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There is certainly a big pool of choices for agencies to choose from when it comes to picking a website audit tool.

There are standalone tools and those that come as part of a package. Some audit tools go through all pages of a website while others just give an overview of a specific page. And there are some tools that claim to be developed specifically for agencies but in reality can’t cope with the requirements that are very important to digital agencies and digital commerce services.

In this article, we are going to dive deep into what exactly agencies need when it comes to website audits and what to look for when choosing the tool for this task.

The audit has to scan deeply and provide a detailed report

Let’s start with reviewing the capabilities of website audit tools in terms of how deeply and completely they audit websites. Google ranks pages, not entire sites. So, logically, a website audit has to analyze each page separately. But it’s only at a glance, so to speak, because Google considers everything:

• Domain authority and website health (that includes server information, MOZ DA, Alexa ranking, number of indexed pages, the presence of robots.txt, sitemap and so forth)
• Page parameters (pages with 404 response, pages with 500 response, redirects, hreflang tag, noindex tag)
• Meta tags and headings (duplicate meta tags, pages with missing meta tags, empty H1, missing H1, duplicate headings)
• Link analysis (broken links, empty anchor, links with 301 redirect)
• Usability (favicon, custom 404 pages, mobile optimization)
• Image optimization, etc.

Advice #1: Choose a website audit with a customizable setting

Select a website audit tool that is powerful enough to scan as deeply as possible (scan all pages, subdomains, and even test pages), and with a high level of detailing so that you can see what pages require your immediate attention and which ones can wait for a little.

My favorite website audit tool in terms of control and completeness is that of SE Ranking.

These guys really went the extra mile in creating a tool that lets users set the scanning depth and speed. You can decide what pages to audit (you can upload URLs in an excel file, configure whether the scanning process should follow or ignore robots.txt rules, or set up your own rules). Plus you can choose the maximum number of pages to audit and define what should be treated as an error at the main negotiable optimization points.

I also like the fact that all their reports are white-labeled and highly customizable. On top of that, I love that the functionality of their website audit includes the option to create an XML sitemap right there in the tool and in just a few clicks.

Lead generation and website audit

SEO as part of marketing sure is a way to drive and convert traffic. In that perspective, a website audit helps to discover errors and fix problems that prevent website pages from being ranked higher in SERPs. In other words, you are using a website audit to make your website make more money. But for those that make a living out of digital marketing, a website audit is also a tool that generates income by itself so to speak.

Advice #2: Choose an audit tool that comes with embed options (aka widgets) that will generate leads for you in exchange for a website or an on-page audit

For example, SE Ranking offers a tool called lead generator which is a web form installed on your site that provides a free on-page audit to anyone that fills out the form (I also like the one from MySite Auditor). The audit report comes in a nice, easy-to-read format that anyone can understand. 

Such widgets bring value to your visitors and build trust in your services. And for you qualified leads and a list of problems their pages have which is a great starting point for a nurturing conversation.

When choosing which widget to pick, check the following:

• How well and easily can you customize the widget itself and the report it generates?
• Does it come as part of a subscription plan, and what package?
• Do you control the number of reports the widget can generate?
• What exactly does the tool audit?
• Does it integrate directly with your CRM and how easily?

Ideally, the lead generating option has to be easily customizable and be able to integrate with your CRM, that way you can incorporate it nicely into your site and your business operations.

SEO Softwares that offer a lead generation form: WooRank, SE Ranking, MySite Auditor.

White-labeled SEO platform with a website audit

Presenting your SEO services based on data collected by your own technology is an incredibly powerful way to create brand ambassadors for your agency. You can use a software that offers a white labeled website audit and customizable reporting only but I found those to come with a lot of limitations. For an agency, a full white label option is the best choice regardless of whether you want to do a website audit or present an array of your digital services in a way that reflects your identity in the most complete manner.

Advice #3: Make sure the software you pick for website audit offers a white label option

Building credibility and trust with your clients is the number one priority for agencies. As found in multiple sources, over about 70% percent of a business that comes to agencies is generated through referral which is built on trust and loyalty.

A few suggestions on how to choose software with the white label option:

• Choose the one that offers white label as part of a subscription plan.
• The software has to be easily customizable.
• The reports need to reflect your identity, be easily created and distributed.
• The projects should be accessible through links with no additional authorization but with full authorization control for different levels of access.

Another valuable tip: Use your own domain/subdomain for white label SEO. That way the services you are providing will look authentic and genuine with no traces back to the parent software.

SEO Softwares where white label comes with the subscription: SE Ranking, WebCEO, BrightLocal, NinjaCat. More software are listed here.

Comparison data in a website audit

I don’t know about you but the majority of my clients are expecting results the next day after signing the retainer for my services. Their web pages should be at the top of the SERPs right away which, of course, is not possible. So what else can agencies do to justify their bread and butter for a good number of months before their efforts start yielding tangible results? I show dynamics.

Advice #4: Make sure that the website audit tool you pick comes with comparative data and dynamics analysis

Website Audit is a great tool for showing progress especially if the tool you choose provides comparison data and analytics over time. I like to show clients the initial report with all sorts of errors in there and then provide the cut from a different period of time in the month from the first reporting, two months, and so forth. Look how many errors we fixed, I tell my clients, how many things are optimized, and how many improvements we’ve implemented.

SEO softwares that offer a comparison audit: MySiteAuditor, SEMRush, ScreamingFrog, SEO Report Card.

Reporting module in a website audit

I can’t stress enough how important it is for agencies to be able to slice and dice data they are working with for a client in a visually appealing and informative format. I would say that reporting is a tool for keeping clients happy while having a close eye on the ROI of your SEO progress and investments.

Advice #5: The website audit tool of your choice has to come with a robust and highly customizable reporting module

Of course, any website audit comes with a report — how else would you see all the errors and data obtained as a result of the scanning? However, not all come with options that are absolutely necessary for agencies:

• Reports should be available as an on-demand created a manual report or an automatically generated report delivered on set schedule to specific email addresses.
• Reports must be white-labeled and highly customizable in order to present them in the most authentic manner that reflects your brand and expertise.
• Make sure website audit reporting offers easy to use customization options, like the ability to choose a time period; drag and drop modules; notes and comments options.
• Reports must be ready-to-download in popular formats such as .pdf, .csv, .xls or .html.
• You should be able to email the reports and/or give access to the reports stored in the cloud.

