Search queries for your brand name, called “brand searches,” are among the most important keywords in a keyword portfolio. Even so, marketers are not often paying as much attention to these types of queries as they should.

While juicy high-volume non-branded queries are exciting, providing your audience and customers with helpful brand information it is an equally thrilling prospect. The truth is that users for many brands, big and small, are commonly underserved by branded search results they find.

In this post, we’ll show you exactly how to conduct a branded search audit, identify failing results, and implement improvements. This audit is one that we perform for our clients at Stella Rising. Now you can do the same for your clients or website.

The first part of the audit is about setting the stage. Do you know what ratio of your traffic is the result of non-brand queries vs. brand queries? You should. In this section of the audit, you’ll set the stage to discuss the importance of what you identify.

Why are branded queries so important?

Branded queries are among the most important keywords you can optimize as they represent a brand-aware audience that is more likely to convert. In fact, many of the people searching for your brand are already customers looking for information or looking to purchase again.

It’s easy (generally)

Unlike most things in SEO, Google wants you to rank well for your own brand terms. Whenever we see branded searches that are failing users, it’s usually easy to fix. Often, it’s as simple as creating a new page or changing a meta tag. Other times it can be more challenging, such as when brands have significant PR and/or brand reputation issues. That said, in most cases, branded search queries are among the easiest to rank for. Don’t overlook them.

Correlation to rankings and personalization

While the search volume of a domain name is not a confirmed ranking factor, Google does hold a patent that may indicate the more searches a brand receives, the more likely that brand is to to be seen as high quality by Google. This, in turn, may help them to rank for associated non-brand terms. What does that mean? Essentially, if tens of thousands of people search your brand name + couch, you may be more likely to rank for “sofas.” A number of 2014 Wayfair commercials brilliantly capitalized on this opportunity. The commercials literally told people to Google “Wayfair my sofa” or “Wayfair my kitchen,” thus tying signals around their entity to other non-brand entities.

How Wayfair brilliantly linked its advertising with its branded search terms

Branded searches can also impact autocomplete which in turn can impact more branded searches, feeding into the connection described above. When users click one of these autocompleted search suggestions, they execute a “branded search,” which then signals to Google that the entities are related. For example, “Amazon, Ralph Lauren or Macy’s” with “Men’s shirts”.

Branded search audit part one: Setting the stage

In part one of this audit, you will provide branded search landscape insights. Like any good show, you need to set the stage for the information you are about to present. This will help to win buy-in, prioritize your efforts, and keep you strategically on track.

What is your ratio of branded search?

For this part, you’ll need to head to the Google Search Console and open up your performance report for the last three months. Start by setting up a filter for your brand name. If you have a brand name that people commonly misspell, then you will want to take that into account.*

Click the “+ New” button and then click “Query.” Filter by “Queries Containing” and not “Query is Exactly.”

*Advanced Tip: The above instructions only account for your brand name, not product names that are proprietary to your brand. Consider using the API to pull down your GSC report and do filtering for those as well.

You’ll then see the total number of branded clicks and impressions your site receives.

Now change your filter to “Queries not containing,” this will give you roughly the number of non-branded clicks the website has received from Google search.

Take this data and bring it into Excel. From there, create a pie chart to visually demonstrate the ratio of branded to non-branded clicks the website receives.

What are the top branded queries driving traffic?

The next and perhaps one of the most critical questions for this analysis is, “What are the top branded queries?” Understanding this is important because the next step in this audit is to manually search each of the top ten (or more) queries. Then you will understand which queries will better serve users.

While this analysis is simple, we found that creating a simple visual with the data makes for a better story in your presentation. To do this, download the data by clicking the down arrow at the top of the queries table.

Once you have the data in Excel, you can create a cool visual using the 2D bar chart graph.

What are the top pages receiving branded clicks?

Similar to the above analysis, you will need to download the top pages from the “pages” tab in your performance report.

Where do branded searches come from?

For some brands, it is worth considering where branded searches come from geographically. To find this information, set your filter to include brand queries and then click the “countries” tab in the Google Search Console.

Now we could just put that image into a report, but what fun would that be? Instead, download the data and bring it into Excel to create a visual.

You can do this a number of ways, but we recommend either using a map or a tree-map which generates a cool way of looking at the data. A pie chart would do but is not as visually appealing. Open Excel and highlight the data you downloaded. Click “Insert”, then click either on “Maps” or the second box for a treemap.

Tree-map visualization of country click data

How has branded search trended over time?

The last and perhaps the most essential question outside of which queries get clicks is, “how has branded search trended over time?” This trend is a hugely important question for any brand that has or is currently investing in brand building efforts, media, PR, or even non-branded paid search campaigns.

During this section of the audit, we have seen brands that previously invested millions in traditional print flatten out for years. Alternatively, we’ve also seen DTC brand’s growth hit a wall. Knowing where brand interest stands is a data point that is vital to all brands and their performance marketing strategies. Whether you are conducting a branded search audit or not, tracking the branded search volume is something that should be on the KPI list for marketers across a multitude of disciplines.

