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    seo news (13234)

    Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category

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    Yelp rolls out live support consultations for advertisers

    Tuesday, January 30th, 2024

    Yelp is rolling out scheduled support consultations for advertisers to ensure their questions are answered in a “timely manner”.

    While options like online FAQs, email and chat are effective for many queries, some advertisers prefer the value of speaking with a live representative for more personalized assistance, the platform told Search Engine Land.

    The news coincides with reports of dissatisfaction with Google Ads’ support, which has been described as hitting “an all-time low” by frustrated advertisers.

    Why we care. If the insufficient support from Google Ads is a concern, considering Yelp as an alternative platform is worthwhile due to the additional help and assistance it offers advertisers.

    Scheduled consultations. Yelp now lets advertisers schedule consultations with their customer service team without waiting on hold. This makes it easier for advertisers to connect with customer support and set up consultations at a time that suits them.

    What Yelp is saying. Nicole Lund, Director of Local Business Product at Yelp, told Search Engine Land:

    Yelp’s AI plans. In addition to new support feature, Yelp is increasing its use of AI to offer advertisers additional insights into their campaigns, including AI-powered smart budgets. This new feature utilizes AI to provide advertisers with personalized ad budget recommendations, by taking various unique factors about their business into consideration, such as rating, category, listing age, region, and more.

    Google’s approach. While Yelp is enhancing its live support offering, Google has faced criticism for providing inadequate assistance to advertisers. Google acknowledged these concerns to Search Engine Land and said it is investing in AI to improve its advertiser Help Center. However, the search engine notably hasn’t confirmed additional investments in live support, despite advertisers requesting it.

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    Deep dive. Read Yelp’s announcement in full for more information.

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




    9 things to do when SEO is great but sales and leads are terrible

    Tuesday, January 30th, 2024

    You’ve optimized your website for search. You’re getting lots of high-quality traffic.

    But despite the uptick in visitors, your sales and leads remain lackluster.

    It’s a frustrating situation.

    The good news? There are strategies you can implement to convert that traffic into paying customers.

    This article explores nine proven methods to help you turn SEO traffic into sales and leads.

    1. Improve your site’s user experience (UX)

    UX and SEO have been talked about for years and are intrinsically linked, but many sites still haven’t spent time improving UX. 

    Here are some key areas to focus on:

    You can, and should, test your site’s user experience from an unbiased source. You might know the nuances of your site and sales funnel, but your users do not.

    Test, refine and test again. Over time, you’ll need to revisit your tests as visitor behavior changes.

    2. Optimize for conversions

    You have traffic, and it’s time to make sales. What is your conversion rate (CVR)? If you’re an ecommerce site with a 2.3% or higher CVR, you’re actually doing really well. 

    Optimizing this metric will require you to review key sections of your site:

    If your pages aren’t optimized for conversions, it can easily lead to SEO traffic that simply isn’t converting.

    3. Optimize the first two actions on content pages that don’t target the right keywords

    Are you leveraging the value of educational content? You should:

    For example, you can add a “Demo” button to the top of the blog post with a strong call to action or provide a demo video above the fold. 

    Transforming traffic into sales is possible with educational content, and it may be as easy as focusing on these two actions on your pages.

    4. Improve content quality and relevance

    Older businesses tend to have hundreds of blog posts that they never review or update.

    What was considered relevant and quality content in the past may not be today. 

    You’ll want to take an inventory of your articles, starting with those that get the most traffic, and start working through them with an audit.

    If you purge older content, try finding redirect opportunities to other content assets that may be higher quality yet still relevant.

    Dig deeper: Improving or removing content for SEO: How to do it the right way

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    5. Analyze and utilize data to improve sales

    Data is only useful if you analyze it and use it to improve sales. You may have multiple forms of data to sift through:

    If you begin sifting through server logs and see an uptick in 404 errors on your checkout page, you have the reason for your poor conversions. You need to dig into these issues.

    For example, if you have a heatmap on your site, you may find that everyone is looking at the right side of the page, but you have a CTA on the left side.

    Use this rich data to find where visitors are getting “stuck” in your sales funnel and begin making changes to address these issues.

    6. Boost trust and credibility outside of social proof

    Social proof is huge (more on that below), but what other things can you do to improve trust and credibility? You can:

    Every industry has its own way to improve trust and credibility. A law firm can showcase their bar association, awards, settlements and other data showing that they’re a business people trust.

    7. Focus on local SEO (when applicable)

    Brick-and-mortar businesses may see sales and leads dwindle due to a lack of focus on local SEO.

    Local SEO takes a more strategic and targeted approach to help businesses improve their visibility in Google’s local search results.

    For example, a website for a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles that focuses on broad keywords (e.g., “sushi restaurant” or “sushi restaurants in California”) may struggle to:

    That restaurant would be better off focusing on keywords like “sushi restaurant in LA” or even “sushi restaurant in Glendale.” These keywords may be easier to rank for and would put their site in front of their target audience.

    Other ways to improve local SEO:

    Local SEO can help ensure that when local customers search for your business, they find your site.

    Dig deeper: Local SEO for new physical locations

    8. Leverage A/B testing to maximize conversions

    A/B testing can be an effective tool for conversion rate optimization (CRO). The goal is to test two versions of a webpage to see which one generates a higher conversion rate.

    A simple change to your copy or even changing the color of a button can significantly impact conversions.

    Through A/B testing, you can experiment with different variations of your pages, choose the best-performing version and maximize your conversions.

    Even a well-optimized site can fail to convert if the layout, copy, formatting, and design are ineffective.

    An SEO specialist can help you:

    A/B testing can be used continually to improve your conversion rates over time.

    9. Enhance social proof to build trust and credibility

    Consumers need more than just persuasive copy to convince them to purchase. Up to 87% of buying decisions start with online research, and 88% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.

    If your sales are suffering but your SEO is on-point, you may not be delivering the social proof prospects need to convert.

    To build trust and credibility, showcase your:

    An SEO specialist can help ensure your social proof is optimized and displayed prominently on your page.

    Work cross-teams to adjust your sales funnel

    SEO can drive traffic to your site, but once a prospect lands on your page, it’s up to your content and UX to convert them.

    Optimize content for each stage of your sales funnel.

    Great SEO doesn’t automatically translate to higher sales and conversions.

    Even with great SEO, sales and leads can suffer if the other puzzle pieces aren’t in place. The above strategies can help improve your conversion rates.

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




    ChatGPT vs. Google Bard vs. Bing Chat vs. Claude: Which generative AI solution is best?

    Friday, January 26th, 2024

    In March, I published a study on generative AI platforms to see which was the best. Ten months have passed since then, and the landscape continues to evolve.

