To guarantee natural visibility for your seasonal pages, begin producing, optimizing, and examining them now
Start producing, organizing, and scheduling seasonal content possessions now for a head-start when it’s time to start concentrating on driving sales
Examine your past seasonal content performance to be able to recycle, upgrade, and potentially even expand them into standalone jobs
Research study your competitive techniques to evaluate how they utilize seasonality in their digital marketing method
Create a comprehensive editorial calendar to plan out all due dates and assignments to “capture” the rising interest in seasonal material and offers
Summer season is a sluggish season for numerous services, specifically those in a B2B niche. If things are a bit slow for you now, here’s an idea– Use these peaceful months to turn your next huge season into a huge increase for your service. Here is how you can start getting ready for your next huge seasonal material marketing campaign now:
1. Inspect your seasonal rankings now
Do you have a page (or pages) offering seasonal offers, gift ideas, and special offers? The need for this type of material may be seasonal however its rankings should be long-term. That’s why I always encourage against eliminating these pages and even delinking them throughout the site.
You want those pages to always be accessed by Google for your rankings to be there when the searches begin climbing.
If you can not find your website ranking for your target seasonal questions, it is time to set them up even if the actual season is still months ahead.
Source: Screenshot produced by the author In addition, Spyfu provides a comprehensive analysis of all SERP motions for you to recognize
important patterns and identify a rival that was doing the best task
retaining their organic exposure for seasonal search inquiries: Source: Screenshot produced
by the author Learn more about this feature here. When it pertains to SEO, seasonality can be difficult but it certainly needs to be planned ahead as organic SEO takes time to yield results. 2. Start creating seasonal assets(material and social)Your high season is going to be a busy time for you
and your team, so while planning your upcoming campaigns, start creating (and even scheduling)your material possessions ahead of time. When brainstorming seasons content ideas, I constantly turn to Text Optimizer that does a great job recommending associated ideas and angles to focus on:
Source: Screenshot produced by the author The tool relies on semantic analysis.
Content marketing includes a great deal of channels, so the more you are ready, the simpler (and more productive)your seasonal project will end up being. Additionally, there are a couple of cross-channel material marketing tools that can assist create and arrange your seasonal content. Boosted by Lightricks enables you to quickly produce
joyful videos in numerous formats: Source: Screenshot produced by the author In this manner you can create contentproperties that will fit all of your channels. There’s also a helpful Brand Kit feature
allowing you to preserve a constant visual identity throughout all your properties: Source: Screenshot produced by the author The app
is offered on iPhone and Android free of charge. You can choose to upgrade for$ 4.99 each month. I for one have been utilizing the free tier(and the above screenshots are taken when utilizing the totally free version of
the app ). The platform likewise uses a list of seasonal material ideas and hashtags to make your project even more reliable. There are a couple of more video development apps out there but I
do not believe any of them let you gain access to many excellent functions free of charge. Another excellent content creation tool that provides you lots of free functions totally free is, obviously, Canva. I’ve been utilizing Canva free of charge for as long as I can keep in mind without ever needing to update.
Source: Screenshot created by the author Here’s the guide on preparing a Christmas marketing campaign. 3. Assess your previous seasonal campaign efficiency If you were publicizing any seasonal material over the years, discover all of it to: Explore a chance for an update(“Can I
recycle this asset this year?” As”How can I make it better? “) Assess how efficient it remained in attracting traffic as well as turning those clicks into conversions Google Analytics uses a simple way to recognize landing pages that did the very best job attracting traffic during any duration:
Go to the Acquisition report and choose one channel (for example, “social” or “organic search”)
Select the date series of your seasonal campaign from the last year
(Optionally) Check package “Compare” and choose “Previous year” from the drop-down
Click “Landing page” tab in the chart listed below:
Source: Screenshot produced by the author This gives you an at-a-glance report of the highest traffic page from your previous projects. You can
even more narrow it down by using word filters (for example , type”blog”there to see your best carrying out seasonal content). To analyze conversions, you can utilize Google Analytics funnels and goals. Another tool I am using to carefully keep an eye on incoming traffic and its conversions is Finteza. Due to the fact that it makes it exceptionally simple to narrow the data to identify which traffic source is sending traffic and how well it transforms as compared to other pages.
Source: Screenshot produced by the author Learn more about Finteza’s
conversion funnels here. Finteza costs$ 25 a month and there’s a 30-day trial readily available for you to have fun with the tool prior to devoting. 4. Consider starting a tradition If any of those previous material possessions turned particularly effective, think about broadening that idea into a brand-new project! All of us remember the frustrating success of “Elf Yourself”, Ask Santa, and NORAD mini-projects that had the ability to engage (and transform) countless individuals year over year.
A different (single-page) site will be much easier to brand and promote without triggering any strong associations with your primary service. If you need some inspiration, check out Namify:
Source: Namify 5. Look what your competitors did(or didn’t)Competitive analysis is very importantbecause it encourages a business owner to do more and do it better. For that reason I always consist of competitive analysis in any of my marketing planning. There are a lot of methods to research your rivals and what they are doing. My primary step is always
checking Ahrefs and what other search questions they are ranking for: Source: Screenshot created by the author Ahrefs is the only platform in the industry that also uses a quote of traffic each search inquiry sends out.
Here’s how they compute it. Ahrefs most affordable tier is $99 monthly however it is absolutely a must-have tool if you are doing SEO. Similar Web is another nice tool for competitive research. I like taking a look at their” Referral Traffic “report to recognize which sites are sending traffic to my rivals:
Source: Similar Web This fundamental report is available for free. It is likewise an excellent idea to set up Google Alerts tobe modified when your rivals are doing something new. 6. Develop your editorial calendar Every year people seem to start getting ready for huge holidays previously. It is not uncommon to find a Holiday-centric social networks advertisement in October. This can in fact trigger both excitement and irritation.
So the essential concern stays: When should I begin releasing seasonal content?
This may depend from specific niche to niche, so I always suggest typing your target seasonal search question into Google Trends:
Source: Screenshot produced by the author
It likewise helps to compare numerous of your target search queries. For example, in this niche the need seems to be quite constant for many years: Source: Screenshot created by the author When it pertains to arranging and scheduling your content possessions, there are a few great calendar plugins to select from. I primarily use CoSchedule because it permits me to
also schedule those updates to your social networks channels as well as assign particular content properties to various contributors. CoSchedule costs $ 29 per month. It supports scheduling to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram. Because it integrates on-site content preparation (assigning content assets to be composed) and social media scheduling, I choose the tool. This allows me to create an extremely well-aligned content marketing project and makes it easy to arrange editorial workflow across lots of channels.
Instagram likewise offers a valuable guide on planning your seasonal material method here:
Source: Screenshot produced by the author Conclusion Seasonal preparation is a fantastic method to make the most of those seasonal interest spikes and construct more sales. The earlier you begin getting ready for your huge season, the more time you have to deal with an increased quantity of sales. All the best!
Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Brand, community and bee manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.
In today’s post, I’m going to show you exactly how to promote your blog.
In fact:
These are the same strategies that I used to grow my blog to 553,682 monthly visitors:
Let’s dive right in.
1. Guest Post Bonuses
If you’re just starting out, guest posting is a GREAT way to grow your blog.
There’s only one problem:
It’s REALLY hard to get people from your guest post to your website.
In fact, one industry study found that the average guest post brings in only 50 visitors.
The solution?
Guest Post Bonuses.
With a Guest Post Bonus, you don’t just toss in a link at the bottom of your post.
Instead, you offer people something that makes them WANT to visit your website.
For example, a while back I published this guest post on The Buffer blog.
Yes, I had an author bio link.
But I also created a Guest Post Bonus just for readers of my guest post.
And that single guest post brought in 471 visitors in the first month:
And lots of those new visitors signed up for my newsletter.
Nice.
2. Publish Data-Driven Content
Data-driven content is BLOWING UP right now.
And for a good reason:
Content with data is a great way for your blog to stand out.
For example, a few years ago we published this massive search engine ranking factors study.
Overall, that post led to thousands of shares on social media.
And a ton of backlinks.
The only problem was:
This study was insanely hard (and expensive) to pull off.
There were servers. Crawlers. Data partners. Bugs. Problems. Millions of data points. And lots more.
Yes, data-driven content takes more work than a list post.
But it doesn’t have to be THIS hard.
For example, after the search engine ranking factors study, we published this study on voice search.
Make no mistake: this took a lot of work.
First, our CTO had to manually ask his Google Home device 10,000 questions.
Then, we transcribed the answers.
Finally, we analyzed the data.
So yeah, it wasn’t easy. But this study was about 20x easier than our big Google study.
And it still did GREAT.
In fact, we got a huge spike in traffic on Day 1.
And people still link to and cite our study all the time.
All anyone really needed to pull this off was a Google Home device and someone willing to put in the work.
We just happened to be the first to do it.
3. Update and Upgrade Old Content
A few years ago, I started a Manhattan Project for the Backlinko blog:
Update every single post on our site.
It wasn’t easy.
But this mega project helped boost Backlinko’s overall traffic by 25.71% compared to the previous year:
Now, 25% may not sound like a lot.
But that 25.71% increase = 410,322 more yearly visitors.
(Which is a lot.)
With that, let’s dive into the steps.
First, go to the last page of your blog feed.
Then, update and improve each post.
For example, I hadn’t done a big update to this post in YEARS.
Most of the strategies in my post still worked.
But a lot of the content was obsolete.
So I went in and overhauled the post.
For example, I replaced old visuals and images.
Removed old strategies:
And overall, made the post MUCH more up-to-date.
Finally, I pushed the changes live… and changed the “last updated” date on the post.
Which boosted the overall traffic to that page by 22.52%.
Rinse and repeat for as many posts as you can handle.
Depending on how many posts you have, this can take months (or even years).
In fact, it took me 6 weeks to update all of our content.
But, as you saw, it was totally worth it.
4. LinkedIn Syndication
LinkedIn now has 756 million users.
Despite those crazy numbers, I don’t see many people talking about LinkedIn.
That’s good news for you and me. Because it means LinkedIn is largely untapped.
In fact:
You can get some serious traction on LinkedIn simply by reposting your best stuff there.
For example, a while ago, I reposted this post on LinkedIn.
I literally copied the exact post word-for-word.
And despite being an old post, it got 3,800+ views.
This works because NO ONE is posting anything interesting on LinkedIn.
So when you publish something cool, you can instantly stand out.
5. Facebook Boosted Posts (With Retargeting)
It’s no secret that Facebook organic reach is basically 0% for most pages right now.
This means that you NEED to boost your posts if you want them to get seen.
That said:
CPCs on Facebook are getting super expensive.
(Especially if you’re in a B2B space like I am.)
Fortunately, you can decrease your CPC by 25-75% with retargeting.
For example, I posted this on the Backlinko Facebook page a while ago:
And I decided to use some fancy targeting options.
Which ended up costing $2.60 CPC per click.
Not crazy. But not a great ROI either.
So a few months later when I boosted this post, I decided to only boost it to people that visited Backlinko in the last 60 days.
