Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023
You’re an SEO with the best intentions of driving traffic and awareness for your brand (or client). After work, you take a spin to the grocery store and pay a few bucks more than you expected.
On the way home, you stop to fill your gas tank and notice that the price per gallon is higher than the last time you filled it.
You shrug and start mentally planning the next day – digging into your favorite keyword research tool, checking out site speed metrics after some asset optimizations, and prioritizing some pages to review after doing month-over-month traffic analysis.
I’m here to tell you you’re missing something.
If the last 12 months or so have taught me anything, it’s that macroeconomic trends significantly impact how users engage with online content.
Maybe SEO is not the first initiative anyone thinks of when strategizing how to incorporate macroeconomic angles inxto their marketing campaigns, but you’re missing the boat if you don’t.
This article examines:
- The macroeconomic signals to watch and why.
- Sources to reference to gauge user reaction.
- How to assess users’ developing needs and emotions.
- How to address those needs and emotions in your SEO campaigns.
The macroeconomic signals to watch and why
I’m not saying you should use daily gas prices as a barometer. I am saying they could be a good reminder to keep your finger on the pulse of the bigger picture.
Signals to watch include:
- Consumer confidence ratings.
- Venture capital and private equity funding trends.
- The stock market.
- Inflation.
- The monthly jobs report.
If you’re in B2C, consumer confidence, inflation and jobs are key.
If you’re in B2B (especially working with high-growth companies, as I do), it’s essential to gauge how easy (and/or expensive) it is to raise funds.
And for marketing agencies, know that the macroeconomy heavily influences the economics of how businesses spend on marketing and spend to acquire users.
If you’re working in an industry closely related to finance, like lending or real estate or insurance, you likely have a second layer of important metrics to watch (e.g., mortgage rates).
Either way, knowing the economic picture can alert you to prime times to dig in for more information to help you effectively engage users.
Sources to reference to gauge user reaction
The SEO space isn’t about staying in a bubble of reporting; it’s about keying into audience behavior, which means you must know your audiences. That goes way beyond monthly search volume and search volume over time.
Many of the major keyword tools aggregate monthly over time and won’t give you the agility you need to gauge real-time impact.
Google Trends, on the other hand, has become an incredible real-time source for changing behavior.
Check out the geo (and hourly) breakdown of the query “do air conditioners filter wildfire smoke” during the eerie period in June when Canadian wildfires were turning the metro New York skies orange:
Twitter and Reddit are other good sources for up-to-the-minute info.
Depending on who you follow, Twitter can give you the view of people like journalists and politicians, who help shape the broad discourse.
Reddit can take you into the weeds to show you what people closer to the ground are saying.
If you’re looking to gauge impact in your specific industry and see the approaches and angles that are most popular:
- Pick two or three trusted industry sites.
- Gauge the (non-sponsored) articles in the prime positions. Those have almost always earned that real estate with lots of engagement.
Qualitative data from your customers, clients, and leads is always good to gather. Your own reports – from Google Search Console and Google Analytics – will show you in real time if you already have any assets that are drawing renewed interest.
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How to assess users’ developing needs and emotions
If the sources I just referenced hit on common themes, opportunities, or challenges more than once, you’ve got another layer of analysis to do.
What fears, ambitions, or questions do those point to that you can address with UX and content? And what modifiers might you add to more broad queries that might make them timely and relevant?
For instance, a few years ago, when mortgage interest rates were in the 2-3% range, a simple “mortgage brokers” would have sufficed.
With interest rates soaring today, something like “mortgage broker comparison tool” or “mortgage broker price match” would likely draw tons of high-intent engagement.
On the B2B side, less available funding means lots of budget reduction, which in turn means a reduction in transactional intent – and a shift up the funnel into research and education, which you can address with content that speaks to industry challenges and your unique solutions.
How to address those needs and emotions in your SEO campaigns
I’ve already mentioned a couple of ways to address these – changing the nature of your content and keywords to align with shifting intent.
Other ways to use your analysis include new site hubs to address discrete challenges, updated UX to emphasize relevant themes and messaging, and even new content initiatives.
(As an example, I once had a client in the manufacturing space; we built a content strategy around the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly Jobs Report in which we got real-time analysis from the client’s CEO each time the report came out, and we’d publish the analysis immediately – and get lots of incremental traffic.)
The other step is to feed intel to your paid media teammates. Suppose we’ve created a piece of content for a relevant term that gets lots of traffic and conversions (which is directional data but still indicates that the page is valuable). In that case, your paid media team will want to know that bidding on that term, even if it’s expensive, is highly likely to succeed.
And from a keyword perspective, remember that keyword planners aren’t exactly up to date with traffic data, so if you see real-time spikes, you can help your paid colleagues take advantage before the keyword’s costs catch up to increased volume.
Looking at the bigger picture
You’ll notice that none of the above contained any (extremely amateur) predictions about the economy itself.
Whether the economy stays in flux, turns for the better, or nosedives, the same principles hold: macro trends should be reflected in SEO strategy.
And it’s not just the economy. As COVID taught us, anything with a transformative effect on society at large introduces new needs that SEOs can help address.
So consider this a reminder to broaden your perspective beyond your usual inputs. Even in SEO, a little real-time curiosity and analysis can bear fruit you won’t see growing in the keyword planner.
The post How to incorporate macroeconomic signals into your SEO strategy appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023
While Google is opening up the discussion on giving credit and adhering to copyright when training large language models (LLMs) for generative AI products, their focus is on the robots.txt file.
