For decades, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has been the bedrock of digital visibility. As SEO marketers, we have spent years understanding algorithms, A/B testing and reporting back our findings to clients to become experts in our field. The thing about SEO is, it never stays stagnant and with the rise in AI we can all look to be kept on our toes with the new landscape of search.

What is GEO?

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation, referring to the methods involved with optimising content for AI-driven generative models like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity AI. Unlike traditional search engines that primarily present a list of links, these generative engines aim to synthesise information from various sources and provide direct, comprehensive answers to user queries.

This means the goal of GEO shifts from simply getting clicks to having your content chosen, cited and incorporated into these AI-generated responses. It’s about becoming a trusted source that AI systems can reliably pull from to answer user questions.

How does GEO differ to SEO?

GEO is newer and lesser understood, with search tools like Semrush and Ahrefs only recently rolling out reporting and research tools to be able to measure growth of GEO presence. A lot of fundamentals, in terms of how to create and optimise content, may be similar across both SEO and GEO, but new tactics and knowledge are required for adapting strategy to this newer technology.

While GEO and SEO share the overarching goal of enhancing online visibility, their approaches diverge in significant ways:

• Target Audience: SEO targets traditional search engine algorithms to rank web pages. GEO targets AI models to ensure your brand’s message is accurately represented and distributed within AI-generated answers.
• Content Goal: SEO aims to bring users to your website through ranked search results. GEO focuses on ensuring your brand is accurately included and represented in AI responses, even if a direct website visit doesn’t occur.
• Optimisation Techniques: While SEO emphasises keywords, backlinks and site structure for ranking, GEO focuses on structured data, contextual depth, semantic relevance and providing clear, concise and authoritative information that AI can easily understand and interpret.
• Success Metrics: SEO often measures success with metrics like click-through rates and bounce rates. GEO considers “reference rates”, how often your content or brand is cited in AI-generated answers.
• User Intent: Both focus on user intent, but GEO takes it further by creating comprehensive content that directly answers user inquiries, often anticipating follow-up questions or providing broader context.

How will this change my digital marketing strategy?

The emergence of GEO is a direct response to the evolving way people search for information. With AI summaries and direct answers becoming more prevalent, users may get the information they need without ever clicking through to a website. For businesses, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

How SEO is changing

Informational searches are in decline

The advancement of AI means users can quickly search informational questions and receive a direct and concise summary of research, all collated into simple to understand content that can be consumed at speed. This benefits users as they no longer have to click links in search engines, where they may need to visit several sites to get the information they need. AI also benefits users as they can easily amend their search query should they find the information provided isn’t answering their question. AI is learning more each day to better the quality of results, some LLMs may be better at this than others though and it’s still not an exact science. Users are still at risk of receiving incorrect information so diligence is always recommended.

For brands investing in a thorough organic content marketing strategy, this could mean AI is stealing clicks away from your site. In many cases, AI could be sharing excerpts of your blog to users, meaning they don’t need to click onto your site to read the same content. This can be frustrating for SEOs measuring organic traffic, meaning we have to adapt in how we measure success moving forward.

If you only focus on SEO, you could be missing out

LLMs are already reducing SEO traffic to sites, see more stats on this below. So, if you want to continue to have a brand presence across all relevant channels for your digital strategy, it makes sense to invest in GEO. It’s not a case of one or the other, the future will likely see SEO and GEO work hand-in-hand to achieve a well-rounded organic presence across both search engines and LLMs.

Sites will need more semantic understanding and context in their content

Beyond just keywords, GEO demands content that demonstrates deep semantic understanding of a topic. This involves creating comprehensive, well-structured content that clearly answers user intent and provides context, making it easily digestible for AI to summarise and integrate.

Clicks as a KPI will be less important (but still worth tracking)

With more answers being provided directly in AI Overviews, the goal isn’t always a click. GEO will increasingly measure success by ‘reference rates’, looking at how often a brand or its content is cited or used as a source by AI models, even if a direct website visit doesn’t occur. A good organic strategy should analyse both organic clicks and reference rates to see correlation between brand mentions and site visits as some users migrate from search engines to LLMs.

