SEO
Enterprise Sites Are Where Technical SEO Shines
Enterprise technical SEO is the practice of optimizing a large, enterprise company’s website to help search engines find, crawl, understand, and index your pages. It helps increase visibility and rankings in search engines.
Enterprise websites are where technical SEO shines. There’s so much money at stake. One mistake can keep millions of pages out of the index or remove an entire site from search results. One fix can potentially be worth millions of dollars in revenue.
Let’s look at what it takes to be successful at technical SEO in an enterprise environment.
Enterprise sites can have complex infrastructures and a lot of legacy systems in place. You’ll have to work with a lot of teams, work through a lot of issues, and work hard on getting buy-in.
Working with others
You’re going to need to coordinate with many different teams to get anything done. Strong interpersonal skills come in handy in enterprise environments, but it’s not always natural for technical SEOs and may be an area you need to improve.
These teams all have their own priorities and SEO is only going to be part of their responsibility, so you’re going to be fighting for resources and attention. In my experience, you’ll get more done by being opportunistic. Be ready to help when they’re ready to do the work.
You’ll want to find out how these teams work, their processes and tools, and opportunities you may have to interact with them like any project calls, team calls, or office hours you may be able to join. The more visible you are, the more likely they are to work with you.
Work where they work. Learn to write tickets in their project management system that communicates the problem, expected outcomes, and the value of implementing the changes. I’ll cover more about tickets in a bit.
Technical SEOs will likely work with a lot of dev teams, but you may end up working with all kinds of teams in different area like products or services, international because of hreflang, taxonomists and/or ontologists for website structure, infrastructure, CMS teams, or even security for things that get indexed but shouldn’t be.
You’ll probably have to create a lot of reports for a lot of different teams and executives. Check out our guide on enterprise SEO metrics and reporting for some tips.
Organizational improvements
Most enterprise SEO teams go through similar stages of progression as they evolve. This is sometimes referred to as the SEO maturity model.
Many teams start off doing ad-hoc work, but eventually things start to centralize, you create standards and processes (SOPs), and eventually you start to get more buy-in by being more proactive and doing things like training other teams.
A lot of this progression depends on a leader who can be successful, visible, and sell SEO in the organization. They will likely spend as much, or more time promoting successes as they will doing the work.
They may have to create SEO forecasts, have lots of executive meetings to show results, train other teams, create those SOPs, send newsletters to keep others informed, etc.
For technical SEOs in particular, make sure you also promote the work of the developers and teams you work with. If you can get them visibility and a promotion, you’ll have an advocate for SEO who is bought in and will be more likely to work with you on future projects.
Professional development
There are two major paths you can take when it comes to enterprise technical SEO. The most common is an individual contributor (IC), or an individual who is part of a team. In enterprise environments, even IC roles may have a lot of autonomy because they’re considered subject matter experts (SMEs). Some people may also end up in people management.
If you want to transition to people management, what I would recommend is:
- Be visible on projects
- Be viewed as a leader
- Work on skilling up
- Help your team where you can
- Understand the bigger picture for the organization
- Build relationships
- Communicate effectively
Take advantage of any funds you’re given for SEO courses, conferences, etc. I highly recommend attending Ahrefs Evolve if you get a chance. If you want to be a manager, you may also look into managerial or leadership courses.
A big part of technical SEO will be setting up your crawls and monitoring for issues. While it would be great if you could get everything technically perfect, it’s rarely realistic on enterprise websites.
One of the things I like about Ahrefs’ Site Audit is that you can choose to ignore issues that you don’t find important.
You can also add any custom issues that you want. We have every data point for the pages and links configurable as issues, as well as changes between dates. You can even change the prioritization level for each issue.
You might also want to break down issues by CMS or even by template so you know exactly which group each issue belongs to and can see when they resolve the issues. This can be done with segments in Site Audit.
You can help a lot of other teams with their data needs. You will likely be asked for things like checking for scripts or outdated file versions, words you’re not supposed to mention, extracting authors, publish dates, update dates, or other useful data.
In many crawlers, you’ll need to do this setup before crawling, but in Ahrefs Site Audit you can actually search within the HTML or text after the crawl has already happened.
For your crawling, you have a few options.
Normal crawls
The standard crawls in enterprise companies are usually once a month, or maybe once every week or two if you’re breaking the website into multiple sections. The downside here is that things might be broken for a while before a crawler flags an issue.
Catch issues before they launch
The ideal scenario is to catch issues before they launch.
In some environments, you may be able to set up unit tests to have automated checks for issues before they launch.
You can also use Ahrefs’ Site Audit to crawl staging and dev environments to check for any issues before they’re launched to the public.
Catch any issues faster with crawl sampling
You don’t always need a full crawl of the website which can take weeks to run on an enterprise site. You just need enough to see if any important changes were made.
You can run Ahrefs’ Site Audit for a custom list of pages daily and get alerted to any changes. Using a sample across different templates or systems, you can find issues faster.
You could also run a smaller crawl on any section that made any new pushes to production.
The fastest way to catch changes: always-on crawling
This is a sneak peek at what we have coming that we’re calling always-on crawling.
The idea is to switch from scheduled crawls, which users tend to schedule weekly or monthly, to a prioritized crawling system that’s always on and notifies users of issues faster.
IndexNow is allowing us to add a real-time option, and at the same time we will be able to save resources for our users and ourselves.
For sites using IndexNow and the new always-on option in Site Audit, we’ll be able to notify users of issues shortly after they make updates to their pages.
This is how that will look:
I can’t think of a system that would be better than this. A practically real-time monitoring and alerting system. As a technical SEO, this is a dream come true for me.
