MozCon is back in person for 2022! From networking with your peers to hearing from industry leaders, there are benefits a-plenty to attending conferences. You know that. Your peers know that. But how do you persuade the powers-that-be (aka your boss) that sending you is beneficial for your business?
Don’t worry, we’ve got a plan. (And if you want to skip ahead to the letter template, here it is!)
Business competition is fiercer than ever. Only those who are able to shift tactics with the changing tides of marketing will be able to come out on top. And that’s exactly what MozCon is going to help you do.
Covering everything a growing marketer needs for a well-balanced marketing diet (SEO, content, strategy, growth), MozCon delivers top-notch talks from hand-selected speakers over three insightful days in July.
There's so much in store for you this year. Here’s just a sampling of what you can expect at this year’s MozCon:
Speakers and content
Our speakers are real practitioners and industry leaders. We work with them to ensure they deliver the best content and insights to the stage to set you up for a year of success. No sales pitches or talking heads here!
Networking
You work hard taking notes, learning new insights, and digesting all of that knowledge — that’s why we think you deserve a little fun in the evenings. It's your chance to decompress with fellow attendees and make new friends in the industry. We host exciting evening networking events that add to the value you'll get from your day of education. Plus, our Birds of a Feather lunch tables allow you to connect with like-minded peers who share similar interests.
High-quality videos to share with your team
About a month or so after the conference, we’ll send you a link to professionally edited videos of every presentation at the conference. Your colleagues won’t get to partake in the real-time experience(the #FOMO is real), but they will get a chance to learn everything you did, for free.
Great food on site
We know that conference food isn’t typically worth mentioning, but MozCon is notorious for its cornucopia of tasty offerings.
You can expect two hot meals a day and loads of snacks from local Seattle vendors — in the past we’ve featured a smorgasbord from the likes of Trophy cupcakes, KuKuRuZa popcorn, Starbucks’ Seattle Reserve cold brew.
Swag
No duds here, we do our homework when it comes to selecting thoughtful swag worthy of keeping. One-of-a-kind Roger Mozbots, a super-soft t-shirt, and more cool stuff you’ll want to take home and show off.
Wear your heart on your sleeve
MozCon on behalf of our attendees gives back each year through donating a portion from every ticket sold towards a charitable organization. Our 2022 charitable recipients are Washington Trails AssociationandNorth Cascades Institute.
Discounts for current customers
Moz Pro, Moz Local, and STAT customers save big on their ticket cost, and there are discounts for groups of 10+ as well, so make sure to take advantage of savings where you can!
Testimonials
But of course, don’t take our word for it! There are some incredible resources available at your fingertips that tout the benefits of attending conferences:
"I've been to MozCon six times — it's worth traveling all the way from Adelaide, Australia. The knowledge sharing is next level!" — Woj Kwasi, Head Honcho, Kwasi
"MozCon is hands-down among the best organized tech-oriented conferences I’ve ever attended. From the strongly inclusive culture with rich representation of all stripes of life, to the friendly vibe around the lunch tables and after-session parties, you would be hard pressed to find a more informative and beneficial SEO conference in the US. — Eddie Childs, Inbound Marketing Manager, Mediagistic
"MozCon has been my go-to conference for the past three years. Between the top-notch speaker lineup, fantastic accommodations and memorable parties and networking events, it's truly a must-attend event for any digital marketing professional looking to further their career in the industry." — Kyle Sutton, Sr. Product Manager, SEO Gannett / USA TODAY NETWORK
"MozCon is more than a "work conference" - it really is an annual collaboration with the brightest and most talented SEOs from all over the world. Three full days of idea sharing, insights, and quality time with industry experts. Never have I ever been to a conference where the speakers on stage are humble and easily accessible. 5/5 would attend again." — Angela O'Pry, Marketing Coordinator at Access Sciences
Need a little more to get your boss on board? Check out some videos from years past to get a taste for the caliber of our speakers.
Buy ticket, save money, get competitive marketing insights. Everyone wins!
MozCon is one unforgettable experience that lives and grows with you beyond just the three days you spend in Seattle. And there's no time like the present to pitch MozCon to your boss. If they're still stuck on the "why", let them know about our subscriber or group pricing tiers to your boss — you’ll save hundreds of dollars when you do. Just think of all the Keurigs you could get for that communal kitchen!
Have you been waiting on the edge of your seat for MozCon to start rolling out the lineup of speakers? Well, my friend, today’s the day so hold on tight!
We’re thrilled to announce the first 15 extraordinary speakers that will be taking the MozCon 2022 stage in Seattle this July (in alphabetical order).
Amalia is the Founder of Good AF Consulting, a Vancouver, BC consulting firm where she helps companies build great marketing teams. She's also a marketing instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and creator of The Wholehearted Manager, a newsletter for people who believe in leading with their heart, and that all employees deserve a safe space to work. Amalia has been in search marketing for eight years, with her work focused on helping businesses understand marketing strategy, mentoring new marketers, building exceptional marketing teams and advocating for more ethical and transparent practices in our space. Her favorite saying is "It Depends," because context is everything.
Amanda Milligan is the Head of Marketing at Stacker Studio. With a degree in journalism and a decade in content marketing, she’s spent her career helping brands harness the intersection of content and SEO.
Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, an award-winning 50-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 20 years, Andy has provided digital marketing advice to over 1,000 businesses.
Areej is Head of SEO at Papier where she focuses on all things technical and on-site SEO. She is the founder of the global Women in Tech SEO community and has been in the digital marketing industry for over eight years.
Crystal Carter is an SEO and digital marketer with over 15 years experience working with clients like Disney, Tomy, Kikkoman, and more. She shares insights in leading publications like Google Webmaster Central, The Moz Blog, Search Engine Land, and Women in Tech SEO.
With more than 15 years in the SEO industry, Hannah's creative work has won multiple awards, and she's worked with a range of companies including the BBC, Dyson, Expedia, MailChimp, and Salesforce.
Jackie Chu is currently the SEO Lead, Intelligence for Uber, driving analytics and tooling for the SEO teams globally. She has deep experience in technical SEO, content SEO, ASO and international SEO spanning both B2B and B2C industries.
Joe Hall is an executive SEO consultant focused on analyzing and informing the digital marketing strategies of select clients through in-depth data analysis and SEO audits.
Born and raised in Barcelona, Lidia has been working in SEO for over eight years. She's been helping businesses in e-commerce, media and B2B reach their audiences on search across European markets, the US and Australia. She has leveraged her BSc in Psychology and Master's in Digital Business to drive organic growth for e-commerce sites, media, and SaaS.
Lily Ray is the Sr. Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital, where she provides strategic leadership for the agency’s SEO client programs. Lily began her SEO career in 2010 in a fast-paced start-up environment and moved quickly into the agency world, where she helped grow and establish an award-winning SEO department that delivered high impact work for a fast-growing list of notable clients, including Fortune 500 companies.
Noah is a technical marketer, nicknamed the Kraken, who is happiest building SEO tools, automations, data pipelines and communities. When not in the lab, he loves skiing, fly fishing, camping with his family, and walking his dog, Shadow.
Paddy is co-founder of Aira, a digital marketing agency based in the UK and delivering work across SEO, paid media, content marketing, and digital PR. He has been working in SEO since around 2004 when he got bored studying for his law degree.
Tom heads up the Search Science team at Moz, providing research and insight for Moz's next generation of tools. Previously, he led the London consulting team for SEO agency Distilled, and worked as a chef in a roadside grill.
Wil has been leading the charge to leverage “Big Data” to break down silos between SEO, PPC, and traditional marketing — pulling together data from various sources to see the big picture.
Stay tuned for more MozCon updates!