How many people are using LLMs over search engines in 2025?

In 2025 alone, I have found myself heading to Google Gemini more frequently than I do Google search. So, I can understand the draw for users. It genuinely does save time and improve results quality for many queries. So, how many people have made the switch overall?

According to ChatGPT, it had over 300 million global weekly users as of December 2024. Another study reports that 78% of brands were already using LLMs for content planning in 2025. Google has also shared some insights on how AIO is faring versus traditional search, claiming that AI Overviews are reducing clicks on traditional search results. Ahrefs reported in April 2025 that AI Overviews reduced SEO clicks by 34.5%. This implies that for a substantial portion of queries, users are finding their answers directly from the AI summary rather than navigating to a website.

Google reports that AI Overviews already reach 1.5 billion monthly users as of Q1 2025. This indicates a significant number of people are encountering AI-generated summaries directly within their search results, potentially reducing the need to click on traditional links. As of March 2025, 13.14% of all queries generated an AI Overview, with 88.1% of those being informational.

In what areas does SEO content triumph over GEO content?

Low-funnel content

All is not lost for traditional SEO, as there are some areas it will remain king for now. Purchases are still being made directly through sites, meaning your lower-funnel commercial and conversion-focussed content should stay as a priority. Think testimonials, customer reviews and in depth FAQs about your brand or product.

Branded traffic

Direct traffic, driving those who have an existing knowledge and relationship to your brand, is still strong. Many users, who know of your brand, will use search engines to find your site. For some, LLMs can play a key role in increasing brand awareness, driving more direct traffic to your site over time.

Complex content

For complex topics such as product comparisons or service evaluations, users want to dig deeper than a summary. SEO content provides the comprehensive, nuanced information that satisfies this need, often leading to better-qualified leads and higher conversion rates.

Unique perspectives

One thing AI will never be able to replicate is the human experience. Meaning unique content told from an individual perspective will always hold value against changing technologies. Case studies, personal reviews or UGC may even become more valuable as audiences look for authentic and credible content.

Credible sources

There are some areas where AI will never be as trusted or authoritative. Take healthcare, as one example, where information around symptoms or medications can never be as trustworthy as a direct governing body like the NHS website. For many users, they will still rather go direct to a source of trusted information, than risk receiving what AI deems to be the best results.

New studies and data research

AI models are trained on existing data. They can’t conduct original research, interviews or experiments. This means SEO content that presents unique data, new perspectives or proprietary insights (e.g. a new study from your company) will become invaluable and something AI will likely just cite, rather than generate.

Experts in their respective fields

Authors on sites and across social media can demonstrate their learned experience within a single topic, highlighting the trustworthiness of the information. Whilst AI is working on an E-E-A-T model, it’s still early days and mistakes can (and are) happening. Getting medical insight from a doctor online, weather advice from a meteorologist or digital marketing advice from an expert, holds much more value than LLMs generative results.

What does AI excel in?

Quick results for informational queries

For now, AI is helping users more so on informational content. Where it’s strengths lie are in collating multiple sources to produce listicles, lifestyle tips and recommendations at speed. AI can churn out large volumes of research to help you find quick answers that are usually relevant.

Ideating content ideas

AI tools are excellent for quickly generating topic ideas, content outlines and initial drafts, serving as a powerful assistant to overcome writer’s block and kickstart the creative process. LLMs can be good as getting a top-level idea of what’s out there currently, what news is trending on a particular topic or what competitor brands are writing about.

Finding sources of data

This is where LLMs and search engines can work together. AI can quickly find you high quality sources of data, which can drive you to these sites to source information directly. A good example of this is ONS data, there is a lot on the site to browse and it can be tricky to navigate or find a particular study, but with LLMs you can ask AI to direct you to a specific page to see if the data you are looking for exists onsite. This helps reduce user journey and improve efficiency for users browsing larger sites. This is why it is important for businesses to make sure their data is structured to rank and correctly indexed.

