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How to define SERP intent and ‘source type’ for better analysis

Thursday, September 22nd, 2022

SERP analysis coupled with your keyword research is a staple of any modern SEO campaign.

Analyzing search intent is already a process within this. But when it comes to SERP analysis, all too often I see reports that stop at classifying a result by its intent – and that’s it.

We know that for queries with multiple common interpretations, Google works to provide a diversified results page with differentiations often being:

• Result intent (commercial, informational).
• Business type (national result, local result).
• Aggregators and comparison sites.
• Page type (static or blog).

And then when planning content we might develop a strategy based on Google ranking some informational pieces on Page 1, so we’ll create informational pieces too. 

We may also use a tool to “aggregate” metrics on the first page and create artificial keyword difficulty scores.

This is where this strategy falls down, and in my opinion, will continue to show diminishing returns in the future.

This is because the majority of these analysis pieces don’t acknowledge or take into account source type. I personally believe that this is because the Search Quality Rater Guidelines that have led to E-A-T, YMYL, and page quality becoming a major part of our day-to-day workings don’t actually use the term source type, but it does talk about assessing and analyzing sources for things like misinformation or bias.

When we start to look at source types, we also need to look at and understand the concepts of quality thresholds and topical authority. 

I’ve talked about quality thresholds, and how they relate to indexing in previous articles I’ve written for Search Engine Land:

• Why 100% indexing isn’t possible, and why that’s OK
• How content consolidation can improve your SEO performance
• How to optimize your ecommerce site for better indexing

But when we relate this to SERP analysis, we can understand how and why Google is choosing the websites and elements it is to form the results page and also achieve an idea of how viable it may be to effectively rank for certain queries.

Having a better understanding of ranking viability helps with forecasting potential traffic opportunities and then estimating leads/revenue based on how your site converts.

Defining source types

Defining source types means going deeper than just classifying the ranking website as informational or commercial, as Google also goes deeper.

This is because Google compares websites based on their type, and not just the content being produced. This is particularly prevalent in search results pages for queries that can have a mixed intent and returns results of both commercial and informational intent.

If we look at the query [rotating proxy manager] we can see this in practice in the top 5 results:

Quality thresholds are determined by the website’s identity, general domain type (not just the blog subdomain or subfolder) and then context.

When Google retrieves information to compile a search results page, it will compare websites being retrieved first based on their source type group first. So in the example SERP, Oxylabs and Zyte will be compared first against each other, before the other source types elected for inclusion or that rank highest based on weighting and annotation. 

The SERP is then formed based on these retrieved rankings and then overlaid with user data, SERP features, etc.

At face value, by understanding the source types that Google is choosing to display (and where they rank) for specific queries we can know whether they are viable search terms to target given your source type.

This is also common in SERPs for [x alternative] queries where the business may want to rank for competitor + alternative compounds.

For example, if we look at the top 10 blue link results for [pardot alternatives]:

So if you are Freshmarketer or ActiveCampaign, while the business may see this as a relevant search term to target, and it aligns with your product positioning, as a commercial source type you’re unlikely to gain Page 1 traction.

This doesn’t mean to say that having the messaging, and comparison pages on your website are not important pieces of content for user education and conversion.

Different source types have different quality thresholds

Another important distinction to make is that different source types have different thresholds.

This is why third-party tools that produce keyword difficulty scores based on a metric such as backlinks for all results on Page 1 have issues, as not all source types on the majority of SERPs are judged in the same way.

This means that in order to ascertain the “benchmark” for what it will take your website and content to get into a traffic-driving position, you need to compare against other websites with the same source types, and then the type of content that they’re ranking with.

Topic clusters and frequency

Establishing good topic clusters and having easy-to-follow information trees allow search engines to understand your website source type and “usefulness depth” with greater ease.

This is also why, in my opinion, for a number of queries in the same space (e.g., tech), you are likely to see websites akin to G2 and Capterra frequently for a broad range of queries. 

A search engine can have a greater level of confidence in returning these websites in the SERPs, regardless of the software/tech type, as these websites have:

• High publishing frequencies.
• A logical information tree.
• Developed a strong reputation for helpful, accurate information

When developing webpages within the topic clusters, aside from semantics and good keyword research, it’s also important to understand the basics of natural language interfaces, particularly the Stanford Natural Language Inference (SNLI) corpus.

