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7 Ways To Tweak Your Content For Better SEO

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Every marketer will tell you – creating high-quality content is no easy feat and getting page views, shares, and conversions is even harder.

But useful, engaging, and easy-to-find content is critical to successful digital strategies – so where do we start?

Defining high-quality in this space is essentially about the balance of two things: the art of the writing itself and the approach to optimization.

Each piece of content designed for your company’s website should be considered with an SEO lens before you publish.

Applying a search lens atop your content strategy helps to ensure that the content you create supports not only the customer journey (the starting point for your content strategy), but also creates cost efficiencies.

How?

Focusing on SEO from the outset can support improved Google Adwords scores. This results in lower cost-per-click (CPC) rates for paid search marketing, for example; and cost savings are something the C-suite always loves.

In this article, we’ll share seven tips to help you make the most out of your content.

1. Ensure Great Content And Structure

Ensuring great content is all about planning.

Do your homework first.

Think about what it is your customer wants to know, and where you are (the expert who can provide them value). From there, decide what you want to say, and where, when, and how your customers will engage, then map out your plan.

An editorial calendar is a great way to get and stay organized. Amid the constant change that defines the current consumer environment, pivots will be needed, but that’s no reason not to plan.

Once you’ve got a calendar that sets out your content needs, you’ll want to set your writers up for success.

Detailed content briefs that outline the user intent or inquiry you’re seeking to address are a good standard practice to adopt.

Process, supported by clear and distinct roles and responsibilities, is important here, too.

Subject matter experts are not necessarily writers; writers may make for great editors, but self-editing is problematic. In short, ensure you’ve got a plan for publication that lets your people do what they do best.

Content comes in many forms and creating content in a variety of formats will help you reach a wider audience.

Check out this article for 100 types of content you can create (with examples).

Format aside, your structure should be simple and intuitive; an introduction followed by a body (where the main content is) and a conclusion sets the standard.

A simple way to think about this is the news approach to content: Say what you’re going to say (introduction), say it (body), and say what you said (conclusion).

2. Show Your Layout Some Love

You’ve thought about structure already, but have you considered the visual experience?

Visual variety is a key component of high-quality communications across platforms and channels.

From text layout and use of whitespace to headings, paragraphs, and imagery, make sure you think through the visual experience of your customer as well.

Paragraphs and headings with a clean layout help readers scan through text, and the use of subheadings throughout will further simplify navigation for your reader.

A good clean layout will supplement the intuitive structure you’ve already planned.

But remember, a sentence does not make a paragraph no matter how you feel about the look of a new sentence on a new line! Each paragraph should cover a single idea or subject, keeping things concise and linking out for more on the topic wherever it makes sense (more on links later!).

From the image perspective, the advice is simple: Use them.

A picture is worth a thousand words, or a bar chart, a graph, a process diagram, a quote of particular importance given prominence through varied font size and script … you get the idea.

In short, use images wherever they help to simplify subjects and as a good way to break up text-heavy content.

Whenever you use images, make sure to optimize them. Here are a few simple tips:

  • Add alt text: Supporting accessibility for customers using assistive screen readers, alt text also helps search engines to identify content on your page.
  • Apply logic to your image names: Image filenames should be readable and simple. They can also be used as alt text.
  • Size does matter: You want to keep your site simple and agile to ensure your pages load quickly. Keep your images under 500 KB and page sizes to less than 5 MB.

3. Optimize The Right Way

Images, of course, aren’t the only part of your page that needs optimization.

The structure and layout already outlined give way to lots of optimization options and the right kinds.

Back in 2011, Google launched the Panda update with the aim of eliminating black hat SEO tactics.

What exactly that means is a long story. Click through for a summary of the why, what we know about the algorithm and a complete timeline.

But the short version is that black hat SEO tactics are ones that aim to increase a site or page’s rank in search engines by violating search engine guidelines (think dirty tricks like invisible text for a simple example).

The right kinds of optimization are in fact simple enough, so there’s no need to get crafty.

Once you focus on optimizing your site information (think site title, site description, page descriptions, and page and title formats), you’re on the right track.

You want to keep things clear and concise. Fifty to 300 characters should provide a relevant readable description of the content on the site and each of the pages using simple and relevant terms.

Length is another key consideration for optimization and not just within your site information sections.

Google likes long articles, but remember, your customer should be at the center of your strategy, so think about their needs and go from there.