Quick analysis of data

You can input large quantities of data and ask LLMs to find trends or interesting insights, which are still recommended to be fact checked in person, however this can help you decide to take on a data analysis task and see if the outcomes will be worth the effort before getting too invested.

In summary, GEO will be a new avenue for SEOs to explore. GEO will be a skill in addition to, not in replacement of, traditional SEO. For brands, this will mean doing the right research when looking for an SEO freelancer or agency, ensuring who you partner with is keeping up to date with new strategies to drive results.

If you’re interested in finding out how freelance SEO or digital PR could transform your digital growth, get in touch below.

Leanne Vause

SEO & DIGITAL PR DIRECTOR

Leanne has over a decade of experience across SEO strategy, content marketing and digital PR. She has worked for a range of clients from SMEs to global brands both for agencies and in-house. She has a 2:1 upper class hons. degree in Media Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University and founded freelance SEO and digital PR business Search etc. in 2023.

LinkedIn profile here.

The post Is GEO the new SEO? appeared first on Search etc..

If you’re a marketing manager working in-house on behalf of a brand you may be looking for a digital marketing agency or freelance consultant to support your business’ organic growth. If SEO is a particular area of interest you will see many SEO content specialists talk about content auditing as a core part of ongoing activity. So, what is a content audit and what does it cover? Read on to find out what to expect.

What is a content audit?

A content audit consists of taking either a sub-section of your website content or the entire site and following a checklist of criteria to look for to find issues which are affecting your SEO performance or user experience. Each specialist or agency will have their own defined criteria to check, as well as their own process for conducting audits in ways that suit their workflows. The audit can be delivered to the client as a list of findings in an excel sheet or fit a more personal approach and be presented nicely in a deck or document. I personally prefer to present audits in a more digestible way that makes it easy for my clients to take learnings from audits and understand the next step actions required.

How often should content be audited?

The frequency of an audit is entirely subjective to the website itself and the type of business the website is for. The size of a website will be a key factor, websites with more pages will have more to audit and audits may need to be broken down into site sections – such as blog audits, landing page sector audits, product category audits.

If you are a business which publishes a lot of new content pages monthly or makes frequent changes to your website it is recommended to audit content more regularly than a site which makes very few changes. Audits could range from monthly, quarterly or even yearly depending on the needs of the website.

Why do SEO specialists audit content?

From an organic search standpoint there is a lot that can be gained by conducting content audits. Any decent SEO Content Consultant that you begin working with should take stock of your website health to begin with before diving into a list of new pages or changes to make.

Common things from an SEO perspective that content audits look for can be: pages which should/shouldn’t be indexed in Google search results, URL structural issues, duplicated content issues, broken pages/links, pages of little relevance or value for SEO and more.

How is website content audited?

As mentioned, each individual will have their own process for auditing content but commonly this can consist of crawling a site or site section as a starting point. This crawl can flag common issues and immediate issues which may need action to be taken. These crawls can also plug in data from sources like Google Search Console or Google Analytics to compare a direct impact of page performance to the issue being flagged.

The difference between poor and good quality SEO expertise will be clear from what you get out of it. SEO tools have become sophisticated enough to run general checks and email you updates directly, so what you want from an audit is actual valuable advice from your consultancy partner. For content, it isn’t just about flagging what is wrong. A good consultant will inform you of priority of fixes, what is necessary versus nice to have and guide you on the right path for your business based on your goals and not just box check SEO basics. A good content audit will go beyond finding problems and actually put forth growth opportunities and gaps for site development.

What types of problems and fixes come out of a content audit?

Websites including Ahrefs include good and thorough guides to content audits. A typical content audit will be a combination of technical issues to fix as well as formatting content to best practices for SEO guidelines.

