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6 fundamental truths about SEO

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

Brands and SEO professionals must take responsibility for the performance of the websites that they run and manage.

Applying these six SEO truths will help you achieve next-level website performance, according to Bruce Clay, the founder and president of digital marketing optimization firm Bruce Clay Inc., who spoke at SMX Advanced.

1. SEO needs to be a strategic initiative across the company

The entire organization participates in SEO. It starts at the leadership level – everyone must understand that SEO is important, commit to it and make it a priority. 

You can’t just do your SEO on Monday. One person can’t randomly do SEO. It isn’t going to work if you aren’t working on SEO every day.

The organization must think about SEO every time there’s a meeting to discuss changing the website. Somebody in that room has to ask, “How does this impact SEO?”

“How can we improve the overall quality and operation of our website so that it actually generates traffic or meets a KPI of the business? … If the commitment is to do SEO, and if you buy into it being long-term, then SEO is a winning operation within your business,” Clay said.

2. SEO should beat the competition, not the algorithm

We must understand how ranking algorithms work. But our job isn’t to beat the algorithm. Beating the algorithm is an insurmountable battle.

Google makes thousands of changes to search every year. And every keyword you’re trying to optimize for is essentially a new algorithm. 

Your job is to beat the competition. 

The best we can do is determine who ranks and determine what they’re doing. Are there any common characteristics? Are there any common words and can we use them better?

“The story I always tell is of two friends who go camping. They set up their tents. They start a fire. They’re cooking a meal and along comes a bear. They take off running down the path. The bear is chasing them. The guy in front doesn’t need to be an Olympic runner. He just needs to be faster than his friend,” Clay said.

Well, SEO is much the same thing. You have competitors. You have to be better than them.

3. SEO done right cares about content architecture

Websites must be built in a way so that search engines see you as a subject matter expert. Publishing authoritative and trustworthy information takes a concentrated effort.

Google prefers content that is presented in a clear hierarchical structure. In other words, a drill down (e.g., a website about electronics has cameras > digital cameras; a website about automobiles has Ford > Mustang). This is called siloing. 

“It actually performs better in search because you’ve concentrated, in one location, all of the information about that particular keyword, instead of spreading it all over the website,” Clay said. “In order to get SEO to perform correctly, you have to be the subject matter expert. You cannot randomly throw a bunch of things onto a website and expect it to work.”

4. It’s not the job of SEO to make a pig fly

Sometimes, no amount of SEO can save a poorly maintained website. That’s why website maintenance has to be built into your SEO program. 

You can’t just push an “easy” button and say you want to rank tomorrow if your website looks like it’s 20 years old, hasn’t been updated in years or isn’t mobile-friendly.

“It’s the job of SEO to take that pig and work with you to genetically engineer it into an eagle. Then you may have something that works. Way too many people come to us with old technology. They haven’t updated their site in five years. They haven’t updated content. And they’re expecting that the search engine is going to give them a reward in the face of people that have been maintaining their sites all along,” Clay said.

Organic search competition is intense. Your competition may have a whole team working on their SEO. Sometimes it can be like trying to compete against websites armed with machine guns while you only have bows and arrows.

5. Cheap SEO is a near-death experience

Cheap SEO has consequences. It can harm you. No business should expect cheap SEO to work well.

Do you want bad advice for half the price, or do you want good advice? How long is it going to take you to discover what went wrong after it goes wrong? And how much will it cost you to fix it later?

What you end up with cheap SEO is inexperienced people experimenting at your expense. And they often can be wrong.

“Get it done right and get it done properly, the first time. You can’t afford to do it over,” Clay said.

6. SEO is done when Google stops changing things and all your competition dies

SEO is a perpetual project because search is constantly changing. So is what your competition is doing. (Oh, and also search behavior.)

Google’s goal is to please users, so they have leaned heavily into things like user experience and rewarding truly expert, accurate, trustworthy content. 

“When you are in an environment like that, where the search engine is going to be constantly changing and experimenting and trying to make itself better – those are changes that are going to seriously impact how you perform in search results,” Clay said. “You cannot ever be done with SEO. The search engines have seen to it.”

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

How to plan and budget for enterprise SEO

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

In an ideal enterprise world, your CMO would plan a budget for SEO, leaving you to enjoy building your strategy without endlessly trying to prove ROI for each line item. 

Like I said, ideal. But not exactly realistic. 

Because CMOs are often hyperfocused on brand strategy or activation. Often, SEO is an entirely new marketing channel for enterprise companies. So, SEO professionals are left to their own devices. 

Anyone who’s ever had to plan an enterprise SEO budget knows that making this business use case can feel like you’re forced to eat grandma’s Jell-O salad. It’s a painful experience. 

So, how do you create an SEO budget for an enterprise company?

As an enterprise SEO Director for multiple companies, I’ve had the luxury of spending countless hours in spreadsheets and meetings to help the C-suite understand why SEO deserves a budget and how SEO will impact the bottom line. 

