SEO
FAQs, How To Set Up & Time-Saving Tips
As the world’s largest social network, Facebook can be a great way for marketers to reach their target audiences through ads.
With approximately 2.70 billion monthly active users, this is a digital channel worth targeting.
But how can you be sure you’re making the most of your precious budget if you’re new to Facebook advertising?
Here are some Facebook ads tips to get you started and help give you an edge on this popular platform.
3 Quick-Fire Answers To Common Facebook Ads Questions
First, let’s address a few of the greatest concerns and questions people have around Facebook advertising.
How Much Does Facebook Advertising Cost?
When it comes to the cost of a Facebook ad, it really depends.
Recent research by AdEspresso reveals that the primary factors that impact the cost of Facebook ads are:
- Timing: Time and day the Facebook ad shows.
- Bidding strategy: Lowest cost or a specific bid cap.
- Ad placement: Higher-competition placements cost more.
- Ad relevance: Low scores engagement ranking, quality ranking, or conversion ranking can increase the costs of the Facebook ad.
- Target audience: Higher competition audiences cost more with Facebook ad campaigns.
AdEspresso also calculated the average cost per click:
- Impressions: $0.98.
- Reach: $1.03.
- Lead generation: $0.67.
- Conversions: $0.25.
- Link clicks: $0.16.
How Does Facebook Advertising Work?
Facebook advertising is sorted by campaigns.
A new Facebook campaign can have one or several Facebook ads in it.
Facebook ads target users based on their location, demographic, and profile information.
The ad will then appear on the person’s screen as they scroll through their Facebook feed.
Views are recorded as impressions.
Likes and comments on Facebook ads are recorded as engagement.
Clicks – which can take the person to another website, an online store, or a Facebook page or offer, depending on the campaign objective – are recorded as clicks, cost per click, click-through rate, and more.
You can read How Facebook Ads Actually Work to learn more.
Are Facebook Ads Worth It?
Facebook ads are 100% worth it if you’re looking to get more visibility, generate more leads, and convert more customers.
Start By Setting Up Your Facebook Ads Manager Account
To start advertising on Facebook, you first need to set up your Facebook Ads Manager account.
- Log into Facebook.
- Select Menu and Ad from the drop-down menu in the top right corner.
- At the bottom, click on the Got to Ads Manager prompt at the bottom left corner.
Facebook Ads Manager will create an account for you and guide you through setting up your first ad campaign.
You can also create Facebook Ads and your new Facebook ad campaign through your Facebook Business Manager account by clicking the drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of your Facebook page and selecting Ads Manager.
It’s Time To Create Your First Facebook Ads Campaign
Click on the + Create button in the Campaigns tab, and let’s jump into Facebook advertising!
Step 1: Identify Your Goal
First, decide what you want your Facebook ad campaigns to do. Do you need more website traffic?
Do you want to grow your email database through lead gen?
What do you want Facebook users to do with your Facebook ad?
Facebook Ads provides 11 objectives to support your overarching objective.
Choose one.
- Brand awareness: Make non-customers aware of your brand.
- Reach: Let your advert and message reach a wider scope of your target audience.
- Traffic: Direct clicks and visits to a specific website, mobile app, or Facebook Messenger chat.
- Engagement: Raise the volume of post engagements, Likes, Page follows, or event engagement.
- App installations: Increase downloads for your application.
- Video views: Get more views on your videos.
- Lead gen: Capture more potential customers and leads into your funnel.
- Conversations: Improve engagement with your business through Facebook Messenger.
- Conversions: Get the desired outcome or action (such as subscribe, download, etc.) on your landing page, web app, or Facebook Messenger.
- Product sales: Integrate Facebook ads with your product catalog so that people see ads for items they are more likely to buy.
- Store traffic: Direct more customers to your physical store.
Conversion-based objectives (like sales and installs) on your Facebook advertising campaigns will be charged per action, and exposure-based goals (like website visits and views) will be charged per impression.
Step 2: Set Your Budget And Schedule
Enter the name of your Facebook ad campaign at the top of this screen.
This is just for your records. Set and choose the page to promote.
Set your budget by choosing a daily or lifetime budget, as well as the start and end dates.
You can schedule your ad to go live in the future or choose to publish it right away.
Facebook Ads Tip: Leverage Campaign Budget Optimization
Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) is a feature provided by Facebook advertising that could be worth utilizing.
CBO allows you to determine your budget at a campaign level rather than the ad set stage.
Doing so will allow Facebook to optimize your budget across different ad sets within the campaign.
Why is this good?
The bulk of your budget will be spent on the target audience or audiences that bring better results.
This should result in more conversions and a lower cost per conversion.
Step 3: Select Your Audience
Scroll down a bit further to build your target audience.
Facebook Ads Tip: Use custom audiences.
Your first choice – and we think the best – is for a custom audience.
This might be alarming for a first-time Facebook Ads user, but here are the tips you need to win at Facebook Ads custom audiences.
Most businesses find their ideal customer by targeting people already familiar with their brand.
These include:
- Old and current customers.
- Website visitors.
- Facebook page followers.
- Etc.
Directing your Facebook ads to these warmer groups of people will get a better result than if you were targeting a cold audience base.
This is done through the creation of custom audiences.
We recommend starting with your customer file and website visitors.
However, if you cannot create a custom audience, use the audience builder provided by Facebook.
Choose your target location (city, country, etc.), age, gender, and language.
