’t sound like optimizing to me.

Optimization sounds like squeezing the last 5-10% out of what you already have. Limited and marginal.

The problem is that we all have different understandings of SEO, so we are not talking with each other but past each other.

To some, SEO means fixing mistakes/bugs. To others, myself included, SEO means (almost) limitless growth.

Fixing and optimizing is not enough:

• Fixing = keeping the bare minimum in place and unlocking the existing potential.
• Optimizing = using the full existing potential.
• Building = unlocking new growth = increasing the potential.

To visualize the idea further, see the following graphic:

• Fixing is like you are repairing a broken window in your one-room apartment. 
• Placing nicer furniture in that room is optimizing, you make it more appealing.
• The missing piece, then, is building new rooms if you actually want to live in a 10-room mansion.

Here are some things you need to communicate, understand and execute SEO as a growth engine:

• A business mindset, the right metrics and language a C-level member will understand.
• An updated SEO mindset, as ranking is not the end but a means to an end (= creating a high-value touchpoint with your target audience).
• The ability to play well with others, to make them embrace SEO, not despise it because you let them starve all the time by being greedy and only taking, never giving.
• Finding your (real) competitive advantage.

Finding your (real) competitive advantage

The last bullet point is especially important. It’s something that is missing quite often, from my experience.

Why should I buy from you? Why is your content the best in the world? The answer has to be the opposite of the “jumping the line” techniques criticized earlier.

The obvious question is how you get or find your real competitive advantage. It’s part of a good strategy. A strategy is always unique to a company. 

In “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” Richard Rumelt says the kernel of a strategy involves three pieces:

• Diagnosis.
• Guiding policy.
• Coherent actions.

To find a competitive advantage, you need to ask the right questions, like:

• What are my unique abilities/assets?
• Which of these abilities/assets matter to my target audience?
• Which of these remaining abilities/assets differentiate me from my competitors?

A SWOT analysis can be a helpful tool here. An alternative to getting started is to list all the abilities and assets that make your brand you and then answer the last two questions.

Examples of abilities or assets could be that you:

• Have a higher editorial output (quantity/quality).
• Employ SMEs in several fields, while others only cover one.
• Are uniquely fast in execution in relation to your company size.
• Have proprietary data that you can use for original research and data journalism.
• Are the manufacturer of a product (= having technical knowledge others don’t have).

Main takeaways:

• SEO is not just “a channel” it’s often the growth engine for most companies.
• Communicate it the right way: Limitless growth > marginal improvements.
• Favor building than optimizing and fixing.
• Come up with a unique competitive advantage that you can leverage in your SEO strategy.

We have work to do

I hope a lot of what I said is something you heard at least once already. But like Christian Morgenstern said (translation by me): 

“Sometimes you see something 100 or 1,000 times until you really see it for the first time.”

• We don’t want to change. Change is inevitable, though.
• We don’t always learn from the things that never change. But they let us predict the future.
• We like to skip the line and to go faster than is actually possible. Too fast often means fragile. You don’t want your SEO to be fragile, but to be unbreakable.
• We want it as easy as possible. Some things, however, are not easy. Like author James Clear said, “The cheat code is the work you’re avoiding.”

We have work to do.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

The SEO impact of interstitials, before and after

Written on October 5, 2024 at 9:14 am, by admin

Recently, an SEO client of mine lost 82% of desktop organic traffic to their homepage in one month.

Then, there was another 97% decline in desktop organic traffic in the second month. 

Why? 

The client launched a mobile and desktop pop-up for all United States visitors. Against my advice, the client hoped the conversions would outweigh the decline in organic traffic.

Here is a breakdown of the intrusive interstitial and its impact on organic traffic. 

The impact of before and after an interstitial on mobile and desktop

The homepage pop-up was related to a promotion and not triggered based on a time delay or scroll. 

Here is an example of a mobile pop-up: 

In the example above, the pop-up also negatively impacts the responsive design. 

Here is the example on desktop: 

In addition to the drop in organic traffic, the homepage lost 97% of its keyword rankings on desktop. 

And saw a 96% decline in mobile rankings for the homepage.

Most of the impact was on branded terms, indirectly impacting the reduction in PPC branded spend. 