However, in my opinion, this is the wrong tool to look at.
My former colleague Pierre Far wrote an excellent article on Crawlers, search engines and the sleaze of generative AI companies where he highlighted some of the immense challenges currently facing the online publishing industry. Similar to his article, I will keep this proposal high-level as developments in this field are extremely fast-paced.
Why not use robots.txt
There are a few reasons why using robots.txt is the wrong starting point for the discussion on how to respect the copyright of publishers.
Not all LLMs use crawlers and identify themselves
The burden is on the website operator to identify and block individual crawlers, which may use and/or sell their data for generative AI products. This creates a lot of extra (and unnecessary) work, especially for smaller publishers.
This also assumes that the publisher has editing access to their robots.txt file, which is not always the case with hosted solutions.
This is not a sustainable solution as the number of crawlers continues to grow
The usable file size of a robots.txt file is limited to 500 kb, according to the newly proposed robots.txt standard.
This means that a large publisher may run into problems with their robots.txt file if they need to block a lot of LLM crawlers and/or refined URL patterns in addition to other bots.
An ‘all or nothing’ approach is unacceptable
For the larger crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot, no distinction can be made between the data being used for search engine results pages (traditionally where there is an “agreement“ between the publisher and search engine in the shape of a “citation“ to the original source) and generative AI products.
Blocking Googlebot or Bingbot for their generative AI products also blocks any potential visibility in their respective search results. This is an unacceptable situation where the publisher is forced to make a choice between “all or nothing”.
Robots.txt is all about managing crawling while the copyright discussion is all about how the data is used
The latter is about the indexation/processing phase. As such, robots.txt isn’t really relevant to this discussion but rather a last resort if nothing else works and should really not be the starting point of this particular discussion.
Robots.txt files work fine for crawlers and do not need changing for the purpose of LLMs. Yes, LLM crawlers need to identify themselves, but what we really need to talk about is indexation/processing of the crawled data.
Reinventing the wheel
Luckily, the web already has some well-established solutions which can be used for managing the usage of data with regard to copyrights. It is called Creative Commons.
Most of the Creative Commons licenses would do fine for the purpose of LLMs. To illustrate:
- CC0 allows LLMs to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format with no conditions.
- CC BY allows LLMs to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use, but credit must be given to the creator.
- CC BY-SA allows LLMs to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If LLMs remix, adapt, or build upon the material, it must license the modified material under identical terms.
- CC BY-NC allows LLMs to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
- CC BY-NC-SA allows LLMs to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If LLMs remix, adapt, or build upon the material, they must license the modified material under identical terms.
- CC BY-ND allows LLMs to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use and credit must be given to the creator, but no derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
- CC BY-NC-ND allows LLMs to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and so long as attribution is given to the creator and no derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
The last two licenses are unlikely to be usable for LLMs.
However, the first five licenses mean that LLMs need to consider how they use the crawled/obtained data and ensure they adhere to the requirements placed upon using the data from the publishers, such as attribution and when sharing the product built upon the data.
This would put the burden on the “few“ LLMs in the world instead of the “many“ publishers.
The first three licenses also support “traditional“ usage of the data, for example, in search engine results where the attribution/credit is given through the link to the original website. While the fourth and the fifth license also support research and development for open-source LLMs.
Side note: Keep in mind that all these software companies building LLMs often use open-source software where they have the same copyright license challenges with regard to the software libraries and operating systems they use to avoid copyright violations on a code level. So why reinvent the wheel when we can use a similar system for the data this code processes?
The meta tag is the way
Once a publisher has identified an appropriate license, this license still needs to be communicated. Again, this is where robots.txt seems to be the wrong approach.
Just because a page should be blocked from crawling for search engines does not mean it can’t be used or isn’t useful for LLMs. These are two different use cases.
As such, to separate these use cases and allow for a more refined yet also easier approach for publishers, I recommend we use a meta tag instead.
Meta tags are pieces of code that can be inserted on a page level, within a theme or the content (I know, this is not technically correct, but HTML is forgiving enough and can be used as a last resort when a publisher has limited access to the code base). They do not require the publisher to have additional access rights other than being able to edit the HTML of the content published.
Using meta tags does not stop crawling, like the meta noindex. However, it allows you to communicate the usage rights of the data published.
And although there are existing copyright tags that can be used – notably from Dublin Core, rights-standard (abandoned proposal), copyright-meta (focuses on the name of the owner rather than the license) and other attempts – the current existing implementation of these on some websites may conflict with what we try to accomplish here.
So a new meta tag may be necessary, although I am happy to reuse an existing or old one, such as “rights-standard“, as well. For this discussion, I am proposing the following new meta tag:
<meta name="usage-rights" content="CC-BY-SA" />
In addition, I recommend that this meta tag is also supported when used in HTTP Headers, like the noindex is supported in X-Robots-Tag, to aid LLMs crawlers better managing their crawl resources (they only need to check the HTTP Headers to validate the usage rights).
X-Robots-Tag: usage-rights: CC-BY-SA
This can be used in combination with other meta tags. In the example below, the page should not be used for search results but can be used for commercial LLMs as long credit is given to the source:
X-Robots-Tag: usage-rights: CC-BY, noindex
Note: The name “usage-rights“ for the meta tag is a proposal and can be changed.