Branded search audit part two: Identifying issues in branded search

Do you have any brand image issues?

Sorry, no SEO magic here. If your brand, founder or employee made headlines (and not the good ones you send to mom) your only strategy is to do your best to rectify the situation.

Take, for example, a brand we came across which was at one point dealing with first page Google results full of nasty headlines. The headings covered how the center had allegedly abandoned more than 40 research animals on an island.

When I first heard this story and considered the best plan forward I thought, “Can they just decide not to abandon the animals and find them homes?”

In fact, that’s exactly what they did. As a result, the negative stories were replaced over time with positive ones about how the center reached an agreement to find a sanctuary for the animals. The first page of results for their brand name is now squeaky clean. The moral of this story is, never abandon animals on an island.

But, if you do, and get dragged through the mud for it, no amount of SEO will save you. Are there any abandoned research animals in your organization? If so, get them off the island.

In other less metaphorical terms, part of auditing brand search is brand reputation.

As we all now know, “E-A-T” and reputation are hugely important to Google. Deal with business practice issues head-on and find the best resolution possible. John Mueller has reminded us that Google has a really good memory and is not apt to forget anything about your brand history. Stains on your brand reputation can really take a toll and have lasting power. The best offense here is a good defense.

Searching the top ten queries

Now for the part of the audit where we find the broken stuff.

Take your list of top terms and manually execute the search in a private browsing window for each term. Record your results and a screenshot of the SERP.

What are we looking for?

• The number of positions on the page we own – With branded searches for things like “brand name backpacks,” you can own 15+ of the top positions.
• Others owning our conversation – Look for other brands ranking for your branded terms. Are they authorized to sell or talk about your products? Is the information they provide correct or accurate? Could a better job be done?
• Misalignment of the query and title/meta – Does your title tag and meta description clearly speak to the query searched and align to the searcher’s intent? If not, make some changes to bring this into alignment. For example, if your shipping info is on a page labeled “FAQ” that’s unclear for users.
• Cross-channel insights – Are all of your social properties listed on the first page where appropriate? Are others bidding on brand terms where you are not? Look for cross-channel synergies that could be leveraged for more aggregate traffic.
• Broken pages – For big and small brands we have found soft “404” messages, outdated or broken pages ranking for highly searched branded terms. Click around the top ten and make sure everything is working as expected.
• Out of stock products – Sometimes the products that rank for branded searches on ecommerce sites are out of stock. Make sure you have a protocol in place for managing inventory so that searchers are best served by the landing page.

Searching other navigational queries

Other areas to check out are navigational or known brand queries that help users navigate and interact with your brand. For example:

• Brand Name Opening Hours
• Brand Name Location
• Brand Name Address
• Brand Name Telephone Number
• Brand Name Customer Service
• Brand Name FAQ
• Brand Name Return Policy
• Brand Name Shipping
• Brand Name Refund Policy
• Brand Name Size Chart/Guide
• Brand Name Sale

Manually execute a search in a private browsing window for these terms. You’re looking for title tags and meta descriptions that do not speak to the query, missing pages where content would be better-served broken-out, and other websites owing the conversation around your terms. In some of our audits, we have seen third-party sellers ranking on position one for things like “brand name return policy”.

Furthermore, the information presented was not even correct. When it came to our site, we were not making that information easy to find, and as such, we got beat out. Simple adjustments to meta information and where content lived helped to improve our visibility and win back the featured snippet.

Track and measure

As with any good SEO effort, you should carefully track and measure the success of your recommendations. Consider setting up a monthly tracking sheet for your branded search volume. Also, consider tracking some of the branded queries identified as “needing work” in your rank tracker.

Conclusion

The branded search audit is a deliverable which does not take a great deal of time but can result in tremendous impact for your brand or client. By focusing on branded queries first, you are serving those most likely to convert on your site while simultaneously addressing your lowest hanging fruit.

Have questions about conducting your own audit? Let us know in the comments section below.

John Morabito is the Director of SEO at Women’s Marketing / Flying Point Digital. He can be found on Twitter .

Related reading

How to enable the usage of JavaScript frameworks while keeping the search engine bots happy? Where should SEOs start from? Key guidelines shared.

Complete overivew of what Google Search Console is, what it does for your site, how to use it, and what you need to get started taking advantage of it today.

Last month, Google tested AR functionality in Google Maps. What are the implications of VPS, street view, and machine learning for local search and SEOs?

Six of the best techniques for building backlinks. The skyscraper, interviews, free tools, interesting data sets, sponsorships, and transcripts.

Consumers spend an overwhelming majority of their mobile internet time within apps. Recognizing this trend, the world’s biggest brands have developed apps as tools for providing services (like checking a bank balance) or making a purchase (through an e-commerce store). But many of these apps have untapped potential. Beyond basic transactions, branded apps can be used as powerful video delivery mechanisms that increase engagement and brand loyalty.