SEO software that offer robust reporting within the website audit: SE Ranking, MySiteAuditor, SEMRush, Ahrefs.

A few words in conclusion

I know some people say that agencies or marketing teams like to use website auditing software that do just that, run a website audit.

But in my years of experience, I found it to be highly inefficient since there are so many tasks to do for a client, so many projects to handle. This contributes to the juggling between the interfaces, reports, and functionality that gets really annoying if not completely chaotic.

What I do is, use the SEO platform that comes with everything and has a very powerful website audit module that complies with all the requirements I outlined above. It saves me time and money. And I do use the one that comes with a white label, so everything I present to my clients is deeply branded and rooted into my business values.

Diana Ford is a digital marketing specialist with writing expertise that spans across online marketing, SEO, social media and blogging. She can be found on Twitter @diana_ford.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that the company’s chief product officer Chris Cox is leaving. Also leaving is WhatsApp VP Chris Daniels. With these executive departures, Will Cathcart, who previously led the Facebook app will now oversee WhatsApp, and Fidji Simo will move from her role overseeing Facebook’s video product to lead the Facebook app.

Why you should care

The departure of two top-level executives at Facebook further underscores the company is undergoing major, tumultuous changes in the wake of two straight years of numerous privacy, data, measurement and disinformation scandals. Whether the executive departures are connected to Facebook’s decision shift focus from public sharing to messaging as it works to connect the back ends of its messaging services is unknown.

In the announcement, Zuckerberg said Cox, who has been with Facebook since 2005, had discussed his exit with Zuckerberg for a few years now.

“He [Cox] is one of the most talented people I know and he has the potential to do anything he wants. But after 2016, we both realized we had too much important work to do to improve our products for society, and he stayed to help us work through these issues and help us chart a course for our family of apps going forward,” wrote Zuckerberg.

During the last year, Facebook has seen a steady stream of executives depart following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, including its chief security officer Alex Stamos, head of communications and public policy Elliot Schrage, WhatsApp founder and CEO Jan Koum and more recently, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.

Last May, Facebook underwent a major reorganization that placed Chris Cox in charge of Facebook’s family of apps team and Chris Daniels in charge of WhatsApp. Now, less than a year out from that reorg, both of these executives are out.

More on the news

• Zuckerberg said he does not plan on hiring anyone to fill Chris Cox’s chief product officer role.
• Fidji Simo, Will Cathcart, Adam Mosseri (who oversees Instagram ) and Stan Chudnovsky (who oversees Messenger) will report directly to Zuckerberg. Facebook’s chief marketing officer Antonio Lucio will report to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO.
• Javier Olivan, who has been overseeing all of the central product services for Facebook’s family of apps team, will now be in charge of identifying where apps should be more integrated.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.

As most of you know the aggregator market is a competitive one, with the popularity in comparison sites rising.

Comparison companies are some of the most well-known and commonly used brands today. With external marketing and advertising efforts at an all-time high, people turn to the world wide web for these services. So, who is championing the online market?

In an investigation we carried out, we found brands such as MoneySuperMarket and MoneySavingExpert are the kings of the organic market.

It’s hard to remember a world without comparison sites. It turns out that comparison websites have been around for quite some time. In fact, some of the most popular aggregator domain names have been available since 1999.

Yes 1999, two years after Google launched.

Think back to 1999 and how SEO has adapted. Now think about what websites have had to consider, keeping up with high customer demands, new functionality, site migrations, introduction to JavaScript, site speed, the list is endless.

The lifespan and longevity of these sites mean that over time issues start to build up, especially in the technical SEO department. Many of us SEOs are aware of the benefits that come with spending time on technical SEO issues — not to mention the great return on investment.

As comparison sites are so popular and relied upon by users, simple technical issues can result in a poor user experience damaging customer relationships. Or worse, users seeking assistance elsewhere.

Running comparison crawls have identified the common technical SEO issues across the market leaders. Find out what these issues are and how they will be harming their SEO — and see if they correlate with your own website.

1. Keyword cannibalization

When developing and creating new pages it is easy to forget about keyword cannibalization. Duplicating templates can easily leave metadata and headings unchanged, all confusing search engines on which page to rank for that keyword.

Here is an example from GoCompare.

The page on the left has the cannibalizing first heading. This is because the page’s h1 is situated in the top banner. This should target the long-tail opportunity “how to make your own electricity at home” which has been placed in an h2 tag directly under the banner.

The best course of action here would be to tweak the template, removing the banner and placing the call to action in the article body and placing the targeted keyword in a first heading tag.

Comparison sites are prime candidates for keyword cannibalization with the duplication of templates, services, and offers which results in cannibalization issues sitewide.

The fix

Run a crawl of your domain, gathering all the duplicated first headings tags, you can use tools such as Sitebulb for this. Decipher between which is the original page and which is the duplicate, then gather your keyword data to find a better keyword alternative for that duplicate page.

Top tip

Talk to your SEO expert when creating new pages, they will be able to provide recommendations on URL structure, first headings, and titles. It is worth having an SEO at the start of the planning process when rolling out new pages.

2. Internal redirects

Numerous changes can result in internal redirects, primary causes are redundant pages, upgrades to a site’s functionality, and furthermore, the dreaded site migration.

When Google urged sites to accelerate to HTTPs in January 2017, with the ideal methodology to 301 redirect HTTP pages to HTTPs, it’s painful to think about the mass number of internal redirects.

Here’s an example.

Comparison sites specifically need to be aware of this. Just like ecommerce sites, products and services become unavailable. The normal behavior seems to be to then to redirect that product either to an alternative page or, in most cases, back to the parent directory.

This can then cause internal redirects across the site that need immediate attention.

The fix

To tackle this issue, gather all the internal redirected URLs from your crawler.

Once you’ve done this find the link on the parent page by inspecting the page on Google Developer tools.

Find where the link is and recommend to your development team that it changes the href attribute target within the link anchor to the final destination of the redirect.

3. Cleaning up the sitemap

With loads of changes happening across aggregator sites all the time, it is likely that the sitemap gets neglected.

However, it’s imperative you don’t allow this to happen! Search engines such as Google might ignore sitemaps that return “invalid” URLs.

Here’s an example.

Usually, a site’s 400/500 status code pages are on the development teams’ radar to fix. However, it isn’t always best practice as that these pages still sit in the sitemap. As they might be set live, orphaned and no indexed, or redirected elsewhere, that leaves some less severe issues within the Sitemap file.