When focusing on technical SEO projects, you’re likely to have an unlimited number of things fighting for your attention in an enterprise environment.
Check out our study on technical SEO issues. We ran audits on over 1,000,000 websites to see the most common issues.
You have to prioritize tasks and focus on the most significant issues. I typically use an impact / effort matrix as a visual to help others understand what I consider the most important tasks. Here’s what that looks like:
You will likely have to work with any dev teams for a better effort prediction, but in my experience I’ve found they appreciate it if you take a first pass at estimating the effort involved. Then give them the opportunity to make adjustments based on how much effort they think it will take.
You may have major incidents and end up in what are sometimes called fire drills or war room situations where stakeholders are gathered to work through a problem. In this case, something likely went horribly wrong and is costing the company a lot of money. This will always override any other priorities.
I doubt there’s a major website that is technically perfect. If there was, I’d be concerned they were wasting resources on things that don’t matter over things that do.
What’s interesting about enterprise, is that sometimes you have to make decisions that aren’t necessarily ideal. For instance, you might have some pages or sections of the site with issues that never get fixed because doing so is more expensive than the work involved. The return on investment (ROI) just isn’t there.
Instead of doing what is right, sometimes you’ll have to choose the least bad option. You won’t have control of everything. Just do the best you can and when you have the opportunity, make the most future-proof decisions you can.
I wanted to cover some projects to help you get started with technical SEO in an enterprise. Of course you may want to start with a technical SEO audit first in order to identify the issues.
Check indexing
Priority – high
You probably have some pages indexed that shouldn’t be, and many pages noindexed that should be indexed. Canonicalization is another issue to check to make sure the version of a page you want indexed is the one that is indexed.
First, check the Indexability report in Site Audit for “Noindex page” warnings.
Google can’t index pages with this warning, so it’s worth checking they’re not pages you want indexed.
You can also check the Site Structure report in Site Explorer for any pages with organic traffic that shouldn’t have traffic.
Recover links with link reclamation
Priority – high
Sites, and the web in general, are always changing. We ran a study that found that ~two-thirds of links to pages on the web disappeared in the nine-year period we looked at.
In many cases, your old URLs have links from other websites. If they’re not redirected to the current pages, then those links are lost and may no longer count for your pages.
It’s not too late to do these redirects, and you can quickly reclaim any lost value and help your content rank better. I normally assign a dollar amount like $400 per referring domain in order to make a business case for this.
Here’s how to find those opportunities:
- Paste your domain into Site Explorer
- Go to the Best by links report
- Add a “404 not found” HTTP response filter
I usually sort this by “Referring domains.”
I even created a script to help you match redirects. Don’t be scared away; you just have to download a couple of files and upload them. The Colab notebook walks you through it and takes care of the heavy lifting for you.
While this script could be run periodically, if you’re constantly having to do redirects, I would recommend that you automate the implementation. You could pull data from the Ahrefs API and visits from your analytics into a system. Then create logic like >3 RDs, >5 hits in a month, etc. and flag these to be redirected, suggest redirects, or even automatically redirect them.
If you had redirects in place for a year or more already, the value is likely already consolidated to the new pages. That’s what Google recommends and seemed to be true when we tested it. You could also add a flag for “was redirected” into the automation logic that checks if the page was previously redirected for a year to account for this.
Add internal links
Priority – high
I’ve always found internal links to be a powerful way to help pages rank higher.
Even these links may be difficult to get in an enterprise environment. Sometimes different people are responsible for different sections of the website, which can make internal linking time-consuming and may require meetings and a lot of follow up to get internal linking done.
On top of the political hurdles, the process for internal linking can be a bit convoluted. You either have to know the site well and read through various pages looking for link opportunities, or you can follow a process that involves a lot of scraping and crawling to find opportunities.
At Ahrefs, we’ve made this simple, scalable and accessible so anyone can find these opportunities. The easiest way to see internal link opportunities is with the Internal Link Opportunities report in Site Audit. We look at what your pages are ranking for and suggest links from other pages on your site that talk about those things.
Add schema markup
Priority – high
I’m a fan of schema markup as long as it gets you a search feature. Check out our guide to schema markup to see which ones you should be implementing. There are some cool tools now that can even suggest schema markup based on what is seen on the page.
Fix Page Experience
Priority – medium
While many of these aren’t necessarily going to move the needle for SEO, they are good for users and how they experience your website, so they’re worth working on.
- Core web vitals. This is how fast your pages load.
- HTTPS. You want your pages to be secure. A surprising number of sites, >6%, redirect HTTPS to HTTP.
- Mobile-friendliness. Are your pages usable on mobile?
- Interstitials. You don’t want intrusive interstitials, or those that take up a good chunk of the screen.
We cover most of these in Site Audit. For example, we pull PageSpeed Insights data so you get actual Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) metrics for Core Web Vitals as well as Lighthouse metrics in Site Audit.
We also flag mobile SEO issues.
General website health / maintenance
Priority – low
These may not have much impact on SEO, but can be an important consideration for user experience.
- Broken links. Find them and fix them.
- Redirect Chains. Google will follow up to 10 hops. I don’t worry until after 5 hops.
- Add sitemaps. I would make sure this is automated. If you are asked to manually create them, you can do it, but just know that if it’s manual these will rarely be kept up-to-date. If you’re creating them based on crawled pages, then it’s likely all search engines can crawl them anyway.
You may want to check if any of the chains are too long. Look for this in the “Issues” tab in the Redirects report.