And we’re just getting warmed up! We’ve got lots more incredible speakers to reveal in the coming weeks including our community speaker lineup, but don’t wait to snap your ticket as early bird savings are only available for a limited time and once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
We’re developing a brand-new SEO guide for you — The Professional’s Guide to SEO, designed as your next-step resource once you’re comfortable with the baseline provided by the Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
When we think of link building, one of the first people we think of is our friend Paddy Moogan at Aira, the architect of the Beginner’s Guide to Link Building, MozCon alumni speaker, and industry thought leader. That’s why we’re jazzed to announce that the link building chapter of our upcoming Professional’s Guide to SEO is authored by none other than the fine folks at Aira. And today we’re sharing an excerpt of that very chapter.
Dive in for a glimpse at our newest guide, and as always, give us a shout on Twitter if you have any thoughts or recommendations — we love hearing from you!
Link Building & Link Earning Tactics
Measuring link building
In this section, we explore approaches to measuring links and understanding which ones may make the biggest difference to traffic and rankings, along with business outcomes such as revenue.
Once your link building strategy is set and you’re underway, you need to measure your work so that you can understand the effectiveness of what you’re doing and demonstrate its value. There are a few ways that you can measure link building, which we’ll cover below, along with the pros and cons of each one.
Volume of links
You can use various tools (such as Link Explorer) to measure the volume of links to a domain and then measure this number over time. You can also manually measure the links that you build via your own outreach and record these over time.
The advantage of this measure is that it’s very easy to do and is usually a direct consequence of the work that you are doing. For example, if you engage in a tactic such as broken link building, you can see exactly how many links you were able to build as a result of that work. This will allow you to understand which activities are most worthwhile and effective at generating volumes of links.
There is a downside to this form of measurement. Not all links are created equal, and the raw volume of links isn’t very useful without important context such as the authority and relevance of those links.
One high-quality, authoritative, relevant link could do more for your site than a hundred low-quality links. If you only measure link volume on its own, then the hundred low-quality links may be seen as successful and effective.
Volume of links can be a useful metric as long as you layer it with other context, which we’ll talk about below.
Quality of links
“Quality” is generally quite subjective, but when it comes to link building, there are some good ways to understand and measure the quality of a link. The two core ways are:
Relevance of a link
Authority of a link
Let’s talk about relevance first.
Link relevance
Relevance isn’t binary. You can’t just look at a link and say off the bat whether it’s relevant or not. For example, imagine you get a link to your website from another in the same industry and which contains content similar to yours. It sounds relevant at the surface, but what if the link is pointing at a piece of content you’ve created that’s on a completely different topic — is that still a relevant link?
What if you somehow get a link from NASA to your coffee beans website? Space exploration isn’t exactly relevant to the grinders and beans that you sell, is it?!
Situations like these make relevance pretty difficult to measure, especially at scale. But it’s possible to do by using your own experience, instincts, and by asking a few basic questions when looking at a link:
If the link is on another website, how likely is it that a potential customer for your products would see that link?
If the link is to a piece of content that you’ve created, would that content resonate with your ideal customer?
If someone at your company who has zero knowledge of SEO and link building saw the link, would they be happy with it?
Questions like these can help you judge whether a link is relevant to your business or not. Despite it not being the most objective measure and hard to scale, factoring relevance into your link building measurement at some point is vital. This is because the more relevant links are, the more likely they are to put you in front of potential customers and to generate real traffic.
Link authority
When it comes to authority, there are many third-party scoring methods that aim to replicate Google PageRank. Domain Authority and Page Authority are proprietary metrics created by Moz. They can give you an approximate idea of how much value a particular link has. It’s not foolproof, and no third-party metric can truly replicate Google PageRank, but they can be good enough to give you a rough idea of how much authority a link has.
Using third-party metrics is a good thing, but you should always keep in mind that these metrics are not used by Google themselves. This means that they’re naturally limited in their usefulness and, similar to link volume, they shouldn’t be used without context.
Rankings and organic search traffic
Ideally, the link building that you carry out should have a positive effect on your organic search rankings and as a consequence, your traffic as well. As we learned earlier, there are many signals that Google uses to determine organic search rankings, but building the right kinds of links is a strong one and should help you rank better.
However, it can be hard to measure the direct effect of the links you build on organic search rankings and traffic. It’s not as simple as being able to say “we built 10 links and our traffic went up by 20%.” Despite understanding some of the signals, none of us knows exactly how the Google algorithm works and even if we did, every website and industry is different.
Building ten links for a brand-new coffee bean website is likely to have a bigger impact than building 10 links for an established website that sells car insurance.
This makes our lives harder as SEOs, but not impossible. It’s also easier if you’re able to control or at least have some influence over other important areas of SEO, such as technical SEO or content.
The main thing that many of us can do, regardless of how much control we have, is to measure organic search rankings and traffic objectively over time and look for consistent improvement. Check your rankings with tools such as Moz Pro or Google Search Console and use Google Analytics to check traffic.
Referral traffic
Another way to measure the effectiveness of link building is to look at how much traffic is sent via the links that you’ve built.
It’s easy to get caught up in measurement of rankings and organic traffic and forget that you can generate traffic directly from links, too. This happens when someone sees your link and then clicks on it, resulting in a visit to your website.
Now, not every link that you build will send traffic — and that’s okay. However, one aspect of your approach should include building links that do indeed lead to referral traffic. They may come as a result of launching a great piece of content or building a new, innovative product feature that gets picked up by industry experts.
Setting expectations is important here because, as mentioned, not every link will send lots of traffic. For example, if you get a link on a page because of a great resource that you’ve created, but your link is amongst hundreds of other links on the external website, the chances of someone clicking on yours is significantly reduced.
With that said, it’s a fantastic metric to use and pretty simple if you utilize analytics tools such as Google Analytics.
Want more news about the Professional’s Guide to SEO? Don’t miss any of our future sneak peeks — make sure you’re signed up for Moz Blog email updates!
The promised page experience updates from Google that caused such a stir last year are far from being done, so Tom takes a look at where we are now and what happens next for the algorithm’s infamous Core Web Vitals.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Happy Friday, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. This week's video is about Core Web Vitals. Before you immediately pull that or pause the video, press Back, something like that, no, we haven't got stuck in time. This isn't a video from 2020. This is looking forwards. I'm not going to cover what the basic metrics are or how they work, that kind of thing in this video. There is a very good Whiteboard Friday about a year ago from Cyrus about all of those things, which hopefully will be linked below. What this video is going to be looking at is where we are now and what happens next, because the page experience updates from Google are very much not done. They are still coming. This is still ongoing. This is probably going to get more important over time, not less, even though the hype has kind of subsided a little bit.
Historical context
So, firstly, I want to look at some of the historical context in terms of how we got where we are. So I've got this timeline on this side of the board. You can see in May 2020, which is nearly two years ago now, Google first announced this. This is an extraordinary long time really in SEO and Google update terms. But they announced it, and then we had these two delays and it felt like it was taking forever. I think there are some important implications here because my theory is that — I've written about this before and again, hopefully, that will also be linked below — but my theory is that the reason for the delays was that too few pages would have been getting a boost if they had rolled out when they originally intended to, partly because too few sites had actually improved their performance and partly because Google is getting data from Chrome, the Chrome user experience or CrUX data. It's from real users using Chrome.
For lots of pages for a long time, including now really, they didn't really have a good enough sample size to draw conclusions. The coverage is not incredible. So because of that, initially when they had even less data, they were in an even worse position to roll out something. They don't want to make a change to their algorithm that rewards a small number of pages disproportionately, because that would just distort their results. It will make their results worse for users, which is not what they're aiming for with their own metrics.