It also negatively impacted our page experience and page speed. 

The website also saw a 10-second decline in page speed. 

Before the launch of the pop-up, the website averaged a 3-second load time.

And a 13-second load time after the launch of the pop-up. 

You can see the negative impact across page experience with the pop-up with a large number of layout shifts. 

The homepage saw a 97% decline in organic traffic cost value overall. 

There is no interstitial penalty or manual action

The intrusive interstitial effects rankings, not indexing. 

However, other areas of impact may occur, such as soft 404 errors, server speed and the site’s overall page experience. 

Remember, Google crawls from the U.S., so if those overlays are only present in European countries, Google will not detect them. 

The negative impact of interstitials is a demotion in search

When Google rolled out the Google mobile interstitial penalty on Jan. 10, 2017, it had a shockingly quiet impact. A few days later, SEO professionals started seeing pages lose 10 or more positions in rankings.  

When the Google page experience hit desktop sites in February 2022, intrusive interstitials were included as a signal. 

It’s important to remember that interstitials do not require manual action (at least not yet), but they still negatively impact your page experience. 

Google’s John Mueller stated in an SEO Office Hours on Jan. 22, 2021:

• “This is kind of like something where we would slightly demote the website in search. Sometimes, the tricky part is these slight demotions. It’s not the case that we’ll remove the site from search or move it to page 100. But if it’s relevant content, we may still show it on the first page of the search results, just not as highly as possible.”

---

4 examples of bad interstitials

1. Checking to see if you’re a spammy bot is bad

Gary Illyes from Google posted on LinkedIn, mentioning:

• “Checking if the site connection is secure interstitials you see on some sites, some of the time, is the last search-friendly thing you can do.”

Example: 

In short, there are other ways to avoid spammy bots from hitting your site.

If you detect a bot, Mueller recommended serving a 5xx status code to manage the robot detection interstitial. 

If you run a hosting service and have a “you might be a bot” interstitial, make sure it uses a non-200 HTTP result code (perhaps 503) and that it doesn’t have a noindex on it. Serving a noindex+200 will result in pages being dropped from search, if search engines see it. pic.twitter.com/LFGQcq2dzf

— John … (@JohnMu) January 17, 2022

2. Redirect to interstitial page 

If you show a user page A in the SERPs but redirect it to page B after the click and page B includes a pop-up or interstitial page, search engines will not detect content outside the redirected page. 

3. Only displays interstitial 

Here is an example of a pop-up display that covers the body copy: 

4. Store locator pop-ups

Store locators are really hit or miss on pop-ups. 

Here is an example of a good location locator pop-up: 

Instead of a pop-up, Xero opts for a banner ad. 

Once you click the “Change region” button, you’re brought to this option to select a region. 

4 examples of good interstitials

1. Displaying a cookies policy interstitial 

Legal interstitials are OK, just as long as search engines can index the content without doing anything special, like asking search engines to click on something to load the background content. 

This means GDPR and cookie policies are fine.

Here is an example of a cookies policy built with a pop-up window:

Here is another example of a cookies policy built with a banner at the bottom (my preferred method):

Mueller mentioned in Google Webmaster Office Hours that Google is trying to recognize these legal banners as separate from advertising banners.

2. Requesting age verification

Age verification classifies as a legal pop-up, so there are no issues with these.

Here is an example of an age pop-up done well:

3. Leveraging banners at the top and bottom

Here is an example of Samsung’s promotional ad banner:

4. Exit intent pop-ups that are time or scroll-based

If you’re going to launch a pop-up, I recommend using an exit intent pop-up based on time on the page (20 seconds or more) or scroll depth.

Stay tuned for more updates on the recovery of the interstitial pop-up

I’ll be updating this article as I get more data on the impact of removing the interstitial and recovery.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Decoding Googlebot crawl stats data in Google Search Console

Written on October 4, 2024 at 6:14 am, by admin

Tucked away in the Settings section of Google Search Console is a report few SEO professionals discuss, but I like to monitor.

These reports are known as Crawl Stats.

Here, you’ll find an interesting set of metrics on Googlebot crawl activity. These metrics are especially useful for websites with thousands or millions of pages.

