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..

For business owners it can be scary to take a leap of faith and invest resources into any form of external marketing. The key thing you want to establish is that you’re going to get value for money and some form of return on your investment. In the world of SEO and digital PR it can be confusing for clients to understand what is reasonable to expect from your digital marketing strategy. Any good freelancer or agency should be accountable for communicating what success looks like, ensuring you have the right context in your reporting to understand key growth markers.

Unfortunately in our industry there are some less trusted marketers who won’t be transparent about their ability, deliverability of results or methods in general. After working in this industry for over a decade, I’ve heard many stories and seen strategies in action which didn’t align with the standards I would personally offer clients. To help, I’ve put together my guide on red flags that should be considered when you look for a reputable digital PR or SEO partner.

SEO Red Flags

1. No KPIs or markers of success:
   There’s a delicate balance between over and under promising results by digital marketers, finding the right balance is key. Someone who gives you no indication of what success looks like has no benchmark or framework within their strategy, meaning you both have no idea of what you’re aiming for. KPIs shouldn’t be too niche, ignoring the bigger picture of SEO success, but they should be in place to have a common goal in mind for the marketer and the client. I start by asking clients that are their wider business goals, key product/service focuses for each quarter and expand my strategy from there, looking at how digital PR or SEO activity can have more specific impact on these goals instead of doing work for work’s sake.
2. You don’t know who is doing the work:
   It is important to note that there are agencies or freelancers who draft in support when things get busy. This is common and not an issue when the quality control is being overseen by the agency or freelancer themselves, although it should be disclosed to any clients affected. This becomes a problem when agencies or freelancers subcontract entire projects to third parties without disclosing it to clients and without taking ownership for the strategy or results. These agencies essentially become a middle man and this can waste budget for clients and resource investment, which could be more efficiently spent if the client cut out the middle man and hired the marketer directly. Clients contract marketers because they are choosing the expertise that has been sold to them in the pitch and by not being honest about who is doing the work, this means the client may be getting a lower quality of work than has been sold to them.
3. No team members are listed onsite with the right credentials:
   I’ve pitched against agencies before where not a single person on the team page had the relevant job title or experience for the services being sold, hinting that these services would be immediately outsourced if a contract is won. This relates to the previous point on transparency and accountability from agencies or freelancers to make clear who would be leading the projector doing the work. It’s important to understand the experience of the marketer to ensure they know your sector and have the skillset to employ the sold strategy effectively. Always look at your agency’s team members page and ask about what specialists they have to work on the account.
4. No senior staff working on the account:
   It can be common in some agencies that you see a senior team presented in the pitch who never end up working on the account, instead junior team members are placed onto accounts to save resource for ‘bigger’ or ‘more important’ clients. This shows an agency’s prioritisation if they aren’t willing to put experienced people on the account. Whilst it is important for juniors to get experience working on accounts and have their skillsets developed, they should never be dumped with the ownership of a full account when they aren’t ready and don’t have the necessary experience. Always ask who will be working on your account so you have full understanding of what level of skill will be applied to the strategy.
5. Unbelievable results:
   We’ve all seen hard to believe case studies being pedalled around LinkedIn over recent months. Oftentimes, these results aren’t always as they seem when you dive deep into them. It can set a dangerous precedent as clients understandably believes that insane results and viral campaigns can be achieved on a shoestring budget consistently, which just isn’t the reality of digital marketing. Growth and success takes long term investment, steady strategy and you may have months which fluctuate. Transparency and honesty in our industry is integral to managing realistic expectations. If you’re being presented case studies which sound hard to believe, do some digging and ask deeper questions to verify the validity of the results. Additionally, ask how frequent those types of results are as a one off success shouldn’t be sold as the norm to expect.
6. Boiler plate strategies:
   There are many marketers selling out of the box SEO and digital PR, which on the surface sounds fine but can be a huge waster of investment for businesses if they strategy isn’t correct for their industry and audience. Tailored marketing strategies require more resource but are worth the effort as it means you are adapting what works to suit the client you are working on. I wouldn’t sell product PR or reactive to a client where there are limited opportunities, just as you wouldn’t expect advertising of a fashion brand to be the same as a car dealership. Ask the question “how will this strategy directly work for my industry?” to understand if the person or agency you are contracting actually understands your business and website audience to be able to effectively deliver results.