So because of these delays, we were sort of held up until June last year. But what I've just explained, this system of only having enough sample size for more heavily visited pages, this is important for webmasters, not just Google. We'll come back to it later when we talk about what's going to happen next I think, but this is why whenever we display Core Web Vitals data in Moz Pro and whenever we talk about it publicly, we encourage you to look at your highest traffic or most important pages or your highest ranking pages, that kind of thing, rather than just looking at your slowest pages or something like that. You need to prioritize and triage. So we encourage you to sort by traffic and look at that alongside performance or something like that.
So anyway, June 2021, we did start having this rollout, and it was all rolled out within two or three months. But it wasn't quite what we expected or what we were told to expect.
What happened after the rollout?
In the initial FAQ and the initial documentation from from Google, they talked about sites getting a boost if they passed a certain threshold for all three of the new metrics they were introducing. Although they kind of started to become more ambiguous about that over time, that definitely isn't what happened with the rollout.
So we track this with MozCast data. So between the start and the end of when Google said they were rolling it out, we looked at the pages ranking top 20 in MozCast that had passes for zero, one, two, or three of the metrics against the thresholds that Google published.
Now one thing that's worth noticing about this chart, before you even look at it anymore closely, is that all of these lines trend downwards, and that's because of what I was talking about with the sample sizes increasing, with Google getting data on more pages over time. So as they got more pages, they started incorporating more low traffic or in other words low ranking pages into the CrUX data, and that meant that the average rank of a page that has CrUX data will go down, because when we first started looking at this, even though this is top 20 rankings for competitive keywords, only about 30% of them even had CrUX data in the first place when we first looked at this. It's gone up a lot since then. So it now includes more low ranking pages. So that's why there's this sort of general downwards shift.
So the thing to notice here is the pages passing all three thresholds, these are the ones that Google said were going to get a big boost, and these went down by 0.2, which is about the same as the pages that were passing one or two thresholds. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that was just the general fit caused by incorporating more pages into CrUX data.
The really noticeable thing was the pages that passed zero. The pages that passed zero thresholds, they went down by 1.1. They went down by 1.1 positions. So instead of it being pass all three and get a boost, it's more like pass zero and get a penalty. Or you could rephrase that positively and say the exact same thing, as pass one and get a boost relative to these ones that are falling off the cliff and dropping over one ranking position.
So there was a big impact it seems from the rollout, but not necessarily the one that we were told to expect, which is interesting. I suspect that's because Google perhaps was more confident about the data on the sites performing very badly than about the data on the sites performing very well.
What happens next?
Desktop rollout
Now, in terms of what happens next, I think this is relevant because in February and March, probably as you're watching this video, Google have said they're going to be rolling out this same expect page experience update on desktop. So we assume it will work the same way. So what you've seen here on a smartphone only, this will be replicated on desktop at the start of this year. So you'll probably see something very similar with very poorly performing sites. If you're already watching this video, you probably have little or no time to get this fixed or they'll see a ranking drop, which if maybe that's one of your competitors, that could be good news.
But I don't think it will stop there. There are two other things I expect to happen.
Increased impact
So one is you might remember with HTTPS updates and particularly with Mobilegeddon, we expected this really big seismic change. But what actually happened was when the update rolled out, it was very toned down. Not much noticeable shifted. But then, over time, Google sort of quietly turned up the wick. These days, we would all expect a very mobile-unfriendly site to perform very poorly in search, even though the initial impact of that algorithm update was very minor. I think something similar will happen here. The slower sites will feel a bigger and bigger penalty gradually building. I don't mean like a manual penalty, but a bigger disadvantage gradually building over time, until in a few years' time we would all intuitively understand that a site that doesn't pass three thresholds or something is going to perform horribly.
New metrics
The last change I'm expecting to see, which Google hinted about initially, is new metrics. So they initially said that they would probably update this annually. You can already see on web.dev that Google is talking about a couple of new metrics. Those are smoothness and responsiveness. So smoothness is to do with the sort of frames per second of animations on the page. So when you're scrolling up and down the page, is it more like a slideshow or a sort of fluid video? Then responsiveness is how quickly the page interacts or responds to your interactions. So we already have one of the current metrics is first input delay, but, as it says in the name, that's only the first input. So I'm expecting this to care more about things that happen further into your browsing experience on that page.
So these are things I think you have to think about going forwards through 2022 and beyond for Core Web Vitals. I think the main lesson to take away is you don't want to over-focus on the three metrics we have now, because if you just leave your page that's currently having a terrible user experience but somehow sort of wiggling its way through these three metrics, that's only going to punish you in the long run. It will be like the old-school link builders that are just constantly getting penalized as they find their way around every new update rather than finding a more sustainable technique. I think you have to do the same. You have to aim for a genuinely good user experience or this isn't going to work out for you.
Anyway, that's all for today. Hope the rest of your Friday is enjoyable. See you next time.
When there is a search query on Google, Google Ads runs a quick auction to determine which ads will show for that search query, and what the ad positions should be. This ad auction is repeated every time an ad is eligible to appear for a search term out of the billions searched each day.
To determine if an ad is eligible to be shown in the Google search results, and what the position of the ad will be, Google uses a value called Ad Rank. If an ad does not meet the Ad Rank thresholds, it will not be shown. Ad Rank also determines the CPC (cost per click) that the advertiser pays for a click on their ad.
In this post, I cover the main factors that are used by Google to determine the Ad Rank of an ad during the auction, and what those factors mean for your ad strategy.
Understanding the Google Ads auction
How the Google Ads auction works
When a user makes a search query, Google Ads runs a split-second auction of all the ads whose keywords are relevant to it. This will determine which ads are eligible to be shown, their ad position relative to competing ads, and the CPC that the advertiser will pay for a click on their ad.
When setting up Google Ads pay per click (PPC) marketing campaigns, advertisers identify which keywords they want to bid on and set their max CPC bid. The advertiser also sets up ad groups with keywords and creates related ads.
When there is a search query, the Google Ads auction begins. Here is the auction process according to Google:
For every search query, Google Ads finds all the ads whose keywords are relevant to the search terms.
The system ignores ads that are not eligible for that location and any disapproved ads.
The remaining ads will be evaluated based on their Ad Rank. The Ad Rank is based on the max CPC bid, ad quality, Ad Rank thresholds, search context and the ad extensions and formats used.
The eligible ads that won the auction are shown on the SERP based on their Ad Rank.
The layout of the Google search results page changes constantly. Currently, Google shows three ads above the organic search results and three ads below the search results on each search page. Depending on the popularity of the search term, and the number of qualified ads, ads may be shown on multiple search pages for the search term.
Here is an example of a search for “eye doctors Dallas” that shows three eligible Google Ads above the organic search results:
Figure 1: Ads shown above organic search results for a search query
What is Ad Rank?
The ad with the highest Ad Rank will be shown in the top position of the search results page for a relevant search term. This is followed by the ad with the second highest Ad Rank and so on. Ads that do not meet the Ad Rank eligibility requirements will not be shown on Google.
Ad Rank calculation
Ad Rank = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score plus additional factors like the impact of ad extensions and ad formats, Ad Rank thresholds, search context, and competitiveness of auction.
Thus, spending more does not necessarily guarantee you the best Ad Rank. Here is an example of basic Ad Rank calculations for four advertisers competing for ad positions in the Google Search Results:
Figure 2: Calculating Ad Rank
As seen in the example, Advertiser 1 had a lower max CPC bid than the other three advertisers, but was able to qualify for the top ad position because their quality score was high. Advertiser 4, in contrast, had the highest max CPC bid but the lowest quality score, and ended up in the lowest ad position.
Why should you care about your Ad Rank?
Google sets minimum Ad Rank thresholds that will determine if an ad is shown at all on Google.
