Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Wednesday, June 14th, 2023
Google has updated its form to submit search spam to the Google Search team. The types of spam you can submit with this form include spam, paid links, malicious behavior, low quality, and other search quality issues, Google said.
Plus, Google added the ability to submit complaints in bulk.
The new form. Google said it is “expanding the scope of user feedback we want to collect,” to include more types of feedback. “Now, you can report spam, paid links, malicious behavior, low quality, and other search quality issues, all in one improved form,” Google added.
Bulk submission. Google also added the ability to submit feedback in bulk with a bulk submission feature. Google said you “can submit up to five pages that violate the same policy in one report.”
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot from Google:
More details. The form will also give you feedback and information that links to its help documentation. It will let you pick the main category and then subcategory, to help you submit the feedback to the right department. Plus, it will disregard identical reports submitted by the same user to prevent spam.
Google will also send you a confirmation email after you submit the form. The email contains help links to external resources that cover our quality policy and our forum for personalized support, Google added.
Why we care. Sometimes you find spammy or invalid information in Google Search. If you want to report those issues, you can using this new form. The form can be accessed over here.
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Wednesday, June 14th, 2023
Google may be forced to sell part of its ad business after being charged with violating the European Union’s antitrust laws. Following a lengthy investigation, the European Commission suggested that “mandatory divestment” is the only way the search engine can resolve the issue.
Why we care: If Google does sell part of its ad business, it could mark the start of a new digital marketing era with a more competitive market and fairer pricing. This could potentially lead to more transparency, greater campaign control for advertisers and increased innovation, which could prompt the creation of new ad tools.
What’s happening: The European Commission conducted a report into the operation of Google Ads and found that the search engine typically tends to favor its own ads, causing difficulties for competing providers.
When discussing potential solutions, the commission said that behavioral improvements would not be enough to rectify the matter. Instead, it has recommended that the search giant sells off part of its business.
What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:
“The Statement of Objections from the European Commission sets out claims that are not new and relate to a narrow part of our advertising business. It fails to recognize how advanced advertising technology helps merchants reach customers and grow their businesses — while lowering costs and expanding choices for consumers.
“Ad tech is fiercely competitive and constantly evolving. We compete with hundreds of companies in this space, including household names like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta as well as specialized advertising technology companies like Criteo, The Trade Desk, and many others. Even media companies and retailers now offer competing advertising technologies.
“The digital advertising market enjoys competitive pricing, lively innovation, and robust competition — helping advertisers, publishers, and consumers. We look forward to showing how our ad tech tools help make the internet open, and accessible — and how breaking them would diminish the availability of free, ad-supported content that benefits everyone.”
Has this happened before? Earlier this year, nine U.S. states (Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia), joined forces to bring a similar lawsuit against Google.
The states accused the search engine’s ad business of violating antitrust regulations. To rectify the matter, they urged Google to break up its Ad Manager suite, claiming it was exploiting its online advertising dominance. Google denied the claims and asked for the case to be dismissed.
In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.
Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.
The post Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Tuesday, June 13th, 2023
Google Merchant Center is testing a ‘checkout’ pilot that could give you an extra opportunity to bring customers to your website.
The Google Merchant Center team has sent out an email alerting merchants about this pilot and described it:
- “Give ready-to-buy customers the option to land directly in your checkout. A. new pilot from Google has helped increase conversions and sales for participating merchants.”
To get into the trial, you have to complete a form.
Once you’re in the pilot, the ‘checkout’ CTA will appear next to the ‘visit site’ link on free product listings.
Why we care: This new feature could help create a more seamless shopping experience for customers and potentially bring more traffic to brand websites.
How does it work? To take part in the checkout pilot for your free listing, simply log into Merchant Center, click on Settings and add your checkout landing page link where you want shoppers to land. You will have the option to either add one dynamic URL template for their entire brand, or they will be able to add a unique checkout link for every individual product in the feed.
How to set up your URL template: Advertisers must ensure that the URL template they wish to use has placeholder product data parameters for specifying the product ID as well as any other parameters. This is to make sure that customers are taken to the right checkout page. Currently, Google can support a maximum of five parameters within a URL template.
Essential placeholder parameter requirements by Google:
- ID – The ID attribute associated with the offer. This will be substituted with the [id] attribute given in the feed for the offer.
