Atomic Media

Google is updating its Shocking Content policy to exclude gameplay imagery

Thursday, July 27th, 2023

Google will exclude gameplay imagery from its Shocking Content policy next month.

The Publisher Restrictions guidelines will be updated to include the exception on August 30, the Ads Manager team has confirmed to Search Engine Land.

Why we care. It’s important for marketers to ensure they are staying compliant with Google policy changes to avoid potential penalties and exclusions.

What’s new? Once the new updates are rolled out, gameplay content will only be excluded if it contains gruesome, graphic or disgusting accounts or imagery and depicts acts of:

• Torture.
• Sexual violence.
• Violence against minors.
• Violence against prominent real-name persons.
• Violence against an individual or group on the basis of a characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.

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What has Google said? Google is advising brands to review the update to check how their site or app will be impacted.

If a brand would like to challenge previous content exclusions based on this update, they have the right to appeal. A spokesperson said:

• “If your site or app received restricted ad serving previously due to Shocking content but you believe ad serving should no longer be restricted following the update, you may request a review or appeal of your site or app on or after 30 August 2023.”

Deep dive. Read Google’s ‘Shocking content‘ rules for more information on what content exclusions apply to. For more information on appealing content exclusion decisions, read Google’s Policy Center guidelines.

The post Google is updating its Shocking Content policy to exclude gameplay imagery appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Microsoft Ads pilots UET Insights dashboard with new traffic data

Thursday, July 27th, 2023

Microsoft Ads is trialling a new dashboard for advertisers called UET Insights.

The new feature, which will display data collected through its Universal Event Tracking Tag, aims to help marketers better understand their campaign’s performance in terms of engagement.

The dashboard. Data will be available in near real-time and won’t be sampled on the new dashboard. It will include the following metrics:

• Session count.
• Popular pages.
• Device breakdown.
• Country breakdown.
• Quick backs (the number of sessions where a visitor navigated to a page, then quickly returned to the previous page during the selected time period).
• Average active time.

New data signals. Additional website performance signals captured by the UET Tag will include:

• Page latencies (speed and load times).
• Click and scroll interactions.
• Purchase cart details.
• Cart abandonment details.
• Browser-based signals.
• JavaScript browser errors.

Awaiting feedback. Microsoft had originally planned to automatically roll out the new dashboard to all advertisers on June 29. However, the tech giant instead decided to launch the new feature in beta on July 25 and give advertisers the choice of whether to opt in. A spokesperson said:

• “Given that we want to gather more user feedback, we’ll first pilot this directly in Microsoft Advertising online as a beta for advertisers to manually self opt-in.”
• “Auto-enablement of this feature will happen at a later undetermined time based on the success of the pilot.”

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Why we care. Microsoft has said that it is trialling the new dashboard to give advertisers more insights into their campaign’s performance. If advertisers are able to better understand what’s working and what’s not working in terms of engagement, then they can make better, data-led decisions to implement improvements moving forward. This could result in a better ROI and potentially generate more traffic and conversions.

About UET Tags. Launched (then on Bing Ads) in 2014, a site-wide UET tag powers conversion tracking, remarketing and automated bidding strategies on Microsoft Ads.

The post Microsoft Ads pilots UET Insights dashboard with new traffic data appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Bing Search and Bing Chat officially rolling out dark mode

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

Microsoft has begun to officially roll out dark mode for Bing Search and Bing Chat. We reported this was coming, along with support for Bing Chat in Chrome and Safari browsers. Microsoft’s Jordi Ribas posted on Twitter “We are starting to roll out desktop dark mode for Bing over the next few days.”

What dark mode looks like in Bing Search. Here is a screenshot of what dark mode looks like in Bing Search:

What dark mode looks like in Bing Chat. Here is a screenshot of what dark mode looks like in Bing Chat:

How to enable dark mode in Bing. To enable dark mode in Bing Search or Bing Chat, click on the menu bar at the top right of the page and under the “appearance” section check off “dark.” You can also default to your system settings for dark or light mode:

Why we care. Jordi Ribas from Microsoft said, “We heard the requests for dark mode and are excited for everyone to experience this feature in Bing Search and Chat.”

So this is a much-requested feature and we know Google Search supports dark mode, as does Google Bard.

The post Bing Search and Bing Chat officially rolling out dark mode appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

3 ways PPC campaign management could soon change

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

Search marketing has evolved rapidly in the past 12 months. This trend will likely continue to accelerate over the next two years. 

Automation and AI have already revolutionized the search industry, and it’s worth considering what other changes could be coming our way in the future. 

Based on recent history and other indications from platforms like Google and Microsoft, here’s what might be in store for our PPC campaigns.

