Miracle shares valuable insights on establishing your brand’s online identity and dominating the SERPs in this informative Whiteboard Friday.
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Video Transcription
Hi, everyone, my name is Miracle Inameti-Archibong. I’m the head of SEO at John Lewis Finance. Welcome to “Whiteboard Friday.” Today I am going to be speaking to you about how to create your brand SEO strategy.
Why do you need a brand SEO strategy?
Now, why are we talking about brand SEO strategy? I mean, it’s 2023. Traditionally, SEOs have always been after generic keywords, and that’s not a bad strategy. I mean, that’s where the search volume is, isn’t it? However, if we’re all competing in the same crowded space, then it gets really tricky to gain visibility. We’ve all seen the SERP evolutions. I mean, since 2000, there’s been 233 major algorithm updates and it feels like Google and all search engines are constantly chasing the goalpost. And rather than running after them, why not get your customers to come directly to you? Now, I’m not saying don’t go after the generic space. Please do, but we need to diversify our audience. In case there’s an algorithm update, in case something changes, we have something to fall back on. Now, except you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of AI. And we’ve all seen how search engines are integrating AI into the SERPs.
And that means that visibility is going to get harder and harder, because with personalization, the data’s gonna get brought back, and it’s only the top brands that will most likely be included in that SERP. So we want to make sure that people are searching for us and they’re coming directly to our content. Another thing is the increase in competition. Have you ever done a search? I mean, I did a search for hope, like a poem about hope, and I got over four million results. And all of the page titles look very, very similar. And it became really, really difficult for me to distinguish between which one I wanted. And so at the end of the day, I just went for a brand, a newspaper brand that I knew. And that brand identification helped me to identify what I wanted to see. And that’s why we’re talking about brand SEO because we want to make sure that your brand stands out in the SERP and people can come to you.
How to start creating a brand SEO strategy
Now, how do we start with this strategy?
Become an entity
The first thing is to make sure that your brand is a recognized entity. Google your brand. Does it trigger a knowledge panel? How do you get your brand to trigger a knowledge panel? How do you get Google to understand that that name is a brand, this is the product we sell, and this is who we target? First things first is to make sure that you are using a consistent naming convention. Across all your brand assets, your social medias, your platforms, make sure. The amount of times I’ve seen websites migrate or change their name, and although instead of like changing the name of their social media platform, they just abandon that one or close it down and create a new platform or a new entity. What you need to do is to make sure that you’re being consistent across, you’re taking ownership of any old assets you want, and you’re pointing it in the right direction. Do you have a Wikipedia page?
I know they’re notoriously hard to get, but Google takes at least 70% of its content for the knowledge panel from there, so you want to make sure that you have one.
Establish relationships between entities
The next thing to do is to establish relationships between all of these identities. Now, when you search for, say, dresses, ’cause I’ve got a lovely dress on, when you search for dresses, what makes Google recommend, and maybe I search for Zara dresses, what makes Google recommend Forever 21 or H&M? What makes Google understand that all of these brands have a similar profile? So what you want to do is establish those links. There is a tool called TextRazor where you can take some of your content, put it in, and Google shows you some of the links and the associations that it’s making with that content.
So what you need to do is think about where you’re building links, where you’re getting citations, and make sure that you are targeting similar brands with competition that you want.
Utilize schema markup
Another thing to do is give a markup. Now, Google can crawl the web, they can understand content, but what you want to make sure you’re making your content super clear. You want to make sure you’re tagging up your organization schemas, your product, whatever you’re doing that just makes it easier for search engines to understand what your content is about.
Engage with your local audience
Again, if your content is local, make sure that you’re engaging with your local audience. Now, this is not just about starting off your GMB profile and feeling like, “No, I’m done.” This is about creating an engagement strategy.
So responding to reviews, creating a review collection strategy, making sure that you’re engaging with your audience so much that they want to like post about you, they want to take pictures and share with search engines. Because at this point, search engines value more what your consumers are saying about you than what you’re saying about yourself. So you want to make sure that you’re using all of the features, the post features, the promotion features, you’re keeping everything up-to-date, you’re answering questions, and you’re really engaging with that audience.
Dominate your brand’s SERP
Again, are you dominating your brand’s SERP?
Now, I did a search. Traditionally, everyone just thinks that if your brand name is in that search, in the keyword when someone searches, you will rank position one. But that’s wrong, as more brands are ignoring their brands and chasing after generic keywords. So I did a search for how to book a flight on Expedia. And surprise, surprise, Expedia, even though it’s a big brand, was not in position one.
Now, the site that was in position one is called Techboomer. They had a full article step-by-step guide, screenshots from Expedia’s website on how to book a flight. They also had a video as well to accompany that, and that was what was in position one and two. Now, I went to Expedia’s website and I tried to look for this content. I couldn’t find it. And to make matters worse, Expedia is bidding on that keyword. So they are paying for their own brand traffic when they could have just been targeting it right by content, using content.
Create a plan to maintain a positive brand reputation
Again, we talked about reviews when you’re part of local search. You want to make sure that you’re doing the same, even though you’re not in the local space. Where are people engaging with your content? What forms are people having chats about your brand, your products, whether you’re doing well? You want to make sure that you’re on there, you’re getting all of that feedback, and you’re targeting them with content that makes it easier for them to understand your product.
You want to make sure that if you’re on Trustpilot or whatever review tool you’re using, that you’re actively seeking to collect reviews and you’re responding as quickly as possible.
Build a top-of-funnel content strategy
Again, you want to build a top-of-the-funnel content strategy. Now, a lot of SEOs shy away from this because it’s really hard to measure, but if you’re really intentional on the purpose of this and you work with the right channel, so this is not just an SEO strategy. You have to work with brand, social media, the product team to bring this into life. And the key to this is establishing your brand’s online identity.
Now, you want to give your brand, you want to position your brand so that it has a distinctive, unique identity. For instance, what makes someone an Apple? What makes someone an Android? And those two users, “Well, I can never use the other product.” And that’s what you’re trying to do. Establish who your brand is for and who you’re targeting with your top-of-the-funnel content strategy. There’s something called social identity theory, which states that if you can do this for your brand, people get like a boost of self-confidence when they associate with a brand because they feel like that brand understands them. And they became your marketers. They recommend your brand to other people. They advocate for your brand in the world. And that’s what you want to do with your brand SEO strategy.
Now, I’ll finish on this note. If we are all targeting the same keywords, we are competing in a very, very crowded space. Your brand’s online identity is your beacon. So make them come to you.
Marketing teams are under more pressure than ever. 50% of small and mid-size businesses have in-house content marketing teams that are struggling to overcome challenges, according to UpCity’s Content Marketing Survey.
Some find it difficult to measure ROI, while others struggle to identify strategic collaborations. Even among those that are effectively measuring content marketing KPIs related to their goals, there is always room for improvement — especially when management wants to know how you will attain that next best result.
To secure budgeting, resources, and cooperation from internal partners, you need to get those stakeholders to ‘buy in’ to your content marketing strategy. You can do that by setting clear content marketing goals that guide you toward more optimal performance. According to Marketing Week, nearly 39% of SMB (Small and Midsize Business) marketers now focus more on performance because of pressure from senior leadership to achieve specific targets.
Whether you seek buy-in from the C-suite or are interested in presenting data to your stakeholders, here’s how to bridge the gap between your team and those with decision-making power.
What are content marketing goals?
Content marketing goals are strategic initiatives that marketing teams set and track in pursuit of their overarching content marketing objectives.
It’s no longer enough to produce quality content, click the publish button, and hope for the best. Content marketing is a strategic approach for creating and distributing content to achieve business goals. These goals look different for varying businesses. For some, the core objective may be to attract new customers and boost brand awareness, whereas another company may focus solely on lead nurturing and conversion. These goals will change over time and in response to varying target audiences.
Regardless of the primary objective, content marketing goals allow teams to gauge progress and communicate to those most interested in that progress. SMART goals provide direction, allowing you to prioritize content creation to allocate your budget effectively.
Think of content marketing goals as a roadmap to achieve success. For example, you may want to increase conversion rates by X% in six months. This clear goal helps you track KPIs to adapt accordingly.
But you shouldn’t run before you can walk. Instead of collecting as much data as possible, set a clear goal and start small. Measure the elements that will provide actionable insights so you can pivot quickly.
For example, if your primary goal is to increase brand awareness and rank higher in the SERPs, you may focus specifically on new website visitors or inbound links, and alter your strategy and approach as further information becomes available.
Top 3 content marketing goals
Content marketing goals can help you grow, engage, and retain your audience. However, you must determine your primary goal to optimize your next campaign and choose the most relevant KPIs. The following three content marketing goals can help you take your strategy to the next level and achieve real, measurable results.
Create content to fill a content gap
After conducting a content audit, you may notice that the performance of your content doesn’t align with your current goals. This audit will be highly specific for some, such as uncovering a keyword gap with competitors.
When you’re ready to review the data, leverage an analytics tool like Google Analytics to look at engagement, traffic, conversions, or other indicators. Based on that data, identify gaps where your content misses the mark concerning your goals, your audience’s needs, or your competition’s standards.
You may discover you lack content for a particular stage in the buyer journey, or you may not have enough content for a specific persona. From insufficient keyword-driven content to the absence of content for an industry trend, there are many reasons why a gap exists. Identify it and act fast to ensure the most significant impact.
Moz’s Keyword Gap tool is particularly useful for identifying content gaps relative to a website’s competitors. Simply plug in your site’s URL (either domain or subfolder) and those of your competitors, then voila! You will see which keywords your competitors are ranking for in comparison to your own rankings. Narrow down your results by using the “Your Rank” filter and inputting your desired rank minimum or maximum to only show keywords that are most attainable for you to go after.
To hone in on the most viable opportunities, you can use Volume and/or Difficulty Score metrics. By setting a Difficulty Score <20, for example, you’ll find keywords that any well-established website should be able to target and ultimately rank for, versus aiming to create content and rank for keywords with higher difficulty.
In the above example, I compared UpCity’s B2B marketing blog against two industry-leading marketing blogs, HubSpot and Digital Marketing Institute. The Keyword Gap tool reveals that UpCity has content ranking in position #8 for the keyword “ppc on google,” while the other blogs are ranking in position #3 and #5 for that keyword, respectively.
With this data, UpCity can optimize its existing content to rank higher for these competitive keywords, and see new content opportunities by looking at phrases for which they are ranking in the 51st position or higher (which, in terms of SERP placement, “higher” is not always a good thing.)
Create content for link-building initiatives
If you have not prioritized link-building strategies, you’re leaving significant growth opportunities on the table. While link building was all about quantity in the past, quality has the upper edge in 2023 and beyond. The quality and authority of the pages where you build links play a major role in ranking.
This goal is of the utmost importance if you are in a competitive industry and want to improve your SEO strategies. To ensure success, you must begin with helpful, quality content that people want to share. Part of this approach will be knowing where to find prospects, or websites, that might be interested in linking to your content.
Create content to rank in the SERPs
The forever-changing SERPs can make it tough to maximize the value of your keyword data. However, there are some fundamental considerations when the goal is to rank.
As you adjust your strategy to rank higher on Google, you’ll get more traffic and drive conversions. But to achieve that, you need to offer quality content. Google continues focusing more on user experience, accounting for bounce and click-through rates, and rewarding sites that publish comprehensive content with search intent, scannability, and speed to value in mind.
Content marketing KPIs
To help drive the above goals, you need insight into what’s working and what isn’t. One way to do so is by paying attention to key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with those goals. While the metrics depend on your objectives and audience, these four are critical for any team to optimize resources:
Sessions: If you want to know whether users are landing on specific pages and staying long enough to engage with the content, dive deeper into average pages per session. When using Google Analytics (GA4), you can track Events per Session or Engaged Sessions per User, which Google defines as a session lasting longer than 10 seconds, a session with a conversion event, or two or more screen or page views.
Keywords: When building a campaign based on target keywords, you must track the keywords’ ranking positions. Focus specifically on rank checking and visibility.
Revenue: You can discover how much revenue is generated directly from your content marketing efforts by determining which conversions come from content and which conversions come from ads. This data can help you compare your strategy to other marketing and sales tactics, and it’s vital for gaining buy-in from other teams.
Backlinks: For content, few KPIs are as crucial as backlinks. Think of every link as a vote. Once you start growing backlinks from authoritative sites, you’ll know your audience is engaged, and your reputation is strengthening, both in the eyes of your readers and search engines.
Mix and match your KPIs to content types
Not all content marketing KPIs make sense for every content type or situation, so knowing when and how to match them will provide more value. For example, the following content types often come with unique goals, which can help you determine the most appropriate KPIs to measure.
Educational resources
Commonly referred to as hub-and-spoke content, educational resources serve as a foundation of information on the given topics on which your site focuses. Having informational content around the products and services you offer plays an integral part in establishing authority and trust.
Educational resources may be centered around “What is?” and “How to” queries, and should heavily focus on targeted keywords for that topic. Not only does this help prove your knowledge and expertise to users, but it also significantly helps with your site’s SEO and ranking potential.
Tools like AlsoAsked and AnswerthePublic do a great job of visually displaying hub-and-spoke queries related to the topic or keyword you input. These tools work by scraping search engine results’ “People Also Ask” boxes to quickly show what questions users are asking, helping you to produce content that people are interested in learning about.
Keywords and backlinks will help you grow your audience and boost your ranking, whereas session data will help determine how your potential clients or customers interact with your educational content. Is one resource page attracting users for an average of five minutes compared to another resource that holds interest for 30 seconds? Determining why this happens can ensure you create more helpful, meaningful content that supports a healthier ROI.
Most vital KPIs:
Sessions
Keywords
Backlinks
Tools
Whether it’s a mortgage calculator or data scraper, a company name generator or a three-question quiz, users love finding helpful and engaging tools and sharing them with others. That’s why online tools are arguably the most linkable assets for content marketers.