Technical things to check include:

• 404 pages
• URL structures
• Thin content (low wordcount/low value content)
• Duplicated pages/duplicated content
• Page indexation issues
• Page crawlability
• Page markup for SEO
• Metadata
• Page traffic and engagement metrics
• Internal link structure
• Website navigation structure
• Page optimisation such as breadcrumbs

Content best practice things to check could include:

• Quality of the copywriting for guides – is copy adhering to E-E-A-T guidelines?
• Author information – as part of E-E-A-T is copy highlighting the experience and expertise of the author?
• Relevancy for topical authority
• Length of copy – is it longform just for the sake of it or does the writer have something to say which requires detail?
• Content consolidation – if you have three similar blogs on a topic would it be beneficial to combine these into one stronger piece?
• Types of topics covered through organic content and authority of cluster topics
• Content structure and formatting – is it user friendly and easy to digest?
• Flow and grammar – is the content well written?
• Content assets – would the content benefit from engaging assets, diagrams or imagery to enhance the page and make it more useful/impactful to readers?

What are the goals for a content audit?

Short-term the goals are to find immediate site issues to fix but longer-term the goal is to use these findings as the basis for a content strategy. This will paint the picture of where your current site is positioned, what your site regularly discusses/or doesn’t discuss at all. It will outline gap opportunities for long-term growth with your SEO strategy.

If you are interested in receiving a content audit for your site, fill out the form below to enquire and get details on my services.

Leanne Vause

SEO & DIGITAL PR DIRECTOR

Leanne has over a decade of experience across SEO strategy, content marketing and digital PR. She has worked for a range of clients from SMEs to global brands both for agencies and in-house. She has a 2:1 upper class hons. degree in Media Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University and founded freelance SEO and digital PR business Search etc. in 2023.

LinkedIn profile here.

The post What is a content audit and what can it tell me about my website? appeared first on Search etc..

Working in SEO is a whirlwind right now, with non-stop discussion around the pros and cons of AI to Google announcing huge changes to search engine results pages. As time goes on there are a lot of myths in content marketing being believed. It’s all enough to make anyone worry whether we should carry on with our current approaches or go back to the drawing board. Luckily, there are some constants that are still important to focus on with your content strategy in 2023. Take a look below.

Build Topical Authority

It has never been more important to be the all-round expert in your website’s relevant fields. Back in December Google announced the implementation of ‘related topics’ – where search results now feature related topic suggestions to refine searches. This has recently been brought to desktop after being featured for several months across mobile.

The launch of this feature not only highlights Google’s focus on tangentially related topics and how they are linked but also gives further insights to marketers to help them research what search engines deem ‘relevant’.

What is important here is to establish your core products or services, then build out your broad topical authority and the types of content subjects that make sense for you to be discussing. A thorough content strategy can do just this when set by an experienced content marketer. Your strategy should zero in on key opportunity topics and gaps being missed, not just publishing for the sake of it.

Utilise Experts

A key focus for content marketers right now is utilising experts to build trust in online content. Google favours content which is created or supported by the expertise of a trusted source in the content’s subject matter. If you are a beauty brand, as an example, you should be providing advice from skincare experts and professionals in the industry to add weight to information you are putting online on your blog.

This will help your content to rank better (be sure to detail the source of the advice and their credentials), it also is more trustworthy for the reader to know they are getting credible information.

Not every piece of content necessarily needs an expert, this depends on the topic, but it’s certainly beneficial to add experts where you can – especially when you are giving advice or commentary.

Connect Your Onsite Strategy to Your Social Strategy

Recently Google has shared it will launch a new ‘perspectives’ filter that will allow users to toggle what types of results they want to see such as: video, forums or blogs. This will integrate social media more than ever before, as users can see specific videos and have easier access to watch these direct from Google.

This will offer much more in terms of content types, with videos, Q&A content and social content getting more favour. Closing the loop between your SEO and social strategies is crucial for success in this new age of Google. You should be serving content in the right channels for your audience and also sharing information in various different ways to suit different channels (where relevant, of course). This brings me to the next tip…

Diversify the Types of Content You Create

If you only write blogs but aren’t using video, look at how you can expand your content offering. The changes Google is looking to make will make search results pages much more diversified, having content served across different platforms in different ways will give you stronger results across the board.

Say you are a travel brand who are producing onsite guides to ‘places to visit in Scotland’, think about how many more people you could reach by storyboarding this into a TikTok or Instagram video (created to the same brand guidelines for consistency). Now imagine getting an expert in UK travel or established travel journalist or blogger to create this content and talk from experience about where to stay/what to eat/things to do, this is the type of strategy Google wants to see in 2023.