Detailed targeting in your Facebook ad campaign allows you to keep or remove an audience based on their demographics, what they are interested in, and their behaviors.
Use this to micro-focus, for example, selecting those interested in car and household insurance, but not life insurance.
You can also include or exclude those who follow your Facebook page or application or have attended or joined an online event for a warmer lead.
Tip: Make Use Of Facebook Lookalike Audiences
Facebook also provides lookalike audiences.
This type of audience replicates an existing audience to help you find people you have already identified as your ideal customer.
This means you can use your existing leads or customers (100 or more), upload this list to Facebook, and Facebook Ads can send your ads to people who are like your ideal customer.
Step 4: Select Where Your Facebook Ads Are Placed
Further down the page, you can identify where your Facebook ads will appear.
Facebook Ads Tip: Utilize Automatic Placements
By selecting this option, Facebook automatically places your advertisements across their platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network.
They decide which platforms to deploy the ad on to get optimal results.
Step 5: Set Brand Safety And Bidding Strategy
Next, you can scroll down to the Brand Safety section.
You can choose to avoid sensitive content, and add specific blocklists such as specific websites, videos, and publishers.
Facebook Ads Tip: Choose The Lowest Cost Bid Strategy
Here is a Facebook Ads tip that is not widely known.
Facebook offers two Facebook ad bidding strategies:
- Lowest Cost: Facebook Ads defaults to this, so most Facebook campaigns use this strategy, and this is recommended.
- Target Cost: This could be the better bidding strategy for you if you want to grow an ad campaign or let it continue running for a while.
The potential reach and conversion estimates appear on the right side of the screen. These are just estimates and can be used as a guide.
Step 6: Create Your Facebook Ad
There are a bunch of ad formats to choose from.
Our tip is that you test out different Facebook ads to find out what works best for your audience.
- Newsfeed Ad: These show up in your newsfeed.
- Right Column Ad: Pretty basic ad, with a headline, description, and single image. Works on desktop.
- Lead Ads: Allows quick opt-in to newsletters and quotes directly from their mobile devices. Contact details auto-populate in the form fields.
- Carousel Ads: Also known as multi-product ads, allow you to showcase up to 10 images and links with each ad.
- Dynamic Product Ads (DPA): Remarketing ads that target users who had past actions or inactions on your site are timed to perfection.
- Page Post Links: Ideal for promoting your external website. Describe your offer with a large feature image, post text, and link description.
- Canvas Ads: Mobile-optimized option; these ads are an animated storytelling ad type.
- Event Ads: Ideal for a specific event.
- Offer Ads: Best to increase redemption rates.
- Mobile App Install Ads: Promote your app install on mobile and connect your Apple App Store or Google Play account.
- Desktop App Install Ads: The desktop Facebook app version of Mobile App Install Ads.
- GIF Ads: These are like a standard newsfeed ad, but with the GIF creativity included.
6 Slick Tips On How To Get Creative With Facebook Ads
It starts with a captivating headline.
Your headline impacts the click-through rate (CTR) and the cost-per-click (CPC).
A recent study revealed that 59% of people do not read more than the headline of a Facebook share before commenting and sharing.
Thankfully, Facebook Ads allows us to carry out multiple A/B tests to discover which headline people respond to!
Here’s how to write a great headline.
Keep Your Headline Short
A recent study found that headlines with 60-100 characters get the highest click-through rates.
Your headline needs to be short and catchy.
Use Emotive Words
Use your power words in your headline.
Words like:
- Instant.
- Free.
- Right now.
- Startling.
- Reveal.
- You.
Here’s Buffer’s list of 898 power words if you need more.
Use Numbers
You can also use numbers. People prefer to click on an ad with a headline that starts with a number.
Consider including these numbers in your Facebook ads:
- Value of the discount.
- Length of the free trial period.
- Number of customers.
Create A Sense Of Urgency
Scarcity and urgency inspire consumers to take action.
Ensure your ad has some kind of deadline, limitation, or cut-off.
Use Clear Calls-To-Action And Your “Doing Words”
Where is the best place for your call to action or verb?
Right there in your ad’s headline.
Include words like ‘get, download, start.’
Be specific and relevant, e.g., “Start learning today” or “Get your free trial.”
Avoid Stock Images And Use Videos Where You Can
Real photos perform better than stock photos, with nearly 35% of website visitors more likely to sign up when they see the real image.
Facebook video ads increase clicks and lower CPC and are just as easy to create as regular image ads.
To create a Facebook video ad, go to Facebook Ads Manager, create a new campaign, and upload a video.
Now You’re Ready To Track And Optimize Facebook Ads Performance
The Facebook Ads Manager dashboard lets you track your campaigns closely.
This ensures you invest in an ad that’s performing well rather than a campaign that isn’t.
Add the Facebook Pixel to your website landing page to track how your ads perform.
In the beginning, you may want to run a few ads with small audiences and budgets.
From this, you will better understand which is the best performing ad that can become the primary campaign once you have determined what works best.
So, now you have what you need to get started on Facebook Ads.
No matter what level of Facebook ad expertise you demonstrate, you now have the tips and tricks necessary to get your product in front of the customers you are most interested in reaching.
More resources:
Featured Image: Fonstra/Shutterstock
SEO
The Most Engaged YouTube Fans For NCAA Basketball Teams
Imagine that you head up digital marketing at Turner Sports or CBS Sports, which have the exclusive rights to license NCAA marks, tickets, and taglines in commercial promotions.