If, for example, you are a professional video marketing service provider, you might create an interactive tool that allows users to estimate the cost of making a professional video. Enabling users to add and remove options for their desired video like “music,” “live action,” or “animated” would adjust the price accordingly. This tool would prove helpful for anyone exploring professional video services, making it a great link target for link building outreach, as well as sharing on social media platforms and online threads.
Most vital KPIs:
Sessions
Keywords
Revenue
Backlinks
Surveys/Data reports
Collecting proprietary data through surveys, carefully analyzing the results, and publishing a high-quality report is a proven content marketing strategy that works time and time again, like this survey on ‘What Diners Write About Most’. Producing survey reports and sharing results with top-tier journalists can help land your brand highly coveted media placements on strong domains.
Similarly, surveys are one of the best content types for link building outreach, as your data can often fit seamlessly into existing content on other sites that have written about the topic of your report. Website owners are typically much more willing to reference your data and link back to your content as opposed to other content types, which are more difficult to earn placements for.
Further, data reports can rank more easily in the SERPs compared to other content types. There is no shortage of users searching for “[topic] statistics” on a daily basis, so it’s wise to do keyword research to hone in on the specific keywords that are being searched for your targeted topic. By incorporating these keywords in your report, you’ll significantly increase your chances of ranking in the SERP.
Most vital KPIs:
Keywords
Backlinks
Quote roundups
Publishing quotes — especially unique, thought-leadership quotes — can help you gain backlinks. You can create an “expert roundup” content piece quoting leaders or influential parties in your industry, also using this opportunity to build collaborative relationships.
You can also combine quote roundups with other content types, like data reports or educational pieces, by adding expert quotes to support the information in those pieces. Adding expert quotes to an article can improve its authoritativeness (an integral part of E-E-A-T) and increase backlink opportunities.
Leveraging reporter-supported platforms like HARO and Qwoted can make putting together quote roundups a breeze. It is more common than not for expert contributors to expect a backlink in return for sharing their insights, and the site publishing the piece shouldn’t stray from asking the featured individuals to return the favor. Expert roundups can truly be a win-win.
Most vital KPI:
Backlinks
Measuring up: How to report against your content marketing goals
Once a piece of content is published, you need to track its performance to have actionable data to report. Without that information, your team will be left in the dark.
Results should align with ongoing content marketing goals to ensure progress and growth. Based on the common goals and content marketing KPIs discussed above, here is how you should approach each scenario.
Content gaps
When the goal is to fill content gaps, the optimal result is relatively black and white — you filled the gap, or you didn’t.
There are several ways of looking at content gaps, ranging from outdated information to fluctuating keywords and shifting customer interests. So, when gaps appear, it doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong in the past. However, if you want to stay ahead of the game and remain competitive, you must identify and address any new gaps, as they will quickly become missed opportunities.
Keyword research will be imperative here to ensure your content ranks high. To get started, focus on a competitor keyword analysis or leverage a tool like Moz Pro, which includes the Keyword Gap tool described above.
Quick Tip: If you are experiencing a lull with your target keywords, it’s time to incorporate more long-tail keywords. These keywords, which are keyword phrases of three words or more, are less competitive and are often highly effective because they represent customers further along in the buying process.
Link-building results
While link quality is of the utmost importance, quantity still matters too. To put it simply: the more quality backlinks you get, the better.
To measure the success of any link-building campaign, you must consider the number of backlinks your site has and the quality of those links, or the number of referring domains acquired within a set period (often month over month).
However, patience is vital before you make significant shifts to your strategy. On average, it takes anywhere from three to 12 months from when you build links to when you see major changes in SERPs. You can also dive deeper into the organic growth of traffic.
Lean on the tools available, like Link Explorer, to make this process as accurate and efficient as possible.
Quick Tip: When the goal is to collect data from your campaigns to measure your link-building success more efficiently, set a benchmark. This benchmark will act as a reference point so that you can pivot and better contextualize your results.
Content that ranks
SEO campaigns are crucial for businesses across varying industries and niches, ranging from retail to technology. While organic search and visibility go hand in hand, ranking is one of the most significant advantages of investing in SEO. Showing up on the first page of Google has massive implications. According to First Page Sage, the average click-through rate for Google’s first three organic results is 68%. By the tenth position, that number falls to 2%.
The first step is determining if your content already appears in the SERPs. The SERP Analysis tool in Keyword Explorer can help you with this process as you tweak SERP features. Pay attention to whether your content is optimized after determining whether it is ranking. Again, this is when you start associating the connection between content marketing and SEO. Focus on keywords and user intent, but don’t overdo it.
From a content marketing perspective, remember that content should serve the user first and the search engine second. The best approach here is to create research-driven content that is high quality and reliable. That way, you’ll cover both bases.
Some of the most valuable metrics to consider include:
Organic traffic, which you can access in Google Analytics or Moz Pro
Keyword rankings, which will help you determine which keywords drive traffic to your website. Moz’s Rank Checker is ideal for this process.
Quick Tip: Always implement best practices to optimize for technical, off-page, and on-page SEO. Know what to prioritize and when based on your initial goal and ongoing KPIs.
Adjust content marketing KPIs to your business goals
Whether you want to sit down with your management team or present figures to stakeholders, you must know how to translate your content marketing goals into actionable KPIs.
As you select clearly defined metrics to track, you will better understand if your marketing spend is producing an attractive ROI. If not, you’ll now have enough information to make more informed decisions. Well-presented data will make decision-makers “buy in” to your initiatives, especially if you have already adjusted and refined your strategy to show improvements.
Whether you have an in-house or outsourced content marketing team, be sure to align and establish KPIs based on your unique objectives. Learning how to measure and report against your chosen KPIs effectively could make or break your next campaign.
“I did what people normally would do — Googled ‘locksmiths near me.’”
These telltale words preface a scandalous account of listing spam I recently ran into on an Irish call-in radio show on RTÉ. I’m going to share a summary of it in today’s column, offer my best understanding of the root of the problem, and close with takeaways both for consumers and for local business owners who operate in Your-Money-Or-Your-Life (YMYL) industries, like security.
When local search reads like a mystery novel
Host, Katie Hannon, and her team did a good job of structuring this unfolding mystery on the Liveline with Joe Duffy show. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would definitely have gotten hooked into this plot.
Caller #1
On a bank holiday, a woman came home to find herself locked out of her house. She called the first locksmith she found on the web. The locksmith told her the lock cylinder needed to be replaced, did the work, and 5-6 minutes later, presented her with a bill for €391 ($419.35 USD). She had been so frazzled by the ordeal, that it wasn’t until the next day that she began to wonder why the charge was so high, but when she re-contacted the company to ask for a breakdown of the cost, she was informed that while the fee might appear large, it reflected the expertise of their staff.
Later, a licensed locksmith would confirm for the customer that, on a bank holiday, the charge should have been about €200.
Caller #2
“I did what people normally would do – Googled ‘locksmiths near me.’ I needed it done as quickly as I could. I took the first one that popped up. I spoke with a young lady, and she said she’d have someone get in touch with me,” said the next caller of his experience of hiring a locksmith when his door handle stopped working, when questioned about the locksmith’s online presence, he answered, “It looks very professional with very good reviews. There was certainly nothing to warn you.”
After a series of non-fixes, the locksmith got the caller’s door open but said he’d leave it without any lock unless the customer was willing to pay for replacement of the mechanism. Not wanting to risk having a door that couldn’t be made secure, the customer found himself with a bill for €1,143 ($1,225.87 USD) and began to worry he’d been overcharged when friends remarked that he could have gotten a whole new door for that amount.
Later, a licensed locksmith would confirm that the charge for the work should have totaled less than €500.
Caller #3
When one woman needed a rusty door lock replaced, she did what most of us would do,
“I just Googled ‘Dublin locksmith.’ It had reviews and everything.”
The locksmith who arrived charged her €60 for the service call but told her he’d need to order a €400 ($429 USD) replacement lock. When some days had gone by with no follow-up, she re-located the Google Business Profile she’d clicked on and again spoke to a receptionist. The receptionist told her she’d need to email the man on the invoice she’d received, but when her email went unanswered, the customer set out to find the elusive locksmith.
Via the Internet, she located a street address, and that took her to the house of a completely different person…
The Case of the Retired Locksmith
Caller #4 was the gentleman whom the woman with the rusty door lock found at the Dublin residence, and he is a retired licensed locksmith who served the industry for 45 years. I won’t do screenshots in this piece, but my own research confirmed that he appears to be the victim of impersonation via a Google Business Profile, and other local business listings. The top-ranked listing I found for the search in question featured the retired locksmith’s name and a 4-star rating on the basis of some questionable reviews + a few complaints.
It turns out that not only does the retired licensed locksmith know about this scandal, but he has felt so upset by customers being overcharged by the alleged impersonator, that he has been going to their homes to explain that he is not the service person they contacted and to offer them advice on what steps they might take. He is proud of the reputation he worked hard to build over more than four decades and is understandably unhappy to find his good name being tarnished, saying,
“I wouldn’t have survived this long in business if I had given a bad service to people.”
He has reported the issue to the authorities but has yet to receive a response, and unfortunately, there isn’t much he can tell these homeowners to do. In most cases, they did receive the work they paid for, but the charges simply were not commensurate with industry standards.
Google… I don’t know how they operate their business
During the radio program, Caller #5 phoned in to say that she, too, is a licensed locksmith, and has had four local people reach out to her lately after apparently receiving outrageous charges for basic services from this same entity. She stated:
“Google, I feel, is partly responsible for providing disinformation, but I don’t know how they operate their business. I would really like to know what is going on beneath all this because I do feel that there is an establishment that may be running companies like this. They’ve seen a niche in the market, and they’ve grabbed onto it, and they are making an absolute fortune. They’re unlicensed, and they are ripping people off.”
And therein lies a very large key to this common problem. Neither consumers nor legitimate business owners in this case (and in many) have a clear idea of what Google’s omnipresent local search results consist of, how they are ranked, or how often they contain spam.
Vulnerabilities in Google’s local search platform make it quite possible for a scenario like this one to take place, of an individual apparently spoofing the identity of another company and creating a listing around it. It’s also possible to hijack the listing of another business and insert your own phone number so that you receive the calls that should be going to your competitor. It’s possible to pay for fake reviews that make a dubious business look trustworthy, and as my honored colleague Joy Hawkins recently reported, you can repeatedly spam Google’s review component without any lasting consequences.
Lack of meaningful competition in the local search space has not motivated Google to fix this problem of listing spam over the past several decades, despite volumes of reporting both by major media outlets and industry journalists. At the same time, Google has never succeeded at widely engaging with or offering adequate support to the millions of local business owners whose data they use to populate their local search results. No matter how many times they rebrand and reshape local search, Google just isn’t getting the basics right to create a trustworthy, manageable platform or consumer experience.
So, where does that leave local business owners and Google users?
The cause and effect of local online scams
“You have to be so careful about who you have come to your home to fix a lock or deal with your security.” — Katie Hannon, RTÉ host
Misinformation, disinformation, and web spam are a threat to public safety in YMYL scenarios. I remember writing an article nearly twenty years ago about having a medical emergency and realizing that Google’s local pack results were full of inaccurate listings for ERs and hospitals. And clearly, when it comes to home security, no one would want someone untrustworthy working on their locks.
Meanwhile, I was listening to another Irish call-in show recently in which guests had lost tens of thousands of euros to scammers allegedly claiming to be from the online finance app Revolut, and the subsequent nightmare they’ve gone through in realizing that even the real Revolut isn’t like a real-world local back with an office and phone number you can contact for emergency help if you’re robbed.
Imagine spending 12 hours with a chatbot because it’s the only source of customer service available to you after having $10,000 dollars taken from your account! One of these callers even wondered afterward if the person she was speaking to at the scam company was a real human being or AI with a Dublin accent. Scenarios like these seem to me to stem from and create the following cascade:
Civil societies function on members having a certain degree of respect for authority, whether the authorities are teachers, medical experts, licensed professionals, or government leaders.
Many members of society have mistaken tech companies and their products for authorities, implicitly trusting that if something is as big and powerful as Google, it must be vetted, regulated, accurate, and authoritative.
In non-daily circumstances like suddenly needing a lock changed, having a medical emergency, or thinking your finances might have been compromised, people are flustered. They reach out for the quickest possible help to get themselves out of trouble and are not in any state to use their best critical thinking. Very intelligent people who say they would normally know not to give out sensitive information to strangers find themselves doing so in emergencies.
Because scammers know people are vulnerable during a time of stress, they build business models around exploiting others during these episodes.
This is a global problem that no government, regulatory body, or tech company has effectively solved. It has been nearly 20 years since Google Maps first appeared, and in the US, there are still no meaningful consequences for a search engine that profits from publishing spam that fools, misleads, misdirects, and even harms people. Regulation does not keep pace with rapid technological development.
Invested tech companies are now actively worsening this problem by presenting AI as an authoritative source of information rather than as an amalgamation of whatever data it has been fed, good or bad, real or not real. If countless people have already been scammed by others who use platforms like Google Business Profile to misrepresent themselves via spam listings and reviews, there’s pretty much no end to what bad actors could do with the opportunities AI will offer to spoof legitimate entities to disastrous consequence.
The effects of scams on communities are deeply serious. Scams undermine how humans feel about the societies they live in. Living in a setting in which people have to be constantly suspicious of their neighbors is stressful, and long-term stress undermines physical health. Some callers I listened to expressed shame at having been fooled, and others were reticent about admitting to anyone that they were swindled for fear of looking out-of-step with the times and the tech. All of them suffered financially, which is especially difficult in Ireland right now given that its people are experiencing what they call a “cost of living crisis,” which appears to have its same root as the 40-year transfer-of-wealth scam American economists cite as the cause of our present state of poverty in the US.
Thieves have always existed. The internet has simply allowed them to scale up and cause harm to vast numbers of people. When societies are unprepared and unprotected from swindles, an unfortunate outcome is that people have to look out for themselves (a very anti-social state of affairs that improves life for no one), but this is where I believe we’re at in the absence of better regulation, and I’ve got a few tips to share.
