As we recap the year gone by, let’s look at the world through the lens of search, SEO, analytics, and content creation.

Source

2022 has been about…

• Looking at your consumers as human beings and not just data sets
• Understanding how your target consumers perceive the world and how they experience life in a digital age
• Tailoring and testing your strategies to meet consumers in their moment of need – all without losing budget (or your sanity!)
• Finding most-effective tools, technologies, and talent to navigate business uncertainty

We present to you the #SEWTop5

A countdown of editor’s picks that the Search Engine Watch community loved and found great value in!

#5. Understanding the three awareness stages of your online audience

Businesses often forget that success metrics aren’t just numbers – they are living, breathing people who are driven by behavior and emotions. As customer journeys continued to remain complex and multifaceted, businesses competed to ensure they were at the finish line when prospects were ready to convert.

Add People’s Content Operations Lead, Jack Bird created a guide on harnessing a content strategy that caters to consumers and their journeys. He detailed the three key awareness stages of online traffic, what type of content fits these stages, and how to audit your existing content.

#4. A must-have web accessibility checklist for digital marketers

Did you know, 98% of US-based websites aren’t accessible? This year web accessibility moved out of the shadows and took center stage as one of Google’s search ranking factors – making the topic itself more accessible to discussions. Marketers could no longer ignore this critical aspect, because –

Stellar user experience >> Positive brand perception >> Greater appeal to value-driven consumers = Good for business

Web design and marketing specialist, Atul Jindal created a must-have web accessibility checklist for digital marketers. It went beyond dispelling “what is web accessibility?” and spoke about its benefits and action points on “how to make your website accessible?”.

#3. Google Analytics 4: drawbacks and limitations—is it worth sticking around?

On July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics properties stopped processing new hits, forcing users to switch to its successor, Google Analytics 4. This transition demanded SEOs and marketers to have a steep learning curve and adaptability since the shift meant losing some historic data.

This article dove into the issues with Google Analytics 4 from a user perspective and a privacy and compliance standpoint. Objective, hard-hitting observations helped inform SEOs and marketers’ decisions before switching platforms.

#2. The not-so-SEO checklist for 2022

While most of the internet focused on “what to do”, we took an offbeat path of “what not to do” that will help your SEO succeed from the get-go.

Best-selling author and SEW Advisory Board Member, Kristopher (Kris) Jones dispelled some major myths surrounding Core Web Vitals (CWV) and Google’s bigger, mainstream 2021 updates.

As an especially interesting, strategy-focused read, this was one SEOs could not miss before designing their 2022 strategy.

#1. Seven Google alerts SEOs need to stay on top of everything!

We as SEOs and marketers often forget that while we focus on consumers and clients, we too are humans – with limited energy (we mean coffee supply), 24 hours (wish we had more), and sleep deprivation (yes we mean sleep deprivation). As burnout crept in and to-do lists climbed, our very own Ann Smarty shared seven Google alerts that aimed at making life easier for SEOs.

These smart ways helped the community get ahead of competition, prevent a reputation crisis, fix a traffic drop, and do much more (without getting overwhelmed).

We hope you enjoyed this! Thank you for being valuable supporters throughout our journey.

Team Search Engine Watch wishes everyone a happy new year! Keep spreading the love and SEO wisdom.

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SEAT S.A, the Barcelona-based multinational automaker part of the Volkswagen group have innovated a testing model that is driving growth for its brands, SEAT and CUPRA in the European market. While SEAT is the young, cool and urban brand that offers cars with striking designs and several mobility solutions – CUPRA is an unconventional brand, which is defined by its progressive design and the performance of its electrified models.

We spoke with Corinne Calcabrina, Global Media Manager at SEAT S.A, Sophie Santallusia, Global Paid Search and Programmatic Director, and Alejandro Sebastian, Global Search Team Lead at PHD Media Spain to discuss the ‘Performance innovation program’ (SEAT S.A’s testing model) and its value add to the businesses.

A fast-paced industry

Digital is a fast-moving sector and search is always reinventing itself with new formats and everchanging ways to create and manage accounts. The teams at SEAT and CUPRA had several pain points:

1. Staying on-top of all innovations and changes in the industry

“We needed to become first movers who actively capitalize on opportunities that appear. To ensure this our teams needed to take advantage of search space dynamics, apply best practices, and gain a technological and intelligence edge over the competition.”

– Corinne Calcabrina, Global Media Manager at SEAT S.A.

2. Improving visibility of the team’s hard work

“While we were putting all these efforts, we wanted to improve our team’s visibility. While we are busy becoming the best performing channel, always reinventing, working towards results and efficiencies, we often miss the glitter of other channels. Adding an official scope and framework means we get to report and showcase our achievements.”

– Corinne Calcabrina, Global Media Manager, SEAT S.A.

3. Maintaining performance and improving efficiency

“As the best performing channel on a last-click attribution model, we were also facing multiple challenges. The pandemic lockdowns and microchip shortages made search performance improvements a constant, ongoing must-have. This meant decreasing the cost per click (CPC) and improving the cost per acquisition (CPA) were always core reasons to develop such a testing model.”

– Corinne Calcabrina, Global Media Manager, SEAT S.A

Putting testing in the driver seat: The SEAT and CUPRA Performance innovation program

The SEAT S.A testing model, ‘Performance innovation program’ was designed to align with the inherent love for innovation that runs at the core of SEAT and CUPRA brands. The testing model was built centrally to maintain brand focus on the strength of paid search – improving cost efficiencies and accelerating performance.

Corinne and her team at SEAT S.A and their agency, PHD Media reviewed brand strategies for SEAT and CUPRA respectively, their performance, and local needs. They created a framework that provides structure, helps the brands expand their market share, and deliver central visibility on the testing results. They created specific testing roadmaps, based on quarterly goals that align with local markets based on their needs and strategies.

“We then applied our tests, sharing the hypothesis (highlighting results from other markets) of what we hope to achieve and then applying the test into the main strategy.

“We had a clear timeline and roadmap. We always test and learn. This allows us to have a specific position with partners, allowing us to always be part of the alphas and betas, testing new formats, always trying to improve results at the same time”, Corinne shared.

To facilitate consistency the SEAT S.A team organized tests throughout the year pacing one test at a time for an ad group or campaign to maintain efficiency and gain clear observations. The roadmap was created on these factors:

• Priorities for markets based on the impact and workload
• Changes that Google makes to ad formats or different features that it sunsets or iterates

The search marketing grand prix: data, automation, and visual optimization

SEAT S.A and PHD Media started differentiating strategies by keyword type and defined them for each ad group. Keywords were segmented based on brand and non-brand search, their role, and their respective KPIs. This data was then used during the auction bidding. Artificial intelligence (AI) was used to segment audiences and target ads that were top of the funnel. Comparative insights from these tests were later fed into the business to inform the direction of strategy.

To improve the click through rate (CTR) and lower CPCs, the SEAT S.A team focused on adding visuals to ads, improving ad-copies, and testing new extensions. They also decreased CPAs by using bid strategies and the system’s AI to get the best of their budgets.