Or suppose that your social video agency was just invited to pitch AT&T, Capital One, or Coca-Cola, which are official NCAA corporate champions.
And you have an assignment to identify the most engaged YouTube fans for the NCAA Division 1 Men’s and Women’s basketball teams.
I realize that you probably don’t work at one of those sports media and entertainment companies and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be asked to pitch one of those brands in the foreseeable future.
So, why should you care about what makes engaged NCAA fans on YouTube?
Keep reading, there is method in the madness.
Cognitive, Emotional, And Behavioral Metrics
As mentioned previously, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has identified 30 metrics – 7 cognitive, 4 emotional, and 19 behavioral – that brands or agencies can use to measure the “engagement continuum.”
But fan engagement can fluctuate depending on whether a college basketball team is on the bubble, makes it to the Big Dance, or goes deep into the Sweet 16, Elite Eight, and Final Four.
Fan engagement can also vary depending on the number of logo 3s, buzzer beaters, or overtime wins.
That’s why this hypothetical assignment is so hard.
Nevertheless, exploring various video engagement metrics from several video intelligence sources can help you better understand the most engaged YouTube fans for NCAA basketball teams and how to apply what you’ve learned to your brands or clients.
Here are three cognitive metrics that you should explore when measuring engagement:
- Change in Brand Awareness/Familiarity: You can use surveys to measure the extent your brand is recognized by potential customers before and after this year’s NCAA tournaments.
- Change in Brand Consideration: You can also use pre- and post-March Madness surveys to measure your brand’s inclusion in a set customers would select from.
- Change in Purchase Intent: You can also use Brand Lift surveys to measure the delta in customers’ plans or willingness to purchase your brand in the future.
Here are three emotional metrics that you should look at using to measure engagement:
- Change in Baseline Brand Perception: Surveys enable you to measure the pre-post delta in what potential customers think and feel about your brand.
- Change in Baseline Brand Favorability: Surveys also enable you to measure what potential customers like and value about your brand before and after the Big Dance.
- Change in Baseline Brand Loyalty: Surveys enable you to measure customer loyalty in terms of weight and frequency of usage – as well as likelihood to switch – from Selection Sunday, March 17, to the women’s NCAA championship game on Sunday, April 7, and the men’s NCAA championship game on Monday, April 8, 2024.
Here are six behavioral metrics worth exploring to measure engagement:
- Watch Time: The total amount of time viewers spend watching a video, including any replays or rewatches, should be a key metric. Since it’s only available if you have access to your brand or client’s YouTube Analytics, digital marketers and social video agencies use “views” as a metric to compare videos across other YouTube channels.
- Applause Rate: The number of likes a YouTube video gets.
- Amplification Rate: The number of shares a YouTube video gets.
- Conversation Rate: The number of comments a YouTube video gets.
- Engaged-View Conversions (EVCs): In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), an engaged-view conversion (EVC) indicates that someone watched a YouTube video for at least 10 seconds and then converted on your website or app within 3 days of viewing the video.
- Economic Value: This is the monetary value of visitors from YouTube to your site who go on to complete micro conversions like subscribing to a newsletter or initiating a chat with your business, as well as macro conversions like purchasing a product or registering for a service.
In addition, here are some of the video intelligence sources you should evaluate:
- Official Team and Conference Channels: Many NCAA Division 1 teams and major conferences, like the ACC, Big 10, and SEC, have their own YouTube channels. These channels feature highlights, interviews, and behind-the-scenes content. Comparing their metrics can provide you with insights.
- Media and NCAA Basketball Channels: YouTube channels like CBS Sports and March Madness upload video content about various college basketball teams, allowing you to compare fan engagement based on comments and viewership.
- Third-Party Tools: Tubular Labs, a social video intelligence company that provides data on social video audiences, and Pixability, a company that helps brands monitor their YouTube and CTV campaigns, can provide deeper insights into engagement, but they require paid subscriptions.
For this article, I contacted Matt Duffy, the company’s CMO, and Sean Alie, the head of its insights team, to see if they had any critical data or strategic insights worth sharing.
They did – and it appears below.
There are four sections: men’s team views, women’s team views, year-over-year (YoY) data for men’s and women’s teams + men’s vs. women’s teams, and lastly, views by popular players (such as Caitlin Clark, the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer of the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Big Ten Conference).
Here’s what the men’s NCAA basketball views look like.
They are filtered to sports videos only, and each video includes the keywords “*team name*,” “basketball,” and “men” somewhere in the metadata.
The timeline is February only.
Men’s Basketball
Houston, the #1 ranked team, earned 7.5% more views than the next leading team, Kansas (21M vs 19.6M). Kansas did rank first in engagements, though, earning 13% more engagements than Houston (442K vs 391K).
Duke ranked 3rd in views (16M) and engagements (389K). One thing to note is Houston is the #1 ranked team and the most viewed team on YouTube.
However, Kansas was ranked 14th and Duke 9th, yet they were able to rank 2nd and 3rd in views. This is a testament to the brand awareness these programs hold.
Women’s Basketball
This data uses the same methodology as the men’s data except with “women” as a keyword instead of “men.”
Iowa, home of star Caitlin Clark, earned 51% more views than the next leading program, LSU (12.4M vs 8.2M). This makes sense as Angel Reece plays for LSU and is widely considered the second most popular player in women’s college basketball, after Caitlin.
The individual stars may influence views for women’s programs more than the team’s fan base. Iowa earned 9.5% more engagements than LSU (178.5K vs 162.9K). Indiana ranked 3rd in views, followed by UConn.
