To help you better understand and communicate more effectively with your SEO team, we’ve composed a 3-part series of basic SEO concepts and their related definitions. While there are many SEO terms, we’re focusing on those that are the most discussed and most basic SEO.

In this first segment of our SEO instructional, we’ll go over the fundamentals of on-page SEO concepts and definitions to help you become an SEO expert.

An overview of page content for basic SEO best practices and concepts

On-page text refers to the actual written content of a web page, and should be substantive in offering visitors valuable information. As search engine crawlers crave written content, a best practices checklist for evaluating your website’s pages should include:

Word count: While there is no universal “ideal” word count for all web pages, a generally accepted practice is to have at least 500 and preferably 2250 words per page, but this will vary by topic and the purpose of the page. Your most important content and SEO pages should trend towards longer length.

That said, Google does not value pages that are considered “thin,” so it’s important to make your web pages as robust as possible without “fluffing” the content with extraneous text to achieve a set word count.

Above-the-Fold Text: Since search engine crawlers “read” Web content from top to bottom, it is best to keep some text near the top of your pages. This is referred to as “above the fold” (think newspapers), meaning that the on-page text is visible on the screen immediately, without the reader having to scroll down past a huge image or multiple ads (the latter of which can invite a Google penalty) to get to the actual content.

Keywords are the words that searchers are likely to use when entering a query for your industry vertical’s products and/or services in a search engine, such as Google or Bing. A search string that includes several words is a keyword phrase.

Integrating keywords into your on-page text (and strategically within your page's meta information, described below) is a basic SEO technique that enhances your site’s search visibility, both by increasing the likelihood that your pages surface in the search engine results pages (SERPs) in response to a specific query and by boosting their overall search rankings for those keywords.

An informed keyword strategy for content optimization will build in keywords so they are seamlessly woven throughout the on-page text, and the content flows naturally for the reader.

Keyword stuffing is when the target keyword appears more than 10% of the text proportionally. We recommend 3-5% keyword density.

Long-tail keywords: Long-tail queries – those searches that contain more than 3 words – present excellent opportunities to capture traffic. Long-tail keyword phrases tend to be far more precise in user intent and can render more relevant results than generic keywords consisting of one or two words. Page content crafted to answer long-tail search queries can result in higher conversions and a greater overall share of organic search traffic than single, highly competitive keywords used by most in your industry’s vertical.

Duplicate content means precisely that: your site has content that is duplicated elsewhere, whether within its own Web pages or on another website altogether.

Duplicate content may result from inadvertently repeating the same information throughout your site, like having duplicate meta information (discussed below) on your Web pages. Other accidental sources of duplicate content can stem from print-only versions (PDFs) of Web pages, e-commerce items that are shown on or linked to other pages, or mobile-friendly replications of your website.

If you find that your site requires pages with duplicate content, there are several ways you can let search engines know the preferred Web page to be displayed in its SERPs (called “canonicalization”). At best, Web pages containing duplicate content will be filtered out from search results. At worst, if it’s a result of scraping content from another site, or if it’s perceived to be an attempt to “game” search results with multiple listings of the same content, then you may face a penalty.

SEO tips for leveraging meta information

Meta information, also referred to as meta data, is the overarching information a search engine uses to determine what your site’s Web pages are about, and what it displays when indexing individual pages in its SERPs. The most critical Meta data for SEO  are titles and descriptions. 

Meta Title or title tag is the one-sentence line of text that serves to denote the subject of a Web page. Meta Titles do heavy lifting in the search space as they correspond to the individual, “clickable” search results listed in the SERPs. As such, each needs to be carefully honed with attention to keywords, length, and uniqueness.

When optimizing your Web page Meta Titles, best practices include: Incorporating one or two of your primary Web page keywords, while keeping them within 55 characters, including spaces.

Longer Meta Titles may be shortened (truncated) with ellipsis (a series of period marks, as in …) or Google may use machine logic to rewrite it. It’s important to note that using large font sizes and capitalized words may further abbreviate the length of Meta Titles. It is essential to craft a Meta title that is unique to the Web page to avoid duplicate content issues, and that accurately reflects the page’s content.