Optional placeholder parameter requirements by Google:
- Size – The size attribute associated with the offer. This will be substituted with the [size] attribute provided in the feed for the offer.
- Color – The color attribute associated with the offer. This will be substituted with the [color] attribute provided in the feed for the offer.
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What has Google said? The search engine is encouraging advertisers to ensure that customers being taken to their website from Google are given the best possible user experience. Although it isn’t essential, Google is recommending you consider:
- Supporting a smooth transition for checkout with purchase flows designed for customers coming directly from Google.
- Communicating clearly so that customers can easily verify who they’re purchasing from, as well as what they’re buying and how much it’s going to cost them.
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Tuesday, June 13th, 2023
TikTok is testing visual search in Shop, its ecommerce solution. Users can take a photo or upload an image to find and buy similar products.
Why we care. TikTok has been moving more into ecommerce lately, with a goal of generating $20 billion in sales. While this feature seems promising, it remains to be seen whether it will prove to have enough ROI for ecommerce brands to care.
What is TikTok Shop. TikTok Shop, which launched in beta in April, is an ecommerce solution designed to boost sales and brand growth. It allows users to discover and purchase products from their favorite creators and brands in a single, smooth experience.
How it works. A user clicks on the camera icon in the search bar. On the camera, TikTok instructs users: “Take a photo or upload an image to find similar products.”
The test. It is limited and only being tested in non-U.S. markets.
But. TikTok Shop is performing “worse than other TikTok channels and elsewhere,” AdWeek reported. Instagram moved into ecommerce but ultimately cut back on its shopping features last year. It will be worth watching to see whether TikTok figures this out or follows a similar fate.
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Tuesday, June 13th, 2023
QR codes have become a powerful tool for driving user engagement and seamless experiences. But are you harnessing their full potential? During this webinar, we’ll dive into the art of designing QR codes to ensure maximum scanning efficiency. Learn how to create visually captivating codes that entice users and make your app stand out from the competition.
QR marketing expert, Scott Allan, Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer at URLgenius, will guide you through the potential pitfalls to avoid, ensuring your QR codes lead to tangible results.
Register and attend “Supercharge Your Customer Experience with the Power of QR Codes,” presented by URLgenius.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
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Tuesday, June 13th, 2023
In today’s competitive landscape, marketing agencies must constantly seek innovative ways to deliver exceptional value to their clients. Smart agencies understand the crucial role that online reputation and customer feedback play in achieving success.
Whether your clients are grappling with negative reviews, a scarcity of reviews, or already boast a strong online presence, this guide is your blueprint for effectively tackling, generating, managing, and harnessing customer reviews in the long run.
Before you can offer review management — and charge for this service — you may have to get clients to see why customer reviews matter. This guide will show you:
- 3 reasons why customer reviews matter
- How to get more reviews – and make them count
- How to respond to a negative review
Don’t miss out on this essential resource! Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download the Marketing Agency’s Guide to Review Management from GatherUp.
The post The power of customer reviews: a comprehensive guide for agencies appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Monday, June 12th, 2023
Searching for advanced, actionable tactics to take advantage of generative AI, transition to GA4, and drive more traffic, leads, and conversions? Search no more.
Join us online – tomorrow and Wednesday, June 13-14 – for SMX Advanced – the only conference designed by advanced search marketers for search marketers.
(Psst… Can’t attend live? Instant on-demand access is included for free, so you can train when it fits your schedule!)
Your FREE All Access pass unlocks nearly 70 tactic-rich sessions, Overtime live Q&As, platform demos, and networking meetups that explore the most sophisticated SEO and PPC topics including ChatGPT, GA4, E-E-A-T, RSAs, PMax, automated bidding, future Google algorithm updates, and much more.
Each day kicks off with exclusive keynotes from Google and Microsoft exploring generative and conversational AI – and what it all means for search marketers like you.
Bonus: Join Barry Schwartz and Greg Sterling on Day 2 for a just-announced live demo of the new Bing and Google Search Generative Experience! Bring your queries to this highly-engaging demo, and Barry and Greg will input them live.
After two intense days of training with some of the smartest search marketers on the planet, you’ll be ready to implement advanced, actionable tactics that give you a serious edge over the competition. No airfare. No expense reports. No time out of the office.