1. Match type consolidation into broad

Google and Microsoft want advertisers to migrate to broad match. It’s no secret.

Eventually, phrase and exact match will likely be phased out in favor of broad match.

PPC platforms have augmented these match types’ functionality in the last three years. No longer the stalwart of search query control, the operation of exact match may show on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword.

When Google retired modified broad match in 2021, it also augmented the functionality of phrase match. Phrase match may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword. The purpose of the keyword can be implied, and user searches can be a more specific form of the meaning, according to Google. 

The changes to exact and phrase have weaned advertisers away from the theory of total control. Advertisers now use a broader range of queries matching their targeted terms.

Historically, advertisers have not preferred the lack of query control with broad match. Google has updated its broad match keyword program for 12-18 months. 

Automation is changing everything in paid search, and match types will be impacted. Within the next 12 months, Google will announce the retirement of another match type. 

Given the advancement in automated bidding and the pairing of “Search + Performance Max,” I think phrase match is the next to go the match-type graveyard. When making large-scale changes, Google will give advertisers 8-12 months to adjust their accounts. We still have time before this change, but time is not on our side. 

Exact match may survive the consolidation steamroller. Advertisers will still have control over their high-value, mission-critical keywords.

Dynamic search ads (DSAs) will eventually migrate to Performance Max. Their functions overlap and may deliver against each other, especially when advertisers run broad match, PMax and DSAs. One of them will have to go. 

This evolution will continue as we march toward a broad-match-focused world. 

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2. Channel consolidation into blended campaigns

Performance Max has been a hot topic in the PPC industry since its launch in 2021. 

However, many search marketers have hesitated to adopt this new campaign type due to valid reasons:

• The black box structure of PMax, combined with limited data and insights.
• The need for optimization levers and drivers.

Despite these challenges and concerns, Google remains committed to improving its capabilities and offering advertisers more control and options. Microsoft has announced its own version. 

Many advertisers need help optimizing their campaigns and achieving better results due to cross-channel attribution and optimization challenges. 

Google recognized this and has addressed the issue by increasing investment throughout the marketing funnel and introducing data-driven attribution.

In September 2021, Google launched data-driven attribution (DDA) for Google Ads. It is an intelligent machine-learning system that analyzes historical data to determine how much credit each ad interaction should get for a conversion. Google Ads has made DDA the default attribution setting for new conversion actions since October 2021. 

DDA is the key to unlocking the power of Performance Max. By taking into account all ad interactions before a conversion, DDA provides a more accurate understanding of how your ads impact conversions.

This new approach to measurement will also lead to the consolidation of channels across the Google ecosystem. Performance Max is just the start of a new era of blended campaign types.

Google Marketing Live unveiled exciting developments in their ongoing efforts to consolidate channels. Two new blended campaigns, demand gen campaigns and video view campaigns, are now available to cover the entirety of the buyer’s journey. 

Video views campaigns are designed to increase brand awareness, while demand gen is focused on driving mid-funnel consideration and discovery through discovery and YouTube placements. 

Finally, PMax will capture demand at the bottom of the funnel, generating sales across all Google properties. These new campaigns and Google’s data-driven attribution system are ushering in a new era of more intelligent, more effective advertising.

While discovery campaigns are a separate product, their inventory delivers across all three blended campaign types. This suggests it may eventually become integrated into the broader campaign structure, streamlining the process further.

Google’s commitment to consolidating channels and optimizing its data-driven attribution system is paving the way for more effective and efficient advertising strategies.

As a result of consolidation, campaign types may eventually look like this: 

• Video views to drive upper-funnel awareness.
• Demand gen to drive mid-funnel consideration.
• Performance to drive bottom-funnel performance.
• Search (broad match only) to cover Google’s largest property.
• Universal app campaigns because this network is unique.

3. Optimization score suggestions into auto-applied recommendations

The last area of disruption due to automation and AI is optimization scores (or OptiScore) within Google Ads.

Currently, Google provides auto-generated optimization ideas within the Recommendations sections of their ad platform. Advertisers can choose which recommendations they want to activate or dismiss these suggestions. 

In April 2021, Google Ads launched auto-apply recommendations (AAR). This feature allows advertisers to automatically apply recommendations to their accounts without manually reviewing and approving each. 

Advertisers remain mixed on AAR. Advertisers I’ve spoken with do not want to relinquish even more control to automation. We’ve heard stories of when AAR changes resulted in accounts going haywire in some fashion.

Google continues to invest in and promote the AAR product. It’s only a matter of time before AAR is folded into the core automation feature set for Google Ads. By this, elements of AAR may apply directly to accounts without being able to turn them off. 

This prediction is based mainly on the fact that Google promotes AAR frequently, often indicating their focus and direction. They may not require every AAR feature, but a subset of features could exist. 