Below is my step-by-step process for building an SEO budget. 

1. Understand the business model

Why is this the first step to developing an SEO budget for an enterprise company?

The business model tells you what projects get money and don’t. Business models move your organization in a specific direction. 

By diving deep to grasp your company’s business model, you can strategically build your SEO budget to align with what the business wants to do. 

If you want to operate at an executive level in an enterprise company, you have to get below the surface. You can do this by finding the answers to these questions: 

• How do customers behave? How do they find us? What do they click on?
• What percentage of revenue comes from each business unit? 
• What revenue metrics are we reporting on (LTV, CAC, margin, etc.)?

The business model is the foundation you will build your SEO strategy on. Each different business model will dictate what your SEO tactics are. 

Let’s walk through some examples. 

Rover’s business model is built around lead generation. It’s got a beautiful map with dog walkers listed. Therefore, this page needs to be tailored to attract users to input their information.

Yelp’s business model is centered around sponsored listings and advertising dollars. The pages need to be structured to support the advertiser’s spend. 

2. Correlate SEO to revenue

When you get to an enterprise company as an SEO Director or above, you cannot speak to the C-suite executive team without mentioning revenue. 

​​Let’s pretend you’re presenting to a CEO. The CEO wants to see “I’d like to propose we do X, which will achieve $ZZZ and cost $Y.” How would you fill in the blank?

Here’s how Matt McKinley, SEO Manager for Revolt Media & TV, would fill in the blank. 

“X would represent one of the biggest projects from the SEO roadmap that’s needed to drive traffic/revenue. ZZZ is measured by the potential increase in traffic x average order value. Y would be the cost of resources needed for the project such as tools, other team’s time (developers, designers, editorial, etc.), additional SEO headcount, etc.” 

If you don’t mention revenue when pitching to the executive team, you’ll likely be more embarrassed than Adidas was for the Boston Marathon email debacle. 

Tough to recover from that, right? 

SEO professionals know how difficult it is to tie revenue to SEO, especially if your analytics is broken. 

I often get asked, “If we improve our page speed score by 10 points, how will that impact revenue?” Connecting a page speed to a revenue increase is a long-fetched idea. But we have to back into it somehow. 

Based on the below, you can say the number of good mobile URLs that are indexed impacts our organic traffic, therefore impacting new customers and revenue. 

Now, you can make a statement like:

“Each indexed Good Mobile URL is worth $10. If we improve the number of Good Mobile URLs by 50%, we can estimate a $5 million additional value.” 

Do you smell that? It smells like BS. That’s because it is. 

Yet, this is how executives at enterprise companies operate. With these back-of-the-envelope calculations, you can frame the potential value of a project more strategically. 

Remember, it doesn’t have to be 100% accurate. Executives want to see that you’re looking beyond just the traffic. 

For example, let’s say you want to create a series of buying guides, but you need to expand the resources.

To sell this to the executive team, you would want to lead with something like, “We estimate that our guides are worth $20,000 in incremental revenue.”

Now to get this information to work up to the $20,000, you’ll want to look at historical data. Show a before/after scenario of an uptick in revenue after publishing a guide. 

You can look at categories. Using the example above, you could pull data from the Xbox category sales after launching the buying guide. 

Let’s walk through another example. I was working on a budget request for additional writers for a real estate company. 

Here is how I turned hypotheticals into ROI: 

Here is a link to my example document to give you something to work with. 

Again, it doesn’t have to be accurate. These are simply assumptions based on the data. 

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3. Forecast SEO traffic

“Hey, we need a forecast for SEO in 2023.” This is a common ask I get from CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, etc. 

Before you can forecast traffic, you need to understand the business model. 

If you have a solid understanding of the business model, you can segment your forecasting based on the business structure instead of page type. 

For example, I worked on a project from Brother USA. Originally, I started to prioritize by page type.

But once I understood the business model and the different business units, I was able to deliver a better forecast. 

Once you know what areas of the website you are forecasting for, you can begin to build your SEO budget spreadsheet. 

I connected with Jori Ford, CMO at FoodBoss, to better understand how to forecast SEO. Ford shared:

“I outline existing traffic. Then, determine a projected lift based on SEO activities. After, I align that lift to the existing conversion metrics to show projected conversions. Next, I apply the overall value of those conversions as it relates to the business to do a rough range of potential financial gain whether that be revenue or just “value” vs. “cost.””

So you can see it’s all based on hypothetical scenarios. 

That’s why I recommend thinking about four different scenarios to give your executive a decision based on impact. 

• Scenario 1: Baseline (if we do nothing) 
• Scenario 2: Conservative
• Scenario 3: Average
• Scenario 4: Optimistic 

For example, if Best Buy wants to expand its buying guides, you can break down the investment into something like this. 

If you’re interested in learning more about financial models, I recommend Tom Critchlow’s SEO MBA course. Also, Tom Capper’s article on SEO Forecasting in Google Sheets is amazing. 