What are you waiting for? Secure your free All Access pass now and join us this week at SMX Advanced. The show kicks off TOMORROW at 11:00am ET… don’t miss out. Secure your free All Access pass now!
Psst… Think you have what it takes to be an “award-winning” search marketer? Enter the 2023 Search Engine Land Awards for your chance to boost team morale, attract new business, and stand apart from the competition!
The post Expert-level training, Q&A, networking – online this week at SMX Advanced appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Monday, June 12th, 2023
TikTok has launched a free AI tool that can create scripts in a matter of seconds. The feature, called Script Generator, is available to all TikTok Creative Center users with a desktop TikTok for Business account.
Why we care: The Script Generator will make life easier for advertisers by generating scripts for them. And the best part is, if digital marketers happen to hate the scripts generated, they have the option to run their enquiry again, as many times as they like, for no cost at all as the tool is completely free.
How it works: Advertisers will simply have to enter in some basic information about the services or products they’re offering (e.g., the product name, item description, relevant keywords) and then choose whether they would like a 15-30 second or 31-60 second clip.
After inputting all the information, you can simply click Generate scripts. This will produce various video scripts with hooks, scenes, calls to action and visual/audio cues.
Is there a catch? As with all AI-generated content, there is a risk of inaccurate information being published. Advertisers who rely solely on this method may also find their content becomes generic with no originality as AI content is created using existing trends, which could be bad for branding. This could also potentially result in a drop in engagement.
What has TikTok said? The company has warned digital marketers that they shouldn’t rely solely on AI-generated scripts as there is a risk of inaccuracies. It explained in a statement:
“TikTok does not make any promises or guarantees regarding the content generated by Script Generator. It is solely your decision whether to utilize and/or publish content created using the Script Generator in any ad or other material. You are solely responsible for any content created using Script Generator, including ensuring that such content is accurate and complies with applicable laws and regulations, and this content is not endorsed, sponsored, or approved by TikTok.”
However, Anton Reyniers, Google’s Head of Creative Partnerships APAC, praised the new tool, stating:
- “TikTok are streets ahead in their genuine understanding of creative’s importance.”
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The big picture: While AI-generated content can be a great PPC tool (see: A Google Ads script that uses GPT to write RSAs), AI auto-generated content is not always accurate (as stressed by TikTok). So it could potentially be risky to rely solely on this method so humans remain a necessity in PPC.
The post TikTok launches new AI ad script generator appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Monday, June 12th, 2023
The product feed is the single most essential element when it comes to listing shopping inventory on Google. However, feeds can be notoriously low-quality and heavily neglected.
Shopping feeds work on multiple levels to help promote retail businesses, with paid and free listings. This, coupled with the emergence of more AI within Google Ads, propels the importance of the feeds to even higher levels.
Providing Google’s algorithms with high-quality and accurate product data is crucial. You can enhance your product data in various ways, including back-end website changes, plugins and feed optimization tools. However, each of these comes with a cost.
This is where Google’s feed rules, supplementary feeds and product edits directly within Merchant Center come in. These valuable tools can optimize your product data and enhance your product listings at no cost.
This guide tackles how to use feed rules to overcome a low-quality feed.
What are feed rules?
Feed rules in Google Merchant Center allow you to adjust and manipulate your base feed. You can use feed rules to help you resolve errors so that your feed adheres to Google’s policies and improves the overall quality.
You can use the rules to adjust any of your feed attributes and create new attributes not yet submitted. With the rules, you can set an attribute to a specific value, extract values from other attributes in the feed or modify the data.
Understanding what attributes to optimize
The title is the most important element of a product feed. When deciding whether your product is relevant to a search, Google uses this as its first reference point. The more complete and comprehensive your feed, the better your odds of success in the ad auction.
To understand the state of your feed in the first instance, you can review product data in Merchant Center or download available data from the products tab. If you are using an XML feed, you can also use tools like XML converters to extract your feed into a readable Excel spreadsheet.
Once you have your products in a format you can analyze, you can identify gaps in your feed where attributes are missing. You can also analyze title length, aiming for at least 30 characters but ideally 75-100.
How to create a feed rule
The first thing to know about feed rules is that they are added at an individual feed level. So if you have multiple product feeds or feed labels, you must apply the rules to each one.
To add a new feed rule, you must first ensure your product feed has been submitted. Once submitted, you are ready to start modifying your product data.