Automation and AI will continue to transform PPC campaign management

Automation and AI are driving significant evolution in the industry, potentially leading to the consolidation of broad match and the retirement of other match types like phrase match. 

Additionally, Google’s commitment to optimizing its data-driven attribution system is fueling channel consolidation into blended campaigns like Performance Max, which provides advertisers with more control and options. 

As automation progresses, auto-applied recommendations may become mandatory in Google Ads, further altering the dynamics of paid search. The continuous integration of automation and AI technologies will undoubtedly shape the future of PPC campaigns.

The post 3 ways PPC campaign management could soon change appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

How long SEO takes to work

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

Online dating, two-day delivery, binge-watching a series on TV. 

SEO is like the slow-food movement in a fast-food world.

How long do you have to wait, though?

This article will discuss:

• What are SEO “results.” 
• The average timeframe to see results.
• The factors that can impact how fast you can get results from SEO.

What are SEO ‘results’? 

First, let’s talk about what “results” mean before discussing how long it takes to get them. 

At the outset of your SEO program, you will want to set goals that outline what you want your SEO program to accomplish. Revenue may be one of them. 

SEO can drive many things, including revenue. 

However, for the purpose of this article, there is only one important metric to measure SEO success:

Organic traffic. 

So when I refer to the timeframe to see SEO results, I am referring to a significant uptick in organic traffic because that is how I have always measured SEO success.

Yes, you want to see organic traffic driving revenue. 

And the good news is that when SEO drives targeted traffic, that traffic can be one of the biggest revenue drivers for a website. 

But so many factors (many of which are outside of the scope of SEO) can contribute to whether you get a conversion on a website. For example, your price point, landing pages and sales process.

That is why I believe traffic is the best indicator that your SEO program is working.  

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How long does it take to see SEO results?  

It typically takes several months up to a year to see measurable SEO results. Your mileage may vary.

This is a general consensus and what I typically see with clients.

Google suggested a similar timeframe in this video:

And research from Ahrefs supports this, too:

Here are some real-world examples:

Ecommerce site

An ecommerce furniture business lost significant search rankings and traffic after launching a redesigned website.

We worked with them and identified the primary cause of the problem was a bloated index.

After implementing our recommendations, here is a timeline of the results:

• After two months, we ranked 56 priority key phrases back onto Page 1.
• Within three months, the client saw a return to previous traffic levels.

B2B site

A manufacturer’s website suffered from lost rankings and dwindling organic search traffic; they didn’t know why. 

After an in-depth analysis, we recommended improving user experience, internal linking and content quality. 

After implementing our recommendations, here is a timeline of the results:

• After four months, the client started to see traffic results. 
• Within nine months, they received record levels of organic traffic.
• Within two years, they saw a 100% increase in organic traffic.

B2C site

A nationwide drug-screening company reached out to us to improve their underperforming website.

Our recommendations included on-page optimization, technical SEO, user experience and content improvements

After implementing our recommendations:

• Within six months, traffic increased 166% compared to the same six-month period two years prior.

What factors impact time to SEO results?

Where any one website falls into the timeframe largely depends on several factors. 

Three of the most important are:

• Your actions.
• The website.
• The competition.

1. Your actions

The “SEO results” clock starts ticking once you implement the program, not when you hire someone, and not during the time that strategies are being formulated. 

Many businesses have failed at SEO even after hiring SEO experts because of their inability to implement the recommendations. This is a significant cause of failures.

This can happen for many reasons, including SEO “buy-in” or if IT needs to make a technical change to the website. 

Regardless of the reason, for every month that is wasted not implementing SEO strategies, it’s a month that you can expect not to see results. 

2. The website

If you’ve got a really challenging website, digging yourself out of a hole will usually take longer before you are in good enough shape to compete in the search results. 

Maybe you:

• Have a lot of technical issues that need to be resolved.
• Received a manual action from Google due to SEO efforts of years past.
• Were negatively impacted by a Google core update. 

Or you might have a new domain, which typically can take a little longer to see results than a more established site.

These are all reasons why it might take longer to see results, but what about quick fixes? These are more rare but they can happen. 

For example, it’s not unheard of for there to be a robots.txt file that’s accidentally blocking the search engines from accessing the site. Yes, this still happens.

Something like this can be resolved fairly quickly and produce fast SEO results.

3. The competition

I’ve always said that SEO should aim to beat the competition, not the algorithm. And depending on what space you’re playing in, the competition can be tough.

Sometimes your competition will have more resources than you, so they can work faster. (All is not lost in these situations, as long as you can stay nimble and creative.) 

Or maybe you are in a your-money-or-your-life industry where you will be held to a higher standard by Google and it might take more effort to compete.