Read our guide to writing effective and optimized SEO title tags.

Meta Description is text that follows your Meta Title in the SERPs, conveying further details about the Web page content. Meta descriptions claim more SERP “real estate,” with up to 156 characters (including spaces) allowed before being truncated with ellipsis.

As with Meta Titles, it is important the Meta Description is unique to each Web page and represents the content accurately. Meta descriptions should also be compelling to encourage click through as they present a great opportunity for keyword optimization (within reason, avoid “keyword stuffing”) and a call to action.

Read our 5 tips for SEO meta description success in 2018.

Meta Keywords is simply a list of the Web page’s keywords separated by commas (,). Google has said they do not use them, but international sites still do, so there can be value in populating the meta keywords.

Optimizing on-page content with these SEO best practices tips

Structuring your on-page content with a visual hierarchy helps readers navigate it more easily (think “scanning”) and search engines “understand” it better. The basic SEO tools for organizing on-page text are heading tags:

Heading tags indicate the structure of Web page content, cuing both the search engines and readers as to the hierarchy of importance of the on-page text.

H1 tag denotes the most important “headline” of a Web page, much like the main headline of a newspaper. The H1 heading tag will render the largest text on a Web page, and a best practice is to have only one H1 tag per page. The H1 tag serves as an “umbrella” under which H2 tags (sub-headings) are placed, indicating content of secondary importance. In turn, H3 tags and accompanying page content would be placed under the H2 tags and content.

The hierarchy of heading tags ranges from the H1 to H6, with H6 representing the least important content of a Web page. Most Web page content calls for only H1 through H3 heading tags. Note that it’s important to keep heading tag character count (including spaces to 70) and to not over-use them as it disrupts the flow of content and may be visually overwhelming to readers.

Rich media, meaning images and video, are rapidly gaining momentum as a preferred user medium and search visibility best practice. As rich media is an overall Web trend, it is a smart practice to incorporate image and video content to complement text in your overall on-page optimization strategy.

Search engine crawlers can “read” and "watch" rich media content, but it consumes a lot of resources or crawl budget. What follows are best practices for allowing them to do so with the use of written titles, descriptions and tags, much like you would do with on-page text optimization. This will enhance Web page visibility in Google’s Image Search and Google Videos, as well as YouTube (if you use YouTube as an independent channel or link it to your on-page video content).

An essential point to remember is to tie your rich media content to the correlating on-page page text in using the same brand keywords and other relevant keywords used, including those incorporated in your Meta information.

Check out our guide to how to succeed with YouTube SEO and the art of SEO image optimization.

Image optimization: While there are several factors to consider when optimizing images, the most important are image titles (referred to as “filenames”), and “alt attribute” or “alt text” (meaning “alternative text” describing the image):

Filename, or the title assigned to an image, should be a brief, unique and accurate line of text of what the image portrays. Brevity is key, and a best practice is use hyphens ( - ) for spaces and all lowercase letters. For example, red-shoe is preferable to Red_Shoe.

Alt text, or the written text describing the image, provides details about what the image depicts. This is important for those with visual impairment and who use screen-reading functionality to explain what’s on the page. Keep it brief (within 100 characters, including spaces), and strive for uniqueness and accuracy.

Video optimization: The most essential principles for optimizing videos are titles, descriptions and tags: Titles for your on-page videos, like your Web page Meta titles themselves, should distinctly, precisely and briefly describe the video content, as well as reflect the relevant keywords used in the Web page’s content and Meta information (while avoiding excessive use).

Descriptions for your on-page videos, like your Web page Meta Descriptions, allow more room in terms of character count for providing details as to what the video is about. As with video titles, video descriptions should include the keywords incorporated in the corresponding on-page text and Meta information when applicable.

Tags are single or two-word Website page “categories” that serve to highlight and leverage brand and other significant keywords associated with the on-page text and Meta information.