Focus on Quality Over Quality

It can be easy to get carried away and try to serve all types of content to all channels but the key here is to strategise cleverly to focus on quality over quantity. Choose your core topic areas to build authority in and make your strategy focus on these few topics to begin with.

With the risk of AI mass-generating content at scale, no one can realistically keep up with the volumes AI can produce. What you can do is stick to what you know and produce high quality content that is maintained and refreshed over time. Understanding the intent of your onsite content is crucial to this.

If you’re interested in reading more, take a look at the content and digital PR sections.

Leanne Vause

SEO & DIGITAL PR DIRECTOR

Leanne has over a decade of experience across SEO strategy, content marketing and digital PR. She has worked for a range of clients from SMEs to global brands both for agencies and in-house. She has a 2:1 upper class hons. degree in Media Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University and founded freelance SEO and digital PR business Search etc. in 2023.

LinkedIn profile here.

The post How to Adapt Your Content Strategy for Current Search Engine Algorithms appeared first on Search etc..

For some PR pros, being constantly in a cycle of strategy and outreach can feel like a bit of a hamster wheel. The pressure to be consistently on point with ideas, deliver results and keep your knowledge up to date can lead to a focus on getting links to hit targets but not necessarily have that all-important SEO aspect of delivering links with tangible value. A classic problem of quantity over quality.

A common mistake seen amongst PRs is to box-tick delivery of links at scale and forget about where those links are going to or what impact they can ultimately have.

Here are some common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Only Getting Homepage Links

When turning out press releases or pitches where there is no onsite content to reference, sometimes it might be the only option to include a homepage link. Where possible you should always be looking to link to the most relevant page. Links are primarily used to provide value to readers and acts as sources of information or as a credit to a source, if you have a relevant landing page URL and not linking to it you are doing a disservice to the reader by linking to a less helpful URL such as the homepage.

Sending users to homepages will impact user behaviour, whereas if you send someone to a campaign landing page that may have further information on the story they just read it’s expected they will naturally spend more time onsite and view the source as more trusted in return. How users interact with your site is another important factor to consider when looking at your SEO strategy. Additionally, having more diversity to pages on your website which are getting backlinks will positively impact your rankings and organic traffic as this is more natural and proves the value of your onsite content to search engines.

Ignoring Nofollow Links

There has been a lot of debate about the value of nofollow links over the years I’ve worked in the SEO industry. I can speak from personal experience when I say I have seen on multiple occasions that nofollow links do have positive impact on rankings and traffic. Ever since Google guidelines changed to view nofollow as a hint rather than a directive, this has become all the more evident.

If you only target follow links, you should still track and report nofollow links as standard practice to keep tabs on any factors which could be contributing to page organic performance.

Not Focussing on Internal Linking Structure

If you’ve achieved success and got a load of great, relevant links to a campaign landing page and not included any internal linking on that page then you’ve significantly reduced the SEO impact that campaign could have achieved. It’s important to use internal linking sensibly, link to pages which are relevant and make sense. PR campaign pages should always have a clear tangential link to a product or brand so there should be a natural fit for a page to link to. Internal links should follow best practice SEO for anchor text, placement and how many you use per page.

Linking to URLs which 404

A common issue in ecommerce SEO is having product URLs which could 404 when products go out of stock. For brands which regularly list and remove stock products online this can mean equity being lost from good links which have been gained to specific products. Working with your technical SEO team is important here to set a strategy for how these can be managed. A tech SEO can provide 404 links of high value and you can assess if there is scope to ask the site owners/content editors to update this link to something else that is still relevant. It could be better to ask for category links if it makes sense to when you outreach instead of a product, especially when promoting a range or collection. You can plan for this accordingly by asking the brand/client at the onboarding stage how the site functions for out of stock product.

Additionally, as sites change over time your original campaign page may get removed for whichever reason (although ideally it would be kept as evergreen content). If this happens, keep tabs on past links of high value, similarly to the ecommerce example above, and work with SEOs to see if these can be reclaimed and updated. A good plan would be to audit these regularly (depending on how many links this site receives it can be more or less frequent) and tackle them as needed.