In the example in Figure 2 above, there are four advertisers competing for an auction with Ad Ranks of 24, 20, 12, 8. If the minimum Ad Rank to show above the organic search results is 20, only Advertisers 1 and 2 will show above the search results. If the minimum Ad Rank to show below the search results is 10, only advertiser 3 will show below the search results. Advertiser 4 will not meet the minimum Ad Rank thresholds, and their ads will not be shown on Google at all.
Advertisers compete to have their ad shown in the top-most position on the SERP since that leads to a higher clickthrough rate (CTR) and results in more leads. Ad CTR changes considerably depending on your ad position.
The average CTR across all ads on Google Ads is 3.17% in search. But that CTR ranges considerably depending on industry and position, with a “good” CTR for position 1 being 6% or higher.
Even those minor differences in percentage can equate to thousands of clicks more for higher-ranked ads.
With that in mind, let’s dig into the two main factors determining your Ad Rank a bit more.
What is CPC?
Cost per click (CPC) is the price you pay per click on your ads in your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns.
When you set up a Google Ads PPC campaign, you set the max CPC bid for the keywords in your account. The max CPC bid can be set up at the keyword level or at the ad group level:
The maximum CPC is the maximum amount that you’re willing to pay for a click on your ads.
The actual CPC is the final amount you’re charged for a click on your ad. Your Actual CPC is determined at the time of the auction and may be less than the max CPC amount.
The average CPC is the average amount you’re charged for a click on your ads.
While CPC costs can vary depending on your industry, the average CPC in Google Ads is $2.69 for search and $0.63 for display.
CPC pricing is also called PPC or pay-per-click. Hence, Google Ads is called PPC or pay-per-click advertising.
How Ad Rank affects actual CPC
Ad Rank also affects the actual CPC you pay for a click on your ads.
Google Ads uses a second-price auction system. The actual CPC you pay is calculated at the time of auction based on your Quality Score and the Ad Rank of the advertiser below you, plus $0.01. Because the auction is dynamic, the actual CPC can vary with each auction.
Google does not disclose the details of how they calculate the Average CPC for Google Ads. According to Search Engine Land, the Actual CPC you pay for a click on your ad is determined at the time of the auction by the following formula:
Actual CPC = (Ad rank of Advertiser below/Your Quality score) + $0.01
Figure 3: Calculating Actual CPC values at each ad position
What is Quality Score?
The Quality Score is a diagnostic tool that is used to estimate the overall quality of your ad compared to other advertisers.
Ads and landing pages that are considered more relevant and useful to the search query get a higher Quality Score. This helps to ensure that more useful ads are shown at a higher position on the SERP.
Quality Score is measured on a scale of 1-10, and is available for every keyword. It is based on historical impressions for exact searches of your keyword.
Three factors that determine Quality Score
Quality Score is calculated based on the performance of three main factors:
Expected CTR
The expected CTR is a prediction of the ad clickthrough rate when the ad is shown on Google. Expected CTR projections are based on user CTR, which helps to decide which ads will perform best when shown for a search query.
CTR is the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown: CTR=clicks/impressions.
Landing page experience
The landing page experience measures how relevant and useful your website landing page is to the person who clicked on the ad.
Ad Relevance
Ad relevance measures how well your ad matches the user’s search intent. It ensures that only the most useful ads are shown for every search query, and prevents ads that are unrelated to the product or service from being shown for a search query.
Each of the three Quality Score factors is given a rating of “Above Average”, “Average” or “Below Average”.
In addition to the three factors above, Google considers additional factors during the real-time auction such as the type of device used, location of the user, time of day, impact of ad extensions, and more.
How to check your Quality Score in Google Ads
Google Ads provides four Quality Score status columns at the keyword level to check Quality Score:
Quality score
Landing page experience
Expected CTR
Ad relevance
To check your Quality Score in your Google Ads account:
1. Log in to your Google Ads account
2. Click on “Keywords” in the left menu
3. Click on the “Columns” icon in the upper right corner of the table
4. Click on “Modify columns for keywords” and scroll to the Quality Score section. Add the following components to your table metrics (see Figure 4):
Quality score
Landing page experience
Expected CTR
Ad relevance
Figure 4: Modify columns for keywords to add Quality Score columns
5. Click Apply
6. Once these columns are added, scroll to the right on each keyword in the table to check the Quality Score and its components (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Quality Score status columns in the keywords table
7. If there is a “-“ in the Quality score column, it means that there are not enough searches that exactly match your keywords to determine the Quality Score for that keyword.
For information on improving your Quality Score, read these tips from Google.
Conclusion
The Google Ads auction is a real-time auction that is triggered with every search on Google to determine which ads will be shown for that search term, and in what position. The Ad Rank and Quality Score of the ads are important factors in the ad auction and help to determine whether an ad is eligible to be shown on Google. By improving the individual components of Ad Rank and Quality Score, you can improve the eligibility and rank of your ads.
MozCon is heading back to Seattle this July, and we’re excited to announce the return of our annual call for up-and-coming community speakers!
Every year, we take great pride in reserving space on our stage for new voices. Are you the person that everyone in your network looks to for digital marketing advice? Perhaps you’ve been honing your voice on podcasts or blogs, all the while dreaming of stepping onto the big stage to share your innovative ideas? Now’s your chance to submit your pitch for the opportunity to join industry leaders on the MozCon stage in front of 1,500 of your peers. (No pressure!)
Not sure what a community speaker is?
At MozCon, we have a speaker selection committee that identifies practitioners at the top of their professional field with a mean speaking game. But these sessions are by invite only, and we know the community is bursting at the seams with hidden gems ready to share groundbreaking research, hot tips, and SEO tests that drive results.
Cue our MozCon community speaker program! We reserve six 15-minute community speaking slots throughout our three-day conference. We encourage anyone in the SEO community to submit their best and most exciting presentation ideas for MozCon. Not only are these sessions incredibly well-received by our attendees, but they’re also a fantastic way to get your foot in the door when it comes to the SEO speaking circuit.
Interested in pitching your own idea? Read on for everything you need to know:
How to submit
To submit a pitch, fill out the community speaker submission form below. Only submit one talk! We want the one you’re most passionate about.
Talks must be related to online marketing and be a topic you can cover in 15 minutes. Submissions close on Friday, February 25th at 5pm PDT — no exceptions!
If chosen, you’ll be required to present your talk July 11-13, 2022 at MozCon in Seattle, WA. Incomplete submissions will not be considered, and all decisions are final. All speakers must adhere to the MozCon Code of Conduct and follow our Covid-19 health protocols including providing proof of full vaccination.
If you submit a pitch, you’ll hear back from us regardless of your acceptance status, so please be patient until you hear back — we’ll work hard to make our decisions as quickly as we can! Please note that due to the volume of submissions we typically receive, we’re unable to provide specific feedback on individual applications.
What do speakers receive?
As a community speaker you will receive:
15 minutes on the MozCon stage for a keynote-style presentation
A free ticket to MozCon (we can issue a refund or transfer if you’ve already purchased yours)
The complete MozCon 2022 bundle of speaker videos
Travel and accommodations during MozCon
Support and feedback as you build your final presentation deck to make sure you deliver the talk of your life on our stage.
And a few more surprises…
How we select our speakers
We have an internal committee of experienced Mozzers that review every pitch. We analyze each topic to make sure there’s no overlap and to confirm that it’s a good fit for our audience.
Next, we look at the entirety of the pitch to help us get a comprehensive idea of what to expect from your talk on the MozCon stage and how it might be received by the audience. This is where links to previous decks, content, and videos of past presentations is helpful (but isn’t required).
Here’s how to make your pitch stand out:
Keep your pitch focused on digital marketing. SEO topics are great but we also love topics that compliment or sit adjacent to SEO. The more actionable the pitch, the better.