Tips for increased safety amid Google Business Profile spam
Let’s start with tips for customers — folks like you and me who are using the internet to navigate our local landscape:
1. Understand that spam is widespread on Google
Know that it is very easy to create illegitimate Google Business Profile listings and that a recent large-scale study by Uberall found that Google is the platform with the highest percentage of suspicious local business reviews. Know that Google does not have adequate safeguards in place to identify and remove fraudulent information from their product. The local results you see when you search for nearby businesses may well contain both fake listings and fake reviews and do not deserve your unqualified trust.
2. In a quiet moment, create a list
To protect yourself from being manipulated in a time of stress, consider the types of sudden incidents that take people unawares at some point or another in many of our lives. These might include:
Medical incidents requiring emergency assistance
Auto accidents and malfunctions requiring roadside assistance, auto repairs, and sometimes legal assistance
Security needs, like locksmith assistance or home security malfunctions
Damages from weather events like storms or fires, requiring rescue or urgent remediation services
Household malfunctions like septic overflows or plumbing problems, garage door failures, major appliance repairs or replacements, and other needs that require urgent assistance
Financial emergencies, such as fearing your banking card has been lost or stolen
It may sound like I’m trying to turn back the hands of the clock to pre-internet times, but at this point, you will be better off writing a list of the names, phone numbers, and addresses of reputable resources and keeping a copy of it in your wallet, purse, vehicle, and home rather than trusting random local business listings for YMYL scenarios. You could definitely put the list on your mobile phone, but you might want a paper copy as well in case your phone gets hacked, lost, or runs out of juice.
When you are not in the middle of an emergency, you can thoroughly research and contact your options to vet them. You can ask your friends and family for recommendations. And if you are traveling even a little distance from home, you can make such a list to protect yourself from being scammed in an unfamiliar setting.
In short, Google may be fine for helping find a quick cup of coffee or a slice of pizza, but don’t trust the local packs or Google Maps if your money, health, bank account, or life is at stake. Don’t invest Google’s results with an authority or accuracy they don’t possess. As a seasoned local SEO, I don’t like having to say this, but it’s my honest take on the state of affairs.
3. Start relying more on people in your life and less on the internet for YMYL decisions
Speaking of ethical scandals, we all need to be bracing ourselves right now. Large publishers you once trusted for vetted, fact-checked information that is hand-researched and hand-written by experts and authorities, may be making decisions right now to replace some of their staff with AI. We are already seeing results in the form of shocking pieces being published like this one (now removed) from Microsoft, which advised tourists to Ottawa to enjoy visiting a local food bank on an empty stomach.
The combination of spam local business listings and reviews + the increase of what could be a real mess of AI-generated nonsense in both chat-based and organic results could mean you should be very careful of letting the internet be your guide when making decisions that involve your life, health, money, security, or major purchases. Publishers have profit goals in view in replacing human authors with AI-generated information, but you need recommendations from people who have your best interests in mind. And that, of course, lands you back in the circle of your friends and family.
You are likely better off asking your mother, your neighbor, or your friend from work where to find a trustworthy outfit to replace your broken windshield than you are asking ChatGPT, Bard, New Bing, local listings, or organic results. You are likely better off steering clear of the web and asking your existing doctor where to find a specialist, if the need arises. Word-of-mouth recommendations are a tried-and-true method that long pre-dates the internet of finding reliable help, and it works on the basis of trusting that real people in your life want the best for you. They may not always get it right, but lived experiences are a rich source of useful information we all can share.
4. Know that asking to see credentials is not bad manners
Know the licensing laws of your country and/or state and request that any service provider show you proof of their credentials before you contract with them. I’ve heard kind people say they worry it sounds rude to ask for this documentation, but remember that legitimate service providers have to go through all kinds of steps to earn their credentials, and they will not be in any way annoyed by sharing the results of their efforts to be compliant with regulations. These credentials set them apart from scammers they already know exist in their geographic markets. If a potential contractor makes a fuss about proving they are licensed, it’s a red flag to you that they don’t have the necessary proof.
In sum, the internet can be a great place for local consumers to browse their communities and connect with local businesses, but when it comes to specific high-risk categories and transactions, you will be safer if you do your research ahead of sudden events and make sure you are working with licensed professionals with legitimate business credentials and contact information.
Now let’s turn to the local business side of this story. What can you do if you know your Google Business Profile categories are polluted with spammers, putting your neighbors and potential customers at risk of being scammed?
1. Report what you can
This shouldn’t be part of your job description; it should be Google’s responsibility to keep their index as free as possible from spam listings and reviews that violate their own guidelines. Nevertheless, you can report spammers to Google, and sometimes they will act on those reports, and that may help you move up in the local rankings. However, do go into this knowing Google often won’t act and that spammers will often simply come back. It’s not ideal, but you do have the following options for reporting:
Use the Business Redressal Complaint Form to report Google listings you are convinced are spam and in violation of the guidelines, or review profiles you believe are the result of forbidden activities.
If three weeks pass and you have seen no movement on what you’ve reported, you also have the option to post your redressal case ID in the Google Business Profile Community help forum to ask a product expert to consider escalating your case.
2. Treat credential content as central rather than as an afterthought
On your website, social profiles, and in areas of your listings like Google Updates (formerly known as Google Posts), create content that explains what your credentials are, and why you have them. Too often, service providers’ sites simply have a license number in the header or footer, with no explanation of why it matters. Build core content that educates potential customers as to what legal requirements there are in your field for licensed or credentialed providers, and take the opportunity to warn your community against spammers and scammers by teaching people to ask to see credentials before they hire anyone.
3. Don’t abandon business cards and fridge magnets
Tech news might make you think that everything has to happen online these days, but the truth is, being generous with handing out business cards, magnets, car stickers, and other tangible marketing assets with your contact and credential information on them is a great way to ensure customers come back to you in a moment of stress, instead of going with another random provider they find online. The oil change business I go to always places a little transparent window cling on my car that is branded with their name, contact info, and the date I should come in for my next service. Any service provider can offer a physical reminder to the customer of whom they should trust when the time comes.
4. Build a simple referral program
This is very easy to do when your business is a cafe or grocery store that locals visit on a regular basis. Offering a free cup of coffee after a customer’s fifth visit or a coupon for ½ off dinner with a friend is simple. But when you are in a YMYL category, chances are good that the same customer isn’t going to need you on a regular basis. What you want is for them to share your good name with their friends and family in advance of the need arising, and a branded merchandise campaign could be one good option for accomplishing this.
For example, imagine you own an auto glass repair company. You might invest in branded stainless steel water bottles that people can take in their cars instead of plastic. Your branding can include your name, phone number, address, and credentials, as well as your logo. When completing a job for a customer, you could let them know you have a special offer of one of these bottles if they agree to give a second one to a local friend or family member. You’ll not only be reducing plastic consumption in your community, but you’ll also be getting your brand name into people’s cars so that they remember it right away if their car window gets damaged. A plumber might offer a toilet brush set. A locksmith might offer a cool keychain charm. The point is to get your trusted name into the hands of your neighbors when they need you, making them safer from scammers and earning you new business.
In sum, you have some options for reporting online spam to Google, but your strongest bet will be to build real-world relationships with the people in your community so that they learn to trust you and recommend you to their circle.
Local listing and review spam harms communities, and AI is likely to take scams to as-yet-undreamt-of levels. While the internet is an amazing tool for finding things, it cannot replace the offline social contract of trust that surrounds time-honored word-of-mouth recommendations amongst family and friends. When your money or life is on the line, or if your business provides services for people with urgent, unexpected needs, trust is a must.
This year’s MozCon was a journey into the future of our industry, set against the stunning backdrop of our brand new venue, Seattle Convention Center’s Summit building. Whether in-person or via livestream, more than 1,000 people gathered for two days of insights and tactical presentations from industry leaders and to connect with fellow attendees. Just a few of the practical lessons we learned include:
How to convince your boss that sending you to an SEO conference is good for your business
And while the industry continues to evolve at a lightning-fast pace, our 22 speakers offered up next-level advice for leveraging emerging technologies and staying ahead of the competition. If you missed the conference live, we’re happy to share that the MozCon 2023 video bundle is now available for your viewing pleasure!
For $299, you’ll gain access to every presentation and speaker deck to watch as many times as you’d like. That’s 22 talks and over 11 hours of content! Schedule a viewing party with your team and get everyone on board with the best digital marketing advice, data, tools, and resources for the coming year.
If you’d like a taste of what this year’s video bundle’s got cooking, check out one of our top-rated talks from Ross Simmonds:
The Evolution of Content & the Future of Our Industry
Is it all over? Is the world as we knew it a wrap? With the rise of AI — is it realistic to assume that the world of SEO and content will stay the same? Or should we all start dusting off our resumes to try something new? In this presentation, Ross shares a blend of both the realities of how AI can be incorporated into our work (maybe to give us additional runway) and answers the question as to whether or not AI is actually coming for our jobs. Ross shares what we can do to ensure that we’re ahead of the curve when it comes to using these tools, embracing the technology, and finding edges amidst rapid change.
Watch the MozCon 2022 videos for free in our SEO Learning Center!
Every key phrase is a competition. But the best competitor for that competition depends on what you see in the SERP. Getting your page to rank organically is only one of the many possible strategies. In this talk, Andy Crestodina explains big-picture strategies in the context of ever-more crowded search results pages.
Visual search has been at the forefront of Google’s search and product innovations in the last year. Watch this talk for “search what you see” optimizations via Google Lens and more with Crystal Carter.
E-commerce website product listing pages contain hidden potential. This talk is all about unlocking the magic of your listing pages by making the most out of filters and internal linking. Instead of being fixated on those landing page head terms, turn your attention to the indexability of long-tail pages with high conversion. Whether you work in e-commerce or not, we’ll also cover how to embed yourself within tech teams and analyze impactful changes.
Local SEO can be so much more than off-site listings, so let’s talk about it! By using content and schema on local landing pages, businesses can create unique value that satisfies customers and search engines with Emily Brady.
Ranking is as easy or as hard as doing better than your competitors. For that, you have to benchmark the sites on your search landscape, meet them where they are, and gain an edge. In this talk, Lidia Infante shares how she built SEO strategies off the back of a gap analysis, along with her templates and success stories.
11 years ago, Paddy Moogan stood on stage at MozCon and shared 35 ways to build links in 35 minutes. In 2022, he spoke about lessons he has learned during the last 10 years, some reflections on what he got right and wrong, along with what the future holds for link building.
There are many types of link magnets, but there’s one that’ll never go out of style: data-backed research reports. When done well, you’re creating a piece of content that helps your E-E-A-T, drives backlinks, and is genuinely interesting content for your target audience. Debbie Chew covers the different steps needed not just to create a research report but to create one that can get links.
In this talk, Noah Learner goes beyond keyword research to explore how to build topic maps and internal linking maps (that align with Google’s understanding) to help you conquer new SERPS and win more budget from stakeholders along the way.
Remote work is the new normal for many marketers — but leading a successful distributed team is about more than just making sure everyone’s got their home office set up. Ruth Burr Reedy talks about how to build a vibrant, cohesive, and productive company culture when your team isn’t all in the same place and how to give remote employees what they need to set them up for success.
Advanced statistical analysis has changed the face of professional sports, and similar insights are changing how we do SEO. In this talk, Will Critchlow shares the approaches he’s seeing from the most forward-looking SEO teams, as well as the lessons learned from their analysis of what’s working and what’s not.
Throw that tired pageview-and-bounce-rate-heavy report right out the (virtual) window — we can do better than that! Dana DiTomaso peels back the layers of measuring content success. You’ll learn which metrics will actually tell you if your content is doing what it’s supposed to be doing and how to link these metrics to your SEO strategies and tactics.
Keyword research is one of the first and most basic tasks that SEOs learn. And yet, it’s strewn with pitfalls and errors, even for experienced practitioners. In this talk, Tom Capper talks you through the various ways the wrong data can lead you astray and how to leverage the right techniques for the right tasks.
Location landing pages are extremely important for local businesses but are often repetitive and uninteresting. This presentation focuses on strategies to make your location landing pages valuable and interesting to search engines and site visitors. Amanda Jordan discusses ways to incorporate first-party data, third-party data, and user-generated content to create local landing pages that don’t fall short.
If you want to geek out on data, this will be the right session to check out. We’re not talking about Google Analytics or your plain old CRM data. We’re talking about de-anonymizing your website traffic, providing one-on-one personalized user experiences, shortening your lead forms without missing out on valuable information, and doing everything possible to get to that SQL. In this presentation, Tina Fleming demystifies the basics of marketing data intelligence, revealing actionable strategies for your day-to-day conversion marketing, and sharing real examples of how her agency has skyrocketed B2B conversions with the addition of marketing intelligence.
3.8 million US adults aged 21-64 have a visual impairment, but 98% of the world’s top 1 million websites don’t offer full accessibility (despite legislation to encourage this). This leads to 1 in 3 baskets being abandoned, leaving an estimated 13 trillion up for grabs. One of the top issues is image alt text. This text is essential for making images accessible — however, it isn’t always a priority when it comes to SEO strategy due to the challenges of implementing it on a wider scale. Miracle Inameti-Archibong walks you through easy, scalable alt text generation — an intuitive and easy-to-understand tutorial, with most of the heavy lifting already done for you.
There are hidden, structural factors holding stellar marketers (and their teams) back‚ and it’s not their fault. Discover what these factors are, how to root them out, and how to help your existing team members reach their potential in Paxton Gray’s MozCon presentation.
For more than 11 years, Hannah Smith has been tasked with coming up with content ideas that people will share, and journalists will write about. In this session, she shares some of the most important lessons she’s learned along the way.