To master their visual impact on audiences SEAT S.A used image extensions for each ad across all their campaigns. Google displayed these images based on multiple factors like clicks, content, and keyword triggers to optimize the best performing ones.

From a data point of view, in Search SEAT S.A used Google Search Ads (SA360) to manage and monitor their Google Ads and Bing Ads respectively. The data sets tracked all the core essentials of paid search:

• Keyword conversion performance
• Ad copies
• Audience data through all the custom bidding options available in SA360

Outcomes

The ‘Performance innovation program’ model has helped SEAT and CUPRA achieve one of their best tests which catalyzed their search performance in terms of the cost per visit (CPV), one of their main KPIs that signaled top of the funnel conversions. The cost per visit (CPV) improved by 30% and cost per acquisition (CPA) improved by 37%.

SEAT S.A (SEAT and CUPRA) are now equipped with new ways to deduce and analyze conversions on a market-to-market basis.

Sharing intelligence across diverse markets

After completing the testing phase, the SEAT S.A team and their global partner PHD Media reported on results and observations. Sharing their learnings and insights with other markets has empowered other teams to benefit from the knowledge and expertise derived from the successful test prototypes. Focusing on components that drive results has allowed the teams spread across to be challenged and has facilitated constant learning while embracing changes and new features. The SEAT and CUPRA teams are now strongly positioned to outperform the competition.

Gearing up for a cookie less future

Going cookie less will bring challenging times and impact the search channel. SEAT and CUPRA plan to counter this with the use of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to maintain performance and target the right audience. Opening up to new visual formats like Discovery campaigns and MMA/MSAN from Bing will also take an important place within search in the future, as the core of search might evolve with more automation, less granularity and control.

Greater focus on measurement and a privacy-first future

The team is testing ‘consent mode’ with GA4 and ‘enhanced conversion’ to estimate the attrition due to privacy guidelines. They are also focused on identifying and designing a risk contingency plan for the paid search elements that they won’t be able to test in the near future.

“We are testing all the new solutions and features that Google is bringing to the market in terms of privacy and cookie less capabilities. Particularly, our testing is focused on deploying the full suite of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), site-wide tagging, consent mode, and enhanced conversions.

Additionally, we are also testing new audience segments that GA4 allows within a privacy first ecosystem on our paid search campaigns. We are seeing some positive and promising results.”

– Corinne Calcabrina, Global Media Manager at SEAT S.A

SEAT S.A and PHD Media are actively focused on Google solutions for mapping markets and audiences that are privacy compliant and applicable for targeting segments.

They are also working towards gathering and connecting first party data like CRM audiences and customer match solutions.

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30-second summary:

• 12 months, several curveballs, and some masterstrokes
• If you missed out, today is a great day to look through the Search Engine Watch lens for the year gone by
• Key themes that were front of mind in 2021 – Google’s updates, cookie death counter-strategies, mastering customer experience elements, trust-building, and alternatives for search marketing and ranking

As the world, people, and of course businesses motored through a year of uncertainties – these crackers of articles gave your strategies an unfair advantage.

#1 – Google Page Experience update is all set to launch in May 2021 – Webmasters, hang in there!

You asked, “What is Page Experience, anyway? Do we really need to have an overflowing to-do list?” – and we answered everything around this enigma. This piece touched upon every aspect, angle, and action point that SEOs needed to know.

#2 – The search dilemma: looking beyond Google’s third-party cookie death

The ad tech and search industry continued to remain precarious that Google will use the cookie deprecation as a new way to establish market dominance to feed its own interests. Google expert, Susan Dolan drew from her rich experience and detailed realities of the search scape. She also shared insights and predicted future key themes that rose out of the 3p cookie death.

#3 – Everything you need to know about the Google MUM update

As the industry bid farewell to BERT, Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) update in June 2021 opened new search experience dimensions. The cranked-up competition for search visibility between businesses and advertisers – left SEO practitioners and agencies with yet another burning question, “How will we win MUM’s good graces?” Joe Dawson’s comprehensive guide left no stone unturned.

#4 – Why killing your content marketing makes the most sense

“Kill your darlings”, yes, we said it! Though it sounded outlandish, this piece held wise and valuable advice from best-selling author Joe Pulizzi on why this could be one of the best business decisions you could’ve made in 2021.

#5 – Quora and Reddit: Powerhouses for SEO and marketing in 2021

Everyone is obsessed with Google, but did you know Reddit is the seventh most popular website in the US while Quora has a DR of 91? This guide shone a light on how your search strategy could take advantage of these platforms with diversification, tap into great brand-building opportunities, and enhance your E-A-T standing.

#6 – Now is the best time to stitch your search marketing loopholes before 2022

The third-party cookie still stands at a crucial intersection between digital marketing, SEO, paid media, web design, and several business tangents. The industry needed to think hard and think differently for a contingency plan. SEO pioneer, serial entrepreneur, and best-selling author, Kris Jones helped weave a tight SEO and search marketing strategy way ahead of 2022. Why? Because a stitch in time saves nine.

#7 – Seven first-party data capturing opportunities your business is missing out on

The internet continued zigging in a privacy-focused direction as a response to consumers’ increasing demand for a transparent, responsible, and ethical outlook towards their data. First-party data became indispensable and consumer trust, invaluable. While the playing field inched closer to the great reset, we revealed some hidden first-party gems every business could use to redesign their search marketing strategies.

#8 – UX: an important SEO ranking factor

The story of SEO and UX began almost 20 years ago with both making a foray into the market in the 1990s. Since then, SEO practitioners saw seasons change and the Page Experience, paired with data analysis finally etched UX as a key ranking factor. Atul Jindal condensed years of his experience working with fortune 500 companies into this SEO guide to help you win at SEO and search experience.

#9 – Cross-channel marketing: why you shouldn’t put all your eggs in the Google basket

The pandemic didn’t let us forget that while every business is unique, budgets too took a hit, making allocation stringent. But why did so many businesses still stick to the “big guns” when allocating spending? Adzooma CEO Rob Wass and Cambridge University’s Akanshaa Khare joined forces to challenge this notion. They produced some truly unique insights that would make stakeholders rethink their media spending habits.

#10 – Core Web Vitals report: 28 Ways to supercharge your site

Everyone remembers the chaos surrounding the Core Web Vitals in early 2021. SEO folks were keen to get ahead on optimizing their site and Twitter threads were full of speculation. Armed with information, we shared a 28-point checklist on action items to spot, optimize, and embrace the inevitable rollout of these new ranking factors.

Thank you for being valuable supporters throughout our journey. Team Search Engine Watch wishes everyone a happy year-end and an adventurous 2022!

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30-second summary:

• The pandemic drove people inside their homes and onto social media like never before.
• Hootsuite has closely been monitoring the changing behaviors of consumers online since the beginning of 2020.
• We caught up with Henk Campher, VP of Corporate Marketing and Head of Social Impact at Hootsuite, to help you derive a cream level perspective for your digital strategies.
• Know how CMOs can find value in SMM efforts, conduct market analysis, and run social media campaigns that actually succeed in the eyes of top management.