Aggregators currently have to deal with sites changing product ranges, releasing new and, even, discontinuing services on a regular basis. New pages, therefore, have to be set up, redirects are then applied and sometimes issues are missed.

The fix

First, you need to identify errors within the sitemap. Search Console is perfect for this. Go to the coverage section, and filter with the drop down. Select your sitemaps with “Filter to Sitemaps” to inspect the errors that are within these.

If your sitemap has 400 or 500 status code pages, then this is more of a priority, if it has the odd redirect or canonical issue, focus on sorting these out first.

Top tip

Check your sitemap weekly or even more frequently. It is also a great way of checking your broken pages across the site.

4. Subdomains are causing index bloat

Behind any great comparison site is a quotation functionality. This allows users to place personal information about a quote and being able to revisit previously saved data kind of like a shopping cart on most ecommerce websites.

However, these are usually hosted on subdomains and can get indexed, which you don’t really want. These are mostly thin content pages, a useless page in Google index equaling index bloat.

Here’s an example.

The fix

The solution is to add the “noindex” meta attribute to the quotation domains to stop them from being indexed. You can also include the subdomains in your robots.txt file to stop them from being crawled. Just make sure they aren’t in the search engines’ index before you place them in the file as they won’t drop out of the SERPs.

5. Spreading link equity to irrelevant pages

Internal linking is important. However, passing link equity thinly across pages can cause a loss in value. Think of a pyramid, and how the homepage spreads equity to the directory and then down to the subdirectories through keyword targeted anchor text.

These pages where equity is passed should hold the value and only link out to relevant pages that might be of relevance.

As comparison sites target a range of products and opportunities it is important to include them within the site architecture, but not spread the equity thinly.

How do we do this?

1. Consider the architecture of your site. For example:

“Fixed rate mortgages” has different yearly offerings, most sites sit these under a mortgage subdirectory, but this could easily have its own directory. This would benefit the site architecture as it lowers the click depth for those important pages and stops the thin spread of equity.

2. Only link to what is relevant.

Let’s take the below example. The targeted keyword here is “bad credit mortgages.” Money.co.uk then supplies a load of internal links at the bottom of the page that aren’t relevant to the keyword intent. Therefore, the equity is spread to these pages resulting in the page losing value.

The fix

Review the internal linking structure. You can do this by running pages through Screaming Frog, which identifies pages that have a click depth greater than two and evaluates the outgoing links. If there are a lot, this could be a good indicator that pages might be spreading the equity thinly. Manually evaluate the pages to find there the links are going to and remove any that might be irrelevant spreading equity unnecessarily.

6. Orphaned pages

Following on from the above point, pages that are orphaned, or poorly linked to, will receive low equity. Comparison sites are prime candidates for this.

MoneySuperMarket has several orphaned pages, especially located in the blog section of the site.

The fix

Use Sitebulb to crawl the site and discover orphaned pages. Spend time evaluating these, it might be that these pages should be orphaned. However, if they are present in the sitemap that indicates either one of two problems given below.

• The pages should be linked to through the internal architecture
  or
• The page shouldn’t be indexable or in the sitemap

If the pages are redundant, make them “no indexable.” However, if they should be linked to, evaluate your site’s internal architecture to work out a perfect linking strategy for these pages.

Top tip

It is very easy for blog posts to get orphaned, using methods such as topic clustering can help benefit your content marketing efforts while making sure your pages aren’t being orphaned.

Last ditch tips

A lot of these issues occur across a range of different sites and many sectors, as comparison sites undergo a lot of changes and development work with a vast product range and loads to aggregate. It is very hard to keep up-to-date with SEO tech issues.

Be vigilant and delegate resources sensibly. SEO tech issues shouldn’t be ignored, actively monitor and run crawls and checks after any site development work has been rolled out, this can save your organic performance and keep your technical SEO game strong.

Tom Wilkinson is Search & Data Lead at Zazzle Media.

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Marketers of the weight loss program from WW — the company previously known as Weight Watchers — can now pitch a new angle: voice-managed dieting.

The company launched an Alexa skill and a Google Home Action that are integrated with the wellness program’s software applications to enable customers to follow their diet plans, via their smart speakers.

Easier management. WW wants to “meet members where they are,” said WW VP of Product Management Nic Chikhani. Voice management is part of WW’s brand and digital transformation, he said, and it builds on the company’s research indicating that, as one might expect, the easier it is to follow a diet, the more likely members will do so.

Previously, he said, WW launched a Google Home Action, but it wasn’t integrated with WW’s new Wellow food and weight tracking application or with a custom search and discovery API from French startup Algolia. Wellow, which handles natural language queries, also syncs with a member’s daily record, available through the company’s web site and mobile app.

Understanding “smart points.” Now, a WW subscriber can verbally ask their Google Home or Amazon smart speaker  questions such as:

• How many “smart points” in a banana?
• How many points do I have left for today?
• What are some food choices for dinner, with the points I have left for today?

While a general search engine like Google could find the number of calories in, say, a banana, Chikhani pointed out that Google doesn’t really understand “smart points” or WW’s program. “Smart points” are WW’s measurement of food value, since 100 calories from a cookie is not nutritionally the same as 100 calories from a piece of fruit.

At some point, he said, WW is intending to expand Wellow’s intelligence, such as offering a dinner recipe based on smart points remaining for a given user in that day.

Why you should care. As intelligent voice interfaces like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are moving past the “gee whiz” phase, brands are beginning to understand the ways in which voice interaction might improve their product or service.

In WW’s case, the introduction of voice management could solve an ongoing hurdle for its customers: the work involved in maintaining a diet and exercise routine. If the interaction works smoothly, and management becomes as easy as conversation, the greater accessibility could make it easier for the company’s marketers to convince prospective customers.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

The ecommerce market is highly competitive, with thousands of small players striving to keep up with the giants like Amazon and eBay.

Still, for both leaders and followers, the web store UX stays the factor that defines who wins customers’ hearts (and purses) and who is to leave the stage.

UX stays a top priority in ecommerce as the majority of shoppers prefer convenience to a nifty look. According to Shopify, 80 percent of users admit that a poor search experience can make them leave a web store. So, a thought-out catalog navigation system is one of the crucial factors of a web store’s success.

Why faceted navigation?