Men’s Vs. Women’s Teams And YoY Stats
- The top 16 men’s teams earned a combined 130.8M views in February 2024, which is 157% more than the top 16 women’s teams have earned (50.8M). Men’s teams earned 247% more engagements (2.4M) than women’s teams (690K).
- YoY, the top 16 ranked men’s teams earned 61% more views this year compared to the top 16 ranked teams last year in February (130.8M vs 81.2M).
- YoY, the top 16 ranked women’s teams earned 147% more views this year compared to the top 16 ranked teams last year in February (50.8M vs 20.5M). This means that views for women’s college basketball are growing faster than the men’s. A large part of this was due to the rise of Caitlin Clark.
Views By Popular Basketball Players
The stats below are based on players participating in the tournament: Caitlin Clark earned 17.5M player mention views in February, which is more than any other player in the men’s and women’s tournaments.
Caitlin earned 10.6x more views in February than the highest male player (Kyle Filipowski) views polled in February (17.5M vs 1.6M).
The second most viewed player was also a woman, Angel Reese, who plays for the LSU Tigers in the Southeastern Conference. Angel earned 3.9x more views than Kyle Filipowski, who plays for the Duke Blue Devils in the Atlantic Coast Conference (6.4M vs 1.6M).
The rivalry between these two women stars has fueled incredible engagement on YouTube.
Again, men’s teams are more popular than women’s teams, but at the individual level, women players are outperforming men by a large margin.
Although the USC Trojans of the Pac-12 Conference won’t make the tournament this year, LeBron Raymone “Bronny” James earned 32M views, which is 87% higher than Caitlin Clark’s views.
This is still incredibly impressive for Caitlin as she is putting up numbers that compete with someone as well-known as Bronny James.
Of course, you could figure out who are the most engaged YouTube fans for NCAA basketball teams without using third-party tools.
But that might take so much time that you’d miss some of the games that make March Madness worth watching and create highlights worth sharing on YouTube.
Hey, you make the call.
How Marketers Can Use Insights Into The Most Engaged Fans
So, how can digital marketers use these insights about NCAA basketball’s most engaged fans?
Well, I can think of three key ways to apply what we’ve just learned.
First, as I mentioned in “39 Emotions Digital Marketers Can Use In Advertising,” people share videos that elicit “high-arousal” or intense emotions twice as much as ones that elicit “low-arousal” or moderate emotions. And March Madness elicits several intense emotions.
For example, the Big Dance triggers nostalgia, a sentimental longing or wistful affection for some past period or irrecoverable condition. How do you make use of this insight?
Watch Continental Tire’s “Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, and the Smart Choice!” Basketball legends Grant Hill and Christian Laettner of Duke not only tell us about the importance of making smart choices but also remind us of “The Shot” during the 1992 NCAA tournament.
During a game between East Region #1 seed Duke and #2 seed Kentucky in the East Regional Final to determine a spot in the Final Four, defending national champion Duke trailed 103–102 with 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime.
That’s when Hill threw a pass three-quarters of the length of the court to Laettner, who faked right, dribbled once, turned, and hit a jumper as time expired for the 104–103 win. In 2004, Sports Illustrated called it the greatest college basketball game of all time.
Second, college athletes can now make money from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). So, brands like State Farm Insurance can now feature players like Caitlin Clark in YouTube videos like “Shoot! (feat. Caitlin Clark, Jimmy Butler, Reggie Miller) :30 | State Farm Commercial.”
It’s worth noting that State Farm uploaded this video on Nov. 21, 2023, almost three months before Clark broke “Pistol” Pete Maravich’s NCAA Division I scoring record on Feb. 15, 2024. Kudos to the brand and their agency for being ahead of the curve.
Third, the line between creators and their audiences is blurring.
At last year’s Brandcast, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan told advertisers, “The universe of ‘creators’ is growing every day as more people make videos on their phones.
This limitless access means the world of creation is changing. Fans used to engage with a like or subscribe. But now, you can see a trend and easily jump in with your own video.”
For an example, check out “Meet the New Face of March Madness – Robbie Avila #collegebasketball #indianastate #sports #funny.” BenchwarmerBran, the online alias of Brandon Carney, a sports content creator who makes jokes about teams, players, and fantasy leagues, uploaded this video on March 7, 2024. And it currently has 405,000 views and 63,500 engagements.
If you use Tubular Intelligence, then you will see that 1,536 accounts in the U.S. uploaded 3,208 videos about “March Madness” to YouTube in the last 90 days.
And influencers uploaded 2,359 of these videos (73.5%), while media and entertainment companies uploaded 602 (18.8%), and brands uploaded only 224 (7.0%).
Now, these 3,208 YouTube videos about March Madness got a total of 11.6 million views and 455,000 engagements.
So, targeting affinity segments, people who already have a strong interest in relevant topics, may be a much smarter option than targeting placements, specific YouTube channels or websites and apps on the Google Display Network.
How SEO Pros Can Use This Information, Too
So, how could an SEO specialist use this information to make actionable decisions?
Well, I’m sad to say that some won’t.
Why? As Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) said in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn”,
“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.”
In other words, some intelligent SEO specialists think their job is to work with text, not videos. And they also think that the content that their optimizing is to help people make rational decisions, not emotional ones.
But YouTube videos have been appearing in Google’s search results since May 2007. And as I mentioned in “Customer Personas Can Transform SEO, PPC and Content Marketing,” Google has talked about emotions driving search intent since May 2019.