This concludes Part 1 of our guide to basic SEO concepts – we hope you found it helpful! Stay tuned for Part 2 on linking concepts and search engine directives, and finally, Part 3, which delves into more techie/geek-speak of SEO lingo.

Track your SEO reporting with customizable dashboards and easily report them to the CEO.

By 2021, digital advertising spend in the United States is expected to exceed $300 billion. The popularity of online marketing has also gained a strong foothold overseas: a 2019 marketing trends survey of UK marketers found:

• 88 percent believe that SEO has importance for marketing -- with 60% saying it is extremely important
• 77 percent report that using SEO has increased their number of leads and decreased the cost of customer acquisition
• Yet over 30% still report struggling to get the funds they need for their desired projects

With the incredible heights that SEO and digital marketing have risen to, it can be valuable to look back at the trends that have really taken off over the second half of the year and what will likely dominate the conversation and practice next year. It provides ideas for building strategies and where marketing plans need to mature to meet the needs of the modern consumer.

Here is what we believe are the biggest 2019 marketing trends and strategies that will likely dominate the first half of 2019.

Six 2019 marketing trends to watch for the first half

1. Resurgence in storytelling

A few years ago, there was a lot of conversation about the importance of creating a story for your prospects and the idea has experienced a resurgence. The idea of storytelling now extends far beyond just creating textual content. With the growing popularity of visual platforms, such as Instagram, brands now have the opportunity to create entirely new storytelling opportunities for their customers.

On social media and on websites brands need to carefully consider the story that they want to tell their customers. Communicate the story of the brand to people, rather than just the services and products that the brand provides. You want to create a brand image and narrative that engages people, connects with them, and lets them know more about the brand on a personal level. Companies might use this narrative to connect with people based on their buyer persona or to build a relationship based on shared values with the customers.

2. Necessity of high-functioning mobile

Thanks to the mobile-first algorithm, brands have to adjust their site development away from being simply compatible with mobile devices, and instead design for those on-the-go users. Our own research at BrightEdge reflects that well over half the visitors to most sites -- 62 percent -- come from mobile devices and still growing each month.  

To rank well and properly engage your users, you will need to make sure your site has been developed with mobile users in mind.

Consider first the type of content you develop. Mobile users tend to have particular contexts in mind, such as contacting businesses while they are on the go. Think about the types of intent that people likely have when they search for your targeted keywords. If they want to find your address or other contact information, make sure your information is featured prominently.

When they do elect to read articles and longer types of content, mobile users are on smaller screens, which should influence how you construct your material.

Your content should have:

• Font and text size that can be easily digested on mobile devices
• Organize your interface in a way that mobile users can easily navigate. For example, buttons that allow people to skip easily to particular sections of content or return to the top of the page can be helpful

As part of 2019 marketing trends, make sure you also pay attention to the visuals on your page. Images and videos, for example, might not always be compatible with the screen dimensions or browser capabilities of certain mobile devices. Make sure that any you include have been carefully formatted to play on mobile devices. If possible you should try to QA your pages on multiple devices to try and catch any issues with your responsive design.

As you create your pages, keep an eye on page load times. Mobile users will click off a page in as few as 3 seconds if the page has not yet loaded.

3. Growth of vertical searches

Vertical searches have begun to reach across a number of different channels. Vertical searches allow users to access more specific information. A number of alternate search options have arisen in response and have gained considerable popularity. Consider Amazon, Yelp, SlideShare, or TripAdvisor.

Even Google’s SERPs reflect the growing importance of vertical search. BrightEdge Research finds that 95% of Google SERPs include a vertical element. Google’s understanding of user intent has resulted in the development of customized vertical SERPs that reflect these desires. Different types of searches will have different numbers of ads, visual content, textual answers, and Quick Answers depending upon the likely intention behind the search.

As a result, moving forward brands need to carefully consider the vertical search engines their searches and optimize accordingly. A hotel chain, for example, will want to verify and pay close attention to their appearance on TripAdvisor and Kayak. Ecommerce businesses need to consider Amazon as well as the new ad formats Google has put out to promote vertical searches and keep users in its ecosystem.