Fix Hreflang issues
Priority depends on the site
Hreflang helps show the right page to the right user in search. This can be crucial for enterprise companies to get right as the dropoff from bad pathing or annoying users can cost you a lot of money.
We flag a number of different hreflang issues in Site Audit.
There are also some nice visualizations to help you explain issues like this first-if-its-kind hreflang cluster visualization. It shows and tells you what is broken, making it much easier to explain to stakeholders than the typical spreadsheet.
Optimize crawl budget
Priority depends on the site
Crawl budget can be a concern for larger sites with millions of pages or sites that are frequently updated. In general, if you have lots of pages not being crawled or updated as often as you’d like, then you may want to look into speeding up crawling.
Optimize ecommerce pages
Specialized task
Ecommerce SEO would be important for any sites selling products.
For enterprise sites, faceted navigation in particular can be tricky. Luckily we have a great guide on faceted navigation.
Fix JavaScript SEO issues
Specialized task
The bigger the site, the more likely you are to run into multiple tech stacks. Some of those may be JavaScript frameworks. These are relatively newer than CMSs and less understood by SEOs, so we have a guide on JavaScript SEO that covers many of the issues you’ll face and how to troubleshoot them, as well as how the rendering process works for Google.
Migrate other websites
Specialized task
A website migration is any significant change to a website’s domain, URLs, hosting, platform, or design. Big companies like to change these things and it creates havoc. Try to write any standards to keep things consistent and minimize the impact of changes.
Keep traffic during mergers and acquisitions
Specialized task
Enterprise companies buy other companies all the time. When I worked in enterprise SEO, I felt like I was constantly doing one website merger project or another. There’s a lot that can go wrong and a lot of money on the line. Check out our guide on SEO for mergers and acquisitions for more info.
Analyze log files
Specialized task
I would typically consider this task firmly in the developer department, but it is something that technical SEOs may be asked to do at times. Logs can be expensive to store and analyze and they contain private information (PII) with IP addresses. Many companies won’t give SEOs log file access. I’d say in 99.9% of cases, the crawl stats report in Google Search Console will meet your needs instead of logs.
Pull data from APIs
Specialized task
I wouldn’t expect every technical SEO to do this, and I usually consider working with APIs a job for a developer, but many technical SEOs do have the skills to help with this kind of thing. Typical use cases are data storage, report building, etc.
Machine learning tasks
Specialized task
This definitely isn’t a requirement for technical SEOs, but there are many who take on machine learning projects and help with things like semantic analysis, redirect automation, keyword clustering, etc.
When submitting tickets to dev teams, you want to be thorough and concise. You need enough detail that they know what to do, but for the ticket to be short enough they’ll actually read it.
These are the elements I focus on:
- Detailed description of the problem.
- Acceptance criteria. What you need to see to consider this problem resolved.
- Any additional info. Uploads, steps to reproduce the issue, videos showing the issue.
- Priority and impact. How important is the issue? Try to equate any expected impact to cash if you can.
Do not waste the time of developers with menial tasks. I’ve seen lots of technical SEOs burn their bridges with dev teams by submitting tickets for lots of things that are high effort and little to no impact.
There are a lot of tools that can help you with enterprise technical SEO including:
- Ahrefs’ Site Audit. It really is best-in-class. Check it out! We’re the most used cloud-based site audit tool. We crawl ~700 million pages a day.
- Google Search Console. It has several useful tools to check indexing, crawling, etc.
Also check out our guide to enterprise SEO tools.
Final thoughts
One final tip is that if you don’t seem to be making progress on projects, try to sell the changes you want to make as A/B testing. Many companies want to do more testing, and you can “test” your SEO changes to see the impact they have. With a measurable impact, you can argue for a more permanent fix, but in the meantime, it’s technically fixed.
If you have any tips, enterprise SEO experiences you’d like to share, or questions, let me know on X or LinkedIn.
SEO
Google AIO Is Ranking More Niche Specific Sites
New data from BrightEdge shows significant changes to Google AI Overviews, prioritizing topic-specific sites and a stronger focus on ecommerce ahead of the year-end shopping season.
Google Core Update And AIO
An interesting insight from the data is that there is more overlap between AIO and Google’s organic search results, that there is more agreement between the two results. Is AIO mirroring the organic search results or are the organic search results more closely aligned with AIO?
The organic search results themselves changed after the August 2024 core algorithm update and so did AIO. BrightEdge’s data offers evidence of how Google’s organic search results changed.
BrightEdge data shows:
- The overlap of URLs cited in AI Overviews with those ranking in the top 100 increased from 37% to 41% post-update.
- This is following Google’s August 15th Core Update.
- The shift indicates that AI Overviews are prioritizing organic results more than before, pulling from lower-ranked results to create comprehensive responses.
BrightEdge data shows that AIO is ranking lower-ranked web pages for more precise answers. Something else to consider is that both AIO and the organic search results changed and it could be the criteria for ranking changed in a similar way for both AIO and organic, that the algorithms for both are doing something similar.
A significant characteristic of the last update is that it is showing less of the big brand sites and more of the independent niche sites. BrightEdge data shows that AIO is also ranking websites that are more precisely about a topic.
Keep reading because there’s more about that in BrightEdge’s data which could offer insights into what’s going on in the organic SERPs.
BrightEdge Dataset
Research was conducted using the BrightEdge Data Cube X, an SEO and content performance platform for researching industries. |
Data Cube X Facilitates:
- Comprehensive Keyword Research
- Competitive Analysis:
- Automated AI-Powered Content and Keyword Research
- Traffic Fluctuation Analysis
Non-Logged-In AI Overviews
Google has rolled out AI Overviews (AIO) to users that are not logged-in to Google accounts, expanding the audience for AIO to a greater amount of people. But it’s not showing across all industries. The data shows that the integration of AIO varies.
