SEO
Improving Brand Awareness & CTR With On-SERP SEO
As search marketers, we all want to own as much SERP real estate as possible, because it means more visibility and more traffic.
Trouble is, page one is steadily changing.
Organic search results are now competing for the user’s attention with paid ads, knowledge panels, maps, videos, featured snippets, and the like.
In this article, you will:
- Understand the challenge of competitive SERPs.
- Learn how to use On-SERP SEO effectively.
- Develop a “Traffic Potential” mindset.
- Get seven actionable tactics to boost your search presence right now.
Understand The Challenge Of Competitive SERPs
Search engine result pages (SERPs) are more competitive than ever.
We’re starting to see many different types of media elements ranking.
The decline of organic traffic for top-performing keywords is rooted in the presence of new elements on page one.
The organic position one is now often bumped low behind ads, maps, media elements, and featured snippets.
We, therefore, call these elements “position zero” because they outrank even the top organic results.
One of the most competitive versions of SERPs is zero-click searches.
A zero-click SERP is one where the answer is displayed directly on the search results page satisfying the search intent of the user without having to click further.
So, how can SEO professionals stay effective when the SERPs are becoming more competitive?
Use On-SERP SEO To Stay Competitive Against Position Zero SERPs
On-SERP SEO is the work of optimizing the entire first page.
The goal is to take up as much real estate on page one as possible, thus increasing CTR and generating more organic traffic.
On-SERP SEO requires a paradigm shift for SEO professionals.
It is an integrated strategy to increase search appearance and brand awareness on page one.
It is the SEO taking ownership of Google traffic, no matter which SERP elements it comes from.
To be competitive in the world of zero position SERPs, this means SEO pros must coordinate all kinds of different media sources to dominate every relevant aspect of page one.
The ‘Traffic Potential’ Mindset You Need To Succeed In SEO Today
When doing your keyword research, defining your target pages and selecting target search terms, there’s one important mindset shift to make to future-proof your SEO strategy:
Factor in the new SERP reality.
In traditional SEO analysis, you’re used to reviewing:
- Search terms.
- Monthly search volumes.
- Keyword difficulty.
Today, however, you must adapt your efforts to factor in:
- The presence of featured snippets.
- Other media elements.
- Decreased CTR for organic results.
Therefore, you must now include CTR in your keyword research and decision-making.
To do this, most SEO tools include a traffic potential factor you can use.
This is an example from Ahrefs for a classic no click, zero position search term: “time Berlin”:
Ahrefs shows us a significant search volume, however, we also see that 80% of all the searches never receive a click.
You should start basing your analyses on this click potential, rather than monthly search volume alone.
Only then will you receive the best CTR and true organic traffic gains for the content you create.
By reviewing the true click potential, you will filter for keywords where a good organic ranking still equates to viable search traffic opportunities.
7 Actionable Tactics To Optimize Your Website In Competitive SERPs
Now that we’ve altered your mindset, let’s discuss tactics to boost your search presence right now.
Within these tactics, we will cover how to take over different elements of the SERP, including an increased presence in organic search, paid ads, knowledge panels, and images.
1. Optimize Your Top 10 Ranking Keywords To Win A Featured Snippet
Optimizing to win featured snippets is not an exact science, but art in and of itself.
It seems to be the case that Google usually pulls data out of the current top 10 rankings to populate the featured snippet.
So, the first step is to check your current organic rankings and determine which of those keywords already displays a featured snippet (using tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, etc.).
Those will identify your target keywords and target pages to optimize for featured snippets.
The purpose of the featured snippet is to give a direct answer to the user without them having to click or search further.
There are four main types of featured snippets, depending on the query intent:
- Lists.
- Tables.
- Text.
- Video.
Your second step is to note what kind of featured snippet is displayed for each of your target keywords.
Featured snippets are usually displayed for long-tail queries and, more often than not, question queries.
To optimize for the featured snippet, add such questions or keyword terms as a subheadline to your content.
Immediately beneath the subheadline, create a precise answer.