4. Machine automation and AI

Machine learning will also continue to emerge as a necessary technological investment. Brands will spend an estimated $60 billion on the technology by 2025 as organizations across sectors realize the value of using technology to create superior content.

The digital universe contains more data than the human brain alone can process. With machine learning, however, organizations can use the technology to interpret the data and better understand what their customers want to see. They can use this insight to improve their content production.

At BrightEdge, we have made these capabilities available to our partners through our products, such as BrightEdge Insights. Customers use this technology to better understand search data and identify content topics faster and more effectively. Brands will be able to identify market changes and 2019 marketing trends in real time, allowing them to produce the content needed to capitalize on these moments efficiency, reaping the benefits of getting content prepared and published at the forefront of the industry.

5. Greater personalized care

Customers also want to see more personalized attention and care moving forward. Consider the growing 2019 marketing trends of incorporating chatbots into websites. These bots enable organizations to answer customer needs in real time. They help customers complete purchases or find other information they need, keeping them engaged with the organization and moving forward rather than clicking off when they cannot find the answers they seek.

This emphasis on more personal relationships with customers can also be seen in the growth of video. By next year, it is estimated that 80% of online traffic will be video. Videos allow customers to digest information passively and create high engagement. They also allow brands to create more personalized connections with their audience. Videos allow the audience to feel as though the subjects on the screen speak directly to them.

6. Voice and image search

We also cannot discuss growing 2019 marketing trends without including voice and visual search. Voice search has become increasingly popular, with the growth of personalized assistants as well as voice search features on mobile devices. Google estimated that over 20% of queries performed on android devices are now done through voice search.

Similarly, Google has also recently drawn attention to the popularity of image search with their introduction of a new potential ad format. This new ad format would allow users to specifically target shoppers browsing image results to get ideas before deciding to shop.

Brands should focus on developing content that speaks to the needs of these users. Brands in highly visual sectors should take advantage of opportunities, such as Google’s image ads, while also creating a strong brand experience with their images.

For voice search, organizations should create content that aligns well with the verbal searches. Consider how voice search influences keywords and the type of information they likely want to find. With personal assistant devices offering a SERP of only one, for example, you also want to focus on earning key Quick Answer or top result positions for highly-relevant queries.

Search and digital marketing continues to grow and mature with each passing year. As we look towards the first 6 months of 2019, reviewing these 2019 marketing trends as well as other new strategies for the end of the year can be immensely helpful. Look at the 2019 marketing trends we discussed here to see which ones can have the greatest impact on your brand’s online strategy.

Using a comprehensive SEO platform will keep you on top of the changes and evolution in organic search.

Welcome to Part 2 of our 3-part SEO basics series, designed to help you “speak SEO” with your team by becoming better acquainted with the basic SEO concepts most often discussed. Part 1 of our series covered basic on-page SEO terms and definitions. In this segment, we’ll define essential SEO linking concepts and search engine directives.

Search Engine Directives: Definitions

Meta robots refers to the automated search engine “robots” -- usually referred to as “bots,” such as “Googlebot” and “Bingbot” -- that “crawl” the Web, discovering and indexing individual Web pages in the search engine results pages (SERPs). By using relatively simple HTML (“hypertext markup language”) code, SEOs can “tell” search engine bots what specific Web pages and page-level information to exclude from search results, as well as how to handle the links contained within a Web page’s content, via directives (often referred to as “tags”). The working definitions of the most common search engine linking tags are: Index: Tells Meta robots to index the Web page, thereby including it in the SERPs. This isn’t necessary to specify, however, as it is the default setting. Noindex instructs the Meta robots to exclude the Web page from indexing in the SERPs. For example, if your site has an unfinished Web page, you could ensure search engines don’t display that page until it is ready for user viewing with a “noindex” Meta robots tag. (In terms of HTML code, the command would be <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>).

