SEO
Building An Integrated Search Strategy
Digital transformation is here.
But is it really here for search marketers?
According to Google,
“Now is the time to reset, pivot, and think big to transform your business operations to match new digital expectations.”
Search marketers need to transform.
Looking at all your audiences and connecting them to relevant search engines – not just Google – truly allows digital marketers to transform.
Every search engine is different; in results, modes of search, and keyword intent (i.e., what keywords we use on each search engine varies).
It is not possible to duplicate what you are doing on Google and think it will work on YouTube and/or Amazon (or any other search engine for that matter).
As you begin your integrated search strategy, looking at one search engine can help you start to think about the others.
Generally speaking, we use:
- Google to find.
- Amazon to buy.
- YouTube to watch.
When it comes to integrated search strategies, let’s begin by identifying what our focus engine/s are.
Identify Your Core Focus Areas Based On Your Audience And Analyze What The Search Engine Displays
Amazon is all about products.
Get to know your product performance. For brands, this isn’t just looking at Brand Analytics via Amazon Seller Central.
Here are the core and secondary focus of the ‘big three’ search engines:
| Search engine | Core focus | Secondary focus |
| Amazon | ||
|
||
| YouTube |
Review your Amazon performance and visibility (i.e., how well you rank) on Google. This will help you start to build out your keyword strategy.
You can do this by looking at which keywords Google ranks Amazon for.
Are any of these URLs your Amazon products? Do any of these keywords have an Amazon “double bubble”?
This might be a stronger indication that that keyword has high commercial intent. So much so that Google ranks Amazon more than once.
Amazon double bubbles are even more important on Google when they occur in higher-ranked positions.
Equally, if you see YouTube ranking, predominantly, on Google (e.g. displaying YouTube timestamps), this may be an indication that these keywords are more video-platform friendly.
Keep an eye on YouTube ranking for a traditional result too. It’s not always about timestamps.
When you see the usual diverse Google layout, one with lots of different search engine results page (SERP) features, this would be an indication that that keyword requires a Google platform focus.
Since we are talking about integrated search, let’s not just look at Google.
Google is a competitor of many search engines, including YouTube. (Even though they are part of the same company, Alphabet.)
According to eMarketer:
“Amazon’s first-party data on consumer shopping and purchase habits offer it an advantage over the more general online behavioral data that Facebook and Google provide.”
This is why Google has created things like Google Shopping and Google Jobs to fend off other large search engines like Amazon, Indeed, or Glassdoor, becoming the most dominant.
Each engine has very unique data, search behavior, and results. Every engine that your audience uses, needs its own strategy.
Overreliance and underinvestment in looking at each search engine’s data will limit your ability to create an integrated search strategy.
On-site search is beneficial.
On-Site Search (OSS)
Since the interface (and the functions of that interface) impact our search behavior, your top internal site search keywords (i.e., what keywords your website users are using within your own search bar) within your website will never fully align with what you see in Google Search Console, for example.
It is, however, a good idea to keep monitoring your internal site searches to continue to evolve your keyword strategy. There are some nuggets in there to help you develop what content you write about.
Internal site search, a form of on-site search (OSS), is powerful because it is based on real user behavior data.
Whenever you can, look at OSS by search engine.
Disclaimer: I work for Similarweb. The company I work for has features using OSS.
Let’s take the product “air conditioner” as an example.
On Google, we search for a wide range of keywords, but most of these are branded keywords, for example, “LG air conditioner” or “Mitsubishi air conditioner”. Overall, these keywords are broad and less specific.
On Amazon, we are more specific and tend to use more non-branded keywords – for example, “portable air conditioner” or “sliding window air conditioner.”
On YouTube, we are interested in both inspirational content at the pre-sale stage (e.g. “best portable air conditioner”), as well as post-sale stage (e.g. “mini split air conditioner installation”).
Image from author, January 2023Any business that ranks on Google and produces videos needs to start creating separate Google and YouTube strategies. Retailers also need to do this for Amazon.
Let’s take a look at how keyword research compares across sites.
