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Encouraging brands to embrace digital marketing opened the doors for new opportunities and success, however, it also brought along a new set of challenges, one of those being a constant flood of marketing industry jargon.

In this blog, we will help you cut through the clutter and provide basic digital marketing terms you should focus on when building a strategy that will help you and your business succeed.

What is Digital Marketing – And Why Should You Care?

Marketing is everywhere, but when people think of it, they often think of billboards, magazines, television commercials, and even ads on the radio.

These are what we refer to as traditional marketing techniques. However, like most things, as the world has evolved, marketing has too.

Digital marketing is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the Internet or other forms of digital communication.

According to the Pew Research Center, three in ten U.S. adults claim they are “almost constantly” online. This explains why businesses are choosing to focus on digital marketing rather than traditional techniques. Using the Internet allows businesses to reach more customers in a shorter amount of time and with less effort. In addition, digital marketing is known to be more cost-effective.

a woman types on her laptop, the screen showing charts and graphs

Digital Marketing Key Terms

For brands to get the most out of digital marketing services they need to have a basic understanding of digital marketing terminology and the ability to differentiate these terms with buzzwords.

Buzzwords are words or phrases that are trending during a certain period. These words, or jargon, won’t have the same effectiveness as those that experienced marketers use and know.

Below, we’ve broken down some important digital marketing terms to start with as you build your knowledge.

Organic

When it comes to digital marketing terminology, you should know the three primary terms marketers will often use when they are discussing how to drive traffic (a term we will cover below) and gain leads. The first term is organic.

If someone finds your site on a search engine without clicking on an advertisement or other type of promotional content, it is considered organic traffic.

This is a natural way of spreading brand awareness and generating leads. For example, sending out email newsletters, publishing monthly blog posts and social media posts (not advertisements), or other pieces of content that don’t require a set budget.

Paid

The second way to drive traffic and gain leads is through paid marketing techniques. These include advertisements or campaigns that require a daily or lifetime budget. For instance, running monthly social media advertisements on LinkedIn.

Typically, businesses will find that paid campaigns perform better than posting organically. This is often because platforms will allow you to use detailed targeting. However, having a balance of both paid and organic marketing is beneficial since you’re likely to reach more people overall.

Referral

If a user finds your site without organically searching or clicking on a paid ad, it’s known as referral traffic. When someone visits a hyperlink from a social network or website and ends up on your site, search engines can recognize this as a referral visit.

Many businesses will also use UTM codes to track exactly where these users are coming from. Doing this allows you to see which social networks or sites are bringing in the most traffic.

Traffic

As promised above, the next digital marketing term everyone in the industry should be aware of is “traffic”. Simply put, traffic refers to the number of users who have visited your website or social media profiles.

This metric is crucial for every brand, but especially those who are trying to increase brand awareness. It’s important for marketers to not only see that traffic is coming through but also to locate where users are coming from.

For example, in Google Analytics, you’re able to identify if a user came to your site organically (in a search engine) or through a paid ad. Determining this will help you build a marketing strategy that is aligned with your overall goals.

Session

As we mentioned previously, you can track the traffic for your site in Google Analytics, but to do that you need to understand another key digital marketing term known as sessions.

Every time a user visits your site, they start a session, and after 30 minutes of inactivity, the session ends. This means if someone is on your site for even a second, they are counted as a session. In the same respect, if a user leaves your site and comes back a few hours later or the next day, it’s counted as a new session.

However, most businesses don’t simply want to know if people are visiting their site, but also how long they’re staying. This is where engaged sessions come into play. When a user stays on your site for more than 10 seconds, completes a conversion (we’ll discuss more about this below), or has at least 2 pageviews, it’s considered an engaged session.

While sessions alone can be helpful, engaged sessions are arguably more important because they show businesses that users are absorbing information on their site and therefore becoming one step closer to becoming leads or customers.

Lead

The primary goal of any company or business is to gain customers and increase revenue. Marketers can assist them in this by creating strategies to bring in new leads. A lead is any user that shows interest in a brand, product, or service.

Depending on the company itself, the quality of leads may vary, however, for the most part, a qualified lead refers to someone who fills out a contact form, requests a quote, signs up for a trial, or takes any other action that pushes them closer to becoming a customer.

Conversions

We’ve mentioned the term conversions a few times, which is appropriate because, in many ways, these are some of the most valuable metrics in digital marketing. When creating a marketing strategy, marketers will break down a number of actions they want users to take.

Conversions can vary in importance, what the business is trying to achieve will greatly impact what types of conversions digital marketers decide to set up.

This could be viewing a landing page, clicking a contact button, or downloading a file, a conversion happens whenever a user completes a desired action.

Call to Action (CTA)

A digital marketing term you’ll hear frequently is a call to action or CTA. This refers to the next step a marketer wants the audience to take to push them further through the sales funnel.

Usually appearing at the end of a content, ad, or email, a good CTA will be clear and concise. Often CTAs will include a direct link for a user to click on.

Whether it leads to a contact form, product page, or another resource, the goal of a CTA is to keep the reader engaged and interested in a service or product.

A/B Testing

Also known as “split testing”, A/B testing is a digital marketing term that describes the process of comparing two variables to determine which performs better.

For example, if you are experimenting with email headlines and want to see what is more effective, you can send out two emails that have the same copy, and list but contain different headlines.

Based on how each performs, you can determine which headline is stronger. This is a technique digital marketers use in several areas to improve conversion rates and optimize their content.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Commonly referred to as KPIs, key performance indicators, are how marketers measure their progress against an objective.

There are two types of indicators to be aware of when creating goals: lagging and leading. Lagging indicators assess the current state of business performance while leading indicators work to predict future success.

It’s important to take into account both types because while lagging indicators aren’t helpful with making ongoing adjustments, they can help you shape your goals which should be based on leading indicators.

two people type on their laptops at a table. the table top is covered in pieces of paper and sticky notes

Tactical Digital Marketing Terms

Now that we’ve covered some of the basic digital marketing terms, it’s time to dive into the specifics.

Generally speaking, 4 main types of services go hand-in-hand with digital marketing. In the following sections, we’ll explain what these are and what terms are specific to the work they do.

Basic SEO Terms to Know

Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to the process of improving a website to increase its visibility in search engines, like Google or Microsoft Bing. The main goal of SEO is to increase traffic and attract users who will become leads, customers, or an audience that continues to come back.

Title Tag– The name of a specific web page. These will appear at the top of a web browser or in search engine results.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)– The page of results users see when they type a word, phrase, or query into a search engine.

Meta Description– Tied to a specific page, these are used to describe web pages and encourage users to click on links in the SERP.

Keyword– A word or phrase a user types into a search engine to find what they are looking for. Using keywords in titles, headings, and body of texts will help improve a page’s ranking.

Ranking Factors– The criteria applied by search engines when evaluating web pages to decide where each page should fall on the SERPs.

Events– A metric that records a specific user interaction or occurrence on a website, for example clicking a button, submitting a form, downloading a file, and more.

Conversion Rate– Measures the number of users who converted (taken action) as a percentage of the total number of users who visited a site. This can be calculated by the total number of conversions divided by the total number of clicks.

Basic Content Marketing Terms to Know

Content marketing involves the creation and distribution of valuable and relevant online material that is intended to promote a brand as well as spark interest in its products or services. These materials include a wide variety of content pieces from blogs to whitepapers.

Buyer Persona– A detailed description of a business’s ideal customer, outlining their customer’s desires, pain points, demographics, etc.

Bounce Rate– The percentage of users who enter a website and leave rather than continuing to browse pages within the same site.

Landing Page– Any page on a website where traffic is sent to prompt a specific action or result.

Copywriting– The process of creating content for web pages, blogs, or social media posts to convert users.

Customer Journey– An outline of the different steps users will take to become qualified leads, customers, or clients.

Sessions Per User– The average number of sessions each user engages on a specific site or application. This can be calculated by dividing a site’s session count by its user count.

Basic Email Marketing Terms to Know

Email marketing helps you reach potential customers, increase brand awareness, build customer loyalty, and promote other marketing efforts. The messages in emails can include valuable content, updates, coupons, or exclusive offers.

Email Automation– An email marketing strategy that sends specific messages according to certain triggers or scheduled times.

Dynamic Content– Email content that changes based on a user’s data, preferences, and behaviors to show them specific messaging.

List Segmentation– A process of breaking down email lists into smaller segments to create personalized messages.

Email Deliverability– The ability to successfully deliver emails to users’ inboxes.

Drip Campaign– A series of automated messages or emails sent to leads regularly and over a scheduled period.

Open Rate– The number of email recipients who opened an email.

Click Rate– The percentage of people who opened an email and clicked on a link or ad within the email. This can be calculated by dividing the number of emails clicked by the number of emails sent.

Click-To-Open Rate– The percentage of people who opened an email and then clicked a link within that email. This can be calculated by dividing unique email opens by unique email clicks and then multiplying by 100.