The basics of this are that you need to test the hypothesis against the text, and the conclusion is either that the text entails, contradicts, or is neutral against the hypothesis.

For a search engine, if the webpage contradicts the hypothesis, then it will have low value and shouldn’t be retrieved or ranked. Whereas if the webpage entails, or is neutral against the query, then it can be considered for ranking to both provide the answer and potential non-bias perspective (depending on the query).

We do this to an extent through content hubs/content clusters that have become more popular in the past five years as ways of demonstrating E-A-T and creating linkable, high-authority assets for non-brand search terms.

This is achieved through good information architecture on the website, and being concise in our topical clusters and internal linking, making it easier for search engines, at scale, to digest.

Understand source types to inform your SEO strategy

By better understanding the source types ranking most prominently for the target search queries, we can produce better strategies and forecasting that yield more immediate results.

This is a better option instead of driving toward search terms that we’re simply not appropriate for and won’t likely see a return in traffic against the resource investment.

The post How to define SERP intent and ‘source type’ for better analysis appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

New Google issue may affect ad serving

Thursday, September 22nd, 2022

It’s just not Google’s week… or month… or year. Today, Google Ads Liason Ginny Marvin just posted to Twitter that they’re currently aware of an internal issue impacting ads serving. Here’s what she said.

Is this related to the other Ads Manager issues they’ve reported this month? We’re not sure. The Tweet is too vague to know what specifically is happening.

This sounds familiar. Just yesterday we reported on other outages and “updates” from Google affecting publishers. This new issue could be related, but again, we’re not sure. Check that out here.

Why we care. The constant outages and issues from Google are getting a little out of hand, don’t you think? Maybe it seems like a lot because we report on them, but, correct me if I’m wrong, we don’t see this many issues from Facebook or Instagram, or even Microsoft for that matter.

Google’s Googleyness here is lacking.

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Webinar: If the customer is always right, your tech should be too

Wednesday, September 21st, 2022

According to a new survey from Forrester, 56% of your marketing peers plan to increase investment in advertising/marketing solutions over the next year. Where do they plan to invest?

Join this webinar to hear experts from AWS, Forrester, Merkle and Treasure Data discuss findings from the study about the state of customer experiences and the advertising and marketing technologies that influence your ability to meet customer expectations.

Register today for “If the Customer is Always Right, Your Technology Should be Too,” presented by AWS Marketplace.

Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.

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How Twitter uses Signals to help you discover more content, creators, and accounts

Wednesday, September 21st, 2022

Twitter recommendations are designed to help you “enrich your Twitter experience” by showing Tweets from people you may not follow, based on actions you take on Twitter such as liking, following, or retweeting.

How Twitter uses Signals. Twitter uses Signals to recommend new content. Signals include topics you follow, posts you’ve liked, accounts you follow, and Tweets that people in your network like.

Where recommendations appear. You’ll see recommendations in your Home timeline, as well as in the Explore tab. Recommendations show just below a small notification that says “You might like.”

Controlling your recommendations. If you don’t want to see a certain recommendation, you can select “Not interested in this Tweet/Topic” from the Tweet menu. If you like or Retweet a recommendation, it sends the signal that you find it interesting.

You can use the “sparkle” icon at the top right corner of your Home timeline. This icon lets you toggle between seeing top “For You” Tweets, which include recommendations from accounts and Topics you don’t follow, and “Latest” Tweets from only the accounts you do follow. 

How Twitter improves recommendations. A new “X” design on Tweets makes it much easier to remove a Tweet from your Home timeline if you don’t want to see it.

Dig deeper. If you want to read the full blog post from Twitter, you can do so here.

Why we care. Browsing social media should be a seamless, hassle-free experience. You follow people you know, like, and trust because you want to see what they’re posting and because you’re interested in what they have to say. Seeing posts from accounts you don’t follow can be a nuisance if they’re not closely aligned with your beliefs and interests.

If you’re seeing too many posts you’re not interested in, try using the “Latest” feature to only see posts from accounts you already know. Or do like I do and “X” them all out.