Be focused and concise. What value does your talk provide? We want to hear the actual takeaways our audience will be learning about and why it’s important — not just a vague reference to them. Remember, we receive a ton of pitches, so the more clearly you can explain the tactical steps and learning objectives for the audience, the better you’ll stand out.
Do your research! Review the topics presented at past MozCons, on the Moz Blog and in our Whiteboard Friday videos for a sense of what resonates with our audience— we’re looking for sessions that are new and that round out our agenda to add to the stage.
No pitches will be evaluated in advance, so please don’t ask :)
Using social media to lobby your pitch won’t help. Instead, put your time and energy into the actual pitch itself!
Linking to a previous example of a slide deck or presentation isn’t required, but it does help the committee.
Leading up to MozCon
If your pitch is selected, the MozCon team is here to support you along the way. It’s our goal to make sure this is your best talk to date, whether it’s your first time under those bright stage lights or you’re a seasoned speaker who feels perfectly at home in front of a big crowd. We’ll answer any questions you may have and work with you to deliver a talk you’ll be proud of. Here are just a handful of ways that we’re here to help:
Topic refinement
Helping with your session title and description
Reviewing any session outlines and drafts
Providing plenty of tips around best practices — specifically with the MozCon stage and audience in mind
Comprehensive show guide
Being available to listen to you practice your talk
Reviewing your final deck
A full stage tour on the Sunday before MozCon to meet our A/V crew, see your presentation on the big screen, and get a feel for the show
An amazing 15-person A/V team to support your presentation every second it’s on the big screen and beyond
When rolling out an SEO strategy, an important step is to establish goals you’re able to report on regularly. With Custom Reports in Moz Pro, you have the ability to set up automatic reports to send to key stakeholders regarding the goals you are seeking to achieve. In the previous Daily Fix edition we talked through the basics of creating reports. This time, we’ll dive deeper into some specific use cases that may help you and your team better relay critical information regarding your SEO goals and objectives.
Use Case: Rankings Opportunities
Staying on top of rankings opportunities and how your site stacks up against your competitor may be a critical piece in your SEO strategic puzzle.
In this video, Varad will walk through how you can further supplement the existing Rankings Opportunities template. This report will offer ongoing insight into possible opportunities to tackle next.
Use Case: Competitive Analysis
Setting up a competitive analysis report can help you answer questions from clients and team members regarding how they are performing next to their competitors. This is a common question when working in SEO and having a report ready to go can help set you up for success!
In this next video, Meghan will go over the Custom Report template for competitive analysis and how you can further segment data to bolster your reporting efforts.
If you need help determining who your competitors are, be sure to check out the True Competitor tool.
Use Case: Site Audit
If you are in charge of the technical SEO for your site, or your client’s site, you will likely be asked to regularly report on what issues you’ve resolved and what you’re currently working on. Moz’s Custom Report templates offer a variety of options for Site Audit reports which can help you stay on top of issues and better communicate with interested parties. You can even add in data from the Performance Metrics part of Site Crawl which reports on a tracked site’s Core Web Vitals performance.
Emilie will go over the different options available for Site Audit reports and how to add in that Core Web Vitals data.
Use Case: Traffic Reporting
If increasing organic traffic to your site or to a specific page on your site is one of your goals, it can be helpful to have a report set up to regularly send you updates in a digestible format. With Google Analytics connected to your Moz Pro Campaign, you can create traffic-related reports in the Custom Reports section.
In this next video, Christy will go over which modules you can add to your report so you’re able to keep tabs on organic traffic right alongside your other Campaign data.
Extra Tips & Tricks for Designing Reports
Although this next video isn’t technically a use case, we couldn’t resist adding one more video for you with extra tips and tricks for designing your report. The cherry on top, if you will! In this last video, Varad will go over some ways you can further customize your Custom Reports to elevate them to the next level.
Back in December of 2021, Google launched a redesigned version of Top Stories on desktop that got relatively little notice. At first glance, it appeared that Google introduced a two-column design, such as this Top Stories pack for “Nerf”:
Over time, SEOs spotted a rarer but more interesting variety, the 7-pack. Here’s one for “snow” (a topic very much on my mind in Chicago as I’m writing this post):
Beyond the redesign itself, this 7-pack occupies a huge amount of screen real-estate, especially compared to previous Top Stories lists and carousels that were limited to three stories.
Should we panic yet?
It’s easy to focus on the most extreme examples, but how often is this 7-pack variety actually occurring? Across the MozCast 10,000-keyword daily tracking set on February 3rd, we captured 2,121 page-one SERPs with Top Stories. Here’s the breakdown by story count:
In our data set, the 7-pack is pretty rare (<1%), with a bit under half (44%) of Top Stories packs containing four stories. Interestingly, there is a design break between three and four stories. Top Stories packs with three or fewer stories are presented in list format, like this one from a search for “dog breeds”:
Top Stories packs with four or more stories (on desktop) seem to switch to the newer, two-column format. While we don’t currently have data on the CTR impact, it will be interesting to see how the two formats impact CTRs and other searcher behaviors.
Is news a search intent?
While the 7-pack is still relatively rare, it represents a qualitatively different SERP — one where news is not just a SERP feature but looks more like a dominant intent for that search. Consider the fuller SERP context of my search for “snow”:
Sorry for the vertical scroll, but these are just the features before the #1 organic result. Obviously, weather SERPs have some unique features, but there’s also a 7-pack of Top Stories, Twitter results, and the new “Local news” pack (launched in December), all suggesting time-sensitive, news-style intent. This is a search where even the most evergreen informational content isn’t going to compete.
Note that, because the news itself is always changing, even the presence of Top Stories packs is very dynamic. Their presence across SERPs follows a cycle that peaks around Wednesday or Thursday and falls off into Sunday and Monday. Some searches may shift intent only on special occasions. For example, consider my search for “groundhog” on February 2nd:
This was not a search for “Groundhog Day” — simply for “groundhog” the animal. Outside of the holiday timeline, this SERP is very likely to be informational. While these dramatic shifts are somewhat unusual, it’s important to remember that search intent is not a static concept.
Is Google testing the waters?
As always, Google giveth and Google taketh away. These Top Stories packs could increase, disappear, or evolve into something entirely new. I do think that Google is testing how searchers interact with news results and trying to separate news as a part of a SERP (when multiple types of content are useful) versus news as a primary intent.
For now, it’s worth monitoring your own results to see where news content may be outshining informational content. In 2022, organic SEO is as much about the searches you don’t pursue as the ones you do and putting your time and money where the ROI makes the most sense.
If you want to serve local business owners, allying your company with their deepest needs matters. Recently, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance provided a valuable opportunity to hear directly from localism advocates and elected officials about small business owners’ goals and obstacles. If your brand is marketing software or other services to this largest sector of American commerce, I highly recommend setting aside an hour this week to watch the whole recording (embedded at the end of this post).
Today, I’ll briefly recap the information from this event that stood out to me as most illuminating, in hopes that you will be able to evaluate these messages to help you find common cause with clients and customers.
The present state of local economics in the U.S.
ILSR’s co-director, Stacy Mitchell, began the webinar by remarking that, just a decade ago, it was not common to hear much political talk surrounding small businesses versus monopolies, but that this is changing. Advocacy groups are gaining strength and political factions like the 100-member progressive caucus are increasingly getting out the message about the present state of U.S. local economics, which Mitchell summed up this way:
“Today, we know that economic concentration and the losses that we’ve seen both for working people and for small businesses have had devastating effects on communities; that the decline of small businesses and the growing concentration across our communities is really driving racial and economic inequality, ultimately undermining our democracy. And we know that the primary driver of this is corporate power, whether it’s the power these corporations wield in the market or the political power they have to rig government policy in their own favor and to undermine their smaller competitors.”