As Justin De Graaf, Head of Ads Research and Insights at Google, observed back then,
“The truth is, decision-making is not a rational process, but one driven mainly by how people feel. The rational brain layers on reasons for our choices only after they’re made.”
So, if SEO specialists continue to focus on optimizing text to help people make rational decisions, then their pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.
Now, they may continue to be somewhat successful, especially if they can answer “yes” when asked: “After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?”
But, as Google has said,
“The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”
So, SEO specialists who can’t create (and optimize) video content that tells a good story and makes a visitor feel something emotionally may struggle to provide a satisfying experience.
In conclusion, this is why it’s worth dreaming about getting a starring role in a Cinderella story.
I realize that you probably won’t get a job at one of those media and entertainment companies and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be asked to pitch one of those brands in the foreseeable future.
But, if and when your opportunity presents itself, then you will be ready to take your best shot at the buzzer.
More resources:
Featured Image: adriaticfoto/Shutterstock
SEO
7 Easy SEO Tips for Small Businesses
If you’re a small business owner, people are searching for what you do on Google. Unless you show up, you’re missing out on customers or clients.
SEO is how you do that, and the basics are quick and easy.
Follow these tips to rank your small business higher in no time.
If you only do one thing as a small business owner, make it to claim and optimize your GBP.
A Google Business Profile helps users find and learn about your business in Google search and maps. It’s free to set up and lets you share important details about your business with customers, like its phone number, opening times, and offerings.
But here’s the real beauty of Business Profiles: People don’t have to search for your business to see your profile. They can appear for broader searches like “pizza restaurant near me.”
This makes them a powerful way to attract new customers searching for what you do.
Here are the basics of optimizing your profile:
- Set the right business category and type
- Add opening hours (and keep them up to date!)
- Add contact details
- Add photos
- Add your products or services
Learn more in our 30-minute Business Profile optimization guide.
People don’t always turn to Google to find small businesses. They also search popular business directories and trusted review websites.
Even if they do search Google, they’ll often end up browsing a popular directory anyway because that’s often what ranks.
For example, I was recently searching for a cat sitter for an upcoming vacation. I started my search by typing “cat sitter near me” into Google. But I soon ended up browsing a niche directory because that’s what all the top results were.
In fact, I even ended up booking a cat sitter through one of these websites:
Long story short, if you’re not listed on popular niche or local directories, you’re losing out on second-hand search traffic and customers.
Let’s look at a couple of ways to find the best directories to get listed on.
Search Google
Head over to Google and search for “[what your business does] in [location]”, then add your business to directories that rank on the first page.
For example, if you’re a cat sitter in Seattle, you’ll probably want to get listed on:
- Meowtel
- Rover.com
- Yelp
- Care.com
Find the directories your competitors are listed on
Most directory listings also link to your website, which means you can use your competitors’ backlink profile to find relevant directories.
Here’s how to do it in Ahrefs:
- Go to our Competitive Analysis tool
- Select the “referring domains” mode
- Enter your site in the “Not linking to target” field
- Enter the sites of a few competing businesses in the “But linking to these competitors” fields
- Hit “Show link opportunities”
You should see a list of domains that link to your competitors but not you. Eyeball this list for sites that look like relevant directories and add your business to them.
Not sure who your competitors are?
Search Google for “[what your business does] in [location]” and go to Maps. Follow the website links on their profiles to find their domains, then copy and paste them into Ahrefs.
Having technical SEO issues can hurt your rankings, so it’s worth checking that your website is technically sound and fixing any major issues.
The easiest way to do this is with an SEO audit tool like Ahrefs’ Site Audit. You can use this free of charge with an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account. Just sign up, follow the steps to crawl your site, then filter the All issues report for Errors:
For advice on what the issues mean and how to fix them, hit the tooltip:
For example, Site Audit found eight 404 pages on our blog during a recent crawl:
To fix this issue, we can either reinstate, redirect, or remove internal links to the pages.
If you also schedule regular crawls in Site Audit, you’ll get alerts about new SEO issues so you can fix them before they cause problems.
People often search for specific products or services rather than what your business does. For example, they might search for “bathroom remodel near me” instead of “plumber near me.”
If they do this, Google tends to show pages about that service, not plumbers’ homepages.
You might struggle to rank for these terms unless you have these pages.
But you might be thinking, “I offer lots of services. I don’t have enough time to create pages for all of them.”
Keyword research is the answer. This is the process of discovering what words and phrases your customers are typing into Google. You can use it to find the products or services they’re searching for the most and then prioritize creating pages about them.
Here’s how to do it:
- Brainstorm all the products or services you offer
- Paste them into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer (make sure to select the country you’re in)
You’ll see the keywords sorted by their estimated monthly search volumes from high to low:
This should give you a good idea of relative interest in the products or services you offer and the pages you should prioritize creating.
Sidenote.
These are national volumes, but that shouldn’t really matter. If a service is more popular than another nationally, it’s probably more popular in the local area where your business operates, too. The only caveat is if you offer something like HVAC services and the climate in your country differs greatly from region to region.
For example, it would make sense to have a page for boiler servicing if it’s something you offer.
Having pages about your products and services is one thing, but you also need to make sure they tell searchers what they want to know. If you know your customers well, you can probably get halfway there easily. But it’s always best to do a bit of research.