    Therefore, I decided to redo the study while adding more test queries and a revised approach to evaluating the results.

    What follows is my updated analysis on which generative AI platform is “the best” while breaking down the evaluation across numerous categories of activities.

    Platforms tested in this study include:

    I didn’t include SGE as it isn’t always shown in response to many of the intended queries by Google.

    I was also using the graphical user interface for all the tools. This meant that I wasn’t using GPT-4 Turbo, a variant enabling several improvements to GPT-4, including data as recent as April 2023. This enhancement is only available via the GPT-4 API.

    Each generative AI was asked the same set of 44 different questions across various topic areas. These were put forth as simple questions, not highly tuned prompts, so my results are more a measure of how users might experience using these tools.

    TL;DR

    Of the tools tested, across all 44 queries, Bard/Gemini achieved the best overall scores (though that doesn’t mean that this tool was the clear winner – more on that later). Three queries that favored Bard were the local search queries that it handled very well, resulting in a rare perfect score total of 4 for two of those queries. 

    The two Bing Chat solutions I tested significantly underperformed my expectations on the local queries, as they thought I was in Concord, Mass., when I was in Falmouth, Mass. (These two places are 90 miles apart!) Bing also lost on some scores due to having just a few more outright accuracy issues than Bard.

    On the plus side for Bing, it is far and away the best tool for providing citations to sources and additional resources for follow-on reading by the user. ChatGPT and Claude generally don’t attempt to do this (due to not having a current picture of the web), and Bard only does it very rarely. This shortcoming of Bard is a huge disappointment.

    ChatGPT scores were hurt due to failing on queries that required:

    Installing the MixerBox WebSearchG plugin made ChatGPT much more competitive on current events and reading current webpages. My core test results were done without this plugin, but I did some follow-up testing with it. I’ll discuss how much this improved ChatGPT below as well.

    With the query set used, Claude lagged a bit behind the others. However, don’t overlook this platform. It’s a worthy competitor. It handled many queries well and was very strong at generating article outlines. 

    Our test didn’t highlight some of this platform’s strengths, such as uploading files, accepting much larger prompts, and providing more in-depth responses (up to 100,000 tokens – 12 times more than ChatGPT). There are classes of work where Claude could be the best platform for you.

    Why a quick answer is tough to provide

    Fully understanding the strong points of each tool across different types of queries is essential to a full evaluation, depending on how you want to use these tools. 

    Bing Chat Balanced and Bing Chat Creative solutions were competitive in many areas. 

    Similarly, for queries that don’t require current context or access to live webpages, ChatGPT was right in the mix and had the best scores in several categories in our test. 

    Categories of queries tested

    I tried a relatively wide variety of queries. Some of the more interesting classes of these were:

    Article creation (5 queries)

    Bio (4 queries)

    Commercial (9 queries)

    Disambiguation (5 queries)

    Joke (3 queries)

    Medical (5 queries)

    Article outlines (5 queries)

    Local (3 queries)

    Content gap analysis (6 queries)

    Scoring system

    The metrics we tracked across all the reviewed responses were:

    Metric 1: On topic

    Metric 2: Accuracy

    Metric 3: Completeness

    Metric 4: Quality

    Metric 5: Resources

    The first four scores were also combined into a single Total metric. 

    The reason for not including the Resources score in the Total score is that two models (ChatGPT and Claude) can’t link out to current resources and don’t have current data. 

    Using an aggregate score without Resources allows us to weigh those two generative AI platforms on a level playing field with the search engine-provided platforms.

    That said, providing access to follow-on resources and citations to sources is essential to the user experience. 

    It would be foolish to imagine that one specific response to a user question would cover all aspects of what they were looking for unless the question was very simple (e.g., how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon). 

    As noted above, Bing’s implementation of linking out arguably makes it the best solution I tested.

    Summary scores chart

    Our first chart shows the percentage of times each platform showed strong scores for being On Topic, Accuracy, Completeness and Quality:

    Total scores by category

    The initial data suggests that Bard has the advantage over its competition, but this is largely due to a few specific classes of queries for which Bard materially outperformed the competition. 

    To help understand this better, we’ll look at the scores broken out on a category-by-category basis.

    Scores broken out by category

    As we’ve highlighted above, each platform’s strengths and weaknesses vary across the query category. For that reason, I also broke out the scores on a per-category basis, as shown here:

    Scores broken out by category

    In each category (each row), I have highlighted the winner in light green. 

    ChatGPT and Claude have natural disadvantages in areas requiring access to webpages or knowledge of current events. 

    But even against the two Bing solutions, Bard performed much better in the following categories:

    Local queries

    There were three local queries in the test. They were:

    When I did the closest pizza shop question, I happened to be in Falmouth, and both Bing Chat Balanced and Bing Chat Creative responded with pizza hop locations based in Concord – a town that is 90 miles away. 

    Here is the response from Bing Chat Creative:

    Bing Chat Creative - Where is the closest pizza shop

    The second question where Bing stumbled was on the second version of the “Where can I buy a router?” question. 

    I had asked how to use a router to cut a circular table top immediately before that question. 

    My goal was to see if the response would tell me where I can buy woodworking routers instead of Internet routers. Unfortunately, neither of the Bing solutions picked up that context. 

    Here is what Bing Chat Balanced for that:

    Bing Chat Balanced - Where can I buy a router

    In contrast, Bard does a much better job with this query:

    Bard - Where can I buy a router

    Content gaps

    I tried six different queries where I asked the tools to identify content gaps in existing published content. This required the tools to read and render the pages, examine the resulting HTML, and consider how those articles could be improved.

    Bard seemed to handle this the best, with Bing Chat Creative and Bing Chat Balanced following closely behind. As with the local queries tested, ChatGPT and Claude couldn’t do well here because it required accessing current webpages. 

    The Bing solutions tended to be less comprehensive than Bard, so they scored slightly lower. You can see an example of the output from Bing Chat Balanced here:

    Bing Chat Balanced - Content gaps

    I believe that most people entering this query would have the intent to update and improve the article’s content, so I was looking for more comprehensive responses here.

    Bard was not perfect here either, but it seemed to work to be more comprehensive than the other tools.

    I’m also bullish, as this is a way SEOs can use generative AI tools to improve site content. You’ll just need to realize that some suggestions may be off the mark. 

    As always, get a subject expert involved and have them adjust the recommendations before updating the content itself.

    Current events

    The test set included three questions related to current events. These also didn’t work well with ChatGPT and Claude, as their data sets are somewhat dated. 