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TikTok will start banning political campaign fundraising

Wednesday, September 21st, 2022

TikTok will soon start requiring accounts that belong to U.S. government departments, politicians, and political parties to be verified. They’ll also ban any videos and content that call for fundraising. 

Fighting political misinformation. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance are working to shut down political misinformation in time for the midterm elections in November. Previously they had allowed that content and faced scrutiny from US lawmakers because of it. As a result, TikTok started banning political advertising in 2019.

Request verification. Political accounts can request verification and the platform will also take added steps to confirm the identity of any profiles they believe to belong to politicians or political parties.

Enforcing the ban. TikTok will update its policies to prohibit campaign fundraising. Accounts belonging to politicians and parties will automatically be prevented from accessing any ad features. Additionally, those accounts will also be banned from using money-making features available to influencers on the app such as digital payments and gifting.

Why we care. If you’re a politician or advertiser working on behalf of a politician, be aware of TikTok’s new policies. Politicians or political groups who try to fundraise on the app will be banned. 

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More Google Ad incidents and issues

Wednesday, September 21st, 2022

The last few weeks have seen several problems with the Google Ads Manager, specifically affecting publishers and an incident dating all the way back to August 31.

The original issue. On August 31, Google reported an incident that “Google Ad Manager Historical Report stats are showing lower than expected for some networks. There’s no clear impact on Serving or Data Transfer at this point.”

Fast forward to this week. Yesterday Google reported an additional issue “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Ad Manager. We will provide more information shortly.  The affected users are able to access Google Ad Manager, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.”

Additionally, they provided the following update from the August 31 incident “Ad Manager Reporting stats remains fixed with all new data since September 1st (PDT) being accurately reported. We are working on correcting the affected data (issue duration: August 30th, 8:00 PM PDT thru August 31st, 5:00PM PDT). Our current ETA to have it fixed is September 23rd.

We received reports from multiple Publishers where Line Items were under-delivered around September 15th and it might be related to this incident. Engineering is investigating and we will provide more details today.”

Later that day. Around 7 pm UTC Google reported “The Reporting workaround fix that was introduced on September 13th to mitigate the missing stats for this incident has impacted the budget extractor causing under-delivery in a few Line Items. A Serving fix has been issued and will be released shortly (expected EOD PDT). This issue potentially only affected Line Items that meet these two criteria:

1. Line Item has been active through the 8/31 (PDT) incident and after the 9/13 (PDT) workaround fix.

2. Line Item had one or more of the following specific changes made on or after the 8/31 (PDT) stats incident: date duration, the actual budget goal, and delivery speed.”

September 21. Today Google posted an update “We expect to resolve the problem affecting a majority of users of Google Ad Manager at Sep 24, 2022, 6:59 AM UTC. Please note that this time frame is an estimate and may change.  The affected users are able to access Google Ad Manager, but may not have access to the most recent data.

Dig deeper. To stay up to date on all Google Ad issues and outages, you can keep checking the status dashboard.

Why we care. These issues affect publishers and shouldn’t have any impact on advertisers. Furthermore, if you suspect an issue with Ads Manager or any other Google platform, let us know!

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Future of in-person events: Marketers likely to return in 2023

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

Marketers are looking forward to returning to in-person events in the first half, and especially the second half, of 2023.

As far as the rest of 2022? Marketers are split down the middle.

That’s according to MarTech’s 2022 Event Participation Index.

A year ago, marketers told us they were less likely to attend upcoming in-person conferences due to fears of an Omicron wave.

Indeed, we saw an enormous surge in COVID cases at the beginning of this year, when many first-half conferences had already been planned. Although the new variants were highly infectious, they seemed less damaging.

The number of cases quickly declined and have remained fairly flat. Nevertheless, the uncertainty seemed to shut down the in-person option for about half of the roughly 200 respondents who were part of the Event Participation Index.

Fifty-three said they were “extremely unlikely” to attend a live event in what remains of 2022; 62 said they were “extremely likely” to go to an in-person event. The rest of the sample was spread unevenly between those extremes.

This year, once again, we asked marketers to rate their likelihood of returning to in-person events. We also asked how many events they have actually attended, as well as the extent to which they have a budget for attending, or exhibiting at, events.