And because I targeted people that I KNOW would be interested in our content, our CPC was only .67 cents a pop:
6. The Super Simple Newsletter
One of the first lessons I learned with Backlinko was:
Newsletters are a GREAT way to promote new posts.
Over the years, I’ve tested 25+ different formats and layouts for our email newsletters.
And all that testing had led to one big takeaway:
Super Simple Newsletters work best.
For example, here’s a newsletter we sent out to the Backlinko community about a new post:
No fancy graphics.
No long intro.
No images.
Just a quick intro and a link to the post.
And because our newsletters focus on the main message (that we just published a new post), our CTRs are 2-3x higher than the industry average for a list of our size.
7. Cross-Pollinate Your Audience
As you may know, I don’t post very much on Twitter.
(In fact, I average around 1-2 tweets per week.)
And despite that, I have over 117k Twitter followers.
My secret?
I ask new email subscribers to follow me on Twitter.
In fact, I’ve had that CTA in place since 2013.
And that simple button has led to over 20k Twitter followers.
8. Collab With Other Blogs
Over the last few years, I’ve worked with other blogs on infographics.
Industry studies:
And case studies for the blog.
For example, some time ago, I teamed up with Pitchbox for this industry study.
This collab was a win-win.
I got awesome data that I could use for a data-driven post.
And they got their product (and revamped blog) in front of thousands of people.
9. Super Personalized Outreach
Have you ever received a generic outreach email like this?
You’re not alone.
More and more people are using blogger outreach to promote their content.
And as you’ve probably noticed, they’re doing it all wrong.
Specifically, they blast out the same exact pitch to hundreds of people.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that you can EASILY stand out.
How? Personalize every outreach email that you send.
In fact, the outreach study I mentioned earlier found that personalized messages got 32% more replies than those that used the same exact template.
For example, I found this broken link:
And realized that we had a guide that would make a PERFECT replacement.
So I sent out this personalized message:
And because I didn’t use a lame template or beg for a link, they happily added my link to their post.
10. Eye-Catching Social Media Images
From A LOT of testing, I can tell you that your social image makes a huge difference.
For example, we used to slap our social media images together at the last minute. Or use a random image from the post.
Today, we create social media images designed to stand out on someone’s Twitter or Facebook feed.
For example, when we publish something with data, we feature a compelling chart:
(And we resize the chart so it’s optimized for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn image dimensions.)
And if we’re publishing a list post or step-by-step guide, we have our designer create something that will stand out.
This kind of thing takes a little bit of extra effort.
But in my experience, the increase in traffic that you get makes it totally worthwhile.
11. Turn Blog Content Into YouTube Videos
I used to start every YouTube video from scratch.
And it took FOREVER.
In fact, I used to spend 10 hours on a single 15-minute video.
(And I’d estimate that I spent 70% of that time on the video script.)
Today, I base my videos on existing content from blog posts, newsletters and keynote speeches.
And it makes this process MUCH easier.
Note: I’m not straight-up recycling a blog post into a video. That’s lame. Instead, I’m using bits and pieces of high-quality content as the basis of my script.
For example, this video from my channel is a mishmash of content from one of my ebooks, a newsletter, several different blog posts… plus some new stuff.
And because the video isn’t just a rehash of an old blog post, it racked up 148,168 views.
You might have noticed that I get a fair amount of comments on every post.
What’s my secret?
First, I ONLY publish world-class content.
(In other words, content that’s worth commenting on.)
Second, I reply to pretty much every comment that someone leaves… especially in the first 48 hours after a post goes live.
In fact, according to our WordPress data, we have 29,142 comments on the blog.
And about 40% of those comments are me replying to comments from Backlinko readers.
So that means that I’ve replied to 11,656 comments so far.
That’s kind of insane. And replying to 11,656 comments takes time and effort.
But these replies show that I care about the people that take the time to leave comments. Even if it’s just a simple “Thank you”.
It also gives me a chance to answer questions that people have.
And at the end of the day, replying to comments is one of the main reasons that we’ve been able to build such an active community here on the Backlinko blog.
13. Write Blog Posts on NEW Topics
Does your niche have a bunch of entrenched competitors?
Trust me, I’ve been there.
When I first launched the Backlinko blog I was diving headfirst into the brutally competitive marketing space.
And I was a one-man show going up against HUGE competitors with dozens of employees.
So:
How did I stand out and get traction?
I published content on NEW topics that my competitors weren’t covering.
For example, one of the first posts I published on the blog was about YouTube SEO:
And another early post was about building an email list:
These were two topics that my competitors weren’t writing about. Which helped my content stand out.
This is a strategy that I still follow to this day.
Some time ago, I published this in-depth guide to Google RankBrain:
And because I was so early, this post didn’t blend in with the 100 other posts about RankBrain.
(Because there weren’t any.)
Which helped my content really stand out:
14. Podcast Bonuses
This is like the Guest Post Bonus strategy I talked about earlier.
But instead of creating a bonus for each guest post…
…you create a set of bonuses for each podcast you go on as a guest.
For example, when I went on Pat Flynn’s podcast, I created this bonus section for his listeners:
And at the end of the podcast, I specifically mentioned this bonus section.
Which led to an influx of traffic…
…and more importantly, email subscribers.
With that, here’s the exact process.
First, create something that listeners of that podcast would want.
Ideally, your bonuses should complement what you’re going to talk about on the podcast.
For example, before I went on Pat’s podcast, I created a bonus section.
This bonus section contained:
A quick case study
An on-page SEO checklist
And a swipe file of 25 high-quality link building videos and posts
Second, run it by the podcast host. Because you’re offering something super valuable to their audience, most won’t have a problem with it. But it never hurts to check in beforehand.
Finally, host the bonus section landing page on a URL that’s easy to remember and type.
For example, for my Pat Flynn podcast appearance, I made the URL: backlinko.com/pat.
Then you just have to set up your email marketing platform to deliver the bonuses after they sign up.
That’s all there is to it.
15. Speak at Events
Speaking at conferences is a GREAT way to promote your blog.
But not for the reason you might think.
I’ll explain…
When I first launched Backlinko, I spoke at as many conferences as I could.
In fact, I spoke at events in:
Dublin
Boston
Austin
Istanbul
Romania
Berlin
And lots more cities and countries
Did getting on stage in front of 300 people skyrocket my blog’s growth?
Probably not.
So how did these conferences help me?
Because I got to meet other speakers.
(Speakers that are leaders in the SEO and marketing space.)
In fact, speaking at these events helped me create partnerships, mastermind groups, and friendships with really smart people.
It even gave me a chance to make an early angel investment in a startup.
And this wouldn’t have happened if I randomly sent these folks an email with: “Hey, do you want to partner up on something?”.
To be clear:
Now that my blog has traction, I pretty much stopped speaking at events. But that’s another story for another post…
But when I was just starting out, speaking at events was SUPER helpful.
16. Publish Posts at The Right Time
What’s the BEST time to publish a new blog post?
Well, BuzzSumo and I set out to answer this question.
And we found that… there isn’t really a big difference between different days of the week.
That said:
Every little bit helps.
And if you want to get more traffic and social shares from every post, publishing at the right time is KEY.
The thing is, the “best time” is different for every blog.
For us, we’ve experimented with publishing on Sundays at 12pm, Fridays at 7am, and Mondays at 2pm…
And we eventually figured out that publishing on Tuesdays at 11am works best for us.
But that’s not something any industry study or “best time to publish a post” article can tell you.
You gotta experiment.
This is something I did A LOT when I was first starting out.
For example, I’d leave comments that added to the discussion:
Or just supported bloggers that I was rooting for:
And this helped me get on people’s radar screens… without being a pushy jerkface.
In fact, these helpful comments directly led to a handful of guest post and podcast interview invites.
Sweet!
18. Create a Blog Alliance
A “Blog Alliance” is where you make friends with other bloggers.
(And “Blog Alliance” sounds a lot cooler than “make friends”. So I went with that. 🙂 )
For example, in the early days of Backlinko, I’d go on weekly calls with Bryan Harris.
And these calls were SUPER helpful.
Sure, it was nice to have someone to talk to about writing, hiring, tools, products, and newsletters.
But we also swapped specific tips and tactics that helped us both grow.
So if there’s another blogger that’s at about the same level as you are, send them a quick message like this:
Hey [Name],
I love what you’re doing at [Blog Name].
Actually, [Something They Teach] really inspired how I do [Blogging-Related Thing].
If you’re game, I’d love to hop on Skype sometime and talk shop.
Thanks, [Your Name]
19. Reader Case Studies
I LOVE reader case studies.
In fact, reader case studies were one of the secret weapons I used to grow my blog in record time.
With that, here’s the step-by-step process.
First, identify a strategy, technique or tip that you want to highlight.
For example, back in the day I wanted to get the word out about The Skyscraper Technique.
Second, find a reader that got results from something you talked about.
Finally, work with your reader on an in-depth case study.
In other words: they send you the details. And you write up what happened.
That way, it’s not a guest post. And the writing is still in your own voice.
For example, I worked with Chris Gimmer on this Skyscraper Technique case study a few years back:
And that post did GREAT. It brought in 13,486 visitors in the first month alone.
And people shared it on Twitter like crazy:
20. Create Cool Visuals, Charts, and Images
You might have noticed that I tend to sprinkle in a handful of custom visuals and charts in every post.
That’s no accident.
I discovered that these custom visuals get shared around (and linked to) without me needing to hustle with outreach.
For example, I asked our designer to create a visual of a page that’s optimized for voice search SEO.
And because this visual helps people understand voice search SEO, lots of other bloggers have used it in their blog posts:
Bottom line? Include 2-3 visuals, charts or mini-infographics in every post. If the post does well, other bloggers will see your visuals. And a small but significant percentage will use your visuals in their content.
21. Double Down On List Posts
List posts are a blogging mainstay.
And they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
Our content study with BuzzSumo found that list posts got more social shares than any other content format:
This makes sense if you think about it…
People love super tactical tips and tactics that they can use right away.
And a list post has a bunch of these tactics on a single page.
In fact, when I analyzed which posts brought in the most traffic, 4 out of the top 10 were list posts.
This is why I’ve published several list posts (like this one) over the last few years.
And I actually have a few more list posts in the works right now.
Speaking of list posts…
Bonus #1: Start List Posts With Your Most Unique Tip
Here’s a mistake I see a lot of bloggers make with list posts:
They put the most important and helpful tip at the top of their list.
Why is this a mistake?
Well, when someone lands on your list post they’re looking for something new.
So you need to give them your most unique strategy right off the bat.
So instead of organizing your list posts like this:
Organize them like this:
In other words, begin and end your list with strategies that your reader probably hasn’t seen before.
For example:
A few years ago I published this list post on how to get more views on YouTube.
And my first tip was a new way to create more effective thumbnails.
Of all the things you could possibly do to get more views, is this the most important?
Heck no!
But it IS a strategy that most people haven’t heard of before. Which means they’ll keep reading.