Especially as email open rates decline, apps can serve as a new way to connect with consumers with greater efficiency. Customers who have taken the time to download a brand’s app onto their device are some of the most loyal customers a brand has. This advocacy is ripe for brands to mine.

When a brand has an app and separately has video content, produced either for TV spots, social media or their website, there’s no reason these ingredients can’t be combined. The result is a powerful in-app content marketing hub that keeps the best customers engaged and keeps the brand top-of-mind. Some companies, like Nike and Red Bull, are already doing this well. To effectively market in a mobile world, brands need to think of their apps as mobile video mailboxes.

The fight for user attention

To better understand the underutilized value of branded apps, it helps first to recognize just how hard it is to reach consumers through more traditional TV and video channels. TV still comes first for so many marketers, and they invest their budget in a series of spots that will run for 30 or 60 seconds on the air. But with cord-cutting on the rise, it’s harder and harder to achieve the level of penetration TV advertisers achieved in the past. While audiences have switched to digital video, reaching them isn’t necessarily easier in that channel: 65% of consumers skip pre-roll video ads when given the option. With mobile viewership on the rise, brands must find new ways to keep their loyal customers truly engaged.

Maximizing efficiency

The efficiency imperative is front and center for most brands, and leveraging apps as another way to promote already-created video content delivers on that. By using their apps, marketers don’t have to buy media to retarget the consumers who love their brand. Instead, they can recycle content that they already have and hand it directly to the consumers who will be most receptive to its messaging.

The biggest obstacle is that the app developers and media teams are very likely working toward separate goals, and in many organizations, they may not be communicating regularly if they communicate at all. But investing time into connecting these disparate departments can yield great results for the company as a whole.

Constructing a content hub

Apps are purpose built. Airline apps are for purchasing tickets and checking in. Consumers download the AmEx app to access their credit card accounts. If the app development team is focused solely on that goal, there’s no reason to include a video player within the app, and no reason to consider content. No one explicitly downloads a banking app because they want to watch a three-minute video on smart investing tactics. But that doesn’t mean that customers aren’t interested in such content. A recent study from Hubspot found that 68% of consumers say video is their favorite way to learn about new products and services. Brands with a narrow focus can easily miss opportunities to increase spend and grow brand loyalty.

Brand’s don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but they can add functionality to make their apps something better. Users already love the AmEx app – it has a 4.9-star rating in the Apple App Store, based on 910,000 ratings. What if the app included video to promote different rewards packages and destinations that are available to cardholders? Or videos about their card features, to inspire consumers to spend a bit more? Heck, it could even host a library of the brand’s famous Jerry Seinfeld TV ads from years past, which have tens of thousands of views online, thanks to user uploads.

Pushing these videos directly to a user’s device and sending them screen notifications to tell them there’s something new for them to watch in the app is an easy, effective and innovative way to engage users. They can now watch these short videos during downtime: on a commute, standing in line at the store, waiting at the doctor’s office and other moments when they’re looking for content to entertain them.

Brands that relied so heavily on TV advertising in the past are still learning how to market appropriately in a mobile world. The video they’re producing to recruit new customers can live in the branded apps, doing double duty to re-engage loyal customers. Rather than have app and ad teams live in silos, brands need to think about how they can best combine resources to efficiently and nimbly engage with consumers in the modern, mobile-first world.

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

About The Author

Daniel Hurwitz boasts more than 20 years of experience in digital marketing/media, AdTech, EdTech and HealthTech and is well versed in technology solutions to support mobile and video. A start-up specialist, Hurwitz led Sales at Evergage, GoNoodle and MapMyFitness (acquired by Under Armour in 2013). His writing has been featured on publications including PhocusWire, Martech Advisor and SalesTechStar.

Two new specs aimed at addressing ad fraud and increasing transparency from the buy-side of the digital advertising ecosystem are out for public comment from the IAB Tech Lab: Sellers.json and the OpenRTB SupplyChain object.

The 30-day public comment period ends May 10.

What is OpenRTB SupplyChain object? The SupplyChain object will show buyers all the parties involved in selling or reselling a given bid request. It consists of a set of nodes, with each node representing an entity participating in the bid request sale. The complete chain of entities involved in (and paid for part of) the sale are then discoverable to the buyer.

“This information can be important to buyers for any number of reasons including transparency of the supply chain, ensuring that all intermediaries are entities that the buyer wants to transact with and that inventory is purchased as directly as possible,” per the spec.

It can be used with OpenRTB 2.5 and OpenRTB 3.0.

What is Sellers.json? It’s a file that allows ad buyers (DSPs) to see and verify the final seller of a given bid request — as long as the seller is ads.txt authorized. It’s like an inverse companion to Ads.txt, which publishers post to their domain to list authorized sellers of their inventory.