Foolproof solution
Granted, there are bad crawlers and bad actors building their LLMs and generative AI products.
The proposed meta tag solution won’t prevent the content from being used that way, but neither will the robots.txt file.
It is important to acknowledge that both methods depend on the recognition and compliance by the companies using the data for their AI products.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article illustrates how using robots.txt for managing data usage in LLMs is, in my opinion, the wrong approach/starting point for dealing with usage and copyrights in this new age of LLMs and generative AI products.
This meta tag implementation would enable publishers to specify copyright information at the page level using Creative Commons, without preventing the page from being crawled or indexed for other purposes (like search engine results). It also allows for copyright declarations to be made for various uses, including LLMs, generative AI products, and potential future AI products.
The post Robots.txt is not the answer: Proposing a new meta tag for LLM/AI appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023
Bing Chat now supports visual search, which means you can now upload a photo or take a picture and have Bing Chat respond with answers around those visuals. “Visual Search in Bing Chat is rolling out now on desktop and mobile,” Microsoft Bing posted on its blog.
What it looks like. Here is a video of it in action on the mobile interface of Bing Chat:
Here is how it works on the desktop interface of Bing Chat:
Why we care. Visual search is a big part of search in general, Bing Search added this feature back in 2018, while Google has Google Lens. Google also just rolled out Google Lens in Bard last week. Bing Chat was testing this feature for over a month.
If you want to ask Bing Chat more details about what you are seeing or on a screenshot you have access to, you can now do so.
Bridging visual and search with AI can be a lot of fun but don’t trust everything you see on these AI search features, they still can hallucinate.
The post Visual Search now live in Bing Chat appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023
Kroger is breaking away from Microsoft to take its advertising platform – Kroger Precision Marketing – in-house.
The new system, which the grocer has spent the last year working on, is currently in beta but all marketers are set to transition in the fall.
Why we care. With 2,700 stores across 35 states, Kroger is the largest supermarket chain in the US and has historically worked with more than 2,000 brands. Marketers that launched campaigns using the old ads platform noted it was “clunky” and unnecessarily time-consuming as they were forced to navigate multiple systems to get a campaign live. The new platform, however, acts as a one-stop shop where marketers can both get their ads live and access data, meaning they can make informed decisions faster to potentially get a better ROI.
“It wasn’t a decision we took lightly because Microsoft has been a great partner,” Dan Mayer, VP, Media Platform, Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51˚, told Search Engine Land. “But this new platform gives [marketers] more control and the ability to act on data and insights much more quickly – we’re excited for that.”
Highlights. The new platform will provide marketers with the power to:
- Reach relevant audiences using search-based insights and custom ad groups.
- Design, iterate, and activate creative messages within the platform.
- Customize and save multiple creative templates by brand and product.
- Optimize all campaign elements including budgets, messaging, and flighting.
- Build reports and boost performance against deterministic retail data – including sales lift, household penetration and unit lift.
Although Kroger is excited to roll out its new ad platform, Mayer emphasized that the system will always be a “work in progress” and that the team is looking forward to hearing feedback from clients.
- “The media space is incredibly dynamic so there is lots more to come. We want to continue to enhance its features and functionalities,” Mayer said.
Read on for highlights from my recent Q&A with Mayer for more details around Kroger’s new self-service ad platform.
Kroger’s ‘biggest pain point’
Marketers had been submitting feedback to Kroger about the interface of its old platform, explaining it was unnecessarily time-consuming to get a campaign live.
- “One of the biggest pain points was the creative of it.
- “Targeted onsite ads in particular was a bit of a disjointed experience because the campaign process started in one spot but you’d have to jump out to build that creative in another spot – and then you’d have to come back in again!
- “The current state is a little clunky if I’m being honest. There are multiple systems [marketers] have to navigate to get a campaign live. We needed to somehow bring that one experience into one platform.”
Taking back control
For Kroger, addressing marketers’ biggest pain point resulted in it taking the tough decision to move away from Microsoft and creating an in-house self-service ad platform, so that its team of scientists could provide real-time data for more control.
- “We like to think we have a healthy obsession with our customer experience and optimizing that experience.
- “[Going in-house] gives us more direct control over that experience as it allows us to offer our data insights and science much more seamlessly and quickly.
- “We now own the roadmap, we own the decision on priority and what we can get into production and when, whereas in the past we depended on partners to bring that stuff to market.
- “With our new platform, [marketers] can now come directly to us through a single entry point and stay contained within that platform. You’re not bouncing out onto other platforms to execute campaigns.”
Verdict from marketers so far…
Although the new platform is still in beta and it’s very early days, Kroger has already started collecting feedback.
- “The feedback from marketers so far has been relief because of how we’ve simplified the process for them.
- “Marketers seem to appreciate the ease of use now – especially when it comes to setting up and activating campaigns.
- “They’re also excited by the science we’re bringing to them – and how much more quickly. We’ve successfully deployed science previously but now that is a much quicker process and advertisers can see the benefit of that in the form of increased performance of their campaigns.
- “But when we were making this platform, there were certainly points at which we thought we had everything covered then we’d go and test it and we realized oh we’ve missed that so we’ve got to add a component of a feature. So I’m excited to get more feedback from our advertisers because this is a work in progress.”
Next steps
Kroger’s new ad platform won’t be rolled out to all marketers until the fall, however, the company is already looking to next year and beyond.