What local business owners want
Chanda Causer, the Co-Executive Director of The Main Street Alliance, gave this list of priorities she hears voiced by the SMB owners she speaks with every day:
Breaking up monopolies
A fair system of taxation
Healthcare
Paid family leave
Access to capital by non-dominant groups
The question was raised as to what business owners and organizers can do to get the public to care about these requirements, and about local economic health. Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Brandi Collins-Dexter explained,
“I think that everybody I talk to cares about this; big business has such a ubiquitous role in our lives that I think people just don’t know what to do about it.”
This quote will resonate with every local search marketer who has been reading survey stats for the past two years that claim three-quarters or more of the public is committed to shopping more locally, and yet, sees how all of our choices have been whittled down to a frustrating dependence on Amazon, Walmart, Target, or dollar store-type options.
I believe that the majority of Americans genuinely do want to shop small and care sincerely about the communities in which they live, but when we need to buy a blender or a book, we increasingly face the stark reality that our town’s independent hardware store or bookshop was driven out of business by economic policy. Meanwhile, our intelligence is repeatedly insulted by monopolies portraying themselves as local heroes and using offensive scare tactics to warn SMBs and the public against any legislation that would limit their profits.
Solutions, obstacles, and hope
If industry surveys and local advocacy groups indicate that the public already cares about the survival of local business owners, we’re already part of the way to solving the dilemma of the economic role of small businesses being cut by 50% over the past 40 years.
What emerged from the ILSR event was a three-part approach to realizing the society that surveys say we want. If implemented, it would take local business owners on a journey from a place of fear to a place of respect and protection.
Education
First, Ms. Causer emphasized the need for continuing dialogue and education, encouraging individuals to take the time to speak about their concerns with their own neighbors, concerns like the effects of monopoly on the community. An educated public is one that can bring pressure to bear on representatives.
Pro-local legislation
Secondly, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who represents the Seattle area and part of King County, is focused on a legislative approach. She is the vice-chair of the subcommittee on antitrust, which conducted a 16-month investigation into the operations of tech monopolies. She introduced HR 3825, designed to prevent corporations like Amazon from demoting merchants on their platforms while simultaneously preferencing their own cheaper product lines – a practice that has been devastating to small entrepreneurs. She is also attempting to directly address the dire needs of all business owners (and the general public) for healthcare amid the pandemic with her HR 1976 Medicare for All bill. As she stated, “The way that local communities do well is to have a thriving small business economy.”
However, Assemblymember Ron Kim, whose district has the largest proportion of small business owners in New York State, was frank about the obstacles standing in the way of the needs of local business owners and communities being met:
“As long as we’re spending, in a place like New York, $7-8 billion a year in tax breaks to subsidize the growth of mega-monopolies and big companies who, in return, donate millions and millions of dollars to executive officers and governors and mayors to keep this game going, we’re going to have a continuous problem.”
Make bribes illegal
This means that the third, and most essential, element in the three-part dynamic is to make it illegal to bribe political candidates and elected officials. Without this stipulation, even the most caring and educated public will find its needs ignored, and pro-local legislation will continue to be defeated by corrupt officials who have been paid by corporations to create policy that serves them.
The scenario may seem hopeless, but it isn’t, because you — who work in tech amid the long-shadowed boulders of monopoly — are reading this article and have a voice. Your co-workers have voices, too, and can advocate for your brands developing authentic allyship with clients and customers.
Our industry has published volumes on the necessity of building relationships with the communities we want to serve. It’s a worthy aspiration, which hinges on listening well and demonstrating solidarity. Honest chats with independent business owners produce stories like Assemblymember Kim’s, about how one of the oldest Korean-American restaurants in his community is becoming a worker co-op to be able to continue operating in a broken economy.
You’ll hear family stories like those of Ms. Collins-Dexter, whose great-grandfather was forced off his land by a powerful tobacco trust, and had to start over again as an auto mechanic whose shop became a major source of community aid during the Great Depression.
You’ll hear neighbors like Ms. Causer explain that 68% of respondents surveyed by her organization want to talk about monopoly, and that she’s advocating for people tp start singing the union songs again — that our grandmothers sang.
And you’ll hear the local business owners whom Congresswoman Jayapal said would only give comments to her antitrust committee in private, because they so fear punishment by the monopolies.
The takeaway
The next time you're asked how to build out the stages of your customer’s journey, consider asking your team and bosses to begin by donning the shoes of a local business owner. They're the people in your community who are living in real fear of being put out of business by national, state, and local policy, and of being made invisible by powerful platforms in daring to speak out. Empathy for this plight could be the start of the most genuine relationships your company has ever developed. It could even be the basis of a coalition of industry agencies and SaaS groups bringing their own, collective pressure to bear on public servants, to insist that we finally do get money out of politics and re-balance our economics to prioritize societal well-being.
As a local SEO, I’ve often looked at Google’s local guides program. There are roughly 150 million of these community interpreters globally, and they write an average of 62% of the reviews you read. That’s a lot of people with a lot of potential power, if they ever chose to organize on behalf of the local businesses they so abundantly grade. Why would they do that? Because there is little left to review when a local business landscape is reduced to just one or two monopolies. There is no fun or joy in that.
I think Brandi Collins-Dexter is right about good people not knowing what to do, and I suspect a lot of that feeling of powerlessness is rooted in a sense of isolation. But, just like there are a lot of local guides, there are a lot of tech workers, and together, we can help build the hope we seek from emboldened collaboration.
Maximizing the value in your keyword data is crucial if you're a brand trying to rank on the forever-changing SERPs. With that in mind, Moz Learning and Development Specialist Zoe Pegler walks you through the key features in STAT Search Analytics that will help you glean extra (and important) insights from that data.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Zoe. I work in the Learning team here at Moz, and my focus is on developing educational materials and resources to promote understanding of our STAT tool. Today, we're going to take a look at how you can use STAT to surface additional insights in your keyword data. Looking for value in your keyword data is important if you're a brand trying to stay visible and on top of the forever-changing SERPs. Looking for those additional insights is paramount to making informed SEO decisions.
What is STAT?
So what is STAT? If you haven't come across STAT before, it's a large-scale rank tracker, but it's also fantastic for many other things, SERP analysis and intent, a competitive landscape tool. Its value is really how you can dig into the data it provides.
Quick wins
So where are the quick wins here? Well, we know that usually improved ranking position means increased or at least some uplift in traffic for that term. Knowing where you sit on the SERPs and what features you're winning can make or break your content strategy. This is where STAT's dynamic tags can be hugely useful.
Dynamic tagging
Dynamic tagging allows you to group keywords together based on criteria you set. That group is then automatically populated daily with keywords based on changeable filter criteria. This means you have the ability to create a group of keywords with any criteria that's important to your business. A great grouping criteria to set here is keywords based on ranking position.
For example, flagging keywords which are sitting just outside the top 3, top 5, or top 10 positions and adding a traffic benchmark means you can easily discover which keywords with traffic potential need just a little bit of extra work to shift them into that better position.
So maybe your strategy includes hunting down a featured snippet. If so, you can use STAT to set up a dynamic tag that monitors keywords that result in featured snippets. If you see keywords that aren't ranking well within that grouping, they're not winning those snippets.
So if you're tracking keywords for a client, this is a great way of seeing where your client owns a snippet and where they don't. You can try to take the spot from their competitors by finding new opportunities to create optimized content. Using this feature is powerful for getting quick feedback on the intent and type of content that perform best in a keyword set, which ultimately is what you can use to guide your content strategy.