From learning banana bread recipes to connecting with loved ones, hunting jobs, and now shopping holiday gifts, the pandemic drove people inside their homes and onto social media like never before. 2020 has shown us how people have resorted to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn. While Hootsuite has closely been monitoring the changing behaviors of consumers online, we caught up with Henk Campher, VP of Corporate Marketing and Head of Social Impact at Hootsuite, to help you derive a cream level perspective for your digital strategies.

Q. Paid ads have their own cons like reduced page reach, how do you maintain an upward graph for organic page reach and boost relationships, engagement, and direct sales?

Henk Campher: Never take a one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing, especially with organic content. To reach a large audience, organic posts need to be optimized. To do this, you need to understand the platform and audience you are optimizing for. Start by focusing on the platforms that make the most sense for your business. For example, if you’re a B2B company, you may find the most value on LinkedIn or Twitter whereas a B2C company may gravitate towards Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok to reach a younger crowd. 

If you want organic content to perform well on social media, create engaging and personalized content that is fitting for the platform you are using. Give people a reason to follow and engage with your social posts. To better understand what content resonates with your audience, start by using social listening tools—at Hootsuite, we integrate directly with Brandwatch so our customers can navigate social intelligence capabilities directly from their dashboard.

Beyond creating the right content for the right platform, it’s essential to connect with people. Show your audience the human side of your brand. You can do this by lifting up your employees on social media and sharing their stories or connecting with the wider community through an employee advocacy tool, like Hootsuite’s Amplify tool. If you want to boost engagement on posts, ask your audience relevant and interesting questions. This is also a great opportunity to learn about what interests them. If you focus on value and creating the right content, you’ll be able to successfully develop relationships with your audience, boost engagement, and drive sales.

Q. What are the top social media metrics that can help CMOs see direct value in marketers’ social media marketing efforts?

Henk Campher: For both B2C and B2B brands, the key to successful social measurement is to keep your metrics simple. Trust classic cross-platform metrics like return-on-ad spend and lifetime value, as these measures also tie directly to your organization’s business goals. Once you choose the content you think will resonate with your audience, test your ideas to identify which posts generate the most engagement, shares, and impressions, and do this for each social platform. Continue to test, learn, and optimize. But when it comes to measuring your efforts on social, it is important to keep your business objectives in mind and develop KPIs that match the overall goals and expectations of your organization. Metrics such as impressions and reach should be analyzed consciously.

If your goal is to build brand awareness, focus on overall engagement and how long visitors are staying on your website. This will help evaluate if your content isn’t just “content-for-content-sake” but is actually resonating with your audience and driving conversions. 

Q. What are the typical touchpoints/aspects marketers must include in their social media campaigns to reflect value for the brand and meet CMO expectations?

Henk Campher: One of the most important aspects of a social media campaign is social listening. A robust social listening tool allows you access to real-time insights into consumer sentiment, shifting trends, and competitive intelligence. These insights are key to helping a brand better understand how consumers feel about a campaign and what they want from your brand.  

The best social media campaigns also have specific goals in mind and are purpose-driven. You must understand the customer segment you’re trying to reach through a specific campaign. To achieve this, create profiles or personas for your core constituencies that integrate data and insights from marketing channels (including social) and CRM. Understanding how, where, and when to engage with your constituents requires a clear picture of their motivations and their needs.

Another important aspect is social data integration. Our ‘Social Transformation Report‘ uncovered that only 10% of marketers feel they have mature practices around integrating social data into enterprise systems like Adobe, Microsoft, Marketo, or Salesforce. However, according to our ‘2021 Social Trends Report‘, 85% of organizations that integrate social data into their other systems have the confidence to accurately quantify the ROI of social media. While data integration is a complex process, a much more accessible entry point that can help marketers better connect social engagement to customer identity and measurable ROI is integrating paid and organic social media activity.  We found that mature organizations with completely integrated paid and organic social strategies are 32% more confident in quantifying the ROI of social media. 

Q. How important is it for any brand to have involvement in social matters and social investments?

Henk Campher: The most successful brands this year didn’t put themselves front and center of the conversation—they decided to listen instead. After taking the time to listen, brands must find creative and empathetic ways of adding value to the conversation instead of trying to lead it. Brands should stay true to their identities and their audience by asking:

• “What is my role?”
• “What conversations make sense for me to weigh in on and why?”
• “How can social media contribute to my business objectives?”

Having a voice in important conversations is powerful for a brand. However, if a brand is posting about topics that don’t align with the brand’s personality and identity, customers will notice. As a wealth of different conversations are taking place across social media at all times, it’s important to create a blueprint for how to comment on a conversation, if at all. 

Q. What methods can CMOs implement to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for effective market analysis?

Henk Campher: There are various tried-and-true methods CMOs can implement when using social media platforms for market analysis. Before you begin your analysis, always have a clear goal in mind. It’s important to look at what exactly you want to analyze whether it’s your brand, product, or competitors. Doing a quantitative content analysis by assessing the engagement rate of your social posts can give companies an idea of if a message or product is resonating with your followers. Social listening is another incredibly powerful tool for analysis. Through social listening, you can zero in on how people are talking about your brand.  It’s also important to not be shy. Be empowered as a brand to implement tactics like polls and surveys on social to get in touch with customers and glean informative insights into how your audience is thinking about your brand. 

Q. How would you push an online event that involves employee referral on social media for a maximum turnaround?

Henk Campher: Develop an effective social media strategy in advance and provide your employees with the right resources and tools to promote the event. You can do this by crafting the content and social platform guidelines in advance so it is easy for employees to spread the word on social media. At Hootsuite our Amplify tool allows brands to extend their social reach and increase employee engagement. Using platforms that are suited for employee advocacy will garner the most successful results. 

Q. What are your expert tips on the most effective ways to run a social media campaign, especially during the holiday season 2020?

Henk Campher: The holidays are a great opportunity for brands to increase engagement and drive sales on social media. Here are my four tips to create an effective social media campaign and stand out from the competition: 

1. Tweak your social media posting schedule to accommodate changing workdays or times. B2B businesses often have higher engagement rates during the day, as employees are leaving early and working less in the evening. B2C companies generally have a better reach when it’s not during typical work hours. 
2. Continue to curate content over the holidays, even if there might be a downturn of activity on social channels across the board. If you go quiet on social, your customers will notice. 
3. Maintain community engagement as relationships, connections and engagement are key to any successful social media campaign. Always respond to customer issues or comments promptly.
4. The holidays are a great time to showcase the ‘human’ side of your business. Take advantage of platforms like Instagram to showcase the company, employees, and interact with the community at large. 