- “We’ll have all advertisers coming over by the end of the year and we’ll be open to the feedback they have to give as we continue to enhance the features and functionalities.
- “Marketers will be able to give feedback on the ad platform.
- “We will also continue to build the platform out across our other advertising experiences across our off site portfolio later this year and into next year.
- “We’re not reporting revenue or our financial goals at the time, but we expect to continue to rapidly grow. Watch this space!”
The post Kroger’s new self-service ad platform: What you need to know appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, July 17th, 2023
Successful search marketing requires thoughtful coordination between diverse teams responsible for SEO, PPC, analytics, and beyond. One key to nurturing that coordination is a shared training experience that gets teams on the same page, speaking the same language, and working towards a shared vision of success.
Sign your team up for their choice of SMX Master Class – happening live online August 16-17 – to sharpen skills, broaden horizons, and learn actionable tactics that drive measurable results… and save up to 20% off* while you’re at it!
Need to convince your boss to let you attend? We’re here to help!
With seven unique, expert-led courses to choose from, the learning combinations are endless. Attend the same class to unify and bond – or attend different classes to dive deep into respective disciplines and report back with armloads of insights and next steps.
The more you send, the more you save!
- 3-5 people save 10% off total registration
- 6-11 people save 15% off total registration
- 12 or more save 20% off total registration
No matter your setup or schedule, attending as a team is a win-win:
- Working from home? Training together (albeit virtually) with your colleagues will foster a feeling of camaraderie that’s essential to high-performing teams, especially remote ones.
- Tuning in from the office? Embark on an invaluable shared learning experience that will fuel creative brainstorms and collaborative projects for months to come.
- Can’t attend live? All Master Classes will be recorded and available for on-demand replay until October 16 (60 days) – giving you plenty of time to watch and rewatch for deeper learning.
Since 2006, thousands of search marketers have attended SMX with their colleagues, and they’re more successful because of it. Now, it’s your turn. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to transform your team into a veritable search marketing Swiss Army knife.
Email reg[@]thirddoormedia.atlassian.net to receive your exclusive group discount code and get your team signed up today.
Psst… Think you have what it takes to be an “award-winning” search marketer? Enter the 2023 Search Engine Land Awards for your chance to boost team morale, attract new business, and stand apart from the competition!
*Discounts cannot be combined.
The post Teams that train together, win together. Send your team to SMX! appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, July 17th, 2023
Successful search marketing requires thoughtful coordination between diverse teams responsible for SEO, PPC, analytics, and beyond. One key to nurturing that coordination is a shared training experience that gets teams on the same page, speaking the same language, and working towards a shared vision of success.
Sign your team up for their choice of SMX Master Class – happening live online August 16-17 – to sharpen skills, broaden horizons, and learn actionable tactics that drive measurable results… and save up to 20% off* while you’re at it!
Need to convince your boss to let you attend? We’re here to help!
With seven unique, expert-led courses to choose from, the learning combinations are endless. Attend the same class to unify and bond – or attend different classes to dive deep into respective disciplines and report back with armloads of insights and next steps.
The more you send, the more you save!
- 3-5 people save 10% off total registration
- 6-11 people save 15% off total registration
- 12 or more save 20% off total registration
No matter your setup or schedule, attending as a team is a win-win:
- Working from home? Training together (albeit virtually) with your colleagues will foster a feeling of camaraderie that’s essential to high-performing teams, especially remote ones.
- Tuning in from the office? Embark on an invaluable shared learning experience that will fuel creative brainstorms and collaborative projects for months to come.
- Can’t attend live? All Master Classes will be recorded and available for on-demand replay until October 16 (60 days) – giving you plenty of time to watch and rewatch for deeper learning.
Since 2006, thousands of search marketers have attended SMX with their colleagues, and they’re more successful because of it. Now, it’s your turn. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to transform your team into a veritable search marketing Swiss Army knife.
Email reg[@]thirddoormedia.atlassian.net to receive your exclusive group discount code and get your team signed up today.
Psst… Think you have what it takes to be an “award-winning” search marketer? Enter the 2023 Search Engine Land Awards for your chance to boost team morale, attract new business, and stand apart from the competition!
*Discounts cannot be combined.
The post Teams that train together, win together. Send your team to SMX! appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, July 17th, 2023
When your industry is over-saturated, chances for ranking higher on search engines become harder.
SEO tools give you keywords variations of your main keyword. But in order to attract new users, you need new keywords that people search while, at the same time, none of your competitors is targeting.
The challenge is this: how do you find these new keywords no tool can provide and no competitor is ranking for?
That’s when tangential SEO can come to help.
This is a strategy designed to increase your visibility on search engines for keywords that are not your core business but are still relevant to your audience.
What are the benefits of tangential SEO?
One of the main benefits of tangential SEO is attracting a wider audience compared to targeting traditional business keywords.
Another benefit of tangential SEO is exponentially increasing the number of topics you can write about. Potentially, with this strategy, your content can scale because you don’t run out of content ideas.
When it comes to SEO performance, when you cover a range of topics, you can rank for more keywords, which means you’ll attract more traffic to your website.
Last but not least, tangential content ideas could increase your backlinks efforts.
When you publish about trending topics around your industry, chances are your posts can passively attract new backlinks.
Let’s see a couple of examples of tangential topics.
- Main topic: Holiday home.
- People looking to buy homes for holidays only. Companies operating in this niche could create topics around real estate investments and sub-letting opportunities because holiday homeowners could use these houses to earn money on the side.