It also makes visible the identities of all intermediaries that participated in the sale of a bid request. It allows publisher name and domain attributes to be looked up and cached offline rather than supplied with every bid request. Each seller has a seller_id, which is the same ID that appears in an ads.txt file, SupplyChain.nodes and typically in the Publisher.id property of an OpenRTB request.

Ad systems place the sellers.json file on their root domain and any relevant subdomains. For example, http://indexexchange.com/sellers.json. The IAB Tech Lab advises “Every advertising system listed in an ads.txt file and any advertising system that is referencedfrom a SupplyChain object node should also publish a Sellers.json file” on their domains.

Why we should care. These two technical specifications build on the ads.txt imitative that launched two years ago, and apps-ads.txt for app developers, to help combat invalid traffic, ad fraud and counterfeit inventory on open exchanges. With the trio of specs, there are now tools for the sell-side (SSPs), the buy-side (DSPs) and intermediaries.

“Growth in the global digital advertising ecosystem requires trust, and sellers.json and the SupplyChain object provide essential visibility into the supply chain, enabling buyers to curate media sources,” said Dennis Buchheim, senior vice president and general manager, IAB Tech Lab. “Used together, these technologies help enable a more transparent, more efficient advertising environment. I encourage everyone to provide feedback to the Tech Lab, and adopt as soon as the specs are finalized.”

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

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

Zazzle Media has released their annual State of Content Marketing 2019 survey, which found that less than one in ten marketers (9%) will be focusing on Digital PR in 2019.

Despite this, over three quarters (76%) state that brand awareness is a key performance indicator for them.

Not only this, but 25% of content marketers will be ceasing to participate in offline PR activity as it has been perceived as an ineffective channel for them over the recent years.

It seems there is an apparent disconnect between marketers’ desired goals and the tactics they need to carry out to achieve these.

So why are marketers seemingly less concerned about off-page distribution, and why should you make a case for Digital PR to hold a key position in your marketing activities?

Brand awareness

Whilst the creation of written blog content will appeal to people on the site, we need a mechanism that is going to drive these people towards the site first.

Digital PR can help users find your site in a more organic way rather than in a targeted advertorial manner.

The survey found that a quarter of marketers want to target new audiences through content distribution, but without Digital PR this will prove to be a difficult task.

Brand protection

PR allows you to control narratives and get involved with industry conversations which you would otherwise be unable to participate in. The digital aspect also allows you to receive real-time coverage updates which mention your brand’s name and put out an immediate response in an attempt to stem or enhance any positive or negative feedback. Protecting your brand, especially in the SERPs, is a powerful tool for PRs.

Read next: Organic reputation management & brand protection

Link building

A major perk of creating Digital PR campaigns is that they usually come with linkable assets that have a chance of being cited within media coverage.

Link building is an activity which has a reputation of relying on black-hat tactics for success, paying for links, directories, and the others. Digital PR allows you to avoid all these techniques and the risks associated with them and build some legitimate links from high authority publications.

Read next: Five proven content formats to maximize link acquisition with digital PR.

Managing director of Zazzle Media, Simon Penson, commented on the statistics:

“Brand awareness has appeared as one of 2019’s core focuses when it comes to brands content marketing efforts. Whilst this can be achieved through a number of marketing techniques, Digital PR is one of the strongest means of getting your name out there to new audiences.

2019 is shaping up to be an exciting year for content marketing, and Digital PR could be the key to giving your brand new audiences and visibility.”

What do you think of these findings? Let us know your thoughts on the results in the comments.

Kirsty Daniel is a Digital Marketing Executive at Zazzle Media. She can be found on Twitter .

Related reading

The biggest impact here will be in the advertiser workflow. Great news for those seeking efficiency and less time spent on the Bing platform.

Creating compelling content in today’s day and age can be tough. Complete overview to on-page SEO essentials to provide a rich content experience.

Digital marketers are often more concerned with attracting traffic to a site than boosting on-site conversions. 8 ways to increase ecommerce conversions.

When it comes to email outreach campaigns, 80% open rates may sound like a pipedream. Here are the five components to get you there.

Netflix will announce its Q1 ’19 earnings on Tuesday – when we’ll know for sure if its subscription price hike was a good business move in the short term. Meanwhile, Disney announced Disney+, its new streaming service platform, will only cost $6.99/month and its stock shot up over 11 percent overnight.

This further complicates the pricing model debate for streaming services as Disney overshadows Apple, who had dominated the tech news cycle for weeks after announcing its competing OTT streaming services to Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, called AppleTV+. With big names like Steven Speilberg and Oprah in attendance helping to buttress Apple’s credibility in the increasingly crowded OTT market, Apple sent a clear message that they, in the words of one executive, would “define the commitment to storytelling, on every screen in your life.” While it may have been tempting to be distracted by the cavalcade of celebrities that took to the stage inside Steve Jobs Theatre, Apple’s silence on one topic became deafening on the Twittersphere as everyone began to ask the core underlying question left unanswered: How much will this cost? Disney shared, why can’t you?