On the flip side, you can go a different route if you’re an agency. I connected with Will Critchlow, CEO at Searchpilot, and he shared insight into how his agency goes about this for enterprise companies. 

“We start with the trend from Google of on-site SEO being more unpredictable and less rules-driven than ever before, and the growth of their use of AI/ML continuing that trend. That, combined with the biggest problems large organizations face with SEO is in getting it done and proving the results lets us make the case that their on-site strategy should be built around SEO testing. From there, we build a budget case based on an ROI model that assumes a certain testing cadence, percentage of positive tests, and typical uplifts.”

SEO testing is underrated in enterprise companies. If you have the flexibility to A/B test your SEO tactics, you can make a better case for SEO ROI.

Before you present your enterprise SEO budget to your executives

Get eyes on the overall marketing budget

The golden rule of company budgets has always been that 10% of your company revenue goes toward your marketing budget. 

Then, that 10% is split between online and offline channels. 

In 2022, CMOs spend 56% of total marketing budget on online channels, according to Gartner’s 2022 Marketing Budget report. 

That means you’re fighting for a teeny tiny slice of the pie. 

Here’s a hypothetical range of enterprise SEO companies and how much they should spend on online channels. 

Before pitching your budget, you need to have eyes on the marketing budget before you ask for something above the overall marketing budget. 

Compare your SEO budget to your PPC budget

Again, hypothetically, you have 56% of the overall marketing budget going to online channels. Now you’re competing against other online channels for budget. 

In the same Gartner report, CMOs shared how the online channel marketing budget gets allocated: 

• 10.1% to social advertising
• 9.8% to search advertising
• 9.3% to digital display advertising 
• 8.8% to digital video advertising
• 8.1% to partners
• 8.1% to digital audio advertising
• 8.5% to SEO 
• 7.8% to content and messaging

It’s shocking. Out of the 56% of the overall marketing budget for online channels, CMOs are allocating 8.5% to SEO. 

Here is what that could look like for you: 

Then, with your SEO budget, you need to determine what percentage goes to technical, content and link building. 

Having this deep understanding of the marketing budget gives you a rough idea of the budget you could aim for. 

Embrace the suck of enterprise SEO budgets

Proving ROI in SEO may seem like a pointless, unuseful, tedious task made up of lies. 

But as SEO professionals, we must embrace the suck. 

Sure, it might seem like B.S. to you. But to your CMO or CEO, it might sound the alarm that you’ve been screaming. By speaking the business language, you’re speaking the language of your executives. 

The truth is, SEO professionals need to stop talking about traffic and pageviews and start talking about revenue.

Budget spreadsheets aren’t sexy. But assumptions are free.

Remember, it’s not about an accurate scientific method. It’s about giving you something to connect with the C-suite. 

I outline existing traffic, projected lift based on activities, and align that lift to the existing conversion metrics to show projected conversions. I then apply the overall value of those conversions as it relates to the business to do a rough range of potential financial gain, whether that be revenue or just “value” vs. “cost.”

I’d like to propose we increase monthly active users by 20%, which will achieve $ZZZ based on the LTV or first-time purchase value of a user and will cost us $Y to get there over the next ABC time frame.

The post How to plan and budget for enterprise SEO appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Google Merchant Center will no longer remove listings missing return or refund policy and insufficient contact information

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

Google has updated its Merchant Center policy to no longer automatically remove shopping listings that are missing the return and refund policy and also that have insufficient contact information, the company posted. This specific policy change is only for free listings, not for paid listings.

What is new. Previously, Google would automatically disapprove Google Merchant Center feed listings that either is missing a return policy and/or a refund policy. Google would also automatically disapprove Google Merchant Center feed listings that have insufficient contact information. That is no longer the case, Google said these free listings with these issues will remain active.

One note, the enforcement type has changed for the free listings policies but the policies have not changed. What has changed is just how Google will enforce these policies for free listings.

Limited visibility. Although Google will keep those listings with the issues active, they may have the products limited in visibility within Google Search. Google said, “free listings accounts with these issue statuses will remain active, but their products will have limited visibility on Google.”

Insufficient contact information. Google defines “Insufficient contact information” as “Websites that are missing required contact information, have unverified business information in Merchant Center, or both.” Examples include the Website is missing contact information (e.g. no social media link, contact email address, or phone number); Merchant Center account has missing contact information, such as a physical business address or a verified phone number; contact information is missing from both the store website and Merchant Center account.

Missing return and refund policy. Google defines “Missing return and refund policy” as “Websites that are missing return and refund information.” Examples include the Store return policy pages that are empty or don’t state all the requirements for return; refund policies that aren’t clear or easy to find; no return or refund policy is clearly stated.

Why we care. Google will no longer disapprove these free listings but that does not mean those listings will garner much traffic from Google Search. So you still probably want to address these issues as soon as you can so that the visibility is not hurt by not complying with these policies.