Data views
So we know that organizing your data is key. How do you organize your data so it's meaningful to you while allowing you to see potential opportunities to quickly report back to a client? In STAT, you can hold all your keyword groups, your tags in a single data view. So keeping selected tags in a data view means you get a single dashboard of metrics for those chosen keyword groups
For example, you could easily put together a data view of tags that reflect the tactical aspirations of your client. If you're a search marketer, you may choose to set up a data view containing keyword segments that cover stages of the conversion funnel. You really want to split keywords into segments that reflect what your clients want to target. So that could be industry sectors, services, or locations. If product categories are important to your client, you can set up a data view containing keywords tagged as shoes, sportswear, swimwear, or whatever specific attributes you need to track across a product line.
Tags tab
Okay. So maybe you're looking for a quick health check on how that specific set of keyword groupings are doing. Well, there's a smart little feature in STAT that allows you to compare all of your tags and how well each of those are performing in terms of visibility online, and it's called the Tags tab. So this feature is pretty cool because it allows you to see the performance of all those tags in one place. You'll get the overall picture of how your SEO strategy is progressing and where to focus your attention based on your most important metrics. You can set a specific date range. You can see average rank, top 10 change.
Visibility
Another key piece of information is finding out who you're up against for those keyword sets you just put together. You can use STAT to view share of voice across that specific set of keyword tags or for that entire market. The share of voice metric used in STAT measures the visibility of a given keyword set on Google. This means you can get invaluable insights, such as where competitors are increasing or decreasing in their visibility.
Now, you may have clients that need formalized insights into the progression of a campaign. What's the best way of displaying those reports? Well, in STAT, we have built connectors that allow you to pull live data from STAT into Google Data Studio reports. These visualizations make it easier to share insights with clients and for them to see those top level metrics really quickly.
So hopefully these tips and tools mean you can really investigate how much extra value and insights you can squeeze out of your keyword data. Have a great day and thank you for watching this edition of Whiteboard Friday.
Because of its broad field, SEO has many touch points with a variety of different marketing channels. As other channels' operations influence SEO, both directly and indirectly, it’s essential to deploy an integrated marketing approach in which each channel supports the other, in order to optimize marketing efforts and enhance your brand’s user experience.
This article provides you with a number of different actionable tips for combining SEO with the marketing channels listed below, that will not only save you time, resources, and money, but will lead to even better results for your team and company:
Both SEO and Search Engine Advertising (SEA) are keyword-driven processes that focus on ensuring a website reaches the top positions of the search engine results page (SERP).
While SEO is a slower process that focuses on organic positions with long-term results, SEA is a much faster approach that focuses on the position of ads with short-lived results.
Although SEO and SEA might seem like adversarial approaches, they actually complement each other — by sharing data, knowledge, and insights, both can be leveraged to achieve better performances.
Here are a few of the different ways that SEA and SEO can work in symbiosis:
Achieve SERP domination
SERP domination means achieving a prominent position on the SERPs for both paid and unpaid results. Maximizing SERP "real estate" increases a sites' visibility, credibility, and chances of getting clicks from searchers.
For some competitive terms, ranking in position one organically is insufficient to be visible above the fold, as the number of paid ads and SERP features pushes the organic results down. Both site awareness and confidence from potential visitors increase when a website is visible organically as well as through paid ads, which will result in the site showing up multiple times on the SERP.
Example of a search query where a website is prominently visible on both SEA and SEO positions on the SERP.
Use SEA to predict SEO
While SEO is a fundamental channel with tremendous potential ROI, it is a long-term and continuous process that requires initial resources and the passage of time before it begins to show results.
The difference between SEO and SEA in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) over time.
As SEA campaigns provide immediate results, they can help to make sure your SEO strategies are worthwhile by testing their initial priorities. Information like the conversion rate and potential of different keywords and pages in paid campaigns can help determine whether or not they should be optimized for long-term SEO strategies.
Optimize metadata
PPC campaigns provide precise results not only in terms of conversions, but also with regards to click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, and time on site for different sessions. It allows for the assessment of the searchers' intent with regards to keywords and landing pages.
The data from A/B testing done by the SEA team can be used to enhance metadata for SEO. For example, using the copy from the best-performing ads to optimize page titles and meta descriptions can help improve organic CTR.
This strategy works the other way around, too: high-performing SEO snippets can be a source of inspiration for SEA ad copy.
Example of how SEO can be inspired by best performing SEA ads.
Improve Quality Score
Optimizing Google Quality Score is crucial for an effective SEA strategy, as it determines the performance and cost of PPC campaigns.
Overview of Google Quality Score factors with Landing Page Experience as a decisive factor.
One decisive Quality Score factor is the landing page's relevance and quality.
As SEO is all about providing the best experience to users, SEA can benefit from the help of SEO to make sure their ads direct users to highly relevant and optimized landing pages.
Optimize bidding strategy and budget management
SEO and SEA go hand-in-hand when aiming for an optimal and dynamic bidding strategy.
When organic rankings for certain keywords generate a relatively high number of conversions (without necessarily ranking in top positions), it would be wise to start advertising for these queries in PPC campaigns and/or increase their allocated budget.
Also, if you observe specific keywords generating high conversions through PPC campaigns, it would be a good idea to begin optimizing for them in your broader SEO strategy, in order to obtain better organic positions.
In the long-term, this also provides the opportunity to reduce the SEA budget for (expensive) keywords when they are already performing well in organic search, especially if the ad budget is limited.
Use SEA as a backup strategy
SEO isn't an exact science, and many variables influence organic rankings.
Results might take longer than initially expected, or rankings can decrease significantly in a short period of time. PPC can be used as a short-term solution to maintain a site's presence and generate traffic from the SERPs.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing and SEO both rely on links.
From the SEO side, backlinks contribute to a website’s authority in the eyes of the search engines, and are one of the most important ranking factors. The higher the authority, the higher the likelihood of ranking.
From the affiliate side, links are sales streams to generate conversions.
Finding the right partners to drive relevant traffic to a website that converts is the main goal. Unlike organic links, search engines do not see affiliate links as "votes" due to the obvious commercial relation with tracking parameters applied.
Both Affiliate Marketing and SEO need to build up a strong network of publishers to promote and enhance their content. There are three ways in which both channels can inspire each other:
Streamline partner research
SEO uses a variety of strategies to find relevant domains to obtain backlinks. For example, looking at competitors' referring domains and top-ranking domains for specific topics is the specialty of an off-page SEO.
Affiliate Marketing and SEO can sometimes target the same domains without being aware of it. Inefficient outreach due to channels not communicating internally costs unnecessary time and looks unprofessional.
Therefore, united research and sharing the list of potential affiliate and SEO partners can be beneficial before starting a campaign.
Combine partner acquisition
Streamlining outreach between different departments not only saves precious time, but can also save a significant amount of budget.
When a particular website is potentially valuable for both channels, it is favorable to negotiate a cooperation with its webmaster for the two channels simultaneously.
By killing two birds with one stone, it's possible to negotiate the best overall deal and conditions.
Seize content inspiration
Editorial affiliate links are placed in relevant context within a page copy. Whenever a referral partner generates many leads, it indicates that their content is trusted and appreciated by its readers.
SEO can use this as a source of inspiration for its own content creation strategy.
PR
The role of Public Relations (PR) is to create brand awareness and strengthen brand image and authority.
SEO's role is to increase a website's overall authority to acquire more organic traffic.
As both PR and SEO need to reach out to authoritative and relevant websites, they can help each other in the following ways:
Identify target audience and trending topics
PR aims to spread the message of a company, and communicate that message in the best possible way. Leveraging SEO for PR helps to detect who the target audience is and what their interests are in order to improve awareness and visibility.