- Main topic: Online courses.
- Brands operating in this industry could talk about jobs you can do without a degree because students looking to buy courses online will likely avoid university. Here is an example of this content about jobs without a degree. The brand can also focus on career change topics and content, start to showcase job opportunities and create a job board.
The good news is that every niche can use tangential content. Here are more examples from various niches:
| Niche |
Tangential Topic |
| Travel |
Cinema |
| B2B Marketing |
Travel |
| Banking |
Technology |
| Fitness |
Covid-19 |
| Education |
Employment |
| CRM |
Remote work |
| Healthcare |
Data analysis |
| Tech |
Productivity |
Tangential SEO starts from one niche and can be extended to various niches, which also means that your research will uncover new angles and perspectives you might not have noticed before.
You’ll become familiar with your customer’s expectations, pain points and motivations.
When you research the topics they like to read about, you also learn more about your industry, making you a real expert in audience research.
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Why do you need to use AI for tangential SEO?
If it sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is.
Tangential SEO requires a huge amount of users and industry research simply because no SEO tool can provide you with this data collection process.
The traditional method of building tangential SEO could be time-consuming. This involves some of the following steps:
A lot of preparation is involved before you can write a line of copy.
But there is a quicker way, thanks to AI. In this case, I used Google Bard to develop new, tangential content ideas based on my audience research.
This method could work because it essentially automates the above steps. The secret is to write the right prompt for training AI to your bespoke results.
Essentially, we can reduce the number of steps from six to simply two:
- Write and refine your prompts for Bard.
- Feed the machine with your keywords.
Now, it’s time to see this process in detail.
Ready? Let’s go.
Step 1: Write the prompts
Prompts are essentially instructions you give to AI in the form of text, question, information or code that communicates to AI the reply you want to get.
Writing great prompts allows you to work better with AI tools and generate relevant results instead of mediocre ones.
Good prompts can increase efficiency because you spend less time refining your instructions, and they also strengthen AI responses, providing you with accurate, in-depth and relevant answers.
Because the prompt will be long and detailed, we can split it into three parts to make it more digestible and easier to understand.
Impersonation and context setting
This aims to provide AI with the most accurate information possible.
Feel free to steal my prompts and generate new tangential ideas in less than two minutes.
- “Act both as a psychologist and a search engine consultant trained in helping people find the right product or service for their needs. You are familiar with the concept of tangential SEO when evaluating common reasons for making a choice.”
Now let’s break this first part of the prompt into further analysis to understand what I asked AI to do.
This first sentence helps Bard behave as a psychologist and sets up the context in which we will operate from now on.
You can instruct Bard (or any AI tool in general) to act as different entities or engage in various situations or tasks.
You can prompt AI to impersonate characters, professionals, or even fictional creatures by providing specific instructions.
- “…trained in helping people find the right product or service for their needs”.
This part of the sentence opens up the AI attitude in preparation for what comes next.
We are telling AI to become a people’s companion when choosing products or services, a sort of shopping consultant, if you will.
“You are familiar with the concept of tangential content”.
This part ensures that we are referring to tangential SEO, which will ensure AI responses align with what we are trying to achieve.
It also removes any misunderstanding because we don’t want to refine the prompt too often. We are trying to get this right the first time.
Set up your prompt goal
After setting the context and the impersonation, it’s time to provide Bard with instructions on the type of results we expect.
We don’t want results to vary. We want results to be very specific for us to continue our process of creating tangential content ideas.
- “Create a tangential content category”
This sentence gives Bard a clear outcome. We want to create a tangential content category.
You can also decide to create two or more categories, but the more you ask from AI, the less accurate results will be.
Remember, AI has some limitations when it comes to spitting our results, sometimes they stop generating, especially in cases where the response takes too long.
That’s why I’d recommend focusing on one tangential category and then repeating the same process for another content category.
- “Be very accurate with your choice.”
We give Bard the permission to pick a category for us. All we ask is to be very specific about it.
- “Give common reasons why people make this particular choice”.
Remember the psychologist’s impersonation earlier on? That’s why we added it to the prompt. Now it’s time to get a reply from AI like a trained psychologist would do.
Research shows that psychology has influenced research in both consumer and marketing, so what’s the best way of understanding consumers’ behavior?
Support prompts
In this last step of writing the prompt, we will focus on the psychological part of our research.
We need a way to tell AI that its responses must have a psychological basis in order to be viable and accurate. Otherwise, it’s like shooting in the dark.
- “Give a list of explanations on the reasons why you chose this category and how it matches with the main content I’ll provide you with.”
This sentence is important because we need Bard to explain to us the reason for their category choice.
Essentially, we are asking Bard to provide us with review tools, we need to be able to make a judgment call and assess whether this proposed category makes sense.
- Does the tangential category match our typical customer?
- Is the customer looking for this type of topic Bard is producing?
If the answer is yes, then we can be certain that the tangential topics proposed by AI are accurate.
Lastly, we also need to take care of AI making assumptions, so we simply ask the following:
- “Don’t remind me of previous instructions, don’t make any assumptions.”
Step 2: Add your keywords
In the second step, we need to give direction to AI about our core business and keywords.
This part is vital because it will further resolve the problem of accuracy that we are likely to encounter with any AI tool.
In other words, in this step, we will connect the previous instructions with your product and services.