Faceted search is probably the most convenient search system to date. It relies on sets of terms structured by relation (aka facets). Users mix and match options (price, color, fabric, brand, and more) to progressively narrow down the search results list until they get a short selection of relevant picks. 

Apart from being convenient, the faceted search system can tell shoppers more about the products they are looking for. For example, amateur hikers looking for their first waterproof jackets will be surprised to see a variety of membrane types.

How to use faceted navigation correctly? 

Like any tool, faceted navigation should be used carefully if you want to get the most of it and cause no harm to your business. So how to adjust it right? Which and how many facets to use? How to arrange them?

These six principles will help you find the answers.

1. Be relevant

For sure, facets should include only the options that shoppers bear in mind when they open a particular category. For example, the shampoo section may include hair type, hair concern, and brand. The only way to make the list of facets complete is to listen carefully to your customers.

Your search logs contain commonly search keywords, and even the messages that customers leave to the sales and support teams can give you more information about the search criteria of your target shoppers. To start, you can check the thematic filters that competitors and industry leaders use.

2. Be brief

Too few facets are not enough to narrow down the search results’ list but too many options can confuse customers. How to provide an optimal number of filters? Some web stores create groups of facets that can be collapsed/expanded and add a scrollbar within each group. Consider the example of Lookfanstastic.

3. Be convenient

Introduce a block with the selected filters and breadcrumbs. Use bold formatting to remind customers that their search results are limited by the chosen options. And don’t forget about the “Clear all” button to let shoppers quickly start the search from the beginning. One more tip to prevent generating the “No results found” pages (which is harmful to both CX and SEO) is to use AJAX to dynamically update the number of matches next to each facet.

4. Be adaptable

Use diverse types of facets: Links, sliders, checkboxes, drop-down lists, and pop-ups.

• Using links is the most popular option to feature categories and qualitative product attributes.
• Adjustable sliders allow customers to limit a preferred range (For example, a range of prices, stars, or item dimensions.)
• If you want to allow matching based on a combination of options (say, the item should be blue and S-sized), use checkboxes. Remember to allow selection of checkboxes by clicking on their labels (the text next to a checkbox) as it’s usually more convenient for the user.
• If product attributes are few and mutually exclusive, like the types of hotel rooms, the best choices are drop-downs and radio-buttons.
• Finally, if you see that the list of must-have facets is getting too long, divide them into groups and use pop-ups to save space on the catalog page.

5. Combine search options wisely

There are three key types of facets combinations: Conditional (and), cumulative (or), and mutually exclusive. So, there are three rules for mixing facets that can help you show the faceted search results conveniently for shoppers.

• Block empty pages if you use “and” matching. “And” matching makes the web store deliver only the products that satisfy all the selected options (say, blue color and size S). As a result, many combinations will lead to “No match” (say, you have only red items in the S size) and should be blocked for both CX and SEO reasons.
• Group options if you use “or” matching. “Or” matching implies that shoppers never get an empty results page whichever combination of options they select. A study by Matthew Henry shows that splitting facets into two or more smaller groups can have a good effect on the number of pages and hence web store optimization.
• Use radio buttons for mutually exclusive options to cut the number of the results pages. For example, Amazon uses radio buttons for rating, stock availability, and price range.

6. Find your mix

There’s no golden rule in the faceted navigation design. The most commonly used filters include checkboxes and links for major attributes brand, size, type, a price slider, customer rating, and availability. As a good example, you can consider how New Look combines pop-ups, checkboxes, adjustable prices, and radio buttons.

The six tips above regard only customer convenience. Another major concern is SEO. Let’s see what you can do to make sure that faceted navigation doesn’t harm your search ranking.

How to apply faceted navigation without damaging SEO?

Though faceted navigation considerably improves the shopping experience, its implementation is a headache for SEO specialists. Faceted navigation can:

• Generate multiple duplicate or near-duplicate pages.
• Let search engines index many similar pages making the web store look full of useless content.
• Eat up crawl budget, the number of URLs a crawler can and wants to crawl.

These problems derive from the way faceted navigation works. When a shopper selects a particular combination of options, the web store delivers the results page. So the numbers of products, options, and possible combinations altogether influence the total quantity of the results pages a shopper can see. All the potential results pages contain pretty much the same information and look almost identical for a crawler. That is why a sincere attempt to deliver relevant information to a customer can make the website look suspicious to search engines.

However, there are two countermeasures that can help you tackle the problem.

1. Use canonical tags (rel=”canonical”) to show search engines which page is the key one and which are its duplicates not deserving authority or link equity.

2. Apply “noindex” and “nofollow” tags to let search engines discover the page and follow the crawling instructions regarding the page per se and the links on it. There are two ways to get the job done.

a. You can use a special meta tag in the <head> section of the page:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”/>

This directive applies to all crawlers.

b. You can instruct crawlers to skip a particular URL using the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header.

X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Both options above work only if the page is not blocked in robots.txt. By applying any of them, you reduce the number of indexable pages. Simply put, users don’t see these pages in Google search results and you reduce the amount of duplicate content.

Afterword

Though faceted navigation is a must-have for every competitive web store, it requires time and effort to bring both convenience for customers and good positions in SERP ranking. As always, the amount of investment depends on the scale of the web store. While smaller players can go with out-of-the-box extensions, medium and large companies more often turn to custom ecommerce development services to get an ideal solution in their particular case.

Maria Marinina is a Digital Marketing Manager at Iflexion.

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Facebook announced Wednesday it is replacing its ad relevance score with three new “more granular” metrics. It will also be removing six additional ad metrics, replacing them with what it calls “more actionable” measurements.

Goodbye relevance score. Facebook’s relevance score offered advertisers insight into how relevant an ad may be to the audience it targeted. The relevance score was reported as single metric, but starting Wednesday, Facebook will begin rolling out three new metrics to replace the relevance score. The single score will no longer be available after April 30.

Three new relevancy metrics. The new metrics are quality ranking, engagement rate ranking and conversion rate ranking.

The quality ranking metric will measure an ad’s perceived quality compared to ads competing for the same target audience.

The engagement rate metric will work the same way, showing an ad’s expected engagement rate compared to ads competing for the same audience.

The conversion rate ranking shows an ad’s expected conversion rates when compared to ads with the same optimization goals and audience.

As with the previous relevance score, these new metrics are not factored into an ad’s performance in the auction, but instead provide insights into how changes to creative assets, audience targeting or post-click experience may impact ad performance.

