New Findings Show Google Organic Clicks Shifting to Paid

Posted by Brian_W

On the Wayfair SEO team, we keep track of our non-branded click curves: the average click-through rate (CTR) for each ranking position. This helps us accurately evaluate the potential opportunity of keyword clusters.

Over the last two years, the total share of organic clicks on page one of our e-commerce SERPs has dropped 25% on desktop and 55% on mobile.

For the ad-heavy non-local SERPs that we work in, paid ads are likely now earning nearly the same percentage of clicks as organic results — a staggering change from most of the history of Google.

Organic CTR loses 25% of click share on desktop, 55% on mobile

Looking at 2015 vs 2017 data for all keywords ranking organically on the first page, we’ve seen a dramatic change in CTR. Below we’ve normalized our actual CTR on a 1–10 scale, representing a total drop of 25% of click share on desktop and 55% on mobile.

Organic receives 25% less desktop CTR and 55% less mobile CTR compared to two years ago.

The much larger drop on mobile is particularly relevant because we’ve seen large traffic shifts to mobile over the last two years as well. The overall percentage drop plays out somewhat similarly across the first page of results; however, the top four were most heavily impacted.

The first four organic results were most heavily impacted by the CTR shift from organic to paid.

About the data

It’s important to note that this type of CTR change is not true for every SERP. This data is only applicable to e-commerce intent search queries, where ads and PLAs are on nearly every query.

We gather the impression, click, and rank data from Search Console. While Search Console data isn’t quantitatively correct, it does appear to be directionally correct for us (if we see clicks double in Search Console, we also see organic Google traffic double in our analytics), site improvements that lead to meaningful CTR gains appear to be reflected in Search Console, we can roughly verify impressions via ad data, and we can confirm the accuracy of rank. For purposes of this data pull, we excluded any keywords that Search Console reported as a non-integer rank (such as ranking 1.2). We have thousands of page one keywords, including many large head terms comprising millions of combined clicks, which gives us a lot of data for each ranking position.

We remove all branded queries from the data, which hugely skews click curves.

It’s important to note that paid ads are not getting all the clicks that organic is not. In addition to the small number of people who click beyond the first page, a surprising number do not click at all. Our best guess is that all ads combined now get about the same percentage of clicks (for our results) as all organic results combined.

Why is this happening?

It’s no secret to SEOs who work on transactional keywords why we no longer gain as large a share of clicks for our best rankings. We suspect the primary causes are the following:

• Ads serving on more queries
• More ads per query
• Larger ads, with more space given to each ad
• Google Shopping (which show up on more queries, list more products per query, and take up more space)
• Subtler ad labeling, making it less obvious that an ad is an ad

At Wayfair, we’ve seen Google Shopping results appear on more and more search queries over the last year. Using Stat Search Analytics, we can track the growth in queries serving Google Shopping results (modified by search volume to give a qualitative visibility score) across the 25,000 keywords we track daily on mobile and desktop. The overall share of voice of Google Shopping has grown nearly 60% in the last year.

Number of transactional queries serving Google Shopping has grown nearly 60% in the last year.

On top of this, we’re often seeing four PPC ads for a typical non-branded commercial term, in addition to the Google Shopping results.

And with the expanded size of ads on mobile, almost none of our queries show anything other than ads without scrolling:

This great image from Edwords shows the steady growth in percent of the desktop page consumed by ads for a query that has only three ad results. We go from seeing five organic results above the scroll, to just one. In more recent years we’ve seen this size growth explode on mobile as well.

At the same time that ads have grown, the labeling of ads has become increasingly subtle. In a 2015 study, Ofcom found that half of adults don’t recognize ads in Google, and about 70% of teenagers didn’t recognize Google ads — and ad labeling has become substantially less obvious since then. For most of its history, Google ads were labeled by a large colored block that was intuitively separate from the non-ad results, though sometimes not visible on monitors with a higher brightness setting.

2000 – Shaded background around all ads:

2010 – Shaded background still exists around ads:

2014 – No background; yellow box label next to each ad (and ads take up a lot more space):

2017 – Yellow box changed to green, the same color as the URL it’s next to (and ads take up even more space):

2017 – Green box changed to a thin green outline the same color as the URL:

What to do about it

The good news is that this is impacting everyone in e-commerce equally, and all those search clicks are still happening — in other words, those users haven’t gone away. The growth in the number of searches each year means that you probably aren’t seeing huge losses in organic traffic; instead, it will show as small losses or anemic growth. The bad news is that it will cost you — as well as your competitors — more money to capture the same overall share of search traffic.

A strong search marketing strategy has always involved organic, paid search, and PLA combined. Sites optimizing for all search channels are already well-positioned to capture search traffic regardless of ad changes to the SERPs: if SEO growth slows, then PLA and paid search growth speeds up. As real estate for one channel shrinks, real estate for others grows.

If you haven’t been strongly invested in search ads or PLAs, then the Chinese proverb on the best time to plant a tree applies perfectly:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

With a similar percentage of clicks going to paid and organic, your investment in each should be similar (unless, of course, you have some catching up to do with one channel).

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Ten steps to successful SEO for startups

SEO can help a growing startup establish its presence and meet business goals. Here’s how to get started with search engine optimization and which areas to focus on.

It’s a common challenge for early-stage and growing startups to find the resources and the time to focus on many different activities that can take their business to the next level. It’s also easy to feel lost among all the tasks, being unable to decide where to start.

SEO is sometimes ignored as an activity when it comes to setting priorities, but it can be very useful in:

• establishing your startup’s authority
• reaching a wider audience
• building traffic and brand awareness
• improving engagement
• generating interest in your business

This is an overview of how startups or new businesses can get started with SEO by following a series of steps that can help them improve their online presence and find a new audience.

Set your goals

One of the most important steps when starting with SEO is to align it with your wider goals. It’s useful to set initial goals for what you want to achieve with your content to explore how to involve SEO in the process.

These goals have to be measurable and clear to help you decide on specific ways to achieve them. For example:

• Double the number of visitors to the site in the next quarter
• Increase blog traffic by 30% in the next three months
• Generate interest from 20 new prospects in the next month
• Increase sales by 20% until the end of the year

The next step is to examine how content fits each goal and what that means for SEO.

For example, if your first goal is doubling the number of visitors in the next quarter, it’s important to build awareness through different channels in order to increase the traffic back to the site. This can be achieved by creating more targeted content, which can also be optimized for search engines.

Keyword research

Once your goals are set, it’s useful to explore how SEO can help the wider business.

Keyword research can help you discover new content opportunities, while it can also improve your existing content.