Q. What are the most common mistakes you see brands making in their social media pushes?

Henk Campher: The most common mistake brands make is thinking of social media merely as a broadcast medium. With nearly three billion people on Facebook every month, more than one million on Instagram, and hundreds of millions more on Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat, it’s tempting to think that way. While social media started with organic posts and later turned to paid social advertising, brands should never lose sight of social media’s core value: establishing and maintaining relationships. Take the time to invest in relationship building, as this helps brands build strong bonds with their audiences and boost customer loyalty, which ultimately benefits their business. Rather than pump out promotional content, take the time to establish your brand’s personality, and connect with customers by taking on an empathetic “human-first” approach.

How is your brand making the most of social media marketing this holiday season? Are there challenges you’re facing with regards to creating value from a board room perspective? Feel free to share your thoughts on our interview, drop a comment!

30-second summary:

• Hyperlocal SEO will help struggling communities salvage their local businesses.
• Moz surveyed over 1,400 local business marketers and more than half said they plan to implement Google’s new features to support COVID-19 affected businesses.
• Five under-rated yet crucial parameters marketers need to stay on top of.
• Sarah Bird’s special tips to optimize audience engagement at various marketing touchpoints.
• The best things you can do for landing pages is….?
• Dive in for these golden nuggets and a lot more.

2020 has hit the reset button for the world in many ways adding more wheels to digital marketers’ and brands’ “car of struggles” for success. SEO is somewhat looked at as a game of Russian roulette where you win some and you lose some, and COVID-19 hasn’t made this any easier. To help you hit bull’s eye and add an extra push to your digital strategies, we caught up with Moz’s CEO, Sarah Bird to uncover emerging trends in the search scape, SEO, audience behaviors, and more!

Q. What technologies, tools, and audience behaviors do you see shape up as 2020 progresses. If you were to draw a line between the temporary and ones that are here to stay, what would it be? 

Sarah Bird: Hyperlocal search has been important for years. 2020 has only increased its merit.

COVID-19 has made active local business listings management more vital than ever before. Communities struggling to keep themselves supplied and cared for in changed conditions must depend on the internet as a crucial resource, and when business listings can quickly communicate to them what’s available, where, when, and how, that’s truly important.

With Google rolling out new features that allow business owners to share updates about curbside pickup, home delivery, or special hours for vulnerable populations directly on their listings, customers can access convenient information with a simple search. We surveyed over 1,400 local business marketers and more than half said they plan to implement such services permanently. Aside from being absolutely necessary this year, businesses recognize that the investment in ecommerce should not simply be for the short-term, but should be able to accommodate their business and customers in the long-term.

Q. If you were to pick the hero of Moz’s local and international SEO strategy for the rest of 2020, what would it be? 

Sarah Bird: Reputation management will be crucial for local SEO strategy during 2020. We offer reputation management features through Moz Local that we urge users to leverage. 

Some of the most valuable features of Moz Local at this time are review alerts that allow you to quickly facilitate complaint resolution and response rating for quality control. During hectic times, customers are more emotional — this can either work for or against you. Should you receive a poor review during this time, it’s imperative that you respond quickly and empathetically.

Moz Local also offers a sentiment analysis feature that shows the most commonly used words for each of your star ratings. This can be useful in deciphering exactly what customers are finding important during this time.

Q. What five under-rated yet crucial parameters do marketers need to stay on top of to ensure that their brand has positively influenced their customers/target audiences?

1. Keywords: Understanding your own keywords and those of your competitors ensures marketers have a plan in place to secure visibility on a brand’s offerings or content. 
2. External links: These are an important source of ranking power in a SERP.
3. Differentiation: Framing content correctly is key to reaching target audiences. Sometimes that means presenting contrarian ideas, as described by Caroline Forsey of HubSpot. 
4. Omnichannel communication: Not all of your readers are going to read and engage via laptop or mobile, but be sure to consider how SEO is involved in your social media strategy.
5. Outcome alignment: SEO goals don’t always have to focus on clicks. Ensure your marketing team is aligned on how content or a topic should be engaged, as it could mean that your ideal outcome is answering your customer’s question directly within the SERP. 

Q. What are the best ways to use entities that can leverage BERT, add more dimensions to keyword strategy, content, and the overall digital presence? 

Sarah Bird: I don’t encourage SEOs or marketers to optimize for BERT. There are too many variables to develop an effective strategy toward this model.

Instead, marketers should continue the focus on the overarching goal of creating excellent content that holistically understands and meets the intent of users. This is no small feat and requires an intense understanding of your business, your audience, and how the two intertwine. Creating world-class content that’s data-driven, timely, and empathetic to the audience will prove to be far more effective than focusing on this specific component of an algorithmic change from Google.

Q. Tips to optimize audience engagement at marketing touchpoints like emails, landing pages, and social media?

Sarah Bird: Each of these touchpoints are important for a business’s SEO strategy. These aren’t tactics that can be tacked on — they all have a powerful impact. 

Email marketing delivers some of the highest ROI, generating $38 for every $1 spent. When it comes to emails, call-to-actions must be clear. Consider which landing pages you’re sending people to and whether they’re appropriate to improve bounce rates.

Social shares of a brand’s content have a high correlation to ranking (as described by our own Cyrus Shepard.) As with everything in SEO, a focus should be put on the keywords used as well as the medium of the content being put out and whether or not it’s optimized.

High-converting landing pages may lead to high bounce rates, which could negatively impact SEO. Rand Fishkin actually addressed this exact issue in a Whiteboard Friday. The best things you can do for landing pages is – focus on high-conversion long-tail keywords and to provide keyword-based content.

Feel free to share your thoughts on our interview and the emerging trends, drop a comment!

30-second summary:

• The worldwide web is a clear reflection of all the shifts 2020 has brought and as businesses and marketers crunch majority of their budgets and pivot strategies.
• In light of the current scenario businesses, digital marketers, and content creators continue to face some key problems around digital ad revenue, ad blocking, and more.
• We caught up with Lior Davidovitch, the founder of PUBLC, an innovative search engine that reinvents user experience and technology.
• PUBLC is a new search engine built by everyone, for everyone, that aspires to create an equally distributed web economy using blockchain token economics.
• Read on to discover insights on how PUBLC serves a more equally distributed web economy using blockchain and token economics, generating a new and native revenue stream for online publishers.

The worldwide web is a clear reflection of all the shifts 2020 has brought and as businesses and marketers crunch majority of their budgets and pivot strategies, these remain some key problems of today’s digital space:

• Digital ad revenue has taken a hit due to ad blockers.
• Online publishers struggle to find a native revenue model as an alternative to ad-based models, which only grows bigger now with the COVID-19 impact on the advertising industry. Digital ad revenue is declining, as use of adblockers is increasing
• Google and Facebook duopoly dominate over 60% of global ad revenue.

We caught up with Lior Davidovitch, the founder of PUBLC, a search engine that aims to reward the entire web ecosystem by creating an innovative, more equally distributed web economy using blockchain and token economics, generating a new and native revenue stream for online publishers.

Q1. Can you tell us about your background and journey towards becoming the founder of PUBLC?