To create your first rule:
- Log in to your Merchant Center account.
- On the left-hand navigation, select Products and then Feeds.
- Under primary feeds, select the feed you would like to create a rule by clicking on the feed name underlined and in blue.
- Select the rules tab in the top navigation.
- Click on the blue plus button to create a new rule and select the attribute you want to edit.
- Configure your data source.
- Apply any modifications.
- Review the preview on the right-hand panel.
- Select Save as Draft.
- You will now see an option to test the changes of your draft rule before they are applied to your live product data.
- Once satisfied with the changes, click Apply to save them and push live. If you are not happy, you can discard and remove the draft.
Important considerations for feed rules
When creating feed rules, always consider these points to ensure your rules work as expected.
- Each attribute within a feed can only have one rule associated with it, so any amends have to be contained with that one rule.
- Feed rules work in a cascading nature, meaning the rules layer on top of one another. Google will apply the first line of the rule, followed by the second and so on.
- When you first access feed rules, you will see a default rule in place. Google applies this automatically to each account. It is instructions to take the value for each attribute from either a supplementary or a primary feed.
- When appending text, the text will appear exactly as entered. This includes spaces and periods. So if you want to append a brand name, for example, rather than just entering “Nike,” I recommend entering “ – Nike” or similar.
- Feed rules are not designed for individual product optimizations and are there to make changes in bulk.
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Your data source options
When configuring your feed rules, you need to select your data source. This configuration identifies where the base data for the chosen attribute should come from.
You are given options on retrieving your data source through filters to apply conditions and operations that need to be met.
The operations allow you to “Set to,” “Extract” or “Take latest.”
- “Set to” allows you to give a simple command to populate your chosen attribute with incoming data from your primary or supplementary feed or assign it a custom static value.
- “Extract” allows you to search for specific terms within your base data and use these within the chosen attribute.
- “Take latest” allows you to command Google to take the latest value submitted through a specific source.
You can use simple data source selections to carry out universal feed tweaks across your feed. For example, you could use the “Set to” function to combine your existing product title attribute with your brand attribute.
Your feed modification options
The options available to modify your feed attributes will depend on the attribute you are trying to change.
For example, numeric-based attributes will have different options to text-based ones. There are basic options, such as append, or more advanced options, such as calculate.
Depending on what you want to achieve, you must select the modification that will allow you to achieve this.
- Append: Add new values to the end of the attribute.
- Prepend: Add new values to the start of the attribute.
- Find and replace: Search within the selected attribute for a specific value and replace it with another.
- Calculate: Available for numerical attributes only. You can add, subtract, multiply or divide with other attributes or custom values.
- Split and choose: Select one or more values from an attribute with a common period separating them (such as commas, arrows, etc.). You can then select the element to break out and use it as part of your attribute.
- Clear: Remove all of the values submitted for an attribute field.
- Add repeated field: Applicable only when multiple values can be submitted for an attribute. This allows you to add an additional value to fields such as additional image links.
- Optimize URL: This function allows you to edit or remove URL aspects. This can be used to add parameters to your URLs.
- Standardize: This can be used when an attribute accepts set values. For example, where there are errors in the original data in fields such as condition.
Using feed rules to overcome low-quality feeds
You can use feed rules for many alterations and modifications, but below are some of my top rules. They aim to reduce errors within the feed and improve its relevance and performance.
Remove errors in product titles
With product titles, there are certain policies they must adhere to. For example, your titles should not be used to promote free delivery or promotional codes.
In some instances, however, such elements can pull in automatically from your website. You can use feed rules to remove or replace such elements to ensure your titles are error-free.
To use feed rules, set the data source you wish to edit. In most instances, this will be your primary feed. If you have a supplementary feed containing titles, you should select the supplementary feed.
Once you have selected your data source, add a modification specifically to find and replace, then add a rule. When selected, a command box will pop up, allowing you to select an attribute or type in an entry. You will want to type in an entry manually.
You should type in the text you wish to remove from your product titles. You can see in the image example we are removing two elements. In the Replace with field, you should leave this blank if you just want to remove the element.
When happy with your rule, click OK at the bottom. You should see previews populate on the right-hand panel. The panel will show how the rules build on top of each other.
You can also use the advanced section to shore up your rule, to specify case sensitivity or matching regular expression, amongst other commands.