As an example of a prompt, we will use the topic of “online courses” for an organization that provides fitness courses and trains people to become personal trainers.
Here is an example of a prompt including both the keyword and the business description:
- “The keyword is Personal training courses and qualifications. From Level 2 Gym Instructor course to Level 3 Personal Trainer certificate, our courses offer a wide range of level to fit your career. We don’t just offer cookie-cutter qualifications. The combination of online and face-to-face training will give you a competitive edge, preparing you to hit the ground running in your new career.”
In this prompt, we must be specific about how the business differentiates itself from competitors. I’d recommend using either your mission statement or the unique selling proposition.
Put everything together
This is the complete prompt you can copy-paste into Bard, obviously changing the keywords and your business description.
- “Act both as a psychologist and a search engine consultant trained in helping people find the right product or service for their needs. You are familiar with the concept of tangential SEO when evaluating common reasons for making a choice. Create a tangential content category. Be very accurate with your choice. Give common reasons why people make this particular choice. Give a list of explanations on the reasons on the reasons why you choose this particular category and how it matches with the content I provide you. Don’t remind me of previous instructions, don’t apologise, don’t self-reference. Don’t make assumptions. Here is the keyword and business description: [insert your keyword + business content].”
The results
If you did everything right, you should be able to get impressive results from Bard that look like this:
The chat found that one of the tangential categories can be “career change.”
This is a brilliant idea because our ideal customer is usually in the middle of changing careers from desk to fitness. They want to enjoy life at the gym and help their clients reach their fitness goals.
Bard also provides us with ideas around the following:
- Articles about how to choose a new career.
- Videos about how to make a career change.
- Blog posts on how to network with people in your new industry.
- Ebooks and posts on how to prepare your cover letter and CVs for your new career
This is exactly what Tangential SEO is about. It’s content that touches your core business but doesn’t directly mention it.
Bard goes a few steps further to provide us also with a wide variety of SEO tangential categories we might want to consider:
Finding keywords no other tool can find
Using AI, especially Bard, can save you so much audience research time because AI is trained with billions of data points. Humans can only scratch the surface of the variety of tangential content.
This doesn’t mean we should rely 100% on AI. Business owners and marketers know their customers better than anyone, which puts us in the position to evaluate AI responses.
In this practical example, I used the business description and mission statement to feed AI with it.
Remember that all businesses can use this same methodology as long as you have a compelling case for being special and can articulate it clearly enough for AI.
The post Tangential SEO: How to use Google Bard to find content ideas fast appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, July 17th, 2023
When your industry is over-saturated, chances for ranking higher on search engines become harder.
SEO tools give you keywords variations of your main keyword. But in order to attract new users, you need new keywords that people search while, at the same time, none of your competitors is targeting.
The challenge is this: how do you find these new keywords no tool can provide and no competitor is ranking for?
That’s when tangential SEO can come to help.
This is a strategy designed to increase your visibility on search engines for keywords that are not your core business but are still relevant to your audience.
What are the benefits of tangential SEO?
One of the main benefits of tangential SEO is attracting a wider audience compared to targeting traditional business keywords.
Another benefit of tangential SEO is exponentially increasing the number of topics you can write about. Potentially, with this strategy, your content can scale because you don’t run out of content ideas.
When it comes to SEO performance, when you cover a range of topics, you can rank for more keywords, which means you’ll attract more traffic to your website.
Last but not least, tangential content ideas could increase your backlinks efforts.
When you publish about trending topics around your industry, chances are your posts can passively attract new backlinks.
Let’s see a couple of examples of tangential topics.
- Main topic: Holiday home.
- People looking to buy homes for holidays only. Companies operating in this niche could create topics around real estate investments and sub-letting opportunities because holiday homeowners could use these houses to earn money on the side.
- Main topic: Online courses.
- Brands operating in this industry could talk about jobs you can do without a degree because students looking to buy courses online will likely avoid university. Here is an example of this content about jobs without a degree. The brand can also focus on career change topics and content, start to showcase job opportunities and create a job board.
The good news is that every niche can use tangential content. Here are more examples from various niches:
| Niche |
Tangential Topic |
| Travel |
Cinema |
| B2B Marketing |
Travel |
| Banking |
Technology |
| Fitness |
Covid-19 |
| Education |
Employment |
| CRM |
Remote work |
| Healthcare |
Data analysis |
| Tech |
Productivity |
Tangential SEO starts from one niche and can be extended to various niches, which also means that your research will uncover new angles and perspectives you might not have noticed before.
You’ll become familiar with your customer’s expectations, pain points and motivations.
When you research the topics they like to read about, you also learn more about your industry, making you a real expert in audience research.
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Why do you need to use AI for tangential SEO?
If it sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is.
Tangential SEO requires a huge amount of users and industry research simply because no SEO tool can provide you with this data collection process.
The traditional method of building tangential SEO could be time-consuming. This involves some of the following steps:
A lot of preparation is involved before you can write a line of copy.
But there is a quicker way, thanks to AI. In this case, I used Google Bard to develop new, tangential content ideas based on my audience research.
This method could work because it essentially automates the above steps. The secret is to write the right prompt for training AI to your bespoke results.
Essentially, we can reduce the number of steps from six to simply two:
- Write and refine your prompts for Bard.
- Feed the machine with your keywords.
Now, it’s time to see this process in detail.
Ready? Let’s go.
Step 1: Write the prompts
Prompts are essentially instructions you give to AI in the form of text, question, information or code that communicates to AI the reply you want to get.