I was always one of those kids that constantly thought of different business ideas and tried to invent things. The original idea for PUBLC started over 15 years ago when I was frustrated with the existing search engines. I always thought that people know best and there should be a way to add the human element to search for a better-organized web. Back then I had mocked up a few presentations and a family friend even connected me to a VC, but I was so young and had no idea what I was doing. Later in university, I wasn’t keen on academia and dropped out to start my journey as a start-up entrepreneur. In the beginning, I was just playing around with different ideas, and eventually, I saw that I’m always going back to the same original idea of creating a new search engine. I started completely from scratch, learning everything in the process, making mistakes, learning again, and building PUBLC layer by layer.

Q2. What was the biggest challenge you faced while setting up PUBLC? How did you solve it?

Just saying that you want to create a new search engine is a huge challenge by itself, doing it the way PUBLC does, creating a new search engine that completely reinvents the user experience and technology with a token-based business model is an even bigger challenge! If you add new and complicated technologies like blockchain and AI to the mix, the challenge becomes even bigger. Plus, the fact that you’re doing it as a small self-funded startup makes it almost impossible! But eventually, we did it step by step, layer by layer and built this platform that’s backed with AI and a blockchain financial infrastructure.

Q3. Can you give us a brief insight into PUBLC and your token economy?

PUBLC is a new type of search engine built by everyone, for everyone, that aspires to create an equally distributed web economy using blockchain token economics. You can think of PUBLC as a mix between Google and Wikipedia, where we combine human intelligence with artificial intelligence (AI) enabling users to categorize the content and “teach” PUBLC how to better organize the web, creating a new search experience, while also rewarding the users for participating in the process.

With regards to the token economics, on the one hand, our token, PUBLX, is granted by PUBLC as a reward to its community that contributes to PUBLC. On the other hand, the tokens are used as the only form of payment for PUBLC’s business services used by advertisers on the platform. This balance between supply and demand is what establishes the token value.

Token earners, be it publishers, brands, influencers, or content categorizers, can either use their token rewards to pay for any of our business services or exchange them on cryptocurrency exchanges, where the tokens can be bought by advertisers. So, we encourage everyone to checkout PUBLC and discover how they could earn PUBLX tokens.

Q5. How can businesses use PUBLC? Any tips on how they can get started with PUBLC?

PUBLC was built with all the different actors of the web ecosystem in mind, as we believe PUBLC is a platform that is meant to serve everyone and reward them for the value they create. Businesses as online publishers, brands, and celebrities benefit from PUBLC as it gives them exposure to new audiences, drives traffic to their websites, and earns them revenue for every time a user clicks on their content and views it. Businesses can get started on PUBLC by submitting their website, categorizing their content, and curating their pages. Our job is to support all those people and help them better achieve their goals, so feel free to reach out to us, we would love to hear from you!

Q6. Would video content be sourced from platforms like YouTube?

Yes! PUBLC curates and displays video content that users upload on YouTube and other such sites. You’ll be surprised to know that we even reward sites like YouTube as they also provide value to the ecosystem for hosting all that content.

Q7. What are your future plans for PUBLC? Will you venture into the digital advertising aspect as well? If yes, we’re assuming it will be in-ecosystem currency of PUBLX tokens?

Besides inventing a new user experience and technology we also had to invent a new revenue model connected to our token economy – and that’s crucial to the success of the platform – having those PUBLX tokens that are given to everyone for their contribution have real-life value. In order to do that we built a new set of business services such as, promoted content, brand awareness, ecommerce, and more, which offer advertisers a new way to enhance their brand awareness or conversions in a native and organic way within the platform without compromising PUBLC’s user experience for the users. 

Our business services work differently than the way it’s done on traditional search engines, and it rethinks this traditional advertising model of just promoting ads over search queries. The usual method is good but it could be different. We put more focus on content and the user experience because when you get ads, whether it’s on Google, Facebook, or any other platform – as a user that harms your experience. We aim to deliver our business services in a very native and organic way that doesn’t harm the user experience. For example, PUBLC offers promoted content that is real, in the form of videos, articles, and other multimedia. These could be campaigns that not only provide advertisers with the worth of their money but also engage and add value for the users. Furthermore, we incorporate PUBLC’s community in the approval of ads, having them take part in flagging spam and fraud, and helping shape PUBLC revenue model.

Q8. Do you use citations? How does the web validate your resources?

We’re focused more on the human element of search. People add domains and content URLs which are then approved by our community, and only then are indexed and crawled, making our sources more credible. There are many parameters that our algorithm evaluates in order to rank content, to give you a better idea I’ll share the three main key elements:

1. Relevancy: How the content is relevant to the search query or the topic that is searched
2. Popularity: How many PUBLC users saw and clicked on the content
3. Content age: How old is it, when was it published

Users are the first gatekeepers of which content gets indexed on the PUBLC search engine. 

Q9. How does PUBLC’s search engine combine human intelligence and AI? Is it curated by people? How do you counter aspects of “subjectivity” and “bias”?

As I’ve mentioned before, I strongly believe that people know best. They would know best about what topic(s) the is content related to or which search queries best describe the content. This is unlike how typical search engines work by mainly analyzing the text of the content. Having users add and categorize content on PUBLC works on a micro-scale for that specific content. However, when you add machine learning and AI to that you can adapt on a much larger scale, learn better about content categorization and indexing in a more precise, user-friendly, and genuine manner. Our search engine intends to broaden users’ horizons by reaching new content that they didn’t even know existed.

Yes, giving too much power to people could bring bias. But I’d like to refer to PUBLC on the lines of Wikipedia where you have a large group of people editing a specific piece of content that could be very controversial, and they still find a way to do it. On PUBLC we have an entire system of a reputation for users and publishers so they’re always building their own reputation simultaneously. 

For example, a user could build their reputation on the PUBLC platform for any niche, let’s assume, blockchain. Now if this user claims something about blockchain, the system considers their subject matter expertise and deems their claim right for crawling, categorizing, and indexing. 

We have everything validated by the users of the community. I think users very quickly know spam when they see it, so they wouldn’t approve spam-like content with the risk of lowering their reputation. We built this set of rules to incentivize people to do good and if they don’t play by the rules, they’re just going to lose.

Q10. Could you give us a small brief on how you’re dealing with privacy? Is there anything else that you’d like people to know about in terms of data privacy?

Privacy is one of PUBLC’s core, crucial elements. In fact, that’s the big problem with the web that we also saw fit to address. Platforms like Facebook and the others make their business out of the users’ data, and in a way compromises their privacy. That’s why there’s a huge loss of trust for users. One of our ambitions and aims is to use blockchain to enable users to have the best, most personal user experience while having 100% privacy. We are now building this element, and plan to have all of our users’ personal data stored on the blockchain and accessed only by them ensuring them with complete control over their data that’s also kept anonymous.

Users would have their own PUBLC IDs but there would be no way that I, the platform, or any of us could access that information. If a user personally chooses to share their information with advertisers and publishers to help them understand the user profile or engagement with their content – that too would be completely anonymized. 