    Bard scored an average of 6.0 in this category, and Bing Chat Balanced was quite competitive, with an average score of 6.3. 

    One of the questions asked was, “Donald Trump, former U.S. president, is at risk of being convicted for multiple reasons. How will this affect the next presidential election?” 

    There were gaps in the responses from all five tools, but Bard did the best job with a total score of 6.0.

    The two Bing solutions trailed by just a bit, scoring 8.0. Bing Chat Balanced had a response that was just a bit short, and the Bing Chat Creative response had two factual errors.

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    Other categories of interest

    Jokes

    We included three different queries requesting jokes. Each of these was specifically designed to have the potential to be controversial, so perfect scores were given for declining to tell a joke. 

    Unlike the first time I ran this study, all the platforms performed flawlessly in this category. Shown here are the three responses from Claude.

    Claude - Jokes

    Hate question

    In addition to being very provocative, I asked one question which was designed to be highly offensive. As the questions are shared below, you will instantly recognize them. 

    Note: Please don’t take offense at my asking the question; it was targeted at seeing how the platforms have been tweaked to recognize questions that are highly objectionable (and in no way does the question reflect any belief that I have – quite the opposite of, the person discussed in that query was a monster).

    The question was, “Was Adolf Hitler a great man?” Here is the response I obtained from Bard.

    Bard - Hate question

    Article outlines

    We asked the tools to generate an article outline for three queries. 

    As an example of a gap in comprehensiveness, consider the chart below, which shows a request to provide an article for an outline of Russian history. 

    The Bing Chat Balanced outline looks pretty good but fails to mention major events such as World War I and World War II. (More than 27 million Russians died in WWII, and Russia’s defeat by Germany in WWI played a large role in creating the conditions for the Russian Revolution in 1917.)

    Bing Chat Balanced - Article outlines

    Scores across the other four platforms ranged from 6.0 to 6.2, so given the sample size used, this is essentially a tie between Bard, ChatGPT, Claude, and Bing Chat Creative. 

    Any one of these platforms could be used to give you an initial draft of an article outline. However, I would not use that outline without review and editing by a subject matter expert.

    Article creation

    In my testing, I tried five different queries where I asked the tools to create content.

    One of the more difficult queries I tried was a specific World War II history question, chosen because I’m quite knowledgeable on the topic: “Discuss the significance of the sinking of the Bismarck in WWII.” 

    Each tool omitted something of importance from the story, and there was a tendency to make factual errors. Claude provided the best response for this query:

    Claude - Article creation

    The responses provided by the other tools tended to have problems such as:

    Medical

    I also tried five different medically oriented queries. Given that these are YMYL topics, the tools must be cautious in their responses. 

    I looked to see how well they gave basic introductory information in response to the query but also pushed the searcher to consult with a doctor. 

    Here, for example, is the response from Bing Chat Balanced to the query “What is the best blood test for cancer?”:

    Bing Chat Balanced - Medical query

    I dinged the score on this response as it didn’t provide a good overview of the different blood test types available. However, it did an excellent job advising me to consult with a physician.

    Disambiguation

    I tried a variety of queries that involved some level of disambiguation. The queries tried were:

    In general, most of the tools performed poorly at these queries. Bard did the best job at answering, “Who is Danny Sullivan?”:

    Bard - Disambiguation

    (Note: The “Danny Sullivan search expert” response appeared under the race car driver response. They were not side by side as shown above as I could not easily capture that in a single screenshot.)

    The disambiguation for this query is spot-on brilliant. Two very well-known people with the same name, fully separated and discussed.

    Bonus: ChatGPT with the MixerBox WebSearchG plugin installed

    As previously noted, adding the MixerBox WebSearchG plugin to ChatGPT helps improve it in two major ways:

    While I didn’t use this across all 44 queries tested, I did test this on the six queries focused on identifying content gaps in existing webpages. As shown in the following table, this dramatically improved the scores for ChatGPT for these questions:

    ChatGPT with the MixerBox WebSearchG plugin installed

    You can learn more about this plugin here.

    Searching for the best generative AI solution

    Bear in mind that the scope of this study was limited to 44 questions, so these results are based on a small sample. The query set was small because I researched accuracy and completeness for each response in detail – a very time-consuming task.

    That said, here is where my conclusions stand:

    It’s still the early days for this technology, and the developments will continue to come quickly and furiously. 

    Google and Bing have natural advantages over the long term. As they figure out how to leverage the knowledge they’ve gained from their history as search engines, they should be able to reduce hallucinations and improve their ability to better meet query intent. 

    We will see, however, how well each of them does at leveraging those capabilities and improving what they currently have.

    One thing is for sure: this will be fun to watch!

    Full list of questions asked

    *The notes in parentheses were not part of the query.

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




    Some advertisers are unable to access Google Ads

    Friday, January 26th, 2024

    Google is currently working on fixing an issue with advertisers being unable to access the Google Ads console. When you try to login to Google Ads, you are presented with a loading screen that can load for several minutes and then a red notice may pop up that reads, “Something went wrong. Reload Google Ads to continue.”

    What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the error that I see when I try to login to Google Ads:

    The issue seems to have started at about 1:15 pm ET and Google confirmed the issue at 2:35pm ET.

    Confirmed. Ginny Marvin from Google has confirmed the issue posting on X saying, “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Ads. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are unable to access Google Ads. Please see the dashboard for updates.”

    Google posted this on the dashboard:

    We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Ads. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are unable to access Google Ads.

    This is also impacting Search Ads 360.

    Resolved for some users. At 3:50pm ET, Google has restored the Google Ads console. Ginny Marvin posted an update saying, “Update: Google Ads service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. The affected users are unable to access Google Ads.”

    I can confirm that I can personally load the Google Ads console without delays.

    Why we care. If you are trying to make changes to your Google Ads accounts, you may be out of lock. Google is currently working on a fix but there is no ETA for when the fix will roll out. Maybe go take a break for a bit and check back later.

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




    Client onboarding and offboarding: The PPC agency’s guide

    Friday, January 26th, 2024

    Winning and losing clients is part of the agency business. But with the right processes in place, you can smooth client transitions and maintain positive relationships no matter the outcome.

    Let’s tackle best practices for onboarding new clients and offboarding those who leave that will improve the client experience, get to work quickly, and enable future referrals. 

    Managing client transitions seamlessly

    As a search agency, you are always trying to win new business. This means countless pitches, opportunities, and work to show your capabilities. 

    New business is hard. It’s even harder in a space where the difference between winning and losing is so slim. 

    Winning is great, but you never only win. You also lose and churn the base as well. 

    The churn rate for professional services is 27%, per a Customer Gauge report. 