The post Google Merchant Center will no longer remove listings missing return or refund policy and insufficient contact information appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Senator claims Google isn’t doing enough to block ad scams

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

Google isn’t doing enough to crack down on deceptive ads, demonstrating a “troubling record of inadequate due diligence against fraud and abuse.” That’s according to a letter Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Blumenthal’s case against Google. Blumenthal is citing an investigation from last year claiming that Google advertisers are impersonating government websites and purchasing ads in an effort to scam consumers. 

Google claims that it took down the deceptive websites, but a recent review from Blumenthal’s office found that a search for the articles’ keywords pulled up the same ads.

Blumenthal also claims that his office continued to find ads for misleading health supplements and treatments such as detox and weight loss teas, two supplements that are restricted from advertising on Google.

What the senator is saying. 

“I am deeply concerned that Google appears unwilling to protect consumers and small businesses on Google Ads, and has demonstrated inadequate due diligence against fraud and abuse.”

Blumenthal is giving Google until September 2 to announce changes to “prevent misleading or fraudulent ads from appearing to consumers.” He is also requesting Google answer questions pertaining to the research they do into how users interact with ads.

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Google’s response. Google has “strict policies in place to protect people and advertisers alike from abuse,” and “Search ads are also clearly labeled,” says Google spokesperson Davis Thompson in a statement. Thompson also said the company is reviewing the letter and intends to offer a “full response.”

Google’s history of trouble. Rumors about a lawsuit from the US Department of Justice have been swirling around for a while. In June, Google offered to split part of its ad business to avoid an antitrust lawsuit.

Last year the Federal Trade Commission released a report calling social media a “gold mine” for scammers, citing that 95,000 people had been scammed out of $770 million due to fraud on social media.

Although Google isn’t social media, the report demonstrates how easy it is for scammers to use the same online tools available to advertisers to target people.

Why we care. Deceptive ads affect everyone from the consumer to the advertiser. If Google isn’t able to crack down on ad scams and fake websites, then legitimate businesses could suffer as a result. Ad policies will become tougher, and the general public could lose trust, making it harder for brands to succeed online. 

The post Senator claims Google isn’t doing enough to block ad scams appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Apple is expanding ads on iPhone and iPad

Monday, August 15th, 2022

Apple will be expanding ads to new areas of the iPhone and iPad, in an effort to drive revenue. 

App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Last year Apple launched ATT which allowed consumers to decide whether they would allow third-party apps to track their activity across apps. The feature was said to cause billions of dollars in losses for Meta, Snap, and other, smaller developers. In response, Meta was rumored to be developing Basic Ads that only tracked the most simple metrics such as engagement or video views. 

The current state of Apple ads. Apple’s current advertising efforts include display ads inside the News and Stocks apps, in the App Store (advertising apps) across all Apple devices, and inside TV+. A portion of ads in the News app go to publishers, and will appear even if you subscribe for $10 a month. You can choose to turn off the ad personalization feature in your device, but the system will still use information from your device, carrier, and types of articles you’re reading to show ads. Apple says they can do this because the system “does not follow you across apps and websites owned by other companies.” ATT is designed to prevent tracking across outside apps and websites. Apple says that since this isn’t happening, they don’t need to show a pop-up.

Where Apple ads are heading. According to a report from Bloomberg, display ads are shown in the search tab. But soon Apple will expand the ads to the main Today tab as well as in third-party app download pages. For search ads in the app store, developers can pay to have their apps featured in the results when users search terms related to the app.

Apple ads group vice president in charge Todd Teresi discusses increasing the ads business to “double digits” from the $4 billion in annual revenue it is generating now. According to Blomberg, that could mean expanding search ads to Maps, adding ads to digital storefronts like Books and Podcasts, and multiple tiers of TV+. 

Read the full article. You can read the full Bloomberg article here. 

Why we care. An expansion could open up a lot more, potentially cheaper, advertising opportunities. Brands who are interested in paying to have their business listings sponsored may be able to do so just as they could on Yelp or other local search platforms. Although tracking would be limited, brands focused on vanity metrics such as engagement and video views could still leverage data from your Apple activity to make the ads worthwhile. Given that there is less user data for targeting, the cost per tap would likely be lower, and brands would need to test placement options to ensure that they’re getting the most out of it.

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

What SEOs can learn about aligning with consensus as described in Google’s QRG

Monday, August 15th, 2022

When Google announced they were improving featured snippets using the power of MUM, some of the wording around aligning with consensus reminded me of things that are described in the search quality evaluator guidelines (a.k.a., the Quality Rater Guidelines, or QRG). 

While the QRG are not an exact blueprint of Google’s algorithms, they give us many clues as to what it is that Google is attempting to accomplish. Google recommends studying the rater guidelines:

“If you understand how raters learn to assess good content, that might help you improve your own content. In turn, you might perhaps do better in Search.” 

Google, “What site owners should know about Google’s core updates“

We have had good success in helping sites improve by assessing them like a quality rater would. I highly recommend you study them!