Other metrics sunsetting. In addition to the relevance score, Facebook is shuttering six other ad metrics next month.

• Offers Saved
• Cost Per Offers Saved
• Messaging Replies
• Cost Per Messaging Replies
• Mobile App Purchase ROAS
• Web Purchase ROAS

Facebook said it regularly updates its metric offerings, and removes any that are no longer being used, replacing them with more effective measurement tools.

New metrics to replace those being shuttered. Facebook is introducing new metrics that will aggregate data from the shuttered metrics.

“We are introducing Posts Saved metric so business can see how many people saved their ads,” wrote Facebook, “Offer ads will be counted in the new Posts Saved metric, so we’re removing the offers saved metric.”

The Message Replies and Cost Per Messaging Replies metrics are being replaced with new Messaging Connections and Messaging Conversations Started metrics.

“We heard feedback that Messaging Replies were not as valuable because marketers are more interested in the NEW conversions that began with people who had never messaged with their business before OR messaging conversations that started after a period of inactivity,” wrote Facebook on the Help Center page. The company says the new Messaging Connections metric will only measure new conversations.

The mobile and web purchase ROAS will now be wrapped into one consolidated metric showing ROAS across all channels.

Why you should care. Facebook’s relevance metric updates should offer advertisers more nuanced insights into predicted performance and where to focus optimization efforts. If you are using any of the other metrics in you’re reporting, plan to update those reports in the coming month.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.

Look around you, people are either watching vlogs and video interviews or enjoying branded video content and live stream recordings. This goes to imply that video marketing is at its peak as people are engaging with video content more than ever before.

Talking about video marketing, one cannot help but mention YouTube, the platform synonymous with it. Being a video marketer, YouTube SEO needs to be at the top of your priority list.

You might be uploading stellar videos on a daily basis, but nothing matters if your videos don’t manage to get seen. After all, with 400 hours of video content being uploaded every minute, how do you ensure yours stands out and attracts viewers?

Don’t let your YouTube marketing efforts go waste. Here are eight effective ways to ensure your videos get ranked highly on YouTube and attract views.

1. Use relevant keywords

Be it Google or YouTube SEO, the first and foremost step is conducting keyword research. Start with making a list of potential keywords related to your video, it can be anything that people will use that can direct them to the video.

Next, use YouTube’s autocomplete feature to identify the popular keywords people use to search. You will be met with long-tail keyword suggestions here which prove to be a lot more accurate than the generic short-tail ones.

Apart from manually searching for keywords, you can also use tools such as TubeBuddy and vidIQ to find the best keywords and tags to use.

2. Optimize the title, description, and tags

When you are browsing videos, the first element that catches your eye is the video title, isn’t it? Not only should the video title be compelling and interesting, but it should also contain the target keyword/s. The same applies to the video description and tags that best attribute your video.

YouTube video descriptions are highly underrated. Marketers don’t realize that this space provides context and influences ranking too. While you have 5000 characters to play with, YouTube just displays the first 157 characters. So use this space wisely, infused with keywords and appropriate call-to-action words.

Another important SEO element is adding relevant tags which make your video easily discoverable.

3. Create engaging videos

Ultimately, people will watch your videos and will keep coming back for more if you upload fresh, engaging and informative content which happens to be an important ranking signal to YouTube’s algorithm.

The more compelling your videos are, the higher is the audience retention which automatically increases your chances of showing up under YouTube’s search suggestions.

In addition to the content, it is important to pay heed to the production quality too. For example, poorly lit and inaudible videos will certainly not entice viewers. So, invest efforts in enhancing the production quality of your video in order to drive views.

4. Encourage subscriptions

Managing a YouTube channel that barely has subscribers and viewers is as good as talking to a wall. Don’t stop at just uploading a video, make it work for you by reaching your target audience and encouraging them to engage with your channel and subscribe to it.

Building a strong subscriber base increases your chances of being ranked highly on YouTube because it goes to show that you have an engaged community which is a huge plus point.

Now, how do you get people to subscribe? Start with asking for it. Make it a practice to insert this call-to-action at the end of every video and include it in the video description. You must also encourage subscriptions outside of YouTube by adding a widget on your website or asking your followers to subscribe on your Facebook or Twitter pages.

5. Add compelling thumbnails

If you have been using YouTube’s auto-generated video still as the thumbnail, you need to stop being lazy and change your ways.

The thumbnail is the first visual reference your audiences get of your video which influences their decision to view it. So it needs to be compelling enough to grab their attention. Instead of settling for an auto-generated still, why not use customized thumbnails which are far more appealing?

It is a good idea to show the close-ups of human faces to strike emotional connect and the appropriate amount of text to make it click-worthy. You can also add your brand logo but make sure it doesn’t overshadow the thumbnail, given the restricted space.

6. Use the closed caption feature

You might have come across “CC” while watching videos on YouTube. CC stands for closed captions, an important YouTube SEO tool.

Closed Captions (CC) refers to the text overlay or transcription of the video. Using closed captions in videos makes it appeal to a wider audience and lets your viewers watch your video with ease irrespective of their surroundings. This leads to higher user engagement in the form of likes, comments, shares, and subscribers.

Discovery Digital Networks conducted a study and found an overall increase of 7.32 percentage in views for captioned videos.

While YouTube generates auto-captions, you rather add closed captions for search engines to accurately index. This impacts your SEO ranking.

7. Name files appropriately

It’s easy to overlook this step but the fact is that naming your video file appropriately is more important than you think. Instead of going ahead with “video_final.mp4” or “brand_filmFINAL.avi,” it is important to rename the video to include the keywords as it is an indicator to search engines about what your video file is about.

8. Be consistent

To improve your rankings and build an engaged community, you must be consistent with uploads. You need to be committed to churning out unique and relevant video content and stay at the top of your game because that is the only way you can improve engagement which in turn boosts search rankings.

Just like any other social media platform, maintain a content calendar for YouTube and ensure you reward your community with videos on a regular basis.

For more on getting videos to rank, also check out our guide on YouTube optimization. Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Marcus is the founder of Brew Interactive, an inbound digital marketing agency that specializes in marketing to the affluent audience through digital. He is also the author of the highly raved book, Social Payoff.