7. Race to the bottom pricing:
   When it comes to SEO and Digital PR, you really do get what you pay for a lot of the time. There has unfortunately been a lot of discount pricing, essentially selling packages of basic marketing for low low prices, which correlates to the out of the box strategies previously mentioned. There’s a line between agreeing KPIs and explaining how the strategy will work to achieve them and simply selling X number of links or keyword positions, with no context as to what impact they’d have on the website’s organic growth. People selling actions without impact is simply a waste of resource. If it seems too cheap, you can guarantee you won’t be getting an experienced strategist on the account and results may be topped up by quick win or spammy tactics, which won’t move the needle. This doesn’t mean you have to pay sky high prices either, as freelancers can typically charge less than agencies due to lower overheads and operational costs. It’s important to find the balance and bring this back to who is going to be doing the work and what is their expertise.
8. Focus on isolated metrics:
   In line with cheap and not-so-cheerful packages comes isolated metrics. So many times I see marketers selling just links, as well as having requests myself for X amount of links. I will always explain to businesses that this viewpoint is narrow and not conducive to organic success. If you do KPI things like links numbers, it needs to be part of a bigger strategy which looks at your actual business goals. What products or services is your business focusing on? What are the goals of your SEO strategy, is it brand or non-brand? Is there are specific category of your site that needs a boost currently? All of this is relevant and having that tailored strategy means you don’t just get endless low quality homepage links that leave you wondering why your organic traffic still hasn’t grown. Additionally, just looking at growth in organic traffic can be a road to nowhere, as it’s easier to write content for content’s sake on irrelevant topics which don’t draw in a targeted audience. You need to partner with a marketer who understands relevancy and focuses on this over arbitrary metrics that don’t honestly communicate success.
9. Too much busywork:
   When you have bigger budgets or are working with a freelancer/agency who doesn’t have the right experience there can be a lot of busywork put into each month’s workload to simply pad it out and keep retainers going. I’ve onboarded several clients where a lot of important and urgent website issues had never been tackled whilst their previous marketers spent months on a strategy that consisted of work like updating metas on pages that were noindexed anyway and disavowing links which will be ignored by Google regardless. Less scrupulous marketers may take advantage of clients’ lesser knowledge of SEO and aim to give themselves easier work to do instead of doing important work that might be challenging and take time to implement. Low level work can make up a bigger project plan, but you should ask the right questions to make sure the big issues have been tackled first before you get into the lower priority tasks. Communicate with your marketer or agency to ensure they have your priorities clear and you’ve working towards a common goal, with the right prioritisation of tasks.
10. Buying links to top up results:
    This tip should really be obvious in 2025 but I’ve still seen agencies recently that rely on a strategy of buying links for clients. Whether to ‘top up’ failed digital PR strategies or to outright sell onto clients, it just isn’t the vibe for 2025 and Google has long clamped down on these black hat tactics. Any short term growth you see from this is misadvised and trust that you will see your organic traffic nosedive at some point once the algorithm becomes wise to the paid links. These paid links are also usually terrible quality, low DA and pure spam. Diligence is important here, making sure you know exactly how your marketer will be gaining backlinks for you, making sure they are going for quality and relevancy in an authentic way.

Hopefully these tips will help you vet your future agency or freelancer if you’re seeking out a new partner for any SEO or digital PR work. You should always ask for reviews or testimonials if unsure, as well as asking about your prospective marketers industry experience.

Are you looking for freelance digital PR or SEO support? 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 Looking for SEO or Digital PR Services? Watch out for these Red Flags 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..

In the world of content marketing for SEO a lot has changed over the years. As tactics evolve and algorithms update, it can be confusing as to what works in 2023. To help I’ve broken down some common content marketing myths that still are believed in the SEO world, take a look:

1. I need to post a lot of blogs frequently

It’s commonly misunderstood that because Google and search engines like sites who are publishing fresh content this means you must post all the time to keep momentum. This is definitely not the case and quality should always come before quantity if you are writing content with the aim of ranking for keywords and driving organic traffic. Google has become sophisticated in understanding relevancy and the helpful content update has reinforced the importance of posting content that is useful to humans first and foremost.