A way to enhance this message is to associate it with currently trending affairs. SEO can provide great insights into search volume for specific keywords throughout the calendar year, and topics presently trending using Google Trend data.
Google Trends data for the search term dogecoin.
Utilize press releases for SEO
Press releases do not directly provide ranking benefits for SEO if the publication is clearly marked as such; as John Mueller of Google stated, the best practice for links in press releases is to put them in "Nofollow" according to Google's guidelines.
In addition, Google ignores most links within press releases.
Nevertheless, press releases might be of interest to publishers who will be willing to write a piece of content about your news and link back naturally to your website, thus providing SEO value.
For this reason, PR should inform SEO when press releases are being sent out, as they could be used by SEO as link baits to obtain organic publications and "Dofollow" backlinks.
Create link baits
Digital PR consists of acquiring qualitative backlinks through the promotion of valuable content.
SEO and PR should cooperate to create linkable assets (infographics, guestographics, studies, interviews, etc.), which are powerful elements to acquire backlinks and increase authority and brand awareness.
An example of a successful link bait created by AirHelp, which generated many organic backlinks from sources such as Forbes, CNBC, the Daily Mail, and others.
Convert unlinked brand mentions into backlinks
Some media platforms happily write about a brand without linking to their website in the publication.
SEOs can easily track these unlinked brand mentions using alerts from various tools in order to gain backlinks.
An example of an unlinked brand mention of Zalando.
Reaching out to the authors of articles and asking for a link back to the website will work in most cases, as it is editorially relevant for readers to gain more information about the brand and the product or service that they offer.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing (SMM) and SEO both need to serve users with engaging content to generate traffic and trigger conversions. They share common goals and can support each other in the following ways:
Get content indexed faster
Sharing new content on social media platforms stimulates pages to get (re)indexed faster as search engines noticing and following the links in the posts will be encouraged to (re)crawl the pages.
Understand user intent
SMM can generate tons of insights about the target audience, as it is often easier for users to share and interact with content on social media than on websites. This type of data allows for the creation of highly relevant landing pages that directly answer searcher intent.
By measuring which content generates the most engagement, how users interact with it, and which questions and/or problems they might encounter using a product or service, SEO can improve the communication and user experience on the website. Plus, social media can provide additional information regarding new trending topics and keywords related to the niche and company.
By using third-party tools, SMM can, for instance, analyze which topics on Twitter are frequently associated with either their brand or their competitors. By sharing this information, SEO can confirm that these themes are also present on the website.
SparkToro Audience Intelligence for hashtags related to Asos.
Optimize posts with relevant keywords
As social media platforms use algorithms that utilize keywords when deciding to display content to their users, SMM must optimize their hashtags and keywords in their posts.
SEO can assist SMM by providing the right set of keywords and queries optimized to reach the most relevant and largest possible audience on social media platforms. In addition, social media posts might appear on the SERPs for certain keywords in specific niches.
Pinterest posts showing up on the SERP.
Promote new content
SMM is an excellent and easy way to promote a website's new content to its audience. When a new piece of content comes online on the website, it's important to share on the different active social media accounts. This will encourage traffic and user engagement.
Stimulate link building
Although social links to a website don't directly influence SEO rankings, actively sharing content on social media is a great way to attract natural and high-quality backlinks to a website. Making influencers aware of a quality piece of highly relevant content might lead to them referencing it on their blog or platform.
Develop joint partnerships
As many website and blog owners are also active on social media, a joint approach between SEO and SMM in acquiring partnerships can save time, effort, and budget for the marketing channels and company as a whole.
Email Marketing
SEO and Email Marketing (EMM) focus on different aspects of marketing, but are both powerful acquisition channels. By sharing their respective data, both channels can highlight potential issues and discover opportunities:
Increase CTR and open rates
By knowing which email subject lines achieve the best open rates, SEO can take inspiration to further optimize page titles and meta descriptions to increase organic CTR.
Vice versa, it can also benefit EMM to copy headlines of landing pages with the highest CTR on the SERPs.
Improve content relevancy
Measuring email click-to-open rates (CTOR) and landing page bounce rates can be very insightful for both channels, to know what keeps users from taking the desired actions.
When adjustments in either lead to improvements in user behavior, the changes can be implemented in the other channel as well.
Recycle content
Newsletter content is not being indexed by search engines. Therefore, successful emails can be recycled, fine-tuned, and turned into blog posts that can be shared across different channels.
Promote content and earn backlinks
Sending out an email to customers and followers is a great way to make them aware of new content on the website that might interest them, leading to more traffic and user engagement.
Linking to blog posts within the emails can increase the chances that people will further link back to it, resulting in an increase in natural backlinks.
UX/UI
SEO + UX = SXO: Search Experience Optimization.
User experience is an essential aspect of SEO. In June 2021, Google released the Page Experience update, which rewards websites for providing an excellent on-site experience to their users.
Google Page Experience update ranking factors.
Communication and cooperation between SEO and User Experience (UX)/User Interface (UI) are both needed, as both can support each other on different elements such as:
Build information architecture
Logical site architecture is fundamental in order to allow search engines to crawl, index, and rank a website appropriately. From the user perspective, a good website structure allows one to easily navigate a website and get a clear understanding of it.
The deeper a page is buried in the site architecture, the harder it will be for it to rank, as it takes more effort for search engine crawlers and users to reach it.
Because navigational links are given more weight, only important and useful pages should be kept in the navigation.
Ensure mobile-friendliness
SEO and UX should ensure that a website is mobile-friendly.
Mobile-friendliness has been a ranking factor since 2015 and is becoming even more important with the Page Experience update.
Responsive design, text size, and tap targets size are examples of elements Google considers when evaluating if a site is mobile-friendly.
Some website design elements can be implemented on the website without consideration of their impact on website performance, and SEO has to monitor the effects that changes made by developers and designers have on the speed of a page.
Manage pop-ups and ads
While pop-ups and ads are an excellent way to catch and/or retain users, they can have a negative impact on your rankings.
Examples of accepted interstitials and intrusive interstitials that make content less accessible.
Content
Writing content that no one reads is the tragic reality companies that don't invest in SEO are facing.
The role of SEO is to make sure that the writers produce content that people are actually looking for. Although content is part of SEO work in many companies, both channels still work independently from each other.
There are several elements to consider where SEO can guide content creation to serve quality content, optimized for both visitors and search engines:
Provide content relevance
Qualitative and keyword-rich content, which answers and satisfies searchers' intent, will drive user engagement and enhance visibility on the SERPs.
SEOs can help content writers to make sure that the topics they write about are actually sought-after and relevant for a company's potential clients and customers.
Content format, structure, length, and freshness have to be defined with users' expectations in mind.
Ensure uniqueness
Each piece of content must be unique. Duplicate content, whether internal or external, can prevent pages from appearing in the search results.
SEO can ensure that every page has unique content, especially above the fold, to prevent duplicate content issues.
Enhance E-A-T
E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is a concept used by Google Quality raters to assess web pages' quality.
It is essential to display information about the author(s) of the content on a website, especially for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) websites.
Is E-A-T a ranking factor? Not if you mean there's some technical thing like with speed that we can measure directly.
We do use a variety of signals as a proxy to tell if content seems to match E-A-T as humans would assess it.
A piece of content is considered qualitative and is valued by users when its author has experience (in either an academic or professional capacity) in the field he or she is writing about. SEO can assist content creators in optimizing for E.AT. on the website.
Conclusion
SEO is a fundamental and powerful channel for increasing a website's presence and value. As we've seen from the above examples, there's massive potential for achieving dramatically better results when SEO is used in conjunction with other marketing channels. Whether this is SEA, Affiliate, EMM, or any of the other discussed examples, SEO can be integrated in order to achieve optimal results and greater conversions.