Within the context of users who are not logged in, Ecommerce search results for not logged-in users dropped in AIO is less than logged-in users by a whopping 90%.
Users that are not logged-in didn’t see AIO in the following topics:
- Education: 21% relative decrease
- B2B Tech: 17% relative decrease
- Healthcare: 16% relative decrease
Although there’s a decrease in AIO shown to non-logged-in users for ecommerce queries, there is an increase in product grids that are shown to these users compared to logged-in users. BrightEdge speculates that Google is better able to target logged-in users and is thus showing product grids to them on a more precise basis than to non-logged-in users.
More Product Comparisons
BrightEdge’s data indicates that Google AIO is showing more product comparisons and visuals.
Their data shows:
- In August, product carousels for apparel-related queries increased by 172%.
- The use of unordered lists across industries rose by 42%.
These adjustments make AI Overviews more user-friendly by organizing complex product features and specifications for easier decision-making.
All of those features allow users to make comparisons between products by what the products look like as well as by price. A takeaway from this data is that it may be increasingly important to show original product images (if possible) and to make sure that images shown are high quality and allow users to get a good sense of the product.
Data is always important and it’s a good way to make a product listing or product review stand apart from competitors. Any information that makes improves a consumer’s decision making is valuable.
A good example is for clothing where it’s not enough to indicate that something is a size small, medium or large. Sizes are inconsistent from manufacturer to manufacturer and even within a brand’s own products. So, for clothing, it may be useful to add comparison information about actual sizes within a product line in terms of inches or metric measurement so that a consumer can make an even better choice.
Comparison between products, especially within the context of a product review, is important. One of the product review best practices (and maybe a ranking factor) that is recommended by Google is a comparison of the product being reviewed. Google’s product reviews best practices recommendation is that publishers compare a product to another product so that users can presumably make a better decision.
Google recommends:
- “Cover comparable things to consider, or explain which might be best for certain uses or circumstances.”
According to BrightEdge:
“As the holiday shopping season approaches Google is refining AIO search results to focus on comparative content, which rose by 12% in August. AIOs prioritized product carousels with engaging imagery, which rose by 172%. Unordered lists (lists of items that are related but in no specific order, such as general searches for ‘winter boots’ or ‘iPhone cases’) also increased by 42%.”
Google AIO Rankings Are More Precise
A data point that all search marketers should be aware of is that Google is ranking more precise content in AIO in a way that might reflect on what is going on with the organic search algorithms.
BrightEdge discovered that generalist sites had massive decreases in rankings while specialists sites had increases. People like to talk about “authority sites” and what they’re usually referring to is “big brands” with a lot of money and reach. But that’s not authority, it’s just a big brand with reach.
For example, most people consider news organizations as authority sites. But who would you go to for SEO information, Search Engine Journal or big sites like the New York Times or Fox News? What the BrightEdge data shows is that AIO is making a similar consideration of what kinds of sites are actual authorities on a given topic and then showing those sites instead of a big brand site.
The obvious question is, does this have something to do with Google’s last core update in August? One of the goals of Google’s last update is to show more independent sites. If the AIO trends mirror the organic search results to a certain extent, then perhaps what Google’s algorithms are doing is identifying sites that are authoritative in a topic and showing those sites instead of a more general big brand site.
BrightEdge’s data shows that AIO rankings of generalist technology review sites dropped. TechRadar.com dropped by 47.3 and TomsGuide.com dropped by 16.4%. This trend was also seen in health related queries where the kinds of sites that AIO quotes also became more precise.
AIO showed less consumer-focused sites and blogs and began showing more sites that are precisely about health. The BrightEdge data showed that consumer news and general sites like VerywellHealth.com experienced 77.9% drop in AIO exposure and EverydayHealth.com virtually dropped out of AIO with a 95.6% decline.
Sites like MayoClinic.org experienced a 32.4% increase and citations of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services AIO increased by +83.2%. It’s not just a trend away from consumer and general news sites, it’s a trend toward more precise rankings of expert and authoritative content.
BrightEdge noted that the following precisely-focused sites experienced increases:
- Spine-Health.com +266.7%
- Arthritis.org +89.5%
- BrightEdge’s report observes:
“This demonstrates Google’s push toward more detailed, factual content in AI Overviews.”
AIO And Organic SERPs
Google has significantly increased the use of product carousels for apparel-related queries, reflecting a 172% rise. These carousels and grids allow for easier product comparisons based on visuals, pricing, and features.
AI Overviews and Google’s organic search results have more overlap than before. The reason for that may reflect a change to prioritize increasingly precise answers from sites that are authoritative for specific topics. Niche sites have gained prominence in both organic and AI Overviews while large more general sites have lost visibility.AI Overviews continues to evolve but the changes from last month indicate that there is a certain amount of agreement between what’s in the SERPs and AIO.