Or maybe you’re after top rankings for million-dollar keywords. 

It took my company two years to get a client to Position 1 for a short-tail keyword. And to say it was worth the time and effort for the client is an understatement.

How to get better SEO results, faster

While you’ll probably never get faster results than the timeframe outlined in this article, there are ways to speed up the process.

• Get an in-depth, technical SEO audit on your website. This can pinpoint exactly how to fix your site and how to beat the competition with prioritized recommendations on what actions will make the biggest impact.
• Enlist the help of an expert SEO consultant or agency to help you implement an SEO program. Expert guidance is worth its weight in gold, and having that wisdom on your side as you enter the search battlefield will make all the difference.

Initial SEO results are good, but ongoing results are better

The SEO results you see within several months to a year are not necessarily the best results you will ever get. 

And because SEO is never done, you can expect better results as time goes on, so long as your SEO strategy is solid.

The post How long SEO takes to work appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

How to use always-on marketing in paid search

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

At any one time, 95% of your potential customers are not in the market looking to buy, according to research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn’s B2B Institute.

Only 5% of your audience is “in-market” now looking to buy, so your advertising largely hits buyers who will not buy anytime soon. 

How can marketers be top-of-mind for buyers at whatever point they decide to buy? 

One great way to do this is through always-on marketing, which seeks to build awareness and create brand-relevant memories through messaging.

Here’s what you need to know about always-on marketing and how to apply it in your search marketing campaigns.

What is always-on marketing?

Always-on marketing is a strategy that aims to keep your brand consistently visible in the market through ongoing campaigns. 

The main objective is to ensure your target audience knows your brand and its solutions even before they are ready to purchase. 

Always-on marketing enhances brand awareness and boosts brand equity. It uses metrics from the full marketing funnel to judge performance, from reach all the way down to revenue. 

Why always-on marketing matters

Short-term lead generation campaigns continue to dominate the marketing landscape. 

These campaigns result in brief revenue spikes, followed by stagnant revenue growth. 

So, why do most marketers prioritize these short-term strategies? 

That’s because they often respond to the immediate revenue needs of businesses, which demand quick results. 

In recent times, marketing, particularly on the digital side, has leaned heavily toward strict “performance-based” campaigns, expecting rapid results within just two weeks. 

Success is then solely measured based on lead generation.

Instead, marketers should use always-on marketing programs incorporating full-funnel campaigns for long-term durations.

If embraced, this approach can elevate marketers from reactive short-term campaign executors to strategic long-term builders of brands and drivers of revenue.

Always-on marketing requires more planning, content, creativity, budget and time over standard short-term lead generation campaigns. 

All of this should be exciting to any marketer, but it will take time and persuasion to convince your company, especially your finance team, to approve. 

Testing new marketing approaches is key to learning and growth. Making big bets can yield big returns.  

Always-on marketing in paid search

Always-on marketing for paid search runs across the entire marketing funnel from top of funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) to bottom of the funnel (BOFU) to ensure your brand is always in the marketing funnel while your target audience searches. 

This approach moves well beyond traditional paid search campaigns that are conversion focused with target cost-per-conversions or conversion volume goals. 

Always-on paid search campaigns include optimizing for those “performance marketing” metrics.

Still, they also include optimizing your campaigns for TOFU awareness metrics like impression share and MOFU engagement metrics like click-through rate. 

An always-on approach to paid search involves a full-funnel execution of:

• Content strategy.
• Messaging alignment.
• Ad creation.
• User-journey development.
• Lead nurturing.
• Metric identification/measurement.
• Budget allocation.
• Keyword selection.  

From a content strategy perspective, TOFU and MOFU landing pages should have ungated content that:

• Speaks to your brand.
• Describes high-level category offerings.
• Displays data that addresses customer pain points.
• Provides social proof. 

BOFU content should only be gated if it is extremely high-value. Examples are signature research reports or annual surveys with valuable and original data. 

Gone are the days of gating standard ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, etc. Give that type of content away without gating it during the TOFU and MOFU stages. 

Budget allocation is another important consideration. When allocating your budget between funnel stages, 60-40 is a good rule of thumb.

• 60% should go to keywords within TOFU and MOFU.
• 40% of your budget should go to BOFU keywords. 

This allocation ensures your brand has visibility across the entire search journey to build awareness and drive revenue.      

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Always-on paid search keywords

Dividing keywords into TOFU, MOFU and BOFU is not an exact science. 

There are keyword research tools that can help aid in this process and complement your knowledge of your audience and your experience as a paid search marketer.

After initial testing, you should always re-evaluate the stratification of your keywords and make adjustments as needed. 

Below are practical recommendations on how to begin to segment your keywords by stage of the funnel.