We’d suggest a minimum of 300 words for a topic, which can make for a 1,000-word article easily. What you don’t want is something so long it scares readers away.

Nobody wants to read 2,000 words of keyword-stuffed filler (and again, Google won’t thank you for it). Your content should provide value to the reader and need to be fit for your purpose.

4. Use The Right Keywords & Topical Alliance

Speaking of keywords, do your homework.

SEO insights represent the best real-time representation of your customer’s voice, so before you start writing keyword research is critical.

Users search for all sorts of different reasons.

By figuring out what terms your audience is searching for and the intent behind their search, you can customize your content to bolster your search results.

You will want to ensure that you use a mix of long-tail keywords, as well as head terms.

Long-tail keywords address searcher intent while tending to have low search volume, associated low competition, and high conversion.

Conversely, head terms are popular search words representing a broad topic.

Going back to our previous notes on optimization, using focused keywords together with simple substitutes and related terms is an easy win.

Search engine algorithms assess the topic of your content by recognizing your content’s keywords, their associated synonyms, and related terms (back to Panda here – it’s essentially about ensuring that the content you’ve developed has real value to it).

You can think about this as an ingredient list versus a recipe. Your ingredient list might be all the search keywords you need, but it won’t get dinner made without associated instructions, while your step-by-step recipe is the content that provides real value to the reader, bringing much-needed context.

For more information on how best to use keywords, check out this advice from Google.

And if you’re looking for more detail on search intent, we’ve got you covered here.

A quick reminder: Search intent is all about focusing on the why (informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional).

So by first researching keywords broadly and then seeking to understand how the content you’re developing will serve your user’s needs, you’ll be better positioned to maximize value (both for your customer and your Adword budget).

Understanding intent and combining that knowledge with other keyword metrics like search volume, CPC, and difficulty will enable you to serve up the right content at the right times.

How?

Take note of search engine results pages (SERPs) features by keyword, and from there, match your content to compete with the top ones.

5. Master The Art Of Meta Description Copywriting

Displayed on SERPs below the title of the page, meta descriptions don’t directly influence rankings, but they are a key piece of optimizing click-through rates.

Make sure yours are used to accurately describe the content on your page clearly and concisely and make them engaging. Treat your meta descriptions as copy, just like you would ad copy.

A well-written meta description can entice your audience to click on your listing over others that may not be quite as interesting, thereby improving click-through rates.

Let’s be clear here: Well-written is always important, and getting it right across the board (that is across your entire website and each of its pages) is the goal.

But with quick wins in mind, optimizing meta descriptions (which are short in nature at somewhere between 156 and 165 characters recommended) is a must.

Plus, a site-wide review can be a great place to flex your writing and editing muscles, ensuring a consistent brand character and tone across your site in the process.

For a deeper dive on meta descriptions, why they’re important, and how best to approach them, including some winning examples, check out this article.

The TL;DR version: Keep these seven tips top of mind:

  • Know what your competitors are doing.
  • Map your customer’s journey.
  • Use your brand voice.
  • Incorporate the right keywords.
  • Take advantage of trends.
  • Target specific intents.
  • Refresh your copy.

6. Make Sure You’re Relevant

Discussing keywords and synonyms, as well as search intent, we’ve touched on relevance already, but let’s take a moment to dive deeper.

After all, doing so has the potential to increase our credibility as an expert in our field, and thus the source and top search hit.

Bringing us back to basics, let’s agree that search engines analyze web content to assess whether a particular page contains information that might be relevant to a user based on that user’s search term.

Once we take that simple statement as the basis for the use case, we then must place ourselves in the mind of our users and their needs.

To do the job efficiently, a search engine must assess a user’s search term based on certain key factors.

That being the case, relevance becomes situational in nature; therefore your optimization goals should be, too.

The short version: You cannot be all things to all people.

In general terms, key ranking factors are openly shared by Google and include the meaning of the query (think intent, determined using language modeling), content quality and usability, as well as context and setting.

The specifics (well, don’t get us started on the challenges of SEO), but broadly speaking, let’s just say that you should think about your content and its relevance in the same way you’d want your search results to respond to your personal needs.

Be your own artificial intelligence. Assess the environment, and then lean into the places you are most relevant to maximize your ROI.

Ranking systems are designed to sort through all available content and serve up the most useful to the searcher, as such, they are not one single algorithm, but rather made up of a whole series of algorithms.