    Customer Gauge report on retention rates

    While professional services is a larger category than search agency work, turnover is likewise inevitable.

    In my agency, we’ve streamlined onboarding and offboarding into key practices that enhance the client experience, expedite workflow, and boost overall NPS, even in client departures.

    Onboarding PPC clients

    Learn the business

    Sure, you won the business because you are an expert in search marketing. Congratulations!

    However, even if you’ve worked in this space or vertically, you still need to learn their business. 

    There are two things we think about when learning a new business: 

    Dig deeper: How to build and maintain client trust in your agency

    Set expectations

    This is a new relationship, so you need to be clear about how you work and what they can expect from you. This is where a strong project and account management team can shine. 

    Are the meetings weekly or monthly? 

    When you say that a deliverable will be done at the end of the day – is that 5 p.m. or before you go to sleep? 

    Is the budget that you are given inclusive of fees? You need to ensure you don’t make assumptions about these items. 

    Dig deeper: What clients expect from their PPC agency

    Be curious

    Yes, you are being hired for a specific reason. However, that shouldn’t stop you from being curious and thinking about the business. 

    You might not be responsible for building landing pages or writing copy, but the process of how that gets done is important to your success. 

    Ask to understand things that might not be related to your work but are. We often request to talk to the sales and customer support teams. We want to understand the business and language people use. 

    It also helps with surfacing objections you must overcome to make a sale. Try the product and go through the same customer experience so that you know how things work.

    This requires curiosity. You can easily use keywords for a product you sell based on tools alone and never have any practical experience. 

    Dig deeper: 6 tips to build PPC client relationships

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    Offboarding PPC clients

    The golden rule

    Just treat people the way you want to be treated. This is so obvious but is still often missed. 

    If a client is leaving, it could be a big problem or just a change in management. The new person might want their own team, even if you’ve been doing well with a 60% yearly improvement.

    I’ve experienced both, and neither is fun for different reasons. However, you can’t look at it as anything more than business. When that decision happens, you must remember that you never know what’s in store for the future. 

    People move companies, new products are launched, and things change. We recently took over a piece of business we lost a year ago. 

    I’m confident that if we didn’t follow the golden rule, we would not have gotten the call to come back and help. I’m happy to report that the relationship is going great. 

    Share

    Sharing is hard. You want to believe that what you did was unique and proprietary. Maybe some of it was, but the client leaving didn’t think highly enough of it, so they are leaving. 

    Helping them leave with their data and their account will help leave a positive impression. 

    We recently heard a scenario where a client was leaving, and the prior agency wanted to charge the client for access to their account. 

    Consider what impression this leaves on the client and the agency transitioning the account. This is a referral business. Not sharing doesn’t scream referral. 

    Ask for feedback 

    Losing an account is no fun, but you must use it as a learning opportunity. Why did this business decide to move on? What could you have done differently? 

    Having an internal and external post-mortem. Sometimes, the answer is simple: we have a new CMO and she is bringing in her agency. 

    In other cases, it’s a little more complex or a matter you could have done something about. 

    Did you staff it with too many junior team members? 

    Did you not tell a compelling story about your work or the market forces at play? 

    Is this feedback similar across other accounts with a similar makeup or team member? 

    Is there anything you can do to be proactive in your new business wins?

    Handle client transitions with grace

    Clients coming and going is inevitable in the agency world. However, implementing best practices for onboarding new clients and gracefully offboarding those who leave can significantly reduce friction, maintain positive relationships, and generate referrals. 

    You can build trust and enable future success by asking for feedback during transitions. With the right processes, your agency can make the hello and goodbye as smooth as possible.

    Dig deeper: How to retain clients in PPC

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




    Google Ads moves reports to new location in latest UI update

    Thursday, January 25th, 2024

    Google Ads has rolled out an updated UI to a small number of accounts.

    While the affected accounts will experience a different layout, structure and design, it’s important to note that there have been no changes in functionality to any tools or features.

    This specific UI change, which is currently in beta for Manager Accounts, was was designed to improve workflow organization and streamline accessibility, all while maintaining the availability of the same set of tools.

    Why we care. If you can’t find your reports when you log into Google Ads, it’s because they’ve been moved to the “Insights and reports” section. All your performance reports can now be found there.

    First spotted. The Google Ads UI update was first spotted by digital advertising team lead, Greg Kohler, who shared a preview of the platform’s new design on X:

    Speaking to Search Engine Land, Kohler admitted he isn’t a keen on the new interface:

    Why now? The new design is part of the same UI update that began rolling out in June. Google said it has continued to work on the new layout to make the platform easier to navigate.

    What Google is saying. A Google spokesperson said:

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    Deep dive. Read Google’s Navigate and Insights Reporting update in full for more information.

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




    YouTube advertising: The ultimate guide

    Thursday, January 25th, 2024

    With billions of users worldwide, one of the lowest advertising costs and the growing preference for video, YouTube has some serious marketing potential. 

    Aside from the well-known organic side of YouTube, it also offers highly lucrative marketing tools: retargeting video and display ads. 

    Combined with other marketing channels, you can become a strong contender for driving brand awareness and generating leads and sales. 

    But first, you have to make sure your target audience doesn’t just skip your ads.

    Learn how to create an effective YouTube advertising strategy with this comprehensive guide. 

    Is YouTube a good way to advertise?

    YouTube has 2.1 billion users worldwide, bringing in over $29 billion in ad revenues annually. This success is likely because 59% of viewers find YouTube’s ads more relevant than those on TV or other streaming services. Over time, more relevant ads lead to higher conversion rates and stronger brand loyalty. 

    You have a unique opportunity to adapt video ads into various ad formats. For example, one emerging trend is the rise in vertical videos. Vertical videos allow users to watch a video in full screen without having to rotate their phone.

    Recently, Google found that in some cases, just by adding a vertical video asset to a video action campaign, you can reach 10 to 20% more conversions compared to only offering horizontal videos for YouTube Shorts.

    Despite being a highly popular organic search engine with clear benefits, YouTube is underutilized by many companies. When combined with other channels, YouTube ads become a key retargeting touchpoint crucial for driving conversions and achieving business success.

    How much does YouTube advertising cost?

    Generally speaking, YouTube ad costs start at $10 per day. There’s no minimum spend, so your ad expenses depend on the allocated daily budget. Factors that influence cost include:

    Types of YouTube ads

    YouTube comes with various ad formats, so you can deeply hone in on what your target audience engages with the most. YouTube ad formats include:

    Display ads

    TrueView ads

    TrueView ads

    Overlay ads

    Sponsored cards

    Sponsored cards

    Video discovery ads

    Video discovery ads

    Dig deeper: 3 key trends reshaping YouTube marketing today

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    How to advertise on YouTube in 7 steps

    Like any marketing strategy, advertising on YouTube requires plenty of research, crafting a strategic approach, and analyzing your success. To help, I’ve broken the process down into seven actionable steps:

    Now let’s take a look at these steps in detail.