This can be one paragraph (around 45 words on average), a list (ordered or unordered) or a table, depending on what Google favours for that keyword.
The more precise and factual you can get, the better.
Google likes pulling lists and data directly into the search results.
You can even use schema to markup lists and comparison tables.
2. Optimize For Google Sitelinks
Sitelinks increase the visual space of your search results by displaying the most important pages of your website directly within your search result.
Although you can’t force Google to display sitelinks, you can create a clear navigational structure – with strong internal links to the core pages, as well as anchors and alt tags that are descriptive – to increase your chances of Google displaying your sitelinks.
3. Add Schema Markup When Appropriate
Product, business, and review schema markup help Google to understand what your pages and content are about.
You can review the types of schema markup at schema.org and implement them on your pages.
The review schema markup can allow Google to display a star rating within your organic search results, which increases truth, credibility, and CTR.
4. Use & Optimize Google Business Profile
You can win a lot of space for local searches by verifying and optimizing your Google Business Profile.
This will also help your presence in Google Maps.
All features, amenities, and details of your business should be listed and displayed to make your Google Business Profile listing visually longer and provide important information.
Collecting reviews for the listing will also allow you to use it for the review schema markup mentioned above.
Bonus: Make sure to collect and answer questions on your listing! This will add valuable length to your listing.
5. Run Branded PPC Ads
Even if your heart belongs to SEO, organic search is your main traffic driver and pay-per-click (PPC) is super expensive in your niche, you should run ads on your branded terms.
Users searching for your brand name have the highest chance of converting from a search into a click.
Don’t ever let someone else occupy your valuable ad space.
A basic branded Google Ads campaign should always be running for your brand name terms.
Make sure to fill out all available fields and add relevant ad extensions for maximum visual impact.
Quick note: In certain niches, it might be beneficial to run shopping ads or hotel ads since they occupy prime real estate for transactional terms.
6. Optimize Your Knowledge Panel
The purpose of Google’s knowledge panels is to display all information about your business in one condensed spot.
They are available to display for companies, nonprofit organizations, influential people, local businesses, media (movies, TV, books, music), nutritional information, and products.
If your company falls into one of the above categories you stand to benefit greatly from optimizing your Knowledge panel.
7. Optimize Images To Appear In SERPs & Featured Snippets
It’s important to review your target keywords and see if images are included in their SERPs.
Why? Because a lot of SERPs feature images.
If so, proceed with some basic image SEO to increase the chances of your relevant images ranking.
Make sure to include such images on a page where the headline and URL match the image target keyword.
For your information, image SEO ranking factors include:
- The image file names and alt tags: Choose appropriate and keyword-optimized names.
- Image context: Place your image on a part of the website where the surrounding content matches the keyword intent.
- Image captions with short and relevant descriptions.
- Image sizes with common dimensions (e.g., 900 pixels wide and 16:9)
Following these seven tactics will allow you to achieve effective wins on page one that goes beyond position one rankings.
They’ll enhance your presence in competitive SERPs and increase your chances of getting that money-making click.
The Future Of SERPs & How To Win With On-SERP SEO
A key strength of SEO lies in your ability to analyze and play to the advantage of the full search result page.
On-SERP SEO is a perfect example of this.
By following the seven actionable tactics we’ve outlined, you can enjoy more SERP real estate – and that means more opportunities to capture searchers’ attention and increase brand awareness and click-through rates.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
SEO
WordPress Insiders Discuss WordPress Stagnation
![WordPress Insiders Discuss WordPress Stagnation WordPress Insiders Discuss WordPress Stagnation](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/WordPress-Insiders-Discuss-WordPress-Stagnation.jpg)
A recent webinar featuring WordPress executives from Automattic and Elementor, along with developers and Joost de Valk, discussed the stagnation in WordPress growth, exploring the causes and potential solutions.
Stagnation Was The Webinar Topic
The webinar, “Is WordPress’ Market share Declining? And What Should Product Businesses Do About it?” was a frank discussion about what can be done to increase the market share of new users that are choosing a web publishing platform.