Basic Social Media Marketing Terms to Know

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to interact with customers to build brands, increase sales, and drive website traffic. Social media can be shared organically and can be used for paid advertising.

Impressions– The number of times content has been shown on the feeds of social media users.

Engagement Rate– A metric that shows how much interaction a social media post or ad campaign earns from users. This can be calculated by dividing the total engagement by total followers and then multiplying by 100%.

Conversion Rate– The percentage of users who follow through a social media post or ad’s call to action.

Cost Per Click (CPC)– A metric that determines how much advertisers pay for social ads based on the number of clicks the ad receives. This can be calculated by dividing the advertising cost by the number of clicks generated by the advertisement.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)– The number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times an ad is shown.

a laptop is open on a table next to a row of cacti in cute pots along a windowsill

Staying educated about basic digital marketing terminology is beneficial for businesses because it gives them the ability to not only understand what other competitors are doing online but also the chance to create a marketing strategy that will put them ahead of their competition.

With this knowledge, you have the opportunity to build relationships with like-minded people who can help tell your brand’s story and achieve your goals.

Interested in learning more about digital marketing? Browse our case studies to see some of our recent marketing projects.

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This blog was originally published on March 30, 2021, and updated on November 1, 2023.

Two and half decades have passed, and today’s Google looks very different from the Google of 1998.

We’ve seen countless Google updates over the years. From the knowledge graph, to featured snippets, to pandas, penguins, and hummingbirds—oh my! With so many Google algorithm updates and SERP changes, we’re reviewing a complete Google history to get you up to speed. 

Take a scroll down memory lane and learn about some of the biggest Google algorithm updates and notable SERP changes by Google over the years. It all kicks off in the 90s.

1998: Google Is Bornscreen-shot-2016-09-12-at-9-15-44-am

Google’s inception actually dates back to 1995 at Stanford University. Two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed a dorm room search engine project that eventually sparked the interest of Silicon Valley investors. In August 1998, Google Inc. was born.

1998 Google was Google in beta, so it was still well on its way to becoming the best search engine. Think minimalist chic Google. Google ads and local listings weren’t a thing yet, so Google’s SERP featured a lot of white space. But that all started to change after the turn of the century.

Google’s Terrible Twos & Toddler Years (1999-2004)

google-local

Google started to change between 2003 and 2004. The introduction of online local listings, All Results, and Google Ads were the biggest Google algorithm updates in the company’s early years. 

Google introduced online local listings to help users find results tied to their specific area. The All Results tab allowed users to search a variety of search options, and Google Ads… well, they continue to frustrate the masses. 

Google Ads served as a reminder that Google is a business at the end of the day. A business that made $162.45 billion from search ads in 2022, making search ads the company’s top revenue source to date. 

Google also started cracking down on spammy search results before other search engines. The company worked hard to ensure their results were the most accurate and less likely to cause users headaches and frustration.

Google Algorithm Updates from 2005-2010

google-2010

“Minimalist chic” Google disappeared after the advent of Google Ads, and Google’s SERP now began to feel a bit more cluttered. 

On the bright side, Google Suggest arrived in 2007 allowing users to shave seconds off of their search time, and giving us all hilarious insight into the searches of our peers. 

Google got rid of their Feeling Lucky button that let users bypass those exhausting ads and go straight to the website of the first search result.

The button still exists today, but around the 2009-2010 mark, with the combination of Google Instant (also gone) and Google Suggest, the button was basically defunct.

Advanced Search was still part of the regular search function in 2010 and other search tools appeared on the left-hand side of the SERP, allowing users to tap into a more specific search query. 

Unlike today’s results, the SERP design was much more vertical; notice how the sitelinks under the primary domain are vertically aligned rather than today’s horizontally aligned sitelinks.

While this change may seem self-explanatory, a more horizontal approach means a) more search results per page and b) more detailed search results. These purely user-driven decisions were what led to major Google search updates. Next up: Google’s animal era.

Pandas, Penguins, & Hummingbirds–Oh My! (2011-2014)

knowledge-graph2

Pandas, penguins, and hummingbirds ruled this epoch of Google history. Let’s break down these updates in more detail. 

Google’s Panda Update (2011)

This update sought to “reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”

The update, named after Navneet Panda (an inventor on the accompanying patent for the update, not a panda bear), launched in February 2011 and noticeably impacted rankings on 11.8% of queries. 

Google’s Penguin Update (2012)

Google’s Penguin update was a landmark update and one of the most notable SERP changes by Google. It cracked down on sites engaging in webspam tactics like keyword stuffing (unnaturally forcing keywords into content) and link spam (link inclusion purely to boost SEO).

Effectively, any site attempting to manipulate search rankings by abusing SEO tactics was punished by Google’s Penguin update. Google announced the update in 2012 and made it part of its core algorithm in 2016. 

Google’s Hummingbird Update (2013)

Aptly named for being “quick and precise,” Google’s Hummingbird update was essentially a rewrite of Google’s core algorithm.

The update improved Google’s ability to handle natural conversation in search queries. Instead of matching all words in a query to the words on a web page, Google began intuitively ignoring certain words that weren’t super relevant to a searcher’s meaning.

The Knowledge Graph (2013)

Not an animal update, but still fun! Google launched the knowledge graph and corresponding Carousel in 2013 to create Universal Search. With this new feature, Google tossed all search results together instead of separating them out (video on top of an image on top of a domain). 

Ads were limited to 3-4 above the fold with more at the bottom of the page. Local listings were a part of the natural landscape of the search results (although fewer were shown). All Results were placed at the top of the results pages, and then visuals busted onto the scene.

Humans are visual creatures. Seeing an image with text helps us make connections to what we are seeing and searching for. By creating a more visual experience, users had an easier time finding what they needed through Search.

Google Goes Mobile (2014)

By 2014, Google had successfully become our third, digital arm. We were using Google not only to search but to create ads, email, track our web analytics, and search for crawl errors.

Naturally, the SERPs were a reflection of each individual’s personal connection with the tech giant. Results were more personalized based on search history and the search tool became an extension of your results page.

But what was one of the most important transitions of 2014? Mobile. 

Not only did Google start stressing the importance of a mobile-friendly site (followed by the highly anticipated Mobilegeddon in 2015), the aesthetic of their entire page changed between 2010 and 2014 to reflect a cleaner surface, fit for tinier screens.

And let’s not forget Voice Search. As a growing number of users adopted smartphones and began searching through mobile, the ability to quickly ask a question hands-free became more and more of a necessity. This was the dawn of the phrase “OK, Google.”

Google Algorithm Updates from 2015-2019

screen-shot-2016-09-12-at-11-55-09-am

2015’s Mobilegeddon, or Mobile-Friendly Update, rewarded mobile-friendly websites with better SERP rankings. As we said, mobile became a massive game-changer for Google during this era.

The RankBrain update also arrived in 2015 and improved Google’s ability to understand new, complex queries. It was essentially Google’s first AI system and deep learning model, allowing Google to intuitively identify related words and concepts. 

With new Answer Boxes to recent Tweets (now X’s?) and stories, there was often no reason to leave Google’s SERP page. Product Graphs also arrived at around this time, giving users a breakdown of a product before even visiting the site.

Images and videos appeared above the fold now. The “snack pack” version of local listings gave a user everything they needed to know about contacting a business before even clicking on its website link. And even with longer meta titles & descriptions, organic results got pushed further down the page.

In 2018, the Google Medic Update targeted medical sites that didn’t comply with Google’s E-A-T (now with an extra “E”) guidelines. Essentially, the update punished sites that were making unsubstantiated medical claims. 

Google’s BERT Update in 2019 introduced a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm that helped Google understand the nuances of users’ search queries. BERT stood for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. What’s that exactly?

Basically, BERT assesses all words in a complex search query to give users the most relevant results to their query, rather than just searching for content based on individual words. With the BERT update, the 2010s chapter of Google closed with some impressive new features. 
So what’s happening with Google’s latest updates?

Google Algorithm Updates from 2020-2023

Google algorithm updates in recent years have mostly revolved around spam and product review updates. 

Google cracked down on spammy links in 2022 by making improvements to SpamBrain, Google’s AI spam-detection system. Any sites engaging in spammy practices or violating Google’s spam guidelines saw worse SERP rankings.

For product review updates, Google began rewarding sites with rich, in-depth reviews rather than thin, low-quality reviews that weren’t as helpful to readers.

These product review updates coincided with Google’s Helpful Content Update. Essentially, the updates ensured users saw more helpful, high-quality, and original content.

Closing Thoughts After a Scroll Down Memory Lane

Google is constantly changing, and it’s safe to say Google will keep growing and changing for years to come. With ever-evolving AI technology and tools like Bard, search will become even easier. 

In February 2023, Google announced, “Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web.”

With that said, having to balance UX with revenue-driving tools can be difficult. And staying on top of the latest Google search results trends and major Google search updates can be equally challenging.

Have other questions about Google algorithm updates? Or need some more Google guidance? Reach out to our team for answers on all things Google!