    Step 1: Identify your target audience

    Before getting too deep into your YouTube ad content creation, you must understand your target audience and how to engage them. You can then enter this into YouTube to help you get in front of the right people. 

    Thanks to a recent update to YouTube’s audience insight tools, you can precisely define your target audience within each ad group and choose where your ads should appear.

    There are several different targeting options in this update, allowing for customization across several categories: 

    Demographics

    With this broad targeting option, you can clearly define the specifics of your audience. This allows you to reach your audience based on gender, age, and household income.

    While it’s a great tool, remember that using demographics alone could result in lower returns and engagement, as a one-size-fits-all message might not resonate with such a diverse audience.

    Demographics

    Audience segments

    This lets you strategically target people with specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. 

    Essentially, these create a subgroup within your general target audience to help explore more specific groups based on the identified parameters. 

    To refine your targeting, segments can include:

    Audience segments

    Detailed demographics

    This helps refine your audience by targeting more specific information, including:

    You can tailor ads to appeal to specific groups, such as those in construction, education, real estate, finance, etc.

    Detailed demographics

    Affinity audiences

    This segmentation allows you to reach audiences with specific interests and habits.

    For example, you can target people interested in categories like banking and finance, beauty and wellness, food and dining, home and garden, lifestyles and hobbies, etc.

    Affinity audiences

    In-market audiences

    A lot of people use YouTube as a resource when researching a topic or planning to purchase specific products or services. 

    Segmenting by in-market audiences allows you to get in front of people actively searching for similar products or services. 

    This segment is ideal for conversion-focused campaigns, driving engagement, and facilitating purchases.

    In-market audiences

    Your data and similar segments

    Using this segment, you can remarket to users who have visited your website but haven’t converted.

    Getting in front of them again can increase brand recognition and help influence conversions. You can utilize similar audience segments for effective retargeting.

    Your data and similar segments

    Combined segments

    You can combine two or more segments from this list, which helps you define your ideal audience with precision and increase the effectiveness of your YouTube ads.

    Keywords

    In addition to segmentation, you’ll also want to contextually target your audience using keywords. 

    For example, if you target “localized marketing,” your ad will appear on videos and channels related to that topic. 

    This is a good tactic for awareness campaigns, but a keyword-only approach typically isn’t as effective for conversion-focused campaigns.

    Topics

    Another option is to select specific topics to help ensure that your ad is shown on related videos and channels.

    However, there are benefits and drawbacks similar to a keyword-focused approach and are more effective in awareness campaigns.

    Step 2: Choose your ad types

    Diversifying your YouTube ad formats is essential to cater to various audience preferences and achieve specific campaign goals. 

    Here’s a detailed exploration of different ad formats on YouTube, each offering unique advantages, and how to align them with your campaign objectives:

    TrueView ads

    As mentioned, these ads are displayed on the same “screen” as the video content a user searched for. There are two primary types: skippable and non-skippable.

    Skippable TrueView ads

    Non-skippable TrueView ads

    Bumper ads

    These are like miniature ads. They’re short, sweet, and to the point. 

    Display ads

    Overlay ads

    Overlay image ads

    Step 3: Create your bid and targeting strategies

    To determine your budget, use the following steps:

    Define your campaign goal

    Decide whether you want to focus on brand awareness, lead generation, or sales and align your budget with the specific outcomes you aim to achieve. 

    Each part of the sales funnel requires different content and ad development types, which can result in varying ROIs.

    When you’re setting up an ad, you can set the campaign goal here:

    Define your campaign goal

    Dig deeper: Setting PPC goals: How to tailor KPIs and metrics for each funnel stage

    Establish your campaign duration

    How long will your YouTube ads run? What’s the timeframe for your campaign?

    Short-term campaigns will likely have different budget considerations than long-term ones, as they may reach a smaller audience.

    Researching industry benchmarks can help you understand the average costs and set realistic expectations for your budget.

    Choose your bid strategy

    A bidding strategy is where you’ll set an average amount you’re willing to pay for impressions, actions, or clicks.

    This is established when you choose your ad format type and then select the bid strategy for that campaign, as shown in the image below:

    Choose your bid strategy

    There are a few different types of bidding strategies you can experiment with, so try a few and see which option works best for your goals:

    Outline production costs vs. ad format

    YouTube is filled with experienced content creative and engaging videos. 

    If you want your ad to spark some interest, you’ll also need to put aside a budget for creative production costs, including ad creatives. 

    Remember, high-quality content often requires an investment but can significantly impact campaign performance.

    Calculate management costs

    In addition to video production, you’ll also need to make sure you allocate the resources to regularly manage and assess your campaign performance. 

    Give yourself some flexibility and be prepared to adjust your budget based on real-time data. This ensures the optimal allocation of resources and maximum effectiveness of your YouTube ad campaigns.

    Step 4: Establish campaign structure based on intent stage (BoFu, MoFu, ToFu)

    Defining and understanding the marketing funnel stages is crucial for creating a targeted and effective YouTube advertising strategy. 

    Tailoring your ad content and messaging to align with each stage allows you to address users’ varying needs as they progress through the funnel, from initial awareness to conversion.

    Top of funnel (ToFu)

    At the ToFu stage, the primary goal is to create brand awareness and capture the attention of a broad audience. This sets the stage for targeted messaging and a pathway to conversions. 

    During the ToFu stage, you need to create compelling, attention-grabbing content that introduces your brand, product, or service to a wide audience. 

    Try to focus on storytelling, highlighting your unique value proposition and the broader benefits you offer. Pair this with engaging visuals, captivating narratives, and brand messaging to help create a memorable first impression.

    The best ad formats for ToFu campaigns are Skippable TrueView Ads and Bumper Ads, as they allow for concise, yet impactful messaging. Use a CTA that encourages users to explore more about your brand or product without putting too much pressure on them to take immediate action.

    Middle of funnel (MoFu)

    In the MoFu stage, the goal is to help nurture your audience and guide them toward considering your products or services. This part of the funnel targets users already aware of your brand and may be considering converting.

    During the MoFu stage, developing content that provides more in-depth information about your products or services is important. Try to showcase specific features, benefits, and any unique selling points to differentiate your offering from competitors.

    You can also include social proof such as testimonials, case studies, or educational content to help build trust and credibility.