Then, later in my list, I outline strategies that make the biggest difference.
Bonus #2: Add Tweetable Quotes To Your Content
This is an EASY way to get more people to share your content on Twitter.
Here’s how it works:
First, find a quote from your post that’s worth sharing.
In other words: a Tweetable Quote.
A Tweetable quote is a short, interesting quote that easily fits inside of Twitter’s character limit.
For example, this line in my “8-Step Content Strategy” post was a Tweetable quote.
It had a “Click to Tweet This” link underneath the quote.
(BTW, I made this link using ClickToTweet.com.)
When someone clicked on that link, they got a pre-written tweet with that quote.
That’s all there is to it.
And if your quote hits a nerve, people WILL share it.
(Including lots of people that wouldn’t have otherwise shared your post.)
And I can tell you from experience that these “bonus shares” really add up.
What Did You Think?
Now I’d like to hear from you:
Which technique from today’s post are you going to use first?
Are you going to publish more list posts? Or leave comments on other blogs?
Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.
Originally Published: November 2014 Updated: May 2020
This seems like a simple one with a straightforward answer. Many would describe an SEO specialist as someone who helps users find what they’re searching for when using search engines like Google and Bing.
However, that is merely the tip of the search engine optimization iceberg.
Let’s consider the following example:
A Google search for “cat” returns “www.cat.com” which belongs to the Cat (Caterpillar) construction equipment. It then shares information based on its web of knowledge to present the searcher with what is known as a knowledge graph. This is a list of questions pertaining to owning cats. The knowledge graph is then followed by a list of YouTube compilation videos of cats. If we refine our search to “cat animal,” the search results are more relevant. A searcher now sees a Wikipedia article ranking first, followed by a similar knowledge graph, plenty of YouTube videos, and information from National Geographic on domestic cats.
If I am the owner of a cat boutique, why isn’t my website showing up in the search engine results for “cat”? How will people find me? What can an SEO specialist do to help us be more visible online?
As SEO experts, it is our job to make your website (cat boutique or otherwise) show up at the top of the “right” search engine results. With that job comes learning the intent of searchers that may be looking for you online, and selecting keywords, and presenting your information in a way that is compelling enough for them to want to click and visit your website.
10+ years ago this job required much different SEO skills than it does now, and there is a whole new skillset that SEO specialists need to master these days.
A modern specialist must be able to:
Make a decision
Research like crazy
Prioritize
Problem solve
Write intriguing content
Know the audience
Learn
As we go through the basics of what an SEO specialist does, we’ll see how often these skills apply to a range of common tasks and strategies.
Improve URL Structure
URLs should be simple, descriptive, and easy to read. While they may not have a huge impact on rankings, a poor URL structure is bad for the user experience and decreases the clickthrough rate.
Opt for this:
https://www.thebestcatboutique.com/beds/fuzzy-bed
Not this:
https://www.thebestcatboutique.com/prd-527/
Required skill: Make a decision
Fairly often there are many possible correct answers for how to solve a problem. That fact is especially true when it comes to changing URL structure on a website, and SEO specialists need to be able to make a good decision quickly instead of agonizing over the dozen possibilities.
Optimize Title Tags
An example of a title tag for SEO.com
The title tag is incredibly helpful when it comes to the many ranking factors out there. It is the text that shows up larger and bold on the search engine results page (SERP). You should include your main keyword in the title (some would argue at the very beginning), have it flow naturally, and include your company name. Each title tag on your website needs to be unique and specific to what that page is about. Also, be consistent and structure every title tag the same way.
The title tag is also a small piece of the puzzle that opens the opportunity to entice searchers to click on your site.
Opt for this:
Cat Beds & Blankets for Your Feline Friend | The Best Cat Boutique
Required skill: Research like crazy & Know the audience
Keyword research is an SEO specialist’s bread and butter. It is by keywords that we know what to optimize and rank for in search engines. To properly optimize title tags we must first complete keyword research. It is not always glamorous or fast-paced, but specialists need to embrace the research rather than fear it.
Need help finding the right domain?
We can help. Talk to a domain expert today.
or call 1-800-351-9081
Optimize Heading Tags
An example of an optimized H1 Heading Tag.
Heading tags are another major ranking factor for Google. Your headings indicate the main topic of the page, should include your main targeted keyword, and be unique to each page. They tell search engines what your content or page is all about.
Optimize your headings starting with H1, H2, and so forth. Each page should only have one H1, and it can vary from your title tag, but is still helpful to include the keyword you’re focusing on for that page.
Opt for this:
Cat Beds
Not this:
Beds
Required skill: Research like crazy & Prioritize
Similar to title tags, keyword research is also necessary for heading tags. However, now we are getting into the other side of things: prioritizing. In SEO, there can be many things that need to be fixed on a website and they all may seem to be a priority. As specialists, it is our job to prioritize tasks and knock them out one by one starting with most important to least important.
Include Meta Descriptions
An example of a meta description for SEO.com.
Meta descriptions don’t necessarily affect your rankings directly. They do, however, improve clickthrough rate, which can indirectly help your rankings, and should not be forgotten or ignored.
The meta description is what shows up underneath the title tag on the search engine results page. This is your primary opportunity to write directly for the user and entice them to click on your link instead of a competitor’s link.
Be descriptive yet brief (under 155-160 characters to not be truncated in results), although some would argue that a longer truncated meta description is still just as effective. Your goal here is to sell the click, not the product.
Opt for this:
Great selection of quality cat beds at great prices. From discount to designer, there’s a cat bed for your best friend! Shop today!
Not this:
Cat beds. New cat beds. Blue cat beds. Red cat beds. Big cat beds. Beds for big cats. Cat beds for sale.
Required skill: Write intriguing content
Meta descriptions are the commercial jingles of the SEO world. SEO specialists must be great writers technically and grammatically, but they also must write catchy and intriguing content. Who knew that 160 characters could be some of the most difficult to write?
Write Rich Content
Long gone are the days of article spinning and keyword stuffing. Keywords are important, but they should be sprinkled in content rather than stuffed. Now, they are generally considered a lower priority than compelling content that speaks to the searcher’s intent.
Content needs to be original, engaging, well-written, and authoritative. SEO is important, but you need to be writing for users and not for search engine rankings for the most effective and impactful SEO campaign.
Before writing, always ask yourself, “what is the purpose behind this article?” Do not create content just to create content. Have a purpose for everything that you create and publish on your website.
That purpose is what will drive your writing style and how you structure your content.
Opt for this:
Keyword sprinkled
Original content
Informative content
Authoritative content
Not this:
Keyword stuffed
Thin content
Unreliable content
Required skill: Write intriguing content
“Content is king”, so says the world of SEO. SEO specialists today know that search engines have been placing increasing value on quality content and that has only continued to increase over the last 5 years. You need to write for quality and write for search intent. While we’re feeling the pressure, we do know how to write intriguing content that brings traffic to your website.
Add Internal Links
When Google crawls your site, they look for internal links. If Google finds links to other pages in your website, they will go to those as well. However, if Google doesn’t find any links they will simply leave, much like a potential user.
Internal linking not only lets Google know which pages are most important, but it can also increase user time spent on your website.
Opt for this:
Natural sentence fragments as anchor text scattered through a page
Relevant, helpful links
Link to pages deep within the site
Not this:
Optimized anchor text
Too many links on one page
Linking strictly to top-level pages
Required skill: Problem-solving and Prioritizing
Internal links require a lot of problem solving and prioritizing to determine which pages will be linked from where. SEO specialists know the importance of internal links, but executing that isn’t always easy. It takes time, thought, and the ability to problem-solve to really find the best locations and the best approach to internal links in a natural way.
A Modern Approach
When it comes to the modern SEO specialist, our jobs are part problem solver and part magician, trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat (in an established and effective way) to make Google (and therefore our clients) happy.
At the end of the day, what we do is really quite simple: we make sure your website is visible online, and we do our best to get you at the top of the search engine results so you have more traffic on your website that can, in turn, generate leads, sales, and more interaction with your brand.
For your business, is there really anything more important than that?
The Content Newsletter is a newsletter that provides 100% pure value.
The value can be in the form of a handful of tips. Or links to helpful resources. Or a personal story.
The exact type of value doesn’t really matter. As long as you don’t pitch anything, you’re good.
In fact, pure value newsletters are so rare that your subscribers will LOVE you for them.
For example, I sent out this Content Newsletter a while back:
(A handful of copywriting tips.)
And dozens of people replied to my email to thank me.
With that, here’s the template:
Intriguing Subject Line
Use a subject line that will make someone curious about what’s inside your message.
For example, I used the subject line “How I Got 45.5% More Traffic (In 7 Days)” for one of my Content Newsletters. And that email got a 32.3% open rate.
Bold Opening
Start your newsletter off with something SUPER compelling.
That way, you hook your reader right off the bat.
Personally, I like to kick things off with a mini-story.
But you can also use a straightforward intro that previews what’s coming next.
Either way works.
Valuable Content
Now it’s time to deliver the goods.
If you’re not sure what to write here, I recommend going with a list of 3-5 actionable tips that people can use that day.
Otherwise, you can teach your subscribers an important lesson in the form of a story.
Or curate links to content that will help your reader achieve a specific outcome, like this newsletter from Ramit Sethi.
CTA
Nope, you’re not pitching anything in your Content Newsletter.
But that doesn’t mean you should skip your call-to-action.
So:
How can you use a CTA if your email is 100% value?
Well, when I send out a story to subscribers, I use a CTA that asks people to reply with their opinion or take.
Or let’s say you just sent out a list of links to Paleo breakfast recipes.
Your CTA could be to try one of the recipes this week.
The type of CTA you go with isn’t that important.
The important thing is to always include a CTA in your newsletters.
That way, when you DO pitch something, your subscribers aren’t caught off guard.
Are your leads slipping through the fractures in these company gaps?
SEOs have a great perspective in the form of data that actively assists recognize service chances and gaps
SEO pioneer, serial entrepreneur, and best offering author, Kris Jones recognizes 3 critical elements that can be fixed to develop the structure of an effective SEO strategy in 2021
One of the strangest things to try to discuss to someone who isn’t so knowledgeable about digital marketing is how company owner can begin targeting service opportunities that aren’t currently on their radars. — if we think about the issue semi-philosophically– how can we understand what we do not understand? Relying on human reasoning alone would make that task quite tough.
The good news is, as SEOs, we have a lot of tools readily available that can help us identify organization chances and gaps. That means keywords we aren’t targeting, audiences we aren’t going after, backlinks we aren’t getting, and material topics we aren’t covering on our websites. To put it simply, these are the structures of an effective SEO technique in 2021, and you might be missing out on leveraging them on your own. Here are three pointers for utilizing SEO analytics to recognize your organization gaps, in the location of keywords, content, and backlinks.
Find your keyword spaces
Digital marketers know the variation in the significance of keywords considering that the late 1990s. However no matter just how much that has actually changed, you still need to be ranking for the ideal keywords, otherwise you won’t be appearing for anything.