Related reading

When it comes to being visible online, video content is increasingly proving its worth as a way to grab attention and – crucially – to engage meaningfully with internet users. Luke Richards takes a look at the rise of video, alternatives to YouTube, social and what it all means for search marketers.

Voice search and image search are increasingly becoming more prominent in our society. Wajid Ali from Forward3D investigates how far the technology has advanced and how it will be used in the future.

In an increasingly competitive and regulated world, how to market an ICO will be the difference between success and failure.

Video marketing has been getting huge for a few years now. Videos allow companies to reach a wider audience – thanks to the popularity of powerful video marketing platforms – and to increase their sales and conversions. But how easy it is to really see ROI from your video marketing campaigns?

If you work in any technology-based company or sector, you know things are always changing. What was standard practice and trendy and new one day or week becomes outdated and ineffective the next. As SEO trends constantly come and go, one simply can’t afford to not change. It is a company’s flexibility and ability to accept and support constant change that often succeeds.

If you’re interested in entering the technology field or you’re returning to the industry after a long break, here are some of the old online trends to avoid. You’ll notice these trends were once the accepted but have since grown stale and have fallen by the wayside:

Music Playing Website

As if hold music or elevator music wasn’t bearable, there was a time when companies welcomed visitors to their website with this awful, outdated music. This old online trend quickly became a no-no as website visitors quickly left a site.

“Click Here!” Linked Buttons

These forms of old online trends are still heavily used even though they aren’t as effective as other types of linked text. Web users now are in a hurry and want context to what kind of website a text link will take them to. The generic “click here” doesn’t tell the busy web user what the linked page is about and whether they would benefit by clicking through to it.

Long Sales Letters

There are multiple reasons the long sales letters disappeared. The largest two reasons being the fact that print is now largely out of date, being replaced with everything digitally, and the other being the short patience and attention spans of busy consumers who don’t want to read long text.

Buying Links

While a good link building campaign still has value today, the link building process has changed. The old online trend of buying links was common practice, but that technique of getting links is a serious no-no that violates SEO ethics and best practice today. Before buying links was a thing, anyone could link to whatever and however many of external pages as they liked. This caught the attention of Google, the largest search engine who put a stop to this form of link spamming with its Penguin algorithm. Since then it’s become important to consider where you’re linking to and the authority of that site.Linking to quality sites gains credibility for your site as well as the trust of Google and web users. Instead of buying links, it is acceptable to “trade” for links via guest posting and blogging outreach.

Yellow Page Advertising

Back in the day, the “Yellow Pages,” or phone book was delivered to each home. It contained a large, local business directory. If you needed a company’s phone number, hours, location or briefly see what they specialized in, you would look it up in the “Yellow Pages.” In addition to basic business information, some businesses would grab reader’s attention through sprinkling ads throughout the phone book. These old online trends was a good idea then. Now, however, with the widespread use and accessibility of the computer and Internet and smartphones, people now have immediate access to the same vital business information on the go.

Keyword Stuffing

In the past, SEO specialists and programmers were overzealous in their use of keywords. The use of keywords in a piece of content made it hard to read and understand. This caught the eye of Google who implemented the Panda algorithm to put a stop to the practice. The use of keywords in online content is still important today, but, now inserting an amount of keywords exceeding 3% of the content is looked down upon.

Artsy and Hard to Read Fonts

With all the websites out there, people use to use a variety of ridiculous fonts such as comic sans and papyrus to show the unique style and personality of the brand. However, these fonts were also distracting and

hard to read. Now, its more professional and credible to use an easy to read font such as a Times New Roman or Calibri and avoid the old online trend of overly artsy fonts.

Phony Stock Photos

While numerous organizations and companies still use stock photos on their websites and printed collateral, the stock photos of today are vastly better than their predecessors. The use of staged, grainy obviously noticeable stock photos are unpopular as these old online trends lower a brand’s credible perception.

Distracting Websites

Back in the day an overly busy website was seen as a way to impress the website visitor, make one’s website memorable in the sea of millions of other websites. Little did developers know how distracting and confusing these old online trends made their website. Today, developers are more focused on the user’s experience. This has resulted in an easy-to navigate, simplistic, yet creative looking websites.

Print Media

Print media has seen a similar to the demise of the “Yellow Pages” and phone book advertising. While print media is till widely used in advertising and in journalism, many consumers access information online via the internet on their smartphones. With the popularity of online media, many advertisers and news outlets have developed digital copies of their content.

Whether you’re an “old school” SEOer who has resisted changing with the times or you’re a new SEO specialist, avoid these common old online trends. They will keep you living in the “dark ages” and prevent you from seeing results in your company’s SEO strategies and campaigns.

If you’re a business owner and aren’t familiar with SEO and its current best practices, contact the specialists at SEO.com. We are a full-service internet marketing firm helping businesses both large and small with all aspects of their online presence.  Our staff has been in the industry for numerous years and know the current SEO online trends.  Contact us today to learn how we can help update your SEO strategy to be in alignment with current online trends.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our 2019 Martech Salary Survey. We’re analyzing the compensation data now, and we’ll release the full results at the MarTech conference in San Jose in just a few weeks. (There’s still time left to snag a ticket — it’s a packed agenda you won’t want to miss.)

But as an advance look, I want to share with you the data we collected about marketing technology and operations roles and responsibilities. (Click on the graphic above for a full-screen — i.e., readable — view of the chart.) Having run this survey two years in a row — here’s the data from last year — we can see how these roles are evolving longitudinally over time.

For our analysis, we filtered the data down to only those respondents who reported their role as primarily marketing technology, marketing operations, or combined marketing operations and technology management. We excluded respondents who identified as a “digital” role instead — even though many have martech responsibilities — to focus on dedicated marketing tech and ops positions.

For 2018, n=432 respondents were qualified by these criteria. For 2019, n=371. The survey was global, although the majority of respondents were from the US.

Top 5 marketing technology and operations responsibilities

One of the first things that jumps out from the year-over-year data is the consistency of the top five responsibilities. From martech staff and managers up to more senior directors and VPs, these are the core functions that these roles deliver to the organization:

1. Research and recommend new marketing technology products.
2. Operate marketing technology products as an administrator.
3. Train and support marketing staff on using marketing technology products.
4. Integrate marketing technology products with each other.
5. Monitor data quality within marketing technology products.

If you’re looking for a brief marketing technologist job description, that’s a pretty good one.