This article will discuss:

• What it means to align with consensus.
• What the QRG says about aligning with consensus.
• What Google’s expanding content advisories could mean for sites writing on fringe or alternative topics.
• Google’s new content advisories for information gaps or low quality sites.
• Why understanding the concept of E-A-T is incredibly important.

What does it mean to align with consensus?

In Google’s blog post, they tell us they are introducing changes to what they call, “featured snippet callouts.” This is the part of the featured snippet that is bolded and in a larger font – essentially the answer to the searcher’s question.

In the example given, if a searcher asks. “how long does it take for light from the sun to reach earth”, the featured snippet callout would be “8 and 1/3 minutes.”

Google search for [how long does it take for light from the sun to reach earth]

They tell us that these callouts will be checked “against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there’s a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing.”

At the time of writing this article, if you do this search, there is not yet a featured snippet with a callout, but you can clearly see that there is consensus from the top ranking sites on this answer.

Even though the results use slightly different wording – 499 seconds is the same as 8 1/3 minutes for example – there is a general consensus that this is a true fact. Google can likely feel comfortable that this answer is correct and therefore can feel confident in displaying it as a featured snippet callout.

Google says they’ve “found that this consensus-based technique has meaningfully improved the quality and helpfulness of featured snippets.”

With this change, aligning with general consensus (i.e. what the majority of high-quality sources say) is likely very important when it comes to winning featured snippet rankings, especially for “know-simple” queries where the searcher is looking for a specific concise answer.

If your content contradicts what the authoritative sites in your vertical say, Google will probably hesitate to show your answer as a featured snippet callout. 

Google is not saying that aligning with general consensus is a ranking factor at this point beyond being considered for featured snippet callouts. Given that there is a lot of information in the QRG to instruct the raters to assess whether content contradicts consensus, I think it’s reasonable to assume that for YMYL topics, aligning with consensus is important.

Whenever the topic of consensus comes up in SEO circles, it causes controversy.

Just because a bunch of people agree on something, does that make it factual?

It’s important to note it’s not just any site on the web that Google is looking at to determine whether there is consensus about an answer. They’re not looking for the most popular answer on the web. Rather, they say they are looking for consensus from “multiple high quality sources on the web”. (Google’s blog post on what site owners should know about core updates tells us a bit more about what they consider to be a high quality website.

Does this mean that any article that contradicts the viewpoint of highly ranking sites for a YMYL topic has no chance of ever being ranked by Google? I think Google possibly has a solution for this, which I will discuss shortly. 

What the QRG says about aligning with consensus

When the raters are taught to assess content, in several places of the QRG they are told to determine whether the content on the page aligns with expert consensus. This wording has been in the QRG for some time.

For YMYL topics, Google tells the raters it is a sign of high quality when content aligns with expert consensus and low quality if it does not.

In order for the raters to consider content high quality, it must be “factually accurate for the topic and must be supported by expert consensus where such consensus exists.”

In order for news articles or information pages on scientific topics to be considered high quality by a rater, they need to “represent established scientific consensus where such consensus exists.”

Again, for YMYL topics the raters are told to assess whether the page aligns with medical, scientific or even historical consensus.

In the most recent update to the QRG, Google stressed in several places that YMYL content should be assessed in terms of whether the topic, or misinformation on the topic has the potential to cause harm. “Health related advice that contradicts well-established expert consensus and could result in serious harm” is to be given the “lowest” rating by raters.

Aligning with expert consensus is important for sites that want to rank on Google with content covering YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics. 

Examples of sites that do not align with consensus

The QRG gives us several examples of content that raters should assess as low quality because they do not align with expert or scientific consensus. Here are a few.

1. A site promoting “proana” or “pro-anorexia” as a lifestyle choice

(Image of the site)

This site promotes anorexia as a lifestyle choice, which contradicts the recommendation of most doctors. Anorexia is viewed by doctors as an eating disorder and considered a mental illness.

If you read the content on the site, some of it is not bad. There is some relatively decent weight loss advice combined with the potentially harmful recommendation to drastically reduce calories eaten in a day. 

What do “high quality sites” have to say on this topic? No matter which search I did, the top ranking site exclaimed that proana was unsafe.

Google is unlikely to rank this page because it has advice that contradicts medical consensus and also has the potential to cause serious harm.

2. A page about the stomach flu

(image of the site)

There are a few reasons why raters are told to assess this page as “lowest” quality. It is an article giving medical advice, but there is no evidence of medical E-A-T.

The raters are not told exactly which parts of this article contradict expert consensus and to be honest, most of the advice in this article does seem to be in line with what experts recommend. The only fault I could find is that the content recommends not eating where the Mayo Clinic recommends a patient with the flu does try to eat certain easy to digest foods.

Google search [should you eat if you have the stomach flu]

I think the main concern with this content is that it is giving medical advice despite lacking medical E-A-T. Still, it is interesting to see that the raters are told it contradicts scientific consensus.