For example, I was recently searching for someone to repair our boiler…
My process went a little like this:
- Searched Google for “boiler repair near me”
- Had a quick look at the reviews and websites of the top-ranked businesses
- Called the most promising ones
I knew that our boiler brand isn’t very common, so I was specifically looking for engineers who mentioned working with our brand on their websites. Out of a dozen sites I checked, only one mentioned this:
As a result, this was the first company I called.
If the other engineers had only done a bit of keyword research, they’d have known this is something customers care about and included it on their pages.
Here’s how you can do that in Ahrefs:
- Go to Keywords Explorer
- Search for your product or service (e.g., “boiler repair”)
- Go to the Matching Terms report
- Go to the “Cluster by terms” tab
From here, skim the list for similar terms that might indicate the kind of information searchers are looking for.
For example, the highlighted terms below are all boiler brands:
I also see mentions of different types of boilers, like oil, gas, and electric:
From this quick skim alone, it’s clear that searchers are looking for engineers who can repair their type and brand of boiler.
If you’re a local boiler engineer, having this information not only helps searchers but also saves wasted time answering the phone to give your “Oh… I don’t work with that brand of boiler, sorry!” response.
Can this also help you rank higher?
In all likelihood, yes.
For example, had I searched Google for local engineers who work with our brand of boiler, the engineer’s website that actually mentions the brand ranks in position #3:
Backlinks are a known ranking factor. The only problem is that high-quality backlinks are far from easy to get. (This is what makes them such a good ranking factor.)
For small businesses, taking advantage of existing relationships is a good starting point.
Here are a few ideas:
- Give suppliers testimonials. These often get featured on their sites along with a link.
- Publish client spotlights. For example, if you’re a plumber who recently helped renovate your local church, write it up and ping them about it. They might feature it on their website.
- Pitch stockist pages. For example, if your store stocks a local craft beer, see if the brewery lists its stockists on its website. If its does, you can usually get featured just by asking.
I would also recommend trying to replicate your competitors’ best backlinks. To find these, plug their site into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and check the Backlinks report.
Sidenote.
If there is a lot to go through, toggle the “Best links” filter to narrow things down.
For example, this local plumber has two links from sites listing small businesses that offer discounts to health and other key workers:
Both of these would be pretty easy links to replicate (assuming you’re happy to offer this discount!)
Google itself advises small business owners to remind customers to leave reviews and reply to them to build trust:
As Google says, the easiest way to do this is to create and share a link to your Business Profile with customers. You can do this in “thank you” emails, at the end of customer support interactions, or simply by including a link or QR code on receipts.
This is also likely to help with your “map pack” rankings, at least according to BrightLocal’s survey. It states that 17% of SEOs deem reviews to be the most important ranking factor.
But don’t limit yourself to asking for and replying to reviews on your Google Business Profile. Many customers also trust other websites. If you’re wondering which review sites matter most for your small business, Google its name and look for other review sites in the results.
For example, reviews on TripAdvisor are clearly important for my favorite pizzeria:
For my favorite local craft bottle shop, niche review sites like RateBeer and Untapped seem more important:
FAQs
What is small business SEO?
Small business SEO is the process of improving your online presence to get more customers from Google and other search engines. It almost always revolves heavily around optimizing for local searches.
What are the benefits of small business SEO?
There are three main benefits of doing SEO for your small business:
- More brand awareness. Showing up in more places online means more people will become familiar with your business.
- More traffic. Ranking higher in Google and other search engines leads to more traffic.
- More customers. As long as your traffic is targeted, it’ll bring in more customers or clients.
What’s the difference between small business SEO and local SEO?
Unless you sell products or services beyond your local area, not much.
If your small business sells products nationally or internationally, check out our guide to ecommerce SEO or our guide to international SEO.
If your small business sells services in multiple locations (e.g., car hire), read our guide to local keyword research to learn how to optimize for that.
SEO
A Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist for 2024
If you’ve invested time and effort writing an epic piece of content, don’t forget about on-page SEO. It helps google to understand what your page is about and show it to as many people as possible in the search results.
Even better, many on-page improvements are super quick and easy to do.
Follow this checklist for perfect on-page SEO every time:
If you’re looking for a reusable interactive checklist to use time and time again, here are a few other formats
Let’s run through everything real quick.
Google says it’s best to use words that are relevant to your content in page URLs, so you don’t want random gobbledygook urls like domain.com/734/834753956756
if you can avoid it. It’s better to use something short and descriptive like domain.com/mens/shirts
.
It only takes a few seconds to change this in most content management systems:
If you’re not sure what words or phrases to use, the main keyword you’re targeting is usually a good bet. That’s what we do on the Ahrefs blog 90% of the time.
For example, our target keyword for this post is “on page SEO checklist,” so that’s what the post’s URL is:
Few best practices to keep in mind:
- Avoid repeating words. If your page is about mens shirts and it’s nested in the /mens/ subfolder, you don’t need to repeat the word “mens.”
domain.com/mens/shirts/
is better thandomain.com/mens/mens-shirts/
- Avoid dates. If a searcher comes across
domain.com/blog/2020/fashion-tips/
in 2024, they’re going to assume it’s out-of-date even if you updated the content yesterday. Sodomain.com/blog/fashion-tips/
would be better. - Avoid being too specific. If your URL is
domain.com/blog/20-best-fashion-tips/
, it’s going to look weird if you add more tips to your post later on. Using the less specificdomain.com/blog/best-fashion-tips/
gives you more future freedom.
Google says that title tags are often the main piece of information searchers use to decide which result to click on. If yours is boring and dull, you’re probably not going to get as many clicks as you could—even if you rank.