Google keyword research:
Screenshot by author, January 2023YouTube keyword research:
Screenshot by author, January 2023
Screenshot by author, January 2023Buyer’s Journey
Traditionally, and far before digital acceleration was a thing, we used to group keywords by “informational,” “navigational,” and “transactional.”
These categories are outdated for integrated search, as the groupings do not easily align with search engines.
Group your keywords into these stages to get a better alignment with the buyer’s journey and core search engine:
| Buyer’s journey phase | Core search engine | Secondary search engine | Keyword example |
| Awareness | Amazon and YouTube | “Paper” | |
| Consideration | Amazon, Google, and YouTube | “Printer paper” | |
| Decision | Amazon | “A4 printer paper” | |
| Inspiration | YouTube | Amazon and YouTube | “How to make a paper airplane” |
Awareness
- Core search engine: Google (sometimes Amazon and YouTube).
- Keyword example: “Paper”.
Consideration
- Core search engines: Amazon, Google, and YouTube.
- Keyword example: “Printer paper”.
Decision
- Core search engine: Amazon (sometimes Google).
- Keyword example: “A4 printer paper”.
Inspiration
- Core search engine: YouTube (sometimes Amazon and YouTube).
- Keyword example: “How to make an airplane out of printer paper”.
Benefits Of The Buyer’s Journey
Easier alignment to search engines and better performance insights.
Let’s take Google SERP features, for example. Are there more Instant Answers for awareness keywords compared to decision keywords?
SERP features help develop your Google strategy and digital assets on Google. Keywords with videos SERPs should not direct your YouTube strategy.
The buyer’s journey helps you to start building an integrated search strategy across the big three search engines of Amazon, Google, and YouTube.
If you have low SEO resources restricting you from focusing on this, try to set aside 30 minutes a week so you can slowly start to categorize keywords for your most important business unit.
Over the following weeks, you will start to gain valuable insights into an important line of business.
This will help you automatically get attention from other stakeholders internally, which will help you make a business case to do more SEO activities.
This is SEO evangelism at its best: engaging internal stakeholders.
The buyer’s journey is much easier to understand for non-digital audiences compared to a specific search engine’s ranking factors.
E-A-T Content Is Required For Every Search Engine Strategy, But Some Less Than Others
If you need a rundown (or refresher) on E-A-T, the SEJ guide explains it beautifully. Read it here: What Exactly Is E-A-T & Why Does It Matter to Google?
Now, let’s look at E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) from an integrated search perspective.
Google places more emphasis on E-A-T compared to Amazon and YouTube.
Amazon uses E-A-T the least, as it’s still playing catchup on improving its content-specific algorithms.
But since content exists on all three search engines, and to follow best practices, we need to think about E-A-T for all three search engines.
Do not use generic product descriptions on Amazon. If you are reselling, do not copy content from external sources, including from the supplier if you are reselling.
Be reactive on Amazon to user-generated content, in particular to reviews and questions/answers you receive.
Unlike Google and YouTube, you can’t send a piece of consumed text or video back. So keep an eye on order defect rates, stock levels, price, and conversion trends.
On Amazon and Google, keep an eye on reviews; authentic, specialist reviews are important.
As mentioned earlier, Google is the most advanced algorithmically when it comes to E-A-T. But really, E-A-T principles are like university essays.
Key questions to ask:
- Is the content unique? If so, to what extent vs. what else we have seen (in the case of search engines indexed)?
- Who else published about the topic? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How does this domain compare in relation to this?
- What research has been conducted? Are there any references and to which resources/author profiles?
- What questions were addressed? What are missing questions/angles?
- What methods and formats were used?
- What were the key points?
YouTube, like Amazon, factors more real-life metrics into its algorithm. In the case of Amazon, it’s defect rates and stock levels. On YouTube, it’s views, likes, gaining authentic subscribers, and comments.
Shareability is important to all three search engines but more important to Google and YouTube.
Google, for the most part, uses backlinks to monitor shareability.