The focus on the right audience and the right content brings an understanding of the content that they’re more likely to consume. That’s when the keyword research can become more useful to provide you with content ideas and new opportunities to rise in the top of search.

You can start by creating an “ideal list” of the keywords you want to target. Chances are that this list will consist of many popular keywords, which means that it will probably be harder to reach the top of the search results as a new startup. The next step is to use a tool to perform the actual keyword research and find new opportunities for keywords to target.

Long tail keywords may offer more chances to show up higher in the search results, while you can also perform manual searches on your own to test the first pages of the keywords you want to target. This will allow you to understand how SEO can work for your target audience and what types of pages ranked higher in SERPs.

A keyword research can also be the start of your content planning, by producing more keyword-focused content in an authentic yet strategic way that can position your business higher in search results.

Analyze your existing content

An important next step is to create an overview of your existing content – any blog posts, or general pieces of copy you’ve created to promote your business. This allows you to spot any content gaps or pieces of content that need to be updated or even removed.

A content inventory allows you to organize every piece of content that exists on your site. This makes it easier to create a content audit for SEO purposes, to explore how your content currently performs and how you can improve it.

A content audit can be a spreadsheet that features all your published content and it can include:

• Page URL
• Page title
• Meta description
• Wordcount
• Type of content
• Condition of content – Evergreen, out of date, re-used, off-topic, etc.

If you still haven’t written meta descriptions or set the conditions of each piece of content, then these can be filled gradually, as you start organizing your SEO strategy. Still, they can be very useful in having them all together in one spreadsheet, even when you fill them later on.

Check for errors

There are many possible errors that can affect your content’s SEO. That’s why it’s a good idea to spot and fix any issues, including:

Duplicate content

There’s a danger that duplicate content will cannibalize the keywords you want to target in search. Duplicate content can be a problem on your own site, but also with any guest posts that you submit to other websites for backlinks – make sure that they don’t resemble your original piece of content too heavily. We’ll talk more about backlinks later on in this post.

Broken images

It’s easy to have a broken image on your site, especially if you’re sharing it from an external source. That’s why it’s useful to check your pages for missing images, improving the first impressions of your content.

404 error pages

A page that’s no longer working can affect your site’s rankings in search engines, but also user experience and the engagement. If you recently migrated content or changed any URLs, you may need to check for any 404 error pages that you’re not aware of.

In fact, you can even turn them into a content marketing asset or add a fun element to them. For more on this, see Stuart Shaw’s excellent guide, ‘How to create the perfect 404 page‘.

Broken links

As with broken images, broken links can harm your site’s reputation, but also the user experience. A broken link can affect your page’s ranking. Luckily it’s easy to discover broken links and fix them with tools such as Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider and Moz Pro.

Optimize content 

There are many ways to optimize your content for search engines. The so-called on-site SEO can be improved with a number of fixes:

URL structure

The structure of your URL can affect both your page’s ranking, but also the user experience. Thus, it’s a good idea to create clear and readable URLs, both for humans, but also for search engines. For example, this url http://ift.tt/2hN07la is better than this one http://ift.tt/2dP9s7z

Title

The title of each page should be clear, concise and descriptive. It can improve both the traffic on your page, but also the ranking provided that the rest of the text matches the title’s expectations.

Formatting

A focus on the formatting of your page can facilitate the crawling for search engines, while it also enhances the readability for your readers. For example, the headings can make the scanning of the content easier, creating a smoother experience and a clear structure.

Meta tags

Meta tags are the HTML elements that search engines and visitors find your content. It’s what they can see in a search engine and thus, it’s important to add value in a limited number of characters. The title and the description should perfectly describe the topic; here are some examples to help you create better meta descriptions.

Internal linking

The addition of internal links – links from your own domain – to your content can be very effective for SEO. It’s a strategic way to inform search engines about the topics you want to serve as an authority, making it easier to showcase all the pages you’ve created for them. It also helps you rank higher on the keywords you are targeting, while facilitating the reading experience for the engaged readers who want to read more.

SEO for images

Search engine optimization goes beyond text. Visual content also requires optimization in order to be indexed by search engines.

The title has to be descriptive rather than generic, such as image32.jpg, while it’s also useful to add an alt-tag to help Google spot your images. Moreover, the size also contributes to your page’s user experience, so it’s better to keep it as small as possible.

Excessive use of generic stock photographs can undermine the authenticity of your content, so where possible, try to source your own, or use screenshots and other informative images instead.

Optimizing images for search also increases the chances for users to discover your content, as many people will come across a picture via image search and visit the original web page to find out its context.

Think about featured snippets 

Google’s featured snippets, also known as “position zero” on the SERP, can be a great opportunity to get one over your competitors in search results.

Anyone can grab a featured snippet spot if you know how to optimize for it, which makes them a huge source of potential visibility for a startup trying to get its name out there.

The first thing to bear in mind is that your content should provide an answer to a specific question in a clear and descriptive way. The formatting, the word count and even the way you present the content can increase the chances of seeing your content appear as a featured snippet.

For more on this, check out our guides on featured snippets:

• How to optimize for Google’s featured snippets
• 5 ways to identify potential featured snippets to rank for

Involving PR, influencers, and backlinks

You can improve your SEO not only through on-site optimization, but also through external sources (known as off-page SEO). A startup that is just growing needs all the available coverage it can find for its services and its content. The combination of PR, influencers and backlinks can be very successful to an improved SEO strategy.

Public relations can help a startup build relationships with the right people in the industry. The combination of knowing your target audience and asking for professional help to expand your reach can increase the brand awareness and the interest in your business. This can boost your SEO by becoming an authority in your field, without spending time on networking all by yourself.

Moreover, influencer marketing can be very powerful and it can even be a manual activity, finding the best influencers for your niche and develop a genuine connection with them. As influencers have a big impact on affecting decisions, they can be the right people to help your startup grow. A startup should think like a person, not a business, that’s why it’s useful to put people to the front and start having conversations either online or offline during events and conferences.

Another useful way to build your authority and help SEO is to focus on gaining backlinks, or else links from external sources. If your business and your content are interesting enough to grab other sites’ attention, then this means that a larger audience will also be able to find you. Backlinks seem to be among the top three Google ranking factors, which means that it’s crucial to build a strategy on how to create interesting content and then how to promote it to the right sources.

Further Reading

• The collision between PR, content, and SEO: How to make it work for you
• How influencer marketing can benefit your SEO strategy
• Guide to Google ranking factors – Part 10: backlinks

Mobile optimization and UX

It’s critical nowadays to optimize your site for mobile devices. Google has already acknowledged the importance of mobile as a ranking signal and as more people consume content through their mobile devices, it becomes an even bigger priority to optimize your content.