CNBC media reporter Alex Sherman, who attended the unveiling in person, tweeted “we got a half hour of actors talking about their shows without clips and zero details on Apple original content pricing or if channels services will be bundled for a discount. The general mood here is shock and mild annoyance among the people sitting around me.” Vox’s critic at large Todd VanDerWerff opined “Apple’s new streaming service is still mostly defined by what we don’t know.”

He’s right. The company chose to avoid addressing any specifics around pricing or the potential savings users could capture by bundling with other Apple services. What we do know is that Apple TV+ will be a subscription service free of advertising. This announcement kicked off an interesting debate about which revenue model – ad-supported or subscription – is most likely to attract large scale consumer audiences.

Apple and now Disney’s decision to forgo ads stands in stark contrast to recent reports from Google-owned YouTube, who instead is purported to be looking into expanding its ad-supported content while potentially deemphasizing subscription-based models as well as Viacom owned PlutoTV which is doubling down on its completely free ad-supported model. Google denies it will abandon its subscription model entirely as others later reported, but it is clear that the world’s largest advertising company sees significant opportunity in offering premium content for free in an ad-supported environment.

As the debate unfolds over ad-supported models vs. subscription-based revenue streams, the real question marketers and content platforms need to be asking is: “What do consumers want?” The answer is both.

To start, it’s important to level set by clarifying that OTT is now mainstream, and this is not a niche consumer audience. In partnership with the Harris Poll, OpenX conducted a nationwide study of OTT users released this week which found that the majority of US consumers now stream at least one OTT service, with most streamers subscribing to an average of three platforms. Within this growing group of streamers, there are very diverse opinions about preferred billing models that signal a broad opportunity for platforms to be creative with how they monetize their content.

The study found a nearly even split among those who want to pay a subscription fee in exchange for zero ads with a slight majority opting for some form of advertising to reduce or eliminate subscription fees. Forty-six percent of consumers prefer a service that costs $10/month with no ads. Interestingly, the survey also found that consumers would be willing to pay as much as $24/month for one primary subscription – nearly twice Netflix’s adjusted monthly rate of its most popular plan now $13/month (up from $12/month), showing there is clear upward pricing mobility for an ultra-premium provider in the subscription market. I expect the earnings call on Tuesday to report no significant hurt in sales because of this increase.

That said, there is a potentially missed opportunity by streaming providers, including Netflix and Apple, to be releasing a tiered pricing model that includes ad-supported, discounted and free subscription models.

Ofthe 2,002 U.S. consumers who answered The Harris Poll survey OpenX commissioned, 54 percent would opt for an ad-supported model; 29 percent of which prefer a service that costs around $5/month with 2-3 minutes of ads per hour, while the other 25 percent prefer a free service with up to 10 minutes of ads per hour. The clear message here is that there is room for multiple models, and a “one-size-fits-all approach” (or singular billing models) will likely be replaced by a menu of options tailored to consumer preferences. One guide to follow comes again from the nationwide survey of OTT users that uncovered the sweet spot of content and cost — what I would call the 15/100 rule of video. Consumers watch around 15 channels of cable TV today and if price weren’t an issue, they would be open to watching 15 different OTT services. For cost, whether it is OTT or cable/satellite, viewers are comfortable spending about $100/month to have access to the content they want to watch.

Consumers don’t want an unlimited number of choices and they don’t want to pay for channels they don’t watch. Just as demand for a variety of OTT providers increases, so too will the diversity of revenue models. Less than five percent of all television advertising dollars flow to OTT channels today. As the eyeballs continue to migrate to streaming platforms, OTT advertising dollars will quickly follow – and they are projected to outstrip the overall growth of all advertising by five times in 2019. Investments in content alone will not determine the winners from the losers in the OTT race. Whichever platforms get the pricing formula, content portfolio and user experience right will ultimately establish market leadership in the rapidly growing OTT market.

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

About The Author

Dallas Lawrence is currently the chief communications and brand officer at OpenX, the largest independent advertising exchange. Prior to joining OpenX, Dallas Lawrence served as the chief communications officer for Rubicon Project, led global communications and government affairs for Mattel and served as the chief global digital strategist for Burson-Marsteller. During more than a decade in Washington, DC, Dallas served as a press secretary on Capitol Hill prior to joining President Bush’s communications team, leading outreach efforts for the President’s signature domestic policy initiative No Child Left Behind. Dallas would later deploy to Baghdad, Iraq, on behalf of the White House to serve as a spokesperson for the Coalition. Upon returning from Baghdad, Dallas joined the communications team of Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld where he served as the Pentagon’s director of public liaison for both Rumsfeld and his predecessor Secretary Gates. He has been named both the “Crisis Manager of the Year” by PR News and “Social Media Professional of the Year.” In 2013, PR Week named him one of the 40 most influential leaders in PR. Dallas was previously a commissioned officer in the United States Navy and earned a BA in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in government from The Johns Hopkins University.