Since it’s still the users’ data giving value to a business they would also be rewarded for it. This way we help users earn some of the revenue made through that data. But again, it would be completely anonymized data ensuring that businesses can’t trace a user to their real-life entity. That’s one of the great potentials that blockchain gives is the bandwidth to build platforms that are more focused on the privacy elements.

Q11. What are your predictions for search and SEO in 2020?

As I’m sure you can already guess, I believe search and SEO will be more focused on the human element, and that we will continue to see improvements in understanding the user’s intent. I think we will also see SEO become more accessible to the creators, and more straightforward, without harming the creativity and user experience of the content. Doing so by making tools to create the best optimization and content categorization. One of the biggest problems I see today is that creative content creators are forced to focus their efforts on SEO rather than on creating better content. I hope that with PUBLC, creators could focus on creating creative content while having the tools to actively influence their content’s SEO, without having the two contradict one another. For me, the prediction would be – better user experience, better content, and hopefully a better web.

30-second summary:

• Knowledge gap stands as the biggest challenge for AI technology adoption and implementation
• Our AI Summit 2020 is a cost-free event that aims to equip marketers with the much needed knowledge to adopt AI, realize AI’s true power, and know how to create strategies that can create huge competitive advantages.
• Brian Solis, IBM Watson Advertising, Adobe and Esri are our headline speakers
• More details on why marketers can’t afford to miss this golden opportunity

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been looked at as an “industry game-changer” but has merely become jargon than actual hands-on technology.

While it continues to grow rapidly – the AI market is expected to grow from $28.42 billion in 2019 to $40.74 billion in 2020 at a CAGR of 43.39% — we observed that the knowledge gap stands as one of the biggest challenges for AI technology adoption and implementation, and our AI Summit 2020 aims to help businesses address exactly that continuum.

For a better idea, these quick facts perfectly display the AI-related challenges faced:

• According to Gartner, only one in 25 CIOs reported applying AI in their business verticals
• Retailers that implemented machine learning for personalization gained 2X as compared to retailers who did not
• According to a McKinsey, only 8% of respondents across industries said their AI-relevant data are accessible by systems across the organization
• Only 3% of an organization’s data meet the quality standards needed for analytics

About the ClickZ AI Summit 2020

Our AI Virtual Summit on June 25, is a half-day event that aims to equip marketers with the much-needed knowledge to adopt and realize AI’s true power and know how to create strategies that can create huge competitive advantages.

AI is the next dream boat that marketers need to be on in order to stay ahead of the curve. Why?

1. Better customer experiences
2. Lower CPAs
3. More profitable and customer-focused business 

Our event headliners help you become AI confident and AI ready

Leading experts along with cutting edge AI technology providers will enable you to discover the realistic power of AI, what you should be doing/using right now, and explore what’s next.

Confirmed speakers:

Brian Solis

Brian Solis is a world-renowned digital anthropologist and futurist. He is also an award-winning author and global keynote speaker. 

Brian’s research, advisory and presentations humanize the relationship between disruptive innovation and its impact on institutions, markets and societies. 

He not only helps audiences understand what’s happening and why, he visualizes future trends and inspires people to take leading roles in defining the future they want to see.

Brian serves as Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. His work focuses on thought leadership and research that explores digital transformation, innovation and disruption, CX, commerce, and the cognitive enterprise.

Dave Neway

Dave Neway is the head of product marketing at IBM Watson Advertising (formerly The Weather Company’s ad sales business). 

Watson Advertising offers marketers and agencies a suite of media, data, and AI technology solutions to help improve decision-making and reduce costs across key facets of the marketing lifecycle – from media planning through measurement.

In this role, Neway is responsible for ideating the go-to-market strategy for all Watson Advertising offerings. He works closely with the offering management team and key stakeholders to position, price, and present Watson Advertising’s products across media, data and technology categories to the marketplace. 

Previously, Neway was director of sales strategy, where he created, developed, and executed plans to drive business across consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, and financial services.

Tim Waddell

Tim Waddell is Director of Product Marketing for Adobe Experience Platform. 

He has been with Adobe since 2009 working on a variety of projects, but always with a passion for audience activation built on rich customer profiles. Tim brings significant experience in the online and traditional marketing disciplines from both the customer and agency perspectives. 

Prior to Adobe, Tim built and managed the Bing marketing analytics team at Microsoft. He also managed MSN’s commerce team, driving the demand generation program and developed packaging solutions for partners. His online experience began with the launch of Travelocity, managing the advertising and sales efforts.

Robert Yocum

Robert Yocum is Marketing Technologist at Esri, an international supplier of geographic information system software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications.

Robert functions across the Marketing Technology suite to integrate and use tools to advance the capabilities and maturation of the overall Marketing Department. He works with Change Enablement, Data and Analytics, IT, and marketing groups across the enterprise to create, prioritize, and implement new capabilities to advance digital marketing best practices.

To book your seat for the AI Virtual Summit on June 25, sign up free of charge here.

SEW: 2020 will see or shall we say, “hear” 50% of search queries in “voice” – How should small and local businesses – make themselves more visible on Google?

Chris Rodgers: Voice search is dramatically changing the way people search for information but not necessarily the information they are seeking. A few years back Google introduced the concept of micro-moments. Google defines a micro-moment as “an intent-rich moment when a person turns to a device to act on a need – to know, go, do, or buy”. These needs have not changed, but what we are seeing is that instead of typing search queries into a device, people are increasingly speaking more conversational queries via voice search… and it’s growing very rapidly.

Getting started with a voice search optimization strategy

As a small business, you need to understand the concept of “micro-moments” and identify the specific needs of your customers in order to create great content that matches search intent. So, if you’re a plumber, you are likely aware of the top questions and problems your customers have. Focus on creating content that meets specific customer needs. This content could be informational, commercial, navigational, or transactional. Creating content that matches user intent will increase the chances of ranking in the top-three results, and as a result, being served in voice search answers.

Last June a study was released that dove deep into voice search ranking factors, and there were some interesting findings.

Chris Rodgers spoke about some of the important ones that you need to be aware of as you formulate an approach to voice search optimization:

• 80% of voice search answers came from the top three organic search results

This means you should continue to focus on ranking in the top three positions of search results, creating high-quality content that matches user intent, and getting relevant and trusted backlinks to your website.

• 70% of all voice search answers were from a SERP feature, most being rich snippets

You should research and understand SERP features, and create a strategy to be featured in rich snippets and in other features where it makes sense.

• A majority of voice search results were from pages that loaded faster than the others

This means you should be paying close attention to page speed. A few tools to help are Google Lighthouse Tools, GT Metrix, and Google Search Console (the GSC tool is still classified as “experimental” by Google).

Three tips to follow for voice search optimization

1. Take a more fluid and conversational approach to the content being created, avoid awkward keyword stuffing, and focus more on “topics” versus exact keyword usage. Consider adding related keywords that are relevant to your search terms and topic.
2. Include questions and answers in your content and use PAA (people also ask) from Google search results to identify questions. Another tool for topics/questions is “answer the public.” Consider which questions prompt a rich snippet (position zero) in search results and try to provide a better explanation of that keyword search/topic.
3. Research types of schema mark-up that can be used on your site and how to implement (there are some WP plugins out there that make it easier). Some types of schema to consider might include local business schema, organizational schema, FAQ schema, Q&A schema, and maybe even review schema. Google has a free structured data testing tool that is useful as well to test your mark-up.

SEW: What do you think were the top challenges for businesses/SMEs in 2019?

Chris Rodgers: Understanding and integrating SEO throughout SME organizations – We often see enterprise organizations with disjointed marketing and operations structure that siloes SEO. This approach limits the success and impact of SEO. We work with some forward-thinking enterprise organizations that are building enterprise SEO strategy across departments. For example, the web development and IT infrastructure group are thinking SEO, but so is the PR group and marketing specialists who influence language, tone, and content strategy.

Communicating the value of SEO and quantifying results for SME stakeholders – While this is true for SEO across most businesses, when we look at small and medium-sized enterprises it is very common. Marketing managers generally have a basic understanding of SEO, but as information goes up to the C-Suite and business owners, much is lost in translation. It is best to focus on a few important SEO KPI’s that are more easily quantified (keyword rankings, organic traffic, landing page organic visits, and conversions). We recommend tracking conversions down to the lead level with sales close data to more effectively calculate and communicate true ROI.

Understanding SEO strategy and processes – Whether we are talking about SME’s, start-ups, or larger enterprise organizations, there is often a fundamental lack of understanding around how SEO works. It is worth doing some research to understand SEO strategy basics and how agencies manage SEO strategy, regardless of whether you are working with an outside vendor or are working with an in-house SEO provider.

SEW: If you were to strongly suggest one platform for small businesses to spend their money and resources on in 2020, which one will it be? – Google SERP, FB, YouTube, Email?

Chris Rodgers: One platform is a poor strategy with too much risk. That being said if I only had one I might choose email marketing (if you have a solid email list). Email can be low cost and high ROI, even though it’s not too sexy and the potential is based on your email list. If you don’t have a well-targeted list, it would definitely be SEO because of the ROI it historically drives.

SEW: You’ve mentioned that you purely practice white hat SEO – What are the most common myths that your clients have had and how have you helped burst them?

Chris Rodgers: There aren’t many SEOs that are 100% white-hat. It’s more of a marketing term used by SEOs. I would not consider us 100% white-hat, because we manage link-building campaigns, which by its very nature is at least partially grey-hat. I guess the biggest myth would be that there are just a handful of factors (or any one “trick”) that make sites rank, and if you use the right strategy you go right to the top (there are hundreds of factors + multiple AI systems).

No one has a buddy at Google that ranks sites. No one person has control over the algorithm, and even more, there are AI systems at play that would likely override any single factor or ­single person’s influence.

SEW: Consumer search habits you can predict for 2020 and how local businesses can make the most of it.

Chris Rodgers: Voice search will grow in 2020, as will the use of smart speakers & home assistants – Use the resources in this article to create a voice optimization strategy to both create new content and optimize current content. Identify the questions your customers have and perform research on Google (incognito) to confirm. If you ask the question in Google and you are seeing SERP features and PAA (people also ask) questions, you’re probably on the right track. Tools like SEMRush and Answer the Public can provide questions as well.

Video will continue to appear more prevalently in search and drive more traffic – If you don’t currently have a video SEO strategy, it might be time to get started. If you weren’t aware, YouTube is owned by Google and by serving more videos in search results, Google can drive organic users back into their paid eco-system. Video is a different content type, but you can use many of the same topics for video. There are however certain video types like “how-to videos” and “product reviews” that can be particularly popular. Do some searches around the video topic you are considering in YouTube, are there tons of results and views? The goal is to increase engagement on your own site by adding video, as well as driving referral traffic directly from YouTube (the second largest search engine).

Rich snippets and other SERP features will continue to grow in search results – Rich snippets and SERP features are an important part of SEO going into 2020. We have more zero-click searches than ever before, so it’s critical to be there. Rich snippets also play a big role in voice search, so research the various schema types that might be relevant for your business and optimize for them. Use Google’s free structured data testing tool to verify your mark up and make sure it’s done properly.

SEW: Could you tell us about some holiday season trends you observed in 2019 – And what would you have done differently for better results?

Chris Rodgers: People are looking for deals, and with how huge Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become, people expect to find them. I have noticed the sales for Black Friday/Cyber Monday have been extended even more this year. There may be opportunities to capitalize on the expectation for sales and deals continuing through the holiday season. Specifically, look to target search around “sales”, “deals”, “doorbusters”, and more such keywords.

SEW: Word of advice for CEOs regarding SEO 2020

Chris Rodgers: 2020 SEO dos – Focus on trying to understand the customer journey for your products and services, define customer roles and personas, and map keywords based on the intent type of first-page ranking web pages. Use Google incognito to perform target searches and note what content types are ranking. If you see informational blogs dominating search results, that tells you those users are more top of the funnel and looking for information. If you see product/service pages ranking, that tells you those users are more bottom of the funnel and are closer to making a purchase decision. This intent is key to solving users’ problems and ranking higher in search results, so create similar content to what is ranking well for your target keywords.

2020 SEO don’ts – Avoid “all-in-one” marketing agencies when it comes to SEO. There really aren’t any general digital marketing companies that lead the way in SEO. They typically rely on other channels like paid search to do the heavy lifting and shy away from the more challenging and complex SEO issues that really matter. SEO is hard, so find someone that specializes if you are looking to be an SEO leader in your space.

SEO timing in 2020 – On a final note, SEO opportunity shifts over time and as more competitors enter a particular industry, the more challenging it becomes. Get serious about SEO sooner than later. Start small if you must, but don’t wait until you need it to begin. It takes a long time to do well, and the best SEO strategies materialize over the long-term, slowly. Going fast with a bigger budget doesn’t work as well as a long-term, well-managed SEO strategy.

Are there any questions or challenges that your SME is facing/overcoming? Feel free to share them in the comments section.

Here are three quick facts to help you understand how critical images are for people (and for SEO):

• 90% of all the data the brain transmits is visual.
• The human brain processes one image in the same amount of time it would take to read 1000 words. (Yes, turns out the old adage is indeed rooted in scientific fact.)
• The recall value of visual content even after three days is 65%, whereas the recall value for written text is merely 10%.

With the majority of search volume coming from phones — and coupled with the fact that people’s attention spans have reduced to eight seconds — it’s essential for websites to be able to deliver a quick, frictionless, and delightful user experience.

Image optimization serves as a major part of this puzzle.

What can image optimization do for my users (and for SEO)?

1. By shaving seconds off your site speed, it can reduce bounce rate and improve site retention.
2. It helps improve page loading speed, which is a major Google ranking factor.
3. It can help improve your keyword prominence. Read more on that here.
4. It helps in reverse image search, which can be a big value add especially if you’re a product-based business.
5. Many devices and desktops use high-resolution screens, which increase the need for good quality images.

Basic image optimization tips

These are some tips that anyone can apply for any type of site (even WordPress), so you’re not solely at the mercy of your developers and designers.

1. Choosing the right type of image: Vector or raster?

• Vector images are simple, created by using lines, points, and polygons. Vector images are best applicable for shapes, logos, icons, and flat images. They have as good as no pixelation when you zoom in, making them apt for high-resolution devices. Additionally, you can use the same image file on multiple platforms (as well as for responsive website design) without having to use multiple variations.
• Raster images, on the other hand, are images that are made of rectangular grids, each packed with multiple color values (pixels). Raster images provide depth to the imagery you would want to convey, giving it an emotional and psychological appeal as these images look real. However, if not handled well, these can heavily hamper your site’s loading speed! Plus, you might have to save multiple file variations to ensure they’re compatible on different platforms and fit for responsive designs.

Here’s a table that Google shared to help understand the pixel-to-byte relation. In short, you’ll get an idea of how heavy one image can get based on its dimensions.

Source: Google

Google also mentioned that it takes four bytes of memory to deliver one pixel. Imagine if you had several images on a site with 800 X 800 pixels. our site would take at least something around 625 kBps. Or in simpler terms, imagine an elephant participating in a rabbit race.

Bottom line

I would suggest wisely using a mix of both. An ideal ratio could be 40% vector images and 60% raster images.

2. Picking the best image format – SVG, JPG, PNG, or GIF?

Best format for vector images:

SVG is the only, and the best, option for vector images. Due to its flat imagery, you also benefit from high quality that is easily scalable.

Best formats for raster images:

• PNG: Produces high-quality images with heavy file sizes. It can be suggested only for times when you want to save every detail of the image.
• JPG: Produces good quality images which aren’t heavy in terms of file size. However, these are lossy images, which means you’ll lose some minor image details permanently. JPG is undoubtedly the preferred image format, which gives you the convenience of hassle-free downloading and uploading of images. Because of this, they’re the most widely used — around 72.3% of websites use JPG image formats and most of the phones save images as “.JPG” files. They are especially suggested for ecommerce sites and social media.
• Gif: If you’re looking for animation, GIF is an ideal choice as it supports 256 different colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. As of now, just 26.6% of websites use GIF formats.

Here’s a chart that could help you take a call on which image format is best to use.

Source: W3Techs

Note: The data in the above chart is of May 15, 2019

3. Resizing images

With a cloud full of devices it’s obvious why people get confused about ideal image sizes.

Note that image size and image file size are two different things. Here we’ll explain how you can get ideal image size (also called image dimensions).

As part of image dimensions, we’ll also discuss aspect ratios.

What’s an aspect ratio?

Aspect ratios tell the width and height of an image and are written in an “x:y” format.

Why is it important?

Remember the time when you tried scaling an image and literally blew it out of proportion? This is exactly what it saves you from. Referring to an image aspect ratio while cropping or resizing images helps you maintain the viability and beauty of the image’s dimensions.

You could refer to this image Shutterstock created to enlist some commonly used aspect ratios.

Source for the image and the table data: Shutterstock

With reference to the table above, it’s best to focus on the 1:1 and 4:3 image ratio that are apt for social media, mobile screens, photography, and print.

You might have your own dimension templates based on the content management system (CMS) you’re using.

According to Squarespace, the most ideal size for image optimization on a CMS is 1500 and 2500 pixels.

Here’s a quick and simple answer to spot the most common image sizes for the web.

Source: Shutterstock

Bottom line

From personal observation, I can suggest using 1080 X 1080 pixels and 1500 X 2500 pixels.

If you’re feeling too lazy to go through all these details, you could also try scaling the image from the corner arrow while you’ve pressed the “Shift” key. Works for some platforms.

4. Naming images – Best practices

Search engines have brains without eyes, so unless you name your images right, they won’t be able to  “read” your images nor rank you accordingly. This is where your keywords come into play. As I’ve mentioned above, if you name your images well, you can improve your keyword density and chances of ranking.

Let’s explain this with an example:

• How people commonly save images – “Haphazard/random numbers and alphabets”, “Flowers can dance”, and “What was I thinking”
• How  people should save images  – “five-tips-for-image-optimization” and “the-ideal-method-for-naming-images-in-2019”

Name your images in all small letters with hyphens in between and leave no spaces. As you’ve seen, I’ve used the keyword “image optimization” in the “five-tips-for-image-optimization” example. You’ll be surprised with how much that helps in ranking.

Bonus

You could also use the following to improve keyword usage in your site content:

• Alt text (If your image is loading slowly, this text appears in place of the image so users can get an idea of what should be there.)
• Captions (Text that gives a short description, helping users know more about the image.)

Plus, if you have an ecommerce site, you could even make good use of structured data to give the search engine more specific details about your products’ color, type, size, and a lot more.

5. Compressing the byte size of the image files

Compressing a file is possibly the simplest yet the most crucial part of image optimization as it directly relates to the website’s loading time. Points one to four prepare you for this final stage of image optimization.

Two live examples of how much load time can cost your bottom line:

• Amazon.com observed a one percent decrease in sales for every 100-ms increase in the page load time.
• Google experienced a 20 percent drop in revenue for every 500-ms increase in the search results’ display time.

What’s the ideal image file size?

A file size below 70 kb is what you should be targeting. In case of heavy files closer to 300 kb, the best you can achieve is a 100 kb file size. Doing so saves your images from taking extra milliseconds to load while it gives you lossy, compressed images that do not compromise the visual quality.

How can you decrease an image’s file size?

All you need to do is drop these files on a file compression site and you’re all set. These are some good, free image file compression online tools:

• TinyPNG/TinyJPG – (Compresses .png and .jpg files – 135 kb reduced to 43.9 kb – Does up to 20 images at a time – Supports dropbox)
• Image optimizer – (Compresses .png and .jpg files – 135 kb reduced to 49 kb – Only does 1 file at a time)
• WeCompress – (Compresses .png, .jpg, and other files – 135 kb reduced to 48 kb – Only does 1 file at a time)
• EzGif – (Compresses .gif and other files – 2MiB reduced to 1.77MiB – Only does 1 file at a time. It also lets you edit the gif before compressing it.)

Bonus tips

• Use web fonts in place of images with text on them as they look better, do not need to be scaled with the image, take less space, and save loading time.
• Use 72dpi resolution for your images.

Closing notes

You could be using all these image optimization tips and still get stuck with a site that loads in 13 seconds or even worse. This is when you might want to ask yourself:

• Do I need all these images?
• Which images are redundant?
• What’s the best place to put images on the site?

Website content, both visual and written, has an intertwined relationship that stimulates emotions and inspires people to further engage with your product or service. People (or at least I) judge a business through its website so feel free to tell us, which was the last impressive website you visited? Or what have you done for image optimization?