Read more about AI Overviews data at BrightEdge
Featured Image by Shutterstock/BobNoah
SEO
100 Most Asked Questions on Google in 2024
These are the 100 most asked questions on Google, along with their monthly search volumes.
| # | Keyword | Search Volume |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | what to watch | 876000 |
| 2 | what | 870000 |
| 3 | what is my ip | 746000 |
| 4 | what dinosaur has 500 teeth | 671000 |
| 5 | when is mother’s day 2024 | 585000 |
| 6 | how many weeks in a year | 497000 |
| 7 | when is father’s day 2024 | 438000 |
| 8 | how many days until christmas | 427000 |
| 9 | how to screenshot on mac | 389000 |
| 10 | what time is it | 370000 |
| 11 | how many ounces in a gallon | 368000 |
| 12 | when is easter 2024 | 361000 |
| 13 | how to screenshot on windows | 349000 |
| 14 | who won the super bowl 2024 | 349000 |
| 15 | what time is the eclipse | 347000 |
| 16 | what time is the super bowl | 326000 |
| 17 | what space movie came out in 1992 | 325000 |
| 18 | when is the super bowl | 322000 |
| 19 | when is easter | 318000 |
| 20 | how to tie a tie | 312000 |
| 21 | how many ounces in a cup | 303000 |
| 22 | what is project 2025 | 298000 |
| 23 | when is the super bowl 2024 | 293000 |
| 24 | when is thanksgiving | 288000 |
| 25 | when is the solar eclipse | 287000 |
| 26 | why women kill | 258000 |
| 27 | what is my ip address | 247000 |
| 28 | what we do in the shadows | 244000 |
| 29 | how many ounces in a pound | 243000 |
| 30 | how old is taylor swift | 242000 |
| 31 | what day is it | 241000 |
| 32 | when is father’s day | 238000 |
| 33 | when is super bowl 2024 | 232000 |
| 34 | what is today | 231000 |
| 35 | when is thanksgiving 2023 | 225000 |
| 36 | when is mothers day | 224000 |
| 37 | what is juneteenth | 215000 |
| 38 | how many cups in a quart | 206000 |
| 39 | when to work | 199000 |
| 40 | how many oz in a gallon | 198000 |
| 41 | when is memorial day 2024 | 192000 |
| 42 | what time is the debate tonight | 191000 |
| 43 | how to write a check | 188000 |
| 44 | how many quarts in a gallon | 188000 |
| 45 | how many people are in the world | 188000 |
| 46 | who shot trump | 188000 |
| 47 | how many seconds in a day | 185000 |
| 48 | what does gyatt mean | 182000 |
| 49 | how many oz in a cup | 178000 |
| 50 | what time is the solar eclipse 2024 | 177000 |
| 51 | who won the debate | 176000 |
| 52 | when is the next full moon | 175000 |
| 53 | what holiday is today | 173000 |
| 54 | who is running for president in 2024 | 173000 |
| 55 | when is daylight savings | 172000 |
| 56 | how long to boil eggs | 169000 |
| 57 | who called me from this phone number | 168000 |
| 58 | where the crawdads sing | 164000 |
| 59 | what time does the super bowl start | 162000 |
| 60 | where am i | 162000 |
| 61 | how many days till christmas | 161000 |
| 62 | how much house can i afford | 161000 |
| 63 | how to draw | 158000 |
| 64 | how many grams in an ounce | 155000 |
| 65 | how to train your dragon | 153000 |
| 66 | how to lose a guy in 10 days | 152000 |
| 67 | what time is the presidential debate | 148000 |
| 68 | how to take a screenshot on windows | 147000 |
| 69 | how to pronounce | 147000 |
| 70 | when is fathers day | 145000 |
| 71 | what is hamas | 145000 |
| 72 | how many tablespoons in a cup | 143000 |
| 73 | when calls the heart | 143000 |
| 74 | how to delete facebook account | 143000 |
| 75 | cindy lou who | 143000 |
| 76 | how many steps in a mile | 141000 |
| 77 | how old is joe biden | 141000 |
| 78 | when are taxes due 2024 | 141000 |
| 79 | how many liters in a gallon | 139000 |
| 80 | how i met your mother | 139000 |
| 81 | how to delete instagram account | 138000 |
| 82 | how many teaspoons in a tablespoon | 137000 |
| 83 | how to lower blood pressure | 137000 |
| 84 | what time does mcdonald’s stop serving breakfast | 137000 |
| 85 | how many cups in a gallon | 137000 |
| 86 | when is mardi gras 2024 | 136000 |
| 87 | when evil lurks | 135000 |
| 88 | when is the presidential debate | 132000 |
| 89 | how many feet in a mile | 128000 |
| 90 | how old is travis kelce | 127000 |
| 91 | what is rsv | 125000 |
| 92 | when does the time change | 123000 |
| 93 | how to deactivate facebook | 123000 |
| 94 | when does fall start | 123000 |
| 95 | how did matthew perry die | 123000 |
| 96 | how it ends | 122000 |
| 97 | when is black friday | 121000 |
| 98 | how many countries are there | 121000 |
| 99 | how to boil eggs | 118000 |
| 100 | what is mewing | 118000 |
| # | Keyword | Search Volume |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | what is my ip | 2,870,000 |
| 2 | what to watch | 1,760,000 |
| 3 | what dinosaur has 500 teeth | 1,450,000 |
| 4 | where is my train | 973,000 |
| 5 | what the font | 901,000 |
| 6 | where to watch india national cricket team vs australian men’s cricket team | 895,000 |
| 7 | how many weeks in a year | 875,000 |
| 8 | when is mother’s day 2024 | 772,000 |
| 9 | where to watch india national cricket team vs england cricket team | 770,000 |
| 10 | que significa | 679,000 |
| 11 | how many ounces in a cup | 679,000 |
| 12 | cuando cobro | 660,000 |
| 13 | how many days until christmas | 642,000 |
| 14 | quando eh o prox carnaval | 638,000 |
| 15 | who called me | 617,000 |
| 16 | how to screenshot on mac | 598,000 |
| 17 | what is my ip address | 590,000 |
| 18 | when is easter 2024 | 590,000 |
| 19 | how i met your mother | 532,000 |
| 20 | when is easter | 530,000 |
| 21 | when is father’s day 2024 | 528,000 |
| 22 | how to screenshot on windows | 522,000 |
| 23 | cuando juega boca | 521,000 |
| 24 | how to tie a tie | 505,000 |
| 25 | what time is it | 503,000 |