A dynamic inventory, complex categorization and filtering options, lack of unique product descriptions, well-established global and local competitors… E-commerce sites are known to be amongst the most challenging types of sites when it comes to doing SEO and often result in some pretty frightening horror story scenarios. But it doesn’t have to be that terrifying. In this session, Aleyda Solis takes us through the most common issues and shows how to effectively address them at scale before they become real nightmares.
In this presentation, Lily uses real data to demonstrate how the rise of E-E-A-T has led to Google prioritizing expertise and authority above all else.
Traditional buyer personas help your marketing team make decisions and run campaigns for your ideal customers. But even when done right, buyer personas don’t benefit half your marketing — the half that’s not customer-facing. Instead, consider a suite of audience personas that support a holistic business and marketing strategy. Your audience personas go beyond helping your performance marketing team — they’ll help your content marketing, PR, brand, and events teams drive better business results. Learn more in this session with Amanda Natividad.
As an SEO, you’ve probably fallen down the rabbit hole of “organic” results that lead to more Google SERPs. If you map that rabbit hole, you’ll see a systematic effort to push searchers down the funnel to commercial results. Why is Google doing this, what does it mean for SEO, and what can we learn about our own customers’ journeys? Dr. Pete Meyers talks through how Google pushes us down the funnel.
In a world that has a million different options for every creative element… where do you start? How do you know a particular element is where you’ll see an impact big enough to make a difference for your bottom line? This is the number one question CRO strategists get asked, and the answer every time is: it depends! Karen Hopper walks you through understanding your testing opportunities, generating test ideas, and measuring your results with scientific accuracy.
What KPIs are actually key? In this talk, Joe shows how organizations can use their own data to ascertain what’s relevant for actionable insights in the hopes of helping you to develop smart SEO strategies.
Let’s cut to the chase: there are a million ways to win online today. You can create amazing scalable landing pages. You can build a backlink empire. You can create a bunch of pillar assets and clusters. The options are endless. But how do you determine what’s the best investment for your brand to generate organic traffic? Ross Simmonds shares a framework that will help guide your thinking, along with some tactical techniques and case studies you can steal.
Whether you’re trying to build a business case or get buy-in for your SEO project, some of the core challenges will come down to the same thing: How well can you sell it? As SEOs, we often forget that, even though we spend our day-to-day analyzing data and optimizing content and websites for bots, at the end of the day, we are working with human beings — and some of those people have decision-making power over what we can and can’t achieve in our roles. This is where learning a good set of sales skills becomes crucial. In this talk, Petra Kis-Heczegh explores some critical skills and methods sales teams use and how you can apply these to your SEO work.
When we talk about digital PR and link earning, we often focus on national coverage, which is fantastic. But local coverage (and the content that leads to it) is often neglected. In this presentation, Amanda Milligan explains how brands can add localized content to their strategies to earn more media pickups and high-quality links.
Take your on-page optimizations to the next level using advanced tactics for one of the most common SEO tasks. This presentation goes beyond simply adding keywords. Chris shows you how to utilize tools such as IBM’s Natural Language Understanding to find semantic entities of competitor pages, how Google’s EAT guidelines apply to content, and what actionable steps you can take to improve content, perform on-page content experiments, and measure the impact of those tests.
Seer Interactive has used keyword research methods to uncover ways to help clients understand their customers better. From diversity and inclusion to hopes and fears, customers are leaving clues in their long-tail searches. Wil Reynolds demonstrates why you should spend the time to find them.
Ready for more?
You’ll uncover even more SEO goodness in the MozCon 2023 video bundle. At the low price of $299, this is invaluable content you can access again and again throughout the year to inspire and ignite your SEO strategy:
22 full-length videos from some of the brightest minds in digital marketing
Instant downloads and streaming to your computer, tablet, or mobile device
Discover key statistics on Google’s Search Generative Experience and their impact on SEO, ads, and user experience. Dive into the latest trends shaping the search landscape in this insightful Whiteboard Friday with Tom Capper.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Happy Friday, Moz fans. I’m here today to share with you some quick stats, four quick stats about Google’s search generative experiences.
So in case you’ve not heard of those before or not seen these before, this is a new kind of search result, a new kind of SERP feature, I suppose that Google started testing earlier this year. Currently, this is not generally rolled out. You can only see this if you are opted in, in Google Labs. You are logged in, you’re using Chrome and you have a US IP address, although VPNs do work.
So this is maybe a bit of a hint about a direction that Google might be considering. Maybe not. I might publish some blog posts about whether I think they’ll stick to this plan but I still think it’s interesting to take a look at what they’re doing right now and yeah see what we can observe.
The structure of Google’s Search Generative Experience
So the basic structure of the SGE is, it’s stuck onto the top of a search engine results page above all of the other kinds of results and SERP features. And you’ve got a little warning. So generative AI is experimental. Then a block of of content, normally text, then some questions. So ask a follow-up and then some suggested questions.
So for example, I’ve searched for Mozcon. One of the suggested questions is where is Mozcon? And this would just link through to a follow-up search. And then there’s these three links on the right and these look kind of like portrait organic results but they’re actually supposed to be the articles that this AI generated text is based on.
Key SGE Statistics
So what are the stats that I want to share with you?
Links in the SGE
Well, these three links, I think it’s very interesting. You might reasonably assume that this would just be like the top three organic results or something like that but actually that’s not the case. So in only 13% of cases in the 100 SGE SERPS that I studied in only 13% of cases, were all three of these links actually present in the top 10 organic.
I should say a bit about the data that I’m using here. So this is the top few keywords from every MozCast vertical. So it’s a hundred SERPS in total tracked in the US on desktop. So relatively small scale study but enough to get an idea of what’s going on here. So yeah, 13% of of SGE SERPs had 100% overlap between these three links. Then also appearing in organic beneath which I think is surprisingly low. And in 41% of cases, there was none at all that none of these links actually appeared in the organic results, which I, yeah I find that very surprising. It shows that this is a different system. This is not built on top of organic.
Ads are beneath the SGE
The second stat I want to share with you is about ads. So you’ll notice I’ve not put any ads above the the SGE here and that’s not an accident. I didn’t see that even once, ads when they exist are beneath the SGE, so pushed right down and in only 30% of the SERPs I looked at were there any ads at all? Which I would say is quite low when you’re looking at sort of competitive head terms which MozCast keywords are, but also think about how far down they’ve been pushed. So this is not a particularly commercially great situation for Google if they were to go with this as it is.
Suggested questions
The third stat I want to share with you is about these questions. So you’ve got, like I say ask a follow-up and then some suggested questions here. Now these look a bit like people also ask questions. And indeed, often the questions that you see here will also appear in a people also ask box further down. I think that’s a bit odd. I think it’s very un Google-like to have duplicated functionality like this, got two SERP features that are essentially doing the same thing. Got both people also asked box somewhere further down. And then these questions often even with the same questions. So in 83% of SGE SERPs also had people also ask as a SERP feature, which like I say, I think that makes me think they kind of rushed this, you know if they had thought about this a little bit more maybe they would’ve changed the SERPs beneath to not include features that are overlapping. I’ve got some other stats on this that I’ll share later on.
But this also happens with maps. So if there are maps in this block, then there’s normally or often I should say also a local pack further down which is basically the same functionality appearing twice. It’s not really very elegant as these things go.
What is actually included in the SGE?
And that brings me to the last stat I want to share which is about what you actually have in the SGE. So in 70% of cases, this is just raw text, so just like a featured snippet, except obviously AI generated. The next most common is places so you know, location listings. And when that happens, it’s a bit odd because these three links tend to just be links to the the Google Maps results or Google local results that are also listed on the map. So again, it kind of comes over as a little bit clumsy. Then 7% of cases you can get products inside here. I did not see when they first demoed this at Google IO they had ads inside the AI generated block. I have never seen that in the wild. I’m not sure they actually have that functionality. It was probably just a mockup or something like this but maybe a statement of intent.
So yeah, that’s four quick stats about SGEs. The main thing that I would take away, to be honest from my experience collecting this data is that at the moment this is a bit of a half-baked feature. So they probably put it out in a rush to, you know to respond to pressure from competitors and from investors. I imagine this has a long way to go. Anyway, hope you enjoyed that. Hope you found these stats interesting. Thanks.
This article contains some ableist phrases that are debunked and combatted throughout the piece. They have been included to highlight better alternatives.
Accessibility should be one of the top priorities for your website in 2024
Disabled people and those with accessibility needs make up a considerable percentage of our clients and customers — but, even if they didn’t, we should care about the end-user experience of those who interact with our products, services, and content.
As an SEO professional who has been advocating for accessibility for years, I’ve heard and seen it all when it comes to excuses for not implementing accessibility best practices to a website.
“How much is this going to cost me?”
“Just focus on SEO, nothing else will benefit my business.”
“Why would I do this work when it only affects a small number of people?”
“We don’t want blind people buying our products.”
I wish I were exaggerating, especially about the last one. Don’t be like them. Providing an inaccessible website is not only a missed opportunity for users — it’s also a missed opportunity for you, as a business owner. Think about all of those potential customers who are clicking through to your inaccessible website, and finding alternative solutions!
I’ve had countless conversations trying to convince business owners to let me include basic accessibility practices into my SEO workflow; honestly, I stopped asking and started just doing. Plenty of SEO activities also benefit accessibility.
When I need to discuss accessibility with a client, it always comes back to “what’s in it for me.” I’ll then start to roll off the benefits and explore whatever seems the most important to my client:
Larger customer base
More returning customers
Community-building
Legal compliance is met
Rank higher in Google
Your competitors aren’t doing this
Potential revenue increase up to 18.9%
The last three typically get their attention. Don’t worry; we’ll explore the 18.9% revenue increase a little later on. In this blog post, I will share the data you need to know to justify accessibility best practices for organic search. We’ll look at revenue increases and your competitors.
Identify revenue that comes from users with disabilities
So, to identify the revenue for a client, you’ll need to understand some stats. These stats will vary depending on the country the business operates in – you will also need the business’s data on organic revenue.
I will talk you through the entire process — using e-commerce as an example to break down total online spending and its intersection with accessibility.
Before we delve into the potential revenue, there are some core stats you’ll need to know and refer back to.
Stats around accessibility and internet usage in America
With those figures in mind and a little math, we can estimate how much of our revenue (if our website is accessible) comes from customers with disabilities with the following formula.
27% of Americans live with a disability, 63.8% of the disabled community have frequent internet access, and 91% of all Americans have internet access.
27% * 63.8% / 91% = 18.9% of the total American population who use the internet have a disability.
18.9% is no number to turn your nose up at. For any sized business, 18.9% of additional revenue is life-changing money. This 18.9% is an incredibly important figure in understanding how many people you benefit by having an accessible website.
If we look at the total e-commerce revenue in 2023, we can see that $196.56 Billion ($1,04t *18.9%) was spent by people with disabilities online. This is just looking at online sales; we are not factoring in any other conversion at this point. What we are seeing is that people with disabilities are not a small portion of the population. A massive contribution to the online economy comes from users with disabilities.
You can replicate this formula for any business in the US and its revenue. Use those stats and the formula together to build a story while explaining the importance of accessibility to your client.
You can frame this data in multiple ways, but at its most simple — if you know your website is inaccessible, you can assume that you are making 18.9% less than you could be if it were accessible. Assumptions around whether a site is accessible or not are rarely wrong.
Own the market share for users with disabilities
For users with disabilities, it’s more than likely that they will struggle to find websites that they can fully navigate. Users with disabilities will have to view multiple sites to find one that caters to their needs so they can resolve their needs.
Studies have shown that over 90% of websites do not meet the minimum compliance with the WCAG guidelines.
WCAG has become the standard for online accessibility and is frequently referred to by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as the standard to meet for online accessibility. It’s also a legal requirement.
The WCAG levels of compliance are divided into three levels: A, AA, and AAA. Level A addresses the most basic accessibility issues, such as alt text and the page being navigable by keyboard. They list out the content and accessibility guidelines a website should follow, and many of them are not difficult to apply.
However, with 90% of all websites not meeting the minimum standards of accessibility, it’s a fair assumption that any given website is not entirely accessible. You can apply this to your own business but also to your competitors. If you have been overlooking accessibility, it’s likely your competitors will not be putting in the work to serve all of their potential customers either.
This creates a substantial opportunity for your business to corner the market. Working with SEOs, developers, and/or accessibility experts, you can open yourself up to potentially take the market share of users with disabilities for your specific service/niche.
It’s no small fee, but if you are already paying for SEO and development work, you may as well cover accessibility best practices, too. SEO can help you reach more users; accessibility can help you convert up to 18.9% of those users.
The cost of inaccessibility
When making your case for accessibility, you must factor in what could happen if you leave your website inaccessible. This could be covering the cost of defending a digital accessibility lawsuit — or even settling a demand letter — which is often more expensive than fixing accessibility issues in the first place.
Accessibility lawsuits will cost you significantly more.
When it comes to accessibility, it’s better to be proactive. If you prioritize accessibility work early, you can reap the rewards and be recognized as an accessible brand to your customers.
How accessibility and SEO interlink
You may have heard that having an accessible website will help you rank better. Unfortunately, this isn’t wholly true. Google doesn’t really care if your website is completely accessible.
However, Google does care if you follow a strong heading structure. Google cares if you speak in layman’s terms. Google cares if you have alt text. Google cares if your site is navigable with JavaScript disabled. Google cares if the user experience is the same on Mobile compared to desktop. Google cares about Core Web Vitals.
All of these are activities that an SEO should address during their auditing and technical optimization strategies as part of a campaign. These activities can directly impact SEO as they provide additional context to your content and create a good page experience. The very same activities are incredibly important for solving access needs for users with disabilities.
Quick tips to make your website more accessible
Want to give yourself the best chance to achieve that 18.9% increase in revenue? Here are ten tips to get you started.
Ensure that every page has an adequately defined heading structure. Users relying on screenreaders often jump from header to header.
Create content that is well-displayed and easy to read. We should outline the problems our business solves and explain them in clear terms.
Links should be clearly distinguished from other text.
All links should be descriptive.