Yet something that came up is that there are some areas that WordPress is doing exceptionally well so it’s not all doom and gloom. As will be seen later on, the fact that the WordPress core isn’t progressing in terms of specific technological adoption isn’t necessarily a sign that WordPress is falling behind, it’s actually a feature.
Yet there is a stagnation as mentioned at the 17:07 minute mark:
“…Basically you’re saying it’s not necessarily declining, but it’s not increasing and the energy is lagging. “
The response to the above statement acknowledged that while there are areas of growth like in the education and government sectors, the rest was “up for grabs.”
Joost de Valk spoke directly and unambiguously acknowledged the stagnation at the 18:09 minute mark:
“I agree with Noel. I think it’s stagnant.”
That said, Joost also saw opportunities with ecommerce, with the performance of WooCommerce. WooCommerce, by the way, outperformed WordPress as a whole with a 6.80% year over year growth rate, so there’s a good reason that Joost was optimistic of the ecommerce sector.
A general sense that WordPress was entering a stall however was not in dispute, as shown in remarks at the 31:45 minute mark:
“… the WordPress product market share is not decreasing, but it is stagnating…”
Facing Reality Is Productive
Humans have two ways to deal with a problem:
- Acknowledge the problem and seek solutions
- Pretend it’s not there and proceed as if everything is okay
WordPress is a publishing platform that’s loved around the world and has literally created countless jobs, careers, powered online commerce as well as helped establish new industries in developing applications that extend WordPress.
Many people have a stake in WordPress’ continued survival so any talk about WordPress entering a stall and descent phase like an airplane that reached the maximum altitude is frightening and some people would prefer to shout it down to make it go away.
Acknowledging facts and not brushing them aside is what this webinar achieved as a step toward identifying solutions. Everyone in the discussion has a stake in the continued growth of WordPress and their goal was to put it out there for the community to also get involved.
The live webinar featured:
- Miriam Schwab, Elementor’s Head of WP Relations
- Rich Tabor, Automattic Product Manager
- Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast SEO
- Co-hosts Matt Cromwell and Amber Hinds, both members of the WordPress developer community moderated the discussion.
WordPress Market Share Stagnation
The webinar acknowledged that WordPress market share, the percentage of websites online that use WordPress, was stagnating. Stagnation is a state at which something is neither moving forward nor backwards, it is simply stuck at an in between point. And that’s what was openly acknowledged and the main point of the discussion was understanding the reasons why and what could be done about it.
Statistics gathered by the HTTPArchive and published on Joost de Valk’s blog show that WordPress experienced a year over year growth of 1.85%, having spent the year growing and contracting its market share. For example, over the latest month over month period the market share dropped by -0.28%.
Crowing about the WordPress 1.85% growth rate as evidence that everything is fine is to ignore that a large percentage of new businesses and websites coming online are increasingly going to other platforms, with year over year growth rates of other platforms outpacing the rate of growth of WordPress.
Out of the top 10 Content Management Systems, only six experienced year over year (YoY) growth.
CMS YoY Growth
- Webflow: 25.00%
- Shopify: 15.61%
- Wix: 10.71%
- Squarespace: 9.04%
- Duda: 8.89%
- WordPress: 1.85%
Why Stagnation Is A Problem
An important point made in the webinar is that stagnation can have a negative trickle-down effect on the business ecosystem by reducing growth opportunities and customer acquisition. If fewer of the new businesses coming online are opting in for WordPress are clients that will never come looking for a theme, plugin, development or SEO service.
It was noted at the 4:18 minute mark by Joost de Valk:
“…when you’re investing and when you’re building a product in the WordPress space, the market share or whether WordPress is growing or not has a deep impact on how easy it is to well to get people to, to buy the software that you want to sell them.”
Perception Of Innovation
One of the potential reasons for the struggle to achieve significant growth is the perception of a lack of innovation, pointed out at the 16:51 minute mark that there’s still no integration with popular technologies like Next JS, an open-source web development platform that is optimized for fast rollout of scalable and search-friendly websites.