You can actually map these top five martech responsibilities across the complete grid of the 5 Forces of Marketing Technology & Operations:

• CENTRALIZE + AUTOMATE: Operate marketing technology.
• DECENTRALIZE + AUTOMATE: Integrate marketing technology products.
• CENTRALIZE + HUMANIZE: Train and support marketing staff on marketing technology.
• DECENTRALIZE + HUMANIZE: Monitor data quality.
• CHANGE: Research and recommend new marketing technology.

While the foundation of marketing technology management is centralizing technology and data — the “operating” in marketing operations — real success in these roles is often achieved through connecting to the rest of this grid.

Training and supporting marketing staff on martech is key to modern marketing enablement. Integrating martech that may be decentralized across marketing helps more teams use more specialized tools without being siloed. Monitoring data quality looks for anomalies in customer experiences and empowers front-line staff to identify and fix erroneous information.

Researching and recommending new marketing technologies is a key element of embracing continuous change.

Changes and gaps in martech responsibilities

As we go further down the list, there were a couple of significant drops in the frequency of other martech responsibilities. Participants in this year’s survey were a little less likely to:

• Perform technical reviews of marketing technology products (-11%)
• Identify and sundown outdated or unused marketing technology products (-10%)

Reduced technical reviews may be a function of the maturing of martech products. They’re more polished. Many have been around long enough now to have established track records. More of them are certified partners in the ecosystems of major martech platforms, which can simplify their integration and provide some assurance of their quality and interoperability.

The 10% drop in identifying and sundowning outdated or unused martech isn’t huge. But at 47%, less than half of marketing technologists reported this as one of their job responsibilities. Maybe in the scheme of ever expanding martech stacks this isn’t a top priority. After all, many of these tools are cheap or free. But still, good marketing stack hygiene feels like it should be higher on the list.

But what really concerns me are the two responsibilities highlighted in orange below:

It is disappointing that, for the second year in a row, performing data privacy and compliance reviews and performing security reviews both remained at the bottom of the list of martech responsibilities — and even dropped a few percentage points.

Given the current environment, where privacy regulations and data security breaches present increasing risks to brands — both financially and reputationally — it seems imprudent for these responsibilities to be “not my job” in marketing technology and operations.

I’m willing to acknowledge the excuse that perhaps an IT or security team outside of marketing operations carries the mantle of governing privacy and security. It’s wise to have a dedicated security expert conduct reviews. But even when that’s true — and I believe IT should provide expertise and oversight here — it does not absolve marketing technologists of their duty to manage their stacks with these factors in mind too.

In the marketing stack, security should be everyone’s job.

Differences between junior and senior martech responsibilities

This year, we also segmented the martech job responsibilities data into two groups:

• Junior Roles: Staff and Managers
• Senior Roles: Directors, Senior Directors, VPs, and C-Levels

This is how they compare with each other (click on the graphic below for a full-screen version that highlights the delta of significant differences):

The differences aren’t surprising, although it is reassuring to see that several strategic martech responsibilities that had lower averages overall were ranked significantly higher among senior martech leaders. Senior roles are much more likely — 37% to 42% more likely — to:

• Pay for marketing technology products from a budget, partially or fully (71%)
• Negotiate business terms for purchasing marketing technology products (68%)
• Approve or veto purchase of marketing technology products (68%)

With more than 2/3 of these senior-level martech positions given the above authority, we can add these three responsibilities to the core job description of such roles. The majority of senior martech leaders also own these responsibilities:

• Architect the overall marketing stack of all marketing technology products (69%)
• Monitor the performance and other SLAs of marketing technology products (56%)
• Integrate marketing technology products with non-marketing systems (58%)
• Perform technical reviews of marketing technology products (56%)
• Identify and sundown outdated or unused marketing technology products (59%)
• Identify and consolidate multiple instances of same or similar marketing technology products (56%)

It’s also a bit encouraging to see that 44% of senior martech leaders perform data privacy and compliance reviews — up 9% from the overall average of 36%. But it should be a responsibility of the majority of these roles. And still only 27% perform security reviews.

As a profession, we’ve got work to do on privacy, compliance, and security.

Customizing martech without tears code

This year’s data also revealed a slight drop, from 43% to 35%, of participants reporting that they customize martech products with software development.

It could be that the out-of-the-box capabilities of martech products, particularly with all the off-the-shelf choices available inside marketing platform ecosystems, offered by certified third-party developers, have reduced the need for homegrown martech software.

Another factor may be that the democratization of marketing technology is proceeding apace, with a growing array of tools for citizen development and citizen integrators. See: Now every marketer is an app developer — even if they don’t know it. Marketers are tailoring marketing technology for their specific workflows and customer experiences, but they’re not explicitly doing “software development” with programming languages like Python or Javascript.

As we discussed in the 3 trends driving the Second Golden Age of Martech, we’re moving beyond a strict “build vs. buy” dichotomy to a world of custom apps & ops built on common platform foundations.

One thing is clear from this year’s data. Marketing technology management continues to mature as a profession, with increasingly well-defined roles and responsibilities.

P.S. If you’re working in or leading marketing technology management, one more thing is for sure: the MarTech conference is for you. Come join us April 3-5 in San Jose to hear about vendor-agnostic martech leadership strategies from brands such as Aetna, Autodesk, Cisco Meraki, Docker, The New York Times, Netflix, Nordstrom, NPR, Sub-Zero, Zillow, and more.

Get your ticket now.

This content was originally published on Chiefmartec.com

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Scott Brinker is the conference chair of the MarTech® Conference, a vendor-agnostic marketing technology conference and trade show series produced by MarTech Today’s parent company, Third Door Media. The MarTech event grew out of Brinker’s blog, chiefmartec.com, which has chronicled the rise of marketing technology and its changing marketing strategy, management and culture since 2008. In addition to his work on MarTech, Scott serves as the VP platform ecosystem at HubSpot. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of ion interactive.

If there’s one thing that’s universally accepted, it’s that the results of SEO are unpredictable.

However, as more investment is made into the channel, we’re being put under increasing pressure to be performance-driven (and show the value we can drive “up front”) in the same way, our paid counterparts have been for some time.

Invariably, this means setting targets and being held accountable for whether we hit them or not. But this shouldn’t be an issue and in fact, I believe it’s completely possible, with the right caveats and education, for SEO to become a results-led channel. And ultimately, if we’re going to continue to grow in popularity (and see further investment), we need to be.