While optimizing for mobile might seem like an expense you can do without in the early days of your startup, it’s also a vital component of being a competitive business, as well as getting your message out to the largest number of people.

Even a few simple things, like paying attention to image size and improving your site speed, will greatly boost your site’s performance on mobile and make it easier to implement full-on mobile optimization further down the line.

Use our mobile-friendly site checklist to make sure you hit the key points when optimizing your site for mobile.

Measuring SEO

A common question for anyone getting started with SEO is how to measure its success. A growing startup is interested in using SEO to:

• build authority
• increase traffic
• improve engagement
• expand reach

There are many ways to measure all these, but the most common metrics to focus on are:

Traffic

Organic traffic can tell the number of users who visited your page through search results. This can be a good indication whether SEO has placed your content high up the rankings, or whether it’s interesting enough to make visitors search for it further in the results.

In either way, it’s a great sign that you’re on the right track to create a solid SEO strategy with the right content and an understanding of what your audience likes.

Engagement

Engagement can be measured by the time users spend on the site, the bounce rate, or even the shares and the number of comments. All these can tell whether your content, the user experience, or the relevance match the readers’ expectations, offering a great start of what can be improved on each page.

Ranking

Your content’s ranking on search results will gradually show your progress while improving SEO. Moreover, a keyword performance can indicate whether your content was successful enough to target specific keywords and how it performs compared to the competitors.

Conversions

Conversions aren’t just about making sales – the term “conversion” can refer to any action you want users to perform after visiting your site, such as subscribing to a newsletter.

Domain authority and number of links

The actual number of links that you’ve gained from other sources leading back to your site serves as a great metric to show the interest towards your content. As the number of links increases, especially if they come from sources of high quality and relevance, so does your domain authority.

Domain authority is a measure of the “weight” your site carries in search, and as it improves, so do the chances of seeing your content higher up the search results.

There are many free tools you can use to measure your SEO performance, including:

• Google Analytics for traffic, engagement, conversion
• Google Search Console for keyword and page ranking
• Google PageSpeed Insights for your page’s performance
• Keywordtool.io / Google Keyword Planner (Adwords) for keyword ranking
• Copyscape for duplicate content
• MozBar for on-page metrics

Plus, check out our list of 15 Chrome extensions to aid in your SEO efforts.

Overview

SEO can help your startup grow in the crucial early stages of your business. While you don’t need to get hugely technical with SEO at this stage, following some simple steps will aid in discovery of your new brand, and help you to gain a foothold in your chosen niche.

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Google Testing “Instant” Tag for AMP in Search Results

Google is testing a new way to let searchers know that AMP results shown are much faster than a typical web page. They have added an “Instant” tag next to the usual AMP logo for those results, instead of the usual AMP icon along with the word “AMP” next to it. Jonathan Jones spotted the […]

The post Google Testing “Instant” Tag for AMP in Search Results appeared first on The SEM Post.

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Still doing guest blogging? Keep these 4 tips in mind

A lot of people still rely on guest blogging as an ongoing part of their link-building strategy.

If you think about it, getting links through guest blogging is much easier than getting links through some other channel.

So it’s no wonder that a lot of bloggers and SEO experts still favor this method. The main question is, are these guest post links still safe and viable?

The answer is yes.

It is still possible to build our link portfolio by contributing on authoritative websites. However, there are certain rules that we need to follow in order to avoid any issues with Google.

Guest blogging 101

One of the beautiful things about guest blogging is that it gives us the opportunity to score some great links from high-tier websites.

To be honest, we probably couldn’t have gotten those links with any other method. This is why guest blogging is always worth bearing in mind as a link-building strategy.

But, we need to be very selective when choosing the websites we guest post for.

Although guest blogging can be carried out on a large scale, you should probably avoid it. This method is optimal in small dosages while cooperating with the biggest domains.

Google trusts authoritative domains. If they notice that your links are coming only from reputable sources, they will not impose a penalty. However…

1) Careful not to overdo it!

The biggest problem with guest blogging is that people tend to overdo it.

Your articles should be coming from various sources, with different anchors. If your only source of inbound links is from guest articles, Google will notice this pattern and you will soon get into trouble.

Instead, you should choose your battles carefully. You need to diversify your link profile.

If you already decide to do some guest posting, make sure it counts. Otherwise you’ll waste all that time you spent building up relationships and writing your posts – with only a Google penalty to show for it.

2) Focus on quality

This is where most people go wrong.

Google assesses the articles from which you are getting links. If the article is of high quality, your link will also be regarded as a quality one.

This makes sense, right? After all, why would anyone bother creating a great piece only to place crappy links throughout?

So when you put together a guest post, make sure it’s a good one.

After creating their own article, people try to promote it by writing guest posts. These guest posts will usually be of much lower quality and they will have the same regurgitated content which you published on your own blog.

By doing this, not only are you getting a devalued link, but you are also endangering your original piece. Google will flag up the regurgitated versions of your article as possible duplicate content. And because there are any number of similar, low-quality pieces out there online, it may conclude that your article is low-quality as well.

Everything you create has to be unique and to provide value to the reader. When you write a guest post, ask yourself: would I link to this piece?

If the answer is yes, you are in the clear.

3) Add images, links and formatting

As I mentioned, each guest post you make needs to be distinctive. Even if you are employing this strategy on a larger scale, at least make sure that everything you create is a separate entity.

One of the best ways to differentiate articles is by using varied formatting.

Blogs always have use different fonts and that is something you have no control over. But you have the ability to break up paragraphs and add things like bullet points, subheadings, block quotes and more. These increase the readability of your piece, and also make it easier for search engines to crawl it and interpret the content.

Another way to improve the look and layout of your text is to add images and other media.

Do not be shy and don’t wait for the website editor to insert them for you. Instead, be proactive and use your own images. Add a couple of them if necessary. If they make sense and the text looks better because of it, the editor will be more inclined to ask you for additional guest posts.

You can even go the extra mile and write titles and alt text to optimize the images for SEO – the editor will thank you, as it will save them the effort, and it will improve the overall SEO value of your piece.

Lastly, we come to links.

Now, editors usually allow one link in your bio, or one link within the article. Most of them do not like it when an author writes a piece with a lots of links pointing to different websites.

However, if the editor allows it, make sure to add some highly relevant links that will make the article even more authoritative.

4) Vary your anchor text

You are trying to rank for a certain keyword. In an attempt to rank, you try to spam the same anchor text over and over.

This strategy is pretty much obsolete. Instead, just as with everything else that we’ve mentioned so far, make sure to diversify things.