TOFU keywords

• Branded keywords
  • Your brand is your most important asset. Promote and protect it as competitors bid. 
• Competitor keywords
  • The searcher might be your competitor’s customer now, but that does not mean they will always be. Competitive conquest can increase your brand awareness to relevant prospects. Remember, we’re judging TOFU on awareness metrics like impression share, not conversions.
• Industry-level keywords
  • Find and bid on industry-level terms. For example, a cybersecurity firm could bid on terms such as “cybersecurity” or “cybersecurity solutions.” Judge performance on impressions and impression share. 

MOFU keywords 

• Category-level keywords
  • Building on the cybersecurity example, go one level down and bid on terms like “threat intelligence.” Judge the performance of these keywords on engagement metrics such as click-through rate and website engagement metrics. Do not judge these keywords on conversions, leads or revenue. 
• Comparison keywords
  • Bid on terms aimed at searchers comparing companies or solutions within your space. For example, “top cybersecurity companies.”

BOFU keywords

• Product-level keywords
  • Product-level keywords are traditional lead generation-focused keywords that are transactional and product-driven. For a cybersecurity firm, an example would be “managed detection and response (MDR) software.” Judge these types of keywords on revenue generation.  

Always-on duration and budget

The always-on marketing approach needs to be both full funnel and long duration to be impactful to your brand. 

That said, always-on paid search can be costly, so be strategic. When the budget is limited, cut back based on the performance metrics relevant to each funnel stage. 

Do not just cut the budget of TOFU and MOFU keywords. Focusing just on BOFU keywords will land you again in the cycle of short bursts of revenue followed by flat growth. 

Push back, say “no,” and advocate for strategic budget allocations based on long-term brand building and revenue growth.    

Champion always-on marketing 

Now that you have an understanding of always-on marketing, test it. Give it a try at your organization via a six-month or nine-month-long paid search pilot. 

Move beyond short-term campaigns promoting a webinar or a gated whitepaper. Embrace a full-funnel, long-term view of paid search. 

Implementing such a trial will not be easy but begin with socializing and advocating for the idea. 

Paid search marketers can and should be more than reactive campaign executioners, so champion always-on marketing and become a strategic brand builder and revenue driver.

The post How to use always-on marketing in paid search appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

How to 10x rankings in competitive spaces using the ‘beachhead principle’

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

Normandy was the beachhead in 1944. 

D-Day was the culmination of a successful head fake, surprising the Germans and helping to establish a strong foothold for the Allies to eventually retake France (and the rest of Europe along with it). 

Clayton Christenson borrowed the military-inspired “beachhead principle” for his bestselling book, “Crossing the Chasm,” to explain how new products can eventually establish category dominance only after they successfully carve out a foothold with a narrow, well-defined group of early adopters. 

SEO is no different, especially today.

It’s never been more challenging, more complex or more competitive.

And to make matters worse, most sites – even established ones – face a Catch-22:

• To rank for good keywords, you need a big site.
• But before you can create a big site, you need to rank for good keywords. 

Therein lies the dilemma. Let’s talk about fixing that today.

Why you can’t compete head-on against giant competitors (and what to do instead)

SEO takes a long time.

It’s like a snowball that slowly gathers momentum before finally taking shape months (if not years) down the line.

That means it might look like nothing’s happening on the surface, despite traction slowly but surely building just beneath. 

Here’s why.

If ~70-80% of people click on the top ~5 SERP results, everyone outside the top five only sees a tiny sliver of traffic. If any.

But that doesn’t mean progress isn’t being made.

And it’s why your organic search traffic might look consistently flat for months, before leaping up and to the right, literally right off the edge of the page.

The same principle applies to middling sites (think: ~DR 40-60) that compete against industry titans (think: ~DR 90+).

If you ain’t in the top five, you ain’t seeing any results!

So to reliably predict SEO success, you need to start by prioritizing keywords and topics and content pieces that can reliably break into the top five – within a reasonable amount of time. 

And for now, ignore or disregard the keywords or topics where reaching top five is difficult. 

This, in turn, will allow you to set your sights higher a few months (or years) from now to then go after much bigger categories filled with SEO giants. 

David ousted Goliath not by competing directly in a test of brute strength but indirectly – with asymmetric warfare. 

You need to do the same thing. Here’s how.

Why your ‘payback period’ should determine which keywords you prioritize

SEO is the best digital investment because results compound.

Done correctly, your investment doesn’t grow 10% per month or become 10% more cost-effective, like PPC ad optimization.

Instead, it 10x’s. Then, it 10x’s again.

The catch?

It takes a long time to get the snowball rolling.

That’s why the most important (yet least discussed) concept for SEO projects is the payback period.