Test that you can interact with everything with a keyboard like you can with a mouse. Use the tab key to navigate the website.
All content images should have descriptive alt text or relevant expandable descriptions.
Ensure that images are not used when text content would have been more appropriate.
Breadcrumbs aren’t just for internal linking and structured data; they are an incredibly effective method of improving the experience for users with disabilities.
The page does not contain harmful flashing elements, i.e. interstitials.
You can zoom in and out effectively while still only scrolling in one direction.
Be the one to help your company address your user’s accessibility needs. Serve the public in this way, and enjoy the boost in reputation you will receive, and watch how your bottom line increases.
The one thing that brand managers, company owners, SEOs, and marketers have in common is the desire to have a very strong brand because it’s a win-win for everyone. Nowadays, from an SEO perspective, having a strong brand allows you to do more than just dominate the SERP — it also means you can be part of chatbot answers.
Generative AI (GenAI) is the technology shaping chatbots, like Bard, Bingchat, ChatGPT, and search engines, like Bing and Google. GenAI is a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) that can create content at the click of a button (text, audio, and video). Both Bing and Google use GenAI in their search engines to improve their search engine answers, and both have a related chatbot (Bard and Bingchat). As a result of search engines using GenAI, brands need to start adapting their content to this technology, or else risk decreased online visibility and, ultimately, lower conversions.
As the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. GenAI technology comes with a pitfall – hallucinations. Hallucinations are a phenomenon in which generative AI models provide responses that look authentic but are, in fact, fabricated. Hallucinations are a big problem that affects anybody using this technology.
One solution to this problem comes from another technology called a ‘Knowledge Graph.’ A Knowledge Graph is a type of database that stores information in graph format and is used to represent knowledge in a way that is easy for machines to understand and process.
Before delving further into this issue, it’s imperative to understand from a user perspective whether investing time and energy as a brand in adapting to GenAI makes sense.
Should my brand adapt to Generative AI?
To understand how GenAI can influence brands, the first step is to understand in which circumstances people use search engines and when they use chatbots.
As mentioned, both options use GenAI, but search engines still leave a bit of space for traditional results, while chatbots are entirely GenAI. Fabrice Canel brought information on how people use chatbots and search engines to marketers’ attention during Pubcon.
The image below demonstrates that when people know exactly what they want, they will use a search engine, whereas when people sort of know what they want, they will use chatbots. Now, let’s go a step further and apply this knowledge to search intent. We can assume that when a user has a navigational query, they would use search engines (Google/Bing), and when they have a commercial investigation query, they would typically ask a chatbot.
Image source: Type of intent/Pubcon Fabrice Canel
The information above comes with some significant consequences:
1. When users write a brand or product name into a search engine, you want your business to dominate the SERP. You want the complete package: GenAI experience (that pushes the user to the buying step of a funnel), your website ranking, a knowledge panel, a Twitter Card, maybe Wikipedia, top stories, videos, and everything else that can be on the SERP.
Aleyda Solis on Twitter showed what the GenAI experience looks like for the term “nike sneakers”:
2. When users ask chatbots questions, they typically want their brand to be listed in the answers. For example, if you are Nike and a user goes to Bard and writes “best sneakers”, you will want your brand/product to be there.
3. When you ask a chatbot a question, related answers are given at the end of the original answer. Those questions are important to note, as they often help push users down your sales funnel or provide clarification to questions regarding your product or brand. As a consequence, you want to be able to control the related questions that the chatbot proposes.
Now that we know why brands should make an effort to adapt, it’s time to look at the issues that this technology brings before diving into solutions and what brands should do to ensure success.
What are the pitfalls of Generative AI?
The academic paper Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap extensively explains the problems of GenAI. However, before starting, let’s clarify the difference between Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Bard (Google chatbot), and Language Models for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA).
LLMs are a type of GenAI model that predicts the “next word,” Bard is a specific LLM chatbot developed by Google AI, and LaMDA is an LLM that is specifically designed for dialogue applications.
To make it clear, Bard was based initially on LaMDA (now on PaLM), but that doesn’t mean that all Bard’s answers were coming just from LamDA. If you want to learn more about GenAI, you can take Google’s introductory course on Generative AI.
As explained in the previous paragraph, LLM predicts the next word. This is based on probability. Let’s look at the image below, which shows an example from the Google video What are Large Language Models (LLMs)?
Considering the sentence that was written, it predicts the highest chance of the next word. Another option could have been the garden was full of beautiful “butterflies.” However, the model estimated that “flowers” had the highest probability. So it selected “flowers.”
Image source: YouTube: What Are Large Language Models (LLMs)?
Let’s come back to the main point here, the pitfall.
The pitfalls can be summarized in three points according to the paper Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap:
“Despite their success in many applications, LLMs have been criticized for their lack of factual knowledge.” What this means is that the machine can’t recall facts. As a result, it will invent an answer. This is a hallucination.
“As black-box models, LLMs are also criticized for lacking interpretability. LLMs represent knowledge implicitly in their parameters. It is difficult to interpret or validate the knowledge obtained by LLMs.” This means that, as a human, we don’t know how the machine arrived at a conclusion/decision because it used probability.
“LLMs trained on general corpus might not be able to generalize well to specific domains or new knowledge due to the lack of domain-specific knowledge or new training data.” If a machine is trained in the luxury domain, for example, it will not be adapted to the medical domain.
The repercussions of these problems for brands is that chatbots could invent information about your brand that is not real. They could potentially say that a brand was rebranded, invent information about a product that a brand does not sell, and much more. As a result, it’s good practice to test chatbots with everything brand-related.
This is not just a problem for brands but also for Google and Bing, so they have to find a solution. The solution comes from the Knowledge Graph.
What is a Knowledge Graph?
One of the most famous Knowledge Graphs in SEO is the Google Knowledge Graph, and Google defines it: “Our database of billions of facts about people, places, and things. The Knowledge Graph allows us to answer factual questions such as ‘How tall is the Eiffel Tower?’ or ‘Where were the 2016 Summer Olympics held?’ Our goal with the Knowledge Graph is for our systems to discover and surface publicly known, factual information when it’s determined to be useful.”
The two key pieces of information to keep in mind in this definition are:
1. It’s a database
2. That stores factual information
This is precisely the opposite of GenAI. Consequently, the solution to solving any of the previously mentioned problems, and especially hallucinations, is to use the Knowledge Graph to verify the information coming from GenAI.
Obviously, this looks very easy in theory, but it’s not in practice. This is because the two technologies are very different. However, in the paper ‘LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications,’ it looks like Google is already doing this. Naturally, if Google is doing this, we could also expect Bing to be doing the same.
The Knowledge Graph has gained even more value for brands because now the information is verified using the Knowledge Graph, meaning that you want your brand to be in the Knowledge Graph.
What a brand in the Knowledge Graph would look like
To be in the Knowledge Graph, a brand needs to be an entity. A machine is a machine; it can’t understand a brand as a human would. This is where the concept of entity comes in.
We could simplify the concept by saying an entity is a name that has a number assigned to it and which can be read by the machine. For instance, I like luxury watches; I could spend hours just looking at them.
So let’s take a famous luxury watch brand that most of you probably know — Rolex. Rolex’s machine-readable ID for the Google knowledge graph is /m/023_fz. That means that when we go to a search engine, and write the brand name “Rolex”, the machine transforms this into /m/023_fz.
Now that you understand what an entity is, let’s use a more technical definition given by Krisztian Balog in the book Entity-Oriented Search: “An entity is a uniquely identifiable object or thing, characterized by its name(s), type(s), attributes, and relationships to other entities.”
Let’s break down this definition using the Rolex example:
Unique identifier = This is the entity; ID: /m/023_fz
Name = Rolex
Type = This makes reference to the semantic classification, in this case ‘Thing, Organization, Corporation.’
Attributes = These are the characteristics of the entity, such as when the company was founded, its headquarters, and more. In the case of Rolex, the company was founded in 1905 and is headquartered in Geneva.
All this information (and much more) related to Rolex will be stored in the Knowledge Graph. However, the magic part of the Knowledge Graph is the connections between entities.
For example, the owner of Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, is also an entity, and he was born in Kulmbach, which is also an entity. So, now we can see some connections in the Knowledge Graph. And these connections go on and on. However, for our example, we will take just three entities, i.e., Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, Kulmbach.
From these connections, we can see how important it is for a brand to become an entity and to provide the machine with all relevant information, which will be expanded on in the section “How can a brand maximize its chances of being on a chatbot or being part of the GenAI experience?”
However, first let’s analyze LaMDA , the old Google Large Language Model used on BARD, to understand how GenAI and the Knowledge Graph work together.
LaMDA and the Knowledge Graph
I recently spoke to Professor Shirui Pan from Griffith University, who was the leading professor for the paper “Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap,” and confirmed that he also believes that Google is using the Knowledge Graph to verify information.
“We demonstrate that fine-tuning with annotated data and enabling the model to consult external knowledge sources can lead to significant improvements towards the two key challenges of safety and factual grounding.”
I won’t go into detail about safety and grounding, but in short, safety implies that the model respects human values and grounding (which is the most important thing for brands), meaning that the model should consult external knowledge sources (an information retrieval system, a language translator, and a calculator).
Below is an example of how the process works. It’s possible to see from the image below that the Green box is the output from the information retrieval system tool. TS stands for toolset. Google created a toolset that expects a string (a sequence of characters) as inputs and outputs a number, a translation, or some kind of factual information. In the paper LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications, there are some clarifying examples: the calculator takes “135+7721” and outputs a list containing [“7856”].
Similarly, the translator can take “Hello in French” and output [“Bonjour”]. Finally, the information retrieval system can take “How old is Rafael Nadal?” and output [“Rafael Nadal / Age / 35”]. The response “Rafael Nadal / Age / 35” is a typical response we can get from a Knowledge Graph. As a result, it’s possible to deduce that Google uses its Knowledge Graph to verify the information.
Image source: LaMDA: Large Language Models for Dialog Applications
This brings me to the conclusion that I had already anticipated: being in the Knowledge Graph is becoming increasingly important for brands. Not only to have a rich SERP experience with a Knowledge Panel but also for new and emerging technologies. This gives Google and Bing yet another reason to present your brand instead of a competitor.
How can a brand maximize its chances of being part of a chatbot’s answers or being part of the GenAI experience?
In my opinion, one of the best approaches is to use the Kalicube process created by Jason Barnard, which is based on three steps: Understanding, Credibility, and Deliverability. I recently co-authored a white paper with Jason on content creation for GenAI; below is a summary of the three steps.
1. Understand your solution. This makes reference to becoming an entity and explaining to the machine who you are and what you do. As a brand, you need to make sure that Google or Bing have an understanding of your brand, including its identity, offerings, and target audience.
In practice, this means having a machine-readable ID and feeding the machine with the right information about your brand and ecosystem. Remember the Rolex example where we concluded that the Rolex readable ID is /m/023_fz. This step is fundamental.
2. In the Kalicube process, credibility is another word for the more complex concept of E-E-A-T. This means that if you create content, you need to demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness in the subject of the content piece.
A simple way of being perceived as more credible by a machine is by including data or information that can be verified on your website. For instance, if a brand has existed for 50 years, it could write on its website “We’ve been in business for 50 years.” This information is precious but needs to be verified by Google or Bing. Here is where external sources come in handy. In the Kalicube process, this is called corroborating the sources. For example, if you have a Wikipedia page with the date of founding of the company, this information can be verified. This can be applied to all contexts.
If we take an e-commerce business with client reviews on its website, and the client reviews are excellent, but there is nothing confirming this externally, then it’s a bit suspicious. But, if the internal reviews are the same as the ones on Trustpilot, for example, the brand gains credibility!
So, the key to credibility is to provide information on your website first, and that information to be corroborated externally.
The interesting part is that all this generates a cycle because by working on convincing search engines of your credibility both onsite and offsite, you will also convince your audience from the top to the bottom of your acquisition funnel.
3. The content you create needs to be deliverable. Deliverability aims to provide an excellent customer experience for each touchpoint of the buyer decision journey. This is primarily about producing targeted content in the correct format and secondly about the technical side of the website.
An excellent starting point is using the Pedowitz Group’s Customer Journey model and to produce content for each step. Let’s look at an example of a funnel on BingChat that, as a brand, you want to control.
A user could write: “Can I dive with luxury watches?” As we can see from the image below, a recommended follow-up question suggested by the chatbot is “Which are some good diving watches?”
If a user clicks on that question, they get a list of luxury diving watches. As you can imagine, if you sell diving watches, you want to be included on the list.
In a few clicks, the chatbot has brought a user from a general question to a potential list of watches that they could buy.
As a brand, you need to produce content for all the touchpoints of the buyer decision journey and figure out the most effective way to produce this content, whether it’s in the form of FAQs, how-tos, white papers, blogs, or anything else.
GenAI is a powerful technology that comes with its strengths and weaknesses. One of the main challenges brands face is hallucinations when it comes to using this technology. As demonstrated by the paper LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications, a possible solution to this problem is using Knowledge Graphs to verify GenAI outputs. Being in the Google Knowledge Graph for a brand is much more than having the opportunity to have a much richer SERP. It also provides an opportunity to maximize their chances of being on Google’s new GenAI experience and chatbots — ensuring that the answers regarding their brand are accurate.
This is why, from a brand perspective, being an entity and being understood by Google and Bing is a must and no more a should!
Breathe new life into your existing content. Join Ross Simmonds in this Whiteboard Friday as he shares strategies to transform your old content into valuable assets that drive results and boost brand authority.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans. Howdy, “Whiteboard Friday” fans.
I am super excited to chat with you today about how to take something that we all have, you might smell it, you might smell it, it is content that is burning money in your pocket, content that you actually invested in that is collecting dust, content that no longer drives results, no longer does anything for your business, but you wish, you wish it could bring some type of life for your business, some type of joy to your business, some type of ROI for your business. And in today’s “Whiteboard Friday,” that’s exactly what we’re gonna be diving into.