It’s the same story for meta descriptions, which Google often uses for the descriptive snippet.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for title tags, but the ABC formula is a decent starting point for blog posts:
For your meta description, my best advice is to try to expand on your title tag to give searchers more detail and context.
If you’re struggling or just want a fast solution, give our free AI title tag generator and meta description generator a shot. Tell the tools what your page is about and your desired writing tone and they’ll generate a few options.
Remember to keep them both short and swee, too. If they’re too long, they’ll get cut-off in search. This looks odd and makes them less compelling. You can use a free tool like this one to check for truncation before publishing, or Ahrefs’ Site Audit to find all the issues on your site.
Google recommends using one H1 tag per page. It makes sense to use this for your page title as H1 is the highest level heading there is.
Most content management systems do this automatically, but you can double-check your title is indeed a H1 for free using Ahrefs SEO toolbar. Just click the Content tab:
If the copy you’d expect to be wrapped in a H1 tag isn’t, hit up your developer!
People want what you promised them in your title and meta description, so don’t kick things off with a load of fluff. Get straight to the point and give the reader what they came for in the first sentence.
There’s no one-size-fits-all way to do this. It all depends on what searchers are looking for.
For example, when people search for “toxic backlinks,” they’re overwhelmingly looking for a definition above all else. That’s why I made the very first paragraph of my article the definition:
But when people search for “best snow blower,” they just want a recommendation—so that’s what Wirecutter gives them in the first paragraph:
Sidenote.
I think Wirecutter’s opening paragraph could be even better because there’s no point in that first sentence. If you’re searching for “best snow blower,” you already know the benefits of the product. You just want to know which one is best!
Google’s John Mueller said that the search giant uses headings to help better understand the content on a page. This is why you need to make sure they’re clear and descriptive.
It’s easy to miss the mark here. We’ve even been guilty of it ourselves.
For example, look at these two subheadings from our list of blogging tips:
Do you have any idea what those mean at first glance?
Me neither. And many of the other subheadings in our post were also unclear.
If you suspect the same might be true for your subheadings, try this: ask ChatGPT to rewrite them for clarity.
This is exactly what Sam did for our post, and it made them much clearer in seconds.
For example, “Create a ‘Do 100’ project” became “Start a ‘write 100 blog posts’ project”:
Make sure your subheadings have proper hierarchy, too. It helps Google to understand the structure and makes it easier to skim for readers.
Search intent is the reason behind the search. Unless your page aligns with intent and gives searchers what they’re looking for, your chances of ranking high are slim to none.
To show just how important this is, look at this graph:
This shows our ranking position for the keyword “backlink checker” over time. You can see that in late 2018, we suddenly went from struggling to rank higher than position #5 to consistently ranking #1.
How? By optimizing our page for search intent.
Here’s what the page looked like before:
Here’s what it looks like now:
Minor design tweaks aside, there’s one important difference: there’s now a free backlink checker embedded. Before it just asked visitors to start a trial of our SEO software.
By catering to what searchers actually wanted, we improved the page’s rankings and its estimated search traffic from ~18K to ~215K monthly visits. That’s a 12X improvement!
But how did we know what searchers wanted?
Back then, we had to do a manual analysis of the top search results. While you can still do that, it’s much easier just to click the “Identify intents” button in Keywords Explorer:
This uses the power of AI to analyze the top search results and tell you what searchers are looking for.
Broadly aligning your content with search intent isn’t enough. It should also cover the topic in full to tell searchers everything they want to know. This can help it rank for more keywords and bring more traffic as a result, too.
To find what searchers are looking for, look for common subtopics among top-ranking pages.
There are a few ways you can do this.
Manually check the top-ranking pages
Search for your target keyword in Google, open a few top-ranking pages, and eyeball them for commonalities.
For example, many top results for “best running shoes for flat feet” give a budget option:
Check the keyword rankings of top-ranking pages
Pages often rank for keywords related to the subtopics they cover. If you see many top pages ranking for these keywords, it’s probably an important subtopic to cover.
Here’s how to find these keywords:
- Go to the Competitive Analysis tool in Ahrefs
- Enter your page’s URL in the “This target doesn’t rank for” field. (If you haven’t published your page yet, enter the URL you plan to use.)
- Enter the URLs of a few similar top-ranking pages in the “But these competitors do” fields
- Look for keywords that represent subtopics
For example, the top three results for “best running shoes for flat feet” also rank in the top 10 for many keywords related to men and women’s shoes:
This tells you that the best picks for men and women is an important subtopic to include.
Find subtopics with the help of AI
It’s currently in beta, but the new AI Content Grader in Ahrefs finds “missing” subtopics. It does this by comparing the content of the three top-ranking pages for your target keyword to your content.
To use it, just enter your target keyword and your page’s URL. (If you haven’t published your page yet, enter the URL you plan to use).
For example, here’s one of its suggestions for the keyword “best running shoes for flat feet”:
Information gain is a measure of how unique your content is. Google describes a mechanism for scoring this in a patent granted in June 2022.
Two months later, in August 2022, Google launched the helpful content update, which they described as “part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”
Are these two things related? Nobody knows. But what we do know is that Google cares about the originality of your content, and almost certainly has mechanisms in place for identifying it.
This means that covering what other top-ranking pages cover isn’t enough for a well-optimized page. It also needs to bring something new and valuable to the table.