3. The Flat Earth society

(image of the site)

This is an interesting one. The site has content that contradicts the general scientific consensus that the earth is round.

Google is confident here:

While you and I likely agree that the idea of the earth being flat is just silly, there are many people who truly believe that it is. But Google does not want to show searchers this information as it clearly contradicts scientific consensus.

Should they though? 

What if people are clearly searching for information that is contrary to consensus?

There is a line in the QRG that says that for medical or scientific pages to be rated as meeting a searcher’s needs, the content “must represent well-established scientific/medical consensus unless the user is clearly seeking an alternative viewpoint.” (Bolding added by me.)

What bothers me is that this is not yet the case for many queries in Google search.

Based on reading the example above, I did some searches for [is the earth flat]. I was curious to read the viewpoint of people who hold this belief – I wanted to understand why they believe this and to hear it from their perspective.

I tried several searches – [explanation of why the earth is flat], [why the earth is flat – flat earther’s viewpoint], or [evidence supporting the earth being flat]. These articles clearly exist. People like to write about their theories!

But even though I was clearly seeking an alternative viewpoint, Google only surfaced articles that were telling me why the earth was not flat and how everyone who says so is wrong. My intent as a searcher actually was to read information that contradicts scientific consensus. 

Who is Google to decide that I cannot search for and find alternative viewpoints on the web? Is Google acting like an overprotective mom deciding which content is safe for me to read?

I think it is possible that Google’s “expanding content advisories for information gaps” described in their announcement could be the first step in addressing this issue.

Content advisories for information gaps

Google already shows content advisories where news about a breaking story is unfolding quickly on the web. They may show searchers a message saying, “It looks like these results are changing quickly. If this topic is new, it can sometimes take some time for results to be added by reliable sources.” 

In Google’s recent blog post they tell us they are expanding this advisory beyond breaking news stories.

In the example Google gives, the search was [how to get in touch with the Illuminati]. I did this search and did indeed get one of these warnings:

While there was a historical group called the illuminati, today when they are mentioned general consensus is that much of the information discussed falls under the category of unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

Again, though, is it Google’s responsibility to protect me from misleading or potentially harmful information on the web? What if I legitimately was doing research and wanted to read information supporting this conspiracy theory? 

Following the warning that Google may not have reliable information on this topic, they actually do display some sites I could read to explore this topic further.

I believe, although it remains to be seen, that this advisory warning is Google’s answer when it comes to people who are clearly wanting to see results from a viewpoint that contradicts consensus or is potentially unsafe. They can now present searchers with sites that present an alternative viewpoint, even if there is concern that the content could be misleading or harmful.

I could see this actually being good for many alternative medical websites! These content advisories may allow Google to display sites discussing medical treatments that are contrary to scientific consensus if it is clear that this is what the searcher is looking for.

Understanding E-A-T is incredibly important

I was thrilled to see Google emphasize in this blog post the importance of understanding the concept of E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness). 

Google wants to show results from authentic sources.

They tell us in their recent blog post that they are expanding the “About this result” feature to help searchers understand more about the company whose website they are viewing.

This all sounds very much like E-A-T as described in the QRG.

The QRG is absolutely filled with information to help us understand what the concept of E-A-T means. Each time I read them I find more clues that can help us improve E-A-T.

This recently published Google document called Search Quality Rater Guidelines: An Overview gives a really good summary of how raters assess E-AT:

E-A-T is so much more than simply adding an author bio. For some content, an author bio may not even be necessary or even helpful! 

E-A-T includes having content that takes time, effort, expertise or talent/skill to create.

If you’re writing on topics where a searcher would expect to see an answer written by an expert, then yes, demonstrating the article was written by someone with expertise, or perhaps being known as a company with expertise in this area is important.

Having a reputation for knowing your topic is a big part of E-A-T.

Consensus: What SEOs can learn from Google

We spoke a lot in this article about the importance of aligning with consensus, especially if you write on YMYL topics. I’d like to reiterate that Google’s blog post was talking about using consensus amongst high quality sites as a component to help them produce better featured snippet callouts. 

They were not confirming that consensus is a ranking factor when it comes to ranking in organic search.

However, given there is huge emphasis on aligning with consensus in the QRG, I think it is reasonable to assume that if we want to have our YMYL content rank on Google, aligning with consensus is something we should strive for.

This is likely a component of trustworthiness, the T in E-A-T.