If you’re interested in reading more, take a look at the content and digital PR sections.

Leanne Vause

SEO & DIGITAL PR DIRECTOR

Leanne has over a decade of experience across SEO strategy, content marketing and digital PR. She has worked for a range of clients from SMEs to global brands both for agencies and in-house. She has a 2:1 upper class hons. degree in Media Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University and founded freelance SEO and digital PR business Search etc. in 2023.

LinkedIn profile here.

The post Common Mistakes You are Making with Links You Get from Digital PR appeared first on Search etc..

We’ve unfortunately all been in the position where a PR campaign just doesn’t take off as intended. The lack of early results can create panic and stress for some of us, but not all is lost. There are ways to turn around a campaign that hasn’t quite hit the mark by trying a few simple steps.

Questions to Ask Yourself

The best place to start is to go back to the strategy and quickly analyse whether you covered all bases with your targeting. Throughout my career I’ve always looked at the what, where, why, when and who when starting a campaign, but it can be useful post-launch to re-evaluate if a story hasn’t landed to see where you may be missing the mark.

What

• What is the key headline of your campaign in a nutshell and have you articulated this simply to the journalist? – If you can’t explain your key campaign/pitch headline in one sentence, it’s too complicated and needs a revision
• What is the point of your story? Are you promoting a product, sharing data, providing an expert comment or something else? Make this clear in your pitch

Why

• Why are you reaching out? Do you have an exclusive story, interesting data or something else
• Why should they care? This sounds harsh but journalists are inundated with emails, what is it that makes yours timely/relevant/newsworthy/original for this news cycle?
• Why is this relevant to now/this journalist/this publication? Put your story into context or why it works for this timeframe and for this publication

Who

• Who is the brand? Explain how they relate to your pitch and make sense in relation to the story. Never assume a journalist has heard of the brand just because you have
• Who are you? PR is a relationship industry, it’s important to introduce who you are and what your relationship to the brand you are promoting is
• Who is the intended audience for this story? Does this fit the demographic of the journalist’s audience? – Look at how you can frame your story to suit the demographic and make sure it is relevant

When

• When is information gathered between? If you have data then provide the dates it ranges from and to
• When can they use this release? Anything under embargo should be clearly stated
• When does something launch? If you are sharing a story about a product, give the date it is available from

Where

• Where can they find supporting resources, data sources, imagery or information? – Providing this from the outset saves them time and increases the chances of pickup
• Where can they purchase the product? If relevant make sure you have given the necessary information for product launches, is this online/in-store/local to certain areas?

These are just quick questions to go over, if you haven’t included these in your initial strategy.

Gain Some Perspective

It can be common when you’re working to short deadlines to get things out the door without having the chance to get much feedback first. If you have a campaign that isn’t delivering results, go back to your team and get some perspective. Share your pitch email with them, setup a short meeting with a group of different colleagues and ask them if the messaging of your campaign is clear, get some feedback and ideas for this can be re-angled. A good idea is to not just ask PR teammates but involve other colleagues, it can be invaluable to see how people outside the PR bubble perceive your story and would consume it as regular readers.

You should also take on board any feedback journalists have given you on why they won’t cover it. It could be it’s not the right media target, wrong timing, not newsworthy enough or been doing too many times/recently by another brand. All of this feedback can inform where you go with your campaign from there.

Read the News

Do a short daily read of the key publications you are looking to target, look at news stories broader within the topic areas of your stories.

Ask yourself:

Are there new or more relevant people I haven’t targeted yet?

Is there an emerging news story or hook I can relate my pitch to?

Ideally you should be reading the news of the publications you target and following journalists specifically, understand common themes and audience interests featured. You’re flogging a dead horse if your story is nowhere in the scope of what an outlet covers.

Re-angle Your Pitch

Look at how you can give your pitch a new angle. Is there a different angle or story to lead with which could be more relevant?