One of the biggest problems digital marketers face is nuances to crafting high-quality SEO rich content.

A great area of opportunity for marketers is their SEO alt text for images. We’ve all been to websites and the image is replaced by a red “X”, or it’s just a blank box. Wouldn’t it be great if you could benefit from that image box for an increased search engine ranking?

That’s where alt text comes in.

Alt text is just a way to describe what is going on in the image while actively increasing your ranking through smart, thoughtful placement of SEO keywords. We are going to look at ways you can improve your image alt text while keeping your content search engine friendly.

Research keywords before you start

It’s important that you look carefully into which keywords you’re going to use before you start creating content including your alt text. Google’s Keyword Planner tool can help you make educated decisions about which words are best suited for your website, depending on your niche.

When you’re researching keywords, the best practice is to look for words that feature high search volume but low competition. The reason for this thought process is simple.

High volume, high competition keywords result in an uphill battle that you may not win. If there are plenty of people searching for the words you pick, but a bunch of reputable websites who have a high domain authority, you’re going to have a much harder time reaching the top of the search engine results.

At the same time, low competition, low search keywords mean your website probably will not get the traffic you need to thrive. The happy medium is words that are popular, but not dominated by highly authoritative sites. The success of your keywords is going to reflect not just in your content or title, but in your alt text, making this an important starting point.

Supplement your alt text with primary keywords

It’s worth pointing out that alt text is important, but it should never take priority over your researched and currently implemented SEO. You would never want to rearrange your pre-arranged keywords to make the alt text keywords fit.

Instead, try to find images that compliment the keywords you’ve already selected. When you work backward from your alt text images, you could end up with a page that is more focused on the images instead of the content throughout.

The only exception to this rule is if your content is image heavy. Companies that implement slideshows, photo galleries, and the likes may benefit more from working backward from their images instead of the other way around.

Connect the content to the image text

Another common mistake that SEO marketers make is they don’t directly link the alt text to the content they create. Alt text, as mentioned, is just text that describes what’s going on in the image. If you want to make a strong connection with your audience and the search engine results, make sure you make a connection between the text in your content, the image, and the alt text.

For example, if your piece of content was about website design, your content should include text within the piece that explains the image. In this fictional piece, let’s say your keyword is “expert web design”, you’re going to need to include an image that emphasizes your point, explains the image in the content, and the alt text should include the keyword.

Keep it short

Since the main purpose of alt text is to inform the reader of what the image shows if they can’t view it, your alt-text should never drag on. Simply explain what the image shows using your keywords as the primary descriptor and additional text as needed.

The recommended alt-text length is about 125 characters. Some browsers only create one line of alt-text and allocate the size of the image to the length of the one line. The result of a long alt text line is not just “search engine confusion”, but also reader confusion when they cannot finish the line of text from within the image because it was cut off by the browser they are using.

If you find that your alt text is always longer than 125 characters, your point is probably better off posted in the actual content of the article instead of the alt image text.

Examples of SEO-friendly alt text

First, let’s take a look at the source code:

<img src=”Image.gif” alt=”alt-text-goes-here”>

In this example, the “image.gif” is the image that is displayed to those who can properly see the image. Those who can’t see the image will instead see the text you include where it says “alt-text-goes-here”.

Here are some better examples to give you an idea of what a good SEO-friendly piece of alt text looks like.

Example one

You own a pet shop and your display picture is a kitten in a basket at your pet shop. Your source code should look something like this:

<img src=”FluffyCat.png” alt=”Pet Shop Kitten Snuggling in Basket”>

The goal is to make your alt-text clean, concise, and friendly to the keywords you decided to target in your piece.

Example two

Now let’s say you have an online car accessory shop. You sell things like seat covers, floor liners, and air fresheners. On your air freshener page your alt text will look like this:

<img src=”AirFreshner.png” alt=”Air Freshener Pack and New Car Accessories”>

In the example above, you’re targeting air fresheners, new cars, cars in general, and car accessories.

Example three

Finally, you have a membership site that sells marketing tips to your audience. You have an infographic of marketing statistics everyone should know in 2019. How will your alt-text look in this situation? Since you obviously can’t fit every stat in your alt-text, you might say:

<img src=”MarketingStatsInfo.Png” alt=”New Marketing Statistics for 2019″>

Piecing it together

There’s no doubt that alt text plays a crucial role in an online world consumed by the importance of keywords. If you want to make the most of your alt text, keep these tips in mind and remember that the online world is constantly evolving.

As your website grows in size and authority you may have to make changes to your SEO keywords for future articles, and therefore for your alt text. The good news is, this allows you to pull off some interesting split tests to see which keywords are ranking well for you, and which ones are pulling in lackluster results.

One thing is clear, don’t underestimate the power of alt text as it relates to your readers and your search ranking. It may not be the most important factor, but correctly creating optimized images and alt text is an important piece of the puzzle.