My advice:

• If most of your site aligns with general/expert consensus but some content is controversial, it may be helpful to have the controversial content separated into its own subdomain or folder. It might also be helpful to present both sides of the story in your writing and make it clear that the content on this page does not line up with what many experts believe. Or, a better option may be to remove the content that is controversial.
• If the majority of your site contains content that contradicts the consensus of high quality sites in your vertical, it is unlikely Google will rank your content unless it is preceded by the “content information gap” warning mentioned above. You may want to look at marketing more on social media, email marketing or some channel other than Google organic search.
• If you have content that is borderline — actually good science, but not yet widely accepted by all experts in your field as valid, I would recommend doing all you can to get the experts in your field talking about this subject. Good PR could help here. Also, ensure everything you write is backed by authoritative references and written by someone who has extensive expertise. As your topic becomes more mainstream, and experts start to align with your position, you may find you are able to rank better.
• If you’re not sure whether your viewpoint could be seen as contradicting consensus, do some searches to see what the top ranking sites say. For example, if you wrote on a controversial topic in the financial world, you could search for something like, “is [keyword] beneficial site:bloomberg.com” or “the harm of [keyword] site:wsj.com”. If your viewpoint differs, you need to really consider whether you want to publish this article. 
• Do all you can to demonstrate your E-A-T. Read the QRG, especially the examples, and thoroughly study Google’s questions they say to ask yourself in regards to content.

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Google reenables the validate fix feature in Search Console and adds new classifications

Monday, August 15th, 2022

Google has reenabled the validate fix feature in Google Search Console while launching the new “more simplified” classifications for the coverage reports. This was expected, earlier this month Google temporarily disabled the validate fix feature in order to launch these new classification labels.

Validate fix is back. Now when you go into Google Search Console and click on some of the coverage reports, the “validate fix” button should be back. Google disabled it while upgrading the classification system. There was a notice that read “Limited functionality: We are making some minor updates in the next few days. During this period you will not be able to issue new validation requests.” That notice has been removed and you now have the validate fix feature back.

Here is a screenshot I took:

New classifications. As mentioned above, Google launched more simplified classifications for these reports. Instead of the coverage report showing errors, valid with warnings and valid; now the report just shows invalid or valid information.

Google said the URLs or items in the Search Console report are no longer grouped at the top level by three or more status categories, i.e. Valid, Warning, and Error. Now they are grouped or classified into two more broad statuses that reflect whether those URLs or items are invalid or not. Google said invalid means that there is a report-specific critical issue in the page or item, and not invalid means that the item might still contain warnings, but has no critical issues. The implications and exact terms for the valid and invalid states varies by report type, Google added.

Google explained “grouping the top-level item (a rich result for the rich result reports, a page or URL for the other reports) into two groups: pages or items with critical issues are labeled something like invalid; pages or items without critical issues are labeled something like valid. We think this new grouping will make it easier to see quickly which issues affect your site’s appearance on Google, in order to help you prioritize your fixes.”

New Tour. When you login and go to the coverage overview section, you can now click on “full report” and Google will ask you if you want to see a tour of the changes, here is what the tour looks like:

We have a lot more detail on these changes in our earlier story over here.

Why we care. This should make it easier for you to understand errors in Search Console reports and thus which items to prioritize over others. This change is just a reporting change and does not change how Google crawls, indexes or ranks your content. But it is a change and you need to understand what changed and why.

Postscript. Google has now confirmed this is live with this tweet:

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3 ways the customer journey can guide SEO

Monday, August 15th, 2022

Understanding how your users engage with your brand is vital to delivering a great customer experience.  

This is why you shouldn’t overlook the customer journey. It allows you to shape your website’s user experience (UX) and content strategies based on the people who matter – your customers.

Let’s explore how the customer journey can help guide your SEO program.

Customer journey and SEO

A well-mapped customer journey can greatly benefit SEO. 

Because SEO is a broad discipline, it is easy to scatter your efforts. Some people get too immersed in perfecting one aspect – either technical, on-page or external. 

Putting a premium on the customer journey helps align your SEO program and focus your efforts on what’s valuable. 

Whether you look at the customer journey as a linear or multi-touch path, four-level funnel, or a flywheel, you must implement an overall strategy. 

Within that strategy and even tactical activities and plans benefits from aligning with the customer journey.

Here are a few areas where the customer journey can guide your SEO efforts.

1. Mapping keywords and topics to the journey

Are you struggling with an extensive keyword list? Do you want to optimize for all the terms that you know are relevant but find it challenging?

Using your customer journey maps, you can get your content right overall and leverage the clarity for SEO. 

For instance, the best time to educate prospects is when they’re still in the research and exploratory phase. 

When someone is just gaining awareness of your brand, you should aim to become their trusted resource. Help them understand their problem and identify possible solutions. Avoid the urge to sell.

This strategy often works for B2B, but it can play out even in ecommerce and B2C. 

Let’s say you’re selling groomsmen gifts. You can plan on creating a comprehensive guide for everything an engaged couple needs to know when planning for their wedding. 

Doing so will help you get found as a great resource – even before they realize they need specific groomsmen gifts.

Building awareness and brand affinity early in the journey will help customers keep engaging with you until they’re ready to buy.

At that initial awareness stage, take the terms that you know are not likely to convert but are important. Then, strategically plan your content and optimization so you can be found at this stage in the customer journey.

The same is true for terms where you know the intent is to convert. Terms that show purchase intent – like a search for a specific product’s part number or action-oriented lead generation terms (e.g., “dentist near me”) – are further in the customer journey. 