It was observed at the 16:51 minute mark:
“…and still today we have no integration with next JS or anything like that…”
Someone else agreed but also expressed at the 41:52 minute mark, that the lack of innovation in the WordPress core can also be seen as a deliberate effort to make WordPress extensible so that if users find a gap a developer can step in and make a plugin to make WordPress be whatever users and developers want it to be.
“It’s not trying to be everything for everyone because it’s extensible. So if WordPress has a… let’s say a weakness for a particular segment or could be doing better in some way. Then you can come along and develop a plug in for it and that is one of the beautiful things about WordPress.”
Is Improved Marketing A Solution
One of the things that was identified as an area of improvement is marketing. They didn’t say it would solve all problems. It was simply noted that competitors are actively advertising and promoting but WordPress is by comparison not really proactively there. I think to extend that idea, which wasn’t expressed in the webinar, is to consider that if WordPress isn’t out there putting out a positive marketing message then the only thing consumers might be exposed to is the daily news of another vulnerability.
Someone commented in the 16:21 minute mark:
“I’m missing the excitement of WordPress and I’m not feeling that in the market. …I think a lot of that is around the product marketing and how we repackage WordPress for certain verticals because this one-size-fits-all means that in every single vertical we’re being displaced by campaigns that have paid or, you know, have received a a certain amount of funding and can go after us, right?”
This idea of marketing being a shortcoming of WordPress was raised earlier in the webinar at the 18:27 minute mark where it was acknowledged that growth was in some respects driven by the WordPress ecosystem with associated products like Elementor driving the growth in adoption of WordPress by new businesses.
They said:
“…the only logical conclusion is that the fact that marketing of WordPress itself is has actually always been a pain point, is now starting to actually hurt us.”
Future Of WordPress
This webinar is important because it features the voices of people who are actively involved at every level of WordPress, from development, marketing, accessibility, WordPress security, to plugin development. These are insiders with a deep interest in the continued evolution of WordPress as a viable platform for getting online.
The fact that they’re talking about the stagnation of WordPress should be of concern to everybody and that they are talking about solutions shows that the WordPress community is not in denial but is directly confronting situations, which is how a thriving ecosystem should be responding.
Watch the webinar:
Is WordPress’ Market share Declining? And What Should Product Businesses Do About it?
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com
SEO
Google’s New Support For AVIF Images May Boost SEO
![Google's New Support For AVIF Images May Boost SEO Google's New Support For AVIF Images May Boost SEO](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Googles-New-Support-For-AVIF-Images-May-Boost-SEO.jpg)
Google announced that images in the AVIF file format will now be eligible to be shown in Google Search and Google Images, including all platforms that surface Google Search data. AVIF will dramatically lower image sizes and improve Core Web Vitals scores, particularly Largest Contentful Paint.
How AVIF Can Improve SEO
Getting pages crawled and indexed are the first step of effective SEO. Anything that lowers file size and speeds up web page rendering will help search crawlers get to the content faster and improve the amount of pages crawled.
Google’s crawl budget documentation recommends increasing the speeds of page loading and rendering as a way to avoid receiving “Hostload exceeded” warnings.
It also says that faster loading times enables Googlebot to crawl more pages:
Improve your site’s crawl efficiency
Increase your page loading speed
Google’s crawling is limited by bandwidth, time, and availability of Googlebot instances. If your server responds to requests quicker, we might be able to crawl more pages on your site.
What Is AVIF?
AVIF (AVI Image File Format) is a next generation open source image file format that combines the best of JPEG, PNG, and GIF image file formats but in a more compressed format for smaller image files (by 50% for JPEG format).
AVIF supports transparency like PNG and photographic images like JPEG does but does but with a higher level of dynamic range, deeper blacks, and better compression (meaning smaller file sizes). AVIF even supports animation like GIF does.
AVIF Versus WebP
AVIF is generally a better file format than WebP in terms of smaller files size (compression) and image quality. WebP is better for lossless images, where maintaining high quality regardless of file size is more important. But for everyday web usage, AVIF is the better choice.