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This blog was originally published on September 12, 2016. It was updated on September 1, 2023.

Whether you’re looking for the best search engine for research or simply checking the weather forecast in your area, it’s a widely held belief that there are few (if any) search engines better than Google.

From the first time it appeared to the public, Google has had its grip on internet users worldwide. After reading this blog, you’ll understand why Google is the best search engine as well as how your business can leverage its many benefits.

When Did Google Come Out?

In 1996, two graduate students attending Stanford University wondered if there was a new (and better) way to search the World Wide Web. Together, they decided the answer was yes.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page would go on to invent one of the most popular search engines in the world. Working out of their dorm room, they created “Backrub”, a project that used backlinks to determine the importance of individual pages on the internet.

By the time 1998 came around, Brin and Page founded Google. The name change was meant to play off the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. They believed this name reflected their mission of organizing the world’s information in a way that was accessible and useful to everyone, everywhere.

What began as a small online search firm would turn into a search engine with more than 50 internet services and products that can be used by businesses, developers, and anyone else looking for information.

Individual searching Google on laptop.

Why is Google so Popular?

“Google it”.

It’s a familiar phrase to hear someone say or even think to yourself. For years, Google has been the go-to search engine for internet users across the globe.

In 2022, studies showed that Google was visited 89.3 billion times a month, making it the most visited website by a landslide. To this day, Google has a market share of over 93%, which causes people to wonder – why is Google the best search engine?

While other search engines have continued to grow and become more efficient in many ways, Google remains the majority’s choice. As simple as it is to tell someone to “Google it”, the process behind the scenes is far more complex.

Search Engine Algorithms

One of Google’s central claims to fame can be attributed to its search engine algorithm. These algorithms make the user’s experience a top priority.

Search engines collect formulas that will help them determine the quality and relevance of a particular ad or web page. A large result of Google’s popularity came from their creation of complex algorithms which improve an individual’s search process.

Google has reported that its algorithm changes hundreds of times a year, making its results more timely and accurate than any other search engine. In addition, Google uses more than 200 ranking factors when determining which results to show to a viewer and in what order.

The precision of a search engine algorithm works to ensure that users are getting the information that they need immediately, rather than having to scroll through pages of search results.

Search Engine Features

Another substantial reason why Google is the best search engine is its various features. Search engine features are the additional elements an individual will see on the result page.

Search engine features don’t only make the user’s experience better, they can also be beneficial to the business or website. In order for businesses to get their site content to appear in search results, they should follow a few key practices:

Also known as SERP features, Google offers an assortment of characteristics that provide the user with a more efficient and comprehensive search experience.

Search Engine Trends

When weighing search engine pros and cons, it’s important to mention Google Trends. These trends are search terms that are popular on Google. Businesses can benefit from search engine trends for a variety of reasons, including:

  • Businesses can research popular topics and see how they are currently or will be trending in the future. This allows them the opportunity to create content that will drive traffic to their site.
  • Businesses are able to watch the pattern of trends which gives them the advantage of knowing when to expect certain volume drops.
  • Businesses can also use trend patterns to anticipate and leverage a surge in specific search activities.

Google offers both basic and advanced trends, which vary depending on the precision of the data and analytics shown.

Marketing team using Google Analytics.

Closing Thoughts: Why Google is the Best Search Engine

While Google has successfully mastered many unique characteristics to make its search engine the most popular, it hasn’t forgotten about the basics.

At the end of the day, a reliable and efficient search engine has 3 things:

  1. Speed. As of 2023, Google processes an average of more than 100,000 search queries per second. In addition, according to tests run in 2022, overall Google Chrome is the fastest search browser in the world when returning results.
  2. Significance. Google is known to crawl more web pages than any other competitor, leading them to gather a more relevant set of results. Its search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size.
  3. Simplicity. Throughout the years, Google has kept a single-minded focus on its goals: search and the user experience. Through building A/B testing frameworks to investing in data center technology, Google has managed to keep its site clear, concise, and convenient.

Interested in improving your site’s rank in Google SERPs? Our SEO specialists know everything when it comes to optimizing websites.

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This blog was originally published on June 15, 2020, and updated on July 18, 2023.

The big countdown to GA4 is finally coming to a close, and it brings a lot of changes, which include user engagement metrics. We’ve outlined the 8 key GA4 differences you can expect, but now we’ll explore how to use the engagement metrics in Google Analytics 4 to your advantage. 

Once you become familiar with user engagement in Google Analytics 4, you’ll be able to use these metrics to better define your marketing strategies and ultimately gain an extensive understanding of your audience.

What User Engagement Metrics Should You Track?

There are a lot of metrics for you in GA4, and trying to track all of them would be very overwhelming. On the other hand, if you’re not tracking the right ones, you might become more confused about what’s successful for your company and what needs work. 

As you consider what metrics to track, you should align this with the purpose of your website and your company’s marketing goals. For example, if you’re looking to sell your products or services online, your KPIs are going to look slightly different than a company looking to provide thought leadership to its audience. 

Below, we’ll outline some of the most influential user engagement metrics you can track to know the effect of your marketing strategies. 

In appropriate sections, we’ll highlight an industry average or target range. This may vary depending on what type of industry you’re in, so you can always use Google’s benchmarking tool to find specific averages on user engagement.

a screenshot of a reports column with sessions, engaged sessions, sessions per user, users, and new users.

Users

There are three different types of users that you should be aware of in Google Analytics 4. Each is similar but tells you a slightly different story about what your audience is doing on your website. 

  • New Users. In Universal Analytics, each device counted as a new user. However, GA4 will use cross-device tracking to recognize the same user on different devices.
  • Total Users. Similar to what you’ve seen before, total users let you know the number of users that had an event on your website during a specific period of time.
  • Active Users. Active users are a new metric you can track within Google Analytics 4. These are engaged users, or someone who stayed on the page for longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event or visited more than 2 pages on your website. Ideally, a good benchmark for active users is 60% – 70% of your total users. 

*Note that in Google Analytics 4, active users will be labeled as just “users”.

Why is this metric important for understanding user engagement? Increasing new users is a really great indicator that your brand awareness is growing. If you want to take this a step further, you can also see how many of these users are engaging with your website, viewing multiple pages, and spending more time on your site.

If you’re noticing that you have a lot of new users but not as many active users, it may be because your site needs some UX improvements so visitors are given a great first impression of your website.

Engaged Sessions

The engaged session metric will also be something new with Google Analytics 4. Just like with an active user, an engaged session is when someone spends more than 10 seconds on your site, viewed more than 2 pages, or completed a conversion. 

An additional, new metric in Google Analytics 4 is engaged sessions per user. This number can be found by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the number of total users. So, if you have 683 engaged sessions and 1,100 total users, your engaged sessions per user is 0.62, or 62%.

Just like your active users, a good benchmark for your engagement rate is anywhere between 60% – 70%. 

Why is this metric important? What we provided above highlights your entire website’s engagement. But you can also narrow this down to specific pages. By finding specific pages that have higher engaged sessions, you can continue to promote that product/service/insight on multiple platforms. 

On the other hand, you can find pages that aren’t performing as well and have lower engaged sessions. This could be a great indication to rework those pages, rewrite the blog, or to better promote the page across different mediums, like social media and email blasts.

Bounce Rate

Since engaged sessions are now an engagement metric in Google Analytics 4, you can use it to get a better idea of what your bounce rate percentage is. Simply inverse the percentage of engaged sessions to get your bounce rate. 

This bounce rate will tell you how many users stayed less than 10 seconds on your site. So, continuing with the example above, if the engagement rate is 62% that means that 38% of total users went to your site and then immediately left.

Average Engagement Time

This is an important metric to show you how long your active users are spending on your website. If you’re noticing that people aren’t spending a lot of time on your page, and aren’t converting, it’s likely that something needs to be adjusted. 

Again, use this metric to see where users are spending the most time on your site. If you’re noticing that your blog posts, case studies, landing pages, or other online materials are getting little engagement time, try creating evergreen, engaging, and authentic content.

Events

Now the main difference you’ll see in UA vs GA4 engagement metrics is it’s now tracking events rather than goals. Ultimately, this is going to help you see a more well-rounded view of your users and their engagement. 

An event now includes any activity on your website, from a form being filled out to a user viewing one of your pages. This is where it is essential to analyze what you want to know about user activity on your website. 

Make sure the events you are tracking are the most important for measuring your marketing strategies. So, if you’re an eCommerce website, you probably want to be tracking when users are browsing the inventory, adding products to their carts, and eventually checking out. 

If your website’s main objective is to disperse information and show yourself as an industry expert, you should be tracking events that occur on your blog posts or case study pages. Events like page scroll depth, video progress (if relevant), and clicks.

a screenshot of conversion examples in Google Analytics 4.

Conversions

In Universal Analytics, you had to set up goals that would then track your conversions. It’s going to look a bit different in Google Analytics 4. All goals have turned into events, and you can mark your most important events as conversions. 