Syed Balkhi is an entrepreneur, marketer, and CEO of Awesome Motive. He’s also the founder of WPBeginner, OptinMonster, WPForms, and MonsterInsights. Syed can be found on Twitter 

Read next:

Related reading

Complete overivew of what Google Search Console is, what it does for your site, how to use it, and what you need to get started taking advantage of it today.

Last month, Google tested AR functionality in Google Maps. What are the implications of VPS, street view, and machine learning for local search and SEOs?

Six of the best techniques for building backlinks. The skyscraper, interviews, free tools, interesting data sets, sponsorships, and transcripts.

Marketing for luxury goods is a highly competitive space. Here’s a full guide of how to craft SEO strategies and tactics to maximize those results.

Supermetrics has launched a connector for BigQuery, promising a “plug-and-play” solution for marketers to compile cross-channel campaign and analytics data with just a few clicks.

What it does. Supermetrics for BigQuery is designed to bring data from multiple marketing platforms into BigQuery — effectively setting up a BigQuery data warehouse without having to write code or SQL or rely on developer resources.

“This new product complements our existing offering by providing a robust, enterprise-scale data pipeline into the most powerful data warehouse out there, Google BigQuery,” said Mikael Thuneberg, founder and CEO of Supermetrics, in a statement.

Why we should care. The ultimate goal is to be able to make better decisions about marketing allocations faster. Getting data from multiple channels into one place where it can be analyzed is often a big headache for marketers. Eliminating the need to know how to code or write SQL, or rely on programmers and developers to create the data warehouse, means just about anyone on your marketing team might be able to get this going. Of course, you’ll need to be using BigQuery.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

In all my years as an SEO consultant, I can’t begin to count the number of times I saw clients who were struggling to make both SEO and affiliate marketing work for them.

When their site rankings dropped, they immediately started blaming it on the affiliate links. Yet what they really needed to do was review their search marketing efforts and make them align with their affiliate marketing efforts.

Both SEO and affiliate marketing have the same goal of driving relevant, high-quality traffic to a site so that those visits eventually turn into sales. So there’s absolutely no reason for them to compete against each other. Instead, they should work together in perfect balance so that the site generates more revenue. SEO done right can prove to be the biggest boon for your affiliate marketing efforts.

It’s crucial that you take a strategic approach to align these two efforts.

Four ways to balance your affiliate marketing and SEO efforts

1. Find a niche that’s profitable for you

One of the reasons why affiliate marketing may clash with SEO is because you’re trying to sell too many different things from different product categories. So it’s extremely challenging to align your SEO efforts with your affiliate marketing because it’s all over the place.

This means that you’ll have a harder time driving a targeted audience to your website. While your search rankings may be high for a certain product keyword, you may be struggling to attract visitors and customers for other products.

Instead of trying to promote everything and anything, pick one or two profitable niches to focus on. This is where it gets tricky. While you may naturally want to focus on niches in which you have a high level of interest and knowledge, they may not always be profitable. So I suggest you conduct some research about the profitability of potential niches.

To conduct research, you can check resources that list the most profitable affiliate programs. You can also use platforms like ClickBank to conduct this research. While you can use other affiliate platforms for your research, this is a great place to start. First, click on the “Affiliate Marketplace” button at the top of the ClickBank homepage.

You’ll see a page that gives you the option to search for products. On your left, you can see the various affiliate product categories available. Click on any of the categories that pique your interest.

On the search results page, you’ll see some of the affiliate marketing programs available on the platform. The page also displays various details about the program including the average earning per sale.

Then filter the search results by “Gravity,” which is a metric that measures how well a product sells in that niche.

You should ideally look for products with a Gravity score of 50 or higher. Compare the top Gravity scores of each category to see which is the most profitable. You can additionally compare the average earnings per sale for products in different categories.

2. Revise your keyword strategy

Since you’re already familiar with search marketing, I don’t need to tell you about the importance of keyword planning. That being said, I would recommend that you revise your existing keyword strategy after you’ve decided on a niche to focus on and the products you want to sell.

The same keyword selection rules apply even in this process. You would want to work with keywords that have a significant search volume yet aren’t too competitive. And you will need to focus on long-tail keywords for more accuracy. While you should still use the Google Keyword Planner, I suggest you try out other tools as well for fresh keyword ideas.

Among the free tools, Google Trends is an excellent option. It gives you a clear look at the changes in interest for your chosen search term. You can filter the result by category, time frame, and region. It also gives you a breakdown of how the interest changes according to the sub-region.

The best part about this tool is that if you scroll down, you can also see some of the related queries. This will give you insights into some of the other terms related to your original search term with rising popularity. So you can get some quick ideas for trending and relevant keywords to target.

AnswerThePublic is another great tool for discovering long-tail keyword ideas. This tool gives you insights into some of the popular search queries related to your search term. So you’ll be able to come up with ideas for keywords to target as well as topic ideas for fresh content.