Here are the results.

Marketers ‘extremely likely’ to attend in-person events

Things look brighter for next year. About twice as many respondents were “extremely likely” rather than “extremely unlikely” to attend in-person events in the first half of 2023.

For the second half of next year, optimism reigns, with 80 “extremely likely” to go to live events, and 40 more checking in as likely or highly likely. Only 19 were still “extremely unlikely” to jump aboard.

At the same time, many thought that a virtual element should still be included. Said one Event Participation Index respondent:

• “Given climate change, travel challenges and increased viruses I think events should have online virtual opportunities that are both synchronous and asynchronous and facilitate in-person gatherings in the locale where people are. For example you have attendees from Chicago, London, and Philly. Create small, intimate networking events in each city so that attendees can go in their backyard while also attending the conference sessions that could be streamed from anywhere.”

Should event organizers mandate vaccination?

A strong majority continued to believe not only that attendees should be vaccinated (and presumably, although we didn’t ask, boosted), but that event organizers should mandate vaccination.

Logically, that probably means checking evidence of vaccination, too.

More than half of our sample, 121 respondents, wanted to see vaccinations made mandatory. Although 77 said no, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re against vaccination (or unvaccinated).

Attendance levels: What is the new normal?

The return of in-person events doesn’t necessarily imply a complete return to normal.

“Attendance will be at pre-pandemic levels,” predicted one Event Participation Index respondent, and for 2022 at least that seems likely to be true.

HubSpot estimated a decline in Inbound attendance of around 10-15% compared with 2019. That said, Inbound had an extensive virtual component, so the overall audience may have been larger than past live-only editions of the conference.

It remains to be seen whether offering audiences the choice of virtual or in-person will depress live attendance. After all, viruses aren’t the only problem – there’s the expense and rampant chaos of air travel.

As one Event Participation Index respondent told us:

• “Expensive air travel and brutal travel experiences make me not want to recommend in-person events.”

Another respondent told us:

• “If event attendance is down, I don’t think it’ll be due to COVID. I’ve been to concerts, ball games, and other crowded events. People seem to be back living their lives.”

Here’s what the survey sample actually did (or are doing) this year:

There was a fairly even split between those who went to zero events (77) and those who went to one or two (I went to two or three).

There was a sharp decline when it came to multiple event attendance, with only eight brave warriors experiencing ten or more in-person shows.

• “Seeing how accessible events can be online has made it more difficult to justify spending money and time away from family on travel for in-person events. While it’s true that networking might be a missing component in the online space, networking isn’t always a strong enough justification to attend in person.”

Marketers have budget for events

A strong majority of respondents (154) had budget to travel to at least a few events the rest of this year and into next year. A small minority (22) had the budget to attend many events.

When it came to exhibiting, 46 had the budget for at least some events, while 19 had the budget for many. Added together, that means around one-third of this sample have the costs of at least some exhibiting covered.

Of course, there’s no pleasing some people: “Do something different. I’m bored with in-person and online events.”

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How to handle PPC landing pages for SEO

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

Every competent SEO knows that “SEO is not an island.” We need to work with different stakeholders to align our marketing efforts.

But one of the most underutilized relationships in marketing teams is between SEO and PPC specialists.

From my experience working with agencies and in-house, collaborating with PPC specialists can bring tremendous value to an SEO strategy and vice versa.

After all, it is not uncommon for an online business to leverage PPC and SEO strategies to grow. Both channels are essential for any online marketing strategy.

While the tactics for PPC are different than SEO techniques, there are a few cases where both channels should collaborate to improve overall business performance.

A look at PPC landing pages

One of the touchpoints between PPC and SEO is landing pages created specifically for PPC campaigns. Creating alternative PPC landing pages is a great way to optimize pages for conversions – and not necessarily for search.

Take a look at this sample landing page used for PPC ads.

Screenshot from SpyFu

The page has very little text and no schema (which isn’t surprising since it’s not an SEO page).

Screenshot from pspdfkit.com/try

And if you look at the organic keywords this page is attracting in Semrush, it’s only ranking for two keywords, and one of them is branded.