2. My blogs should only be about the products I sell or my business

To develop a multi-funnel content marketing strategy you should aim to create content which targets users at all consideration stages of their buying journey.

Using blogs as a top-funnel informational hub which discusses topics relevant to your business is a great starting point to grow your organic visibility and brand awareness. You should look to build out content which answers questions your ideal customers are asking. What is important is to create content you have the authority to comment on, within the realm of your audience’s secondary interests but still suitable for your expertise. This means don’t give driving advice for winter if your business sells fashion accessories, stick to what you know and your website relevancy will be rewarded in your SEO efforts.

3. Blogs can’t generate ROI

A common concern for business owners is that blogs aren’t contributing to the bottom line and delivering ROI. This is certainly not the case all the time and it’s important to consider long-term impact of blogs for SEO growth. Whilst you should be in the know and KPI your blog strategy accordingly, it is possible for the right type of blogs to drive sales in addition to rankings or top-funnel traffic.

For ecommerce brands, creating blogs which rank and have an active audience can inspire and influence these regular readers to buy your products if you create quality buying guides which assist them in decision making. It is also important to know that many blogs aren’t designed to drive direct sales however, it is important to set out the right intent in your blog content strategy in the first instance and measure success correctly for your goals.

4. There’s no point having a blog for my business site

If not utilised correctly, it is possible your blog isn’t driving traffic or awareness of your brand. However, employing a targeted organic strategy will deliver results to suit your business aims. All you need is the right expertise to steer you in the right direction.

5. My category pages don’t matter

For those who understand the importance of SEO content strategy it is very common for key pages like category pages to be ignored or overlooked. A lot of agencies and marketers become embedded in creating blogs for top-funnel traffic and never progress beyond this to the point where they are targeting more commercial opportunities.

Category pages should act as a supporting way to help users narrow down their search and give information that helps to make a buying or conversion decision. Much thought should be put into how information is displayed, how products are accessed from these pages and how users can filter down options to find what they are looking for. Leaving prospective customers with uncertainty at this stage could lose you a conversion.

6. Bounce rate is the most important metric

In my 10 years of industry experience I have lost count of the number of businesses who overly worry about the bounce rate of a page. For some it becomes the single most important metric to them, ignoring all other positive signs of website growth.

There are many varying factors that can play a part in why your bounce rate is declining and it isn’t something that businesses need to worry about overall. Say you have massively increased traffic to a page, more users can mean more drop-offs but you still have more people spending time on your page and may have more interactions, average time spent or other metrics signalling growth but if you only look at one metric in isolation you will convince yourself things are in decline.

7. My organic content traffic should be increasing every month

This is another common concern that businesses need not worry about. In most businesses, seasonality plays a huge role. There will naturally be times when more or less people are in market to purchase your product, this can be impacted by time of year, weather, seasonal habits such as school holidays or Christmas. As a business you can use SEO data to your advantage, pre-empt the seasonal habits and demand for your products and work your strategy accordingly. You should also compare year-on-year or like-for-like reporting to give a better picture of how traffic is stacking up versus similar periods of seasonality in the past.

Hopefully this advice is useful, if you are interested in support for your brand website’s SEO or content marketing efforts, get in touch using the form below for a quote.

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 7 Content Marketing Myths that are Commonly Believed 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..

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.

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Intent in Your Organic Content Strategy appeared first on Search etc..

If you’re new to SEO or even digital marketing in general, we’re here to help. There are some simple aspects you can have an understanding of which will help you put efforts into the right places.

What You Need to Know

Lets start with the basics. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation, put simply this is the results you see in search engines which aren’t paid ads. When you google or search something on a search engine the results you get are based on a multitude of factors. How you search a word or phrase can impact the results you receive, we call these keywords.