I always recommend having different targeted pitches for different media types, e.g. for specific regional media you should provide and lead with stories that have data or local interest to those areas. Find new targets to trial this with and see if this improves results.

Assess whether there is additional value you can provide with your story, are there designs or data that could make it more compelling or increase the scope of relevant media to pitch to?

Manage Expectations

Whether this is your own, your teams or your clients it is important to keep an eye on outreach progress and keep the relevant parties updated. If you haven’t had the success you wanted (it happens in PR to everyone) and you are worrying about how it will be perceived, you can manage expectations and show people you have a plan.

Give feedback: provide to the team/client what feedback you have to demonstrate you understand where things have fallen down

Have a plan: any reasonable person can accept things haven’t worked out and trust in you if you have a plan for next steps – look at whether you can re-angle, find new contacts or whether you need to try a new campaign instead. Having thought about this in advance shows competence and gives confidence to other parties that you have a handle on things

Provide learnings: every failure can be a lesson, it gives us more insight to what to change next time and how we can better position something to increase chances of success. Use what you have learnt to provide insights to your team or client and take positives from the negative result

Don’t be afraid to ask for help: whether from a teammate or manager, always ask for help if you don’t know what to do next. No one person can have all the answers and asking for help is always better than suffering in silence

If you’re interested in reading more, take a look at the content and digital PR sections.

Leanne Vause

SEO & DIGITAL PR DIRECTOR

Leanne has over a decade of experience across SEO strategy, content marketing and digital PR. She has worked for a range of clients from SMEs to global brands both for agencies and in-house. She has a 2:1 upper class hons. degree in Media Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University and founded freelance SEO and digital PR business Search etc. in 2023.

LinkedIn profile here.

The post What to do When Your PR Campaign is Failing appeared first on Search etc..

To outsiders of the industry content strategy might seem simple, just write some blogs and drive traffic from it. Easy right? Unfortunately it isn’t that simple and the value of a strong content strategy can go unnoticed unless you deliver results fast.

What’s important is to set expectations from the offset of what you want your content to achieve. Where I see some marketers go wrong is to treat all content as equal and expect similar results from different intent content.

When it comes to SEO you need to know what your goals are before you begin writing. There are a few areas you can break this down by before you start:

Brand Versus Non-Brand

Before we dive into different intent of users looking for different things online, we’ll look at the difference between branded and non-branded search.

Branded: users searching for your brand name, product name specifically e.g. ‘Coca Cola’

Non-Branded: users looking for a product but aren’t married to a particular brand e.g. ‘fizzy drinks’

Unless you’re a global household name, there’s going to be little volume in search terms for your brand versus the non-brand alternative. It’s important to consider all stages of the marketing funnel below for both brand and non-brand. For SEO purposes, the biggest area of initial growth for awareness to conversion will be to target the non-brand areas of search to put your website in front of users who don’t know who you are yet.

A good starting point is to list all products your brand offers, then create a sheet where next to each product you list the varying non-branded words it relates to. From this you can conduct thorough keyword research to look at the volumes and alternate terms you might have missed. You will get varying keyword per product e.g. ‘car window cleaner’, ‘car windscreen cleaner’, ‘windscreen wash’. As part of your research look to group the core keywords per product together and look at the combined volumes for these. There’s a lot of scope here so the key is to keep it simple, focus on your main products and don’t get lost in the sea of keywords available. Relevancy is also key. Once you have a final list for this you can map it to the below funnel stages and decide on a strategy for which content to create and when.

The Marketing Funnel

Any good marketer will look at the aims of content and what the brand’s business goal is that they are trying to achieve, this is an essential starting point. Is the goal to acquire new customers, build loyalty with existing ones, share useful information within a brand sector or something else?

There are many versions of the standard marketing funnel model, Semrush has a basic breakdown of the funnel which mirrors most of them. The idea is that prospective customers exist in different stages and you can target them at different parts of the funnel.

Awareness: These are users who may not have heard of your brand, the purpose of them visiting your site is to find useful information on a topic or answer a top-level question.

Consideration: These users may have a specific problem they want to solve and are seeking advice or a solution.