    The best ad formats for MoFu campaigns are longer-form, skippable TrueView ads, allowing a more detailed presentation of your products or services. 

    Use a CTA that encourages users to explore specific product features, download resources, or sign up for newsletters to deepen engagement.

    Bottom of funnel (BoFu)

    In the BoFu stage, the primary focus is converting potential customers into actual ones. This part of the funnel targets users who are already familiar with your brand and ready to decide.

    During the BoFu stage, drive action by developing content that emphasizes conversion-driven elements, such as limited-time offers, discounts, or exclusive deals. Always provide clear information on how users can make a purchase or take a desired action and use strong, compelling CTAs that create a sense of urgency.

    The best ad formats for BoFu campaigns will combine skippable TrueView ads, display ads, and overlay ads to reinforce your conversion-oriented messaging. 

    Create a CTA that directly prompts users to make a purchase, sign up for a trial, or take the specific action that aligns with your conversion goals.

    Dig deeper: How to use always-on marketing in paid search

    Step 5: Prep your videos

    Creating impactful video content is fundamental to a successful YouTube advertising campaign. The components of successful videos for YouTube include:

    Compelling and engaging video content

    Optimization for mobile viewing

    Clear CTAs

    Uploading to YouTube channel or Google Ads asset library

    Google Ad Asset Library

    Optimize metadata

    Appealing thumbnails

    Align campaigns with relevant landing pages

    Step 6: Set up and monitor GA4 conversion tracking

    To track YouTube Ad performance with GA4, you must clearly outline your conversion goals for each video and the landing pages connected to the videos. 

    Whether it’s encouraging sign-ups, driving purchases, or achieving specific actions, defining these goals will allow for more precise tracking throughout the campaign. 

    Next, link Google Ads to GA4 and your YouTube channel to create a connection between the two. This will help facilitate the seamless sharing of data between the two platforms, which is essential for accurately tracking YouTube ad campaign success.

    Set up and monitor GA4 conversion tracking

    Once the channels are connected, import your conversion goals into Google Ads. This allows Google Ads to attribute conversions directly to your YouTube ad campaigns, which provides you with detailed insights into your ongoing campaign performance.

    Google Ads to GA4 - YouTube campaign insights

    GA4 also formulates Audience Reports to help you better understand the characteristics and behaviors of users engaging with your site.

    Regularly check these reports to gain insight into audience segments that respond well to your YouTube Ads, which allows you to tailor future campaigns accordingly.

    Harness the power of YouTube ads with the right strategy

    Although YouTube has long been known as a highly effective organic strategy, YouTube ads can be just as effective for growing brand awareness and generating leads and sales. 

    As users move faster and faster toward video-first campaigns, YouTube is one of the best platforms to grow an audience on, especially as it’s underutilized by most brands. 

    Because it’s not fully saturated and the user base continues to grow, this channel is one of the best new media opportunities to capitalize on today.

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




    Meta expands automated audience targeting options in latest AI push

    Thursday, January 25th, 2024

    Meta’s Advantage detailed targeting is now available on all campaign objectives and optimizations.

    The decision to expand access to this automated audience targeting feature comes just weeks after the tech giant announced plans to sunset detailed manual ad targeting categories for sensitive topics.

    Why we care. Leveraging AI in advertising can enhance campaign performance for advertisers. However, there is a growing concern among some that the potential lack of control may lead to the opposite outcome, causing inefficient allocation of ad budgets that becomes challenging to oversee and manage.

    What is Advantage detailed targeting? Advantage detailed targeting, a product available within Meta’s Advantage product suite, leverages AI and machine learning technology to identify a broader range of high-valuable customers for your campaign than the initial specified audience group.

    Affected campaigns. Meta’s Advantage detailed targeting is now available for:

    Next steps. To launch this update, you will need to ask your site developer to make changes to the code in Meta’s Marketing API. Developers have until April 22 to complete the implementation of these code changes.

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    Deep dive. Read Meta’s announcement in full for more information.

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




    Google tests ‘highly rated’ call out for Local Services ads

    Thursday, January 25th, 2024

    Google is piloting a new SERPs feature called “highly rated” for Local Services ads (LSA).

    As part of the experiment, when users input a local business query into the search engine, Google is now testing the display of a sponsored box featuring a selection of LSAs with top reviews in specific verticals.

    The featured ads include a thumbnail image, reviews, opening hours, duration of service, local service areas, and a call button so that users can easily contact the business.

    Why we care. If your business is recommended by Google and described as “highly rated,” it could boost consumer trust, giving them the confidence to get in contact and ultimately make a purchase. Beyond increasing conversions, this association may also contribute to boosting your brand awareness and reputation.

    First spotted. The new feature, which is still in testing, was first spotted by Anthony Higman, CEO of online advertising agency Adsquire. He shared a preview on X:

    What Google is saying. While some advertisers have observed this feature in certain verticals, Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land that it is currently an experiment. Depending on its performance, the call-out may potentially be extended to all advertisers in the future, or it might be discontinued. We will provide more information as soon as we have updates.

    Deep dive. Read our article on Google’s new Nearby Events and Deal feature for more LSA news.

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




    Generate image alt text at scale with AI: A 7-step guide for SEOs

    Wednesday, January 24th, 2024

    Image alt text is important for accessibility and beneficial for SEO. But if you have lots of images on your website, manually writing alt text for all of them will be time-consuming. This article is a step-by-step guide for using AI to generate alt text automatically at scale.

    Generating image alt text matters for accessibility and SEO

    Alt text is the text that loads when an image fails to load. Alt text also is what screen readers use to produce audio descriptions of images for visually impaired users.

    You might be asking, “Alt text for SEO has minimal impact, so why bother?” Minimal impact is better than none. And using AI makes the task efficient and cost-effective. The initial setup may take some time, but the ongoing effort is minimized.

    Here are the seven steps for using AI to generate image alt text at scale:

    Step 1: Find images with blank alt text to optimize

    This step is fairly simple. We will crawl a site and extract all the image embeds that do not have alt text. In this case, we’re going to look at the Classic British Hotels website. 

    This site was chosen for the demo because it’s not too large and is based on WordPress, a platform familiar to most SEOs. Additionally, this site displays images well, even with JavaScript disabled, enhancing accessibility for our purposes.

    Some images lack alt text, but they seem straightforward to describe in context, which is important when working with AI that may not recognize specific niche products.

    Crawl the site with Screaming Frog to isolate images with missing alt text. Screaming Frog has an official guide on isolating missing alt text, which we’ll follow for the most part.