Screenshot from Semrush

(The actual number of organic keywords may be higher, but it’s expected to be branded, and low rankings on non-branded keywords, if there are more.) 

This is an example of a landing page not optimized for search but utilized for PPC purposes. PPC campaigns may require pages with more focus on branding or creative titles, less text, more graphics and clear calls to action. 

And because SEOs can get really touchy about their titles, keywords, length of content, and more, PPC pages offer a PPC manager a way out.

Can PPC pages interfere with SEO efforts?

The short answer is yes. Any page that is indexed in search needs to be optimized for search.

Creating PPC pages without taking into consideration the impact they can have on SEO can interfere with organic performance in two ways:

• Cannibalization. When there’s a PPC page version of an existing SEO page, the PPC landing page can potentially jeopardize the performance of its counterpart SEO page.
• Creating PPC landing pages means having pages on your website with low word count and minimal content, which in the time of Google’s helpful content update, can actually impact the overall performance of the website, including pages that are well optimized and provide value to the users.

Why have PPC landing pages?

A landing page can be used for both SEO and PPC purposes, so why would we need to create a PPC landing page? 

From a marketing standpoint, PPC pages attract customers from ads. Thus, the content on the page should align with the ads’ messaging. This means that the most prominent text on the page can be the same as the messaging used in the PPC ad.

So, for example, if your PPC ad says something like, “We’re the best in the Canadian market,” your H1 can be the exact same text. Some PPC managers even use the ad title as the H1 and the ad description as the H2 to improve the CRO of their ads. 

Another issue with PPC landing pages is that they are built to eliminate distractions. They are focused on getting the user that clicked on the ad to convert. In SEO, the content serves both the users and a search algorithm that decides whether this page brings the best value to the user.

How to handle PPC pages from an SEO standpoint

You can do any of the following tactics to deal with PPC landing pages on your website before they are created.

1. Mark your PPC landing pages as noindex

This is the simplest solution and the noindex tag will not impact the PPC campaign performance.

2. Create your PPC landing pages on a subdomain

Creating PPC landing pages on a subdomain:

• Does not require cross-domain tracking.
• Keeps your website organized. 
• Will not impact the organic performance of your main domain as Google treats subdomains as a separate domain. 

This solution may not be 100% reliable. Google’s Danny Sullivan answered a question on whether the helpful content update considers subdomains as part of the main domains saying, “We tend to see subdomains apart from root domains but it can also depend on many factors.”

3. Do both

Given all of this information, you may want to do both if you are handling PPC pages before they are created. In short, create the PPC pages on a subdomain and mark them as noindex.

What if PPC landing pages already exist?

The solution can be a bit more complicated if you just started working on a website and found that PPC landing pages already exist.

First, you’ll need to look into the performance data of those pages in Google Search Console and evaluate the impressions and clicks those pages are getting from search.

If the PPC landing page is not performing well

If the page is not performing well in search and there’s an alternative SEO page alternative for it, then you can just mark it as noindex and move it to a subdomain. 

You can try canonicalizing the PPC page instead of using the noindex tag on its alternative ​​SEO page. However, this may not help resolve duplication or cannibalization issues, as Google can ignore the canonical tag and choose to index both pages.

That said, because this solution requires the least effort, you may want to test it first and try implementing proper canonicals on a few PPC landing pages and see whether Google executes your canonicals.

If the PPC landing page is performing well and there’s no alternative SEO page

If the PPC page is performing well in search or has the potential of performing well in search if optimized (something that can be indicated by seeing that the page is getting plenty of impressions in GSC) and there’s no corresponding SEO page, you can copy the content of the PPC page to a new SEO page with an optimized URL path. 

Then you can redirect the existing PPC page to that newly created SEO page. Finally, you can re-create the PPC page on another URL and mark it as noindex, so the PPC campaign doesn’t get interrupted. 

Use this approach if you want to have two separate pages for PPC and SEO and want the URL to be optimized, and the PPC page will have fewer content optimizations. 

Note: If the PPC page URL is good, and you are allowed to optimize the PPC page for SEO, then definitely go with this much simpler approach.