However have you ever done a few look for keywords you wish to rank for and not even had the ability to find your website in the SERPs? Does not it frustrate you to see your rivals on page one?
You can be as great as they are. The method to do it is to run a keyword gap analysis in a tool such as Semrush or Google Search Console (GSC).
Semrush is better and more easy to use for this, but if you do not have access to that, let me cover GSC first.
You initially need to connect your Google Analytics and GSC together. After that, go to Analytics and browse to Acquisition>> Search Console>>
Queries. You’ll see the search terms individuals have actually used to get to you, as well as those inquiries’clicks, impressions, and click-through rates (CTRs). Export that data into an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet, and after that compare the number of real website check outs that those keywords got you to the number of impressions you got for those keywords. The portion of difference in between them will provide you a measurable concept of where you need to enhance.
However, I choose Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool for this. You just input your URL and those of a couple of rivals, and it compares your keyword numbers against your competitors. The tool reveals you a keyword overlap diagram along with your leading opportunities for getting brand-new rankings.
Discover your content spaces
You likely know that no serious SEO today writes material for keywords alone. Keywords have their location as subject identifiers for Google, but we require to focus content around real topics. We require our content to deal with questions people are asking.
And maybe your leading competitors are doing that better than you are.
As an outcome, they rank well for this or that question, and you don’t. How do we use SEO information to discover content spaces?
Well, we are going to develop on the previous point and utilize our competitors’ keywords to find this out. I pointed out earlier that we compose material for subjects over keywords, but keywords are still how the general public discovers your content.
In Semrush or your spreadsheet from in the past, you can filter your keyword space analysis to reveal the keywords you’re ranking for in positions 11 through 100 or any number you like. If your rivals are doing well for this or that term, while you are suffering in position 18 or 22, then it’s time to have a look at the material you’ve developed around those terms.
What’s wrong with it from user experience and SEO point of views? Is the information obsoleted? Is the content thin? Does it not resolve a specific concern within the buyer’s journey?
For example, are you composing blog posts about making an appointment with a physician when you have not even covered why you might require to see a medical professional? Not everyone who’s searching a medical center’s website is all set to act.
Evaluating your content by doing this (along with the material of your competitors, by mining the SERPs, for example) tends to be more of a manual method, but the keyword gap analysis you did ought to actually come in convenient.
You can also utilize what you’ve gained from that data to create new ideas for content marketing , if you need to.. Tools such as BuzzSumo, Answer the general public, and Semrush’s Topic Research tool aggregate user analytics to show you the currently trending subjects around certain keywords.
Discover your backlink gaps
When we’re talking about using SEO data to recognize your business spaces, then the icing on the cake is a good, thorough backlink space.
Where keywords get you found and content makes client trust, backlinks flex your website’s authority for Google. A backlink is a vote of self-confidence. It’s the equivalent of somebody standing up in a crowd and saying, “Yes, I think in what you’re doing.”
The method to a strong backlink profile is through your content marketing, reaching out to influencers to see if they wish to link to your helpful and authoritative content.
Then, your competitors are doing the same thing, and potentially to much higher result.
Here again, we can use SEO analytics to find where you’re falling behind.
You can definitely utilize everything already pointed out here to examine your rivals’ content, however in the end, you’ll likely require a paid tool to perform a full-fledged backlink space analysis.
You can use Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz’s Link Explorer, or something else. You can check out how each deal with a free trial, however to stay on top of your backlink spaces, you would require a paid subscription.
From your research, input your site and a few of your competitors’ websites. Whichever tool you utilize, you will require to see the total variety of backlinks and referring domains.
Now, note that it is quite typical to have more backlinks than domains. When, that simply indicates that some domains are linking to you more than. That does not sound so bad, however if you want a big and differed backlink profile, you will want to ramp up the number of domains that link to you.
At this point, though, it’s everything about sifting through the information to see where you’re missing the mark. Take a look at your top competitors ‘backlinks. What kind of material gets the most links? Is it long-form post? White papers? Or is it some other content format that’s winning those links?
Discover what your competitors are succeeding, and after that produce better content!.?.!! If these domains connected to that type of content for somebody else, they can definitely do it for you.
Likewise, if you’ve filtered to see your top pages for backlinks and see you’ve gotten a load to a certain kind of post, then make more of those in the future!
In conclusion
In the end, whether it’s keywords, content, or backlinks, the very best general presentation wins in SEO. You have to be authoritative and beneficial to human users and Google.
As SEOs, we’re used to sorting through information. The everyday entrepreneur may not be, though. In that case, I hope readers have actually found out a lot from this about how analytics information is your friend when you’re seeking to determine spaces in your service’s SEO strategies.
When you start to get this right, you’re going to share in those wins, too.
Kris Jones is the founder and former CEO of digital marketing and affiliate network Pepperjam, which he sold to eBay Enterprises in 2009. Most recently Kris founded SEO services and software application business LSEO.com and has actually formerly bought numerous successful innovation companies. Kris is an experienced public speaker and is the author of one of the best-selling SEO books of all time called, ‘Search-Engine Optimization– Your Visual Blueprint to Effective Internet Marketing’, which has actually sold almost 100,000 copies.
This is the third post in our series where we test the on-page SEO of the world’s most popular CMS systems.
In parts 1 and 2 of the series we tested Wix and Squarespace. The headlines: Wix offers decent control of on-page SEO, Squarespace not so much.
But if Squarespace was hoping for a consolation “wooden spoon” in our on-page SEO series they’re going to be disappointed.
Because this week we’re diving into Godaddy’s Website Builder…
…and the low bar just got a whole lot lower.
So buckle up, and read on to discover:
how well setup for on-page SEO GoDaddy’s Website Builder is out the box,
how you can configure your GoDaddy Website Builder site to rank higher in Google,
the technical SEO issues we found on the platform
Let’s get started with a summary.
Table of Content
In Summary: Is Godaddy’s Website Builder good for SEO?
No.
You were expecting more? Ok then…
We’re sure you know GoDaddy. They’re the world’s largest domain registrar.
But you might not know — unless you spotted the numerous upsells when you registered your domain — that they also have a semi-popular CMS you can use to build your website.
Why do we say semi-popular? Because according to w3techs just 0.3% of sites run on GoDaddy’s Website Builder. Which means that WordPress sites (with a market share of 41.4%) outnumber GoDaddy sites by 138-1.
But those numbers don’t tell the full story.
Because our guess is that when you consider the amount of spam sites choosing WordPress, the percentage of “real” businesses running on GoDaddy’s Website Builder will be much higher than 0.3%.
The bad news?
Those businesses are going to be seriously hampered by the lack of control over their website’s on-page SEO.
Because the bottom line is, there’s just not much you can do to optimize your GoDaddy site.
In fact, what you can do is pretty much summed up in this video:
We’ll save you time watching and summarize. To optimize your GoDaddy site you can use a fancy wizard to:
Generate an SEO title straight outta 1999
Add a meta description
Change your H1 tag
Spam some keywords into your text
Profit?
We made up number 5.
In a nutshell:
You’ve got about as much control over your website’s on-page SEO as Donald Trump has over his hair in a strong wind.
Throw in slow load times and you’ve got a platform that’s definitely going to be holding back your efforts to rank your site higher in Google.
Like pictures? Here’s a summary…
How we tested GoDaddy Website Builder for SEO optimization
We set up a small site on a GoDaddy Website Builder Premium plan.
We chose a popular theme and loaded the site with demo content.
The tests included manual review, running the site through our own SEO audit tool, and testing using third party tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix.
GoDaddy Website Builder SEO: The good, the bad, and the ugly
Before reviewing GoDaddy’s control of on-page SEO factors, let’s run through some of the SEO highlights (and lowlights) of the platform.
We’ll start with the positives.
Good:
Crickets chirp…
Empires rise and fall…
The sun slowly melts away the rocks over millions of years…
Ok, um… it’s easy to integrate your GoDaddy site with Google Search Console.
Moving on.
Bad: Unconventional naming of fields, no search previews outwith wizard
GoDaddy has a wizard you can use to “optimize” each page on your site. We don’t find it particularly useful, but we’ll come onto that later.
Outside the wizard, they’ll let you set a title and meta description for each page on your site in the main editor.
Only they don’t call it a title. For some reason they’ve decided to call it a “headline”.
So why is this a problem?
Well, consider a non technical user who’s just read an article (like our SEO audit guide) telling them to create an optimized title tag. Isn’t calling the field “headline” just causing unnecessary confusion?
Are we nitpicking? Perhaps. But this just seems illogical to us.
You’ll also note from the screenshot above that you won’t get a search preview in the main editor (you will get one in the wizard).
Ugly: Slow load times
With Google about to start integrating Core Web Vitals into their main algorithm, speed and layout stability is becoming increasingly important to SEO.
Our test GoDaddy site had serious issues with both.
For example, this super basic blog post…
…had a Google PageSpeed Insights score of just 23, and a time to interactive of 15.4 seconds.
It also had strange issues with layout stability (loading then hiding layers), which you can see in the timeline below.
The slow load times were primarily caused by heavy script usage.
Ugly: There’s just not much you can do to optimize your site
Want to edit a page’s title and meta description? No problem… unless you want to do it for a blog page.
Want to get more advanced?
Time to switch to another CMS.
On-Page SEO Fundamentals: How does GoDaddy’s Website Builder measure up?
Now let’s turn our attention to control of some of the fundamental on-page SEO factors.
Does GoDaddy’s Website Builder cover them all?
Not even close.
Here’s our summary again.
Note: having control of an SEO ranking factor is not equal to its optimization. SEO audit tools like Seobility offer advice on how to properly optimize each element, and find errors in optimization which may be holding back your site. See our SEO audit guide for more information on how to fully optimize your website.
SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Control in GoDaddy: partial
A page’s title continues to be one of the most important on-page ranking factors. And a well written meta description can help you get more click-throughs (although Google won’t always use it).
On a GoDaddy site you can set a custom title and meta description for each “page”, but for a blog post you’re out of luck.
There are two ways you can set the title and description for a page.
The first is in the main editor, which we already covered above.
The second way is through the SEO wizard.
To access the wizard, click on “Start Optimizing” under “Settings > Search Engine Optimization” on any page (shown below), or choose “SEO” from the “Marketing” dropdown.
From there, you can choose to “optimize” your homepage, or any other page on your site.
Once you’ve selected a page to optimize, GoDaddy will ask you to describe it in one or two words….
…which they’ll use to generate a list of related keywords. You can select two or three of the most relevant phrases for your page.
After a prompt to insert those keywords into your content (which you can do if you wish, but we’ve skipped) you’ll be asked to select a title for your page.
Yikes!
Let’s take a look at that first title (which we suspect many small business owners may pick):
Looks good right? Because stuffing keywords into your title and repeating the word yoga 5 times is a great way to boost your search engine rankings.
*checks calendar
Wait, it’s 2021 not 1999.
Obvious sarcasm is obvious hopefully. But just In case… let’s be crystal clear. This is not a good way to write your page titles for SEO in 2021.