Googlebot ‘Crawl stats’ 

Long ago, Google Search Console had easy-to-find metrics on Googlebot crawl activity. Then, it seemingly disappeared.

In reality, it was tucked away in the Settings section.

How to access the crawl stats reports:

• Click on Settings at the bottom of the left navigation.
• Go to the Crawl stats section.
• Click Open report.

About the crawl stats data

As Googlebot crawls your site, Google tracks and reports on various aspects of Googlebot’s activity and reports on it in Google crawl stats.

This is where you’ll find high-level statistics about Google’s crawling history on your website. 

Google says this data is for advanced users

The Googlebot Crawl Stats data is not for the technical SEO rookies.

Google specifically says this data is aimed at “advanced users” with thousands of pages on their site, which may be why it’s located in such an unusual location, unseen by many in the SEO community.

One reason Google may perceive this as an advanced report is that so many things can influence these metrics, including network issues and cloud delivery services such as Akamai.

Who will find crawl stats most useful?

I find the Crawl Stats reports less of an “advanced” set of reports but something that’s more useful to enterprise SEOs without crawler monitoring tools such as Lumar and Botify. 

When doing SEO on an enterprise website with thousands or millions of pages, crawler optimization is a vital task, and crawler activity metrics provide important insight for defining action items.

Smaller sites likely do not need to worry too much about crawler activity because there is probably enough crawl budget allocated to your site to crawl at an appropriate pace. 

On the other hand, enterprise sites tend to have far more pages that need to be crawled, discovered, and/or refreshed than Google crawls their site each day.

For this reason, they must optimize for crawler activity, which is a tool to help guide next steps.

What to look for in this data

After years of reviewing this data across many sites, I have one primary rule:

• Do not spend a lot of time here unless you see fluctuations and correlations.

Often these reports are interesting but not actionable.

Example fluctuations that I tend to investigate: 

• HTML requests decreased (or spiked) at the same time Bytes of JavaScript downloaded increased (or spiked).
• Average response time increased (or spiked) at the same time the number of HTML requests went down (or sudden fall).
• Total download size increased (or spiked), but the number of HTML requests did not change.
• The percent of requests for discovery (to discover new URLs) increases and the percent of requests for refresh goes down; however, you did not launch new URLs on the site.

When to look at this crawl stats

Crawl stats are good to peruse (and log) at least once a month.

They are especially good to monitor after major releases, such as a platform migration or major redesign. This will help you quickly understand how Google is responding to your newly launched changes.

Remember: If you have a bot monitoring tool such as Lumar or Botify, then this data isn’t as useful as you’ll find in the bot monitoring data provided by these tools.

Caveats about the crawl stats data

Many things can influence Google’s crawl stats metrics beyond a normal dev release.

This means the SEO team, product manager(s) and developer(s) must think outside the box when evaluating the fluctuations.

You must consider what could have caused an increase or decrease in Googlebot crawl activity, not only in your release but also within the network and tech stack.

Changes to something such as Akamai could potentially impact this data. 

Log the crawl stats data in a spreadsheet

This is data I like to archive because Google reports such a small window of time.

A great example of this is a challenge I’m facing now with a client. What is reported in GSC right now looks like things are improving:

However, because I have metrics from six months ago, I can say that these metrics are 40% higher than they were six months ago.

While they’re trending down, they’re still worse than they were in the past. The client’s challenge is that development has no idea why this is happening (unfortunately, solving that problem is beyond the scope of this article).

You may think to just grab a screenshot. However, it makes it very hard to compare over time.

Notice there is no left axis in the chart. You really cannot tell what the lines reflect. (Note: Numbers do appear on the left/right axis when you are only viewing two metrics in the chart)

Instead, drop this data into a spreadsheet. Then, you have actual data that can be charted over time, calculated and used to compare with other metrics, such as visits. 

Having the historical data in one place is often useful when discussing major changes with development to show how much better the metrics were 4-6+ months ago. 

Remember, development likes hard, specific data, so charts with actual numbers on the left/right axis (or worse, no numbers on the x-axis at all) will be more useful to you than charts with varying numbers on the x-axis.

Remember, the reports boxes are paginated

Though the most important metrics you’ll need are likely visible in the default view, many of the report sections are paginated – and they’re easy to miss! 