• Note that while a “noindex” directive will prevent the Web page from appearing in the SERPs, the page will continue to be crawled. This means links within the page content will be followed and the destination page of the link indexed, unless a “nofollow” directive is also defined, as discussed below.

Follow directs Meta robots to follow the links included on the Web page to the (destination) pages indicated in the links’ respective URLs (Web page addresses), which they will then index in the SERPs. As with “index,” the “follow” directive is in effect by default. Nofollow prevents Meta robots from following and indexing the Web page URLs of links included within the original page content. Using the example (above) of an incomplete Web page from the “noindex” directive, should you want to exclude both the Web page and the link URLs within its content from indexing, the HTML code would read <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>. A more concise directive recognized by Googlebot for “noindex,nofollow” is simply none (in HTML, it’d be <meta name=”robots” content=”none”>).

• Note that the “nofollow” tag disallows the following/indexing of all links on the Web page level. This is distinct from the “nofollow” attribute that applies to individual links within the page’s content.

Noarchive prevents Meta robots from showing a cached copy of the Web page in search results. Nosnippet blocks Meta robots from displaying the Web page’s Meta description in the SERPs, as well as the page’s cached copy.

Link Profile Concepts

As search engine bots crawl the Web via links, your website’s link profile plays a key role in determining its search visibility. There are several essential elements to a “healthy” link profile, defined as follows: Inbound links, also referred to as “backlinks,” are those from other websites linking to yours.

Beginning with the initial release of Google’s “Penguin” update in 2012 and several iterations thereafter, webmasters and site owners have become increasingly vigilant about the quality of inbound links comprising their backlink profile. Targeted at link schemes seeking to pass “PageRank” (which Google describes as its “opinion of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other sites”) from one Web page to another, the Penguin algorithm has resulted in countless manual penalties – oftentimes leveled at legitimate websites that have unknowingly or unwittingly become ensnared in a link scheme. In recent times, Google will target the penalties to the page with bad links instead of the whole domain.

• Our article on link audits details a 4-step process for assessing link quality. Should you discover unnatural or poor-quality backlinks in your profile, the article also outlines measures you can take. If those fail, then you may have to employ Google’s “disavow backlinks” tool.
• Read our guide to using backlinks effectively for content and SEO success

Outbound links are external links from your site’s Web pages to those of another site. As with inbound links, it is a best practice to exercise caution when linking out; be sure that the website is in good standing with Google and other search engines. Internal links are those linking separate pages within a website. These links act as a “wireframe” within a site, providing internal structure that assists users with navigation and Meta robots with crawling and indexing. Anchor text is the clickable word or words used in a link, whether internal or external (outbound).

• Anchor text used to be viewed by search engines as a strong ranking signal, but because spammers abused anchor text (with exact-match keywords) in their attempts to manipulate search engine rankings, the Google search engine scaled back the SEO weight assigned. Now, sites found to be overusing anchor text with exact-match keywords may be subject to manual penalty.

Besides exact match, there are partial match, zero match (generic) and branded (links with the brand name or website URL) anchor text. That’s a wrap for Part 2 of our guide to basic SEO concepts! Be sure to catch Part 3, where we’ll discuss even more technical SEO terms.

In this third and final segment of our guide to SEO basic concepts, we’ll touch on the more advanced SEO definitions and concepts of website “crawlability,” including basic search engine directives, common client and server errors, best practices and web developer resources.

You can access Part 1 of our series, covering on-page SEO concepts, and Part 2, explaining essential linking terms and related search engine directives.

Crawlability

In simple terms, “crawlability” refers to the ease with which search engine robots (or “bots” like Googlebot) can “crawl” a website in doing their work of indexing pages to build the search engine results pages (SERPs).

There are several tools and best practices webmasters and developers can employ to optimize a website for search engine bots – in other words, maximize its crawlability – as well as minimize the usual crawling errors.

The ultimate goal behind site crawlability is to expedite the speed and accuracy of the bot’s crawling and indexing of individual pages.

SEO basic search engine directives

User-agents are a general term for software that acts on behalf of a user or a program and their corresponding Web browsers or identity (e.g., Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox).