Anchor text should vary.

When people place links with purely editorial value, without trying to cynically rank for a specific keyword, they will rarely link with the exact same phrase every time. This is highly unnatural behavior and can get you in trouble.

Instead, make sure to use different phrases. Place links in different sentences, with different anchors. Focus on writing naturally and place your link accordingly.

Conclusion

Guest blogging is NOT dead. As far as we know, there is no Google system or algorithm that will penalize the creation of such articles.

Nevertheless, it is better to be conservative. Like always, it comes down to whether your link profile looks natural. There should be no indication that you are purposely trying to push a keyword (even if you are).

People usually think about guest blogging in terms of links. However, you should observe it from a different perspective. By using this strategy, not only should you get links, you should also get some good exposure.

Your articles should promote your skills well as your blog.

By placing emphasis on this, you will be able to accomplish much more with guest posts and as a result, links will start coming from various sources without you forcing them.

How often do you guest post? Have you ever had problems due to it? Share it in the comment section below!

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Special Notes for SABs Amid Decreased Local Search Visibility

Posted by MiriamEllis

One of the most common complaints I hear from service area business owners, like plumbers, locksmiths, and housekeepers, is that Google has always treated them as an afterthought. If you’re in charge of the digital marketing for these business models, it’s vital to understand just how accurate this complaint is so that you can both empathize with SAB brand owners and create a strategy that honors limitations while also identifying opportunities.

In marketing SABs, you’ve got to learn to make the best of a special situation. In this post, I want to address two of the realities these companies are facing right now that call for careful planning: the unique big picture of SAB local listing management, and the rise of Google’s Home Service Ads.

Let’s talk listings, Moz Local, and SABs

I was fascinated by my appliance repairman — an older German ex-pat with a serious demeanor — the first time he looked at my wall heater and pronounced,

“This puppy is no good.”

Our family went on to form a lasting relationship with this expert who has warned me about everything from lint fires in dryers to mis-branded appliances slapped together in dubious factories. I’m an admiring fan of genuinely knowledgeable service people who come to my doorstep, crawl under my house where possums dwell, ascend to my eerie attic despite spiders, and are professionally dedicated to keeping my old house livable. I work on a computer, surrounded by comforts; these folks know what real elbow grease is all about:

It’s because of my regard for these incredibly hard-working SAB owners and staffers that I’ve always taken issue with the fact that the local Internet tends to treat them in an offhand manner. They do some of the toughest jobs, and I’d like their marketing opportunities to be boundless. But the reality is, the road has been rocky and the limits are real.

Google goofed first

When Google invested heavily in developing their mapped version of the local commercial scene, there was reportedly internal disagreement as to whether a service area business is actually a “place” and deserved of inclusion in Google’s local index. You couldn’t add service area businesses to the now-defunct MapMaker but you could create local listings for them (clear as mud, right?). At a 2008 SMX event, faced with the question as to how SABs could be accurately represented in the local results, a Google rep really goofed in first suggesting that they all get PO boxes, only to have this specific practice subsequently outlawed by Google’s guidelines.

Confusion and spam flowed in

For the record,

• Both SABs and brick-and-mortar businesses are currently eligible for Google My Business listings if they serve customers face-to-face.
• SABs must have some form of legitimate street address, even if it’s a home address, to be included
• Only brick-and-mortar businesses are supposed to have visible addresses on their listings, but Google’s shifting messaging and inconsistent guideline enforcement have created confusion.

Google has shown little zeal for suspending listings that violate the hide-address guidelines, with one notable exception recently mentioned to me by Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky: SABs who click the Google My Business dashboard box stating that they serve clients at the business’ location in order to get themselves out of no man’s land at the bottom of the Google Home Service ad unit are being completely removed from the map by Google if caught.

Meanwhile, concern has been engendered by past debate over whether hiding the address of a business lowered its local pack rankings. The 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors survey is still finding this to be the #18 negative local pack ranking factor, which might be worthy of further discussion.

All of these factors have created an environment in which legitimate SABs have accidentally incorrectly listed themselves on Google and in which spammers have thrived, intentionally creating multiple listings at non-physical addresses and frequently getting away with it to the detriment of search results uniformity and quality. In this unsatisfactory environment, the advent of Google’s Home Service Ads program may have been inevitable, and we’ll take a look at that in a minute.

Limits made clear in listing options for SABs

Whether the risk of suspension or impact on rankings is great or small, hiding your address on SAB Google My Business listings is the only Google-approved practice. If you want to play it totally safe, you’ll play by the rules, but this doesn’t automatically overcome every challenge.

Google is one of the few high-level local business index requiring hidden SAB addresses. And it’s in this stance that SABs encounter some problems taking advantage of the efficiencies provided by automated location data management tools like Moz Local. There are three main things that have confused our own customers:

1. Because our SAB customers are required by Google to hide their address, Moz Local can’t then verify the address because… well, it’s hidden. This means that customers need to have a Facebook listing with a visible address on it to get started using Moz Local. Facebook doesn’t require SAB addresses to be hidden.
2. Once the customer gets started, their ultimate consistency score will generally be lower than what a brick-and-mortar business achieves, again because their hidden GMB listing address can’t be matched to all of the other complete listings Moz Local builds for them. It reads like an inconsistency, and while this in no way impacts their real-world performance, it’s a little sad not to be able to aim for a nifty 100% dashboard metric within Moz Local. Important to mention here that a 100% score isn’t achievable for multi-location business models, either, given that Facebook’s guidelines require adding a modifier to the business name of each branch, rendering it inconsistent. This is in contrast to Google’s policy, which defines the needless addition of keywords or geo-modifiers to the business name as spam! When Google and Facebook fundamentally disagree on a guideline, a small measure of inconsistency is part and parcel of the scenario, and not something worth worrying about.
3. Finally, for SABs who don’t want their address published anywhere on the Internet, automated citation management simply may not be a good match. Some partners in our network won’t accept address-less distribution from us, viewing it as incomplete data. If an SAB isn’t looking for complete NAP distribution because they want their address to be kept private, automation just isn’t ideal.

So how can SABs use something like Moz Local?

The Moz Local team sides with SABs — we’re not totally satisfied with the above state of affairs and are actively exploring better support options for the future. Given our admiration for these especially hard-working businesses, we feel SABs really deserve to have needless burdens lifted from their shoulders, which is exactly what Moz Local is designed to do. The task of manual local business listing publication and ongoing monitoring is a hefty one — too hefty in so many cases. Automation does the heavy lifting for you. We’re examining better solutions, but right now, what options for automation are open to the SAB?