For example, my colleague Chris collected data on how folks deal with low-quality backlinks for his post on removing backlinks:
Ryan interviewed three B2B marketers for unique insights for his post on B2B content marketing:
And I worked with Patrick Stox to create an interactive workflow and template for my content audit guide:
None of these posts are completely unique. They contain plenty of information that you can probably find elsewhere—and that’s fine. What matters is that we’re bringing at least something new to the table.
Google’s algorithms are designed to surface content that demonstrates E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
If you’re an expert in your field or crafted your content from personal experience, your page already has E-E-A-T. But searchers aren’t going to know that without reading it, so you should try to showcase it as obviously as you can on the page. Let’s look at two ways to do this.
Flash your credentials
Healthline does this extremely well. The very first thing you see on their page about rheumatoid arthritis is that the content was reviewed by a rheumatologist:
Put your uniqueness front and center
If you’ve put time and effort into adding “information gain” to your content, don’t bury it. Make sure searchers see it right away so they know they can trust you.
For example, to curate our list of the best Facebook groups for SEOs, we asked the 12K+ members of our customer-only group to vote for their favorites. Instead of burying this fact deep in the post, we highlighted it in the very first paragraph.
For a page to earn backlinks (which are a strong ranking factor) and shares, people have to actually consume the content. This isn’t going to happen if the copy is hard to read.
You can use free tools like Hemingway and Grammarly to fix this.
For example, Hemingway gives my recent guide to toxic backlinks a reading grade level of 7:
Given that 54% of Americans lack literary proficiency (essentially reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level), this means we’re alienating at least 46% of readers. If we could bring the reading grade level down, more people would be able to read it.
Sidenote.
This isn’t absolutely necessary for every topic. It depends on who your audience is. If they’re technical folks, don’t worry about it. But if you’re publishing content for the masses, accessibility matters.
Here are a few more tips to improve readability:
- Use short sentences and paragraphs
- Use bulleted lists
- Use images
Featured snippets give searchers a short answer right in the search results.
But here’s the cool thing: Google pulls the snippet from one of the top-ranking pages. This means that if your page already ranks in the top 10 for keywords where Google shows a featured snippet, there might be an opportunity to steal it without much effort.
This is exactly what I managed to do a couple of months ago, which led to a ~38.9% jump in estimated search traffic to our page:
Here’s what happened:
In Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, I used the Organic Keywords report to find the page’s top 10 keyword rankings with featured snippets we didn’t own.
Right away, I noticed a trend: many of the keywords were people searching for the most searched thing in Google (singular) rather than a list of top searches (plural):
After searching for a few of these keywords in Google, I saw that the snippet was pretty much always pulled from this very short paragraph in a competing post:
So… I added a similar paragraph to our post (using our data instead):
This quick big of on-page SEO won our page 163 more featured snippets:
Images on your page can rank in Google Images and send you more traffic. There are three things you need to do to optimize them.
Filenames are descriptive
Google says that these give clues about the subject matter, so avoid random file names like IMG_5497.jpg in favor of something short and descriptive like brown-dog.jpg.
Alt text is present and descriptive
Google also says that image alt text helps them understand subject matter, so the same rules apply as filenames: keep them short and descriptive.
Most content management systems have a place to add alt text in the UI, so there’s no need to mess around with HTML:
Images are compressed
Compressed images are smaller and faster to load. Some platforms like Shopify claim to do this automatically, but the results aren’t always great. It’s generally better to employ the help of a plugin like TinyIMG or Shortpixel.
Internal links are links from one page on your site to another. They help Google understand what a page is about and boost its authority, which can lead to higher rankings.
For this reason, when you publish a new page, it pays to internally link from there to other relevant pages. This won’t help the new page’s rankings, but it might help the rankings of the pages you internally link to.
To find relevant opportuntities, use Ahrefs’ Site Audit:
- Go to the Internal Link Opportunities tool
- Enter the URL of your newly-published page in the search box
- Choose “Source page” from the dropdown
Sidenote.
Site Audit needs to have crawled your site since you published the new page, otherwise this won’t work.
Pay attention to these columns:
- Source page → your newly-published page, where you will add the link
- Keyword context → where on the page to add the link
- Target page → where to link to
For example, here the report is suggesting that I link from my post on toxic backlinks to our bad links guide:
Citing valuable resources is helpful for readers. Even Google says so.
Does that mean it’s a “ranking factor?” No. But it does improve your content’s credibility with readers, and that can impact things that do matter like links and shares.
This is something we regularly do on the Ahrefs blog:
If you’re trying to boost the rankings of the page you’re optimizing, you’ll want to add internal links to it from other pages on your site.
To find relevant opportunities, use Ahrefs’ Site Audit:
- Go to the Page Explorer tool
- Enter your target keyword (or part of it) in the search box
- Choose “Page text” from the dropdown
This will find pages on your site that mention your target keyword, which may be good places to add internal links.
For example, it tells us that our guide to removing backlinks mentions the word “toxic”:
If we search that page, this is the mention:
That looks like the perfect place to internally link to our guide to toxic backlinks.
Schema markup is code that helps search engines understand the information on a page. It also powers many rich snippets you see in Google, which can lead to more clicks.
If you’re not sure whether schema markup is worth prioritizing for your page, search for your main target keyword in Google and look at the top results. If all or many are rich results, it’s probably worth adding it.
If you use WordPress, you can easily add schema with a plugin like Yoast or RankMath. Alternatively, use a tool like Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator to generate the JSON-LD code yourself and add it manually.
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