If the PPC landing page is performing well and there is an alternative SEO page

If the PPC page is performing well and attracting some clicks from search and there’s an SEO alternative for it, you can simply redirect the PPC page to the SEO page, create a new PPC page on a different URL and mark it as noindex.

Here’s an infographic summarizing the SEO process for handling PPC landing pages.

What to consider before making changes

There’s a line between ideal SEO recommendations and what you can actually execute in real life.

It won’t always be feasible to noindex every PPC page and move it to a subdomain. We need to consider the following:

• The number of pages: Does the issue occur on 2-3 pages or hundreds of pages? If you’re only dealing with a few pages, you should be easily able to implement “noindex then move to subdomain” approach.
• The backend: Does the client have the resources to create and move pages to a subdomain? If that’s not the case, you can skip this part and stick to the noindex.
• Impact/effort: It takes resources to create new pages and redirect existing PPC pages. Is it worth the effort? Does the impact of handling the existence of PPC pages vs. just doing minimal SEO tweaks for the PPC page justify the expected outcome? 

The approach in practice

For one client, a small ecommerce business, I decided to do minimal SEO tweaks to their existing PPC pages and let them be. I optimized the title tag, didn’t change the H1, changed H2s where applicable, and added keywords when needed.

I decided to use this approach because:

• The client’s website was small. The effort will not justify the impact with only a few PPC pages.
• The existing PPC pages were not jeopardizing or cannibalizing any important pages on the website.

Before rushing to execute SEO recommendations for handling PPC pages, evaluate the situation first. Look at the data and the expected outcome/impact before deciding.

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Google launched additional support and troubleshooting for Consent Mode

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

Google is rolling out new features to give advertisers additional help with setting up and troubleshooting Consent Mode. A new certified partner program is also available with additional support with implementation and tech challenges.

About Consent Mode. Consent Mode allows advertisers to adjust how your Google tags behave based on the consent status of your users. It also enables Google to model for gaps in conversions. The Google tags will dynamically adapt, utilizing cookies for specified purposes when consent has been given by the user. using the consent signals, Google will apply conversion modeling to recover lost conversions due to consent changes.

Consent Mode status and diagnostics. Google has built new support and features to help advertisers set up Consent Mode correctly. The Google Tag Assistant troubleshooting guide covers possible cases and solutions if Consent Mode is not detected or consent is lower than expected.

Diagnostics can be directly accessed on the conversion summary or action settings page.

What Google says. “In coming months, you’ll be able to view troubleshooting alerts in your diagnostics tabs and see domain-level insights about your tagging and consent rate. You’ll also be able to download a list of URLs and access Google Tag Assistant’s consent debugging tools to help you fix issues with your setup.

Soon, we’ll be surfacing troubleshooting recommendations in the diagnostics tab. In the meantime, you can access the recommendations tab to ensure Consent Mode is properly set up and that you’re receiving the full benefits of conversion modeling” says Shirin Eghtesadi, Senior Product Manager, Privacy Centric Measurement, in the Google announcement today.

Activating Consent Mode. Advertisers can review eligibility requirements here. Google has also partnered with Consent Management Platforms (CMP) and is launching a new partner management platform with partners such as One Trust, Osano, Cookiebot, and more.

It should also be noted that in order to meet the thresholds, advertisers will need to have a presence in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK.

CMP partners. CMP partners are integrated with Consent Mode and Google Tag Manager, which help ensure proper implementation and address any technical issues. CMPs help manage cookie consent banners and direct the consent management process which begins when a user lands on your website and makes a consent choice on a CMP banner. The CMP then communicates that choice to the Google tag via Consent Mode, and the tag adjusts its behavior accordingly. 

Why we care. Most of us are fully aware that new regulations concerning privacy are at the forefront of our jobs as advertisers. Consent Mode ensures that websites protect the confidentiality and security of user data, while still allowing for accurate conversion and targeting data.

If you meet the requirements, check into partnering with a CMP to implement Consent Mode.

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4 smarter ways to measure SEO effectiveness

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

I find myself answering a lot of the same questions from new clients about ways to measure SEO. My answers generally fall into one of two categories:

• Why basic/boilerplate SEO metrics aren’t good KPIs and how to make them better.
• Which (more advanced) metrics we should establish to determine actual business impact.