Append text in product titles
Another great way to use feed rules for titles is to append text based on set criteria. This is a simple way to add relevancy based on core keywords.
This rule allows you to improve the feed quality to increase the match rate to more relevant searches for your products. This approach could also be applied to product descriptions.
If you are using more than one rule for titles, remember to layer them in the correct order. You can use the preview to accomplish this.
Build titles with product attributes
If your product titles lack key attributes such as color or size, but these are submitted attributes in your feed, you can draw on these.
You can also use this approach for attributes such as brand to help incorporate these details into your product titles.
Apply custom labels
A quick and easy way to group products based on set criteria is through custom labels. An example of this would be if you wanted to identify all products that were currently on sale.
In this example, I use other submitted attributes to build the criteria. We know that a sale price should be submitted with the primary feed for sale items. We can call on this element and tag all products with a sale price with a custom label.
Using a rule based on this criteria, the value becomes dynamic as products come in and out of sale. You can then use this label to build your campaign structure, optimize, or report on.
Because we aren’t amending a value but creating one, there are no modifications to add underneath this.
Add promotion IDs
If you are running promotions but need to narrow down to specific products only, you can use feed rules to apply a promotion ID. For example, if the offer was only available for specific brands.
As with the other rules, you can only have one rule per attribute. So for each new promotion, you must replace the rule conditions.
Populate missing attributes
In some instances, your feed may underperform due to missing attributes. While these attributes may only be recommended, they can help increase feed quality or support in campaign structure.
Attributes you could build out with feed rules include product types and colors. To build these attributes out, the data needs to be available elsewhere in your feed, for example, within a title or description.
This way, your feed rule becomes “If title contains black set color to black.”
Remove errors in standardized fields
Within your shopping feed, there are several attributes that have standardized values you can submit, for example:
Building product types from URLs
The product types attribute is often among the messiest and hardest attributes to amend successfully.
While product type is only a recommended attribute and does not factor directly into ad delivery, it is a vital attribute for account structuring. Ultimately your account structure can make or break your performance, so it becomes an important attribute.
Depending on your site structure, feed rules can help to navigate this. With the use of split and choose, you can use the breadcrumb structure of your URLs to build out product types.
To build out your product types, you can follow the steps below:
- First, add your data source as your primary feed and select “Set to.”
- You will want to set the value to “Link.”
- You will then want to add your modification and select “Split and choose.”
- You will want to split your attribute by a slash (“/”).
- Finally, you need to select the split attributes you want to use. For example, https:// will be 1 and your domain will be 2, so the best practice would be to start your selection at 3. You will also want to consider how deep into your URL path to go as not to include the product string itself
Overcoming low-quality feeds with feed rules
Many edits and improvements can be made to your product feed using feed rules. They are a great place to start if you have edits that span across all or a high volume of products.
The post How to set up feed rules in Google Merchant Center and ensure quality product data appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Monday, June 12th, 2023
A lot of what impacts SEO success is ultimately out of the hands of search professionals.
We can have elaborate and robust SEO strategies in place. We can demonstrate substantial traffic growth. Our organic conversions can be higher than ever.
All it takes is an errant noindex tag to decimate our success overnight.
There are a few ways to protect against this happening – including building processes, checks and balances and QA systems.
But ultimately, the most important method is training those teams on how their actions can improve or destroy SEO progress.
1. Invest in company-wide education
SEO seems like a mystical dark art to many people. Either that, or they reckon it’s just keywords and meta. As search professionals, we know that there are many facets to SEO.
Depending on the industry and website, SEO strategies might have a wide focus. You may have international sites with local SEO and language handling considerations.
Perhaps yours is a marketplace and you need to deal with out-of-stock items frequently. Perhaps you manage a network of sites and have to consider syndication and links more than most.
Why it’s advantageous to upskill colleagues
One of the biggest advantages you can give yourself in SEO is educating your company or departments who deal with the website/s.
This doesn’t mean in-depth training for every single person who has an impact on SEO. It can be as little as a general introduction to SEO carried out in your all-hands meeting or a guide you write and share internally.
Educating your colleagues means creating SEO-aware champions in each key department.
It’s always better to have someone ask, “Does this matter to SEO?” than not. Without raising their awareness of what SEO involves, they may not know to ask.