See also: 12 Important Image SEO Tips You Need To Know
Is AVIF Supported?
AVIF is currently supported by Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari browsers. Not all content management systems support AVIF. However, both WordPress and Joomla support AVIF. In terms of CDN, Cloudflare also already supports AVIF.
I couldn’t at this time ascertain whether Bing supports AVIF files and will update this article once I find out.
Current website usage of AVIF stands at 0.2% but now that it’s available to surfaced in Google Search, expect that percentage to grow. AVIF images will probably become a standard image format because of its high compression will help sites perform far better than they currently do with JPEG and PNG formats.
Research conducted in July 2024 by Joost de Valk (founder of Yoast, ) discovered that social media platforms don’t all support AVIF files. He found that LinkedIn, Mastodon, Slack, and Twitter/X do not currently support AVIF but that Facebook, Pinterest, Threads and WhatsApp do support it.
AVIF Images Are Automatically Indexable By Google
According to Google’s announcement there is nothing special that needs to be done to make AVIF image files indexable.
“Over the recent years, AVIF has become one of the most commonly used image formats on the web. We’re happy to announce that AVIF is now a supported file type in Google Search, for Google Images as well as any place that uses images in Google Search. You don’t need to do anything special to have your AVIF files indexed by Google.”
Read Google’s announcement:
Supporting AVIF in Google Search
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands
SEO
CMOs Called Out For Reliance On AI Content For SEO
![CMOs Called Out For Reliance On AI Content For SEO CMOs Called Out For Reliance On AI Content For SEO](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CMOs-Called-Out-For-Reliance-On-AI-Content-For-SEO.jpg)
Eli Schwartz, Author of Product-Led SEO, started a discussion on LinkedIn about there being too many CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) who believe that AI written content is an SEO strategy. He predicted that there will be reckoning on the way after their strategies end in failure.
This is what Eli had to say:
“Too many CMOs think that AI-written content is an SEO strategy that will replace actual SEO.
This mistake is going to lead to an explosion in demand for SEO strategists to help them fix their traffic when they find out they might have been wrong.”
Everyone in the discussion, which received 54 comments, strongly agreed with Eli, except for one guy.
What Is Google’s Policy On AI Generated Content?
Google’s policy hasn’t changed although they did update their guidance and spam policies on March 5, 2024 at the same time as the rollout of the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update. Many publishers who used AI to create content subsequently reported losing rankings.
Yet it’s not said that using AI is enough to merit poor rankings, it’s content that is created for ranking purposes.
Google wrote these guidelines specifically for autogenerated content, including AI generated content (Wayback machine copy dated March 6, 2024)
“Our long-standing spam policy has been that use of automation, including generative AI, is spam if the primary purpose is manipulating ranking in Search results. The updated policy is in the same spirit of our previous policy and based on the same principle. It’s been expanded to account for more sophisticated scaled content creation methods where it isn’t always clear whether low quality content was created purely through automation.
Our new policy is meant to help people focus more clearly on the idea that producing content at scale is abusive if done for the purpose of manipulating search rankings and that this applies whether automation or humans are involved.”
Many in Eli’s discussion were in agreement that reliance on AI by some organizations may come to haunt them, except for that one guy in the discussion
Read the discussion on LinkedIn:
Too many CMOs think that AI-written content is an SEO strategy that will replace actual SEO
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands
-
SEO7 days ago
Google’s Revamped Documentation Shows 4 Reasons To Refresh Content
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 26, 2024
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Google Ranking Bug Fixed, August Core Update Swings, AI Overviews, Google Ads Bug & More
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 27, 2024
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
How to Secure Your WordPress Store
-
AFFILIATE MARKETING7 days ago
Business Owners are Batting 1,000 With This All-in-One Management Hub
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Migrating All To Google Merchant Center Next By September
-
WORDPRESS5 days ago
10 Best StudioPress Alternatives (Genesis Framework)
You must be logged in to post a comment Login