Simply toggle the switch to indicate which events you’d like to mark as conversions. We recommend marking events like form submissions and phone calls as conversions.

two events that are showing they can be marked as conversions in Google Analytics 4.

Why is this metric important? No matter the purpose of your website, you’re going to want users to take action. Conversions are one of the best ways to track user engagement in Google Analytics 4. 

Not only can you see specific actions being taken, but you can see where these conversions are coming from. You may see conversions come from an email campaign you sent out, a social advertisement, or a pay-per-click campaign. 

Especially during a time when you need to reevaluate your strategies, being able to see where conversions are happening can help you focus your attention on those specific channels. 

How to Improve Engagement Metrics in Google Analytics

With a little time, specific tools, and website testing, you can make changes that will benefit users navigating your site. 

Explore the Why

In marketing, there isn’t usually a one-size-fits-all answer as to why things are happening. Here are a few tips you can explore to gain a more accurate depiction of ways to improve your engagement metrics. 

Depending on your industry, there could be multiple reasons for a decrease in engagement. If you work in an economically dependent industry, this could play a huge factor in site engagement. 

There will be similar effects if your business has a seasonality factor. If that’s the case, try comparing year-over-year data rather than month-over-month, so you can get a better view of what’s happening through each season of the year. 

If you are seeing dips in engagement, don’t panic! What’s important is that you’re continuing your strategies and creating engaging, evergreen content that can be used across multiple platforms to engage more of your audience.

Encourage Engagement Across Multiple Channels

It’s important to reach your audience where they are. Cross-promotions allow for your message to spread to a wider audience, nudging them to visit your site and discover your content. 

You can use various internet marketing tactics like content writing, email newsletters, social media advertising, and pay-per-click advertising to capture your user’s attention and send them to your website.

Test Your Theories

As we said, there sometimes isn’t a definitive answer to why engagement is increasing or decreasing. So, it’s never a bad idea to test what you think may be the reason for the fluctuation or try implementing a new strategy. 

When you’re A/B testing, make sure you’re not changing everything at once. You should only change one element at a time, so you can accurately identify the most positive effects on your user engagement in Google Analytics 4.

Need help analyzing your current strategies and pinpointing areas of improvement on your website? Contact our specialists today!

Reach Out

This blog was originally published on September 25, 2019, and updated on June 28, 2023.

Blog writing seems deceptively easy. Some people think that all you need to do is write new and compelling content, publish it on a consistent schedule, and new traffic will be generated. While that is a necessary part of the process, experienced content marketers know there is more to it. 

One way to drive traffic to your website is forum link-building. After reading this blog, you’ll learn why forum link-building is important, what forums you can use, and why it’s beneficial.

What is Link Building?

Link building refers to the variety of methods marketers use to increase the number of high-quality links that refer to your website. It often includes spending lots of time researching and reaching out to external sources. 

If you use the correct link-building strategy, you can increase your website traffic, boost your brand awareness, and increase your domain authority. 

What is Forum Link Building?

This type of link-building activity uses forums. By interacting on the forum and answering questions, you can establish backlinks to your website. 

These backlinks increase your page’s ranking in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) because you have more links pointing back to your site. This becomes important when you’re trying to outrank competitors in your industry. 

Why Should You Use It?

You want to be known as an authority in your industry and a brand people can trust. Every time you interact with a person is a chance to build a relationship with your audience. Creating quality content to share also demonstrates your brand’s expertise.

This content gives your audience something to refer to when checking your site. They might not have originally gone to your website for this topic, but they’ll remember you had a post on it. Since you’ve already built that trust with your audience, you’ve become a go-to resource for them, making it more likely that they will recommend your site to others or visit again. 

What Forums Should I Use?

If people discuss a topic, then there is a forum for it. There are forums for cars, travel, cooking, computer programming, and everything in between. But are all forums created equal? Below we’ll explore which ones are going to best benefit your website.

Quora

Quora is a question-and-answer forum. It covers over 400,000 topics and is used by 300 million people per month. 

Why Should You Use It?

While anyone can use Quora for advice on any issue, it can be more professional than other forums. Part of that is because the site is heavily moderated and any topics or answers that don’t adhere to the guidelines are removed. 

Since Quora is only for questions and answers, your answers are less likely to get lost in conversation threads.

Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow

Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow are online communities that allow users to ask and answer questions, mostly on technology and software. Stack Exchange is the overarching network and Stack Overflow is a specific community hosted in that network. 

Why Should You Use It?

Stack is one of the largest and most active programming Q&A communities on the internet, with a large community of users who provide help and support to other developers around the world. It is a well-known resource for programmers and software developers. If you’re a part of that industry, being involved with Stack is a good way to get your brand out there.

Reddit

Like Quora, Reddit is a social news and discussion website where users can submit content, such as links, text posts, and images, and engage in discussions with other users. It has 430 million monthly users. Where it differs from Quora is that Reddit shows the latest news as well. 

Why Should You Use It?

Since more people use Reddit, you can reach a larger audience. Reddit also allows you to discuss recent news stories and see what issues your audience is interacting with. 

There are questions on a variety of topics and different subcategories for more information/discussion to go more in-depth on an issue. 

However, something to keep in mind when you’re using Reddit is to do some research before you start using this platform. Discussions can get contentious fairly quickly on Reddit so it’s a good idea to do some research and understand your community before you start posting. 

Medium

Medium differs from the other platforms we’ve discussed as it’s a blogging platform. Once you create an account you can go on and either write blogs or you can repost ones already on your website. You can also determine if your articles are behind a paywall or not. 

Medium is free to everyone; however, non-members are limited to three free articles per month. To gain unlimited access, you can get a membership to the site.

Why Should You Use It?

While there isn’t as much interaction on Medium, you can still create content that links back to your website and help you become an authority within your industry. You can also still reach portions of your target audience and see what content matters to them. While not instantaneous, it can still be a good research tool.

Which One is the Best?

Deciding which forum is best isn’t easy. It depends on several factors including your overall content marketing strategy, your audience demographics, the industry you’re in, and what you want to achieve. 

For example, if you are a clothing designer, you might not use a forum like Stack Exchange that focuses on programming and software development. You might want to go somewhere like Reddit or Quora because you are more likely to find your target audience there. 

What Can You Accomplish With Forum Link Building?

Before you start on any project, you must establish what the benefits are for your business—what potential outcomes you would expect. When you start on your forum link-building journey, here are some of the potential benefits you can experience. 

Establish Your EAT

The acronym EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. It’s a marketing theory that helps websites rank better in Google SERPs. However, it can be applied to just about any type of marketing, including forum link-building. 

Expertise

Being a go-to expert in your field will not go unnoticed on whichever forum you select. By answering many questions with useful and relevant information, you will gain followers who will recognize your knowledge of the topic or industry.

Authority

In this case, authority goes hand-in-hand with your expertise. Answering questions gives you the ability to position yourself or your company over your competition. 

Trust

By being a beneficial resource for users, you’ll work on gaining trust. That can then turn into loyalty, which means users will be more willing to use you or your company’s products and/or services over others.

Generate New Content Ideas

When you’re creating new content for your website, forums are an overlooked place to find content. Thanks to the vast amount of users using the platform each day, you’re bound to come across various patterns in the topics you see. 

You’re likely to see questions surrounding your industry that you haven’t thought of. You can then use this information to create new, unique content for your website.

Gain Insight Into Your Audience

As you’re looking through posts on the forum, you can get an idea of what topics your target audience is interested in or have questions about. The forum lets you speak directly with your audience and gain valuable targeting data. 

Drive Traffic To Your Website

The goal of using link building is to drive quality traffic to your website. If you have great content but no one’s seeing it, then you have a problem. 

Getting your brand out in front of your audience and answering their questions helps show them that you’re knowledgeable and should be taken seriously as a resource. 

Tower March 2023 blog image 1 min scaled How Good Forum Link Building Helps Drive Traffic

How to Get Started Building Forum Backlinks

Now that we’ve gone over all the benefits of using forums for link building, the real work begins—using the forum. However, by using these simple steps, you can get started sooner than you think.

1. Create Your Forum Profile

Once you’ve created your content, the next step is to create a profile on your forums of choice. You can create an individual profile or you can create a profile on behalf of your company. It all depends on if this is for a personal project or for a business. 

2. Find Questions to Answer

Go through the forum and collect different questions you can confidently answer. When you’re searching for topics, you can bookmark topics so it will be easy to find them the next time you log in. 

Look for questions that speak directly to your brand and messaging. Don’t try to make questions fit what you’re saying—your audience can tell when you’re being disingenuous and that will lead to you losing credibility with them. 

3. Carefully Craft Your Answers

When you’re ready to begin answering questions, make sure your answers stand out from others. Don’t rush through your answers—take your time to think out your response and make sure that it’s beneficial. 

Using the suggestions below, your answers will be concise, clear, and useful for users.