In addition to seeking the terms used in your search entry, ranking systems will evaluate source expertise and consider geographical location, for example.

As a basic relevance criterion, location information provides an incredible opportunity for niche businesses with great content to maximize ROI.

By establishing a site as a reliable source within a certain radius, a credible thought leader in their space with the right blog content (read timely in nature and regularly providing thoughtful commentary on trending topics), an organization can focus content development dollars on a targeted area with the aim of local brand awareness with demonstrable impacts, leveraging click-through as a key performance indicator.

7. Leverage Your Links

Straight off the bat, let’s agree that it’s possible to perform well in SERPs without backlinks, even Google’s John Mueller says so himself.

That’s out of the way, so let’s align that Domain Authority (which predicts how likely a website is to rank in SERPs) is impacted by the credibility granted to your content by other credible sources linking to it.

You can measure your Domain Authority with SEO tools like Moz and Ahrefs.

We’ve been talking about external promoters, but let’s not forget the importance of internal links, as well.

Ahrefs has you covered here, too, with internal backlinks reporting supplying a measurement of your internal linking efforts.

Your site structure should be set up to optimize internal links.

It makes sense from not just an SEO perspective, but from the client experience perspective that a well-structured site will enable your user to click through your site in line with their information appetite.

Conclusion

Great content is key to an ever-growing list of client experience strategies.

From broad marketing strategies to targeted client acquisition and public relations plans, to search across sectors and specialties, great content has a role to play in every business’s digital strategy.

For your content to attain higher rankings, you need to consider every area of optimization.

If you’re only focusing on body copy, you’re missing out.

While the setup may seem time-consuming, an investment in SEO optimization – truly knowing your audience and delivering accordingly – is well worthwhile.

Outside of the knowledge that planning effectively will yield better customer-centric content, you can rest assured that doing the thinking around SEO optimization will also provide value to your digital budgets.

In time, and through great effort and consistency, following tried-and-tested optimization tips, your new (and improved) content may just appear on the first page of your soon-to-be newest clients search.

More Resources:


Featured Image: VectorMine/Shutterstock

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The Lean Guide (With Template)

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The Lean Guide (With Template)

A competitive analysis (or market competitive analysis) is a process where you collect information about competitors to gain an edge over them and get more customers.

However, the problem is that “traditional” competitive analysis is overkill for most businesses — it requires impractical data and takes too long to complete (and it’s very expensive if you choose to outsource). 

A solution to that is a lean approach to the process — and that’s what this guide is about. 

In other words, we’ll focus on the most important data you need to answer the question: “Why would people choose them over you?”. No boring theory, outtakes from marketing history, or spending hours digging up nice-to-have information.

In this guide, you will find:

  • A real-life competitive analysis example.
  • Templates: one for input data and one for a slide deck to present your analysis to others.
  • Step-by-step instructions.

Our template consists of two documents: a slide deck and a spreadsheet. 

The Slide deck is the output document. It will help you present the analysis to your boss or your teammates.

The spreadsheet is the input document. You will find tables that act as the data source for the charts from the slide deck, as well as a prompt to use in ChatGPT to help you with user review research.

Competitive analysis template — spreadsheet sneak peek.Competitive analysis template — spreadsheet sneak peek.

We didn’t focus on aesthetics here; every marketer likes to do slide decks their own way, so feel free to edit everything you’ll find there. 

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the process. The template consists of these six tasks: 

  1. Identify your direct competitors. 
  2. Compare share of voice. 
  3. Compare pricing and features.
  4. Find strong and weak points based on reviews.
  5. Compare purchasing convenience.
  6. Present conclusions.

Going forward, we’ll explain why these steps matter and show how to complete them. 

1. Identify your direct competitors

Direct competitors are businesses that offer a similar solution to the same audience. 

They matter a lot more than indirect competitors (i.e. businesses with different products but targeting the same audience as you) because you’ll be compared with them often (e.g. in product reviews and rankings). Plus, your audience is more likely to gravitate towards them when considering different options. 

You probably have a few direct competitors in mind already, but here are a few ways to find others based on organic search and paid search ads

Our basis for the analysis was Landingi, a SaaS for building landing pages (we chose that company randomly). So in our case, we found these 3 direct competitors. 

Slide 1 — direct competitors.Slide 1 — direct competitors.

Look at keyword overlap

Keyword overlap uncovers sites that target the same organic keywords as you. Some sites will compete with you for traffic but not for customers (e.g. G2 may share some keywords with Landingi but they’re a different business). However, in many cases, you will find direct competitors just by looking at this marketing channel. 

  • Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and enter your site’s address. 
  • Scroll down to Organic competitors
  • Visit the URLs to pick 3 – 5 direct competitors.
Top organic competitors data from Ahrefs.Top organic competitors data from Ahrefs.

To double-check the choice of competitors, we also looked at who was bidding for search ads on Google.

See who’s advertising 

If someone is spending money to show ads for keywords related to what you do, that’s a strong indication they are a direct competitor. 

  • Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.
  • Type in a few broad keywords related to your niche, like “landing page builder” or “landing page tool”. 
  • Go to the Ads history report. 
  • Visit the sites that have a high presence of ads in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). 
Ads history report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.Ads history report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

Once you’re done checking both reports, write down competitors in the deck. 

You can also take screenshots of the reports and add them to your deck to show the supporting data for your argument. 

 Slide 2 — direct competitors by organic traffic. Slide 2 — direct competitors by organic traffic.

2. Compare share of voice

Share of voice is a measure of your reach in any given channel compared to competitors. 

A bigger share of voice (SOV) means that your competitors are more likely to reach your audience. In other words, they may be promoting more effectively than you. 

In our example, we found that Landingi’s SOV was the lowest in both of these channels. 

Organic: 

Slide 3 — share of voice on Google Search.Slide 3 — share of voice on Google Search.

And social media:

 Slide 4 — share of voice on social media. Slide 4 — share of voice on social media.

Here’s how we got that data using Ahrefs and Brand24.

Organic share of voice 

Before we start, make sure you have a project set up in Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker

Create a new project in Ahrefs' Rank Tracker.Create a new project in Ahrefs' Rank Tracker.

Now: 

  • Go to Ahrefs’ Competitive Analysis and enter your and your competitors’s sites as shown below. 
Create a new project in Ahrefs' Rank Tracker.
Create a new project in Ahrefs' Rank Tracker.
  • On the next screen, set the country with the most important market for your business and set the filters like this:
Content gap analysis filter setup.Content gap analysis filter setup.
  • Select keywords that sound most relevant to your business (even if you don’t rank for them yet) and Add them to Rank Tracker
Common keywords found via Ahrefs' Competitive Analysis.Common keywords found via Ahrefs' Competitive Analysis.
  • Go to Rank Tracker, open your project, and look for Competitors/Overview. This report will uncover automatically calculated Share of Voice
Organic share of voice data in Ahrefs.Organic share of voice data in Ahrefs.
  • Add the numbers in corresponding cells inside the sheet and paste the graph inside the slide deck. 
Filling the share of voice template with data.Filling the share of voice template with data.

It’s normal that the numbers don’t add up to 100%. SOV is calculated by including sites that compete with you in traffic but are not your direct competitors, e.g. blogs. 

Social share of voice 

We can also measure our share of voice across social media channels using Brand24.

  • Go to Brand24.
  • Start a New project for your brand and each competitor. Use the competitors’ brand name as the keyword to monitor. 
  • Go to the Comparison report and compare your project with competitors. 
Using Brand24's Comparison tool for competitive analysis.Using Brand24's Comparison tool for competitive analysis.
  • Take a screenshot of the SOV charts and paste them into the slide deck. Make sure the charts are set to “social media”.
Social media tab in share of voice report.Social media tab in share of voice report.

3. Compare pricing and features

Consumers often choose solutions that offer the best value for money — simple as that. And that typically comes down to two things: 

  • Whether you have the features they care about. We’ll use all features available across all plans to see how likely the product is to satisfy user needs.
  • How much they will need to pay. Thing is, the topic of pricing is tricky: a) when assessing affordability, people often focus on the least expensive option available and use it as a benchmark, b) businesses in the SaaS niche offer custom plans. So to make things more practical, we’ll compare the cheapest plans, but feel free to run this analysis across all pricing tiers.

After comparing our example company to competitors, we found that it goes head-to-head with Unbounce as the most feature-rich solution on the market. 

Slide 5 — features vs. pricing.Slide 5 — features vs. pricing.

Here’s how we got that data. 

  • Note down your and your competitors’ product features. One of the best places to get this information is pricing pages. Some brands even publish their own competitor comparisons — you may find them helpful too. 
  • While making the list, place a “1” in the cell corresponding to the brand that offers the solution.
Filling data in the spreadsheet.Filling data in the spreadsheet.
  • Enter the price of the cheapest plan (excluding free plans). 
Adding pricing data inside the spreadsheet.Adding pricing data inside the spreadsheet.
  • Once finished, copy the chart and paste it inside the deck. 