Option #1: If your business is okay with your address being visible in multiple places, then simply be sure your Facebook listing shows your address and you can sign up for Moz Local today, no problem! We’ll push your complete NAP to the major aggregators and other partners, but know that your Moz Local dashboard consistency score won’t be 100%. This is because we won’t be able to “see” your Google My Business listing with its hidden address, and because choosing service-related categories will also hide your address on Citysearch, Localeze, and sometimes, Bing. Also note that one of our partners, Factual, doesn’t support locksmiths, bail bondsmen or towing companies. So, in using an automated solution like Moz Local, be prepared for a lower score in the dashboard, because it’s “baked into” the scenario in which some platforms show your full street address while others hide it. And, of course, be aware that many of your direct local competitors are in the same boat, facing the same limitations, thus leveling the playing field.

Option #2: If your business can budget for it, consider transitioning from an SAB to a brick-and-mortar business model, and get a real-world office that’s staffed during stated business hours. As Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling discuss is in this excellent video chat, smaller SABs need to be sure they can still make a profit after renting an office space, and that may largely be based on rental costs in their part of the country. Very successful virtual brands are exploring traditional retail options and traditional brick-and-mortar business models are setting up virtual showrooms; change is afoot. Having some customers come to the physical location of a typical SAB may require some re-thinking of service. A locksmith could grind keys on-site, a landscaper could virtually showcase projects in the comfort of their office, but what could a plumber do? Any ideas? If you can come up with a viable answer, and can still see profits factoring in the cost of office space, transitioning to brick-and-mortar effectively removes any barriers to how you represent yourself on Google and how fully you can use software like Moz Local.

If neither option works for you, and you need to remain an SAB with a hidden address, you’ll either need to a) build citations manually on sites that support your requirements, like these ones listed out by Phil Rozek, while having a plan for regularly monitoring your listings for emerging inconsistencies, duplicates and incoming reviews or b) hire a company to do the manual development and monitoring for you on the platforms that support hiding your address.

I wish the digital marketing sky could be the limit for SABs, but we’ve got to do the most we can working within parameters defined by Google and other location data platforms.

Now comes HSA: Google’s next SAB move

As service area business owner or marketer, you can’t be faulted for feeling that Google hasn’t handled your commercial scenario terribly well over the years. As we’ve discussed, Google has wobbled on policy and enforcement. Not yet mentioned is that they’ve never offered an adequate solution to the reality that a plumber located in City A equally services Cities B, C, and D, but is almost never allowed to rank in the local packs for these service cities. Google’s historic bias toward physical location doesn’t meet the reality of business models that go to clients to serve. And it’s this apparent lack of interest in SAB needs that may be adding a bit of sting to Google’s latest move: the Home Service Ads (HSA) program.

You’re not alone if you don’t feel totally comfortable with Google becoming a lead gen agent between customers and, to date:

• Plumbers
• House cleaners
• Locksmiths
• Handymen
• Contractors
• Electricians
• Painters
• Garage door services
• HVAC companies
• Roadside assistance services
• Auto glass services

...in a rapidly increasing number of cities.

Suddenly, SABs have moved to the core of Google’s consciousness, and an unprecedented challenge for these business models is that, while you can choose whether or not to opt into the program, there’s no way to opt out of the impacts it is having on all affected local results.

An upheaval in SAB visibility

If HSA has come to your geo-industry, and you don’t buy into the program, you will find yourself relegated to the bottom of the new HSA ad unit which appears above the traditional 3-pack in the SERPs:

Additionally, even if you were #1 in the 3-pack prior to HSA coming to town, if you lack a visible address, your claimed listing appears to have vanished from the pack and finder views.

*I must tip my hat again to Joy Hawkins for helping me understand why that last example hasn’t vanished from the packs — it’s unclaimed. Honestly, this blip tempts me to unclaim an SAB listing and “manage” it via community edits instead of the GMB dashboard to see if I could maintain its local finder visibility… but this might be an overreaction!

If you’re marketing an SAB, have been relegated to the bottom of the HSA ad unit, and have vanished from the local pack/finder view, please share with our community how this has impacted your traffic and conversions. My guess would be that things are not so good.

So, what can SABs do in this new landscape?

I don’t have all of the answers to this question, but I do have these suggestions:

1. Obviously, if you can budget for it, opt into HSA.
2. But, bizarrely, understand that in some ways, Google has just made your GMB listing less important. If you have to hide your address and won’t be shown in HSA-impacted local packs and finder views because of this guideline compliance, your GMB listing is likely to become a less important source of visibility for your business.
3. Be sure, then, that all of your other local business listings are in apple-pie order. If you’re okay with your address being published, you can automate this necessary work with software like Moz Local. If you need to keep your address private, put in the time to manually get listed everywhere you can. A converted lead from CitySearch or Foursquare may even feel like more of a victory than one from Google.
4. Because diversification has just become a great deal more important, alternatives like those offered by visibility on Facebook are now more appealing than ever. And ramp up your word-of-mouth marketing and review management strategies like never before. If I were marketing an SAB, I’d be taking a serious new look at companies like ZipSprout, which helps establish real-world local relationships via sponsorships, and GetFiveStars, which helps with multiple aspects of managing reviews.
5. Know that organic visibility is now more of a prize than previously. If you’re not in the packs, you’ve got to show up below them. This means clearly defining local SEO and traditional SEO as inextricably linked, and doing the customary work of keyword research, content development, and link management that have fueled organic SEO from the beginning. I’m personally committing to becoming more intimately familiar with Moz Pro so that I can better integrate into my skill set what software like this can do for local businesses, especially SABs.
6. Expect change. HSA is still a test, and Google continues to experiment with how it’s displaying its paying customers in relationship to the traditional free packs and organic results. Who knows what’s next? If you’re marketing SABs, an empathetic and realistic approach to both historic and emerging limitations will help you create a strategy designed to ensure brand survival, independent of Google’s developments.

Why is Google doing this?

I need to get some window blinds replaced in my home this fall. When I turned to Google’s (non-HSA) results and began calling local window treatment shops, imagine my annoyance in discovering that fully ½ of the listings in the local finder were for companies not located anywhere near my town. These brands had set up spam listings for a ton of different cities to which they apparently can send a representative, but where they definitely don’t have physical locations. I wasted a great deal of time calling each of them, and only felt better after reporting the listings to Google and seeing them subsequently removed.

I’m sharing this daily-life anecdote because it encapsulates the very best reason for Google rolling out Home Service Ads. Google’s program is meant to ensure that when I use their platform to access service companies, I’m finding vetted, legitimate enterprises with accurate location data and money-back satisfaction guarantees, instead of finding the mess of spam listings Google’s shifting policies and inadequate moderation have created. The HSA ad units can improve results quality while also protecting consumers from spurious providers.