Writing great prompts allows you to work better with AI tools and generate relevant results instead of mediocre ones.
Good prompts can increase efficiency because you spend less time refining your instructions, and they also strengthen AI responses, providing you with accurate, in-depth and relevant answers.
Because the prompt will be long and detailed, we can split it into three parts to make it more digestible and easier to understand.
Impersonation and context setting
This aims to provide AI with the most accurate information possible.
Feel free to steal my prompts and generate new tangential ideas in less than two minutes.
- “Act both as a psychologist and a search engine consultant trained in helping people find the right product or service for their needs. You are familiar with the concept of tangential SEO when evaluating common reasons for making a choice.”
Now let’s break this first part of the prompt into further analysis to understand what I asked AI to do.
This first sentence helps Bard behave as a psychologist and sets up the context in which we will operate from now on.
You can instruct Bard (or any AI tool in general) to act as different entities or engage in various situations or tasks.
You can prompt AI to impersonate characters, professionals, or even fictional creatures by providing specific instructions.
- “…trained in helping people find the right product or service for their needs”.
This part of the sentence opens up the AI attitude in preparation for what comes next.
We are telling AI to become a people’s companion when choosing products or services, a sort of shopping consultant, if you will.
“You are familiar with the concept of tangential content”.
This part ensures that we are referring to tangential SEO, which will ensure AI responses align with what we are trying to achieve.
It also removes any misunderstanding because we don’t want to refine the prompt too often. We are trying to get this right the first time.
Set up your prompt goal
After setting the context and the impersonation, it’s time to provide Bard with instructions on the type of results we expect.
We don’t want results to vary. We want results to be very specific for us to continue our process of creating tangential content ideas.
- “Create a tangential content category”
This sentence gives Bard a clear outcome. We want to create a tangential content category.
You can also decide to create two or more categories, but the more you ask from AI, the less accurate results will be.
Remember, AI has some limitations when it comes to spitting our results, sometimes they stop generating, especially in cases where the response takes too long.
That’s why I’d recommend focusing on one tangential category and then repeating the same process for another content category.
- “Be very accurate with your choice.”
We give Bard the permission to pick a category for us. All we ask is to be very specific about it.
- “Give common reasons why people make this particular choice”.
Remember the psychologist’s impersonation earlier on? That’s why we added it to the prompt. Now it’s time to get a reply from AI like a trained psychologist would do.
Research shows that psychology has influenced research in both consumer and marketing, so what’s the best way of understanding consumers’ behavior?
Support prompts
In this last step of writing the prompt, we will focus on the psychological part of our research.
We need a way to tell AI that its responses must have a psychological basis in order to be viable and accurate. Otherwise, it’s like shooting in the dark.
- “Give a list of explanations on the reasons why you chose this category and how it matches with the main content I’ll provide you with.”
This sentence is important because we need Bard to explain to us the reason for their category choice.
Essentially, we are asking Bard to provide us with review tools, we need to be able to make a judgment call and assess whether this proposed category makes sense.
- Does the tangential category match our typical customer?
- Is the customer looking for this type of topic Bard is producing?
If the answer is yes, then we can be certain that the tangential topics proposed by AI are accurate.
Lastly, we also need to take care of AI making assumptions, so we simply ask the following:
- “Don’t remind me of previous instructions, don’t make any assumptions.”
Step 2: Add your keywords
In the second step, we need to give direction to AI about our core business and keywords.
This part is vital because it will further resolve the problem of accuracy that we are likely to encounter with any AI tool.
In other words, in this step, we will connect the previous instructions with your product and services.
As an example of a prompt, we will use the topic of “online courses” for an organization that provides fitness courses and trains people to become personal trainers.
Here is an example of a prompt including both the keyword and the business description:
- “The keyword is Personal training courses and qualifications. From Level 2 Gym Instructor course to Level 3 Personal Trainer certificate, our courses offer a wide range of level to fit your career. We don’t just offer cookie-cutter qualifications. The combination of online and face-to-face training will give you a competitive edge, preparing you to hit the ground running in your new career.”
In this prompt, we must be specific about how the business differentiates itself from competitors. I’d recommend using either your mission statement or the unique selling proposition.
Put everything together
This is the complete prompt you can copy-paste into Bard, obviously changing the keywords and your business description.
- “Act both as a psychologist and a search engine consultant trained in helping people find the right product or service for their needs. You are familiar with the concept of tangential SEO when evaluating common reasons for making a choice. Create a tangential content category. Be very accurate with your choice. Give common reasons why people make this particular choice. Give a list of explanations on the reasons on the reasons why you choose this particular category and how it matches with the content I provide you. Don’t remind me of previous instructions, don’t apologise, don’t self-reference. Don’t make assumptions. Here is the keyword and business description: [insert your keyword + business content].”
The results
If you did everything right, you should be able to get impressive results from Bard that look like this:
The chat found that one of the tangential categories can be “career change.”
This is a brilliant idea because our ideal customer is usually in the middle of changing careers from desk to fitness. They want to enjoy life at the gym and help their clients reach their fitness goals.
Bard also provides us with ideas around the following:
- Articles about how to choose a new career.
- Videos about how to make a career change.
- Blog posts on how to network with people in your new industry.
- Ebooks and posts on how to prepare your cover letter and CVs for your new career
This is exactly what Tangential SEO is about. It’s content that touches your core business but doesn’t directly mention it.