Other factors that play a part are the technical make-up of your site, it’s relevancy, backlinks (more on this later), content onsite, positioning versus competitors, site history and how established it is in the respective sector and much much more. A host of varying factors are taken into account by Google and it uses an algorithm to decide how your website may or may not appear for certain keyword phrases. This is the same for other search engines but we primarily focus on Google.

Google is the biggest search engine and responsible for most traffic driven through people using search engines. We call this organic traffic as it is traffic driven more naturally than a paid for ad. So why does this matter to a business? A 2014 independent study showed organic traffic made up 51% of major websites traffic (traffic being people visiting your website), whereas social media drove just 5%.

If you can harness the power of organic search then you can effectively drive not only volumes of traffic to your website but also make sure the people finding your website are super relevant. It is to be expected a portion of visitors you drive to your website will convert into customers if you are doing this in the right way. Read on to see how SEO can be used specifically to drive sales.

The Basics

You’ll hear some frequently used terms in the industry so here’s a quick guide to help understand what’s what:

SEO
Search Engine Optimisation: the method and practice of using marketing tactics to make a website more visible in search engines for prospective customers

Keywords
The words, sentences or phrases people may use when searching something in a search engine

Backlinks
Websites usually hyperlink to other websites (where you click text to take you from one to another). When websites link to your site we call these backlinks. These can be used to improve SEO performance

Organic Traffic
Visitors coming to and starting sessions on your website (periods of time browsing) who have found your site via search engines like Google

Content
Pages, blogs or other types of articles on your website. Content can be produced for different reasons to further boost traffic to your site and engage customers. Content can be planned around a keyword strategy to target terms which work well for SEO

Digital PR
Using a range of PR tactics and strategy to drive results for SEO. This can be focussed on backlinks and getting links from relevant, authoritative websites in order to boost your SEO performance of your site

Rank
On average, a rank is where your site is shown in Google search results. There are 10 organic website listings per page of Google search results, meaning if you rank 10 or under, you are appearing on page 1 of Google and are likely to drive more search volume for people searching this term than competitors listed on page 2 onwards.

Search Volume
Google and other tools estimate how many people on average search per month for a keyword or key phrase. This number is the estimated search volume, meaning if everyone who Googled that word/phrase visited your site, this could be the number of prospective customers you can target. Not everyone who searches your keyword will click your website in Google results, so it is important to expect a small percentage of your search volume is a realistic figure – this will be dependent on your site content/products, the keyword, the intent of the customer and where you are ranking. The search volume figures themselves are also not an exact science, different tools estimate wildly different volumes for particular keywords as exact figures aren’t available from search engines. This is where having an expert SEO marketer comes in to decipher the varying tool statistics and put this into an actionable plan that will drive results.

Tips for Local SEO

This is a key point we have seen businesses fall down on for simple reasons. When someone begins to look at keywords to target for a business it’s typical to see mistakes with targeting keywords that are way too competitive for smaller businesses to compete.

Say you’re a florist and you want people looking to buy roses to buy from your local flower shop, it might seem a natural first choice to look at keywords relating to the product. You might look at a basic keyword such as ‘roses’ which can have hundreds of thousands of monthly searches in the UK alone. As the prospective traffic is so high, every major player in this market will be targeting this term and they can invest more infrastructure and resources into securing top rankings for large volume terms. According to Ahrefs, only 5.7% of pages will rank in the top 10 search results within a year of publication.

The other issue is, even if you managed to rank and drive high traffic to your site for a top keyword like this, most of it will be irrelevant users. If you’re a local business especially, you wouldn’t advertise in cities you don’t have stores so this works the exact same way. You will have far better success targeting your strategy to small search volume keywords which are being used by highly relevant people in your local area, people who are also in a position to buy your product or service.

Say you are a Manchester business, you may want to look at targeting the broader north west of England. You might decide to also target different parts of Manchester, such as: Bolton, Salford, Trafford etc. It makes sense to have a keyword strategy (as part of a broader organic strategy) which brings together your products, your customer intent and your location to find the sweet spot to target.

With the right strategy and expertise, you can find your niche online and drive relevant customers to your site. If you are looking for support with content marketing or digital PR for your site, please get in touch.

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