YouTube may also use backlinks but video shares are more important. Make sure you enable video sharing under options/settings. Engagement is key for YouTube.
How Can I Build An Integrated Search Strategy?
Identify who your audience is, and what their core focus is.
If it’s to target younger audiences who consume video, your keyword strategy needs to be different than just targeting video consumers.
If your company is currently only doing SEO, review Amazon and YouTube performance on Google. This is the easiest way to start getting teams to think and get them to understand that each engine is different.
Understanding Amazon performance on Google at a keyword level, can add another dimension to keyword intent.
Categorize your keywords into the four stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, decision, and inspiration. This will help you align your keywords by search engine, too.
Keyword grouping of the buyer’s journey will also add another interesting layer to your understanding of SERP features.
E-A-T your content on every search engine you operate in. Some engines have less emphasis, but remember every engine is getting more sophisticated, some at a slower rate than others.
Stay ahead of the game.
More resources:
Featured Image: Costello77/Shutterstock
SEO
Google March 2024 Core Update Officially Completed A Week Ago
Google has officially completed its March 2024 Core Update, ending over a month of ranking volatility across the web.
However, Google didn’t confirm the rollout’s conclusion on its data anomaly page until April 26—a whole week after the update was completed on April 19.
Many in the SEO community had been speculating for days about whether the turbulent update had wrapped up.
The delayed transparency exemplifies Google’s communication issues with publishers and the need for clarity during core updates
Google March 2024 Core Update Timeline & Status
First announced on March 5, the core algorithm update is complete as of April 19. It took 45 days to complete.
Unlike more routine core refreshes, Google warned this one was more complex.
Google’s documentation reads:
“As this is a complex update, the rollout may take up to a month. It’s likely there will be more fluctuations in rankings than with a regular core update, as different systems get fully updated and reinforce each other.”
The aftershocks were tangible, with some websites reporting losses of over 60% of their organic search traffic, according to data from industry observers.
The ripple effects also led to the deindexing of hundreds of sites that were allegedly violating Google’s guidelines.
Addressing Manipulation Attempts
In its official guidance, Google highlighted the criteria it looks for when targeting link spam and manipulation attempts:
- Creating “low-value content” purely to garner manipulative links and inflate rankings.
- Links intended to boost sites’ rankings artificially, including manipulative outgoing links.
- The “repurposing” of expired domains with radically different content to game search visibility.
The updated guidelines warn:
“Any links that are intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”
John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, responded to the turbulence by advising publishers not to make rash changes while the core update was ongoing.
However, he suggested sites could proactively fix issues like unnatural paid links.
“If you have noticed things that are worth improving on your site, I’d go ahead and get things done. The idea is not to make changes just for search engines, right? Your users will be happy if you can make things better even if search engines haven’t updated their view of your site yet.”
Emphasizing Quality Over Links
The core update made notable changes to how Google ranks websites.
Most significantly, Google reduced the importance of links in determining a website’s ranking.
In contrast to the description of links as “an important factor in determining relevancy,” Google’s updated spam policies stripped away the “important” designation, simply calling links “a factor.”
This change aligns with Google’s Gary Illyes’ statements that links aren’t among the top three most influential ranking signals.
Instead, Google is giving more weight to quality, credibility, and substantive content.
Consequently, long-running campaigns favoring low-quality link acquisition and keyword optimizations have been demoted.
With the update complete, SEOs and publishers are left to audit their strategies and websites to ensure alignment with Google’s new perspective on ranking.
Core Update Feedback
Google has opened a ranking feedback form related to this core update.
You can use this form until May 31 to provide feedback to Google’s Search team about any issues noticed after the core update.
While the feedback provided won’t be used to make changes for specific queries or websites, Google says it may help inform general improvements to its search ranking systems for future updates.
Google also updated its help documentation on “Debugging drops in Google Search traffic” to help people understand ranking changes after a core update.
Featured Image: Rohit-Tripathi/Shutterstock
FAQ
After the update, what steps should websites take to align with Google’s new ranking criteria?