Web developers and SEOs employ user-agent switchers, which change the user agent of a browser (e.g. Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox) when testing how a site renders when crawled by different search engine robots. Changing the user-agent of a browser is an advanced method generally reserved for a brand’s “geek squad.”

A short list of search engine robots and corresponding browsers would include:

• Googlebot for Chrome
• Bingbot for Bing
• Slurp for Yahoo!
• MSNbot for MSN/Live

There are also an extensive number of user-agents and switchers that Web developers can apply to see how different browsers work on mobile devices. Web developers have the option of using custom user-agents; this is a more common practice for larger, more complex websites.

Another set of search engine directives centers on redirects, which forward a Web page URL to a new Web page address, directing both site visitors and search engine robots to a different Web page. There are two redirects commonly used: permanent (301) and temporary (302).

• 301 indicates a permanent redirect, reflecting the HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) status code of a Web page (HTTP status codes are further discussed below). It is the recommended method for Web page redirects, as it passes most of the PageRank status of the original page to the new page.
• 302 designates a temporary redirect. It does not pass PageRank and is generally not recommended.

Errors and Best Practices

There are several common and seemingly persistent issues that compromise the performance of websites, resulting in a poor user experience. Among the more typical problems are Web server glitches, faulty redirects, broken links, slow page speeds, duplicate content and multiple URLs. Fortunately, there are counter-measures that webmasters and developers can adopt to address these issues. Here, we define the problems most often encountered and best practices for deterring them.

Redirects

Errors are HTTP response status codes, ranging from 1xx to 5xx, indicating five classes of standardized responses to search queries. The most common are the 3xx redirection (described previously), 4xx client (website owner) error, 5xx server error and 444 no response.

You’re most likely familiar with 404 not found error message, which simply indicates the page URL requested could not be located. This is usually result of a broken or defunct link. A best practice is to develop a custom 404 page to display to the (likely frustrated) searcher, offering help or guidance in non-technical language. A second common 4xx error is 444 no response, indicating that the server has failed to return information and shut down the connection. This is often used to fend off malware.

5xx server error response codes signify the server is aware of an error, and cannot execute the user’s request. There are 18 5xx responses, ranging from 500 internal server error to 504 gateway timeout.

Canonical link element and canonical HTTP headers: In cases where Web page content may be accessed through multiple HTTP headers (URLs), has syndicated content that is published elsewhere, or is otherwise duplicated, canonicalization is recommended.

Canonicalization means defining the single, preferred Web page URL for your content, which consolidates and strengthens both link and ranking signals for greater search visibility. There are several ways to do this, such as specifying a canonical link in your HTTP header for downloadable white papers and PDFs, all of which you can find via Google’s Webmaster Help forum. Learn how our own ContentIQ can crawl your site to detect 4xx and 5xx errors and direct you towards getting them fixed.

Site speed

Site speed is a major signal in Google’s search ranking algorithm, and the search giant continues to push for a faster internet experience with its mobile-friendly initiative, which encourages webmasters to improve page load time. While rich media is a medium to embrace, it’s important to pay attention to the size of images and “bulkiness” of videos, as they may significantly slow upload time.

Sitemaps

XML Sitemaps lists a site’s Web pages in file with XML tags that details the organization of your website using “extensible markup language” (i.e., XML) schema. Submitting an XML Sitemap to the search engines is a recommended best practice to help search engine bots crawl and index your site’s pages quickly and accurately. You can learn more about XML Sitemaps from our article on the BrightEdge blog.

Resources and Tools

For SEO glossary purposes, we’ve only scratched the surface of how to optimize your website for crawlability.

There are several resources that go much farther in-depth, including BrightEdge’s ContentIQ, Google Webmaster Tools and Webmaster Central Help Forum.

We hope you’ve found our introduction to basic SEO concepts helpful!

In recent years there's been a lot of discussion about personalized search and a personalized user experience on the web. A few years ago, search engines emphasized their efforts to create more personalized results on the SERP. Personalized search results attempted to connect the information you looked at before and how you interact with the platform to the query you just input, creating an improved and unique user experience.