The other evident purpose of HSA is the less civic-minded but no less brilliant one: there’s money to be made and Google’s profit motives are no different than those of any other enterprise. For the same reason that Amazon has gotten into the SAB lead gen business, Google wants a piece of this action. So, okay, no surprise there, and if the Google leads wind up growing the revenue of my wonderful German handyman, more power to them both.

But I hope my plumber, and yours, and your clients in the service markets, will take a step back from the Monopoly board and see this as a moment to reevaluate a game in which Google and Amazon are setting up big red hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I do advocate getting qualified for HSA, but I don’t advise a stance of unquestioning loyalty to or dependence on Google, particularly if you haven’t felt especially well-served by their SAB policies over the years. If Google can drive lucrative leads your way, take them, but remember you have one advantage Google, Amazon and other lead generation agencies lack: you are still the one who meets the customer face-to-face.

Opportunity is knocking in having a giant of visibility like Google selling you customers, because those customers, if amazed by your service, have grandmothers, and brothers and co-workers who can be directly referred to your company, completely outside the lead-gen loop. In fact, you might even come up with an incentivization program of your own to be sure that every customer you shake hands with is convinced of your appreciation for every referral they may send your way.

Don’t leave it all up to Google to make your local SAB brand a household word. Strategize for maximum independence via the real-world relationships you build, in the home of every neighbor where the door of welcome is opened in anticipation of the very best service you know how to give.

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Does your website need an SEO audit?

Websites are like cars: they need maintenance. That may come in the form of updating the CMS, security or plugins. The same goes for SEO.

A great SEO strategy will always need reviewing and constant scrutiny of analytics, in order to ensure that you remain on the intended path.

To garner the most success from search engine traffic, a fully-fledged campaign is the best bet, where an individual or team can dedicate the correct amount of time to deliver results.

SEO audits are a slightly different beast. Audit. A word associated with redundancies or the tax man knocking at your door. It’s a word devoid of happy connotations.

But don’t be afraid, they can be very helpful. So where do they fit into the SEO ecosystem, and how can you tell if your website needs one?

What’s involved in an SEO audit?

Carrying on with the car metaphor, not all cars are the same.

The fundamentals might be the same: cylinders, internal combustion, suspension, gears, wheels. But a Lamborghini is not the same as a Skoda.

In the same vein, not all SEO agencies are the same, and SEO audits can differ greatly between agencies in their complexity and depth. The results will therefore differ according to the content of the audit. However, let’s presume that an SEO audit will look at:

• Overall keyword strategy
• On-site optimization
• Website user flow
• Content strategy
• Backlink profiles
• Analytics

The aim? To give an overview of the health of your website with regard to SEO. You should also get a multitude of actionable points according to the strategy, which either you or the agency should implement.

An SEO audit can act as a first point of call for developing an SEO strategy if you don’t already have one, or if you do, as a valuable second opinion that potentially flags up critical issues with your existing strategy. Let’s look at how an SEO audit could benefit your business in each scenario.

Starting from scratch

You have a website, but you don’t feel that you’re getting much in the way of traffic or conversions via search engines. You may or may not have conducted SEO work in the past, but you definitely want to be making more of the potential that search engine optimization offers.

Great! An SEO audit is a fantastic starting point and will provide you with an initial strategy to implement.

It should be noted that the first weeks of an SEO campaign will cover a lot of what would be included in an SEO audit, so you don’t necessarily stand to lose out. The audit should cover the major points of an SEO strategy, leaving you to either implement it yourself or continue the work with an agency.

Why is this a good option? Well, it means that you can test the waters. It is unfortunate that the SEO world is somewhat marred by the presence of black hat practitioners, making the paying client somewhat wary of engaging with an agency, especially if their knowledge is limited or they have previously had their fingers burnt.

The SEO audit should allow them to review the quality of the work produced by said agency and decide whether the working relationship is worth following. In certain scenarios, implementing thorough on-site SEO can result in a jump in rankings* therefore acting as something of a litmus test or a less costly alternative for the budget-conscious.

*This is not to say that an audit will produce the same results as a full campaign. It should, however, (if properly completed and implemented) demonstrate value.

Second opinion: In-house & agency

At Yellowball we like to use the metaphor of the coal face. It is a difficult task when you are at the coal face to take a step back and take a breath. We see this with really good websites. The client will look at it on a daily basis for months which inevitably results in them getting bored of the designs, regardless of whether the new business that they want to attract thinks it looks great.

On the other side of the coin, you can be so involved with something (i.e an SEO campaign) that it is very difficult to take a sense check. Confirmation bias can creep into analytics reviews, and data-driven decisions can turn into more emotional decisions due to the time you’ve already invested into the campaign.

An audit provides a fresh set of eyes. It can bring new ideas or a slight tweak to the strategy that can refresh the campaign and deliver increased results. Depending on whether your SEO strategy is executed by an in-house team or an external agency, there are a couple of ways this can play out:

Audits for in-house teams

The eternal battle between in house teams that know the company and industry inside out compared with agencies that have arguably more up to date SEO knowledge and techniques. Audits can upskill in house teams or refresh an ageing strategy.

Audits for agencies

Monthly retainers put pressures on agency teams to fulfil what was laid out in the proposal. Campaigns often roll on past the original proposal length without pause for breath. An audit will provide an agency with the time to review the campaign’s successes and failures, the original strategy and make amendments.

Depending on how long the campaign has been running this audit can provide valuable insight and amendments which in turn become greater results as you move forward.

Regardless of whether your SEO campaign is run in-house or outsourced to an agency, it is worth considering an audit as a sort of half-time break. A period where you can make your substitutions, change formation and go out into the second half to win the game… Sorry about my excessive use of metaphors.

Second opinion: Audits can solve critical issues

Let’s take a look at a situation where things are not going right. Ditch the rose tinted glasses. Not the easiest situation to be in but one that requires action and one that definitely happens:

You are a business that has been running an SEO campaign in house or with an agency. Great. Except for the fact that it ain’t working. How can an audit help you here?

Close the skills gap

Sometimes there are critical issues which are caused directly by a skills gap. The individual or the team running the campaign just don’t have what it takes. That might be in the form of writing truly awesome content. It might be their ability to approach other websites to provide value and gain links. It may even be a developer who doesn’t have the technical skillset to implement all of the onsite optimization required. Whatever it is, you know that it is holding you back.

This is where you can give very specific instructions to those conducting the audit. They should be able to provide a strategy, guidance or even the specific skillset to solve this critical issue. Solve the problem and the results from the campaign could be drastically different!