In fact, we don’t really like any of GoDaddy’s suggested titles. But as we’re forced to select one before proceeding we’ll choose the simplest:
Yoga Classes – Seobility Yoga
It’s not good. But at least it’s not spammy.
On the next screen, we can add our page’s meta description.
And then after another couple of screens where we can choose to add our keywords to our page’s content and heading, we’ll get to a final review page…
…and we’re done.
As we alluded to earlier, we don’t find this SEO wizard particularly helpful. Notwithstanding the fact that the page title suggestions are poor, it’s an incredibly slow way of updating some of the most basic SEO ranking factors.
Ultimately though, that’s just our opinion. And non technical users may prefer to update their site this way.
So we can’t exactly call this a negative.
But what we can say is a negative is that GoDaddy doesn’t give you any way to set a custom SEO title and description for your blog posts. The title will always be the same as your headline, and there’s nowhere to add a meta description.
We’ve no idea why this is the case, but it’s not good.
Learn more about SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Page slug / URL
Control in GoDaddy: partial
We recommend creating short, descriptive, 2-3 word slugs, including the primary keyword (or phrase) for each page. Use hyphens to separate words.
You can do it on a GoDaddy site, but again, it’s pretty unintuitive. There’s no field for editing your slug, but GoDaddy will base it on your page’s title.
And to layer on the confusion, we don’t mean SEO title (remember, GoDaddy calls that “headline”), we mean the “title” you choose when you create a new page:
So in the example above, we’d get a slug that looks like:
yourdomain/yoga-tips
If you update this title, the URL will also update.
Which is kind of fine we guess. But a field for slug/URL might have made it a little simpler to grasp?
As for the blog, you’ll be stuck with a slug based on the title of the blog post itself. So if we have a blog post titled:
Yoga Tips For Beginners: Here’s How To Get Better At Yoga FAST
And there’s nothing we can do to change it. Not ideal.
Note: something we did discover is that if you change a published blog post’s title, GoDaddy will keep the old URL. So we suppose you could initially create the blog post with a short, 2-3 word keyword targeted title, then change it to a longer title afterwards if you wanted a workaround.
Learn more about URL slugs/permalinks
Canonical URLs
Control in GoDaddy: no
On smaller sites you probably won’t need to worry about this.
But if you have a series of similar pages on your site — i.e. targeting the same keywords, or with very small variations in content — there may be times when you’ll want to set a canonical (master) URL.
This helps to avoid duplicate content issues.
There’s certainly no obvious way to set canonical URLs in GoDaddy’s Website Builder. So potential fiddly workarounds excepted, we’re going to say that this is not something you can control on a GoDaddy site.
Learn more about canonical URLs
Index control (robots meta tag)
Control in GoDaddy: no
The robots meta tag instructs Google to either index (1), or not to index (2) a page:
<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow”> – index this page please Google
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”> – ignore this page please Google (but follow the links on it)
You don’t actually need the first one as (assuming your page meets their quality standards) indexing is Google’s default action. But it doesn’t do any harm to have it in place.
We couldn’t see any simple way to noindex an individual page on a GoDaddy site.
Learn more about index control
Heading Tags (h1, h2, h3 etc)
Control in GoDaddy: no
Heading tags (h1, h2, h3 etc) help Google understand the structure, and topic(s) of your page.
They should be properly nested.
For example, an h1 tag would generally be the main topic (level 1), an h2 could be a subtopic (level 2), and an h3 could be a sub-sub topic (level 3) etc:
<h1>Pets</h1> (topic of the page)
<h2>Goldfish</h2> (subtopic)
<h3>Caring for your goldfish</h3> (subtopic of goldfish)
<h4>Clean your fish’s tank regularly</h4> (subtopic of caring for your goldfish)
<h2>Cats</h2> (subtopic)
<h3>Caring for your cat</h3> (subtopic of cats)
GoDaddy’s Website Builder fails miserably here. You’ve got pretty much zero control over headings.
At first glance, we thought perhaps they were doing their funky naming convention trick again and calling heading tags “Styles”. But we were wrong.
Turns out the dropdown in the image above is literally for controlling the style of the heading. There’s no way to change the actual heading tag itself.
So you’re stuck with whatever GoDaddy feels is the best fit for a particular heading tag. Which wouldn’t be quite so much of an issue if they were choosing the right ones…
…but (at least in our tests) they’re not.
In the example above, we’ve skipped straight from H2 to H4.
How about on a blog page?
Well, all you can do is select “T” in the text tool bar.
Which turns the highlighted text into an H4. Want a subheading? Tough, you’re getting another H4.
(H4 wasn’t even the right tag here, it should have been an H2)
So there’s just no way to create a properly structured page.
Poor.
Learn more about heading tags
Structured data (aka schema)
Control in GoDaddy: no
Structured data (also known as schema) can help Google understand:
the type of content on a page (i.e. recipe, review, product, article),
the entity behind the website (i.e. organization),
and can also be used to show additional search features (rich snippets)
If you’re not familiar with structured data and its impact on SEO, we recommend reading our rich snippets guide.
There’s no simple way to add schema markup to a page on GoDaddy.
Learn more about structured data and rich snippets
Image SEO
Control in GoDaddy: yes
The three most important elements of image SEO are:
Alt text (description of the image for screen readers and search engines)
File size (smaller = faster = better)
File name (we recommend using descriptive file names)
GoDaddy’s Website Builder performs reasonably well here.
It’s easy to add alt text…
And when you upload an image GoDaddy will create (and serve) a WebP version — a lightweight image format that’s recommended by Google.
They will change the filename of the webp (we’d rather they kept it the same), but overall we’re pretty happy with how GoDaddy handles image SEO.
Learn more about image SEO
HTTPS
Do GoDaddy sites run over HTTPS? yes
HTTPS has been a confirmed Google ranking signal since 2014.
And in 2021 there’s really no excuse for any site to still be running over HTTP. Notwithstanding any SEO benefits, it’s unsecure.
So we’re pleased to say that every GoDaddy site (whether on a custom domain or not) runs on HTTPS.
Learn more about HTTPS
Robots.txt file
Control in GoDaddy: no
A robots.txt file allows you to stop search engine bots from accessing certain areas of your site.
For example, you might have a section with user generated content that you don’t want crawled or indexed by Google.
Unfortunately while GoDaddy will create a default robots.txt file for your site, there’s currently no way to edit it. They explain why here.
Unfortunately, no, you will not be able to edit the robots.txt directly on GoCentral. It is a proprietary GoDaddy product and all server side access is controlled by GoDaddy. The customer has no direct access.
Learn more about Robots.txt
XML Sitemaps
Generated by GoDaddy: yes
An XML sitemap helps Google find (and index) all the pages on your site.
GoDaddy automatically sets up and maintains an XML sitemap for your site (pages, blog posts etc), however, there is no way to edit it.
Learn more about XML Sitemaps
Are GoDaddy sites mobile friendly?
One word answer: yes
When designing your site on GoDaddy, there’s a good chance you’ll be focusing on how it looks on desktop.
But mobile traffic overtook desktop traffic in 2017. And Google now prioritizes the mobile version of your site for crawling and indexing.
The good news is that GoDaddy sites are fully responsive, and (speed issues notwithstanding) work well on mobile.
Just make sure to preview how your site looks on both desktop and mobile. And remember it’s the mobile version of your site that Google will index and rank. So if you have a feature that displays on desktop but not mobile, then Google won’t take it into account for rankings.
GoDaddy will give you a preview of how your site looks on mobile.
But we’d still recommend testing on your own device after going live.
If Google does find any issues with the mobile version of your website, they’ll let you know in Search Console.
So keep an eye out.
In conclusion: GoDaddy Website Builder’s SEO is seriously lacking
Our mother told us that if we don’t have anything positive to say, then don’t say anything.
But if we stuck by that rule… well, you’d be looking at a blank page here.
Because it’s pretty hard to conclude anything other than GoDaddy’s Website Builder is poor for SEO.
If you’re on the platform, you’re going to be hampered by the lack of options for optimizing your site/content. And the slow page load times are going to see you lagging your competitors both literally and metaphorically.
But with that being said:
If you currently have a GoDaddy site and don’t want to switch to a more advanced CMS — an action we actually found GoDaddy support engineers recommending in many of their own help threads! — our advice would be to:
run a full SEO audit (you can follow this guide),
allocate time to fixing issues and optimizing your site (where possible),
focus in on creating high quality content that helps your users and fully answers their search queries,
build your site’s authority by earning high quality backlinks (check out our recommended link building tactics here)
Over the coming weeks we’ll be reviewing the on-page SEO of two more popular CMS systems. We’ll then be comparing the SEO pros and cons of each CMS in a roundup post, where we’ll also reveal the best CMS for SEO in 2021. Sign up for our email list below to follow this series, and for loads more fresh SEO tips, tutorials, and guides straight to your inbox.
The needs of an SEO firm are vibrant and modification as business grows
From data precision to smooth functionality, the spectrum of SEO tools and their functions is large, however how do you decide?
5 dead giveaways that it may be time to begin prospecting for new SEO software application to finish your innovation stack
The SEO market is continuously changing and developing. Your SEO agency’s requirements likewise alter as your business grows. The tools you utilize will form how you direct your development. So it’s essential to remain updated on what’s new in the area to decide whether adopting a new SEO tool would benefit your organization.
Yet, it’s always a concern of prioritizing what’s vital for your business requirements.
There are lots of aspects at play here:
Some SEO platforms solve issues that you maybe didn’t even know existed– to recognize these, you need to stay abreast of new improvements in the industry
Some solve a particular problem, which you’re already knowledgeable about– in these cases, it’s just about determining which tool is the best suitable for your firm’s requirements
Some use a smooth experience that assists you enhance your SEO workflows
Some offer competitive advantages in terms of features or rates
In our interviews with leading SEO firms from around the world, we’ve gathered various insights into the elements that the majority of influence the decision to test, and even change, to a new core SEO tool.
Here are some of the dead giveaways that it may be time to start prospecting for new SEO software application in your tool stack.
Content developed in partnership with SEOmonitor.
1. Your current tool isn’t offering you the best information or performances
Accuracy and performance are the biggest discomfort points SEO experts have with their tools.
Does your present option give you enough information? Does it offer the best data? If not, you may not have the ability to provide on your SEO objectives.
Have you ever discover either of these issues?
Unreliable or insufficient information
Some SEO platforms merely supply more information features than others, while others charge additional to see particular metrics, like:
Google’s “(not provided)” data
Brand/non-brand organic traffic division
Mobile vs. desktop traffic
Having this data is indispensable for SEO experts. Having to pay for it granularly can be a hugely restricting factor, particularly for smaller agencies.
For instance, mapping the traffic information from Google Analytics and matching it with the keyword data from Google Search Console to get what’s “(not provided)” means you can reveal customers the direct effect which SEO has on other business goals– like how increasing ranking for a keyword affects conversions.