Conversion: These users are looking for a product and are ready to commit to purchase.

Loyalty: These are past customers who may have purchased once and are being encouraged to become repeat customers or brand advocates.

Ways Funnel Stages Search the Internet

Lets use a cleaning product brand as an example.

Awareness: These users search top-level queries which can be long tail questions or terms such as ‘common kitchen germs and how to kill them?’ This content should always be created with the aim of driving organic traffic broadly, most of these users won’t convert but this content acts as a first touchpoint in their journey and begins brand recognition at a very early level.

Consideration: These users are more intended on a specific problem or looking for something closer to a conversion by doing detailed research and searching queries such as ‘what is best to clean wine stains?’. These are pre-purchase terms where users are seeking to compare whats out there and narrow down their search.

Conversion: These users could search very directly for terms like ‘wine stain remover’ or search for a specific product/brand – there is a clear intent to buy so these users will want an easy journey to purchase.

Loyalty: These users may be looking for more uses for a product so could be searching for terms like ‘what else can I use [brand name] stain remover for?’ or ‘how do I store stain remover safely’ – these could be customers who repeat purchase as they find new uses for your product or users wanting guidance for product care. Brands who provide solid product care advice onsite can build customer loyalty and trust simply by being the authority voice on post-purchase search queries.

Types of Content

So what kinds of content should you create to attract each stage?

Awareness: blogs work really well for general awareness, it takes work but any brand can build up a hub of blog content to increase organic site awareness and drive traffic in volumes. Just remember, traffic volume doesn’t necessarily equal increased sales so keep your blog content top-level but still related to your brand’s topic areas of expertise. Blogs which have a specific expert author or authority voice comment on subject matter they are targeting works particularly well for getting your content to rank better where there is a lot of competition on a topic. Google likes advice from experts in their fields so its a good way to build trust in your site and ensure you rank for terms your prospective customers will be searching.

Consideration: FAQ pages, product category pages or key landing pages are your best friend for consideration stage content. This is a brand’s opportunity to really sell the product, explain how it works and what makes it different. Demonstrate brand expertise in this area by answering questions with confidence. Answer about the ‘why’ in all aspects.

Conversion: product or conversion pages are where your visitors can take the next step. It’s important to remember not every conversion may be a sale, a conversion might look like a sign-up, a booking enquiry or an email to customer service. Also important is how these pages function, give clear CTAs for your users, don’t add extra steps in your journey to purchase. Making it as easy as possible for these users to convert is key here.

Loyalty: FAQ pages can additionally provide value here and drive customer loyalty. Tell users how to use your product, troubleshoot issues, give them inspiration for how they can use your product and answer all common questions across these landing pages. If your customers have common issues and you answer these online, you can prove trust and support for them through these simple pages. Look at ways to incentivise customers to leave reviews and encourage trust for new customers. If it makes sense, create a hub of user generated content to show how people are using your product.

Measuring Impact

When quantifying success you need to be looking at the right metrics too.

Awareness: this could be organic traffic, time spent on pages, rankings, pages per session, onward site journey, organic market share of keyword cluster topics

Consideration: metrics could be organic traffic, clicks to product pages, rankings

Conversion: can be tracked depending on the specific goals by metrics like purchases, enquiries, sign-ups, adds to baskets, booking a consultation, percentage of traffic converted, organic market share of product keywords

Loyalty: can be measured by metrics like increase in branded search (as loyal customers switch from non-brand to brand), organic traffic, onsite engagements, rankings for post-purchase keywords

The above metrics might not work for all products or websites, it is important to tailor your metrics to what your business goals are, these are simply examples to put into context how intent relates to measuring success.

If you’re interested in reading more, take a look at the content and digital PR sections.

Leanne Vause

SEO & DIGITAL PR DIRECTOR

Leanne has over a decade of experience across SEO strategy, content marketing and digital PR. She has worked for a range of clients from SMEs to global brands both for agencies and in-house. She has a 2:1 upper class hons. degree in Media Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University and founded freelance SEO and digital PR business Search etc. in 2023.

LinkedIn profile here.

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