Dare we say it, get you out of an expensive contract

This point is likely to be pretty controversial, but we would be lying if we said that the SEO industry was squeaky clean. There are pirates out there. The reality is that digital marketing agencies are a dime a dozen.

As a byproduct, a portion of those businesses that instruct an agency will make the wrong choice. They will go with an agency that promises the world and under-delivers. Worse, they spam the website. The business wants to pull the ejector, but there is a 12 or 24 month contract which they themselves have signed.

Hopefully the contract will dictate the work that was supposed to be carried out on your site, and an audit will provide the evidence to show that this work has not been completed to a satisfactory standard, therefore making the contract void.

It’s not something that we like to talk about, but important nonetheless, and potentially very useful.

So there you have it. An audit can set the initial strategy, provide second opinions for in-house teams and agencies, or even help solve critical issues.

If you can see the value in audits, we would highly recommend scheduling one in; they should be viewed as a positive step to a more lucrative SEO campaign!

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The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist

Posted by zeehj

The SEO case for competitive analyses

“We need more links!” “I read that user experience (UX) matters more than everything else in SEO, so we should focus solely on UX split tests.” “We just need more keywords on these pages.”

If you dropped a quarter on the sidewalk, but had no light to look for it, would you walk to the next block with a street light to retrieve it? The obvious answer is no, yet many marketers get tunnel vision when it comes to where their efforts should be focused.

1942 June 3, Florence Morning News, Mutt and Jeff Comic Strip, Page 7, Florence, South Carolina. (NewspaperArchive)

Which is why I’m sharing a checklist with you today that will allow you to compare your website to your search competitors, and identify your site’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential opportunities based on ranking factors we know are important.

If you’re unconvinced that good SEO is really just digital marketing, I’ll let AJ Kohn persuade you otherwise. As any good SEO (or even keyword research newbie) knows, it’s crucial to understand the effort involved in ranking for a specific term before you begin optimizing for it.

It’s easy to get frustrated when stakeholders ask how to rank for a specific term, and solely focus on content to create, or on-page optimizations they can make. Why? Because we’ve known for a while that there are myriad factors that play into search engine rank. Depending on the competitive search landscape, there may not be any amount of “optimizing” that you can do in order to rank for a specific term.

The story that I’ve been able to tell my clients is one of hidden opportunity, but the only way to expose these undiscovered gems is to broaden your SEO perspective beyond search engine results page (SERP) position and best practices. And the place to begin is with a competitive analysis.

Competitive analyses help you evaluate your competition’s strategies to determine their strengths and weakness relative to your brand. When it comes to digital marketing and SEO, however, there are so many ranking factors and best practices to consider that can be hard to know where to begin. Which is why my colleague, Ben Estes, created a competitive analysis checklist (not dissimilar to his wildly popular technical audit checklist) that I’ve souped up for the Moz community.

This checklist is broken out into sections that reflect key elements from our Balanced Digital Scorecard. As previously mentioned, this checklist is to help you identify opportunities (and possibly areas not worth your time and budget). But this competitive analysis is not prescriptive in and of itself. It should be used as its name suggests: to analyze what your competition’s “edge” is.

Methodology

Choosing competitors

Before you begin, you’ll need to identify six brands to compare your website against. These should be your search competitors (who else is ranking for terms that you’re ranking for, or would like to rank for?) in addition to a business competitor (or two). Don’t know who your search competition is? You can use SEMRush and Searchmetrics to identify them, and if you want to be extra thorough you can use this Moz post as a guide.

Sample sets of pages

For each site, you’ll need to select five URLs to serve as your sample set. These are the pages you will review and evaluate against the competitive analysis items. When selecting a sample set, I always include:

• The brand’s homepage,
• Two “product” pages (or an equivalent),
• One to two “browse” pages, and
• A page that serves as a hub for news/informative content.

Make sure each site has equivalent pages to each other, for a fair comparison.

Scoring

The scoring options for each checklist item range from zero to four, and are determined relative to each competitor’s performance. This means that a score of two serves as the average performance in that category.

For example, if each sample set has one unique H1 tag per page, then each competitor would get a score of two for H1s appear technically optimized. However if a site breaks one (or more) of the below requirements, then it should receive a score of zero or one:

1. One or more pages within sample set contains more than one H1 tag on it, and/or
2. H1 tags are duplicated across a brand’s sample set of pages.

Checklist

Platform (technical optimization)

Title tags appear technically optimized. This measurement should be as quantitative as possible, and refer only to technical SEO rather than its written quality. Evaluate the sampled pages based on:

• Only one title tag per page,
• The title tag being correctly placed within the head tags of the page, and
• Few to no extraneous tags within the title (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

H1s appear technically optimized. Like with the title tags, this is another quantitative measure: make sure the H1 tags on your sample pages are sound by technical SEO standards (and not based on writing quality). You should look for:

• Only one H1 tag per page, and
• Few to no extraneous tags within the tag (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

Internal linking allows indexation of content. Observe the internal outlinks on your sample pages, apart from the sites’ navigation and footer links. This line item serves to check that the domains are consolidating their crawl budgets by linking to discoverable, indexable content on their websites. Here is an easy-to-use Chrome plugin from fellow Distiller Dom Woodman to see whether the pages are indexable.

To get a score of “2” or more, your sample pages should link to pages that:

• Produce 200 status codes (for all, or nearly all), and
• Have no more than ~300 outlinks per page (including the navigation and footer links).

Schema markup present. This is an easy check. Using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, look to see whether these pages have any schema markup implemented, and if so, whether it is correct. In order to receive a score of “2” here, your sampled pages need:

• To have schema markup present, and
• Be error-free.

Quality of schema is definitely important, and can make the difference of a brand receiving a score of “3” or “4.” Elements to keep in mind are: Organization or Website markup on every sample page, customized markup like BlogPosting or Article on editorial content, and Product markup on product pages.

There is a “home” for newly published content. A hub for new content can be the site’s blog, or a news section. For instance, Distilled’s “home for newly published content” is the Resources section. While this line item may seem like a binary (score of “0” if you don’t have a dedicated section for new content, or score of “2” if you do), there are nuances that can bring each brand’s score up or down. For example:

• Is the home for new content unclear, or difficult to find? Approach this exercise as though you are a new visitor to the site.
• Does there appear to be more than one “home” of new content?
• If there is a content hub, is it apparent that this is for newly published pieces?

We’re not obviously messing up technical SEO. This is partly comprised of each brand’s performance leading up to this line item (mainly Title tags appear technically optimized through Schema markup present).