Like any other capital investment, you:

• Invest $X dollars/pesos/yen today, to 
• Generate $Y dollars/pesos/yen tomorrow

But…

Instead of only taking days or weeks to produce results (like advertising), you’re looking at months or years. At a minimum. 

Mainly because most marketers (and their bosses holding the purse strings) are so busy focusing on lagging indicators – like traffic, leads, and sales – that they miss all the inputs or leading indicators bubbling beneath the surface.

So you can define the payback period into a few easy groups:

• 0-6 months
• 6-12 months
• 12-18 months 
• 18-24 months
• 24+ months

And by extension, you can prioritize the keywords/topics and content that you think will deliver short-term results (0-12 months) vs. long-term ones (18-24 months +).

Now, here’s the catch.

Most companies need to balance both at the same time:

Capitalizing on low-hanging fruit to generate some short-term results while laying the groundwork for the more difficult campaigns that will generate a substantial ROI two years from now.

Why are we droning on and on and on about this?

Resource allocation! 

‘Cause it’s the single biggest determining factor behind your ability to generate results (or lack thereof).

If you don’t get the long-term vision, direction, budget, and patience to plot this long, winding road, you’ll almost never be able to compete with industry giants long-term. 

Meaning you need to:

• Prioritize and establish a beachhead ASAP!
• Leverage quick wins as evidence for proof of concept behind your idea.
• Illustrate to your boss that you need a bigger budget and team to continue rolling the SEO snowball downhill.
• Allow your boss to make a case to their boss that the ROI will be worth it 2+ years from now if you and they are given the time + money to sustain the required marathon.
• Freedom to make autonomous, strategic, long-term decisions without allowing other HIPPOs (highest-paid person’s opinion) to squash your vision before it has a chance to take off.

But the payback period alone won’t determine how fast or slow you can move.

It’s also linked directly with topical authority. This means you will be able to move slowly or quickly.

• Slow: Starting from scratch and need to create topical authority in a category.
• Fast: Kinda/sorta have topical authority and need to continue doubling down to grow it.
• Fastest: Already have topical authority and are ready to dominate.

So if next year’s SEO results depend on this year’s work, then it’s time to get cracking on establishing your beachhead right now.

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How to establish your SEO beachhead by going deep and narrow (vs. broad and wide)

Let’s take a random SaaS keyword, like “customer churn.”

Volume looks pretty good, CPC indicates at least some buying intent, and the keyword difficulty looks hard but not impossible.

Please note that keyword difficulty is often biased towards the number of referring domains pointing to each piece of content ranking, and doesn’t always indicate the overall domain strength of the sites ranking. 

So an “Easy” KD in your favorite SEO tool could actually be a lot harder to rank for in reality because all those DR 90 sites ranking only have ~10 referring domains each.

Let me illustrate this. 

The quantity of referring domains below don’t look that difficult to compete against in theory. However, take one glance over at the average DR of the top ten and you quickly realize this will be an uphill battle.

Yikes.

Seven out of the top ten are DR 90+ sites. Two are mid-to-high 80s, while the last is the only one in the 70s. 

So overall, from a domain-level perspective, this keyword is extremely competitive!

Now, let’s say your site’s DR is in the ~50s. Respectable! It’s pretty good. 

But not good enough to reliably outrank those competitors in the next few months alone.

That means a few things:

• You can and should work on increasing your own DR…
• Except that will take 12+ months at the absolute minimum to crack 80 or 90,
• So right now, you need to set your sites on easier targets, in order to…
• Eventually come back and rank for “customer churn” ~12-24 months from now.

Making sense so far?

Your near-term strategy, then, should be to create a “customer churn” pillar, with a surrounding cluster of child pages based on easier-to-rank, longer-variation “Terms match” and “Question”-based queries:

Still with me?

Digging into these lists a little more, we can uncover some excellent near-term (again: ~0-12 months) options, like these related keywords for “predicting customer churn.”

A little SERP analysis across all of these will help you quickly see a fair bit of content overlap. You can probably get away with creating one good, in-depth article vs. unique content for each slight variation.

You can further validate this last sentence by looking at the relationship between Traffic Potential and Volume in one of these keywords. 

The fact that Traffic Potential is ~2X your Volume typically means overlapping intent between a few closely-related keywords.

Plus, the Keyword Difficulty also looks more palatable on this long-tail variation (“customer churn prediction”).

We can’t stop there. We need to cross-reference the DR ranges again like before.

Voila! 

While there’s still some heavyweights in there, you at least have a few competitors in the ~40 - 60 range – falling exactly within your own current weight class.

You can take them on especially if you continue to go deep and narrow, becoming the go-to resource on all things “customer churn” while repurposing or updating existing content to provide a 0-6 month payback period.