Your old content is burning money
Were gonna be talking about how that content that is just burning money, just sitting on your site, not collecting any revenue, not driving any sales, driving no links, driving no results for your business, can be brought back to life. That’s right, we’re going to go to town on that old content, give it new life, bring it back, and ultimately give you the ability to unlock new levels of growth for content that you thought was dead.
Let’s jump into it. So we’re all there. We have all had content that we’ve invested in. We’ve all heard a guru speak onstage at a conference and say, “Content is king. Write more content. Create more content.” And we’ve listened. We’ve developed tons of content as business owners, as marketers, as CMOs. We’ve invested in these assets, but the ROI of some of them has started to deprecate. It’s started to go down.
At one point, it was up and to the right and everything looked beautiful, but now, eh, it’s starting to tank. It is starting to tank. It’s no longer driving results. The traffic is no longer there. It’s no longer on page one of the SERP. You are starting to see that content that at one point was a cash cow is no longer driving the results that you and your business wants. How can you bring these pieces back to life? We’re gonna talk about it.
In addition, you might’ve had a few pieces that were a one-hit wonder. When they hit the internet, when they went live, the internet went wild. The leads were flowing. The revenue was flowing. The links were flowing. Everything was flowing in the right direction. But time went on and those pieces that were at one point a hit, that resonated with people, that people embraced, that people shared, that people talked about, those pieces are no longer generating any buzz for you. They’re no longer generating any results for you. We’re gonna talk about how to bring those one-hit wonders back to life.
And finally, there might be a piece that you, your team, your organization created early on that really communicated some of the key messages that you want your audience to hear, some of the key stories, some of the key ideas, some of the key concepts that truly understand and communicate the value that you bring to the market, the pain points that your customers are having. And these key messages are messages that you want to get back out there. It’s a key message that at one point resonated so closely with your audience that you feel like your team may have lost the way and have lost sight of the key message that you wanted to articulate.
How do you bring all of these pieces back to life? Things that are currently just getting zzzs, people are sleeping on them, they’re not reading them, they’re not engaging with them. It’s essentially money just being burned because you invested time or energy in them. How do you bring ’em back to life? That’s what we’re gonna talk about.
We’re gonna talk about how you can do that with text content, with video content, and with audio content. So these are the three primary types of content that you can repurpose, that you can repackage, on the internet.
Text content falls into the category of things like blog posts, of white papers, of e-books, resources that you created that, again, were very valuable at the time that they went live, but maybe got crickets, maybe were a one-hit wonder, or maybe they were ranking number one and now they’re starting to tank. How do you bring those pieces back to life?
There’s a few things that you can do with text content that will let you win. Similarly with video content. One of my favorite formats is video content because it’s so versatile. That’s exactly what you’re looking at now. Kinda meta, but you’re looking at a video asset. These video assets can be used still today. A webinar that you might’ve created, a actually just talking head video where you set up a camera and you talked into the screen. All of these types of assets can be repurposed. They can be remixed, and they can be reshared on your various channels. We’re gonna talk about that.
Audio content is the exact same thing. There is less versatility with audio content, but audio content is powerful. But it’s oftentimes misunderstood that these podcasts that you might’ve created two years ago, three years ago, can be repackaged even today.
How to bring your text content back to life
So let’s start with text-based content. Text-based content is one of the fundamentals of the internet. When you were thinking about text-based content, let’s say you have a blog post. Do you just press publish and call it a day? No, you need to take that old blog post that you created two years ago and then start to share it on social. And you do that with social media posts.
So you are going to start putting up posts on social directly on your various channels, whether it’s LinkedIn, whether it’s X, whether it’s Facebook, you name it. Whatever channel it is that you’re using, you’re going to take that asset and you’re gonna promote it. You’re gonna amplify it. You’re gonna share it on those channels. Then, we have things like carousels. Carousels are a very engaging way to tell a story about a piece of content that you created but tell it in a way that the user, the audience, the people who are on these channels, might actually get value from. What do I mean by that?
So let’s say, for example, you have a blog post that are five simple things that every SEO needs to know to succeed. Every single one of those slides in a carousel could represent one of those five ideas. So as someone scrolls and they start to swipe their thumb, as they go from one carousel screen to the next, they’re reading a summarized version of that blog post that you created. And when you start to share those on social and use hashtags that are relevant to your ICP, it gives you the ability to now take an old asset that was burning hole in your pocket, not generating results, but give it the ability to reach new people, to reach an audience that might not have been online at the same time when you first published that piece, but also have a personal connection to more interactive content and they want to engage via a carousel. You can use tools like Canva to be able to do this, and it is an amazing tool that I strongly recommend that you check out.
Email content. All those old blog posts, a lot of brands make the mistake of pressing publish on these pieces, and then, they just call it a day. They don’t go anywhere. You have people who are currently on your site probably downloading things, signing up for things. Use your email sequences to reshare these old blog posts that you created that are so important to you. Because by doing that, you’re able to connect with people who are meeting you and interacting with you for the very first time. And you can bring that old content, especially if it’s a one-hit wonder, and bring it back to life for your audience to love, care about, and see again.
How to bring your video content back to life
Now, another type of asset is video content. If you have blog posts, if you have e-books, if you have content that you’ve developed from the text lens, why don’t you take that same text and turn it into a script? Turn it into a script that you can read on camera. Turn it into a script that is worth reading, worth talking about, and if you are personally not like in the whole idea of wanting to be on camera and that kind of weirds you out, then instead, maybe you do a faceless video where it’s just your audio with animations in the background. But video content is an amazing play for you to repurpose, repackage some of those old text pieces that you developed and then bring them back to life.
What do you think the second most popular search engine in the world is? It’s YouTube. YouTube is going to give you the ability to now take those blog posts that you created, that you hoped would rank in Google, and now rank in the second most popular search engine in the world. And it just so happens that Google owns YouTube, so eh, you can win on both sites. That is the play. Now, that’s text content. When you get that video asset created, if you create it and you develop it, now you’re into a trifecta of situation. Because you can now take that video content that you developed and you can turn it into a whole bunch of new content as well.
What do I mean? So that video content asset that you just created, a new video, new script that you just recorded, it’s amazing. Take the audio file, extract it out of the video, and start to upload that thing to Apple Podcasts, upload it to Spotify, upload it to all of the various podcasting platforms, and let it sing. Let it reach new audiences. Optimize that for search on the podcast platform and let more people hear the audio that was in your video on these different channels.
Now, you now have two different assets. You have a podcast episode. You have that, and you have the video. Take these assets and embed them into blog posts that you have produced. That same blog post that you wrote a few years ago, update the dates, add new info, and now embed either the YouTube video that you created or the podcast audio that you created directly into that piece. And now, you have a more interactive experience for the user and the reader who is consuming that content, right? Then, once you’ve done that, you should be looking at pages on your site that are already ranking high.
If you have pieces of content that are ranking well, that are generating organic traffic, take these video assets, take these podcasts, embed them in these pieces so those pieces get additional reach, get additional eyeballs. And it ultimately will influence your ranking in the Spotifys, in the Apples, and in YouTube itself.
Now, if you’ve got video content and you are starting from ground zero with video, let’s say you did not embrace the idea of going from text to video, you just happen to have video content, because over the years, again, prior to it being set on fire with just like no results, you were investing in YouTube. Let’s say you were investing in webinars. A lot of brands create webinars. They put them behind a gate. They get a bunch of signups and then, they never actually use them again. Take those video assets that you’ve created and run this exact same playbook, folks. Run the exact same playbook. Take those old webinars, turn them into podcasts, start embedding them into blog posts, or write long-form content based off of the material within that video. Take that, an export of the transcript from the video that you just created or that you created years ago, and start to transcribe it. Rewrite all of that into content in a way that is human, friendly, people would love, people would adore, and get them to consume it.
Then, the next thing you wanna do is start chopping up that video. You wanna look for key moments within the video that you developed years ago, or basically, right off of that text, you wanna take certain clips from that and start to repackage and repurpose them. Identify a few key moments where you’re saying something special, saying something impactful and important, and then clip it and then start sharing that on social. And the whole cycle begins again.
How to bring your audio content back to life
Now, another type of content that comes out of this that we talked about was podcasts, audio content. Take clips of those audio, those parts of your video, and start to chop them up into audiograms. An audiogram is essentially a visual that shows the voice wave. So again, if you’re not somebody who likes to be on camera, it’s a great alternative. And start distributing those on social. Share them on all of your platforms. Share them out, hashtag, let people consume them, engage. Also, turn those podcasts into long-form text, and then, again, embed them into your blog posts.
Folks, this is the playbook you need to apply to these pieces of content that you invested so much time and energy into. And if you can, run through these sequences and bring them back to life, update them, improve them, and start to repurpose them.
Gain greater return on investment, increase your brand authority, and skyrocket
You will be able to see new ROI, new revenue, new results from content that you created decades ago. And when you start to see this, you’re ultimately going to start to see an increase in the amount of people talking about your brand. You’re gonna see an increase in the amount of people interested in buying your solution, your product, your service, whatever it may be. And from this, by having a content engine that doesn’t let content just collect dust and get on fire, you’re also gonna have the ability to increase your BA.
Your brand authority in the market is going to have the ability to start to rise, right? That is the ultimate goal. You want to increase your brand authority, because if you can do that, then you are ultimately going to have net new leads, net new opportunities, and you’re gonna set yourself up for long-term success, which is the game that all of us should be playing. And when you do that, you’re gonna essentially set yourself up as a rocket ship. You’re gonna be heading to the Moon. You are no longer going to be trying to grab scraps, and you will no longer be in the rat race of always trying to figure out what content you should create next. Because the content that you should be optimizing, the content that you should be producing has already probably been created.
The next step is simple: go back, do an audit, identify your one-hit wonders, identify the depreciating ROI assets that you invested in before, identify the key messages that you wanna reiterate to your audience. And once you have those, start to run them through this engine and give your content new life. I’m Ross Simmonds. Thank you so much for checking out my “Whiteboard Friday.” I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you on the internet.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has blown up like a supernova. Conversations about AI are happening everywhere. As you browse LinkedIn, read your favorite SEO blog, or tune into a marketing podcast, you will see discussions about AI.
Some marketers see AI as a threat. But that doesn’t have to be the case. You can learn how to work with AI. Building AI into your processes will future-proof your marketing skills if AI takes over the world. As a freelance copywriter and content marketer, I’ve seen ‘I, Robot,’ and I’m not taking any chances.
AI can be your marketing sidekick. You can use AI to support your writing process, be a fresh pair of eyes for proofreading, or act as a second brain. This makes it a powerful companion for content marketing.
AI won’t replace content marketers (yet)
AI opens up a universe of opportunities. As new AI tools emerge every day, so do new ways of using AI in your business and everyday life. You can use AI to do almost anything.
But that doesn’t mean AI will replace content marketers, SEOs, or writers — or, at least, won’t replace them yet.
AI has a lot of potential. But it also has limitations. Before using AI for content marketing, it’s helpful to get to grips with the constraints of AI.
It isn’t sentient
AI doesn’t have a brain like you or I do. It can’t think or feel.
AI’s knowledge is based solely on logic. In contrast, our knowledge is based on a mix of reason and emotion. Our experiences and feelings shape how we see things. But AI doesn’t have that ability.
AI might feign human emotion, but it’s merely an illusion. AI’s emotion is curated. AI can only perceive things based on the information it is fed.
You can’t rely on it to be accurate
Sure, AI is powerful. But it isn’t always accurate. Just like humans, AI sometimes gets things wrong.
When using ChatGPT, you will see a disclaimer stating, “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” While AI tools do their best to provide factually accurate information, they still need a human touch.
If you’re using AI, fact-check the information it gives you. This is particularly important when writing YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content that has real-world effects on the readers. In these cases, a human touch is crucial for ensuring E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) runs through your content. AI cannot replicate this, running the risk of your content being inaccurate and low quality.
The output is limited by the input
Getting the best possible results from AI depends on feeding it the best possible information.
It’s like asking someone to design you a logo without giving them the exact details about what you want the logo to look like. They might get it right. But it is more likely that they will get it wrong — and you will end up in a back-and-forth ping-pong match of reiterating the design.
You need to tell AI exactly what you want. Otherwise, it’s going to hazard a guess (and likely get it wrong). Be specific in your request — like really specific. Want AI to give you ten content ideas for a blog post on programmatic SEO? Tell it! Want to make sure those results are all about the SaaS industry? Tell it! The more specific your generative AI prompt is, the better the output will be.
The responses can feel canned
You can get AI to write your landing pages, blog articles, and ad copy. But you might not want to.
Remember how I said AI isn’t sentient? And that the output is limited by the input? Well, both of those factors also contribute to the responses feeling somewhat meh.
AI responses can feel canned. They lack the originality and personality you get from a human writer who knows your brand inside and out.
With that said, you can train some AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to produce content that mirrors your brand’s voice, personality, and tone. You can do this by sharing examples of your writing style, providing background information on your company, and feeding it your tone of voice guidelines. But I’ll share more on that later in the article.
Another attribute that limits the creativity of AI outputs is that it doesn’t automatically consider the user journey stage, their current motivations or desires, or the exact words that drive action for them. AI doesn’t know your deeper brand origins or future goals — unless you train it on them.
All that adds up to creating generic content anyone could write. Use AI enough times, and you will notice familiar patterns in the responses. It sounds like AI.
But AI can be a powerful content marketing sidekick
It pays to be aware of the shortfalls of AI before you add it to your content marketing process. As we’ve established, AI isn’t perfect. But it can still be useful.
You can use AI to optimize the research, writing, and editing phases of content marketing.
You might not be able to rely on AI alone. But you can pair it with a human touch to turn it into a powerful content marketing sidekick.
Here are some ways you can use AI to optimize and streamline various aspects of your content marketing process.
How to use AI in the research phase of content marketing
The research phase of a content marketing strategy can be time-consuming. While every company’s strategy is different, the core elements will follow a similar pattern.