Measure the right things

For a long time, SEOs have talked about “improving keyword rankings”, with the coveted number one spot on a high traffic term, being the primary focus for many marketers. In 2019, however, this approach is myopic. I’m not ruling out rankings entirely, they still have value, but promoting the idea that a small, well-backed site, can outperform a titan like Amazon, Compare The Market, or RightMove for a competitive term, is unrealistic. Moreover, the resources required to do this could be better spent driving change elsewhere and this is why it’s important to measure the right things.

For forecasts, I typically look at three metrics: traffic, conversions, and revenue, with the former holding the most importance.

My reasoning – While you may receive a significant amount of new traffic from a high-value term, but (more often than not), the traffic will not be as qualified, lowering the “true value”. Used as a vehicle to drive wider site change, SEO. However, it should build results across your businesses search landscape as a whole and this can only really be measured through increased traffic (and from this, we can work out conversion and revenue increases).

But traffic isn’t a “clean” metric either and can be influenced through changes in the market, wider media activity, competitors, or even the weather. For this reason, many look to derive a “growth factor” or absolute increase figure from keyword gains, basing the output of expected traffic from changes in position (and the clicks received from this). This is an approach we’ll discuss shortly and certainly can give an indication of any potential performance gains, but its reliance on keyword data still provides a few flaws.

Put this into context

A key point to make with any forecast is that it is a projection, based on factors that we believe we can predict with varying degrees of certainty. Apple cannot provide an exact figure to shareholders, for the total number of new iPhones they will sell; nor can Disney foresee the specific number of tickets the next Star Wars film will sell. This context is important, given the unpredictable nature of search marketing.

I think we often lose ourselves in trying too hard to be accurate, that we miss the point of a forecast altogether, it’s an indication, not a definitive statement of growth that could be achieved, linked to the investment that is made. So it’s perfectly fine to caveat as such and represent any figures as non-binding. I personally use a “percentage certainty” score depending on my experience of rolling out specific activities (and their impact), which is often well received.

Importantly and as a key takeaway for this section, you need to put your data into perspective.

If you’re required to project the impact of a minor change perhaps to help and IT prioritize their development queue it may be more realistic to provide a percentage range instead of a specific number. So long as the methodology and your explanation of how this could come to be are logical and data-driven. Ultimately, a forecast is only as reliable as the data and the experiences of the person making it.

Projecting growth (or not)

In terms of working out the specific figures, each SEO has their own methodology, but broadly speaking, these can be grouped into three:

1. “Experience-based gut feel”

This kind of forecast draws on the expertise of the individual and can be a useful, “quick and simple” guideline for making snap decisions. The reliability of the projection is intrinsically linked to the knowledge of the person making it and shouldn’t be utilized in any official capacity or to make business-critical decisions. But this is not to say that this type of prediction isn’t valuable, it just depends on the use case and context the forecast is being made under.

2. “Ranking-focused click curves”

This uses ranking data to project an increase in keyword position over time (and the value from this). In my experience, many “off the shelf” forecasting tools use this method, which relies on modeling traffic based on click-through rates from ranking positions. More advanced studies might include competition or seasonality factors (perhaps from Google’s Keyword Planner) and may provide the output as either a total growth figure or shown by month using a compound growth rate or more complex increase curve.

3. “Traffic-based growth modeling”

This is, in my view, the most accurate way to forecast and frequently uses historic traffic data to predict the impact of not carrying out SEO activity, taking the market impact, seasonal changes, and other factors into account, and estimating projected increases from this. It’s often incredibly difficult to perfect and typically requires the help of a data scientist. But, if executed correctly, this methodology can provide a good representation of the impact your proposed activity can make.

A side note: In many scenarios, you may expect to see an increase in traffic predicted over your time period. However, SEO takes time and doesn’t often conform to the pre-set timelines of a campaign or contract. As such, it may be that a true forecast may not show immediate growth or even (if your site is following a downward trajectory) no increase at all.

The key takeaway here is that without the activity, you may be in a much worse place that you are predicted, and no growth doesn’t necessarily mean no value.

However, at their heart, each of the above methods still requires an expert to assess the types of changes you are intending to make and their impact. This must be someone with enough experience of the channel to understand how the different projects will move the needle, in the context of your site’s situation.

There’s no “official view” of how search activities will impact your performance and opinions may differ between experts. Moreover, the value of each work-stream will likely change by industry (or even by the query) and this is an important context to keep in mind when discussing targets and key performance indicators.

Evaluate objectively

So far, we’ve discussed context, measurement, and methodology.

As such, in this whistle-stop tour of forecasting, it would be a missing piece not to touch on evaluating performance and targets. As I mentioned in the last section, SEO takes time and we’ve already established that it’s highly unpredictable. So, holding it to the same degree of accountability as other channels may be unhelpful. Importantly, performance needs to be a two-way and open conversation between your expert and your business (as it’s impacted by many different factors); in my experience, continuing with this approach throughout the completion of a strategy and into the evaluation process is the best way ensure you’re driving the most value from the channel.

There’s no official blueprint or road-map to SEO success and it’s highly likely you’ll try things that do not work and others that exceed expectations. Not every fluctuation in traffic or missed target (or over-achievement) for that matter is due to performance and your expert should be able to explain why this is the case. Deviations do not always mean the model is off either; remember, in an SEO forecast, you’re ultimately asking your expert to predict not only the direction of a constantly evolving algorithm but changes to market demand and the world you operate within. It’s not a coincidence that many of us become futurists!

To sum up, predicting SEO results can be very hard but is a challenge we must seek to solve if we are to take the channel to the next level within digital marketing teams. A prediction may use a data-driven methodology, but is still essentially the view of a specialist, based on their experience of the search landscape. Not all forecasts will show growth and not all targets will be hit, this shouldn’t be seen as an issue as long as the reasoning behind this can be explained.

Related reading

It’s tempting to go after broad, high-volume keywords with huge audiences (and equally huge competition). But there’s an equally large — albeit more distributed audience — to be reached by targeting lower-competition, long tail keywords.

Scaling a brand one link at a time can consume a great deal of time. Using PR can change this and grow your audience and links much more quickly.

The data-driven attribution model is exclusive to customers of Google Analytics 360 and offers an easy way to personalize experiences to your customers.

Featured snippets are one of the main engines of economic growth today, with countless businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs relying upon them to get their message out to prospective clients.