  • Format answers
  • Use images
  • Create links
  • Make sure answers have value

4. Maintain Your Profile

Once you’ve started your profile, you’ll need to take time to maintain it. Some of the ways you can interact with your profile are:

  • Continue answering questions
  • Add content to your profile page
  • Interact with other members 
  • Create questions for other users to answer
Tower March 2023 blog image 2 min scaled How Good Forum Link Building Helps Drive Traffic

Is Forum Link-Building Right for You?

Having relevant, SEO-optimized content already created eases your workload as you try to link build and connect with your audience. You’ve done the hard work, now you just need to share it with your audience. 

Remember, you want quality traffic over quantity. You are going straight to the source and talking directly to the audience you want to target. Since they’re searching for what you’re offering, they’re probably going to be interested in what you have to say. 

Using forums provides the ability to spread brand awareness and speak directly with your audience, which helps you understand them better. 

Want help reaching your target audience through forum link building? See how working with an experienced full-service agency can support your business.

Contact Our Team

Editor’s note: This blog was originally published on May 1, 2019. It was updated on June 9, 2023.

On July 31, 2019, Google announced a new way to unify both app and website measurement with their new platform Google Analytics 4 or GA4 with the plan to sunset Universal Analytics in the near future. 

After the original announcement, there have been many delays in the official plan to sunset Universal Analytics (UA)  after backlash from many businesses. But now, there is an official date of July 1, 2023, in which Universal Analytics will stop processing your business’ data. 

 The switch to GA4  has huge implications if you rely on Google Analytics for measuring your KPIs, but being prepared is the best way to combat the inevitable confusion and questions you have when the switch happens. 

Our goal is to help you understand eight of the main differences between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics so you are prepared to start making those business decisions you rely on. 

Main Difference #1: Google Analytics 4 Interface

The most striking difference you’ll immediately notice in GA4 is the new interface. The GA4 interface looks very different from UA.

The Google Analytics 4 default interface
Google Universal Analytics interface

Right off the bat in GA4, you’ll see more data in the home section that’s generated by Google’s “automated insights” feature. These insights are automatically created by Google using its new machine-learning capabilities. They’ll trigger automatically whenever GA4 detects spikes or falls in your data. 

You’ll also notice there are new navigation features. In GA4, you will see on the left-hand side of the property “Home, Reports, Advertising, Exploration, and Configure.”  When you compare this to Universal Analytics you will see “Home, Customization, Realtime, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions.”

Side by side comparison of the sidebars between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics

When comparing Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics, all the navigation options on Universal Analytics are now under “reports” in Google Analytics 4. Under the reports function, you’ll be able to see where your users came from, what valuable actions they took on your site, and much more. 

Most importantly, there are two new navigation options “Exploration” and “Advertising” which are brand new to Google Analytics 4.  

Exploration Report

Out of all the changes to the platform, the most valuable to businesses is the new Exploration Reports. 

Exploration Reports in GA4

With the exploration reports, you will be able to track your key business metrics in much more detail than in UA. These reports allow you to perform custom analysis and gain insights into your app and/or website’s performance. 

The Exploration reports provide a variety of visualization options, such as charts, tables, and graphs, to help you understand the data more easily. Additionally, you can use the “Analysis” feature to apply machine learning algorithms to your data and uncover deeper insights. 

The Exploration reports are particularly useful for identifying trends, tracking user behavior, and measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. We suggest learning Google Analytics 4 exploration reports as soon as you understand the basics of the new interface, as it yields the most powerful insights.

Advertising Report

The Google Analytics 4 advertising report provides insights into your paid media efforts with a focus on attribution modeling.

Google Analytics 4 advertising report "snapshot"

The GA4 advertising report allows you to track key metrics, such as impressions, clicks, and conversions, and analyze the data by dimensions like ad creative, campaign, or audience. You can also use the reports to monitor the cost and return on investment (ROI) of your advertising campaigns.

Most notably, the “conversion paths” allow you to see your performance across all inbound advertising campaigns including Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Google Ads, and more. 

The advertising reports, if you use them properly, will help you optimize your advertising spend, refine your targeting, and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Main Difference #2: Event-Based

Besides the initial interface differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics, the next biggest difference is the use of events in GA4. 

Every metric in Google Analytics 4 is an event while Universal Analytics is hit-based.

This means when you are analyzing your data in GA4, everything from a page view to a form fill is an event. 

While Universal Analytics can record events as well as page views, GA4 provides a more comprehensive view of user behavior and engagement.  Comparing this to Universal Analytics, which tracks and measures the number of times a page is viewed by the user. 

Main Difference #3: Session Scope

If you are comparing your Google Analytics 4 vs Google Universal metrics, you may notice, they are not the same. Why? There are a couple of different answers, but the most notable is the way GA4 defines sessions. 

Firstly, GA4 defines sessions as “when a user opens your app in the foreground or views a page or screen and no sessions are currently active”. Whereas in Universal Analytics, a session is “ a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a given time frame.” 

The main difference between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics sessions is that GA4 uses sessions as a period of user activity whereas Universal Analytics sessions are a period of time. 

Google has also said sessions in your GA4 property may be lower than your Universal Analytics property because “Google Analytics 4 does not create a new session when the campaign source changes mid-session, while Universal Analytics does create a new session under that circumstance.”

Secondly, GA4 sessions are based on events, rather than page views. A session in UA is calculated as the time between the first and last hit. Whereas GA4 is calculated as the time between the first and last event.

Lastly, a single session in GA4 can be across multiple traffic sources where a UA session stops when the original campaign source is stopped.

One last note about sessions in GA4 is the metrics associated with them. Since GA4 is based on events, there are new session metrics within GA4.

These include:

  • Engaged Sessions
    • An engaged session in GA4 is a session that spent 10 seconds or more on the site/app or viewed 2 or more screens/pages or had a conversion event.
  • Engaged Sessions Per User
    • Engaged sessions per user is the number of engaged sessions divided by the total users on your site and mobile apps.

Main Difference #4: User Scope

Another distinction between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics is the way the users on your site are measured.

In Universal Analytics there are two user metrics: total users and new users. In Google Analytics 4, there are now three user metrics: total users, new users, and active users.

As mentioned above, since everything in GA4 is based on events, the user metrics are also based on events. 

These new metrics mean: 

  • Total Users: Number of users who had an event
  • New Users: Number of users who had an event occur for the first time
  • Active Users: Number of users that had an engaged session

In Google Analytics 4, the primary metric is active users, whereas in UA it is total users.

Main Difference #5: Pageviews

Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics differ in their pageviews measurement methodology, making it difficult to make an accurate one-to-one comparison between the two platforms.

Page views are defined in two specific ways between the two platforms: 

  • Universal Analytics: Total number of pages viewed
  • GA4:  Total number of app screens and/or web pages the user saw

Please note, the metric of unique pageviews which is measured in UA is not measured in GA4.

Main Difference #6: Conversions

When you switch to GA4, you’ll notice a disparity in conversion tracking. GA4 uses an event-based system, meaning that each site conversion is treated as an event, rather than a pageview. This results in each user action on the site being tracked as an event.

With the addition of events, comes more advanced methods of conversion tracking in GA4. Most notably, conversion modeling. 

Conversion modeling uses the machine learning capabilities of GA4 to estimate the number of conversions that may have been missed due to data gaps or incomplete data.

The machine learning model uses data from users who did convert on your custom conversions and those who did not convert. This allows you to identify patterns and correlations that may indicate which user behaviors are most likely to learn to convert. 

Alongside the conversion modeling comes the addition of cross-device tracking. This means you can track how your users are converting whether they are on your website or on your mobile app. This makes tracking GA4 conversions much easier than Universal Analytics. 

A great example of how GA4 has led to more conversions is McDonald’s in the Hong Kong Market. They were able to successfully increase in-app conversions by 550% while utilizing the various machine-learning algorithms in which GA4 operates. 

Main Difference #7: Bounce Rate & Engagement Rate

One of the more popular metrics you could gain valuable insights from in Universal Analytics is bounce rate. This is the percentage of sessions that contain a single page view on your website. 

However, in GA4 since everything is event-based, the definition changes. The GA4 bounce rate definition is the “percentage of sessions that were not engaged sessions.”

When using Google Analytics 4, it’s preferable to examine the engagement rate rather than bounce rates, which is a significant factor that sets it apart from Universal Analytics.

The engagement rate in GA4 is the percentage of engaged sessions. This can be more helpful than bounce rate as you can analyze and decide which pages have low engagement rates and strategize how to increase the engagement rate on those pages. 

Main Difference #8: Filters

In Universal Analytics, it was industry standard to create multiple views within each property. Usually, this was to segment and filter out data that wasn’t valuable to your business. 

When you migrate to Google Analytics 4, you won’t see the filters you were used to seeing. Instead, you will see only two “data filters” in GA4. These are “developer traffic” and “internal traffic.”