4. Find strong and weak points based on user reviews

User reviews can show incredibly valuable insight into your competitors’ strong and weak points. Here’s why this matters:

  • Improving on what your competitors’ customers appreciate could help you attract similar customers and possibly win some over.
  • Dissatisfaction with competitors is a huge opportunity. Some businesses are built solely to fix what other companies can’t fix. 

Here’s a sample from our analysis: 

 Slide 6 — likes and dislikes about Competitors. Slide 6 — likes and dislikes about Competitors.

And here’s how we collated the data using ChatGPT. Important: repeat the process for each competitor.

  • Open ChatGPT and enter the prompt from the template.
ChatGPT prompt for competitive analysis.ChatGPT prompt for competitive analysis.
  • Go to G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot and find a competitor’s reviews with ratings from 2 – 4 (i.e. one rating above the lowest and one below the highest possible). Reason:

businesses sometimes solicit five-star reviews, whereas dissatisfied customers tend to leave one-star reviews in a moment of frustration. The most actionable feedback usually comes in between.

  • Copy and paste the content of the reviews into ChatGPT (don’t hit enter yet). 
  • Once you’re done pasting all reviews, hit enter in ChatGPT to run the analysis.
Sample of ChatGPT output with charts.Sample of ChatGPT output with charts.
  • Paste the graphs into the deck. If you want the graphs to look different, don’t hesitate to ask the AI. 

There’s a faster alternative, but it’s a bit more advanced. 

Instead of copy-pasting, you can use a scraping tool like this one to get all reviews at once. The downside here is that not all review sources will a have scraping tool available. 

5. Compare purchasing convenience

Lastly, we’ll see how easy it is to actually buy your products, and compare the experience to your competitors. 

This is a chance to simplify your checkout process, and even learn from any good habits your competitors have adopted.

For example, we found that our sample company had probably nothing to worry about in this area — they ticked almost all of the boxes. 

Slide 7 — purchasing convenience.Slide 7 — purchasing convenience.

Here’s how to complete this step:

  • Place a “1” if you or any of your competitors offer convenience features listed in the template. 
  • Once done, copy the chart and paste it into the deck.

Step 6. Present conclusions

This is the part of the presentation where you sum up all of your findings and suggest a course of action. 

Here are two examples: 

  • Landingi had the lowest SOV in the niche, and that is never good. So the conclusion might be to go a level deeper and do an SEO competitive analysis, and to increase social media presence by creating more share-worthy content like industry surveys, design/CRO tips, or in-house data studies.
  • Although the brand had a very high purchasing convenience score, during the analysis we found that there was a $850 gap between the monthly full plan and the previous tier. The conclusion here might be to offer a custom plan (like competitors do) to fill that gap. 

We encourage you to take your time here and think about what would make the most sense for your business. 

Tip

It’s good to be specific in your conclusions, but don’t go too deep. Competitive analysis concerns many aspects of the business, so it’s best to give other departments a chance to chime in. Just because your competitors have a few unique features doesn’t necessarily mean you need to build them too.

Final thoughts 

A competitive analysis is one of the most fruitful exercises in marketing. It can show you areas for improvement, give ideas for new features, and help you discover gaps in your strategy. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it’s fundamental to running a successful business. 

Just don’t forget to balance “spying” on your competitors with innovation. After all, you probably don’t want to become an exact copy of someone else’s brand. 

In other words, use competitive analysis to keep up with your competitors, but don’t let that erase what’s unique about your brand or make you forget your big vision. 

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Critical WordPress Form Plugin Vulnerability Affects Up To +200,000 Installs

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Critical WordPress Form Plugin Vulnerability Affects Up To +200,000 Installs

Security researchers at Wordfence detailed a critical security flaw in the MW WP Form plugin, affecting versions 5.0.1 and earlier. The vulnerability allows unauthenticated threat actors to exploit the plugin by uploading arbitrary files, including potentially malicious PHP backdoors, with the ability to execute these files on the server.

MW WP Form Plugin

The MW WP Form plugin helps to simplify form creation on WordPress websites using a shortcode builder.

It makes it easy for users to create and customize forms with various fields and options.