---

Which metrics to monitor and why

Let’s get into the primary metrics to look (very quickly) each month, along with a few tips to take away action items from the data:

Total crawl requests

• View this report in Google Search Console (located in the top chart).
• Google definition: “The total number of crawl requests issued for URLs on your site, whether successful or not.”
• If this metric goes up or down, compare it with average response time and total download size (bytes).
  • An obvious reason for this metric could go up if you change a lot of code or launch a lot of new pages. However, that is by no means the only cause.

Total download size (byte)

• View this report in Google Search Console (located in the top chart).
• Google definition: “Total number of bytes downloaded from your site during crawling, for the specified time period.”
• If this metric goes up or down, compare it with average response time
• An obvious cause for this metric to increase is adding a lot of code across thousands of pages or launching a lot of new pages. However, that is by no means the only cause.

Average response time (ms)

• Google Search Console Report (located in the top chart).
• Google definition: “Average response time for all resources fetched from your site during the specified time period.”
• If this metric goes up or down, compare with with total crawl requests and total download size (bytes).

Crawl requests breakdown by response 

• View this report in Google Search Console (located below the top chart).
• Google definition: “This table shows the responses that Google received when crawling your site, grouped by response type, as a percentage of all crawl responses…”
• Common responses:
  • OK (200).
  • Moved permanently (302).
  • Server error (5xx).
  • Other client error (4xx).
  • Not found (404).
  • Not modified (304).
  • Page timeout.
  • Robots.txt not available.
  • Redirect error.

Crawl requests breakdown by file type

• View this report in Google Search Console. 
• Google definition: “The file type returned by the request. Percentage value for each type is the percentage of responses of that type, not the percentage of of bytes retrieved of that type.”
• Common responses:
  • JSON.
  • HTML.
  • JavaScript.
  • Image.
  • PDF.
  • CSS.
  • Syndication.
  • Other XML.
  • Video.
  • Other file type.
  • Unknown (failed requests).

Crawl requests breakdown by crawl purpose

• View this report in Google Search Console.
• Two purposes:
  • Refresh.
  • Discovery.
• This is an interesting metric for presentations; however, it only has a few useful use cases. For example:
  • If the percent of Googlebot activity that is for Discovery suddenly increases, but we’re not adding URLs to the site, then you have an action item to figure out what is being crawled that shouldn’t be crawled. 
  • If the percent of Googlebot activity that is for Refresh decreases significantly, but you didn’t remove pages from the site, then you have an action item to figure out why fewer existing pages are being crawled.

Crawl requests breakdown by Googlebot type

• View this report in Google Search Console.
• Google definition: “The type of user agent used to make the crawl request. Google has a number of user agents that crawl for different reasons and have different behaviors.”
• It’s an interesting metric, but not very useful. It just shows Google is still using their desktop crawler. Honestly, I usually ignore these metrics.

You can click into each metric for more data

Often when you present any SEO concern to product managers and developers, they often want to see example URLs. You can click on any of the metrics listed in this report and get example URLs.

An interesting metric to look at is “other file types” because it’s not clear what’s in the “other file types” category (often it’s font files).

The screenshot below shows the examples report for “other file type.” Every file listed is a font file (blurred out for confidentiality reasons).

In this report of examples, each row reflects one crawl request. This means if a page is crawled multiple times it could be listed more than once in the “examples.” 

As with all Google Search Console reports, this is a data sample and not every request from Googlebot.

Do you share these metrics with developers and product managers?

These metrics will typically generate one of two thoughts: 

• “There’s nothing to look at here.” 
• “What could have caused that?” 

In my experience, the answers to “what caused that” tend to require the input of product managers and/or developers.

When presenting the data and your questions about potential causes for issues, remember to clearly explain that these metrics are not user activity and solely represent Googlebot’s activity and experience on the website.

I find product managers and developers often get a bit confused when discussing this data, especially if it doesn’t match up with other metrics they have seen or facts they know about the site. 

By the way, this often happens for most Google Search Console data conversations.

If there are no Crawl Stats fluctuations or correlations to be concerned about, don’t bring it up to development, nor product management. It just becomes noise and prevents them from focusing on more critical metrics.