Google Analytics 4 default data filters

The developer traffic filter is a predefined filter that allows developers to exclude their own traffic from analytics data. These filters are automatically applied to each GA4 property when created. (It’s worth noting that these are not foolproof and may not catch all the testing developers are doing on your site. )

The internal traffic filter in GA4 is a predefined filter that allows website or app owners to exclude traffic from their own organization’s network or devices. 

Those are all the filters you can add in GA4. You cannot exclude certain IP addresses, include only your operating country of business, or segment your site’s content. 

This means that all traffic in your GA4 right out of the box is similar to an “unfiltered” view in Universal Analytics. This means you can be making assumptions about your data and users that may not even apply to your business. 

While there are less robust filters in GA4 vs Universal Analytics, there are several ways to “create a view” in GA4. The best way we would recommend to create “views” would be to create custom reports in GA4 using the filters in there. 

For instance, if you wanted to look at only United States event conversions, you would create a custom report and add the filter view “County = United States”. You can apply this logic to other segments you wish to view including channel grouping, all events, etc. 

Google Analytics 4 custom report
Google Analytics 4 custom report
Sidebar of Google Analytics 4 custom report

These are just eight of the main differences between Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics. There are countless differences between the two platforms, but ultimately, the switch to GA4 will give you a better understanding of the actions a user takes on your website or app. 

Interested in improving your marketing efforts through data analysis? Reach out to our team to develop a custom plan that helps you track and meet your business goals.

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POV: You’re a driven, passionate content creator. 

Whether you’re a blogger, marketer, or small business owner, your dedication shines through your writing. You’ve poured your heart into your work, investing endless hours into research, content creation, and meticulous revisions. Nothing is more satisfying than finally pressing the “publish” button on your masterpiece.

But the sad reality is, you can have the greatest content in the world, but unless you get it in front of the right people, it can’t impact anyone.

Over 7 million blog posts are published each day, and Google is extremely selective when deciding which posts make the cut for the top positions. 

Think your blog has what it takes to rise to the top of the search results? You may be surprised to learn how many subtle blog SEO strategies you could be missing. 

What Is Blog Optimization?

Blog optimization is the process of amending your blog to enhance its visibility in search results. Blog optimization often includes:

  • Well-written metadata
  • Internal linking
  • Descriptive anchor text
  • Effective image alt text
  • Optimized content for featured snippets

We’ll go into more detail below, but for a summary, download our easy-to-follow blog SEO checklist.

shutterstock 695980678 1 4 Blog SEO Tips To Increase Google Search Visibility

Need a summary of what’s covered in this blog?

Does Blogging Help SEO?

Regular blogging can help improve your SEO by positioning your website as an authority and supplying your users with fresh, relevant content that answers their questions. 

More content = more opportunities for links, more discovered pages, and a larger variety of queries to appear for.

Follow these key blog SEO tips to increase Google search visibility.

Blog SEO Tip #1: Optimize Meta Titles & Descriptions (So Google Won’t Rewrite Them!)

Yep, you read that correctly – Google rewrites over 61% of all meta titles. While there’s no way to prevent Google from changing your meta titles, there are certain best practices to decrease the likelihood of your metadata being rewritten:

  1. Ensure it’s the right length. 

Keep meta titles around 50-60 characters. According to Moz research, approximately 90% of your meta titles will appear correctly if they’re under 60 characters. Meta description length should be around 155-160 characters.

The challenging part is that Google sometimes adds the date or bolds certain keywords to match a query, which may add space. Also, letters are varying widths (i.e. the letter “l” takes up less space than a “W”). Since Google actually registers pixels rather than characters, it’s best to keep it on the lower side of those ranges to account for this.

Use the Portent SERP Preview Tool to check your metadata length.

  1. Keep it unique. Use a different primary keyword, meta title, and meta description for each page on your site to avoid keyword cannibalization (competing keywords).
  1. Put your keyword at the beginning of your meta title. Since users (and Google) read left to right, you’ll want the user to immediately see the match to their query.
  1. Include your brand name at the end for recognition and credibility. Use the full brand name when possible (i.e. Tower Marketing rather than Tower).
  1. Avoid quotation marks in meta descriptions. Google may truncate the rest of the description if you use them. Also, avoid brackets or parentheses.
  1. Don’t stuff your metadata with keywords. Keyword stuffing is when you unnaturally repeat the keyword multiple times to try to appease search engines.
  1. Write for your user first, not the search engine. Create a positive experience!
  1. Match the meta title to the H1 (the main title on your page) if possible. This can reduce the chance of rewriting by about 20%. If you decide to make them different, make sure they’re related so the user knows they went to the right page. 

Additional Metadata Info: 

  • While meta descriptions aren’t ranking factors, they do persuade users to click on your result over others. This can increase your click-through rate, which is a ranking factor.
  • Use numbers and ampersands (&) to save space.
  • Capitalization doesn’t affect metadata. Personally, we suggest capitalizing the first letter of each word for consistency.
  • Include a call to action. Or, rather, a call to value. Describe the value the user will get from clicking on your result.
  • Generally, Google prefers dashes to pipes. However, pipes take up less space and some experiments have shown a higher click-through rate (so customers prefer it). 

Personally, we like to use a dash when describing something relevant (i.e. Train Rides – All Ages Welcome) and a pipe with two individual things, such as a title and a brand name (i.e. Train Rides | Strasburg Rail Road).

Blog SEO Tip #2: Optimize For Featured Snippets

What Is A Featured Snippet?

A featured snippet is a short piece of content that appears at the very top of a search engine results page. This is often referred to as “position 0.” 

A featured snippet example in Google's search results on how to keep a plant alive.

How To Optimize For Featured Snippets 

When doing keyword research, select questions as your secondary keywords. Then, use them as headings. Optimize for the featured snippet by answering the question in 30 words or less. 

Types Of Content To Include To Optimize For Featured Snippets

  • Short, direct answers to questions
  • Bulleted or numbered lists
  • Tables/charts
  • Videos
  • Tools or calculators

Blog SEO Tip #3: Optimize Images

Alt text (a.k.a. “alt attributes,” “alt tags,” “alt descriptions,” or “alternative text”), is a short piece of content that describes what’s happening in the image. This allows search engines and people with disabilities who use screen readers to understand the image. Additionally, if the image doesn’t load, the alt text will show instead.

How To Effectively Write Alt Text For Search Engines & Screen Readers

  1. A picture is worth a thousand words. But in this case, be concise. Keep it under 125 characters (that’s when screen readers typically cut off).
  1. Don’t start with “A picture of” or “An image of.” Google knows it’s an image, and screen readers will announce that it’s an image before reading the alt text, so it would be repetitive.
  1. Put a period after alt text so the screen reader will pause, creating a better user experience.
  1. For decorative images, such as icons, the search bar magnifying glass, line page breaks, etc., use an empty alt attribute. 

Note: This doesn’t mean leaving it out. If you leave it out, the screen reader will assume you forgot to write alt text, and may read the file name instead. This could just be random numbers/letters, creating a negative user experience. Use alt=”” to signal an empty alt attribute.

  1. Going along with this, a descriptive image file name is helpful. Use keywords if applicable, and use hyphens, not spaces. We wouldn’t recommend going back and updating all of your image file names, but going forward, it’s a good practice.
  1. Proofread! Spelling a word wrong could entirely change the image’s meaning.
  1. For images with captions already on the site, you don’t need to include the captions in the alt text.
  1. With linked images, describe the action rather than the appearance. 

i.e. A question mark image that leads to a contact page could say, “Contact Our Experts” for its alt text rather than “question mark.”

  1. Unless it’s an acronym, don’t use all caps. Screen readers may spell out entirely capitalized words.
  1. For charts and graphs, list all important details in the text of the blog so that those with screen readers understand what it’s illustrating.
  1. Include keywords if appropriate (but don’t stuff them). 62.6% of all Google searches are through Google Images, so including keywords in your alt text gives your images the chance to rank for them. Let’s look at an example below.
A real estate agent and new homeowner shaking hands after closing a deal.

For this image, you may be tempted to say, “people shaking hands.” 

However, try more descriptive alt text like, “A real estate agent and new homeowner shaking hands after closing a deal.” This provides context and a chance to rank in Google Images for keywords like, “real estate agent,” “new homeowner,” or “closing a deal.”

In addition to writing alt text, you should compress your images to reduce load time for a positive user experience.

Blog SEO Tip #4: Add Relevant Internal Links With Detailed Anchor Text

What Is Internal Linking & How Do Internal Links Help SEO?