After exhausting one defined area, you should think about branching out into other adjacent pillars and clusters. 

The reason is that you can leverage topical authority in one area – your beachhead! – to branch out and successfully start taking territory away from others.

Rinse and repeat for months, and those “hard” keywords that used to look difficult now become “much easier” to rank for based largely on your existing topical authority.

Don’t get me wrong. 

In most competitive spaces on the web (read: the one you’re probably working in if there’s a lot of money floating around), you’ll still need to create a link building engine in the background.

But the point is the point.

• You establish a beachhead in one fruitful area that’s highly relevant to your core product or service.
• You gain traction on less competitive yet still relevant keywords.
• You slowly go from Page 2 to Position 2, increasing traffic 10X at least across each URL that makes this jump.
• You move the goalposts back, now adjusting your sights on the top spots in the space.
• Only when you have the existing topical authority and site size that make your payback period more palatable (and realistic).

It’s not easy per se.

The pros – the ones doing this repeatedly, over the long haul, proving success across categories or websites – just keep their heads down and continue plugging away.

A former client of mine scaled traffic by over 600% in two years.

No tricks or gimmicks. 

They just trusted the process, focusing exclusively on executing month after month, year after year. 

And the results took care of themselves.

Delivering SEO results for long-term success

There are often two primary reasons most SEO campaigns fail to deliver results:

• You (or your boss) unrealistically set your sights too high on keywords completely out of your reach (in the near future).
• You (or your boss) pull the plug too early, change direction, and don’t allow enough time to pass to bear fruit. 

That’s it! 

Simple at the end of the day. 

Either you set the wrong targets from the beginning or fail to execute over the long term.

Both are cardinal sins in SEO. Both will sabotage your efforts.

Like losing weight, they’re focusing on the inputs of food they eat, the number of steps they take, etc. 

Let compounding do its thing instead of focusing on the outputs, or lagging indicators, like the number of pounds lost on a scale. 

Weight loss, like SEO results, goes slowly. And then suddenly. 

Months become years. And only then comes success. 

The post How to 10x rankings in competitive spaces using the ‘beachhead principle’ appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Information gain in SEO: What it is and why it matters

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

A Google patent on “information gain score” was granted in June 2022. I believe it’s no coincidence that several algorithm updates – including the helpful content update – followed. 

Is information gain score a key way for Google to prioritize valuable content that is “original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T”?

My hypothesis: yes. Here’s why.

What is an information gain score? 

An information gain score is essentially a measure of how unique your content is from the rest of the corpus. Here, the corpus would be all the potential documents that Google analyses in ranking for the particular query searched. 

In the patent, most of the scenarios given to calculate information gain scores are done after subsequent queries or document views and search result views. It’s a learning process specific to the individual and/or to the topic they’re searching about.

The late Bill Slawski wrote a technical breakdown of this process when the patent was still in review in 2020. 

One of the interesting things I see in the patent language is this: 

Google is giving leeway for information gain scores to be calculated algorithmically and applied as training data across machine learning models. 

The need for a first set of documents to calculate the information gain score may become obsolete in the future: 

“[i]n some implementations, data from each of the documents of the second set of documents may be applied across a machine learning model as input.”

How does information gain affect search rankings? 

From a real-world perspective, this means Google:

• Has a way of calculating how unique your content is from the rest of the content in that topic area.
• Has a metric to actively promote or demote content based on that level of difference or sameness. 

The information gain score suggests a new algorithm element targeting AI-generated content and new content farms.

Consequently, content might be demoted if it lacks uniqueness, even if it consists of different words arranged differently.

Skyscraper content could be a part of this targeted demotion.

The information gain score and helpful content system are forcing innovation where there’s currently a sea of “perfectly optimized” content.

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Can information gain improve your website visibility? 

Using information gain to create or update content is a two-fold process. 

• Analyze the source of your data.
• Identify market opportunities.

In an ideal scenario, it would be fascinating to see what an expert or sales manager could produce if asked to write about solving a client’s X problem without any “SEO requirements” or using Google. The result might be a surprisingly innovative and appropriate response.

Most of us don’t have the luxury of a shot in the dark like that and need a bit more structure to change, update and adapt how we create content.

So let’s break down how we can shift that approach. 

Where are you getting your information from? 

While it may feel like a step back, prepare to spend more time researching for content than you perhaps ever have.

If you’re getting your information solely from the web and the SERP you want to rank for, you may be a part of the problem. We all do it, but it’s kinda lazy, right?

Great, quality content takes time.

The content we publish that we’re amplifying and using as a way to promote our companies, our brands, and ourselves should be able to meet the “thought leadership” mark.

What does that take? The basis of thought leadership is essentially informed opinion. 