What’s next? 

Check out your crawl stats to make sure there are no spikes or correlations that are concerning. 

Then, determine how often you want to look at these and set up systems that prompt you to check these and other Google Search Console metrics in a systematic, analytical method each month.

While you check out your Googlebot Crawl Stats, I’ll write Part 4 in this series that will talk about how to know which URLs you should focus on for technical SEO improvements and in particular, Core Web Vitals metrics.

Dig deeper

This is the third article in a series recapping my SMX Advanced presentation on how to turn SEO metrics into action items. Below are links to the first two articles:

• Evaluating technical SEO data: Key segmentation approaches
• Key Google Search Console metrics to monitor every month

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

How AI is advancing advertising and changing consumer engagement

Written on October 4, 2024 at 6:14 am, by admin

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing consumer engagement and transforming the landscape of search, according to James Murray of Microsoft Advertising, who spoke at SMX Advanced.

Here are the key points he raised in his presentation, exploring the paradigm shift in search technology and its implications for advertisers and marketers.

The expanded search box: A gateway to nuanced queries

Murray highlighted a seemingly small but significant change in search: the expansion of the search box: 

• “What have we done or what has changed? Well, a lot has changed. In fact, we think that we have completely shifted the paradigm of what search means and what is possible with search.
• “And I’d say one of the biggest and most fundamental changes through AI is that we’ve changed search from this to this. We’ve made the box bigger.”

From:

To:

This physical enlargement represents a fundamental shift in how users can interact with search engines.

No longer confined to short keyword phrases, users can now express complex, nuanced queries that more accurately reflect their true intentions.

For example, instead of searching for “cheap holiday Rome,” users can now input detailed requests like:

“Could you provide a Rome weekend itinerary for a family of 2 adults and 2 children aged 6 and 4. We want a mix of historical culture and fun activities, and the kids want to eat as much pizza as possible.”

This level of detail allows AI-powered search engines like Microsoft’s Copilot to understand context and provide more relevant, comprehensive responses.

Murray said:

• “Up until very recently, it has just not been possible in the sense that whilst we have always had the capability to put in these very large, very nuanced searches, the results that we get would often be confused or or just unintelligible.
• “Now, we’re in a situation where search through AI, through these new conversational capabilities, can actually not only understand a very complex query but can give us a meaningful reply that actually answers what we’re looking for.
• “So this is an example within the Microsoft ecosystem of Copilot. And so you can see that it has taken what I’ve given it, and it’s actually started to put together an itinerary, going to the Colosseum, going to see various bits of what Rome has to offer.”

AI’s Impact on search capabilities

Murray then explored the key advancement of integration of AI into search:

• Synthesis and summarization: AI can quickly process and synthesize information from multiple sources, providing concise, relevant answers to complex queries.

Murray explained:

• “If we look at that example which I just gave (trip to Rome), we start with this very dense, rich and sort of multifaceted, query on the left.
• “Copilot is able to simulate all of that information. But in the background, this would have taken us previously, in normal search, multiple iterations, multiple searches (see right) to pull together that same information. Whether it’s looking for family activities or what to see, history tours, the best place to get pizza in Rome, and so on.
• “And so what we’re seeing is, that from a consumer perspective, this does a number of things.
• “One is that it enables people to say what’s on their mind, but it enables them to get to answers quicker.”

Understanding true intent

AI-powered search engines aim to understand the underlying question behind a query, going beyond literal interpretation to grasp context and user intent.

Current search engines often provide broad, surface-level answers, but struggle to understand the deeper intent behind user queries.

For example, when someone searches for “Cancun weather in March,” the real underlying question might be about what to pack for a trip.

Murray said that search engines should evolve to better grasp and address the true, more nuanced intent behind users’ searches, rather than just offering basic information and related suggestions:

• “Wouldn’t it just be easier if we could say, ‘can you just pack, and make me a packing list and organize it by which room in the house I’m most likely to find those items?’
• “And to showcase how that can come to life and the reality of how we can get to the underlying question where we don’t have to read between the lines anymore because when people can actually ask what’s truly on their mind, and we can give them a sensible answer.
• “It allows that freedom to be able to most relevantly match to what people are actually asking for.