This article will tackle the first category and show how to apply an advanced approach to make basic SEO KPIs far more effective indicators of success. The KPIs I’ll discuss include:

• Traffic (visits)
• Ranking
• Conversions
• Links

Let’s get started.

1. Traffic

Measuring SEO traffic week over week is as basic as it gets – and it’s missing nuances that can become clear with a couple of adjustments.

First, use Search Console to split traffic into brand and non-brand buckets.

There’s a simple reason for this: brand traffic is generally not a function of SEO. Instead, it’s influenced by awareness campaigns, including billboards, CTV (or linear TV) ads, programmatic campaigns, PR, and more. Brand search, in short, is a function of your overall marketing portfolio.

Non-brand search is where SEOs can shine, especially when you identify keywords at the most important stages of your funnel and prioritize them by potential impact. This often functions as the level of intent.

Educational keywords (e.g., “SEO best practices”) equate more or less to the top of the funnel and more transactional keywords (e.g., “best SEO agency for B2B”) align with the bottom of the funnel. 

Second, remember that seasonality impacts SEO as any other channel.

For this reason, it’s crucial to set up month over month, quarter over quarter, and year over year windows. I prefer QoQ and YoY over shorter comparisons.

Big SEO shifts, whether forced by an algorithm change or internally directed, require longer measurement cycles to prove real change.

2. Ranking

Relying on moment-in-time screenshots of your current keyword rankings will get you a limited idea of your overall campaign success.

Instead, consider these factors:

• How are your target keywords ranking over time (MoM, QoQ, YoY)?
• How are individual pages ranking?
• Are you achieving actual milestones?
• What are your trends?

Evaluating rankings over time will show you progress across possible calendar events and seasonal shifts. 

Instead of looking at a blended portfolio affecting a keyword, which offers less actionable insight, look at individual pages using Google Search Console. This allows you to isolate which specific properties are impacting rankings for a single keyword.

On the topic of milestones, not all ranking changes are created equal. You can move up 50 spots from 61 to 11, but that may have less impact than moving up a single notch from the top spot on page 2 of the SERPs to the last spot on page 1. 

Last, dig deeper to see the actual deltas of impressions and clicks that any rankings changes are driving. This also incorporates external trends. For instance, consider that you could have seen huge increases in impressions and clicks for “video conferencing software” in March 2020 without a change in your ranking for that keyword. 

The more activity around the keyword, the more competitive it will get – and the more potential impact it has on your portfolio.

3. Conversions

The 1.0 way to measure acquisition is to aggregate last-click conversions from organic search. Incorporating GA4, which uses a cross-channel, data-driven model with a 30-day lookback window for acquisition, will give you a more nuanced view of attributed credit for conversions. 

We could add many more layers here, including measuring the effects of SEO on other channels’ acquisition costs. 

For this post, which is meant to help you derive more meaning from relatively basic KPIs, let’s talk about building different conversion events aligned with the level of intent of the keywords you’re targeting (e.g., “download the guide” for educational keywords or “book a demo” for transactional ones). 

Your report might look like this:

Different conversion events, when used strategically with back-end CRM data, will have different values.

When you use a variety of conversion events that align strategically with your keywords, you should see an increase in conversion rate and get a more accurate picture of the value those keywords are driving.

4. Links

Links are important. They’re still a ranking factor, and they can help measure the impact of your content.

That said, link quantity is a shallow metric. Links are simply a means to an end.

SEO’s overall purpose is to drive meaningful traffic and acquisition. Focusing on downstream KPIs without rolling them up to business impact (which is admittedly more complex) will do little to move the needle in important ways. 

If you focus on counting links, you’re incentivizing yourself to chase more links. The incentive should be actual impact.

Counting will give you a quantity bias and will shift the way you run your SEO program. If you focus on business drivers, you’ll be incentivized to deliver value, not volume. 

Volume is easy. Value is harder.

Prove the value of SEO with better metrics

For the most part, these are fairly easy adjustments to make, and they’ll help you paint a much clearer picture of the value you’re driving with your SEO program and how that’s trending over time.

In my next post, I’ll show how to take measurement to the next level by helping you understand how SEO is affecting your overall marketing efforts in relation to other channels. 

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