The plugin has many features, including one that allows file uploads using the [mwform_file name=”file”] shortcode for the purpose of data collection. It is this specific feature that is exploitable in this vulnerability.

Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload Vulnerability

An Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload Vulnerability is a security issue that allows hackers to upload potentially harmful files to a website. Unauthenticated means that the attacker does not need to be registered with the website or need any kind of permission level that comes with a user permission level.

These kinds of vulnerabilities can lead to remote code execution, where the uploaded files are executed on the server, with the potential to allow the attackers to exploit the website and site visitors.

The Wordfence advisory noted that the plugin has a check for unexpected filetypes but that it doesn’t function as it should.

According to the security researchers:

“Unfortunately, although the file type check function works perfectly and returns false for dangerous file types, it throws a runtime exception in the try block if a disallowed file type is uploaded, which will be caught and handled by the catch block.

…even if the dangerous file type is checked and detected, it is only logged, while the function continues to run and the file is uploaded.

This means that attackers could upload arbitrary PHP files and then access those files to trigger their execution on the server, achieving remote code execution.”

There Are Conditions For A Successful Attack

The severity of this threat depends on the requirement that the “Saving inquiry data in database” option in the form settings is required to be enabled in order for this security gap to be exploited.

The security advisory notes that the vulnerability is rated critical with a score of 9.8 out of 10.

Actions To Take

Wordfence strongly advises users of the MW WP Form plugin to update their versions of the plugin.

The vulnerability is patched in the lutes version of the plugin, version 5.0.2.

The severity of the threat is particularly critical for users who have enabled the “Saving inquiry data in database” option in the form settings and that is compounded by the fact that no permission levels are needed to execute this attack.

Read the Wordfence advisory:

Update ASAP! Critical Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload in MW WP Form Allows Malicious Code Execution

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Alexander_P

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How SEOs Make the Web Better

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How SEOs Make the Web Better

SEOs catch flak for ruining the web, but they play a crucial role in the search ecosystem, and actually make the internet better for everyone.

Let’s get the criticism out of the way. There are bad actors in SEO, people who seek to extract money from the internet regardless of the cost to others. There are still scams and snake oil, posers and plagiarists. Many parts of the web have become extremely commercialized, with paid advertising and big brands displacing organic and user-generated content.

But while there are situations where SEOs have made things worse, to fixate on them is to ignore the colossal elephant in the room: in the ways that really matter, the web is the best it’s ever been:

  • It’s the easiest it has ever been to find information on the internet. Searchers have a staggering array of tutorials, teardowns, and tips at their fingertips, containing information that is generally accurate and helpful—and this was not always the case.
  • Bad actors have a smaller influence over search. Search is less of a Wild West than it used to be. Once-scam-ridden topics are subject to significant scrutiny, and the problems and loopholes in search that need fixing today—like big brands and generic content receiving undue prominence—are smaller and less painful than the problems of the past.
  • More people use search to their benefit. Online content is the most accessible it has ever been, and it’s easier than ever to grow a local business or expand into international markets on the back of search.

SEOs have played a crucial role in these improvements, poking and prodding, building and—sometimes—breaking. They are Google power users: the people who push the system to extremes, but in doing so, catalyze the change needed to make search better for everyone.

Let’s explore how.

SEOs help regular people benefit from search

SEOs are much-needed intermediaries between Google and the rest of the world, helping non-technical people acquire and benefit from search engine traffic.

There is a huge amount of valuable information locked up in the heads of people who have no idea how to build a website or index a blog post. A carpet fitter with a bricks-and-mortar business might have decades of experience solving costly problems with uneven subfloors or poor moisture management, but no understanding of how to share that information online.

SEOs provide little nudges towards topics that people care about and writing that’s accessible to people and robots. They help solve technical problems that would hinder or completely block a site from appearing in search results. They identify opportunities for companies to be rewarded for creating great content.

It’s a win-win: businesses are rewarded with traffic, searchers have their intent satisfied, and the world is made a little richer for the newfound knowledge it contains.

SEOs turn helpful standards into real websites

SEOs do many things to actively make the web a better place, tending to their own plot of the Google garden to make sure it flourishes.

Take, for example, the myriad standards and guidelines designed to make the web a more accessible place for users. The implementation of these standards—turning theoretical guidelines into real, concrete parts of the web—often happens because of the SEO team.