• “And so, really, what we’re seeing is this evolution of people being freed to ask the questions that they’ve always wanted to but, you know, perhaps haven’t felt comfortable of being able to do and the search engines being able to respond with much deeper, and much more nuanced and relevant answers.”

Evolution of AI search usage

Murray outlined three stages in the adoption of AI search tools:

1. Initial curiosity (2023): Users explored the capabilities of AI tools, testing their limits and discovering new opportunities.
2. Knowledge and action: As users became more familiar with AI tools, they began to find new use cases and develop greater proficiency.
3. AI in action (2024 and beyond): Users are becoming increasingly comfortable with AI tools and are extracting tangible value from them in their daily lives and work.

New possibilities for users and marketers

He then took us on the journey of how the advent of AI-powered search has opened up new avenues for users and marketers:

Expanded capabilities

Users can now perform tasks that were previously impossible or time-consuming, such as generating content, analyzing data and writing code.

• “Looking at the yellow bars here, we’re also seeing an incredible amount of new things that just previously weren’t possible.
• “So, coming up with new ideas and inspiration, summarizing content, which we’ve just seen, being able to actually generate, write and draft content. But not only that, analyzing data and writing code.
• “Actually, the list of these capabilities is expanding all the time. And we talked about that idea of value as we’ve moved from knowledge to action as the prompts that we put into some of these conversational experiences and the generative AI tools are getting more precise, we’re getting to faster task completion, and people are really starting to extract value.”

Increased efficiency

Studies show that users can complete tasks and reach decisions up to 50% faster using AI-powered search compared to traditional search methods.

• “Because we’re seeing that we’re able to ask those more complex questions, more nuanced questions, and we’re able to get to the answers quicker, what we [Microsoft] found is that on average, users take about half the time to reach a decision on Copilot compared to traditional search, and this matches up with other, tools as well.”

These are driving forward new ways of thinking and more efficient ways of being able to, you know, use engines for what we need them to do, which is ultimately get to the answers that I need, get that relevant information.

Enhanced advertising opportunities

Marketers can leverage these new search capabilities to create more targeted, relevant ad experiences for users in several ways.

• Ads have already been incorporated in AI Search: Because of AI tools rapidly growing in importance, the search tools are already AI powered.

Ads were built into the Copilot experience from day 1. Murray said if you’re optimizing for your core search experience, you’re also optimizing at the same time for the Copilot experience.

• Best Practices: Advertisers should focus on creativity, especially visually speaking ads, image extensions, product feeds and multimedia ad formats to improve click-through rates. 

What Microsoft are doing is taking the same ad creatives and content that advertisers create for search, and are replicating them within the conversational experience as well.

Murray highlighted the searcher has been transformed to deeper, more rich, engaging, conversations.

The more that advertisers can make ads visual, whether that’s using image extensions or some of the product feeds, or, new sort of formats like multimedia ads.

The more visual you can make them, the more they will likely stand out and then, the better they’re likely to get in terms of your click through rate.

Examples of marketers leveraging AI

• Content simplification: AI is regularly used for rewriting complex product summaries for easier understanding. It also useful for simplifying technical information from engineers.
• Tone adjustment: AI can help change the tone of ad copy to make it more approachable making serious content about cat trees more playful and fun. AI can generate multiple headline options, showcasing an understanding of context and even wordplay (e.g., cat puns).
• Strategic analysis: Marketers can input their brand and competitors into Copilot, to get insights. AI can then perform complex tasks like SWOT analysis. This saves time and provides external perspectives on strengths and weaknesses.
• Inclusive advertising: AI can help create more inclusive ad strategies such as analyzing customer challenges in car insurance. AI can suggest adjectives to address specific customer concerns and create a sense of safety.

Implications for marketers

Murray highlighted three key implications for marketers in this new AI-driven search landscape:

1. Quality and visibility

Ensuring high-quality, crawlable content is crucial for visibility in AI-powered search results. Tools like IndexNow can help keep content fresh and discoverable.

Murray suggests “revisiting and thinking about your SEO strategy, making sure that all of your content is crawlable.”

2. Hyper-personalization

The detailed nature of AI search queries allows for unprecedented levels of personalization in ad targeting and content delivery.