| 26 | what we do in the shadows | 503,000 |
| 27 | where to watch sri lanka national cricket team vs india national cricket team | 503,000 |
| 28 | why women kill | 462,000 |
| 29 | how many seconds in a day | 446,000 |
| 30 | how to delete instagram account | 446,000 |
| 31 | where to watch india national cricket team vs pakistan national cricket team | 441,000 |
| 32 | where to watch south africa national cricket team vs india national cricket team | 419,000 |
| 33 | who won the super bowl 2024 | 403,000 |
| 34 | what is today | 402,000 |
| 35 | qué significa | 397,000 |
| 36 | how many ounces in a gallon | 394,000 |
| 37 | where the crawdads sing | 394,000 |
| 38 | when is mothers day | 393,000 |
| 39 | when is black friday | 391,000 |
| 40 | cuando juega river | 384,000 |
| 41 | what is love | 381,000 |
| 42 | what space movie came out in 1992 | 376,000 |
| 43 | where am i | 369,000 |
| 44 | when is father’s day | 366,000 |
| 45 | какой сегодня праздник | 362,000 |
| 46 | how to make money online | 361,000 |
| 47 | when is the super bowl | 352,000 |
| 48 | what time is the eclipse | 351,000 |
| 49 | what is ai | 346,000 |
| 50 | how are you | 346,000 |
| 51 | what time is the super bowl | 340,000 |
| 52 | when is thanksgiving | 333,000 |
| 53 | what day is it | 331,000 |
| 54 | how to lose a guy in 10 days | 323,000 |
| 55 | how to draw | 322,000 |
| 56 | who won the election 2024 | 321,000 |
| 57 | what is project 2025 | 320,000 |
| 58 | where to watch zimbabwe national cricket team vs india national cricket team | 320,000 |
| 59 | when is the solar eclipse | 317,000 |
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| 62 | when is the super bowl 2024 | 310,000 |
| 63 | cuando juega argentina | 303,000 |
| 64 | how to deactivate facebook | 301,000 |
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| 67 | how old is taylor swift | 296,000 |
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| 69 | where to watch olympics 2024 | 293,000 |
| 70 | how many ounces in a pound | 291,000 |
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| 75 | where to watch india national cricket team vs bangladesh national cricket team | 281,000 |
| 76 | where to watch new zealand national cricket team vs pakistan national cricket team | 279,000 |
| 77 | when is fathers day | 275,000 |
| 78 | when is thanksgiving 2023 | 267,000 |
| 79 | how many days in a year | 265,000 |
| 80 | when is the next full moon | 265,000 |
| 81 | where to watch india national cricket team vs south africa national cricket team | 264,000 |
| 82 | how many countries in the world | 264,000 |
| 83 | why is my husband yelling at me | 262,000 |
| 84 | how it ends | 260,000 |
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| 86 | how many people are in the world | 254,000 |
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Top Google questions by growth
Many popular questions don’t change from year to year. For example, people have been asking measurement-related questions since forever (e.g., ” how many cups in a gallon”). I ask that often too.
But there are new questions, too. These are the questions that have seen the most growth recently.
1. Who shot Trump
Monthly search volume: 188,000
Change in search volume over the past 3 months: +73M%
The spike in searches for this keyword was due to the assassination attempt on the former U.S president and then presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for the 2024 presidential election. Searches for this topic has dwindled since then.
2. Where to watch summer olympic games
Monthly search volume: 82,000
Change in search volume over the past 3 months: +19M%
The spike in searches was due to the 2024 Summer Olympics which was held in Paris. It concluded on 11 August 2024, which is why searches around this topic have died off since then.
3. How to register to vote in the US
Monthly search volume: 70,000
Change in search volume over the past 3 months: +16M%
The spike in searches is due to the upcoming 2024 United States presidential election. It is set to be held on November 5, 2024. I foresee searches will go the way of the Summer Olympics once the election concludes.
4. How did rich homie quan die
Monthly search volume: 28,000
Change in search volume over the past 3 months: +11M%
Rich Homie Quan (real name: Dequantes Devontay Lamar) was an American rapper. The spike in searches was because Rich Homie Quan was found unconscious at home on September 5, 2024. His girlfriend told 911 that he was on the couch in the morning and had not moved when she returned home later. He was later pronounced dead at an Atlanta hospital on the same day at the young age of 34. An autopsy has been performed, but the cause of death is currently unknown.
5. What is demure
Monthly search volume: 23,000
Change in search volume over the past 3 months: +5.6M%
The word “demure” is an adjective that means “reserved, modest, and shy.” However, this particular spike was because of TikTok creator Jools Lebon. In a video that has now more than 30 million views, Jools used the phrase “very demure, very mindful” to describe herself. It went viral and many creators on social media started replicating the catchphrase in their own content.
Looking at the dip in searches, it is likely that this trend is, like most Internet trends, merely temporary and will die off soon.
Here’s how to find the most asked questions in your niche:
- Go to Keywords Explorer
- Enter a relevant keyword
- Go to the Matching terms report
- Toggle the Questions tab
For example, if you search for “coffee”, you can see 142,000 questions which you could potentially create content for.