SEO platforms that offer this type of data as standard can provide you an advantage when it pertains to obtaining and maintaining customers by highlighting the connection between SEO and service results. Or it can be an issue of undependable metrics– opaque or misleading computations, problems that relate to technical changes and not your SEO performance, and so on. Think about the visibility metric. If it’s determined as approximately positions for a set of keywords, then changes based on adding or deleting keywords on that list will be deceptive, leaving you to determine why ball game changes.
Paul Wood, Director of Indulge Media, explains that development in how an SEO tool computes a key metric is a deciding aspect. Much more so if it’s something the agency utilized to do with spreadsheets and many hours invested before finding out about such an effective metric.
“The more interesting situation is when you all of a sudden become mindful of a tool that’s out there that does something your team didn’t even consider,” Wood stated. “When you see it in a tool, that’s a minute when you change the method you’re considering things, about how you structure your work. And then you start to work differently.”
This is how the ideal SEO tools need to work– resolving company pain points, even the ones you might not have thought were possible to solve. Performance concerns Speed is a huge factor in the SEO market.
Search experts need access to precise, up-to-date data in the minute to carry out campaigns and track efficiency.
Since when your software malfunctions, you require to get the issue fixed quickly.
This is why it’s essential to consider the quality of support offered when choosing an SEO tool.
Ideally, you need to get access to a dedicated account supervisor who you can approach for quick resolution of concerns on an as-needed basis, along with regular support calls to evaluate your company’s requirements.
When Paul Friend, Head of SEO, and Ben Foster, Managing Director, from SEO Works decided it’s time to pick a different core SEO tool, they scored ad-hoc and ongoing support as one of the “numerous different relevant aspects when choosing the right tool.”
As part of their decisional matrix, this was one point that needed to match essential functionalities like keyword functions including universal rankings, general market visibility ratings, material insights, forecasting and reporting abilities, link structure capabilities, competition insights, and a lot more.
When you’re considering or evaluating upgrading your existing tech stack, you require to see how well an option performs based on your firm’s particular needs.
2. You want to be seen as a leader in development
Digital is constantly moving, and SEO specialists need to be updated with new developments to remain competitive. Agencies require to be at the forefront of development, so they continuously lookout for brand-new technologies that will set them apart.
Paul Wood states that they “make an effort a minimum of a couple of times a year to have a correct evaluation of what’s out there in terms of tools.” They focus mostly on availability and UX when evaluating brand-new tools on the market, like:
How easily they allow you to export information
How they facilitate partnership between internal teams and clients
How many performances can be integrated into a single platform
The team at SEO Works likewise highlights the importance of constantly watching, with members keeping each other informed. They have an extensive training program in place, too– so everyone is onboarded not only with the tools but the particular approaches the agency utilizes for superior SEO strategies.
Going even further, firms like SEO Works develop exclusive tools, showing how their innovative method can be a competitive advantage for clients in their portfolio.
3. You’re growing or scaling your SEO firm
Digital adoption has sped up globally by at least three to four years in simply a few months, according to a recent McKinsey Global Survey of C-level magnate.
This drive toward a digital-first approach is just expected to continue, which indicates that scaling needs for SEO companies are likely to be high right now, in addition to for the foreseeable future.
Meeting this growing demand for SEO services requires companies to scale operations effectively while likewise staying competitive themselves. If you’re growing your company, it’s a good time to test your tools and see if they have the right set of performances to promote and support this development.
Fast-growing agencies require more abilities, like:
Access to more users: As you add brand-new customers and workers, you want tools that enable you to have limitless users (preferably, at no extra cost) and assist in cooperation across teams
Limitless API access: Your SEO tools require to work seamlessly with your other company tools as you grow your general technology toolkit. For instance, we’ve made it as basic as possible to export big quantities of data through the SEOmonitor API, letting you pull the campaign and keyword-level data into your preferred internal systems (like Klipfolio) and tailor customer reports
More efficient workflows: Operational dashboards, integrated systems, and organizing capabilities for your customer portfolio, all make a difference in helping you get the status quo at a glimpse
In the words of numerous SEO professionals we’ve talked with, the greatest value an SEO platform can bring is to assist you not waste time. The right tools will help you do this, however inefficient ones can leave your group spending too much time on technical processes, which will seriously hamper your ability to scale. 4. Your tool isn’t collaborative enough or adjustable SEO professionals need to have stable processes and methods across all groups. The best software application is constructed with this
in mind. When choosing SEO tools, partnership and customization are the most essential things that companies prioritize. And great deals of features facilitate this, like:
Multiple user access: Unlimited gain access to for team members and clients, with customizable client view permissions.
Collective features: Real-time annotations, remarks, and sharing abilities for both customers and teams.
Tracking metrics: A central company dashboard that lets groups keep an eye on efficiency and jobs, as well as align on goals.
Personalization functions: From filtering campaigns by account managers, to an editing mode that enhances your time for keyword management, to saving tailored reporting templates throughout the agency, there are numerous capabilities you should think about.
< img loading =”lazy”class=”aligncenter size-large wp-image-143321″src=”https://www.searchenginewatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/4-1024×581.png”alt width =”640 “height= “363 “srcset =”https://www.searchenginewatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/4-1024×581.png 1024w, https://www.searchenginewatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/4-300×170.png 300w, https://www.searchenginewatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/4-768×436.png 768w, https://www.searchenginewatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/4.png 728w “sizes=” (max-width: 640px)100vw, 640px” > A robust SEO solution, which integrates several performances like these in a single platform, assists enhance internal workflows and get a holistic view into firm operations. 5. Your tool isn’t economical Various sized firms
have different budgets. Optimizing costs is important, particularly for scaling companies. You need to work with more individuals and utilize more resources in your tools to deal with a larger volume of clients, and you don’t want to scale your costs at the same rate.
Some concerns to ask when assessing the cost-efficiency of a particular tool are:
Does it offer versatile prices and use of resources?
Most SEO software application solutions have a repaired subscription expense, that includes a set number of domains and keywords. But if your usage of the tool’s resources changes from month to month, your rates stays the same.
Other platforms provide companies the ability to update or downgrade monthly, so you only spend for what you utilize. Having no predefined strategy supports companies much better examine their expenses based upon campaign volume on a particular timeframe.
Are there any extra concealed expenses?
Some tools have an appealing base price but featured covert costs and extras that can quickly build up, specifically when you’re onboarding great deals of brand-new customers and handling bigger campaigns. These include:
Per-user costs: Will you have the ability to add unrestricted users (including customers) at no additional cost to permit external and internal partnership?
Migration charges: Is there a per hour or set rate for migrating from your existing system to a new tool?
Integration costs: Are there multiple combinations to crucial tools of the trade (Data Studio, Google Sheets, API gain access to, and more) included in the price?
If your current software isn’t making the most monetary sense for your business, it might be time to test a new one.
When is the right time to start prospecting for a new SEO tool?
The answer is, you need to never ever stop your vital analysis.
Innovation is an ongoing procedure, specifically in this rapidly-changing market. Your core SEO tool of choice requires to keep up the speed and constantly upgrade its abilities.
When you come across these indications with your existing solutions, they may not be serving you as well as they need to be, like:
When you don’t get access to the ideal information or performances.
When you wish to be a leader in development, which suggests you need ingenious approaches.
When you’re growing or scaling your agency, and you need more capabilities in location.
Or when you wish to be more cost-effective.
We comprehend that an SEO agency’s core tools are crucial in winning more clients and handling them more efficiently.
That’s why our team at SEOmonitor is committed to developing specific options that help you get, manage, and retain appropriate consumers.
Join us and our SEO firms community in the journey to bring more transparency and measurability to the SEO market.
Alice Teodorescu is Content Marketing Manager at SEOmonitor. More about:
We analyzed 208,085 webpages to learn more about Core Web Vitals.
First, we established benchmarks for Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint.
Then, we looked into the correlation between Core Web Vitals and user experience metrics (like bounce rate).
Thanks to data provided by WebCEO, we were able to uncover some interesting findings.
Let’s dive right into the data.
Here is a Summary of Our Key Findings:
1. 53.77% of sites had a good Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score. 46.23% of sites had “poor” or “needs improvement” LCP ratings.
2. 53.85% of websites in our data set had optimal First Input Delay (FID) ratings. Only 8.57% of sites had a “poor” FID score.
3. 65.13% of analyzed sites boasted good optimal Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) scores.
4. The average LCP of the sites we analyzed clocked in at 2,386 milliseconds.
5. Average FID was 137.74 milliseconds.
6. The mean CLS score was 0.14. This is slightly higher than the optimal score.
7. The most common issues impacting LCP were high request counts and large transfer sizes.
8. Large layout shifts were the #1 cause of poor CLS scores.
9. The most common issue affecting FID was an inefficient cache policy.
10. There was a weak correlation between Core Web Vital scores and UX metrics.
11. We did find that FID did tend to slightly correlate with page views.
53.77% of Websites Had an Optimal Largest Contentful Paint Score
Our first goal was to see how each site performed based on the three factors that make up Google’s Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay.
Specifically, we wanted to determine the percentage of pages that were classified as “good”, “needs improvement” and “poor” inside of each site’s Search Console.
To do this, we analyzed anonymized Google Search Console data from 208k pages (approximately 20k total sites).
Our first task: analyze LCP (Large Contentful Paint). In simple terms, LCP measures how long it takes a page to load its visible content.
Here’s how the sites that we analyzed fared:
Good: 53.77%
Needs Improvement: 28.76%
Poor: 17.47%
As you can see, the majority of sites that we looked at had a “good” LCP rating. This was higher than expected, especially when taking into account other benchmarking efforts (like this one by iProspect).
It may be that the websites in our dataset are especially diligent about page performance. Or it may be partly due to a sample size difference (the iProspect analysis continuously monitors 1,500 sites. We analyzed 20,000+).
Either way, it’s encouraging to see that only about half of all websites need to work on their LCP.
53.85% of Websites We Analyzed Had Good First Input Delay Ratings
Next, we looked at Search Console reported First Input Delay (FID) ratings. As the name suggests, FIP measures the delay between the first request and a user being able to input something (like typing in a username).
Here’s a breakdown of FID scores from our dataset:
Good: 53.85%
Needs Improvement: 37.58%
Poor: 8.57%
Again, just over half of the sites we looked at had “good” FID ratings.
Interestingly, very few (8.57%) had “poor” scores. This shows that a relatively small number of sites are likely to be negatively affected once Google incorporates FID into their algorithm.
65.13% of Sites Had an Optimal Cumulative Layout Shift Score
Finally, we looked at the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) ratings from Search Console.
CLS is a measurement of how elements on a page move while loading. Pages that are relatively stable through the loading process have high (good) CLS scores.
Here were the CLS ratings among the sites that we analyzed:
Good: 65.13%
Needs Improvement: 17.03%
Poor: 17.84%
Among the three Core Web Vitals scores, CLS tended to be the least problematic. In fact, only around 35% of the sites that we analyzed need to work on their CLS.
Average LCP Is 2,836 Milliseconds
Next, we wanted to establish benchmarks for each Core Web Vital metric. As mentioned above, Google has created their own set of guidelines for each Core Web Vital.