If your colleagues outside of the marketing department consider SEO to just be keywords and backlinks, they may not know to involve you in site architecture or branding decisions.
They may not consult you at the beginning of a site redesign or when considering re-platforming. You might not be looped in on the international expansion plans or the campaigns to create microsites for new products.
Opening the wider company’s eyes to the complexities of SEO can aid them in realizing when they need to involve you in their decision-making or quality assurance.
2. Keep SEO in the public eye
Once you have given your company an overview of what SEO entails, keeping them aware of what you are working on and how it’s performing is a great idea.
Keeping SEO in front of them will remind your key stakeholders that they need to be consulting with you. Showing the impact of your work demonstrates the benefits of SEO to them.
Training your colleagues or agency clients on the latest changes with search engines or approaches to SEO can remind stakeholders of the complexity and nuances involved in Search.
Share the experiments you run and what you’ve learned from them company-wide. You can demonstrate that SEO doesn’t always have a straightforward answer.
The classic “it depends” answer can wear pretty thin with stakeholders. Demonstrating how much SEO is experimental and iterative can help reinforce that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy.
3. Identify who needs more bespoke training
There will be colleagues who need more than the basic overview of SEO for their work to complement and not hinder yours.
The key to identifying who could do with a deeper education in SEO is looking at who you communicate with daily.
Brand-side
Chances are that the teams you interact with each day are the ones who will be able to impact SEO success. Audit your meetings and emails over the course of a week.
- Who are you messaging the most?
- Who are you in meetings with?
Alongside people who can help or hinder SEO through their work, consider key stakeholders.
- Who holds the keys to your budget?
- Who is involved in prioritizing developer time?
These people are the ones who can help your SEO strategy get implemented. It is prudent to help them to understand the importance of SEO.
Clients
If you are working as a consultant or for an agency, the process of identifying training needs will differ. After all, you may only have one key contact at your client’s organization. Consider asking your contact for an overview of their organizational structure.
An organizational chart or department overview will help you know who might need SEO upskilling. Look for the teams that have an impact on the website. For example, this might be developers, project managers, or marketing teams.
Alternatively, speak with your contact and ask them to identify who might benefit from SEO education. Explain that your training will ultimately help gain buy-in for SEO activity. They will likely have a list of who would benefit from that.
4. Determine the SEO skills needed for each stakeholder
Once you have a list of people who may benefit from training, split them into three groups:
Needs to be able to carry out SEO-informed activities
These people could use SEO skills in their work to help improve search performance.
For example, copywriters benefit from keyword research training and front-end developers from understanding how hreflang tags work.
They will likely need an overview of SEO and how their work impacts it. They will need training on specific activities and the tools needed to accomplish them.
Don’t get caught up in trying to teach them the entirety of SEO. It will probably make it harder to remember what they actually need to know.
Give them sufficient SEO context to understand why the activity is important. This enables them to figure out better processes because you have equipped them with the knowledge to do so themselves rather than just training them by rote.
Needs to understand the context of SEO
These people will benefit from understanding where their work, or the work of the people they manage, can impact SEO. They might be your UX designers, project managers, or PPC managers.
For this group, consider what they need to know to understand their impact on your work. Consider training stakeholders on when to involve SEO professionals in their decision-making.
This can be very important for team members who make changes to the website.
For example, your UX team might advise including pop-up boxes to encourage email sign-up. They will need to understand the implications of using interstitials and that it would likely need an SEO’s input to ensure it is implemented in a search-engine-friendly manner.
They may not need in-depth training on rectifying the issues you are highlighting or which decisions they make could cause them.
Needs to understand the importance of SEO
These are your colleagues or client stakeholders who don’t directly impact SEO but indirectly do through prioritization and budget-holding.
These are your marketing directors, chief operating officers and finance managers. The people who need to understand the remit of SEO to sign off on the resources needed for your strategy.
Your focus for training for this group is to show SEO’s impact on their bottom line. This might be operational efficiency, revenue or other KPIs important to your senior leadership team.
Work with them to find out what metrics they really care about and show them how SEO can impact them.
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5. Choose the best methods of training them
Workshops
As identified above, some of your colleagues or client stakeholders will need in-depth training. They may benefit from workshops to help them understand the processes they must follow.
Give them the full context of why the SEO skills you are teaching them are important. Walk them through examples and allow them to practice with you assisting. This will allow them to ask you questions as they learn new skills.