At some point during on-site content planning, you will need to find content ideas, conduct keyword research, and create outlines for blog posts. There are a few ways you can use AI to simplify these content marketing research and planning steps.
Use AI to find content ideas
In its most basic form, the content you create for your brand should focus on two things:
What you do
Who you do it for
We can get more nuanced than that by layering in factors like goals, campaigns, and user intent. But most content will cover topics that are related to your business (what you do) and of interest to your audience (who you do it for).
You can use AI to develop content ideas for a wide variety of marketing channels — be it social media, newsletters, blogs, or videos. For the examples shared throughout this article, I’ve used ChatGPT.
A simple AI prompt you can use to find content ideas is:
Write a list of 10 [content type] ideas aimed at [audience] who are [problem they are trying to solve/goal they want to achieve]
In this prompt, the content type should relate to the channel you are creating content for, such as a blog. The audience will align with your target audience. The problem or goal should relate to what your brand does.
For a dog training school, the prompt might look like this:
Write a list of 10 blog post ideas aimed at new dog owners who are trying to train their puppy.
If you put this prompt into Chat-GPT, you will be presented with a list of potential blog post ideas such as “puppy separation anxiety: tips and tricks” or “10 essential commands every puppy should know.”
Work through this list to decide if any of those ideas are viable blog posts. Some might be perfect as they are, while others might need fine-tuning to make sure they align with your content marketing strategy.
Create a hub-and-spoke strategy from those content ideas
Drill down further into each idea to create the bones of a hub-and-spoke strategy. For each idea presented, note what the topic is.
For the blog post idea “10 essential commands every puppy should know,” you can confidently assume the focal topic is “puppy training commands.”
There is likely an array of blog posts you can write about puppy training commands, making this a potentially powerful hub topic for your hub-and-spoke strategy. Rather than doing lots of manual research to find suitable spoke blog post ideas, you can use AI to speed up the process.
Use the following AI generative prompt to ask Chat-GPT for spoke content ideas based on the hub topic:
I am writing a series of [content type] for a [business type] aimed at [target audience].
For the hub topic “[hub topic],” create a table of spoke content ideas.
Applying this to the puppy training commands keyword, the prompt would look like this:
I am writing a series of blog posts for a puppy training school aimed at new dog owners.
For the hub topic “puppy training commands,” create a table of spoke content ideas.
In response to this prompt, Chat-GPT generates a table of more specific blog post ideas related to the hub topic “puppy training commands.” This will help you spin out a series of valuable content that strengthens your content visibility for this topic.
Use AI for keyword research
Love it or hate it — keyword research is essential to developing on-site content strategies. It tells you what topics people care about, how popular those terms are, and how difficult it might be to rank in SERPs.
Generic AI tools can’t do in-depth keyword research, so you should still use a keyword research tool like Moz’s Keyword Explorer. However AI can help with the early stages of keyword research.
If you’re starting keyword research from scratch, use AI to generate a list of keywords. Take this a step further by asking the AI tool to group those keywords by search intent. This prompt will look something like this:
Create a list of keywords for [business type/topic]. Present the keywords in a table grouped by search intent.
Sticking with our dog training school example, the prompt would be:
Create a list of keywords for a dog training school. Present the keywords in a table grouped by search intent.
You’ll then be presented with a neat table of keywords you might be able to use. The keywords likely won’t be perfect, but it’s a great starting point.
Go through the list and research each keyword in Moz’s keyword research tool to get more data, including metrics such as Difficulty and Monthly Volume. You can then use your keyword research to see which keywords you do (or don’t) want to use and find other viable keywords.
Using AI for keyword research is great for getting the cogs turning, taking you from a blank page to a list of keywords. Grouping by search intent lets you take that rough keyword research one step further, making sure you’re covering various user journey stages.
Use AI to write blog post outlines
Okay, by this point, you should have a bunch of target keywords and blog post ideas. You’re almost ready to start putting pen to paper. But before you write your blog post, you need to plan a first draft.
You can use AI to help you write the first draft of blog post outlines. AI-generated first drafts won’t be groundbreaking. You will need to cast your eyes over it and optimize it with your amazing brand, customer, and market insights and knowledge.
While they aren’t perfect, they give you a good blog post template you can then tweak and improve.
Input this AI prompt to generate blog post outlines:
Write a blog post outline for a blog post titled “[blog post title].”
The main keyword for this blog post is “[main keyword]”
You guessed it, we’re sticking with the puppy training example! Based on the puppy training research we’ve done so far, the AI prompt might look like this:
Write a blog post outline for a blog post titled “10 essential commands every puppy should know.”
The main keyword for this blog post is “puppy commands”
Chat-GPT will then give you a blog post outline split into sections, including the introduction, main content sections, and a conclusion.
As this post focuses on the “10 essential commands,” Chat-GPT has given a listicle-style blog post outline. It has also shared a list of additional resources at the end you might want to reference in the post.
You can then review the outline that Chat-GPT has provided and apply your topic knowledge, adapt based on your experiences, and carry out additional research to improve the outline before you start writing the article.
How to use AI in the writing phase of content marketing
The sidekick powers of AI don’t stop when you start writing. When you’re writing content, the process will be predominantly human-led. Your tone of voice matters. As do your personal experiences, opinions, and insights. Those are the things that make your content unique and that AI can’t do very well. So don’t replace your uniqueness with generic AI content.
You can, however, use AI as a sub-writer to assist with the writing phase of content marketing projects.
Use AI to adapt your tone of voice
If you’re writing content and want to make sure it has a particular voice, you can use AI to tweak the tone of your writing. This can help make sure your content aligns with your brand voice and the page intent.
If you’re writing content for a sales landing page, you will want that content to sound more persuasive than an educational blog post. AI can help you adapt your content to make it better suit its intended purpose.
Use AI to adapt your content’s tone of voice by using generative AI prompts such as:
Make the following text sound more [adjective]
Improve the following text by using a [tone of voice type] tone of voice
For a sales landing page, these prompts might look like this:
Make the following text sound more persuasive and encouraging
Improve the following text by using a persuasive and confident tone of voice
Remember, the output from AI depends on the input. You can improve these prompts by providing more details. You could, for example, ask AI to use metaphors or similes in its version or to use simple vocabulary and short, snappy sentences.
You could even tell it your brand values to make sure those are taken into consideration for tone of voice content.
AI doesn’t always get the tone of voice right. Often, it will exaggerate the voice. Whatever AI provides, you will need to edit manually. But it can be great for finding inspiration and unraveling the thread for words you could use or changes you could make.
I never copy and paste the output given by AI. Instead, I’ll look for words, sentences, or content styles that stand out to me. I’ll then refine my content manually based on any learnings gleaned from the AI version.
Starting the paragraph with the word “Enroll,” for example, encourages action and lets the reader know the intention of the content. This is far more persuasive than the softer, descriptive opening line “In these classes…” used in the original content.
This feature is far from perfect, but it can be useful if you’re experiencing a classic case of writer’s block.
Use AI to generate headlines
The headline is one of the most crucial elements of a blog post. A compelling, well-written headline gets clicks. It drives traffic to your blog post and gets more eyes on your content.
Yet, headlines can be the hardest thing to write. Do a quick Google search, and you will find hundreds of formulas for writing compelling headlines or tools to improve your existing headlines.
When writing headlines, you should account for your target keywords and the intent of the content. If you’re writing an educational blog post that teaches readers how to do something, you will likely use phrases like “how to.”
The only issue is that having an endless list of “how to” articles on your blog starts to look boring and repetitive. You can mix this up by asking AI to generate potential headlines for your blog articles.
Use the following prompt to get AI to generate headlines for your blog posts:
Write a list of 10 potential headlines for a blog post about [blog post topic]. This blog post [brief description of blog post].
Using our puppy training school example, this prompt might look something like this:
Write a list of 10 potential headlines for a blog post about puppy commands. This blog post shares 10 essential commands any new puppy owner should know when training their puppy.
As this example is a listicle, it makes sense that Chat-GPT includes the number in the headline. However, you can see a variety of headlines you could potentially use that sound more compelling than just “10 essential commands every puppy should know.”
The headlines also use power words like “must-know” and “ultimate” to entice readers to click through to the article. Meanwhile, words and phrases like “learn,” “teaching,” and “training 101” let the reader know the article has an educational intent.
These outputs offer a great first draft of some potential headlines. You can then fine-tune these headlines using well-known headline best practices.
This prompt doesn’t have to just be used for blog articles. You can adapt it for YouTube video headlines or email subject lines.
You can also use AI to generate headline formulas that you can use when writing headlines in the future. Do this by using a prompt such as:
Write 10 headline formulas that can be used to write blog post headlines. Display these as a table and make sure they cover a variety of content types such as [types of blog posts you typically share]
As always, you can drill down further into this by asking AI to prepare several headlines for each article type. You can then tweak the formulas and keep these on hand next time you’re writing an article.
Use AI to summarize your writing
Every blog post should end with a conclusion that gives the TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) low down of the article.
Typically, your conclusion should summarize the article by sharing the key takeaways. It should succinctly wrap up the article, leaving a lasting impression on the reader.
You might also want to use the conclusion to encourage readers to take action. This might include prompting them to read related articles, encouraging them to get in touch, or directing them to additional resources.
If you’re using ChatGPT-4, you can input longer content. This makes it great for asking ChatGPT to summarize long-form blog articles. You can also use AI tools that have specifically designed conclusion generation features, such as WriteMe or LongShot.
Use the following AI prompt to get AI to summarize your content:
Summarize the following content and provide the key takeaways. This will be used to write the conclusion for the blog post about [brief description of the blog post]
For our puppy training school example, this prompt will look like this:
Summarize the following content and provide the key takeaways. This will be used to write the conclusion for the blog post about the 10 essential commands any new puppy owner should know when training their puppy.
In this example, I only shared a snippet of a blog post to give you an idea of how this might look.
You can even take this prompt a step further by asking Chat-GPT to provide the key takeaways as a bullet-pointed list.
This quickly transforms a long-form article into a scannable list of key takeaways. You can then use this output to get a quick overview of the blog article so you can easily write your conclusion.
Use AI to write meta-descriptions
While they might only be short, writing high-quality meta descriptions requires skill. The right meta description can be the deciding factor in whether someone clicks through to your website or not.
Luckily, you can use AI to distill your on-page content into a couple of short sentences you can use as a meta description.
You can get ChatGPT to write meta descriptions by using the following AI prompt:
Summarize the following content into a 2 sentence meta-description
The optimal length for a meta description is between 50 to 160 characters. Run the AI-generated output through a word count checker to ensure it’s a suitable length. If not, you can either ask AI to generate a shorter version, or you can edit it manually.
In the above example, ChatGPT generated a meta description that was 195 characters long. As this is slightly longer than desired, I inputted the prompt, “can you make it slightly shorter?”
In response, ChatGPT cut the original output down to 145 characters while maintaining the key takeaways of the article.
How to use AI in the editing phase of content marketing
Before any content sees the light of day, it needs to go through a couple of rounds of revision. These revisions will either be conducted by the original writer or by editors, proofreaders, or content managers.
But reviewing your own content is hard. You’re too close to it. You know it inside out. I like to give myself one day between writing my first draft and proofreading it. This makes sure I’m looking at my content with fresh eyes.
But you don’t have to edit or proofread your content alone. Your AI content writing sidekick can come in useful during the editing phase of content marketing.
Use AI to clarify your writing
If you’re writing about complex topics, your content can easily become overwhelming for the reader. It might be laden with jargon or use niche analogies that only a small subset of people understand. The trouble with this is that complex content runs the risk of alienating your reader.
On the flip side, being too creative with your writing can also have a negative impact. Perhaps you’ve tried to write content that’s witty or overflowing with metaphors to create a vivid emotional reaction. Except it doesn’t quite land how you expected. The meaning and purpose of the content are lost in creativity.
Both scenarios are examples of how being “clever” can negatively affect the impact of your content. As writers, we live by the rule of being “clear over clever.” Yes, being clever is great. It turns heads, captures attention, and shows people you know what you’re talking about. But it should never come at the expense of your writing being clear and easy to understand.
If you’ve written something that you think might be clever rather than clear, you can use AI to clarify your writing.
AI prompts such as “Does this text make sense?” or “Make this text easier to understand” let you check and improve the clarity of your writing.
You can use the AI output to see whether it has understood your content or if the original meaning has been lost. In its response, Chat-GPT will tell you what it interpreted the text as, and it might also provide suggestions for improving your copy. You can then use this information to rewrite your content so it is easier to understand.
Use AI to simplify your writing
I have the habit of being a bit of a waffler when I’m reading. My default writing style is to use all the words. So, when proofreading my content, I sweep my content for long sentences and large blocks of text. I will then highlight these and simplify them.
To speed up this process, you can use AI to simplify content so it’s shorter and more readable.
Some AI prompts you can use to simplify your content are:
Make the following text shorter and snappier
Explain [topic] to me like I’m 7 years old
Make the following text easier to read
If we input a large block of text, you can see how the prompt “make the following text shorter and snappier” produces a simplified version of the original content. You can then comb through your content, making it short and more readable.
Final thoughts — AI can be a powerful content marketing sidekick
AI isn’t perfect, but it can be an invaluable asset for content marketers, acting as a powerful sidekick at every stage of the content creation process.
Guided by well-crafted generative AI prompts, you can optimize your content. From kickstarting content research with keyword research to creating hub-and-spoke content strategies, generating headlines, and clarifying your writing, AI can streamline your content marketing efforts across content research, writing, and editing.
Remember, you can’t rely on AI alone just yet. Your content still needs a human touch if you want it to outperform your competitors — especially when writing for YMYL topics and niches where E-E-A-T is crucial.
Few aspects of my job drive me to extreme internal conflict, but the subject of author attribution is one that tears my brain in two.
My writer brain says, “Yes, absolutely! Writers’ names on all that they create! Credit where credit is due!”