This requires you to take a stance, have a specific opinion, or come to a particular conclusion. 

And to do that, you need the information to substantiate that opinion, or you should.      

At any company, you will have unique data that’s just waiting for you to use in an article or tool for your clients and customers, like:

• Feedback and logs from your customer service team.
• Your reviews.
• Feedback and sales calls from your sales team.
• Your product usage data, if it can be aggregated and published.

These are all content sources that a competitor can’t easily duplicate. 

They can also be turned into rich media experiences that Google can’t create. 

It’s also informed by your actual customers and their actual experiences. 

A lot of the content the search results may be “telling” you to create may not actually be appropriate for your customers. 

Starting with your own data will naturally filter out a lot of content that’s written purely for search engines. 

What opportunities are there in the market? 

While it’s tempting to go to Google or Bing and follow the format of the top-ranking article in search results, remember that Google only ranks it the highest because it’s the best of what they have access to. 

They can’t create their own content (yet) to answer exactly what a person is searching for if it doesn’t already exist. 

So the content ranking could be absolute garbage for meeting actual expertise and providing a solid answer, but because it’s the best of the worst, it’s what ranks. 

So when creating new content, we should also look at topical relevance and areas related to the topic you’re writing about that perhaps other competitors aren’t taking advantage of. 

Tools that can help you see the existing topical relationships of your competitors include:

• Natural Language API demo
• Diffbot demo
• Orbitwise

Tools you can use to help understand the semantic topic relationships of your primary topic (that may not be covered by your competitors) include: 

• MarketMuse
• TF-IDF via Ryte
• Keyword clustering with Semrush (paid)
• Create your own topic modeling tool using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Python (not tested)

Each of these tools has its own trade-offs and considerations, and each should be weighed up with the data compromises your organization is making. 

Like everything else, they’re also an approximation of how Google’s search engine ranking system works. 

It’s also good to remember that the outpouring of recently published content from AI has real-world cost implications for Google. 

More content means incrementally more expensive electricity bills, so they have a vested interest in cutting out as much content as possible before it goes through all three crawlers. 

So find ways to create content that makes the cut for both your customers and Google. 

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Organic SEO industry benchmark report by Digital Marketing Depot

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

Identifying organic SEO KPIs and evaluating your organic traffic’s performance can be quite challenging. This difficulty arises from the lack of industry-wide organic benchmarks due to fluctuations in organic traffic caused by Google’s algorithm updates. Moreover, publishers have limited access to back-end performance analytics for numerous websites.

To address this challenge, Conductor undertook an extensive analysis of over 600 enterprise domains from renowned brands. Their aim was to identify industry-specific benchmarks for organic search in 2023, which will enable enterprise organizations to assess the effectiveness of their organic SEO efforts better.

See how your site compares! This comprehensive report includes an analysis of over 82,000 searches, revealing industry and subindustry organic traffic benchmarks, the most frequent top result types, and the domains leading the conversation in each result type.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download Organic SEO Industry Benchmarks from Conductor.

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

Bing Chat not yet available on Chrome or Safari browsers

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

After weeks of testing, Bing Chat is coming soon to Chrome and Safari browsers – leaving behind the requirement to install Edge, Microsoft’s browser, to use Bing Chat.

What we know. In the coming days, we expect Bing Chat to soon work on Chrome, Safari and other non-Edge browsers.

Most people who go to Bing and click on Chat will see this message, which says you need to download Edge to use the new Bing.

Testing Bing Chat on other browsers. Bing has been testing Bing Chat on Chrome, Safari and other browsers since earlier this month.

• Bing escalated its tests to a larger percentage of users late last week.

Misinformation. Some news organizations incorrectly reported that this is now live for all Chrome and Safari users. It is not. Some of these publishers have since updated their stories.

Testing is common. Search engines often test new features and changes to a subset of users. Like Google, Bing does this all the time.

Some features roll out live to all users while others never do and quietly disappear.

What Microsoft said. Here are tweets from Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO of Bing, on this topic, where you can see Bing has been testing this for a while but it should be coming to more browsers soon.

First, here he just said yesterday that Bing is still testing Bing Chat on other browsers, but it should be live soon to all users:

Last week he said this feature should be live in a week or two, so it should be live soon for all:

In late May is when he confirmed Bing was first testing this:

Other tests. Bing Chat:

• Is also testing dark mode.
• May eventually get an “expert mode” interface to search Bing Chat.
• Is coming up with a nosearch prompt.
• Would love to be on Apple CarPlay, but it seems Apple is preventing that right now.

Why we care. Bing Chat and these AI search solutions are rapidly changing. Both companies are frequently testing new features and expanding access to those features. What goes live and what remains a test is a waiting game.

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