3. Optimize your website content

High-quality content is the essence of a successful SEO strategy. It also serves the purpose of educating and converting visitors for affiliate websites. So it’s only natural that you will need to optimize the content on your website. You can either create fresh content or update your existing content, or you can do both.

Use your shortlisted keywords to come up with content ideas. These keywords have a high search volume, so you know that people are searching for content related to them. So when you create content optimized with those keywords, you’ll gain some visibility in their search results. And since you’re providing them with the content they need, you will be driving them to your site.

You can also update your existing content with new and relevant keywords. Perhaps to add more value, you can even include new information such as tips, stats, updates, and more. Whatever you decide to do, make sure the content is useful for your visitors. It shouldn’t be too promotional but instead, it needs to be informative.

4. Build links to boost site authority and attract high-quality traffic

You already know that building high-quality backlinks can improve the authority of your site and therefore, your search rankings. So try to align your link-building efforts with your affiliate marketing by earning backlinks from sites that are relevant to the products you’re promoting.

Of course, you can generate more social signals by trying to drive more content shares. But those efforts aren’t always enough. Especially if you want to drive more revenue.

I suggest you try out guest posting, as it can help you tap into the established audience of a relevant, authoritative site. This helps you drive high-quality traffic to your site. It also boosts your page and domain authority since you’re getting a link back from a high authority site.

Although Matt Cutts said in 2014 that guest posting for SEO is dead, that’s not true if you plan your approach. The problem is when you try to submit guest posts just for the sake of getting backlinks. Most reputable sites don’t allow that anymore.

To get guest posting right, you need to make sure that you’re creating content that has value. So it needs to be relevant to the audience of your target site, and it should be helpful to them somehow. Your guest posts should be of exceptional quality in terms of writing, readability, and information.

Not only does this improve your chances of getting accepted, but it also helps you gain authority in the niche. Plus, you will get to reach an engaged and relevant audience and later direct them to your site depending on how compelling your post is.

Bottom line

SEO and affiliate marketing can work in perfect alignment if you strategically balance your efforts. These tips should help you get started with aligning the two aspects of your business. You will need some practice and experimentation before you can perfectly balance them. You can further explore more options and evolve your strategy as you get better at the essentials.

Shane Barker is a Digital Strategist, Brand and Influencer Consultant. He can be found on Twitter .

Related reading

Six of the best techniques for building backlinks. The skyscraper, interviews, free tools, interesting data sets, sponsorships, and transcripts.

Marketing for luxury goods is a highly competitive space. Here’s a full guide of how to craft SEO strategies and tactics to maximize those results.

Back in September 2018, Google launched its Dataset Search tool, an engine which focuses on delivering results of hard data sources (research, reports, graphs, tables, and the others) in a more efficient manner than the one which is currently offered by Google Search.

Image content can increase subscription users by up to 329%. Five of the most fantastic visual content creation design tools.

Google announced the launch of Google Cloud for Retail Wednesday at Google Cloud Next, with a host of new solutions designed for the retailer vertical. The new solutions are aimed at helping retailers deliver personalized recommendations, unify customer experiences across online and offline environments and more.

What does it offer? Google Cloud for Retail includes solutions for inventory management, personalization, customer service and predictive analytics. E-commerce hosting is designed to flex with seasonal traffic increases and spikes on high volume shopping days — think Black Friday, Cyber Monday — so sites don’t get incapacitated and lose revenue due to traffic surges. Google offers managed customer reliability engineering (CRE) services for preparing for peak volume events.

Real time inventory management and analytics provide a full view of what’s in stock in-store, in-warehouse and online.

Visual product search enables retailers to integrate Google Lens-type capabilities that can let customers learn more about a product, pricing and availability by taking a picture of it with their phones. IKEA is lready using this to let customers find a specific or similar product on its site.

Google says its Recommendations AI “continuously learns and adapts to real-time user behaviors and dynamic environments such as changes in assortment, pricing, and special offers,” to power personalized product recommendations on retailer websites.

Currently in beta, AutoML Tables is a solution for data science teams to build and deploy machine learning models on structured data — such as product data. Retail applications can include supply chain management, fraud detection, conversion and revenue optimization.

Partnerships for future products. Google also announced it’s working with several partners to build more retail-oriented solutions. Partnerships include Accenture for personalization; Deloitte for demand forecasting and other supply chain analytics solutions; and Trax for in-store inventory insights with image recognition, to name a few.

Why you should care. This is among Google Cloud’s first efforts at developing and packaging a set of cloud solutions for a specific vertical as a growth strategy. Google clearly has its sites set on Amazon Web Services retail customers. It counts retailers such as Bed Bath and Beyond, Carrefour, IKEA, Kohl’s and Target as well as e-commerce platform Shopify, which supports more than 800,000 retailers, among its current customers.

Google also announced a partnership with Salesforce Wednesday focused on improving customer service experiences. It combines Google’s Contact Center AI which parses tone and intent of customer service calls and can bring in environmental information like weather and news events with Salesforce’s customer data to guide sales and customer service agents.

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

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.