Internal links lead from one page on your site to another page on your site. This helps users (and Google) navigate to other relevant pages. Here are just a few ways internal links help SEO:

  • Helps Google bot discover other pages on your site faster
  • Creates a well-structured website hierarchy, leading to the most important pages
  • Increases pages per session
  • Decreases bounce rate
  • Avoids orphaned pages

Anchor Text SEO Best Practices

Anchor text is the clickable, linked text throughout your content. Its purpose is to describe to your user (and Google) what that linked page is about. Follow these anchor text best practices: 

  1. Keep it succinct, yet relevant to the page it’s linking to.
  2. Context is important. You look at the words around it – Google does, too!
  3. Rather than repeating the same anchor text throughout your page, use a variety. Google’s penguin algorithm update in 2012 addressed spammy links. If your links all had the same anchor text, Google may penalize you, assuming you purchased them.
  4. Beware of competing keywords. Essentially, don’t use your primary keyword as anchor text because you’ll be sending people to a competing site. This might confuse Google on which site to rank higher for that keyword.
  5. Use keywords if they’re relevant, but avoid keyword stuffing. Here’s an example directly from Google on keyword-stuffed anchor text:

There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress.

  1. Multiple links that lead to the same page don’t affect SEO; each link is treated equally. It’s more of a user experience consideration. Be cautious about overwhelming or distracting the user with too many links.
  2. Ensure anchor text is clearly clickable (underlined/a different color). Also, don’t cause confusion by underlining things that aren’t clickable.
  3. Use a table of contents for easy navigation. It could also improve your click-through rate from the search results because Google may include “jump to” links.
An example of jump to links in Google's search results for HubSpot.

Summary: The Importance Of Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

As an expert in your field, you’ve already perfected the art of creating fresh content for your website. Now, ensure that content can be found by search engines. 

While you’re optimizing new content, it’s also a good idea to refresh older blogs for SEO with updated keyword research, links, and information.

If you’re looking for insight into a more in-depth content creation strategy, get in touch with our content marketing specialists to learn how we can generate and/or optimize the best content for your industry.

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In part one of our local SEO series, we talked about how your business can reap the many benefits of local SEO by understanding what goes into ranking well. We mentioned one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO was backlinks.  

One of the best ways to gain backlinks for your website is to add your business to as many relevant local SEO directories as possible. With a well-thought-out and researched local SEO directory strategy, you can put your business in front of highly targeted users and show up on the most important search engines.

Are Directories Valuable for Local SEO?

Adding your business to some, if not all of the local SEO directory listings below, will add value to your business, including both algorithmic and user benefits. 

Generating backlinks for your site through directories can increase your chances of ranking well on search engines. Each backlink, a link that goes from one website to yours, essentially acts as a “point” in the local SEO algorithm regardless of what search engine you are trying to rank on. 

Some directories will have higher point values than others due to their domain authority.  When your site gains backlinks from directories, you are adding “points” to your site which will be a positive ranking factor that you will see.

Perhaps the most important and valuable part of adding your business to directories is getting your basic information in front of highly-relevant audiences. If you are strategic with your directory submissions, you can send your information to users who are lower down in your marketing funnel. 

For instance, if you are a roofing business, you can add your company to local directories like Angi , HomeAdvisor, or Roofing Insights, a specific directory for those looking to get their roof replaced. 

Local SEO Directory: Do’s & Don’ts 

With all of the factors mentioned above, you can see just how important adding your business to local search directories is. You can boost your online reputation through various review sites, create backlinks to your site, and gain brand awareness. However, there are some do’s and don’ts when adding your site to directories.

Do’s: Be Consistent

Many of the local business indexes share data. That’s why it is important to have the same information displayed on each business listing you create.

At the absolute minimum, all of your local business listings should include the same:

  • Business name
  • Address
  • Phone number
  • Website address
  • Short description

These names, addresses, and phone numbers (NAP) must be exactly the same across all the listings you submit to. Additionally, create the same message. Make sure your categories and taglines are similar to avoid confusion.

Local listings all require you to add a business description, and it’s best to provide a long and short version. Adding all this information over and over again is tedious, so create two descriptions of your business:

  • A short description (about 125 characters) 
  • A longer description (about 300+ characters)

With the descriptions ready, all you have to do now is copy and paste them to each of the local listings below to properly reap the local SEO benefits for your business. 

Don’t: Add To Spam Sites

A general rule of thumb when submitting to local SEO directories is to check for spamminess. If a site looks like spam, it probably is. One way is to check a site’s domain authority via Moz. Generally, any site scoring lower than 20 would be considered spam and having links on those sites will add toxic links to your site. 

Do: Claim Your Listings

As mentioned above, you may find that you are already listed on many sites, but you need to claim your listing. You may also notice that some of the information is incorrect. Make sure to change that when you claim your business listings.

Don’t: Target Irrelevant Listings

There are thousands of possible directories to add your business to and you may be tempted to add your business to every single one of them. However, targeting irrelevant directories will hurt you. Not only are you deceiving search engines, but you are also providing misleading information to the user that found your site.

Do: Add As Much Information As Possible 

In addition, add as much information as possible. The more information you add, such as pictures, logos, and staff photos, the better. You want your listing to stand out from the competition. 

In fact, Google Business Profile, recommends adding at least 22 photos to your profile. Tower Marketing recommends getting professional photography done to properly showcase your business.

Don’t: Create Duplicate Listings

There are many reasons why your business might have duplicate listings. Maybe your business moved locations or a previous effort was placed on creating a listing on that particular site. 

Whatever the situation is, duplicate listings can confuse users and search engines. As noted above, the key to creating a successful local SEO directory strategy is consistency. If possible, delete the old listings or claim and update them.

Best Online Business Local Directories

Take a couple of hours and add your business website to these top-rated local SEO directories.

While these listings are generally used for any business, we also highly recommend checking out Moz’s Directory Listings page. Here you can find the top industry-specific directories to add to. 

If you don’t see your industry there, Tower Marketing’s local SEO team can help you find the best directories for your local SEO strategy.

Top Free Business Listings

Google Maps search for accountants in New York City showcasing the various accounting firms on a mapping service application
Google Business Profile is the one free listing we encourage every business to utilize.

While there are thousands of free business listings online to choose from, these are the ones we would recommend starting with regardless of your industry.

Google Business Profile (GBP) formerly known as Google My Business.

Having a Google Business Profile listing is probably the most important first step when trying to rank in the top local results. All you need to get started is a Gmail account and if you don’t have one, create one. Adding your Google Business Profile listing information here will help you to be found across Google platforms, including organic search results, and the Google Maps Pack.

It should be a top priority for any business to have its location listed on Google Maps. More users are searching for products and services with local intent and using GPS navigation as a way to guide them to different locations. Optimizing your Google Business Profile page will help your business to be found on Google Maps.

Bing Places for Business

This business listing is powered by Bing.com and operates in a similar fashion to the Google My Business listing service. Bing Places for Business is a Bing portal that enables local business owners to add a listing for their business. With Bing Places for Business, once you have your Google Business Profile set up, you can import that information directly onto Bing so you do not have to redo essentially the same work.

Apple Maps

Apple Maps is one of the most used map platforms in the world. Local SEO Guide estimates that at least 75-100 million adults it. With your business listed, users can see directly in the app your reviews, photos & categories just like Google Maps. 

Please note that you can submit a business listing for free on Apple Maps but often the information is pulled from other sources such as Yelp.

Yahoo Listing via Yext

Getting a Yahoo Listing isn’t as easy as Bing or Google. In order for you to claim your listing on Yahoo, you have to go through Yext. 

These listings are very similar to Bing or Google. Use your same NAP across Yahoo as well.

Please note, you can claim your free listing on Yahoo via Yext but there are also more premium options that allow you to distribute your information across up to 50 platforms. 

Facebook

You will need to create a Facebook business page, which means you will first need to have a personal account on Facebook. Add your business name, description, and website, and connect with users socially.

Yelp

Most people think you need to be a restaurant to be listed on Yelp. Not true. Any US business can be added to the local business listings. 

Foursquare

Foursquare is a local search and discovery app and is a fantastic business listing to be included. Make use of their location data by adding your business.

Insider Pages

Insider Pages is a web directory looking to offer users the best recommendations. Not only do you want your business listed here, but you also want people who use this site to recommend you.

TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is great for B2C businesses. This free business listing online allows you to share your hours, upload photos, and more importantly, customers can leave reviews. There’s also a Q&A section where you can answer your most commonly asked customer questions. TripAdvisor profiles can also be shared across other directories online.

Best of the Web (BOTW)

BOTW is a general web directory listing for both commercial and non-commercial sites. Each listing is manually approved and, therefore, search engines value the citation of businesses listed here. This is one of the oldest internet web directories and is organized by category, offering content-rich and well-designed websites.

Superpages

This is a great online that acts much like the Yellow Pages. Superpages is a local business directory including phone numbers, ratings, reviews, maps, driving directions, your address, website, hours of operation, and more.

NextDoor

While NextDoor is often thought of as a social media platform for connecting with your neighbors, it is also a great place to list your business. Here you can share posts with people in your community making it one of the more powerful local SEO directories out there. Your business can even interact with users much like Facebook or Instagram as well.

Citysearch

Citysearch is a web-based city guide offering information about local businesses using categories throughout different states in the US.

HotFrog

HotFrog is a commercial website directory sorting businesses according to location and category.

Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages is one of the most well-known off-site and on-site directories. Everyone has heard of it or used it, at some point. Having your business listed here is a must.

Top Paid Business Listings

Better Business Bureau Example Local SEO Directories Guide: Do’s & Don'ts + Top Online Listings
The Better Business Bureau is one of the best paid local SEO directories.

Please note, as of the time of this writing, you have to pay to be on each one of these listings. Each platform additionally has multiple pricing levels with the option to pay for advertising as well. We recommend adding costs for the platforms into your marketing budget.

Angi FKA Angi’s List

Angi formerly known as Angi’s List, is one of the most powerful listings you can add to your local SEO directory strategy especially if you deal with homeowners. While Angi is free to join, the most powerful way to use Angi is to pay for lead generation. You can also send and build custom quotes, request payments, and integrate with QuickBooks making it one of the more forward-thinking business directories.

Better Business Bureau AKA BBB

The Better Business Bureau is a nationwide nonprofit organization with a self-described mission of “focusing on advancing marketplace trust”. Once again this is free to join but to become an accredited business in the BBB, that comes with a fee. With the fee, you show customers “that you are an honest, ethical business that they can trust.”

Within their listings, users have the option to search for BBB Accredited Businesses only OR all businesses which includes the free account. In each listing is a list of complaints from consumers, average star rating as well as your NAP.

HomeAdvisor

HomeAdvisor is a great local SEO directory to add your business to if you deal with homeowners. Getting your business on HomeAdvisor is only paid and there are no free options so do careful research before deciding if it’s a good fit.

Chamber of Commerce

Listing your business on your local chamber of commerce website is a great way to reach local customers and network with other businesses. While each chamber of commerce has different pricings, you will most likely not be able to join for free.

To find your local chamber of commerce, visit the national Chamber of Commerce website.

Taking the time and effort to add your business to the listings above and to your industry’s niche directories will be worth it. There is both a local SEO algorithm and user value to adding to each website. 

We at Tower Marketing have done this for our clients across almost every industry you can think of. We understand it can cost time and money to add to each directory. But we can help you find your industry’s niche directory and even do the hard work for you with our local SEO services. 

Our team of experts will help get your business ranking well locally no matter where you conduct business. Contact us today to get our local SEO expertise. 

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Ever wondered if there’s merit to updating old blog posts for SEO instead of always focusing on new content? One of the most popular questions we hear from a review of our content calendars is “why are we doing a rewrite — do we need to do that?” (The short answer? Yes!) 

When it comes to your blog, new isn’t always better. Sometimes there’s value in refurbishing what you have.

That’s why we’re going to take a closer look at the top 5 benefits of rewriting blog content. And towards the end, you’ll find tips on how to update blog posts for SEO in a way that can help your performance in search.

1. It Can Boost the Performance Of Your On-Page Optimizations

If your blog was published several years ago, you likely have some new competition trying to rank for the same query. But with some research into keywords, you can assess what kind of keyword updates will help your content writing strategy.

Plus, since our language is always evolving you’ll be able to capitalize on new ways of speaking about a topic. That way you’re capturing trending terms in your industry.

Keywords aside, you can also look at re-organizing the internal links used in your blog. An up-to-date internal linking strategy is important since it creates a better journey for visitors navigating your site. Plus, you can include new, relevant pages that were created and those pages will also benefit from being linked to applicable blogs.

And last but not least, when you update a blog you have a fresh chance to look at the schema. That way you can make changes that will positively affect which queries the blog is showing for. (And make sure it isn’t showing in the wrong searches, which can frustrate users.)

2. It Creates A Positive UX (User Experience)

Old blogs can have a few problems, such as:

  • Broken links
  • Dense content (with no/few headings or images)
  • Poor display on mobile

But fortunately, when you go to update a blog there are some workarounds. To start, you can use this handy tool to find any broken links. And while you’re revising the writing, you can also look at doing more visually with the blog.

With the help of tools like Canva, Unsplash, and Pexels, you don’t need to be a designer to create infographics or pay for an expensive subscription to find stock images. Although, when possible it’s better to use in-house over stock imagery, since it lends a more authentic feel.

Either way, including multi-media content in SEO-optimized content can extend your reach. Using rich media like videos, infographics, etc., can help your blog get pulled into different types of search features.

Visuals aside, make sure you consider mobile visitors. Keep paragraphs extremely short (2-3 sentences) so they don’t appear as walls of text on someone’s device. Otherwise, you risk someone immediately leaving because of how difficult the blog is to read.

Ultimately incorporating these practices will help ensure that anyone finding your content has a better experience. Which can affect important digital marketing metrics, like reducing bounce rates or creating a higher pages per session.

If you want more ways to improve your site’s UX, read our blog on 7 easy UX improvements to make on your site.

3. It Can Boost Your Brand’s Credibility

In Netflix’s show “Inventing Anna” (based on a real story) there’s a moment where a journalist is discussing the effects of content and the internet. She tells her husband “People forget but people use Google… and Google never forgets.”

And as a marketer, I couldn’t help but resonate with that line and commit it to memory. It’s easy to forget all the blogs published on your site once you have a lot of them — but Google doesn’t. 

This means that an old piece from several years can still pull into a search, even if some of the information is a bit dated. And that in turn can dilute your brand’s reputation as a credible expert.

A good blog content strategy will help boost your E.A.T. (expertise, authority, and trust) on different search engines. But old blogs with incorrect information can degrade that among users.

Any time you see new research released or notable consumer shifts, take note of older pieces that should be revisited. Make sure the content you have in them holds true to the current industry. 

It can definitely be difficult to keep tabs on your content library if you have a lot. So we recommend setting up a content index where you at minimum log details on the pieces you’ve created, keywords targeted, and publish dates. 

That will help you identify blogs that need rewriting. And further down we’ll also look at how you can use Google analytics to spot potential targets for updating as well.

A woman checks her phone.

4. It Can Increase Your Click-Through Rate in the SERPs

At the end of the day if two pieces are pulled into a search and look fairly similar, but one was published more recently — which one do you think users will pick?

In the SEO world, fresh content is a google ranking factor. Google (and other SERPs) will tend to show more recent results at the top of searches. Keep in mind that you can’t trick the system and just re-do the publish date on a blog to take advantage of this. 

Based on how search engines crawl your content, they’re also looking to see significant content updates paired with that date change. (Something we’ll discuss below in getting started updating blogs.)

5. It’s A Time-Saving Content Creation Tactic

If you’re in charge of any marketing efforts, you know that some seasons are busier than others. An added benefit of working blog updates to your blog publishing schedule is that they are typically faster to do than starting from scratch.

Where to Start: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO 

Now that you have an idea of the benefits of rewriting content, you may be curious how often should a blog post be updated. There’s certainly no hard or fast rule, but what we find works best is a blended approach.

For example, in a 6-month content calendar, you could work on 2 blog rewrites and 4 new blogs. That way you’re still creating truly fresh content, but you’re holding your business accountable to keep older pieces in good shape.

As you look to get started, here is some helpful advice to guide you.

Tips For Identifying Blogs To Update

The most successful way to create a content strategy that wins in the SERPs is to identify your topics based on data instead of gut decisions. So you’ll want to make sure that you have a content reporting system in place to track the performance of what you’re publishing.

Once everything is tracking properly, you can identify blog updates in a few different ways:

  • Find low-ranking queries on Google Search Console and see if there are opportunities.
  • Identify blogs with an extremely high bounce rate. (Above 90%, since blogs typically have bounce rates between 70-90%.)
  • Find blogs getting the top clicks from queries and spot-check titles to find ones you know are old but are still getting a lot of traffic.
A marketer reviews her reporting.

Steps For Updating Old Blog Posts for SEO

Whether you’re wondering how to republish a blog on WordPress or update one on a different CMS system (Shopify, Squarespace, etc.), here are some tips to keep in mind.

Step 1: Find the original blog and make sure that when you have content finalized, you update it directly in that post.

Step 2: Revisit your original primary keyword and do research. Is it still relevant or is there a new one with more opportunity?

Step 3: Re-write the content as you see fit. Keep the parts you think work well, but create new content wherever it’s needed. 

Step 4: Once it’s ready to post, go into your post and replace the old blog with your rewritten one. 

Step 5: Make sure to add an editor’s note at the bottom of the updated post to clarify. That way if someone finds your blog but sees comments on it from before the publish date, it doesn’t look suspicious. 

Eg., editor’s note: “This blog was originally published on April 25, 2019. It was updated on March 25, 2022.”

Step 6: Keep the URL as is if possible. If not, update it but make sure you have a redirect put in place, in case someone saved that old link and tries to access the piece.

Step 7: Adjust the blog snippet to ensure it accurately describes the updated blog when users find it in SERPs.

Step 8: Revise the publish date to reflect the date you’re pushing the rewritten blog live and publish the piece.

Looking to elevate your blog strategy to better compete in the SERPs? See how our content services can support your business by creating optimized content that helps you connect with your audience online.

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