After Google’s March 2024 Core Update, websites should:
- Improve the quality, trustworthiness, and depth of their website content.
- Stop heavily focusing on getting as many links as possible and prioritize relevant, high-quality links instead.
- Fix any shady or spam-like SEO tactics on their sites.
- Carefully review their SEO strategies to ensure they follow Google’s new guidelines.
SEO
Google Declares It The “Gemini Era” As Revenue Grows 15%
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, announced its first quarter 2024 financial results today.
While Google reported double-digit growth in key revenue areas, the focus was on its AI developments, dubbed the “Gemini era” by CEO Sundar Pichai.
The Numbers: 15% Revenue Growth, Operating Margins Expand
Alphabet reported Q1 revenues of $80.5 billion, a 15% increase year-over-year, exceeding Wall Street’s projections.
Net income was $23.7 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $1.89. Operating margins expanded to 32%, up from 25% in the prior year.
Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s President and CFO, stated:
“Our strong financial results reflect revenue strength across the company and ongoing efforts to durably reengineer our cost base.”
Google’s core advertising units, such as Search and YouTube, drove growth. Google advertising revenues hit $61.7 billion for the quarter.
The Cloud division also maintained momentum, with revenues of $9.6 billion, up 28% year-over-year.
Pichai highlighted that YouTube and Cloud are expected to exit 2024 at a combined $100 billion annual revenue run rate.
Generative AI Integration in Search
Google experimented with AI-powered features in Search Labs before recently introducing AI overviews into the main search results page.
Regarding the gradual rollout, Pichai states:
“We are being measured in how we do this, focusing on areas where gen AI can improve the Search experience, while also prioritizing traffic to websites and merchants.”
Pichai reports that Google’s generative AI features have answered over a billion queries already:
“We’ve already served billions of queries with our generative AI features. It’s enabling people to access new information, to ask questions in new ways, and to ask more complex questions.”
Google reports increased Search usage and user satisfaction among those interacting with the new AI overview results.
The company also highlighted its “Circle to Search” feature on Android, which allows users to circle objects on their screen or in videos to get instant AI-powered answers via Google Lens.
Reorganizing For The “Gemini Era”
As part of the AI roadmap, Alphabet is consolidating all teams building AI models under the Google DeepMind umbrella.
Pichai revealed that, through hardware and software improvements, the company has reduced machine costs associated with its generative AI search results by 80% over the past year.
He states:
“Our data centers are some of the most high-performing, secure, reliable and efficient in the world. We’ve developed new AI models and algorithms that are more than one hundred times more efficient than they were 18 months ago.
How Will Google Make Money With AI?
Alphabet sees opportunities to monetize AI through its advertising products, Cloud offerings, and subscription services.
Google is integrating Gemini into ad products like Performance Max. The company’s Cloud division is bringing “the best of Google AI” to enterprise customers worldwide.
Google One, the company’s subscription service, surpassed 100 million paid subscribers in Q1 and introduced a new premium plan featuring advanced generative AI capabilities powered by Gemini models.
Future Outlook
Pichai outlined six key advantages positioning Alphabet to lead the “next wave of AI innovation”:
- Research leadership in AI breakthroughs like the multimodal Gemini model
- Robust AI infrastructure and custom TPU chips
- Integrating generative AI into Search to enhance the user experience
- A global product footprint reaching billions
- Streamlined teams and improved execution velocity
- Multiple revenue streams to monetize AI through advertising and cloud
With upcoming events like Google I/O and Google Marketing Live, the company is expected to share further updates on its AI initiatives and product roadmap.
Featured Image: Sergei Elagin/Shutterstock
SEO
brightonSEO Live Blog
Hello everyone. It’s April again, so I’m back in Brighton for another two days of Being the introvert I am, my idea of fun isn’t hanging around our booth all day explaining we’ve run out of t-shirts (seriously, you need to be fast if you want swag!). So I decided to do something useful and live-blog the event instead.
Follow below for talk takeaways and (very) mildly humorous commentary. sun, sea, and SEO!
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