Mapping the right keywords to this stage is critical too. At this point, we want to get them close to a purchase, contact form or another way to engage with us.

Don’t bury the call to action. Avoid hitting them with thought leadership or general awareness content.

Based on your customer journey mapping, you will also find a lot of in-between queries and topics to tie your content to. Use your understanding of the journey to categorize keywords and topics and map them to the right content on your site.

Hopefully, by categorizing your keywords this way and looking at content needs through this lens, you can gain some refreshing focus and clarity for your content plans and investment.

2. Conversion rate optimization goals and objectives

So you’ve invested a lot of time in mapping keywords and topics to respective stages of the customer journey and developed the content to fill any gaps. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that everything will work perfectly as intended.

Regardless of how objective and specific you are, there will always be something to test, optimize, and build upon.

In some cases, you might find out new things about what the customer journey looks like.

In others, you’ll get the impressions and traffic you want but won’t see the user move to the next step you expect in the journey.

This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. 

Go back to your historical data and your projected data. 

• What percentage of users typically do what next? 
• What do you expect them to do?
• Do they return to the site three days later on a more specific page? 
• Do they usually visit certain pages or take specific actions?

Dig deeper. See what other keywords you could be optimizing for. 

Understand when they bounce back to Google and how they might refine searches. Leverage data from other channels.

Getting granular with Google Analytics, heat mapping and CRO tools, and your customer relationship management (CRM) platform will help. 

Leverage them to learn where the journey is accurate, whereas the UX or content needs improvement. Find areas where you can optimize the assumed or planned journey.

SEO elements must be incorporated here to include technical factors (site speed, Core Web Vitals, indexing), on-page, content strategy and calls to action.

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3. Measurement and attribution

I could have listed this first as it is woven through my look at how the customer journey and SEO converge. 

I assume you have a well-defined journey. However, as I noted above, using CRO and other ways to optimize the journey and website overall, you will need to measure what is happening to make informed decisions fully.

Are the keywords you’re focused on at each stage driving traffic to your intended pages? 

Are the users doing what you want them to do and going deeper in the journey?

You’ll find weaknesses in your analytics setup and how you look at SEO and overall web analytics when you put it to the test. That’s a good thing.

Find new ways to view and measure the customer journey. Also, align your measurement of SEO factors and performance against that journey. 

This will help you focus your efforts and not broadly bucket global stats like rankings, impressions, traffic, and conversions.

Getting this deep, you can see what you’re leaving on the table. Perhaps you’re focusing too heavily on awareness keywords (and not getting conversions). Or you might be fixated on just action/”convert now” terms without fostering “unaware” users through the journey.

Conclusion

Focus and objective guidance is essential for SEO. Any prioritization and alignment with web and broader strategies can help, whether you have extensive resources to invest or can only adopt a lean approach.

Through leveraging a mapped-out customer journey, you can define needs, strategies, tactics, and goals for content. At the same time, you can manage expectations and investments.

SEO should not be done on an island. It’s best implemented as part of the whole. Customer journey thinking brings you closer to the overall marketing plan and strategy. Leverage it as an opportunity.

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Webinar: The key to email marketing success

Saturday, August 13th, 2022

Marketers are being asked to do more with available resources while still delivering against tough targets. Pivoting this from a no-win mission to a job-well-done scenario is a no-brainer. The simple solution? Entrusting your email marketing to a reliable and scalable platform.

During this webinar, you’ll learn how Hertz has tackled their ESP sprawl, grew its marketing team and scaled operations through consolidation efforts.

Register today for “Why Finding the Right Platform is the Key to Winning in Email Marketing,” presented by Salesforce.

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Google reporting issue with Search Console Discover report

Friday, August 12th, 2022

Google had a data logging error that impacted the Discover performance report in Google Search Console. This occurred on July 26, 2022 and may result in a drop in the number of clicks and impressions that Google logged.

This did not impact your rankings or visibility, it was just a reporting glitch.

The issue. Google wrote that on July 26 “due to a logging error, site owners might see a drop in their Discover clicks and impressions during this period. This is only a logging error, it is not a drop in actual views or clicks.”

Reporting issue only. Again, this did not impact your visibility in Google Discover, it is just an issue with reporting and data logging. So it may appear like you saw a drop in visibility but in reality, it was just an issue with Google’s reporting engine.

Here is a screenshot showing the annotation Google put on the report:

Fix coming? There does not appear to be a fix coming to replace the data, it seems like the data is gone and you will just have to annotate the date and move on.

Discover is hard. As a reminder, Google Discover traffic is super volatile, and thus, seeing massive spikes or massive declines in your Discover clicks and impressions is normal. So the loss of this data will be hard to backward engineer for any marketer or SEO.

Why we care. This is important for you to know and communicate to your clients, boss, stakeholders, etc when providing these reports to your client. So make sure to annotate the chart, which Google did for you, and then communicate these issues when presenting them to others.

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