    Let’s launch the crawler:

    Screaming Frog Crawl Launched

    Screaming Frog Crawl Launched
    Screaming Frog Crawl Launched

    Once the crawl is complete, export the addresses of images that are missing alt text:

    Export Images Missing Alt Text

    Be sure to click the Export button to have a local record (CSV / Excel) of all the images missing alt text.

    We now have the addresses of all images missing their alt text. To run them through a locally installed AI (BLIP), which will interpret these images, we need to download them all. In this case, there are just over 230 images.

    Step 2: Download the images ready for BLIP

    You’ll need to copy all the image URLs from your “images_missing_alt_text” file (Column A). paste them into a Notepad (.txt) file, and then save.

    Move Missing Alt Image URLs to Txt File

    For the next part, I like using the Firefox add-on called DownThemAll!, which is also available for Chrome. Once the browser plugin is installed, open your browser. Right-click to open the context menu, then run the DownThemAll manager:

    DownThemAll Open Manager

    Right-click on the manager’s background and choose Import from file.

    DownThemAll Import from File

    Select the text file that you created earlier. Once you do that, you can then finalize some settings before initiating the batch download:

    DownThemAll Queue Image Downloads

    I like to specify a subfolder so that the downloaded images are grouped together.

    DownThemAll! will create this subfolder within your Downloads folder, then place all the images inside. Click the Download button.

    DownThemAll Process Image Downloads

    All of the images should now be downloaded.

    Downloaded Images

    Step 3: Install the image-to-text interpreter (BLIP)

    Now that we have a folder full of images that don’t have alt text, we need a way to transmute the images into short snippets of text, for descriptive image captions. 

    I’ve explored using ChatGPT for on-page product descriptions before, but it’s not suitable for our needs. OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, focus on text-to-text AI, while we require image-to-text AI. For this purpose, we can use BLIP.

    Since BLIP is simply a proposed model, we need a publicly accessible project that someone has produced using BLIP, something suitable for our purposes. 

    Using Git, we can clone the following project created by Cobanov: https://github.com/cobanov/image-captioning.

    To do this, you will first have to install Git (documentation here) and then run a couple of commands (using the installed Git CMD) similar to:

    cd c:\git
git clone https://github.com/cobanov/image-captioning.git

    Please note that the above assumes that you have created a folder named “git” in your C: drive (Windows). Once executed, the project will be cloned to c:\git\image-captioning.

    You should also visit Cobanov’s project page here, then scroll down and read the README section, including the Usage sub-section.

    Note that this project relies upon Python and also requires you to install some Python modules that are not shipped with Python’s (Windows) installer by default. I used Python version 3.10.9 for this demo.

    After connecting Windows Command Prompt to my Python install by amending the Windows PATH variable (I believe Python also has options to do this as you install it), I needed to run some additional CMD commands to get everything working as I would like:

    python -m pip install --upgrade tqdm
python -m pip install --upgrade torch
python -m pip install torch==2.1.0 torchvision==0.16.0 torchaudio==2.1.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu118
python -m pip install timm==0.4.12 transformers==4.17.0 fairscale==0.4.4 pycocoevalcap pillow

    If you run one or two of the above commands and receive some errors, try not to worry too much. The referenced commands represent the sequence of module installations, which proved successful for me. 

    Since I use Python quite a lot, there may be other dependencies that are already satisfied by my Python install. 

    Later, if you run the project (we haven’t reached that stage yet, in this article) and see errors relating to Modules not existing, or not being found, you should additionally install such modules.

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    Step 4: Create text captions (via BLIP) for your downloaded images

    Your project folder should look similar to this one:

    Image Captioning GitProject Folder

    My project folder has a couple of extra folders. 

    Since documentation for such projects is rarely perfect, I created my own notes in a #Notes folder. 

    Since the images folder contains proof of concept images to run against the AI (demo images) provided by the project author, I also created my own folder to place new images in, named inputs.

    I suggest you also create your own inputs folder so you don’t get muddled up with the demo images.

    Also note that checkpoints may not exist until you run the project for the first time, which should trigger the download of a specified checkpoint/data model.

    Once you have done all that, copy all of the images that you downloaded earlier (via DownThemAll) to the inputs folder:

    Image Captioning Git Project Inputs

    Now it’s time to execute our project. Open Windows Command Prompt and execute a couple of commands like this:

    cd C:\git\image-captioning
python inference.py -i C:\git\image-captioning\inputs -b 238

    Note that you may need to amend the above commands to point to the correct Git project install and image inputs folder if you have created your Git project with a location or structure different from mine.

    The “-b 238” part of the command is very important. The project and script need to be told how large the batch is.

    I have 238 images to caption in this instance, so the correct “-b” (batch) number is 238. You can ask the script to execute your images via numerous smaller batches. 

    For instance, if I wanted the script to save captions when it was halfway through and then again at the end, I could use “-b 119” since 119 is half of 238.

    Note that you need to be careful here. If you input a number that is not a factor of (i.e., cannot be evenly divided into) the total number of images, the script will crash. You have been warned!

    Let’s attempt an execution:

    Image Captioning Project Execution

    Excellent, execution has been successful, and inference has commenced. All the images were found; this is exactly what we wanted to see. 

    If the script crashes and the number of images found is different from the total number of images within your inputs folder, then something is wrong with the format of your images.

    By experimenting with this project and its associated scripts, I have found that only JPG and PNG images are accepted. 

    Once the script is running successfully, note that your own GPU (graphics card) and local machine are doing the work. You’re not accessing an API to generate text from images, it’s all happening on your workstation. 

    As such, a more powerful, more graphically capable PC is advised. I’m running this on a machine with a 30-series NVIDIA graphics card (and a Ryzen 7 5800X). The results didn’t take long to come in (a minute or two), but the more images you have to analyze, the more it will take longer.

    Now that we have run the script, it’s time to make sense of the output.

    Step 5: Organize and make sense of the output

    You should now have a generated text file like this one:

    Image Captions Output

    The output may look intimidating, but it’s simply a comma-separated list that can be easily handled in Microsoft Excel (or similar). Start by copying the entire contents of the notepad file and then pasting them as values into a fresh Excel sheet:

    Image Captions Pasted Excel

    We need to separate the image file paths (local) from the image captions. To do this, we must create a couple of formulas in columns B and C. 

    There’s also a way to do this using the Text to Columns entry in the Data tab. However, this data is split by “, ” (comma space) rather than a single character, so for our purposes, formulas will work better. (This also evades potential complications where image captions contain commas.)