(For example, a “good” LCP is considered to be under 2.5 seconds.)
However, we hadn’t seen a large-scale analysis that attempted to benchmark each Core Web Vital metric “in the wild”.
First, we benchmarked LCP scores for the sites in our database.
Among the sites that we analyzed, the average LCP turned out to be 2,836 Milliseconds (2.8 seconds).
Here were the most common issues that negatively impacted LCP performance:
High request counts and large transfer sizes (100% of pages)
High network round-trip time (100% of pages)
Critical request chains (98.9% of pages)
High initial server response time (57.4% of pages)
Images not served in next-gen format (44.6% of pages)
Overall, 100% of pages had high LCP scores at least partly due to “High request counts and large transfer sizes”. In other words, pages that are heavy with excess code, large file sizes, or both.
This finding is in line with another analysis that we did which found that large pages tended to be the culprit behind most slow-loading pages.
Average FID Is 137.4 Milliseconds
We then looked at FID scores among the pages in our dataset.
Overall, the mean First Input Delay was 137.4 milliseconds:
Here are the most prevalent FID-related issues that we discovered:
Inefficient cache policy (87.4% of pages)
Long main-thread tasks (78.4% of pages)
Unused JavaScript (54.1% of pages)
Unused CSS (38.7% of pages)
Excessive Document Object Model size (22.3% of pages)
It was interesting to see that caching issues tended to negatively affect FID more than any other problem. And, not surprisingly, poorly-optimized code (in the form of unused JS and CSS) was behind many high FID scores.
Average CLS Is .14
We discovered that the average CLS score is .14.
This metric specifically looks at how the content on a page “shifts”.Anything below .1 is rated as “good” in Search Console.
The most common issues affecting the projects’ CLS included:
Large layout shifts (94.5% of pages)
Render-blocking resources (86.3% of pages)
Text hidden during web font load (82.6% of pages)
Not preloaded key requests (26.7% of pages)
Improperly sized images (24.7% of pages)
How LCP Correlates With User Behavior
Now that benchmarks were set, we then set to find out how accurately Core Web Vitals represent real-life user experience.
In fact, this relationship is something that Google themselves highlight in their “Core Web Vitals report” documentation:
To analyze Core Web Vitals and their impact on UX, we decided to look at three UX metrics designed to represent user behavior on webpages:
Bounce rate (% of users leaving a website’s page upon visiting it)
Page depth per session (how many pages users see before leaving the website)
Time on website (how much time users spend on a website in a single session)
Our hypothesis was as follows: if you improve a website’s Core Web Vitals, it will positively affect UX metrics.
In other words, a site with “good” Core Web Vitals will have a lower bounce rate, longer sessions, and higher page views. Fortunately, in addition to Search Console data, this data set also contained UX metrics from Google Analytics.
Then, we simply had to compare each website’s Core Web Vitals against each UX metric. You can find our results for LCP below:
LCP and Bounce Rate
LCP and Pages per Session
LCP and Time on Site
On the three graphs, it was clear that all three different segments (Good, Poor and Needs Improvement) are somewhat evenly distributed on the graph.
In other words, there wasn’t any direct relationship between LCP and UX metrics.
FID Has a Slight Relationship With Page Views
Next, we looked at the potential relationship between First Input Delay and user behavior.
Like with LCP, it’s logical that a poor FID would negatively impact UX metrics (especially bounce rate).
A user that needs to wait to choose from a menu or type in their password is likely to become frustrated and bounce. And if that experience carries across several pages, it may lead to them reducing their total page views.
With that, here’s how FID correlated with their behavioral metrics.
FID and Bounce Rate
FID and Pages per Session
Note: We found that a high FID tends to correlate with a low number of pages per session. The opposite was also true.
FID and Time on Site
Overall, the only instance where we see hints of correlation is when we compare FID to the number of pages viewed per session. When it comes to bounce rate and time on site, a website’s FID appears to have no influence on user behavior.
How CLS Impacts User Behavior
Next, we wanted to investigate a potential link between CLS and user activity.
It seems logical that a poor CLS would frustrate users. And could therefore increase bounce rate and reduce session time.
However, we weren’t able to find any case studies or large-scale analysis that demonstrated that high CLS scores influence user behavior. So we decided to run an analysis that looked for potential relationships between CLS, bounce rate, “dwell time” and pages viewed. Here’s what we found:
CLS and Bounce Rate
CLS and Pages per Session
CLS and Time on Site
Overall, we didn’t see any significant correlation between CLS, bounce rate, time on site, or page views.
Summary
I hope you found this analysis interesting and useful (especially with Google’s Page Experience update on the way).
Here’s a link to the raw data set that we used. Along with our methods.
I want to thank SEO software WebCEO for providing the data that made this industry study possible.
Overall, it was interesting to see that most of the sites that we analyzed performed relatively well. And are largely ready for the Google update. And it was interesting to find that, while Core Web Vitals represent metrics for a positive UX on a website, we didn’t see any correlation with behavioral metrics.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
What’s your main takeaway from today’s study? Or maybe you have a question about something from the analysis. Either way, leave a comment below right now.
We analyzed 208,085 webpages to learn more about Core Web Vitals.
First, we established benchmarks for Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint.
Then, we looked into the correlation between Core Web Vitals and user experience metrics (like bounce rate).
Thanks to data provided by WebCEO, we were able to uncover some interesting findings.
Let’s dive right into the data.
Here is a Summary of Our Key Findings:
1. 53.77% of sites had a good Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score. 46.23% of sites had “poor” or “needs improvement” LCP ratings.
2. 53.85% of websites in our data set had optimal First Input Delay (FID) ratings. Only 8.57% of sites had a “poor” FID score.
3. 65.13% of analyzed sites boasted good optimal Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) scores.
4. The average LCP of the sites we analyzed clocked in at 2,386 milliseconds.
5. Average FID was 137.74 milliseconds.
6. The mean CLS score was 0.14. This is slightly higher than the optimal score.
7. The most common issues impacting LCP were high request counts and large transfer sizes.
8. Large layout shifts were the #1 cause of poor CLS scores.
9. The most common issue affecting FID was an inefficient cache policy.
10. There was a weak correlation between Core Web Vital scores and UX metrics.
11. We did find that FID did tend to slightly correlate with page views.
53.77% of Websites Had an Optimal Largest Contentful Paint Score
Our first goal was to see how each site performed based on the three factors that make up Google’s Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay.
Specifically, we wanted to determine the percentage of pages that were classified as “good”, “needs improvement” and “poor” inside of each site’s Search Console.
To do this, we analyzed anonymized Google Search Console data from 208k pages (approximately 20k total sites).
Our first task: analyze LCP (Large Contentful Paint). In simple terms, LCP measures how long it takes a page to load its visible content.
Here’s how the sites that we analyzed fared:
Good: 53.77%
Needs Improvement: 28.76%
Poor: 17.47%
As you can see, the majority of sites that we looked at had a “good” LCP rating. This was higher than expected, especially when taking into account other benchmarking efforts (like this one by iProspect).
It may be that the websites in our dataset are especially diligent about page performance. Or it may be partly due to a sample size difference (the iProspect analysis continuously monitors 1,500 sites. We analyzed 20,000+).
Either way, it’s encouraging to see that only about half of all websites need to work on their LCP.
53.85% of Websites We Analyzed Had Good First Input Delay Ratings
Next, we looked at Search Console reported First Input Delay (FID) ratings. As the name suggests, FIP measures the delay between the first request and a user being able to input something (like typing in a username).
Here’s a breakdown of FID scores from our dataset:
Good: 53.85%
Needs Improvement: 37.58%
Poor: 8.57%
Again, just over half of the sites we looked at had “good” FID ratings.
Interestingly, very few (8.57%) had “poor” scores. This shows that a relatively small number of sites are likely to be negatively affected once Google incorporates FID into their algorithm.
65.13% of Sites Had an Optimal Cumulative Layout Shift Score
Finally, we looked at the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) ratings from Search Console.
CLS is a measurement of how elements on a page move while loading. Pages that are relatively stable through the loading process have high (good) CLS scores.
Here were the CLS ratings among the sites that we analyzed:
Good: 65.13%
Needs Improvement: 17.03%
Poor: 17.84%
Among the three Core Web Vitals scores, CLS tended to be the least problematic. In fact, only around 35% of the sites that we analyzed need to work on their CLS.
Average LCP Is 2,836 Milliseconds
Next, we wanted to establish benchmarks for each Core Web Vital metric. As mentioned above, Google has created their own set of guidelines for each Core Web Vital.
(For example, a “good” LCP is considered to be under 2.5 seconds.)
However, we hadn’t seen a large-scale analysis that attempted to benchmark each Core Web Vital metric “in the wild”.
First, we benchmarked LCP scores for the sites in our database.
Among the sites that we analyzed, the average LCP turned out to be 2,836 Milliseconds (2.8 seconds).
Here were the most common issues that negatively impacted LCP performance:
High request counts and large transfer sizes (100% of pages)
High network round-trip time (100% of pages)
Critical request chains (98.9% of pages)
High initial server response time (57.4% of pages)
Images not served in next-gen format (44.6% of pages)
Overall, 100% of pages had high LCP scores at least partly due to “High request counts and large transfer sizes”. In other words, pages that are heavy with excess code, large file sizes, or both.
This finding is in line with another analysis that we did which found that large pages tended to be the culprit behind most slow-loading pages.
Average FID Is 137.4 Milliseconds
We then looked at FID scores among the pages in our dataset.
Overall, the mean First Input Delay was 137.4 milliseconds:
Here are the most prevalent FID-related issues that we discovered:
Inefficient cache policy (87.4% of pages)
Long main-thread tasks (78.4% of pages)
Unused JavaScript (54.1% of pages)
Unused CSS (38.7% of pages)
Excessive Document Object Model size (22.3% of pages)
It was interesting to see that caching issues tended to negatively affect FID more than any other problem. And, not surprisingly, poorly-optimized code (in the form of unused JS and CSS) was behind many high FID scores.
Average CLS Is .14
We discovered that the average CLS score is .14.
This metric specifically looks at how the content on a page “shifts”.Anything below .1 is rated as “good” in Search Console.
The most common issues affecting the projects’ CLS included:
Large layout shifts (94.5% of pages)
Render-blocking resources (86.3% of pages)
Text hidden during web font load (82.6% of pages)
Not preloaded key requests (26.7% of pages)
Improperly sized images (24.7% of pages)
How LCP Correlates With User Behavior
Now that benchmarks were set, we then set to find out how accurately Core Web Vitals represent real-life user experience.
In fact, this relationship is something that Google themselves highlight in their “Core Web Vitals report” documentation:
To analyze Core Web Vitals and their impact on UX, we decided to look at three UX metrics designed to represent user behavior on webpages:
Bounce rate (% of users leaving a website’s page upon visiting it)
Page depth per session (how many pages users see before leaving the website)
Time on website (how much time users spend on a website in a single session)
Our hypothesis was as follows: if you improve a website’s Core Web Vitals, it will positively affect UX metrics.