You may also consider follow-up sessions or refreshers when relevant new people join the company. This can act as a refresher for those you have previously trained.
Written updates
Sometimes the best course of action is to write up training guides and notes. This way, a permanent resource will be available for colleagues and clients to refer to.
If it is a document that allows tracked changes, you can also request that they ask any questions about it within it. This creates an FAQ within the guide to clarify anything where you accidentally omitted important foundational concepts or specific actions.
Videos
Sometimes showing people will be the best way to teach them.
Creating a quick video of you carrying out a specific SEO activity, such as a crawl or keyword research, could be the key to helping instruct many people quickly.
You are not requiring them to be present in a workshop but giving them a resource they can use when they are carrying out the task.
6. Consider what needs to be provided externally
You might decide that you would feel more confident in an external trainer helping educate your stakeholders, especially on specific aspects like technical SEO training for your development team or E-E-A-T guidance for your content creation team.
No SEO is an expert in every aspect of the discipline, so if you want to provide training but feel uncomfortable carrying it out yourself, employ an external consultant to help.
You may have been banging the same drum about an issue for a long time. Sometimes, having an external consultant provide the training on that issue can reinforce what you’ve been saying.
As frustrating as it might be, sometimes stakeholders respond better to hearing recommendations from external sources they have brought in for that specific project.
7. Assess outdated knowledge
One of the biggest struggles SEOs face is correcting wrong or obsolete SEO knowledge. Many of the stakeholders you identified as needing some SEO education have probably worked with SEOs in the past.
Some may even have been responsible for SEO despite not being specialists. As such, they will possibly have a level of understanding of SEO already.
This can be a great head-start for getting buy-in for your recommendations. However, it can also mean starting right at the beginning and helping to unpick wrong thinking.
A quick way to see if any pre-existing SEO knowledge needs to be corrected is by creating a survey or quiz.
You can intentionally choose fairly common SEO myths like duplicate content penalties and PPC budgets to help organic search performance. It should give you an understanding of where to pitch your training.
Some stakeholders might already be very well informed and you don’t need to spend much more of their or your time training them. You can keep them updated on changes in the industry relevant to what they are working on.
Others may have had SEO training a decade ago and need to be updated on how modern SEO differs.
8. Teach to encourage processes
Through the SEO upskilling of your stakeholders, you can encourage the adoption of SEO-beneficial processes.
For example, if you train copywriters to conduct keyword research, use those keywords in their copy, and write engaging page titles, they may add their current sign-off process.
The key to ensuring SEO considerations are adopted into relevant processes is educating the process owners. These are typically the senior members of teams.
They are the ones who decide if changes will impact efficiency and to whom you’ll need to highlight the benefits of considering SEO.
Allowing the SEO team to sign off on changes to the website can save a lot of headaches down the line. Unfortunately, it’s not often something that gets built into the QA process for many teams.
By training your colleagues and stakeholders, you will likely highlight the risks of not considering SEO impact in their work. This training can help to encourage them to build SEO into their sign-off processes.
9. Develop a self-serve curriculum
Creating a self-serve curriculum is the most efficient way of encouraging SEO upskilling.
Create a page on your intranet that houses all of the guides, videos and workshop presentations the SEO team has made. Tag them by department, project involvement or skill set to help your colleagues find training they might be interested in.
You can keep adding to the training over time and ask them to request their own resource from within that platform.
You can set out a roadmap based on training pathways, for example, “Training for Engineers” or “SEO training for Project [X].”
10. Get buy-in for your training
If you are asking entire teams to give up their time to attend an SEO workshop or asking for a half-hour slot in your next town hall meeting, you’ll probably need to demonstrate the benefits.
As it is likely senior stakeholders, you must consider what metrics they use to define success. Work backward to identify how SEO-related mistakes may have impacted those metrics.
For example, if a code deployment caused a crawling issue on the site, leading to rankings drops, demonstrate the link to the recent drop in organic leads and revenue.
Give examples of how training relevant people could prevent similar issues in the future.
Using SEO education for stakeholder management
Whatever level of training you can give your stakeholders, the more buy-in to your ideas and processes you’ll get.
The time you invest now will save future time, stress and discouragement when pitching ideas.
The post How to use SEO education for stakeholder management appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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