My marketer brain is apparently more reserved because I find myself asking myself questions such as:
Who deserves the credit for this article? The actual writer? The entire team of researchers who helped provide data? And what happens if a totally different writer updates the article later?
Will the author’s name support this content’s performance, or would it be better received if a more well-known subject matter expert had their name on it?
Does it need a name at all, or is that just distracting extraneous information?
So, who’s right? Me, or me? (I like the odds on this one.)
Let’s try to get inside Google’s mind to figure this out — first, by reviewing what Google has said on the matter, then by looking at some real search results from Google.
What does Google say about author attribution?
Google has grappled with author attribution for a long time, as evidenced by the birth and gradual death of the Google Authorship experiment that carried on for several years in the early 2010s.
In the end, the folks at Google decided they’d rather use algorithms to try to identify the author of any given piece instead of relying on the oft-forgotten, occasionally misused, rel=”author” tag.
The search giant seems confident that they could do this, as evidenced through comments made by Google leaders such as, “We are not using authorship at all anymore… we are smarter than that.”
But where their confidence really comes through is in their extensive collection of patents. As pointed out by Olaf Kopp, writing for Search Engine Land, there are ample methods by which Google can attempt to identify the author of a piece, including:
Author vectors: Identifying the unique style of a writer and using that to attribute content.
Author badges: Using identifying information such as an email address or name to verify authors.
Agent rank: Assigning content to an agent (an author or a publisher), and using backlinks to, in part, determine the rank.
And there’s more. It’s not known which, or how many, of these are used actively in search algorithms — and if so, how they’re used or how heavily they’re weighted.
So, is that the end of it? Author attribution doesn’t matter because Google “just knows”?
No, that’s way too easy. See, we also have cues from Google pros like John Mueller and Danny Sullivan advising people to strive for highly authoritative content by way of having experts write or proofread content on their area of expertise.
Furthermore, Google’s own Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines include specific instructions on “Finding Who is Responsible for the Website and Who Created the Content on the Page,” and highlights author-related observations for both low-quality and high-quality content.
The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are the guidebook that search quality evaluators use to analyze organic Google results to provide feedback on the effectiveness of Google’s algorithm. If low-quality results end up in SERPs, they flag it.
So, why would they need guidance on identifying authors and responsible parties if it doesn’t matter?
The answer: It might just matter.
What do Google’s search results tell us about author attribution?
OK, now we know what Google says about the subject:
It’s not necessary to name authors in content…
Because Google already knows who wrote what on the internet…
But it’s also advisable that content is created or checked by experts who have authority on the topic.
So, do actual Google search results reflect that?
Last year, I published the results from a study I conducted in an attempt to isolate which factors are really, truly important to demonstrate E-A-T (this was before the addition of the second E).
My writer’s brain approached that study with the idea that author attribution had to matter. And what I found was somewhat disappointing to that version of myself but validating to the marketer in me.
First: A quick primer on how this study went.
I chose seven categories and ten queries for each category. I searched all 70 queries, clicked on all 647 Page 1 results, and took notes. If a particular element was highly prevalent on Page 1 results, I considered it to be important. If it’s more common in the Top 3 results than the overall Top 10, then I’d view it as very important.
I looked for a bunch of author-related factors:
Author name
Author has previously been published online
Author is affiliated with the organization
Author is a guest contributor
Detailed author bio is available
Links to the author’s website, social accounts, or other information
Link specifically to LinkedIn (I counted this one separately)
Multiple authors or contributors listed
And here’s how each of these factors performed in my study:
Author name
46% of Page 1 results attributed their content to a person, a group of people, or to an organization.
43% of Top 3 results did the same.
Of all the 32 factors I looked for, this was number 15 in the study, following truly important things like HTTPS and having original research published on-site (you can see a detailed description of each of the factors I analyzed here.)
Does this tell us that authorless content is OK? I’d say it’s actually a reflection of the types of content being served. There are plenty of times when author attribution simply isn’t needed.
Now, let’s look at the rest of the author-related factors I considered. For the rest of the study, I considered the overall 647 results, as well as the results for what I called the “author set,” which is the 298 results that included an author name.
Previously published author
36% of Page 1 results had a named author who clearly had previously been published online.
35% of Top 3 results showed the same.
It doesn’t seem to matter one way or the other how much previous publishing experience the writer has. But, among those results that did name an author, how common was previous publication?
Among our author set, the percentages look a bit different:
79.2% of Page 1 listings with listed authors had previously published authors.
81.3% of Top 3 results with listed authors showed the same.
There’s a bit more experience among Top 3 results’ authors than among the general Page 1 results’ authors. This could reflect higher-domain publishers’ (which are likely to rank well already) careful discernment of the authors they work with. Or, this could show that experience matters for ranking — alternatively, it could indicate that experience is good for creating quality content. Practice makes perfect.
Author affiliation: In-house vs. guest contributor
Do guest posts perform better than in-house written content? It looks to me that there’s no real advantage in one approach or the other.
23% of Page 1 results had authors who were clearly affiliated with the organization (e.g. they were employees).
22% of Top 3 results had the same as above.
13% of Page 1 results had authors who were clearly guest contributors.
12% of Top 3 results had the same as above.
It’s more common to have an author who’s affiliated with the publishing organization. But that doesn’t mean it matters. The nearly identical results for Page 1 vs. Top 3 results for both of these factors show that it’s not particularly critical.
The author set reinforces my theory that author affiliation doesn’t really matter much:
49.33% of Page 1 results with named authors were in-house contributors.
50.33% of Top 3 results showed the same.
28.86% of Page 1 results with named authors were guest contributors.
28.57% of Top 3 results showed the same.
This could actually be a reflection of how difficult it can be to attract high-quality guest posters instead of how important either strategy is. To establish a guest posting program (which is what you’d want to do to support an ongoing guest post initiative), you’ll need a few things, including:
Lots of traffic. Guest authors like to contribute to websites that get views.
A good reputation. Otherwise, what will incentivize them to contribute?
A manager. Guest post programs can get complex quickly, between vetting writers, approving topics, proofing content, and the publication and distribution of it all.
Author bio and links
Including an author biography or links to their personal website, portfolio or social media profiles can help readers learn more about whose content they’re reading. It also gives search crawlers more opportunities to get to know the content creator.
I considered these items separately:
Detailed author bio (as opposed to a sparse, unhelpful one).
Links to the author’s personal website, portfolio or social media, excluding LinkedIn.
Links to the author’s LinkedIn profile.
Detailed author bios were the most common, with 22% of both Page 1 and Top 3 results containing one. Next up were links to authors’ personal websites, portfolios, or social media profiles, which showed up 18% of the time on Page 1 and 16% of the time in Top 3 results. Finally, 11% of Page 1 listings had LinkedIn profile links for the author, whereas only 10% of Top 3 did.
The only one of these factors that really changes when looking at the author set is the detailed bio. 48.3% of Page 1 results’ authors had one, whereas 51.7% of Top 3 did. So, it’s a small difference, but it’s enough to make me think that a bit of information about your author could be beneficial.
Multiple contributors listed
I called this multiple contributors rather than multiple authors because this category includes listed activities like:
Editing
Proofreading
Fact-checking
Contributing (e.g., providing research, interviews, or written content but not having written the entire thing)
Updating
Could listing multiple contributors on your content help it rank? My results don’t really support that. This was a find that disappointed not just my writer’s brain but my marketer’s brain, too.
17% of Page 1 results listed multiple contributors.
13% of Top 3 results did, too.
Among our author set, 36.58% of the Page 1 results had multiple contributors listed, and so did 32.97% of the Top 3 results.
Here’s my disappointment: Many of the results I analyzed included multiple contributors because they were being fact-checked or reviewed by professionals in that field, like doctors checking medical content — exactly the type of thing Google advises.
Similar to the guest posting factor I considered above, this could be a reflection of the practicalities of having in-depth content that requires multiple hands before it’s published. It’s another activity that requires a lot of time, talent, and resources.
When — and why — should you attribute your content?
By now, we’ve learned that author attribution kind of matters for ranking but isn’t a make-or-break factor on its own.
Or is it?
I’ve come to the opinion that it depends on the type of content in question (my marketer’s brain takes the lead). Regardless of which method you choose, here are some of the benefits you could gain through your choice:
Demonstrate your brand’s authority. Choosing the right author attribution can highlight your organization’s expertise.
Give credit to the creator. When it’s appropriate to attribute the true author, doing so can help build a positive relationship with that author and gives the added benefit of boosting their online portfolio (which should, in the long term, add further credibility to the content they create for your brand).
Provide information for readers and crawlers. Attribution helps the humans and robots who review your content to find more information about the topic as well as the expert who wrote it.
Here are some common marketing content types and appropriate options for author attribution:
Blog posts
Posts written for your organization’s blog are a prime opportunity to show off author credentials, or it could be an opportunity to highlight the expertise of your in-house experts (whether they penned the content or not).
Here are some questions to ask when deciding how to attribute blog content:
Is the author a true expert on this subject? If yes, include their name.
Will this author contribute regularly to your blog? If yes, all the better to include their name.
Is this author well-known or respected in this field? If yes, definitely list their name.
If your author isn’t an expert in that topic, you could attribute the content to an actual expert to lend authority to the piece. In that case, it’s recommended to have that person read over the content to get their sign-off.
Another option for organization blogs is to attribute the content to the organization itself or to the group of people who are in charge of reviewing content. For example, lots of Mayo Clinic’s articles are authored “By Mayo Clinic Staff.”
Guest articles
Guest article attribution can be considered in much the same way as blog posts. If the author is a real expert (which is more likely when working with guest-post programs, as many choose their contributors carefully), including their name can add credibility to the piece.
Crediting a guest post can boost awareness or reinforce brand recognition among readers. For example, this Marketing Week article about TikTok is sponsored by the social media brand, but no author is listed. The piece’s main purpose is to spread awareness of TikTok’s capabilities as a marketing platform.
Landing pages
Landing pages are designed to get viewers interested in taking some type of action with your company. There are tons of types of landing pages:
Commercial landing pages that discuss the virtues of your products or services.
Conversion landing pages, which people see after clicking on an ad.
Subscription landing pages, where people sign up for your newsletter.
Company landing pages, such as your about page or careers page, which support people exploring your company with a variety of intents.
In any of these cases, it’s not necessary to attribute your content. Someone at your organization likely wrote them or, at the very least, reviewed the content for accuracy and brand consistency. It’s assumed that the responsible party for this type of content is your organization as a whole.
Pillar pages
Pillar pages are sort of like blog posts in that they are highly informational and support people who want to learn more about a particular subject. Where they differ from blog posts is in the depth of their content — usually, they’re breaking down a multifaceted topic, instead of focusing on just one facet like a blog post might do. In fact, pillar pages often link out to blog posts that dive deeper into relevant subtopics.
Because pillar pages address big, broad topics and link to articles for further reading, they are powerful topical authority pages.
Including an author’s name could add credibility to these pages, but it could also take away from it. Without an author’s attribution, the assumption is that, like landing pages, your organization at large is responsible for the content. And, if it’s covering a topic that’s central to your brand identity and linking to the many articles you’ve published on your blog covering the matter, then it may be best to let this content be “authored by your organization.” A great example of this is the Moz SEO Learning Center.
After all, your company’s credibility and expertise matter most when building brand trust — not the individual writer who happened to pen the piece.
Press releases
Press releases are announcements from your organization, meant to be distributed far and wide by a wire service. The tone should be congruent with your brand voice, your brand logo should be included, and details about your organization are a must.
In almost all cases, press releases are authored “by your brand.” That said, a real person should always be included as the media contact. This is the person that people — especially journalists — can contact to learn more about your brand and the announcement.
Original research and thought-leadership content
Original content and original research are going to be hugely important for SEO in the years ahead. Google’s own communiqués about the Helpful Content Update, E-E-A-T, natural language processing abilities in search, and more prove that Google really does care about original content.
Original research was one of the 32 points I checked for during the study, and it was more prevalent than even authors’ names — signifying that not all original research had an attributed author.
64% of Page 1 results’ websites had original research available.
70% of Top 3 results’ sites did, too.
Original research is any type of content that includes unique information that the company gathers, analyzes, and publishes itself. To name a few, these could be in the form of:
Surveys
Annual reports
Original product reviews
Website or organization data
Grant or funding information
The decision to attribute original research depends on the type of original content in question. Things like annual reports and grant information could feasibly be authored “by your organization,” whereas original product reviews may read more trust-worthily if readers can get to know the actual people who tested the product.
At Brafton, we conduct original research to learn more about the state of the content marketing industry, and the blog post written afterward is attributed to the blog post’s author. We’ve chosen to do that to match the style on our blog (we love our authors because they’re all experts at what they’re doing, and it’s a great opportunity for them to showcase their talent).
To attribute or not to attribute: Who won the debate?
I’m pleased to announce that I won this argument against myself. More importantly, I’ve decided that both of my selves — writer me and marketer me — are correct.
My marketer self might be slightly more right, though.
Attributing content can be worthwhile for your brand and the author in lots of situations.
However, there are plenty of other situations where attributing an expert who didn’t actually create the content but did review or otherwise consult on it can lend credibility to your brand.
Finally, there are actually plenty of instances where there’s no need to attribute anyone at all.
In the end, it all depends on the purpose of the content and your goals with it.
![Screenshot of ChatGPT conversation. The user inputted Write 10 headline formulas that can be used to write blog post headlines. Display these as a table and make sure they cover a variety of content types such as [types of blog posts you typically share] ChatGPT's response features a three column table with headers for 'No.', 'Headline Formula', and 'Content Type'. In the table, it provides headline formulas. At the end of the table, ChatGPt says to 'Feel free to mix and match these formulas to create compelling and diverse headlines for your blog posts!'](https://moz.com/images/blog/image3_2023-09-11-192252_nohp.png?w=1216&auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=crop&dm=1694460172&s=e0900fd0a21a1239a5c5e05e51d3b994)
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