In other words, a site with “good” Core Web Vitals will have a lower bounce rate, longer sessions, and higher page views. Fortunately, in addition to Search Console data, this data set also contained UX metrics from Google Analytics.
Then, we simply had to compare each website’s Core Web Vitals against each UX metric. You can find our results for LCP below:
LCP and Bounce Rate
LCP and Pages per Session
LCP and Time on Site
On the three graphs, it was clear that all three different segments (Good, Poor and Needs Improvement) are somewhat evenly distributed on the graph.
In other words, there wasn’t any direct relationship between LCP and UX metrics.
FID Has a Slight Relationship With Page Views
Next, we looked at the potential relationship between First Input Delay and user behavior.
Like with LCP, it’s logical that a poor FID would negatively impact UX metrics (especially bounce rate).
A user that needs to wait to choose from a menu or type in their password is likely to become frustrated and bounce. And if that experience carries across several pages, it may lead to them reducing their total page views.
With that, here’s how FID correlated with their behavioral metrics.
FID and Bounce Rate
FID and Pages per Session
Note: We found that a high FID tends to correlate with a low number of pages per session. The opposite was also true.
FID and Time on Site
Overall, the only instance where we see hints of correlation is when we compare FID to the number of pages viewed per session. When it comes to bounce rate and time on site, a website’s FID appears to have no influence on user behavior.
How CLS Impacts User Behavior
Next, we wanted to investigate a potential link between CLS and user activity.
It seems logical that a poor CLS would frustrate users. And could therefore increase bounce rate and reduce session time.
However, we weren’t able to find any case studies or large-scale analysis that demonstrated that high CLS scores influence user behavior. So we decided to run an analysis that looked for potential relationships between CLS, bounce rate, “dwell time” and pages viewed. Here’s what we found:
CLS and Bounce Rate
CLS and Pages per Session
CLS and Time on Site
Overall, we didn’t see any significant correlation between CLS, bounce rate, time on site, or page views.
Summary
I hope you found this analysis interesting and useful (especially with Google’s Page Experience update on the way).
Here’s a link to the raw data set that we used. Along with our methods.
I want to thank SEO software WebCEO for providing the data that made this industry study possible.
Overall, it was interesting to see that most of the sites that we analyzed performed relatively well. And are largely ready for the Google update. And it was interesting to find that, while Core Web Vitals represent metrics for a positive UX on a website, we didn’t see any correlation with behavioral metrics.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
What’s your main takeaway from today’s study? Or maybe you have a question about something from the analysis. Either way, leave a comment below right now.
We analyzed 208,085 webpages to learn more about Core Web Vitals.
First, we established benchmarks for Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint.
Then, we looked into the correlation between Core Web Vitals and user experience metrics (like bounce rate).
Thanks to data provided by WebCEO, we were able to uncover some interesting findings.
Let’s dive right into the data.
Here is a Summary of Our Key Findings:
1. 53.77% of sites had a good Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score. 46.23% of sites had “poor” or “needs improvement” LCP ratings.
2. 53.85% of websites in our data set had optimal First Input Delay (FID) ratings. Only 8.57% of sites had a “poor” FID score.
3. 65.13% of analyzed sites boasted good optimal Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) scores.
4. The average LCP of the sites we analyzed clocked in at 2,386 milliseconds.
5. Average FID was 137.74 milliseconds.
6. The mean CLS score was 0.14. This is slightly higher than the optimal score.
7. The most common issues impacting LCP were high request counts and large transfer sizes.
8. Large layout shifts were the #1 cause of poor CLS scores.
9. The most common issue affecting FID was an inefficient cache policy.
10. There was a weak correlation between Core Web Vital scores and UX metrics.
11. We did find that FID did tend to slightly correlate with page views.
53.77% of Websites Had an Optimal Largest Contentful Paint Score
Our first goal was to see how each site performed based on the three factors that make up Google’s Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay.
Specifically, we wanted to determine the percentage of pages that were classified as “good”, “needs improvement” and “poor” inside of each site’s Search Console.
To do this, we analyzed anonymized Google Search Console data from 208k pages (approximately 20k total sites).
Our first task: analyze LCP (Large Contentful Paint). In simple terms, LCP measures how long it takes a page to load its visible content.
Here’s how the sites that we analyzed fared:
Good: 53.77%
Needs Improvement: 28.76%
Poor: 17.47%
As you can see, the majority of sites that we looked at had a “good” LCP rating. This was higher than expected, especially when taking into account other benchmarking efforts (like this one by iProspect).
It may be that the websites in our dataset are especially diligent about page performance. Or it may be partly due to a sample size difference (the iProspect analysis continuously monitors 1,500 sites. We analyzed 20,000+).
Either way, it’s encouraging to see that only about half of all websites need to work on their LCP.
53.85% of Websites We Analyzed Had Good First Input Delay Ratings
Next, we looked at Search Console reported First Input Delay (FID) ratings. As the name suggests, FIP measures the delay between the first request and a user being able to input something (like typing in a username).
Here’s a breakdown of FID scores from our dataset:
Good: 53.85%
Needs Improvement: 37.58%
Poor: 8.57%
Again, just over half of the sites we looked at had “good” FID ratings.
Interestingly, very few (8.57%) had “poor” scores. This shows that a relatively small number of sites are likely to be negatively affected once Google incorporates FID into their algorithm.
65.13% of Sites Had an Optimal Cumulative Layout Shift Score
Finally, we looked at the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) ratings from Search Console.
CLS is a measurement of how elements on a page move while loading. Pages that are relatively stable through the loading process have high (good) CLS scores.
Here were the CLS ratings among the sites that we analyzed:
Good: 65.13%
Needs Improvement: 17.03%
Poor: 17.84%
Among the three Core Web Vitals scores, CLS tended to be the least problematic. In fact, only around 35% of the sites that we analyzed need to work on their CLS.
Average LCP Is 2,836 Milliseconds
Next, we wanted to establish benchmarks for each Core Web Vital metric. As mentioned above, Google has created their own set of guidelines for each Core Web Vital.
(For example, a “good” LCP is considered to be under 2.5 seconds.)
However, we hadn’t seen a large-scale analysis that attempted to benchmark each Core Web Vital metric “in the wild”.
First, we benchmarked LCP scores for the sites in our database.
Among the sites that we analyzed, the average LCP turned out to be 2,836 Milliseconds (2.8 seconds).
Here were the most common issues that negatively impacted LCP performance:
High request counts and large transfer sizes (100% of pages)
High network round-trip time (100% of pages)
Critical request chains (98.9% of pages)
High initial server response time (57.4% of pages)
Images not served in next-gen format (44.6% of pages)
Overall, 100% of pages had high LCP scores at least partly due to “High request counts and large transfer sizes”. In other words, pages that are heavy with excess code, large file sizes, or both.
This finding is in line with another analysis that we did which found that large pages tended to be the culprit behind most slow-loading pages.
Average FID Is 137.4 Milliseconds
We then looked at FID scores among the pages in our dataset.
Overall, the mean First Input Delay was 137.4 milliseconds:
Here are the most prevalent FID-related issues that we discovered:
Inefficient cache policy (87.4% of pages)
Long main-thread tasks (78.4% of pages)
Unused JavaScript (54.1% of pages)
Unused CSS (38.7% of pages)
Excessive Document Object Model size (22.3% of pages)
It was interesting to see that caching issues tended to negatively affect FID more than any other problem. And, not surprisingly, poorly-optimized code (in the form of unused JS and CSS) was behind many high FID scores.
Average CLS Is .14
We discovered that the average CLS score is .14.
This metric specifically looks at how the content on a page “shifts”.Anything below .1 is rated as “good” in Search Console.
The most common issues affecting the projects’ CLS included:
Large layout shifts (94.5% of pages)
Render-blocking resources (86.3% of pages)
Text hidden during web font load (82.6% of pages)
Not preloaded key requests (26.7% of pages)
Improperly sized images (24.7% of pages)
How LCP Correlates With User Behavior
Now that benchmarks were set, we then set to find out how accurately Core Web Vitals represent real-life user experience.
In fact, this relationship is something that Google themselves highlight in their “Core Web Vitals report” documentation:
To analyze Core Web Vitals and their impact on UX, we decided to look at three UX metrics designed to represent user behavior on webpages:
Bounce rate (% of users leaving a website’s page upon visiting it)
Page depth per session (how many pages users see before leaving the website)
Time on website (how much time users spend on a website in a single session)
Our hypothesis was as follows: if you improve a website’s Core Web Vitals, it will positively affect UX metrics.
In other words, a site with “good” Core Web Vitals will have a lower bounce rate, longer sessions, and higher page views. Fortunately, in addition to Search Console data, this data set also contained UX metrics from Google Analytics.
Then, we simply had to compare each website’s Core Web Vitals against each UX metric. You can find our results for LCP below:
LCP and Bounce Rate
LCP and Pages per Session
LCP and Time on Site
On the three graphs, it was clear that all three different segments (Good, Poor and Needs Improvement) are somewhat evenly distributed on the graph.
In other words, there wasn’t any direct relationship between LCP and UX metrics.
FID Has a Slight Relationship With Page Views
Next, we looked at the potential relationship between First Input Delay and user behavior.
Like with LCP, it’s logical that a poor FID would negatively impact UX metrics (especially bounce rate).
A user that needs to wait to choose from a menu or type in their password is likely to become frustrated and bounce. And if that experience carries across several pages, it may lead to them reducing their total page views.
With that, here’s how FID correlated with their behavioral metrics.
FID and Bounce Rate
FID and Pages per Session
Note: We found that a high FID tends to correlate with a low number of pages per session. The opposite was also true.
FID and Time on Site
Overall, the only instance where we see hints of correlation is when we compare FID to the number of pages viewed per session. When it comes to bounce rate and time on site, a website’s FID appears to have no influence on user behavior.
How CLS Impacts User Behavior
Next, we wanted to investigate a potential link between CLS and user activity.
It seems logical that a poor CLS would frustrate users. And could therefore increase bounce rate and reduce session time.
However, we weren’t able to find any case studies or large-scale analysis that demonstrated that high CLS scores influence user behavior. So we decided to run an analysis that looked for potential relationships between CLS, bounce rate, “dwell time” and pages viewed. Here’s what we found:
CLS and Bounce Rate
CLS and Pages per Session
CLS and Time on Site
Overall, we didn’t see any significant correlation between CLS, bounce rate, time on site, or page views.
Summary
I hope you found this analysis interesting and useful (especially with Google’s Page Experience update on the way).
Here’s a link to the raw data set that we used. Along with our methods.
I want to thank SEO software WebCEO for providing the data that made this industry study possible.
Overall, it was interesting to see that most of the sites that we analyzed performed relatively well. And are largely ready for the Google update. And it was interesting to find that, while Core Web Vitals represent metrics for a positive UX on a website, we didn’t see any correlation with behavioral metrics.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
What’s your main takeaway from today’s study? Or maybe you have a question about something from the analysis. Either way, leave a comment below right now.
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