Want to do keyword research for your site? Sign up for Keywords Explorer.
SEO
An In-Depth Guide For Businesses
Social media marketing is all about being where your audience is.
If your target audience is active on a platform, then you should be, too. And if you’re looking to speak to a younger demographic, Snapchat can be a powerful marketing tool for your business.
Snapchat is the fifth largest social media network in the world – but it’s one of the most misunderstood (and underestimated) by marketers.
So, if you’re concerned about missing the boat on this platform, you’re not alone. You’re also not out of touch – you just need a comprehensive guide to get started. And you’re in the right place.
In this updated guide to Snapchat marketing, we’ll provide you with a deep dive into the multimedia messaging platform, explain who’s using it, and give you the strategies you need to add it effectively to your marketing mix.
Why Use Snapchat For Marketing? (Is It Still Relevant?)
Successful marketers focus on grasping every opportunity to reach potential customers – and Snapchat continues to offer unique opportunities.
As of 2024, Snapchat boasts over 406 million active daily users, with more than 80% of them being 34 or younger. The platform reaches 90% of the 13-24-year-old population worldwide and 75% of 13-34-year-olds in over 25 countries.
This makes it an ideal platform for targeting Millennials, Gen Z, and, increasingly, Gen Alpha.
While it might not have the massive user base of Facebook or YouTube, it drives impressive engagement. According to recent data, the average Snapchat user opens the app over 40 times per day and spends about 30+ minutes daily on the platform – which means people interact with their social circles on Snapchat more than any other social network.
Yet, when it comes to marketing, Snapchat is a relatively untapped territory. While every brand seems to have a Facebook and Instagram presence these days, comparatively few have a foothold on Snapchat. And that just means more opportunity for your brand.
The boon of Snapchat is how it’s optimized for authenticity. Given the ephemeral nature of the app and the more unfiltered style of content approach, brands can use the platform to connect with their audience in ways that feel genuine and immediate – which is more valuable than ever.
And, as if all of this wasn’t enough, Snapchat has established itself as a competitive force in the social commerce market. With its augmented reality (AR) shopping experiences, you’re able to build immersive shopping experiences for users through the app – something most other platforms can’t compete with.
By now, it should be crystal clear why Snapchat could be a strong addition to your marketing strategy. So, how do you get started? Let’s break it down.
How Does Snapchat Work? A Brief Overview
If your social media experience is primarily with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or X (Twitter), Snapchat’s interface may initially feel like a whole new world.
Snapchat’s design is unique – it’s built for spontaneity, exclusivity, and in-the-moment content creation. When you open the app, it goes directly to the camera, making it super easy for you to capture and share videos and photos (called “Snaps”) in just a few seconds.
You can then edit these Snaps using a variety of filters, stickers, and AR Lenses before sending them directly to your chosen friends or adding to your “Story,” which remains viewable for 24 hours. There’s also a newer Spotlight feature, similar to TikTok, for sharing short-form videos with wider audiences.
The app offers a host of other features, including a Snap Map, an AI-powered chatbot, and disappearing direct messages. Long story short: There are a bunch of innovative and creative ways for brands to engage with audiences on Snapchat.
What Brands Are Best Suited To Snapchat Marketing?
Let me be clear: Snapchat isn’t for every brand. There’s a reason why it’s less frequented than some other social media platforms. That said, if your target audience includes younger consumers, it’s absolutely worth considering.
Brands that are best suited to Snapchat are those that present a youthful image and tone and prioritize authenticity, “realness,” and creativity. If your brand image is highly professional or you have red tape around your marketing efforts, you should likely look elsewhere.
Lifestyle brands, fashion labels, beauty products, entertainment companies, and tech startups – these are the kinds of companies that typically see success on the app.
But really, the opportunity exists for any type of brand that is interested in using Snapchat’s tools to create immersive, engaging content that resonates with the platform’s users.
How To Get the Right “Tone Of Voice” For Snapchat
I mentioned tone above – and on Snapchat, tone of voice is a big deal. The platform itself is playful and casual, so you’re not likely to find success using an overly formal or professional tone.
Instead, your brand should focus on having a genuine conversation with users and infusing your content with humor.
Here are some tips for nailing the Snapchat tone of voice:
- Keep it light: People go to Snapchat to be entertained. Leave your hard sales pitch at the door.
- Prioritize authenticity: It’s a place to show the human side of your brand, whether it’s through user-generated content or behind-the-scenes Snaps.
- Engage, engage, engage: Snapchat has a ton of interactive tools for engaging directly with users, like polls, Q&As, and more. Put them to use!
How To Create A Snapchat Strategy For Business
So, you want to create a successful Snapchat strategy. You can just start posting content sporadically, right? Wrong.
You need to start by understanding your brand’s goals and audience, and then determining the type of content that will best help you reach those people on Snapchat specifically. Here are some steps you can take to start building your Snapchat strategy:
- Decide what you want to achieve on the platform. Maybe it’s brand awareness, community building, or increasing sales – once you know your goals, you can build your content approach around them.
- Know your audience. As with any kind of marketing strategy, this is crucial.
- Experiment and be creative. Try your hand with some of Snapchat’s different tools (like Bitmoji, AR Lenses, filters, etc.) to create content that resonates with your audience. Don’t just choose one type of content and settle – you can (and should) experiment with a variety of Snaps, Stories, and Spotlight videos.
- Be consistent. All great marketers know that consistency is key – and it’s the same story on Snapchat.
- Keep a good balance. Of course, you want to sell your brand to users, but don’t go all in on self-promotional content. Make sure you’re balancing organic, engaging storytelling with talking about yourself.