Technical SEOs play a big part in adhering to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, a set of principles designed to ensure online content is “perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust” for every user. Every SEO’s fixation with Core Web Vitals fuels a faster, more efficient web. Content teams translate Google’s helpful content guidelines into useful words and images on a page.

(Case in point: check out Aleyda Solis’ Content Helpfulness Analyzer.)

Screenshot: Aleyda Solis' helpful content GPTScreenshot: Aleyda Solis' helpful content GPT

There is a lot of overlap between “things that help users” and “things that improve search performance.” Even if the motive behind these changes is as simple as generating more traffic, a well-optimized website is, generally speaking, one that is also great for real human beings trying to engage with it.

SEOs pressure-test Google’s systems

The biggest criticism leveled at SEOs is that they break things. And they do! But that breakage acts as a type of pressure testing that strengthens the system as a whole.

Abuse of spintax and keyword stuffing forced Google to develop a better understanding of on-page content. Today, that loophole is closed, but more importantly, Google is much better at understanding the contents of a page and its relationship to a website as a whole.

Hacks like hiding keywords with white text on a white background (or moving them beyond the visible bounds of the screen) forced Google to expand its understanding of page styling and CSS, and how on-page information interacts with the environment that contains it.

Even today’s deluge of borderline-plagiarised AI content is not without benefit: it creates a very clear incentive for Google to get better at rewarding information gain and prioritizing publishers with solid EEAT credentials. These improvements will make tomorrow’s version of search much better.

This isn’t just Google fixing what SEOs broke: these changes usually leave lasting benefits that extend beyond any single spam tactic and make search better for all of its users.

Illustration: how fixing problems leads to smaller future problems and improved search experienceIllustration: how fixing problems leads to smaller future problems and improved search experience

This is not to argue that blackhat SEO is desirable. It would be better to make these improvements without incurring pain along the way. But Search is huge and complicated, and Google has little incentive to spend money proactively fixing problems and loopholes.

If we can’t solve every issue before it causes pain, we should be grateful for a correction mechanism that prevents it—and more extreme abuse—from happening in the future. SEOs break the system, and in doing so, make future breakages a lot less severe.

SEOs are the internet’s quality assurance team

Some SEOs take advantage of the loopholes they discover—but many don’t. They choose to raise these issues in public spaces, encourage discussion, and seek out a fix, acting like a proxy quality assurance team.

At the small end of the spectrum, SEOs often flag bugs with Google systems, like a recent error in Search Console reporting flagged independently by three separate people, or Tom Anthony famously catching an oversight in Google’s Manual Actions database. While these types of problems don’t always impact the average user’s experience using Google, they help keep search systems working as intended.

At the other end of the scale, this feedback can extend as far as the overarching quality of the search experience, like AJ Kohn writing about Google’s propensity to reward big brands over small brands, or Lily Ray calling out an uptick in spam content in Google Discover.

SEOs are Google’s most passionate users. They interact with it at a scale far beyond the average user, and they can identify trends and changes at a macroscopic level. As a result, they are usually the first to discover problems—but also the people who hold Google to the highest standard. They are a crucial part of the feedback loop that fuels improvements.

SEOs act as a check-and-balance

Lastly, SEOs act as a check-and-balance, gathering firsthand evidence of how search systems operate, letting us differentiate between useful advice, snake oil, and Google’s PR bluster. 

Google shares lots of useful guidance, but it’s important to recognize the limits of their advice. They are a profit-seeking company, and Search requires opacity to work—if everyone understood how it worked, everyone would game it, and it would stop working. Mixed in with the good advice is a healthy portion of omission and misdirection.

Google Search plays a vital role in controlling the flow of the web’s information—it is simply too important for us to leave its mechanics, biases, and imperfections unexplored. We need people who can interrogate the systems just enough to separate fact from fiction and understand how the pieces fit together.

We need people like Mic King, and his insanely detailed write-up of SGE and RAG; Britney Muller and her demystification of LLMs; the late Bill Slawki’s unfaltering patent analysis; or our own Patrick Stox’s efforts in piecing together how search works.

Screenshot from Patrick Stox's presentation, How Search WorksScreenshot from Patrick Stox's presentation, How Search Works

Final thoughts

The web has problems. We can and should expect more from Google Search. But the problems we need to solve today are far less severe and painful than the problems that needed solving in the past; and the people who have the highest expectations, and will be most vocal in shaping that positive future, are—you guessed it—SEOs.

To SEOs: the cause of (and solution to) all of the web’s problems.



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