Murray clarifies here that this isn’t a result of data collection, saying that being able to be detailed with answering questions is “not because we are being invasive in terms of how much data we can stack and track on what people are, doing and and the demographics of who they are.”

• “This is simply by giving people the opportunity to explain what it is that they really want in detail. Through that conversation, the richer signals that we’re able to get, the sort of depth that we are able to understand means that when we serve an ad, it is absolutely the right ad at the right moment for the right person.”

3. Creativity and efficiency

AI tools can assist marketers in various tasks, from writing headlines to conducting SWOT analysis, fostering creativity and improving efficiency. It can even “showcase some blind spots that you might have in your creative campaign,” Murray said.

The future: Multimodal AI

Looking ahead, Murray touched on the concept of multimodal AI, which can process and generate content across various formats (text, image, video, audio).

This advancement promises even more exciting possibilities for search and content creation.

• “Where we’re moving to is where we can have any output from any input,” Murray said.

He shared an example – a picture of a rocket launch. By feeding just the image and asking AI about it, AI was able to tell us the specific event depicted in the image.

Unlock new levels of creativity, efficiency and productivity

The evolution of search in the age of AI represents a significant shift in how users interact with information and how marketers can reach their audience.

Murray encourage us to notice the small things and, quoting Liz Vassey (an American actress):

• “The rewards are inversely proportional.”

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Change Who Pays: New Google Ads process for client account transfers

Written on October 4, 2024 at 6:14 am, by admin

Google is introducing a new process – Change Who Pays – for transferring your client accounts to a new agency’s manager account.

Details. Google Ads sent an email sent to users about the change:

• “We’re happy to introduce a new process for transferring client accounts to a different paying manager. You may now initiate this change directly within your Ads manager account yourself, without needing to reach out to our support team. This process is called ‘Change Who Pays.”

What to do. You will need two details to complete a transfer:

• The Ads manager account ID of the new payer.
• The transfer date.

Google Ads support page. Transfer your client account to another agency

Why we care. As Georgi Zayakov put it on LinkedIn: “Finally, advertisers may now initiate this change directly within the Google Ads manager account themselves, without needing to reach out to the support team.”

The email. Here’s a screenshot of the email, shared by Zayakov:

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google rolls out new AI-organized search results, AI Overview links

Written on October 4, 2024 at 6:14 am, by admin

Google is starting to roll out AI-organized search results today, as well as the new links and citations format in the Google AI Overviews.

AI-organized search results. The new AI-organized search results, as we covered in May, are now rolling out in the U.S. Google wrote:

• “We’re rolling out search results pages organized with AI in the U.S. — beginning with recipes and meal inspiration on mobile.”

This includes search results organized by web, including articles, videos, forums and more.

Google said in its testing, searchers “have found AI-organized search results pages more helpful. And with AI-organized search results pages, we’re bringing people more diverse content formats and sites, creating even more opportunities for content to be discovered.”

Here is what it looks like:

New links and citations in AI Overviews. In August, Google began testing new links and citations in the AI Overviews – and now that new format is going live.

Google told us they are now rolling out this new design globally to all countries where AI Overviews are available.

Google said in its tests they’ve “seen that this improved experience has driven an increase in traffic to supporting websites compared to the previous design, and people are finding it easier to visit sites that interest them.”

Here is what they may look like:

More AI news. Google also announced other news about AI and Search. Here are the highlights:

• AI Overview Ads. Ads are finally available for mobile users in the U.S. Dig deeper in Google AI Overview ads launch on mobile in U.S.
• New multimodal Lens features. Google is launching the ability to search with video in Lens and ask complex questions about moving images (available through Search Labs) and voice input in Lens, so you can ask questions out loud while snapping a photo (or recording video) to more easily search what you see.
• Shop easily with Lens. Google is now showing more helpful product information when using Lens for shopping, including a product’s price across retailers, reviews or where to buy. Dig deeper in Google Lens to add Shopping Ads this year.

Why we care. As Google and other search engines continue to innovate around AI and search, it is important to continue to watch the ongoing tests and launches of these features. AI Overviews have continued to evolve since it was announced as Search Generative Experience in May 2023. Plus, AI has been added to countless areas of Google Search and other products.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing