Because of the uptick in digital usage, we’re also exposed to thousands of ads daily. This represents a dramatic increase over the last decade thanks in large part to social media, among other apps, serving up heavy doses of targeted advertising.

Consumers are fully accustomed to the onslaught of ads, but expectations for relevancy are high. 71% expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this does not happen. So, while they spend more time engaged with digital media and online activities and want the abundance of engagements personalized and meaningful, they also aren’t eager to give up personal information to make that possible.

All of this makes building a unified digital identity, built around email addresses, even more important.  Utilizing the email address as the key identifier is the most effective way for businesses to ensure they’re reaching the intended consumer with consistent, personalized messaging across multiple channels.

 When MarTech and data explode

The pandemic brought about a wave of behavioral changes in consumers. From increased eCommerce sales and digitally purchased groceries and household goods, to reduced loyalty as consumers sampled new brands. Many of these changes seem to have staying power.

Managing digital identities becomes necessary, but more challenging, when you consider the expanding universe of data, devices, platforms, and channels comprising the digital world.

The MarTech ecosystem is bulging at the seams with companies trying to capitalize thanks to these new opportunities. As of 2022, there were nearly 10,000 MarTech vendors offering solutions, growing a staggering 6,521% from 2011 to 2022 (ChiefMartec).

The cause for concern runs high. With so many applications and solutions in play at any given time, it is easy to understand how organizations struggle to keep consumer data up to date and synced appropriately. It’s common to discover companies have conflicting or incorrect information.

Moreover, people may use different email addresses depending on how and with whom they interact. For example, online shopping. Retailers may have a customer’s email linked to their billing information, another tied to promotions and loyalty programs, and perhaps a third from contact with customer support. Finding that multiple email addresses link back to the same person is highly beneficial.

Not only do consumers use multiple email addresses, but when close to 30% of data decays annually, it’s likely some of them created or are using a different email address than what exists in a company’s system. Targeting can only reach the audience if based on up-to-date and preferred information.

Despite the growing number of apps in companies’ tech stacks, businesses are recognizing the importance of properly and actively managing digital identities by placing them in the hands of the marketers and data analysts that use these profiles every day. This renewed focus is the only way forward to meet customer’s expectations for personalization, keep retention high, and effectively improve digital marketing overall.  

Email data underpins digital identity

Centering around consumer email data provides marketers with the strongest foundation to keep pace with customers and prospects. That’s because email remains the center of digital transactions for a large number of industries. The most effective way marketers can make sure they have clean, valid email addresses and connect with actual customers is by utilizing a process for email validation.

Marketers need to verify that email addresses exist, are deliverable, and contain no risk. Running email addresses through a series of syntax, domain, and mailbox checks will meet the goals of pinpointing and deleting bad emails, correcting errors, and resolving discrepancies.

After all, messaging that doesn’t reach the recipient wastes resources with missed opportunities and poor campaign performance. When it comes to email marketing, for example, email service providers may direct senders with bad lists to the spam folder or worse, block emails entirely.

Email validation helps digital omnichannel campaigns reach their targets. And good email data can also help companies protect themselves against fraud as an estimated 40% of fraudsters use a newly created email, and 10% of fraud is attempted using invalid or fake addresses.

Keeping up to speed with the modern consumer as they engage brands across a plethora of touchpoints is not easy. Even the number of connections attributed to the average consumer is growing – over 13 for North America in 2023 (

The one common thread tying together all of these transactions and interactions? The email address.

Managing this data doesn’t need to be as daunting as it might seem. With proper validation you can be certain you’re using good information. Utilizing email intelligence will allow for the personalization consumers are expecting. Resolving digital identities will make their experience consistent. And the proper data will help reduce potential fraud. All of this revolves around strong email address data.

Learn how the right email-centric data drastically affects digital marketing

30-second summary:

• Marketers should use both historical and forecasted data to drive blog post content
• Ensuring the content has added value to a competitors – either through additional information or FAQs – is vital for SEO
• Content which is littered with errors will harm SEO in the long run

Content written in partnership with RankIQ

Here are the top 25 blogging SEO tips to help all blog posts compete for a first page Google ranking.

1. Cut the time to write a post in half by using an AI SEO tool

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools, like Clearscope and RankIQ, tell you what topics marketer should cover in their post to compete for a first-page ranking on Google. This allows marketers to create a comprehensive outline in a short amount of time.

2. Do not use single-phrase search volume when choosing keywords

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make when blogging, is using single-phrase search volume to identify keywords. This metric is only meant to be used for Google ads, and it is not an accurate measurement of the traffic you will get.

There are only two keyword research tools which provide an accurate traffic estimate, which are Ahrefs’ Traffic Potential and RankIQ’s Estimated Yearly Visitors.

3. Poll create original research posts from poll results

Original research posts get a high number of backlinks. One easy way to generate original data is for marketers and bloggers to identify large Facebook groups within their area of interest, and post polls. The answers gained from the polls can form the basis for building a research post.

4. Get interviewed on podcasts to generate high quality backlinks

Backlinks to a blogs can be generated in several ways, including being interviewed for a podcast. Links then often appear in the show notes page for the relevant episode.

One way to marketers can advertise employees as available for podcast interviews is to send emails to various show hosts. Details of podcast hosts are relatively easy to find through hosting sites; Apple’s Top Charts lists the top 300 podcasts in a number of different areas. If bloggers do not have time to send emails, there is the option to sign up to PodcastGuests.com and have the hosts reach out instead.

5. Write blog posts on the most searched stats for year-round passive backlinks

Journalists citing data or specific statistics will often add a backlink to their source within their articles, but they tend to click on a title which has the highest number of data points available. (E.g., 50 Latest Dog Biting Statistics).

Marketers can boost their blogs’ SEO by researching keywords to glean the most searched for statistics in a specific area of interest. Once a blogger knows which statistics are popular, there is the opportunity for them to write a blog post with additional data points.

6. Use Google ‘friendly’ terms in your title

When marketers run an AI SEO Report through a tool like RankIQ, it lists the words Google ‘likes’ the most within titles. This enables bloggers to create perfectly optimised post titles from words driving the highest click-through rates (CTR) for specific keywords or phrases.

7. Use a targeted front-end modifier on your blog post title

A strategically placed front-end modifier, like “best,” “top” or “good”, can bump a marketers blog  ranking from #3 to #1. Different topics and areas of interest have unique front-end modifiers. Food bloggers get over 90 percent of their traffic from recipe posts. The top front-end modifiers for recipe posts are “easy,” “best,” “homemade,” and “simple”. (E.g., Easy chicken pot pie recipe).

8. Always go higher than your competition

Before a list post is published, marketers should look at their competition on the first page of Google. If the highest number in a title is 15, then they should consider lengthening their blog list post to 25. This is going to increase the CTR and push their blogs’ posts past titles with lower numbers.

9. Do not go over 60 characters in your blogpost title

Ahrefs SEO tool found titles with more than 60 characters are rewritten by Google 57 percent more often than those with 60 or less characters.

10. Use brackets with the current year at the end of each post title

Google searchers want content with the latest information. Blog posts which have the current year in their title are going ng to get more clicks than those that do not; using square brackets increased the click-through rate by 38 percent.

An example would be: ‘25 Email Marketing Tips for Bloggers [2022]’.

11. Internally link to a new post from two other high authority posts

As soon as a market publishes a new post through a company blog, they should link it to at least two of historical blog posts which have plenty of inbound links.

12. Write 40-50 word paragraphs to rank for featured snippets

Multiple studies have confirmed the majority of featured snippets are pulled from paragraphs which are 40-50 words in length. This is also the ideal length of a paragraph for maximum reader engagement.

13. Make sure your ‘content grade’ is an A+ before publishing

Backlinko looked at 11.8 million Google results and found posts with a high content grade ranked significantly higher in Google search. Content optimisation tools, like RankIQ, will grade a blog’s content based on what Google wants to see from a post for a specific keyword phrase.

14. Add FAQs at the end of a post to increase ‘dwell time’

One way to prolong people’s time on page is to add a frequently asked questions section to the bottom of a blog post.

To find out the best questions to include, search engines can be used by any marketer to find out the most common questions searched for on specific topic. Google even has a dedicated “People also ask” option.

Marketers should consider included around 3-5 of these questions, and their 40–50 word answers, within their businesses’ blog posts.

15. Listen to teaching podcasts like ‘The Blogging Millionaire’

The host of The Blogging Millionaire – a podcast devoted to teaching different blogging strategies – gets 5 million monthly visitors from over 100,000 first-page Google rankings.

Brandon Gaille, host of the podcast, has so far taught over 100 blogging and SEO growth hacks in short ten-minute episodes.

16. Keep your intros to three sentences or less to increase engagement

Readers want to get to the body of blog post as quickly as possible. For list posts, marketers should ensure readers can see the first item on the blog’s list above the fold.

17. Create a meta description tease to increase click through rates

In 150 characters, markets should include the best part of a post and end with an ellipsis. This can increase the click-through rate on a post enough to move up several spots in Google’s rankings.

Here’s an example of a meta description tease:

Title: 11 On-page SEO Best Practices for Blog Post

There are eleven On Page SEO tactics that pro bloggers use to get ridiculous results. The one tactic that plays the biggest role in SEO is…

18. Buy an aftermarket domain with existing backlinks to rank higher faster

Using a high domain authority expired domain will allow a blog post to rank high on Google from day one. The best place to find these domains is at GoDaddy Auctions.

• In the advanced search, select expiring “.com” or “.org” domains which are at least 4 years old.
• Copy all domains which come up with at least 1 bid into a Google sheet.
• Run these through a bulk domain authority checker and remove all domains with less than a 30-domain authority.
• Use the Wayback Machine to find domains with content which are at least loosely related to your subject area.

19. Identify the word count that google prefers for every keyword you write on

The word count needed to hit a keyword is different, depending on the subject area.  For a recipe post, it may only take 900 words. For a marketing tips post, 4000 words may be needed.

AI SEO tools like Frase and RankIQ use algorithms to determine the word count a post needs to compete for the top Google ranking.

20. Keep your URLs short by focusing on the core keyword phrase

A study by Backlinko found URLs in the top Google position are 9.2 characters shorter than the URLs in position number 10.

21. Use your own video thumbnails and links

SEO can also be bolstered by avoiding video embedding from a hosting site. The YouTube embed code significantly slows down the page speed of a post, which is a component of Google’s algorithm.

22. Place your target keyword in the first 100 words of your content

This tactic has been around for a while, and it still makes an impact.

23. Run your post through Grammarly before you hit publish

There is nothing worse than a blog post littered with spelling errors or grammatical errors; it suggests author laziness or a rushed blog post.

Grammarly’s tool is almost as good as having an editor who reviews your work. It will instantly take a rough post and flag any inconsistencies or errors and suggest corrections.

24. Include short stat-based infographics for more backlinks and social shares

There are few things which attract backlinks and social shares like simple stat-based infographics. By using a 16:9 ratio, your stat infographics will work for both desktop and mobile audiences.

25. Get a list of the lowest competition keywords with the highest traffic potential from RankIQ

Most bloggers end up writing more than 50 percent of their posts on keywords they will never be able to rank for.

RankIQ’s top keyword research experts have identified the lowest competition high traffic keywords in over 300 blogging niches.

Rank IQ provides AI-powered tools to help marketers and bloggers improve their SEO by identifying key words and topics that top Google’s ranking algorithm. 

30-second summary:

• With search getting more sophisticated there will be a strong relation between user signals and influencers
• Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) and the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) model will impact search intent and influence a business’ search visibility
• Intellifluence’s CEO, Joe Sinkwitz explains key concepts surrounding the impact of influencers on website rankings in modern SEO

One new to SEO might assume that the only role influencers play when it comes to ranking is in the form of bloggers providing reviews and links via guest blogging. However, if we were to segment search into simplistic buckets of links, content, and the cumulative user signals associated with how a visitor interacts with links and content, the future role of influencers is going to skew far more towards the user signals bucket.

Historically, influencers have been viewed as a paid social channel add-on for B2C and D2C companies, only more recently taken seriously for their ability to influence B2B purchases. Their use cases are far more versatile than the initial assumptions and preconceived notions related to value, with expected compensation ranges to match that versatility based on audience sizes and channel selection. As an SEO, it is easy to understand how influencers that maintain blogs in your niche would be useful when undergoing a PR-driven outreach campaign for link purposes. To understand how influencers can affect the outcome of a site’s rankings external to the links generated, it’s important first to understand a few key concepts.

Content created in partnership with Intellifluence.

Targeted peer personas

Within the realm of content marketing, a marketer would seek to develop out personas in order to properly structure content with the appropriate hooks and value propositions. For ease in understanding how to create a sample buyer persona, consider the following process:

1. Provided you’re not operating on a brand new site, look into your previous 100 customers – if you have enough data, you can be more granular and select out your most ideal customers.
2. Based on the buyer contact’s email, use a tool such as Clearbit to generate a list of their social media accounts. Keep in mind that where they maintain social accounts is just as important as to their level of usage and subject matters.
3. Who do these customers aspire to be? Are they constantly seeking out solutions? Whom do they follow to get these solutions? A quick hack in this is to sort their followers by audience size as authoritative influencers tend to have a larger following than most of their industry peers.
4. Digging further, who influences those subject matter experts? Which sources do they consume?
5. Who are your ideal customer’s peers? On one hand, you’ll likely have some of that data immediately when analyzing the audience data. If you do not, LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes segmentation rather simple based on their filters and query refinements, allowing you to select extremely similar individuals to your targets.
6. Repeat the above process as necessary to generate a large enough dataset that you can apply pivots on in a worksheet, in order to determine buyer persona commonalities.

Once targeted personas are created based on those characteristic commonalities, we can use them in order to positively impact those user signals. Here are a few oversimplified pieces for the sake of brevity.

Navigational queries

Through multiple experiments, we know that spikes in navigational queries can have a spillover effect on rankings for non-navigational queries. As Google is introducing Multitask Unified Model (MUM) to make sense of complex queries, the more positive effects we as SEOs can provide on showing that these navigational queries also have informational and transactional signals associated with them, the better the intent and therefore search the ordering will be on the coveted transactional terms.

How does this work with targeted peer personas? It can be as easy as hiring influencers that exist frequently enough in the sum audience data to your targets to share out useful information related to your product or service, specifically writing out the brand name. Each time we’ve run campaigns of this type, the navigational queries spike. This alone is very useful, but there’s more power to these peer influencers.

Repeat dwell

Having a user specifically search for your brand and click the result is a fantastic first step. What could be better? Repeatedly visiting and spending time on-site. I recognize that we’re simplifying here but structuring a campaign with peers that follows the model of Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA) allows you to introduce the brand name for navigational queries then pepper the targeted audience via those peer influencers with interesting facts and use cases.

In this phase of the campaign, the direct links from social posts could be used as we can all probably agree that our Chrome and Android data is being used to continually refine future searches. The goal of this phase is to drive repeat usage of the site. Some commercial activity may very well take place, which is a bonus, but not the KPI.

Query satisfaction

The final phase of the AIDA model moves from desire to action, and our goal is to turn our navigational queries into transactional rankings. Translated to how MUM might perceive this, a user that seeks out a result navigationally, returns to the result from another channel, and then comes back with a transactional query modifier is likely satisfied with the query result and thus that website should be shown more frequently.

How does that work with the influencers? The third style of posts from the peer influencers to your buyer personas can again return to mentioning your brand name and including a specific value proposition to generate that action. It could be a coupon code, a time-specific call-to-action for a deal, a giveaway, or any combination of the sort. By now focusing on a specific transactional modifier with your brand name, a percentage of those blended queries will occur, resulting in action being taken, which is the definition of query satisfaction. You’ll have successfully used influencers to influence how Google perceives the site for future transactional queries.

Joe Sinkwitz is CEO at Intellifluence.

30-second summary:

• Websites that rank well on Google tend to have a higher Core Web Vitals score
• There are three core web vitals that make up the majority of the site’s overall page speed score
• Prioritizing user experience in web design and marketing campaigns could give you a competitive edge
• This comprehensive guide prepares you for the rollout of the new Google Search algorithm update

Google’s latest major update to its search algorithm focuses greatly on the user experience through a new set of ranking factor metrics, called Core Web Vitals. Early results from Core Web Vital audits reveal that the average website performs below these new standards. Searchmetrics’ research revealed that, on average, sites could reduce page load time by nearly one second by removing unused JavaScript.

This provides an amazing opportunity to outperform other websites by boosting your own page rankings.

Here is everything you need to know about Core Web Vitals plus four simple steps to improve your metrics.

Content created in partnership with Searchmetrics.

What are the Core Web Vitals metrics?

Core Web Vitals are an extension of Google’s page experience signals that include mobile-friendliness and HTTPs. The three Core Web Vitals metrics measure loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability, which Google views as providing an accurate depiction of a real-world, user experience.

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the loading time of the largest image or text block visible within the user’s viewpoint.
2. First Input Delay (FID) measures the interactivity on the page by calculating the time from when a user first interacts with the site to the time when the browser responds to that interaction.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) refers to how much the content shifts during page rendering.

How to check your page speed insights

There are many online tools that check your page ranking score, including PageSpeed Insights, Chrome User Experience Report, Lighthouse Audit, and Search Console. These sites measure page speed in various elements and display the results using a traffic light system. PageSpeed Insights provides a breakdown of the results and highlights areas of improvement.

What does “good” performance mean in numbers?

To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading. Pages should have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds and maintain a CLS of less than 0.1.

Websites, like Wikipedia, have the highest page speed score due to a lightweight approach to web design, using mainly text and optimized images. Websites that rely heavily on video content and images are slower to load and make for a poor user experience. Therefore, there is a balance to strike between design and user experience.

See where your site ranks. Visit PageSpeed Insights and enter your URL. Note: The top number is your Lighthouse score, also referred to as PageSpeed score, measuring from zero to 100. While it’s a good general benchmark for the performance of your site. It’s not entirely related to the three Core Web Vitals metrics, which should be viewed as an analysis of LCP, FID, and CLS.

How to improve your page speed

Passing is considered getting a “good” score in all three areas. Making small changes can improve the page speed score by as little as one second, which can shift the site from a “poor” or “needs improvement” score in LCP to a “good” one. Reducing load time will make users happier and increase traffic to the site.

Tom Wells, creative marketing expert at Searchmetrics, says,

“Anything that’s not needed on a website shouldn’t be there.”

Putting it simply, identifying and removing elements that are not used or have a substantive purpose could improve the site’s page speed score.

1. Oversized images

Poorly optimized images are one of the main causes affecting a site’s LCP score as this is usually the largest element to load. Ecommerce businesses and those who rely heavily on images may have poorer LCP scores due to the page rendering of multiple high-resolution images.

Optimizing these assets by using responsive design or next-gen image formatting such as WebP, JPEG 2000 and JPEG XR can improve the score by cutting down rendering time. Often, images can be condensed to a much smaller size without affecting the quality of the image. Free resources like Squoosh can do this for you.

2. Dynamic content and ads

Loading ads on a web page is one of the main causes of a bad CLS score. This can be down to elements on the page shifting to accommodate dynamic ads, which makes for a poor user experience.

Using a smart implementation method such as allocating size attributes or CSS aspect ratio boxes for all ads, videos, and image elements is one way to reduce content shifting. Some companies may use a plugin or coding at the top of the website to place the ads. However, this could lead to a slower website, impacting the user experience negatively and indirectly affecting rankings.

Also, never insert content on top of existing content, except in response to specific user interactions as this ensures any layout shift that occurs. For example, when you click a CTA button and a form appears is an exception.

3. Plugin-centric web economy

Plugins can act like “plaster over the cracks” to solve website problems, says Wells. Despite creating a temporary fix, it can slow down and hinder web performance as all the code needs to load before the user is able to fully interact with the webpage.

Using plugins can increase server request counts and increase javascript execution time. All these factors can lower the site’s FID score.

“Often we look for advanced fixes and solutions but sometimes it’s as simple as deleting what’s not needed,” says Wells.

Therefore, removing some plugins, especially unused ones, can improve the reactivity and speed of the website.

4. Too much code

Google advises focusing on the overall website performance.

“It’s critical for responsive and well-scored websites to be as lightweight as possible,” says Wells.

“The more things that a server has to load, the slower that load time is going to be overall.”

While unused CSS and JavaScript may not directly impact the page speed score, it can still impact the site’s load times, create code bloat, and negatively impact user experience.

When should I start?

Google’s rollout of the new algorithm began in mid-June, so it’s worth getting a start on reviewing how well your site scores on pages speed tests. Websites that rank well tend to have higher Core Web Vitals scores and this trend is set to continue as Google places greater emphasis on user experience.

Want more Core Web Vital insights? Read Searchmetrics’ Google Core Web Vitals Study April 2021.

30-second summary:

• Your SEO proposal plays an instrumental role not just for your agency but also for your client’s business
• Forecasting needs to be a star element of your customer acquisition process – but how do you navigate these tricky waters?
• SEOmonitor dissects the entire thought process and action plan for you
• Here’s how to ensure realistic, practical, achievable, and mutually agreed milestones and budgets are set with your clients

Clients often ask for a forecast to estimate their ROI with this type of marketing investment. Agencies are caught between building a realistic business case and explaining that they’re all scenarios, not promises. Think about it like this – you both need to know where you’re going, or you won’t have a clue when you’re there. But it’s all about how you set expectations from the start. This is where your SEO proposal plays an instrumental role in customer acquisition and experience.

Let’s imagine the following scenario: a Client Service Director argues about the benefits of presenting a business case to a new lead to make the sell.

Yet, the agency’s CEO wants to make sure the initial internal evaluation is on point. After all, it makes sense to calibrate your model first and then show the opportunity.

With the right forecasting methodology in place, you can do both and prove your SEO services’ business value.

The big question is how to go about it.

Content created in partnership with SEOmonitor.

What does SEO success mean for your client’s business?

To invest in SEO, a client needs to understand how that strategy translates into sessions, conversions, and ultimately revenue. So, as an agency, you need to connect the business metrics with the non-brand organic traffic and keyword ranks – the data that you directly impact.

Keywords are influenced by many variables that you need to consider when designing a trustworthy methodology to create realistic SEO scenarios.

And even before that, the way you do your keyword research influences those scenarios:

• What is the client’s industry trend like?
• What is their business trend? Are they in a growth phase, or are they plateauing?
• What is their market share in terms of organic real-estate (their visibility compared to their competitors)?

Understanding the opportunity for growth

The competitors’ keywords gap analysis

It’s common sense, but it can sometimes escape the client’s focus – showing them who their real online competitors are in terms of queries and search intent.

A perfume shop, for example, will be in tight competition with big retailers such as Amazon more than competing perfume shops, deciding to offer online services.

Exploring the client’s domain in connection with the competitor landscape will give you an overview of the overlapping and non-overlapping keywords, together with their key attributes (search volumes, seasonality, etc.). This is one significant way to understand which keywords are worth introducing into your SEO proposal and ulterior strategy so as not to get sidetracked by misleading keywords.

Continuing our perfume shop example, although the client might want to focus on a specific set of keywords, you’ll be able to make a compelling, data-based argument on why it’s important to improve non-overlapping keywords.

Let’s say you found out that a competitor to our perfume shop had dedicated pages for aroma-based perfumes, with listings that target “vetiver” or “white musk”. Replicating this won’t involve changing the client’s product line and will add new valuable keywords to the mix.

The client’s market share

Another way to evaluate the client’s business status quo is by using the Visibility metric as a market share indicator. Calculated as an impression share and weighted against search volumes, it shows you the growth potential compared to the client’s competitors and the total shares.

As it’s expressed as a percentage, you’ll know where to focus your attention.

For instance, if it’s a competitive market, and the main competitor has a Visibility of 70 percent, then improving the rankings for high-volume keywords in the top-three group will be a game-changer. You’ll also know which keywords to select for a winning SEO strategy.

Transparent calculations for a realistic timeframe

After thoroughly researching and selecting the targeted keywords at hand, modeling how the non-brand organic traffic might look if a particular performance is achieved in a timeframe of six or 12 months will help your agency set the right expectations.

To do so, you need to look at all the variables impacting your keyword list:

• Search seasonality and the keywords’ year-over-year trend
• How the inertial traffic influenced by seasonality only looks (as if the website’s rankings would stand still)
• The performance in time toward the SEO goal, calculated as linear or exponential
• The average CTR curve calculated for the top 10 positions for each mix of SERP features and device segmentation, showing you the actual clicks that manage to reach your client
• The long-tail keywords and their impact on forecasted traffic

With this model in mind, you get to estimate sessions and conversions instead of ranks. For instance, in SEOmonitor’s forecasting module, the estimation of the additional conversions is based on the estimated additional visits multiplied by the corresponding conversion rate of each keyword included in the calculation. You can verify each input and output at an individual keyword level and see what makes a realistic or too far-fetched scenario.

Thus, you transform the loaded notion of forecasting into a more tangible idea – various additional traffic scenarios which translate into possible business results, moving the conversation towards marketing added value.

To make a case for a certain scenario, you can highlight what their traffic would look like with and without the proposed SEO campaign, being transparent about what went into your calculations and what assumptions you’ve made.

Letting the client understand the overall opportunity and what’s in it for their business will help you set a common ground for success.

Is it the right budget for the client’s business now?

When your agency builds a business case, another important thing is to evaluate the direct connection between SEO performance and results, correlated to an objective benchmark that both, you and the client can easily gauge.

Compare the SEO budget and forecasted results to its equivalent in Google Ads, and you’ll have an external comparison showing the worth that SEO brings. For instance, if the estimated Google Ads Value for your realistic scenario is $55,000 for 12 months, then a $500 to $700 retainer seems more plausible than a $1,500 one.

In contrast, if the estimated Google Ads Value reaches $250,000+ for the same 12 months timeframe, it’s clear that we’re talking about international SEO on a highly competitive market and a $5,000 to $7,000 retainer at least.

Instead of guesstimations and the painful back and forth of establishing a budget benchmark, you’ll now have an overview of where the business is and how you can contribute in terms of revenue. So these calculations can help you set the right price for that client profile.

Even if you choose not to put that forecasting scenario in your proposal and instead negotiate KPIs after the SEO technical improvements are in place (the third or fourth month of collaboration), you’ll have an important internal calibration tool at your disposal.

The forecasting exercise helps assess if the new client’s objective is worth it and keeps your agency accountable for the SEO strategy you propose.

Is the campaign going in the right direction?

An initial business case with variable scenarios helps the agency define success for the new client. Then, it’s just as important to track the SEO campaign’s progress once it’s in place. After all, forecasting is just a way to estimate a possible future and set “a north star” for both of you. The rest depends on how the strategy evolves against the shifting context.

Here’s where re-forecasting plays a significant part.

Perhaps the agency decides to share KPIs for the first time in the third or fourth month of collaboration after implementing the audit requirements. Or it’s time for the quarterly review, and the initial SEO strategy and subsequent forecasting are scrutinized. Either way, it’s crucial to revise and adapt.

Maybe there are new keyword lists to add and model into a traffic scenario or a digital PR opportunity to add to the overall plan. Maybe the client has additional products or services that they want to optimize that weren’t included in the starting plan.

For instance, coming back to our perfume shop and its pandemic challenges, it’s important to touch base regularly to see what new opportunities are in store. They might be looking to branch out in the home fragrance industry but don’t know how much demand is in their target market. As their SEO agency, you can re-pitch an SEO campaign based on search data for “home perfumes” and design a creative digital PR campaign with that hook.

This step of the client relationship-building process is an added advantage in proving how you’ve created business value and what more you can do.

Summary

Effectively communicating your proposed SEO campaign’s value is crucial for potential clients to decide if – 

• the price is right,
• the timeframe is right,
• the ROI is worth it.

It’s also a way to keep your agency honest and accountable.

A trustworthy forecasting methodology helps with all of the above, as you get to:

• Establish a common definition of what success looks like – rankings achieved for relevant keywords, Visibility achieved against competitors, and other established factors which directly translates to additional traffic, conversions, revenue
• Establish a realistic budget based on the client profile and its Google Ads equivalent value
• Keep track of the SEO objective and re-forecast when it’s the case to adjust the strategy

SEOmonitor’s forecasting module supports SEO agencies to do all that with reliable data and all the necessary variables, taking into account seasonality, YoY trends, and more.

Plus, with the Google Slides integration, you get a Proposal Builder that automatically pulls the forecast data and transforms your business scenario into a pitch-ready presentation.

The forecasting module is just one of the solutions SEOmonitor develops for agencies to acquire, manage, and retain more relevant customers.

Join us in our quest to bring more transparency to the SEO industry!

30-second summary:

• Keyword difficulty (KD) scores help digital marketers understand potential search engine performance
• KD scores are useful in building SEO strategies, filtering out ineffective keywords
• Low competition keywords give an advantage in attracting traffic
• Some KD calculating tools may be inaccurate due to the use of limited parameters
• Semrush has developed a new formula for KD score calculations that it says has improved accuracy

With countless companies competing for the same audience, digital marketers need to develop a highly effective and targeted content strategy to find a way through the crowded market and connect with potential customers. Keyword difficulty (KD) is an essential metric to assist marketers in formulating an effective SEO strategy for reaching the top of search engine results pages (SERP).

Focusing on a keyword with a low KD score can achieve faster results with traffic from search engines as there is less competition. Whereas keywords with a higher KD score will typically have far more competition in search results, making it much harder to appear near the top of SERPs in the short term. Long-term improvements are achievable but will take time and require multiple SEO measures to be implemented.

KD calculation tools can determine how effective a keyword may be in search results. However, a lot can depend on the SEO tools that digital marketers are using. Such tools are not always accurate due to the limited parameters that can vary from developer to developer. The result is that the KD calculation may be inaccurate and even lead a digital marketer to believe that their keywords will perform better in practice than in reality.

Content created in partnership with Semrush.

Semrush, an online visibility management platform provider, has developed what it says is a proven formula to achieve an accurate KD percentage score based on in-depth research into SEO patterns and client feedback.

How Semrush’s Keyword Difficulty platform works

This year, Semrush released an updated version of its KD metric. The new formula was the result of extensive lab testing by the company’s team of data scientists and engineers. They studied patterns of SERP activity for approximately 120,000 keywords, covering more than 100 parameters and varying contexts to determine an accurate KD value. Alongside this, the teams analyzed the data to determine the difficulty that keywords would face in using SEO to appear on the first page of search results.

The three steps to decode your SERP standing and opportunities

Semrush’s platform has three steps to calculate the formula.

1. SERP analysis

The first involves SERP analysis, where the median value is identified for three metrics throughout URLs on the first page of search results. The three median values are:

• The number of referring domains pointing to the ranking URLs
• The authority score of the ranking domains
• The ratio of follow/no-follow links to the ranking URLs

2. Keyword parameter analysis

The second step is an analysis of keyword parameters. This considers the above SERP factors, alongside a closer inspection of individual keywords. All factors are weighted differently in Semrush’s formula regarding the likelihood of influencing the first-page ranking.

The parameter weighted the highest by some way is the median number of referring domains for ranking URLs, totaling 41.22 percent. While the second-largest weighted share is the median authority score for ranking domains at 16.99 percent. Search volume is third with 9.47 percent, and the median follow/no-follow ratio for ranking URLs is a fraction lower in the fourth position at 9.17 percent.

Other parameters include featured snippets, branded keywords, and site links, with the weighted share becoming progressively smaller. Factors that can harm the KD score are keywords with a high word count and no SERP features.

3. The calculations

The third step is the calculation itself. The formula also adapts for each country, taking a nation’s population size and the number of websites into account when calculating the KD score based on Semrush’s regional database.

What KD scores mean for your SEO performance

On Semrush’s KD platform, the user can enter up to 100 keywords at a time to check the KD score. Crucially, the platform can help the user find valuable low-competition keywords. KD scores can also be calculated for both long-tail and local keywords. In addition, the tool allows the user to compare their SEO strategy with competitors to see what is performing well and identify any keyword gaps.

The results provide the user with the KD rating and advice on what they need to do next to gain hits. At the lower end of the scale, scores of 0-14 percent are classed “very easy” with the strongest likelihood of new pages appearing near the top of Google rankings without the need for backlinks.

The next step up is 15-29 percent, which is considered “easy”. While there may be some competition, it remains possible to achieve a high ranking for new web pages. However, this will require quality content based on the keywords.

Things get progressively harder as the KD scores get higher. A score of 85-100 percent, for example, is classified “very hard”, where keywords face the strongest competition and the odds are stacked against new websites breaking through. A ranking is still possible through features such as on-page SEO, link building, and campaigns to promote content. In this instance, pay-per-click advertising may prove more beneficial.

To find out more about Semrush and its Keyword Difficulty platform download its recent whitepaper.

30-second summary:

• Reddit is the seventh most popular website in the US while Quora has a DR of 91
• These factors make for great opportunities to build your brand’s online presence and enhance your E-A-T standing
• This comprehensive guide helps you take advantage of Quora and Reddit marketing

Get ready to take advantage of the resources that two-third of marketers and SEO specialists miss out on. We’re talking about Quora and Reddit Marketing and you’re about to know how they can bring tons of value to your business.

Raising brand awareness, driving traffic, and diversifying your link profile with useful backlinks – all that is more than feasible with the right, out-of-the-box approach.

Let’s dive right in and take a look at the pros, cons, and everything in-between concerning the promotion of your website on Reddit and Quora.

Content created in partnership with Crowdo.

What makes these two solid platforms for SEO and marketing?

According to Alexa, Reddit is the seventh most popular website in the US, surpassing even Wikipedia. It’s a community-based platform with 130K+ niche-based subreddits brimming with highly active users.

Although different from Reddit in terms of structure, Quora is equally worthy of marketers’ attention. It’s a Q&A platform with a DR of 91, making it a highly trustworthy resource, frequently shown in SERP.

Both platforms have strict moderation and high content standards, which means no spamming or self-promotion is allowed. Google is known to favor links from clean unspammed resources, which is why backlinks from either of these platforms will be useful for your backlink portfolio.

Apart from that, expanding your brand’s online presence is crucial for the EAT Google algorithm. This is aimed to provide users with relevant, and useful information.

This is where Quora answers and Reddit comments and posts come into play. Submitting helpful and informative answers can get you far in your promotion strategy, but let’s first start with some theory.

Are backlinks from Reddit and Quora useful for SEO?

Many SEO specialists don’t consider Quora and Reddit viable sources for link-building because the backlinks coming from these platforms are nofollow.

Taking into account the myth about the uselessness of nofollow links – nofollow translates into no-good for them.

This misconception is easy to clear up:

1. Your backlink profile looks suspicious to Google and other search engines if it contains dofollow links exclusively. Diluting it with good nofollow links allows creating an organic-looking and diversified link profile.
2. Google perceives nofollow links as “hints,” which means they still have a positive effect on your promotion. Even Google’s John Mueller confirmed it, just take a look at the tweet below.

How to get the most out of Quora: A step-by-step guide

1. Create a well-thought-out user profile

A thorough and properly formatted user profile is essential for Quora. Your profile should look trustworthy for your answers to be considered valuable and included in the feed. Here are some points you need to include:

• Fill out the “About me” section with information about you and your occupation. Don’t shy away from going into details if it can truly benefit your credibility as an expert. But keep in mind that only 50-character-worth of text, including your name, will be shown above your answers. So make sure you make them count.
• List your fields of expertise by choosing them from the “Knows About” section. Expert replies are deemed more valuable by the Quora algorithm, which in turn increases the chance that your answers will get into the feed and won’t be collapsed.
• Link your social media accounts in the Settings section. Verified social media accounts add trustworthiness and make it easier to connect with you.
• Add credentials

You can either copy them from your LinkedIn profile or fill them out and add some more info. “Credentials” is the part of your profile where you can add links to your portfolio, info about previous companies you worked for, your educational background – anything that can make people believe that you are indeed an expert in your field.

• Upload a clear and friendly photo of yourself

Profiles with a photo instill more trust and are more relatable for other users. Try to avoid funky pictures or graphics.

2. Find suitable, niche-related questions

Now that your profile is all set up and looks good, it’s time to get down to business and find relevant questions to showcase the expertise and skills you’ve mentioned.

Start with outlining some keywords, relevant to your niche. You can either do it yourself or you can use a keywords generator tool like SEMRush or Ahrefs.

You can either choose questions with the most views because they’re shown in the feed and get a lot of attention or go for unanswered questions and score a higher chance to get in the top spot.

3. Write informative, source-rich, helpful answers

Your answers on Quora should be informative and answer the question directly – include statistics, references, graphics, and other media that can help illustrate your points and give a better insight into the topic you’re covering.

The Quora algorithm filters out irrelevant answers and collapses them. The more expert and in-depth your answer is, the higher the chance that it gets shown in the feed and won’t get collapsed.

As for the length of the answer – short answers usually don’t look authoritative and insightful. The optimal length of your answer should be between 1500 – 2000 characters, at least that’s what we think at Crowdo.

4. Format your answers in an appealing way

Formatting your answer is essential for making it look professional and easy to understand. No matter how much effort you’ve poured into your answer and prior research – if you submit a wall of text, it won’t do.

Answers like these don’t get enough upvotes and are mostly ignored by the viewers. Use all formatting means necessary to make your answer as appealing as possible: bullet points, appropriate headings, quotes – all of it will help your text look clear, engaging, and comprehensible.

5. If you use someone else’s content – indicate the source

Plagiarism is a big no-no on Quora, and it might get you banned. If you use someone else’s content to emphasize/illustrate/prove your point – always indicate the source.

6. Link to your website naturally

Although Quora allows self-promotion, it doesn’t mean that you can blatantly abuse it. Clickbait titles are frowned upon on Quora, and the same goes for obvious begging for clicks, like “Check out my awesome website!”.

The link to your website must be organically inserted in the text and correspond to the context.

For instance, you can present it as something that provides additional in-depth information: “This detailed overview of best digital marketing practices might come in handy to you.”

7. Use authoritative sources to enrich and add authority to your answer

Answers with a single link to your website look suspiciously promotional and don’t instill trust. Try including other topic-related, helpful links from reputable and authoritative sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, or others.

It will add a professional touch to your answer and increase its value for the reader.

How to avoid collapsed answers?

Sometimes, even if you followed the Quora guidelines to the letter, your answer might get collapsed.

The reasons may vary, from an error in the algorithm that can be corrected by writing a support ticket to a mistake on your part. Let’s take a peek at the most common reasons why answers get collapsed:

Your user profile is lacking trustworthiness

If you haven’t indicated your field of expertise, skipped the credentials and bio description, the Quora algorithm may deem you unfit to answer certain questions due to the lack of trustworthiness of your profile.

Your answers aren’t helpful to the author of the question

Make sure you clearly state the answer to the question.

Posting long text walls containing no definitive answer and brimming with irrelevant links helps no one.

You’re overlinking

A common mistake among those who only start working with Quora is to write as many replies as possible and cram all the links they can think of in their answers.

You have to establish yourself as a trustworthy contributor first, show your expertise and only then strategically insert links into your replies. Start with writing 20+ helpful and informative answers without any links.

Your answers are lacking interaction from other users

If the Quora algorithm detects that your answers have no comments or upvotes, it may deem them unworthy of showing and collapse them.

The ideal way would be to try to benefit the readers as much as possible and get this social traction organically.

The rather “grey” way would be to use other Quora profiles to upvote your answer and increase the view count.

The approach you choose is completely up to you.

Product/service promotion on Reddit: All about Reddiquette and Karma

Being a community-based platform, Reddit pushes you to come to the audience and pour actual value into the content you generate and share. On Reddit, you must be a part of the community if you want to succeed.

Before submitting anything, you need to “get the feel” of what every community is about and tailor the content you contribute to be in line with the customs of each and every subreddit.

Reddiquette

An excellent way to start your marketing campaign on Reddit is to learn its basic rules, aka Reddiquette. Let’s take a quick look at the main ones:

• Don’t rush to submit – Easy does it

Reddit algorithm and moderators take into account your profile’s age and authority, aka Karma (more on this later). If you rush to post right after you registered and haven’t even researched the subreddit you’d like to post on – it’s a sure bet that your post will be removed.

• Never beg for upvotes

Upvotes and downvotes are used on Reddit to show appreciation or displeasure with posts or comments. Submissions with the highest upvote score rise to the top and may even reach the front page – the holy grail of Reddit. Begging for upvotes is rightfully considered to be a “big no”.

• Don’t rely on reposting

Reposting is a common bane on Reddit and involves sharing the content of any type, pictures, gifs, videos previously shared by the original poster on another subreddit. In other words, it’s stealing to get upvotes.

In a few cases, the content is reposted to multiple subreddits if it’s extremely important for all, and the more people see it, the better. But in the vast majority of cases, it’s a dishonest way of obtaining Karma points.

• Don’t spam with useless comments

Comments in threads are a perfect place to help the OP (original poster), give advice, joke around, provide some tips. Users share links and provide valuable insights here.

You can use the comment section to your advantage and write helpful answers with a link to your website.

However…sometimes people just share the link. Comments like these are immensely annoying and bring no value to the discussion. They are typically removed by moderators and will likely lead to a shadowban (more on that in a bit).

Karma

Karma is a Redditor’s score determined by the number of upvotes against downvotes their posts and comments received. In other words, Karma is essentially the reflection of the user’s reputation and a trustworthiness indicator.

Some subreddits don’t allow submitting content if one’s Karma score is low. That’s why it’s crucial to spend some time surfing the subreddits, understanding the rules, types of content welcomed in each of your target communities, and contributing helpful and interesting content.

It’s a common mistake among new users to rush into posting with no Karma and include links on top of that. If you do that, there’s a very high chance that your post won’t pass the moderation and will be deleted.

And here comes the shadowbanning that we mentioned earlier.  It implies that the posts you submit are visible only to you. Shadowban is used to filter out promotional posts and comments that are made solely for self-advertising purposes.

Marketing on Reddit: Some ground rules

Keep in mind that each subreddit is a close-knit community protective of its habits, rules, and culture. The one thing communities have in common is the absolute hatred towards those whose sole purpose is self-promotion.

Imagine it as a gathering of friends discussing things they like, and that one guy suddenly starts to preach about some irrelevant business and its benefits. It’ll obviously annoy everyone and get your profile banned.

Let’s take a look at how to approach marketing on Reddit the right way:

• Grow your Karma by submitting useful content

Learn the ins and outs of every subreddit and contribute content people of the subreddit like to see. The more engaging, useful content you post, the more Karma you’ll generate.

The sure-bet subreddits to grow your Karma are r/aww – for cute pics of animals (no one downvotes these), r/AskReddit – where you can ask literally about anything and everything, or r/explainlikeimfive/ – a helpful and friendly community that rarely downvotes even the most absurd questions.

Remember that your submission history is visible to everyone, and some Redditors make it their point to go through the entire submission history of the person to see if there’s a hint of them being an advertiser.

• Once again, don’t go crazy with placing links

It’s not a commonly known fact, but only one in ten of your submissions can contain a link to look natural and be accepted – the rest should be contributed without any links, be it posts or comments.

This ratio is directed at making you contribute more than you take, keeping the benefit of the community above all else. If you exceed this ratio, you’ll be immediately suspected of self-promotion and get a shadowban.

Long story short, be a friendly neighbor and not a salesperson.

Conclusion

Marketing on Quora and Reddit takes a lot of time and effort, but the benefits for SEO (in terms of increased traffic to your website and backlink portfolio diversification), brand awareness, and ultimately sales boost are equally impressive.

Given the extent of work, competence, and resources needed for successful marketing on these platforms, even experienced marketers leave this task to experienced professionals like Crowdo, who offer a standalone Quora and Reddit Promotion Service.

That being said, hopefully, you’ve just discovered two unexplored marketing channels and got a hint of how to approach them wisely!

30-second summary:

• The needs of an SEO agency are dynamic and change as the business grows
• From data accuracy to seamless functionality, the spectrum of SEO tools and their features is wide, but how do you decide?
• Five telltale signs that it might be time to start prospecting for new SEO software to complete your technology stack

The SEO industry is constantly changing and evolving. Your SEO agency’s needs also change as your business grows. The tools you use will shape how you direct your growth. So it’s important to stay up-to-date on what’s new in the space to decide whether adopting a new SEO tool would benefit your business.

Yet, it’s always a question of prioritizing what’s critical for your business requirements.

There are many factors at play here:

• Some SEO platforms solve problems that you maybe didn’t even know existed – to identify these, you need to stay abreast of new advancements in the industry
• Some solve a particular problem, which you’re already aware of – in these cases, it’s just about identifying which tool is the best fit for your agency’s needs
• Some offer a seamless experience that helps you optimize your SEO workflows
• Some offer competitive advantages in terms of features or pricing

In our interviews with top SEO agencies from around the globe, we’ve gathered various insights into the factors that most influence the decision to test, and even switch, to a new core SEO tool.

Here are some of the telltale signs that it might be time to start prospecting for new SEO software in your tool stack.

Content created in partnership with SEOmonitor.

1. Your current tool isn’t giving you the right data or functionalities

Accuracy and functionality are the biggest pain points SEO professionals have with their tools.

Does your current solution give you enough data? Does it provide the right data? If not, you may not be able to deliver on your SEO goals.

Have you ever come across either of these problems?

Unreliable or incomplete data

Some SEO platforms simply provide more data features than others, while others charge extra to view specific metrics, like:

• Google’s “(not provided)” data
• Brand/non-brand organic traffic segmentation
• Mobile vs. desktop traffic

Having this data is invaluable for SEO professionals. But having to pay for it granularly can be a hugely limiting factor, particularly for smaller agencies.

For example, mapping the traffic data from Google Analytics and matching it with the keyword data from Google Search Console to get what’s “(not provided)” means you can show clients the direct impact which SEO has on other business goals – like how increasing ranking for a keyword affects conversions.

SEO platforms that provide this type of data as standard can give you an advantage when it comes to acquiring and retaining clients by highlighting the connection between SEO and business results.

Or it can be an issue of unreliable metrics – misleading or opaque calculations, issues that pertain to technical changes and not your SEO performance, and so on.

Think about the visibility metric. If it’s calculated as an average of positions for a set of keywords, then changes based on adding or deleting keywords on that list will be misleading, leaving you to figure out why the score fluctuates.

Paul Wood, Director of Indulge Media, points out that innovation in how an SEO tool calculates a key metric is a deciding factor. Even more so if it’s something the agency used to do with spreadsheets and many hours spent before finding out about such an efficient metric.

“The more interesting scenario is when you suddenly become aware of a tool that’s out there that does something your team didn’t even consider,” Wood said. “When you see it in a tool, that’s a moment when you change the way you’re thinking about things, about how you structure your work. And then you start to work differently.”

This is how the right SEO tools should work – solving agency pain points, even the ones you might not have thought were possible to resolve.

Functionality issues

Speed is a huge factor in the SEO industry.

Search professionals need access to accurate, up-to-date data in the moment to implement campaigns and track performance.

Because when your software malfunctions, you need to get the problem solved fast.

This is why it’s essential to consider the quality of support provided when selecting an SEO tool.

Ideally, you should get access to a dedicated account manager who you can approach for quick resolution of issues on an as-needed basis, as well as regular support calls to review your agency’s needs.

When Paul Friend, Head of SEO, and Ben Foster, Managing Director, from SEO Works decided it’s time to choose a different core SEO tool, they scored ongoing and ad-hoc support as one of the “hundreds of different relevant aspects when selecting the right tool.”

As part of their decisional matrix, this was one point that needed to match key functionalities like keyword features including universal rankings, overall market visibility scores, content insights, forecasting and reporting capabilities, link building capabilities, competition insights, and many more.

After all, when you’re evaluating or considering upgrading your existing tech stack, you need to see how well a solution performs based on your agency’s specific needs.

2. You want to be seen as a leader in innovation

Digital is always moving, and SEO professionals have to be up-to-date with new developments to remain competitive. Agencies need to be at the forefront of innovation, so they constantly lookout for new technologies that will set them apart.

Paul Wood says that they “make an effort at least a few times a year to have a proper review of what’s out there in terms of tools.” They focus primarily on accessibility and UX when assessing new tools on the market, like:

• How easily they allow you to export data
• How they facilitate collaboration between internal teams and clients
• How many functionalities can be integrated into a single platform

The team at SEO Works also highlights the importance of always being on the lookout, with members keeping each other informed. They have an extensive training program in place, too – so everyone is onboarded not only with the tools but the specific methodologies the agency uses for top-notch SEO strategies.

Going even further, agencies like SEO Works develop proprietary tools, showing how their innovative approach can be a competitive advantage for clients in their portfolio.

3. You’re growing or scaling your SEO agency

Digital adoption has accelerated globally by at least three to four years in just a few months, according to a recent McKinsey Global Survey of C-level business leaders.

This drive toward a digital-first approach is only expected to continue, which means that scaling needs for SEO agencies are likely to be high right now, as well as for the foreseeable future.

Meeting this growing demand for SEO services requires agencies to scale operations efficiently while also staying competitive themselves. If you’re growing your agency, it’s a good time to test your tools and see if they have the right set of functionalities to promote and support this growth.

Fast-growing agencies need more capabilities, like:

• Access to more users: As you add new clients and employees, you want tools that allow you to have unlimited users (ideally, at no extra cost) and facilitate collaboration across teams
• Unlimited API access: Your SEO tools need to work seamlessly with your other business tools as you grow your overall technology toolkit. For example, we’ve made it as simple as possible to export large quantities of data through the SEOmonitor API, letting you pull the campaign and keyword-level data into your preferred internal systems (like Klipfolio) and customize client reports
• More efficient workflows: Operational dashboards, integrated systems, and organizing capabilities for your client portfolio, all make a difference in helping you get the status quo at a glance

In the words of many SEO professionals we’ve talked with, the highest value an SEO platform can bring is to help you not waste time.

The right tools will help you do this, but ineffective ones can leave your team spending too much time on technical processes, which will seriously impede your ability to scale.

4. Your tool isn’t collaborative enough or customizable

SEO professionals need to have stable processes and methodologies across all teams. The best software is built with this in mind.

Collaboration and customization are the most important things that agencies prioritize when choosing SEO tools. And lots of features facilitate this, like:

• Multiple user access: Unlimited access for team members and clients, with customizable client view permissions.
• Collaborative features: Real-time annotations, comments, and sharing capabilities for both teams and clients.
• Tracking metrics: A centralized agency dashboard that lets teams monitor performance and tasks, as well as align on goals.
• Personalization features: From filtering campaigns by account managers, to an editing mode that optimizes your time for keyword management, to saving customized reporting templates across the agency, there are many capabilities you should consider.

A robust SEO solution, which combines multiple functionalities like these in a single platform, helps optimize internal workflows and gain a holistic view into agency operations.

5. Your tool isn’t cost-effective

Different sized agencies have different budgets.

Optimizing costs is crucial, particularly for scaling agencies. You have to hire more people and use more resources in your tools to handle a larger volume of clients, and you don’t want to scale your costs at the same rate.

Some questions to ask when evaluating the cost-efficiency of a particular tool are:

Does it offer flexible pricing and use of resources?

Most SEO software solutions have a fixed subscription cost, which includes a set number of domains and keywords. But if your use of the tool’s resources fluctuates from month to month, your pricing remains the same.

Other platforms give agencies the ability to upgrade or downgrade each month, so you only pay for what you use. Having no predefined plan supports agencies better evaluate their expenses based on campaign volume on a specific timeframe.

Are there any extra hidden costs?

Some tools have an attractive base price but come with hidden costs and extras that can quickly add up, especially when you’re onboarding lots of new clients and handling larger campaigns. These include:

• Per-user costs: Will you be able to add unlimited users (including clients) at no extra cost to allow for internal and external collaboration?
• Migration fees: Is there an hourly or fixed rate for migrating from your existing system to a new tool?
• Integration costs: Are there multiple integrations to important tools of the trade (Data Studio, Google Sheets, API access, and more) included in the price?

So if your current software isn’t making the most financial sense for your business, it could be time to test a new one.

When is the right time to start prospecting for a new SEO tool?

The answer is, you should never stop your critical analysis.

Innovation is an ongoing process, especially in this rapidly-changing industry. So your core SEO tool of choice needs to keep up the pace and constantly update its capabilities.

When you encounter these signs with your existing solutions, they may not be serving you as well as they should be, like:

• When you don’t get access to the right data or functionalities.
• When you want to be a leader in innovation, which means you need innovative methodologies.
• When you’re growing or scaling your agency, and you need more capabilities in place.
• Or when you want to be more cost-effective.

We understand that an SEO agency’s core tools are crucial in winning more clients and managing them more efficiently.

That’s why our team at SEOmonitor is committed to designing specific solutions that help you acquire, manage, and retain relevant customers.

Join us and our SEO agencies community in the journey to bring more transparency and measurability to the SEO industry.

30-second summary:

• Keywords represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding consumer intent
• Using AI-powered chatbots, conversational data that occurs over messaging channels like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Messaging can give businesses a deeper understanding of what consumers want
• Below, we’ll discuss how conversational marketing platforms like Spectrm use natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) to guide customers through the buying funnel
• A robust conversational marketing platform makes it possible for companies to build chatbots that engage and convert customers on the websites, apps, and social platforms where people spend their time

For more than two decades, Google and other search engines have attempted to crack the consumer intent code. The entry point for a search marketing campaign is the keyword list. Yet keywords—whether spoken or typed—represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding what a user wants. There’s no way to clearly measure (or identify) user intent, but Google is getting better at figuring out what a user wants with technologies like Google Hummingbird, an algorithm update they rolled out in 2013. Google introduced Hummingbird in response to the increasingly conversational nature of search queries. 

Per a 2013 article in Wired, “Google is now examining the searcher’s query as a whole and processing the meaning behind it.” In January 2020, Statista reported roughly 40 percent of US search queries contained four or more terms.

Asking a search engine or virtual assistant a question is the beginning of a conversational journey that carries the searcher across channels until they ultimately find what they want (or not). Keywords pull the curtain of intent back, but they only provide a glimpse of the customer journey, labeling the searcher’s thoughts without revealing the “why” of what they’re searching for. 

Once a user clicks on a search result, the conversation—from the search engine’s perspective—is over. 

But thanks to advances in natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI), businesses have access to a much deeper understanding of what consumers want across the entire buying journey. 

AI-powered chatbots that “speak” to consumers can collect customer intent data and take the conversation beyond an initial keyword query. They enable businesses to leverage that customer intent data instantly to scale one-to-one personalization in direct chat.

Below, we discuss how conversational marketing platforms employ NLP and AI in chatbots to guide customers through the buying funnel, using conversational analysis to gain an understanding of customer intent that goes far beyond keywords. 

Content created in partnership with Spectrm.

The customer conversation is online

According to Hootsuite’s Digital In 2020 report, 60 percent of the world’s population is online. The report found that, globally, users spend an average of 6 hours and 43 minutes online each day—40 percent of their waking life using the internet. A large chunk of that time, more than two hours, is spent using social media.

Consumers were using mobile messaging and chat an average of 20 minutes per day in 2020, with Business Insider predicting that the average would grow to 24 minutes by 2021. Interacting with chatbots is a natural extension of consumers’ comfort with messaging in social media apps like Facebook and Instagram.

Increasingly, messaging is how we connect with each other. Facebook and Instagram are at the center of this trend. Businesses have the potential to reach and engage with over two billion people on Facebook and Instagram using their respective messengers. This level of engagement gets to the root of consumer intent, diving beneath surface keywords to the conversational data that can help companies understand what’s motivating the consumer to conduct their search in the first place. 

Leveraging conversations to drive results

Conversational marketing platforms use messaging apps to engage with consumers and determine intent. This is next-level chatbot technology that uses AI to create a two-way exchange with every customer, asking them questions throughout the buying process and capable of operating on multiple messaging channels.

Spectrm is an example of a conversational marketing platform that goes beyond simple, generic approaches to conversational AI by using domain-specific NLP to guide consumers through the customer journey. Generic conversational AI uses general NLP that can be used for simple tasks like autosuggestions and basic keyword matching. Domain-specific NLP is trained for the individual business. Spectrm’s approach to conversational AI combines domain-specific NLP with the use of generative adversarial networks, a type of machine learning that enables enterprises with little or no customer intent data to quickly generate their own data sets to train the algorithm.

“Marketing chatbots that use domain-specific NLP learn how your individual customers speak. The customer intent data specific to your business, customers, and goals are used to continuously improve your chatbot. It’s about understanding how your customers engage naturally with your brand, and training your bot to respond to that to drive outcomes valuable to your business. Even if you don’t have a lot of conversational data to train your bot.” – Writes Spectrm

Chatbots are only part of what makes conversational marketing platforms work. Platforms like Spectrm operate across multiple messaging channels where consumers spend all their time including Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messaging, Google Business Messages, and even at the display level via conversational display ads using AdLingo and Google DV360.

Consumers like chatting with businesses. They’re already moving through the buying cycle using one-on-one conversations that provide much more in-depth intent data than a simple keyword search. Consider the follow statistics:

• 75 percent of consumers prefer to engage with brands in private messaging channels versus traditional channels
• 65 percent of people are more likely to shop with a business they can reach via chat

Conversational data = More targeted campaigns

Conversational data can be used to create marketing campaigns that are more targeted than traditional search and display campaigns. They enable businesses to design targeted messaging around the customer journey, learning what customers want/need in the context of how they’re interacting with the chatbot.

Conversational data also enables businesses to create customer profiles using the answers people provide in chat. Personalization and segmentation become easier based on the granularity and specificity of conversational data. This information can be used to personalize marketing messages at a one-to-one level directly in chat. 

None of this is possible without the right platform. Some factors to strongly consider while evaluating an enterprise-level conversational marketing platform would be:

• An easy to implement, no-coding setup
• Customizations for your specific company and customer needs
• Easy integrations with your tech stack
• Enforcement of the highest privacy standards (GDPR, CCPA, and the others)
• Connection to your product feed (for ecommerce websites) and ability to serve product recommendations/content in real-time based on user input
• Flexible role management with the ability to set user access roles

Tools like Spectrm are at the heart of marketing automation, enabling companies to acquire new customers at scale. A robust conversational marketing platform makes it possible for companies to build chatbots that engage and convert customers on the websites, apps, and social platforms where people spend their time—no engineering resources needed.

Just like search engines, conversational intelligence tools effectively use language to get to the heart of consumer intent. They go beyond keywords to make every datapoint actionable, using chatbot analytics to optimize funnels and segment customers. 

In Spectrm’s words, “Reaching the right audience is getting harder every day. Consumers are more curious, demanding, and impatient than ever. They expect their digital experiences to be personalized, instant, and effortless. Chatbots enable brands to connect with their audience personally and offer seamless customer experiences from the start.”

To view Spectrm’s offerings, click here.

30-second summary:

• Make no mistake, Google Shopping is still mostly a paid PPC channel, but you can also enjoy its free traffic
• Video and display formats are not the type of ad you think of when it comes to online acquisition
• They are more popular for brand awareness and influence targets
• All conversions are not born equal, especially, when it comes to acquisition channels – a purchase on your site from a new customer has more value than one from a returning one
• It’s easy to forget that most of the business still happens offline and that Zoom calls and online shopping are not all there is to life
• Yet offline conversion trackings are not always taken into account
• With Gallery Ads, Google offers a new ad format integrated into the Search Network
• As these ad formats are for mobile displays only, their dimensions enable advertisers to make a stronger impact than with a text ad

Google released new smart features and ways to buy ads on its different channels. They allow marketers to increase their reach and to try new approaches. As always with the novelty, there will be a learning curve.

At SEISO, the reference PPC insight platform, we analyzed the impact of these updates on more than 13,000 accounts. Here is how you can make them work for you.

Content created in partnership with SEISO.

1. Get listed for free on Google Shopping

Make no mistake, Google Shopping is still mostly a paid PPC channel, but you can also enjoy its free traffic. Why is there a free option? After the introduction of the shopping channel, Google ousted most of the other price comparison websites from its SERP (Shopping.com, Shopzilla, BizRate, and others). The move was so aggressive that in 2017, the European Commission fined Google €2.42 billion (~$3 billion) for breaching EU antitrust rules by “giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service.” Although it is still going through appeal, Google has made changes to ensure other options are present on its services and SERP than its own. As for organic search optimization, you need to ensure your products appear in the first positions.

How to make it work for you

First, you need to start by optimizing your Shopping Ads and understand what products click and convert the most. For example, you can use SEISO Google Shopping Analyzer (Free to try) to get shopping reports. From there you can adapt your product feed and product pages to ensure you focus on products that are margin positive.  

Source: SEISO Report for non-performing products in your shopping feed

Once you have trimmed the feed and pages, you can go to your Google Merchant Center account in the Growth Menu. There you will find a channel called “Surfaces across Google”. You want to set it to “ACTIVE”. This feature was initially available only in the USA and India but is being rolled out worldwide. 

2. Get impressions on display and YouTube ads but only pay for sales

Video and display formats are not the type of ad you think of when it comes to online acquisition. They are more popular for brand awareness and influence targets. 

But now Google wants to convince you otherwise. Why? Google has so much data on users’ profiles and their intents that they can predict what they will buy. Facebook has built its platform on what they know about the users from their browsing and sharing. Google knows the users very well: from the search queries, from the media they consume on its surfaces (videos and AMP pages), and its past purchases thanks to receipts received in Gmail. 

Thanks to this treasure trove of data points, the algorithm identifies which new video game console the user wants. And it only shows him the relevant ads when he is ready to buy. The ad will be more likely to convert and Google will get a higher revenue per page by only showing converting ads to users: win/win. 

Now you can run performance-based targeting for YouTube Ads and on the Display network. It usually means a lower reach than a CPM or a Trueview campaign but you will get incremental conversions while controlling your budget. 

But remember, this is a black box. The algorithm will decide to display your ad or not based on how much money it will generate for Google. If your products find an audience this is a virtuous cycle and you will get a lot of volume. If not, your campaign might not pick up at all. 

How to make it work for you

• Use Smart Display with a tCPA or tROAS bidding strategy. This allows you to retain the benefits of the Smart Display framework without losing control.
• Based on 13,000+ Google Ads accounts audited by SEISO, the best targeting are: “Similar converters” & “Custom Intent on your competitors”

You can use the audience analysis section of SEISO to identify which audience is the most relevant for you. And you can try it for free.

3. Customer acquisition is good but NEW customer acquisition is better

All conversions are not born equal. When it comes to acquisition channels, a purchase on your site from a new customer has more value than one from a returning one. Of course, loyalty is key and you need to take care of existing customers. But Search engine marketing is neither the main nor the most money-efficient channel to do so. CRM, whether through email marketing or earned social media are more efficient to re-engage your customers. The symbiosis between acquisition and loyalty is the best way to maximize your customer lifetime value.

Once you know how much money you can expect from a user in the long term, you are able to adapt the amount you are willing to pay for a new customer vs. an old one.

In Google Shopping, you can now take the lifetime value into account. Go in the conversion goals by clicking “Settings” in the left navigation of your Smart Shopping campaign. Use the “New Customer Acquisition” option. There, indicate the incremental price you are willing to pay per conversion for this type of customer versus a returning one. For example, if your CPA for a conversion is $42 and you set the new customer value to $38. It will let the campaign pay up to $80 for new customers and $42 for existing ones.

How to make it work for you

Make sure you are tracking your new customers, there are two ways to do so and you should use both:

• Make sure your Google Ads account and your Google Analytics account are connected. This way, the algorithm is aware of all sales made on your website even if they came from another channel.
• Set differentiated tags for new and old customers and let your ecommerce platform or your tag manager. You need to show one or the other tag depending on the status of the customer.

As a rule of thumb, you should align this with your promotion strategy. Focus on your product selection to boost your best-recruiting products. The ones that usually trigger the first sale on your website for new customers. 

4. Get offline! How to keep tracks on offline conversions

In these days and times, it is easy to forget that most of the business still happens offline and that zoom calls and online shopping are not all there is to life. Yet offline conversions tracking are not always taken into account. According to Google, 30 percent of mobile queries are local searches and it is the fastest-growing segment. And 75 percent of users making a local search will go to a store within 24 hours. This is a lot of conversions lost to online tracking.

The new version of the Google Ads’ local campaigns is here just for that. Local campaigns use GPS and Wifi to identify the location of the user. Google will display ads related to business advertising presence around the user’s current location. 

How to make it work for you

To succeed, you will need to set up an omnichannel tracking that integrates offline elements. From there you will be able to measure different types of conversion. You should create a set of conversion actions for each campaign:

• In-store visits: Google automatically tracks walk-in traffic from user’s location captured from their Apps and OS). You will need to register all your points of sales addresses or GPS coordinates. 
• Offline purchase thanks to offline the Conversions API or bulk sheets upload.
• Online purchase through your regular tracking pixel.

Once your conversions start to show in the interface you will be able to optimize against each of these goals. Moving further you will be able to optimize the new full potential of each campaign against each target! To do so you try the SEISO campaign optimization tool for free. 

Source: SEISO PPC Campaign Optimisation Tool

5. Be creative! Push gallery ads over all networks

Gallery Ads and Showcase Shopping Ads on Search are good to be tested! 85 percent of respondents put more importance on visual information than text information. Visual information is preferred over text by at least 50% of respondents in all categories except for electronics, household goods, and wine and spirits (Intent Lab research, Feb 2019).

With Gallery Ads Google offers a new ad format integrated into the Search Network. As these ad formats are for mobile displays only, their dimensions enable advertisers to make a stronger impact than with a text ad. Google will continue to serve the same user with your creatives on new placements such as: 

• YouTube: On the “Home” screens where more than 90% of users say they discover new brands & new products.
• Discovery: Google Discovery App while scrolling the news feed and searching by interest.
• Gmail: Through discovery, even though Gmail Ads are being rolled out, Discovery ads allow you to expand your reach from Gmail to other Google-owned surfaces. 

And of course, they are shown in the main result pages as Showcase Shopping Ads.

Google is always bringing in new features to test, The key to having a State of the Art Google Ads account is to test early. Once the features reach mass adoption you are already fully optimized and have secured the best positions.

There is much more to discover in the SEISO analysis report, including expert tips and best practices, account activity analysis, and more than 75 criteria sifted.

Are your Google Ads Campaigns optimized? Try SEISO for free TODAY, click on this link: www.seiso.io/en.