- Learn (and follow) Snapchat best practices. This is a no-brainer. Spend time on the platform to find what works, and see how you can adopt it in your own strategy.
Types Of Content That Work Best On Snapchat
Snapchat is all about driving engagement. What does that look like in action? Here are some examples of content approaches that work particularly well on the platform.
1. Sneak Peeks & Teasers
Launching a new product or service? Snapchat is a great place to drive excitement by giving your audience teasers or sneak peeks at what’s to come.
You might think about dropping hints about the product, sharing a quick glimpse, or some other behind-the-scenes moments to encourage anticipation among your Snapchat followers.
Warner Bros., for example, has used teaser content to promote its upcoming movie releases.
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Screenshot from Snapchat.com, August 2024
2. Behind-The-Scenes Content
Speaking of behind-the-scenes, this type of content is tailor-made for Snapchat.
Showing your audience what goes on behind the curtain at your brand is a clever way to create a sense of exclusivity and make people feel like insiders.
3. User-Generated Content (UGC)
You’ve heard about user-generated content – well, Snapchat is a place where UGC really thrives. Consider prompting your followers to create their own Snaps that feature your products or brand, and then share them along with a custom hashtag. Then, you can amplify the strongest ones in your own Stories.
UGC is proven to be a highly effective way to generate social proof, increase brand loyalty, and build a stronger social community.
Javy Coffee is one example of a brand that leveraged UGC by featuring real customer testimonials and stories about how they enjoy the coffee concentrate. This helped the company create relatable ads that resonated with its audience.
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Screenshot from Snapchat.com, August 2024
4. Interactive Content
One thing that separates Snapchat from most other social media platforms is its interactivity. And brands have plenty of opportunities to get in on the action!
Try devising interactive moments for your followers, whether it’s a simple poll, a challenge, or a unique AR Lens. These allow users to really get involved and have a fun experience with your brand – and can lead to new UGC for you, as well.
For example, e.l.f. Cosmetics used AR Lenses combined with Bitmoji to allow users to virtually try on makeup, creating a highly interactive experience for its audience.
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Screenshot from Snapchat.com, August 2024
5. Exclusive Offers
Want to really impress your Snapchat followers? Reward them. From promo codes to exclusive discounts or early bird access to new products, there is no shortage of ways to treat your audience.
It’s great for them but beneficial for you, too. It gives people a reason to keep engaging with your content and following your brand.
Advertising On Snapchat
While organic content is at the heart of Snapchat, the platform also offers some unique and powerful paid advertising options. The company also rolled out a new ad platform update in August 2024 that provides enhanced analytics, improved targeting, and more.
1. Snapchat Ads
Served to users in between user-generated content, these are full-screen, vertical video ads. They’re not dissimilar to Instagram Stories, and can include interactive elements such as having a user swipe up to visit a website.
The Salvation Army’s Snapchat Ads featured videos depicting real-life stories of individuals impacted by its services, emphasizing themes of hope and transformation. These ads connected emotionally with viewers and included a swipe-up option to learn more or donate, making the content both impactful and actionable.
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Screenshot from Snapchat.com, August 2024
2. Sponsored AR Lenses
One of Snapchat’s unique offerings is its custom AR Lenses, which brands can create for users to experience.
You can create Lenses that allow users to virtually “try on” products, for example, put people in a humorous visual setting or even have them play games. At times, they can even respond to users’ movements or the environment around them.
These can be hyper-engaging and drive a lot of interactions – like Volkswagen did when it used an AR Lens to enable people to experience its ID.3 electric vehicle virtually. Using the Lens, people could place a virtual model of the car in their environment, explore its features, and even change the color.
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Screenshot from Snapchat.com, August 2024
3. Filters
These are static overlays that you can apply to your Snaps once they’re created – and brands are able to design their own to delight Snapchat users. These are typically non-interactive but are fun visual enhancements that enable people to add some creative flair to their content.
Post Consumer Brands created its own custom Snapchat Filter to promote its Honeycomb cereal – and it was very sweet!
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Screenshot from Snapchat.com, August 2024
4. Dynamic Ads
Snapchat’s Dynamic Ads enable brands to automatically create and deliver personalized ads to users based on their behavior and interactions with your company. For example, if a user visits your website and looks at a specific hat, Snapchat might serve them an ad for that product.
If you work for an ecommerce company, these might be particularly interesting to you, as you can automate ad creation based on your product catalog – so you don’t need to lift a finger.
Fashion brand Free People has used Dynamic Ads to automate personalized ads for users, ensuring that those who viewed specific items on its website were later served ads featuring those exact products on Snapchat. It resulted in a 396% increase in demand.
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Screenshot from Snapchat.com, August 2024
5. Commercials
These are non-skippable Snapchat video ads that usually appear within the platform’s premium content, like Snap Originals.
They’re short – three to six seconds for a Standard Commercial and up to 180 seconds for an Extended Play Commercial (though users can skip after the first 6 seconds) – and are optimized for high visibility.
They typically focus more on storytelling than some of the other ads on the network.
Let’s Get Snapping!
Yes, Snapchat is still an effective marketing platform for reaching younger audiences – but you must be mindful about your strategy and approach.
With its unique blend of high engagement, unique creative tools, and loyal audience, Snapchat offers brands a variety of ways to connect with their target consumers.
Hopefully, this guide has given you the insights and inspiration you need to build a successful Snapchat marketing strategy in 2024.
Now, it’s time to put these ideas into action and start Snapping your way to success.
More resources:
Featured Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
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