It would be unreasonable to run a full technical audit of each competitor, but take into account your own site’s technical SEO performance if you know there are outstanding technical issues to be addressed. In addition to the previous checklist items, I also like to use these Chrome extensions from Ayima: Page Insights and Redirect Path. These can provide quick checks for common technical SEO errors.

Content

Title tags appear optimized (editorially). Here is where we can add more context to the overall quality of the sample pages’ titles. Even if they are technically optimized, the titles may not be optimized for distinctiveness or written quality. Note that we are not evaluating keyword targeting, but rather a holistic (and broad) evaluation of how each competitor’s site approaches SEO factors. You should evaluate each page’s titles based on the following:

• The site’s (sampled) titles are not duplicative of one another,
• Their titles are shorter than 80 characters,
• They appear to accurately reflect the content presented on their pages, and
• The page titles include the domain name in a consistent fashion.

H1s appear optimized (editorially). The same rules that apply to titles for editorial quality also apply to H1 tags. Review each sampled page’s H1 for:

• A unique H1 tag per page (language in H1 tags does not repeat),
• H1 tags that are discrete from their page’s title, and
• H1s represent the content on the page.

Internal linking supports organic content. Here you must look for internal outlinks outside of each site’s header and footer links. This evaluation is not based on the number of unique internal links on each sampled page, but rather on the quality of the pages to which our brands are linking.

While “organic content” is a broad term (and invariably differs by business vertical), here are some guidelines:

• Look for links to informative pages like tutorials, guides, research, or even think pieces.
  • The blog posts on Moz (including this very one) are good examples of organic content.
• Internal links should naturally continue the user’s journey, so look for topical progression in each site’s internal links.
• Links to service pages, products, RSVP, or email subscription forms are not examples of organic content.
• Make sure the internal links vary. If sampled pages are repeatedly linking to the same resources, this will only benefit those few pages.
  • This doesn’t mean that you should penalize a brand for linking to the same resource two, three, or even four times over. Use your best judgment when observing the sampled pages’ linking strategies.

Appropriate informational content. You can use the found “organic content” from your sample sets (and the samples themselves) to review whether the site is producing appropriate informational content.

What does that mean, exactly?

• The content produced obviously fits within the site’s business vertical, area of expertise, or cause.
  • Example: Moz’s SEO and Inbound Marketing Blog is an appropriate fit for an SEO company.
• The content on the site isn’t overly self-promotional, resulting in an average user not trusting this domain to produce unbiased information.
  • Example: If Distilled produced a list of “Best Digital Marketing Agencies,” it’s highly unlikely that users would find it trustworthy given our inherent bias!

Quality of content. Highly subjective, yes, but remember: you’re comparing brands against each other. Here’s what you need to evaluate here:

• Are “informative” pages discussing complex topics under 400 words?
  • Note: thin content isn’t always a bad thing. Keep page intent in mind as you evaluate.
• Do you want to read the content?
• Largely, do the pages seem well-written and full of valuable information?
  • Conversely, are the sites littered with “listicles,” or full of generic info you can find in millions of other places online?

Quality of images/video. Also highly subjective (but again, compare your site to your competitors, and be brutally honest). Judge each site’s media items based on:

• Resolution (do the images or videos appear to be high quality? Grainy?),
• Whether they are unique (do the images or videos appear to be from stock resources?),
• Whether the photos or videos are repeated on multiple sample pages.

Audience (engagement and sharing of content)

Number of linking root domains. This factor is exclusively based on the total number of dofollow linking root domains (LRDs) to each domain (not total backlinks).

You can pull this number from Moz’s Open Site Explorer (OSE) or from Ahrefs. Since this measurement is only for the total number of LRDs to competitor, you don’t need to graph them. However, you will have an opportunity to display the sheer quantity of links by their domain authority in the next checklist item.

Quality of linking root domains. Here is where we get to the quality of each site’s LRDs. Using the same LRD data you exported from either Moz’s OSE or Ahrefs, you can bucket each brand’s LRDs by domain authority and count the total LRDs by DA. Log these into this third sheet, and you’ll have a graph that illustrates their overall LRD quality (and will help you grade each domain).

Other people talk about our content. I like to use BuzzSumo for this checklist item. BuzzSumo allows you to see what sites have written about a particular topic or company. You can even refine your search to include or exclude certain terms as necessary.

You’ll need to set a timeframe to collect this information. Set this to the past year to account for seasonality.

Actively promoting content. Using BuzzSumo again, you can alter your search to find how many of each domain’s URLs have been shared on social networks. While this isn’t an explicit ranking factor, strong social media marketing is correlated with good SEO. Keep the timeframe to one year, same as above.

Creating content explicitly for organic acquisition. This line item may seem similar to Appropriate informational content, but its purpose is to examine whether the competitors create pages to target keywords users are searching for.

Plug your the same URLs from your found “organic content” into SEMRush, and note whether they are ranking for non-branded keywords. You can grade the competitors on whether (and how many of) the sampled pages are ranking for any non-branded terms, and weight them based on their relative rank positions.

Conversion

You should treat this section as a UX exercise. Visit each competitor's sampled URLs as though they are your landing page from search. Is it clear what the calls to action are? What is the next logical step in your user journey? Does it feel like you’re getting the right information, in the right order as you click through?

Clear CTAs on site. Of your sample pages, examine what the calls to action (CTAs) are. This is largely UX-based, so use your best judgment when evaluating whether they seem easy to understand. For inspiration, take a look at these examples of CTAs.

Conversions appropriate to several funnel steps. This checklist item asks you to determine whether the funnel steps towards conversion feel like the correct “next step” from the user’s standpoint.

Even if you are not a UX specialist, you can assess each site as though you are a first time user. Document areas on the pages where you feel frustrated, confused, or not. User behavior is a ranking signal, so while this is a qualitative measurement, it can help you understand the UX for each site.

CTAs match user intent inferred from content. Here is where you’ll evaluate whether the CTAs match the user intent from the content as well as the CTA language. For instance, if a CTA prompts a user to click “for more information,” and takes them to a subscription page, the visitor will most likely be confused or irritated (and, in reality, will probably leave the site).

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This analysis should help you holistically identify areas of opportunity available in your search landscape, without having to guess which “best practice” you should test next. Once you’ve started this competitive analysis, trends among the competition will emerge, and expose niches where your site can improve and potentially outpace your competition.

Kick off your own SEO competitive analysis and comment below on how it goes! If this process is your jam, or you’d like to argue with it, come see me speak about these competitive analyses and the campaigns they’ve inspired at SearchLove London. Bonus? If you use that link, you’ll get £50 off your tickets.

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