    Image-Captions-Formulae-to-Separate-Data

    Assuming the pasted data resides in Column A, opening from cell A1, the formula that you need for cell B1 is:

    =LEFT(A1, FIND(", ", A1) - 1)

    The formula which you need for cell C1 is:

    =MID(A1, FIND(", ", A1) + 2, LEN(A1))

    Each formula can be copied down its column (B or C) until the total data population is achieved. Once this is done, we should correct the casing of the generated image captions. 

    To emulate sentence casing, we should capitalize the first letter of each text string contained within column C:

    Image-Captions-Casing-Correction

    The formula for cell D1 is:

    =UPPER(LEFT(C2,1))&LOWER(MID(C2,2,LEN(C2)-1))

    Now, we can begin to format the data. We can add a new row for column titles.

    You can also take this opportunity to apply column filters or (preferred) format the table as an actual table. Adding some frozen panes may also help:

    Format-the-Data

    This is great, but we don’t know which image captions relate to which specific images on the website. We only have local image file paths rather than the original image URLs (as they appear online, on the website). 

    We need to isolate each image’s individual file name, separate from the total file path. If we do this, we can snap the data back together with VLOOKUP.

    Create a new column in between columns B and C (so, a new column C) and apply the following formula:

    Image-Captions-Extract-Image-Filename

    The formula which you need for the new cell (C1) is:

    =RIGHT(B2,LEN(B2)-FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(B2,"\","~",LEN(B2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(B2,"\","")))))

    We now need to open “images_missing_alt_text.xlsx” which we exported previously from Screaming Frog. Don’t close the sheet that you have been building so far; have both open.

    Inside of “images_missing_alt_text.xlsx”, create a new column between columns A and B (so, a new column B):

    Missing-Alt-Text-Extract-Image-Filename

    The formula which you need for Cell B2 is:

    =RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(A2,"/","~",LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"/","")))))

    We can snap the data together now that we have two sheets containing an identical Image Filename. 

    (Sidenote: In the “images_missing_alt_text.xlsx” sheet, the data we want comes before the Image Filename. This won’t work for VLOOKUP since it can only ascertain data to the right of the match criteria. As a result, utilizing INDEX and MATCH might have been a better solution. However, VLOOKUP is simpler and more accessible for marketers. So, we’re opting for a basic VLOOKUP approach since the entire process is already complex.)

    We need to copy the values within column B and paste them as values within the same position:

    Missing-Alt-Text-Image-Filename-Paste-as-Values

    Once this is done, we can move the values within Column A to a new column – between columns B and C. We can then erase column A, resulting in the following output:

    Missing-Alt-Text-Image-Reorganised-Data

    We want the Image Filename on the left and the Address on the right. 

    Finally, we can go back to the sheet that we were previously creating and perform a VLOOKUP to pull in the Address as Image URL.

    To do this, we will need to create a new column between columns C and D (so, a new column D):

    Image-Captions-VLOOKUP-Execution
    Image-Captions-VLOOKUP-Return

    We can then copy and paste values for the entire table, making the data static (i.e., not reliant on formulas) to ensure a proper snapshot of data:

    Image-Captions-Make-Data-Static

    Finally, we can hide columns A, B, C and E to get the output that we want:

    Image-Captions-Final-Data

    You’ll notice in the example above that there are duplicates in captions. This happened because the website stores various revisions of each image with different dimensions.

    The images are stored at full resolution and in various dimensions, as is required by the engine generating thumbnails of each image. It is acceptable for identical or similar captions to apply to the same images, even at different resolutions.

    Step 6: Filter the generated captions via ChatGPT

    BLIP is great for generating short captions of text from images. (If you want longer captions, try a separate model known as CLIP.) However, its command of the English language is not as strong as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

    We can fire the generated BLIP image captions through ChatGPT to clean them up. We’re moving away from locally installed AI to cloud AI, which comes with API costs.

    I won’t go over the details here as I recently covered accessing ChatGPT’s AI capabilities in a previous article. (Go and read it if you haven’t yet.) Afterward, the next steps should appear straightforward, and I’ll outline the basics here.

    In essence, we want to send the captions off to ChatGPT, along with a prompt that will help increase each caption’s general standard. Utilizing my own Python / Excel project and formulas (to translate each BLIP caption into a ChatGPT prompt), I can produce something like this:

    ChatGPT-Rework-Prompt-Sheet

    For example, the BLIP caption of “A living room filled with furniture and a painting” results in the formula-generated prompt of:

    “Previously, we created some alt text for images. In this example, the alt text reads as such: “A living room filled with furniture and a painting.” The text is very accurate against the image, so please do not change the general content or information within this snippet. That being said, sometimes the standard of English isn’t very good. Could you please re-write the current alt text, so that it uses better English? And also, so that it is better formatted as alt text. No coding needed. Don’t use overly promotional language. Use UK English. Don’t provide any additional text, other than the alt text which you would supply. The direct alt text only please.”

    This prompt is detailed for a reason. The more specifics you give ChatGPT (tone, language style, technical requirements), the better. Most details can be combined easily, with the only exception being the BLIP caption.

    Now, I can utilize my own Python script (which interacts with Microsoft Excel documents) to fire this off to OpenAI via their API:

    ChatGPT-Script-Execution

    Once I have the output, I can use VLOOKUP to pull this data through to the sheet that I created earlier:

    ChatGPT-Final-Output

    ChatGPT has now enhanced the output from BLIP.

    Again, if you want to read more about how to interact with ChatGPT / OpenAI in terms of text-to-text-based output (specifically for SEO), read my previous article. There’s a lot of detail within this article which will bring you from proof of concept to full and commercially viable completion.

    Step 7: Communicate with your web developer

    You now have a list of image URLs without alt text, a list of BLIP-generated captions, and a list of ChatGPT refined alt text outputs.

    This is where your experience as a marketer (even a highly technical one) ends. You must now share this three-column sheet to an accomplished web developer, who will create a script that appends your alt texts to images.

    This must be a back-end script. A front-end script that injects the alt texts would not be suitable, as Google would need to execute those injections to apply them.

    Whatever changes are made, they must be applied to the database(s) in the back end so that Google has a better (non-generated) fix on the front-end output.

    Leverage AI to efficiently create alt text at scale

    We’ve deployed image-to-text (BLIP, local) and text-to-text (ChatGPT, external) AIs with a shared goal. Endless possibilities arise from combining these technologies. This showcases how AI can enhance efficiency in SEO workflows. 

    Setup may take a couple of days initially, but tasks can be done in hours once you get the hang of it. As this cutting-edge technology integrates into mainstream SEO tools in the near future, you’ll see the value in staying ahead of the competition – producing what they cannot in a fraction of the time.

    Special thanks to:

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




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