Bard goes a few steps further to provide us also with a wide variety of SEO tangential categories we might want to consider:
Finding keywords no other tool can find
Using AI, especially Bard, can save you so much audience research time because AI is trained with billions of data points. Humans can only scratch the surface of the variety of tangential content.
This doesn’t mean we should rely 100% on AI. Business owners and marketers know their customers better than anyone, which puts us in the position to evaluate AI responses.
In this practical example, I used the business description and mission statement to feed AI with it.
Remember that all businesses can use this same methodology as long as you have a compelling case for being special and can articulate it clearly enough for AI.
The post Tangential SEO: How to use Google Bard to find content ideas fast appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Monday, July 17th, 2023
How does SEO content help increase sales?
Many brands make the mistake of relegating search engine optimization (SEO) to ranking websites and driving targeted traffic.
They never align it with their sales efforts, leaving a huge gap in their business growth strategy.
However, if executed well, SEO can help you significantly boost your sales.
And that’s exactly what I want to help you see in this post.
We’ll examine the challenges of attributing sales to SEO, how SEO content helps you increase sales and much more.
Challenges in connecting SEO efforts to revenue
Aligning SEO with revenue generation can be complex, presenting various challenges for brands. And this is why many brands fail to see how SEO can help them increase sales.
Some of these challenges include:
Lack of tools and proper configurations
Attributing revenue to SEO requires sophisticated tools and accurate configurations to extract the necessary data. Many businesses may lack the tools or skilled personnel to handle this in-house.
Outsourcing to a SaaS SEO agency can be a beneficial solution, particularly since regular upgrades are necessary for both tools and personnel.
Complexity of attribution
Attributing revenue to SEO is daunting due to its involvement throughout the customer journey.
Users interact with multiple touchpoints before converting. This makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact impact of SEO efforts.
While not flawless, you can use different attribution methods to help gauge the impact of SEO on your bottom line.
Use tools like Google Analytics to help you with this.
Lack of historical data for analysis
Many businesses face the challenge of limited historical data for analyzing SEO return on investment (ROI). SEO takes time to produce an ROI, which compounds the difficulty of assessing its impact without sufficient historical data.
Despite these challenges, you should still develop a system to help you track and attribute the impact of SEO to sales.
Understanding the role of SEO in revenue generation is crucial for effective marketing and resource allocation.
It helps you make informed decisions and optimize your marketing strategies for better business outcomes.
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How SEO content helps increase sales
Viewing SEO as a mere traffic-generating channel overlooks its true potential as a key revenue driver.
SEO should be seen as an integral part of growth marketing, capable of leveraging substantial bottom-line growth.
Here are several ways in which SEO can contribute to revenue generation:
1. Powerful customer acquisition channel
You can acquire new customers effectively by shifting from using SEO solely as a traffic source to a customer acquisition channel.
Fine-tune your SEO and content strategies to target individuals more likely to convert.
One way to do that is to prioritize bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) content that incorporates high purchase intent keywords. This approach positions SEO as a marketing channel and a powerful catalyst for sales.
2. Improved customer retention rates
SEO done right can positively impact your customer retention rates. You can use it to build authority, credibility and trust. These factors encourage increased sales, a crucial factor in business growth.
Additionally, SEO provides valuable insights into customer buying behavior. This enables the development of marketing and sales strategies tailored to help retain customers and enhance the overall efficiency and contribution of your SEO to revenue growth.
3. Reduced customer acquisition costs (CAC)
SEO helps minimize customer acquisition costs (CAC) by providing a more cost-effective alternative to paid channels.
As SEO compounds over time, it generates results without proportional cost increases. As a result, your CAC drastically reduces, leading to your bottom line experiencing a boost.
4. Reputation management and brand building
A positive brand reputation cultivated through SEO efforts yields numerous benefits.
These include customer loyalty, increased customer confidence, and transforming customers into brand ambassadors. These factors lead to heightened sales and revenue growth.
5. Support for other sales and marketing channels
SEO’s broad scope extends its influence across various sales and marketing disciplines.
Whether it’s pay-per-click advertising (PPC), affiliate marketing, social media marketing, or public relations (PR), SEO provides support and visibility to other channels.
This visibility enables more sales, especially for established brands with enterprise-level SEO strategies.
Recognizing and capitalizing on SEO’s revenue-driving capabilities can help you unlock significant growth opportunities for your business.
That’s why you must implement a comprehensive SEO strategy that aligns with your sales goals. You’ll then see its power as a catalyst for revenue generation.
The post How SEO content helps increase sales appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Saturday, July 15th, 2023
Google has confirmed it fixed the ongoing issue with Google News indexing. This resulted in many publishers seeing massive traffic declines from Google News for a three-week period, starting around June 21st.
The update. Google posted an update at 5:06 pm ET today, saying, “We fixed the issue with News indexing. There will be no more updates.”
Google initially discovered the issue on July 10th, and Google identified the specific issue the day after, then implemented a fix on July 12th. After the fix was implemented, publishers began to see improvements.
Now Google is confirming the fix worked, and news publishers should see their traffic at mid-July levels.
Why we care. If your site is in Google News and you noticed a traffic drop from Google News over the past few weeks, it might have been related to this Google News indexing bug. Google fixed the issue today and you should have started to notice normal traffic levels from Google News today.
The post Google fixes Google News indexing bug appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