Lately, however, there's been some pushback on personalized search. Customers began to voice concerns about how their info was stored and the amount of tracking that sites placed on them. If you're a search marketer, odds are you're familiar with the ritual of logging into an incognito browser window to run a Google search query so you can see the universal listing instead of the personalized one.

Recently Google announced it would be stepping back the extent of personalized search, focusing only on location of the user or the searches they made immediately prior to their current search. As a marketer, you want to understand what this means for the trend of personalization throughout the industry. Here is what we think everyone should know.

Why did Google step back from personalized search results?

Google’s Pandu Nayak explained Google’s rationale, saying, “A query a user comes with usually has so much context that the opportunity for personalization is just very limited.”

Generally, Google found that SERPs didn't offer much opportunity for effective personalized search. Their efforts did not do much for customers and did not improve the web results displayed.

In other words, Google discovered that while their ability to understand the likely intent of certain queries--and thus pair those queries with micro-moments--remains strong, their ability to interpret the individual desires of a particular user was ineffective. People enter queries influenced by a large number of factors which may or may not be connected to their past searches and/or other interactions with Google.

Keep in mind that you can often still find examples of personalized search with different Google products.

How this impacts marketers

Search marketers may find that this change makes it easier to track and measure optimization results. There'll be, theoretically, less overall variation in SERP layout between individual searchers, especially in the case of universal listing elements, like Quick Answers and Local 3-Pack. SERPs won't change as much from person to person, customization being limited to the nature of the search query.

For example, the layout and types of content presented for personalized search will still adjust depending upon your vertical searches and efforts to create SERPs that conform to the likely micro-moment. Consider local searches. When a person makes a search with a likely “I-want-to-go” micro-moment, such as “parks near me,” Google focuses on the local 3-pack and score-based, UGC-driven review sites like Yelp.

This has the potential to help with personalized search optimization strategy. Brands can feel more confident that their listings will appear consistently when they achieve a high ranking on universal search results. That in turn will help them accurately measure their ability to interest and engage users. Measurements of the number of times their site will likely appear in organic listings, based on search volume, will be more accurate and can be better compared to their site traffic.

It is also important for marketers to note that this does not mean that personalized search overall is dead. The ability to customize content and be relevant to your users should still be a priority across multiple aspects of digital marketing.

Types of personalized search marketing that are still important

Personalizing for intent

Google will continue to display different SERPs depending upon their understood intent of the user. In other words, users searching for terms that align well with an “I-want-to-buy” micro-moment will see different types of results than those who have searches aligning with “I-want-to-go” micro-moments. This means that as you develop your content, you should also be keeping these different goals in mind.

To create content for the right micro-moment, you should spend time researching the likely user intent of your intended audience. Look at the current layout of the SERP for your target keyword and see where you should focus your efforts. You can read more about optimizing for the different micro-moments by reading the following BrightEdge blog posts:

• The I-want-to-go moment
• The I-want-to-buy-moment
• The I-want-to-know moment
• The I-want-to-do moment

Personalized search for repeat visitors

Customers still like knowing that they matter to brands. They want to know that the businesses they buy from cares about helping them personally with their pain points and needs. Finding ways to personalize content on your site for return customers can be enormously beneficial. The individualized experience will boost your engagement rates while also letting customers know that you remember them.

You can personalize the content of known users by taking steps like these:

• Suggesting purchases based on what the customer bought in the past
• Offering tips and advice based on the purchases people have made
• Making content suggestions based on the material they have downloaded from your site

Personalized email campaigns

Email allows you to speak directly to prospects and customers one-on-one, which makes it a prime vehicle to personalize your material. For email to successfully engage with prospects, it must be in alignment with their buyer persona and where they are on the buyer journey. A well-run email program will keep people engaged and encourage them to learn more about the brand and keep opening emails. This is an opening for you to continue to nurture them to progress through the sales funnel.

As the web continues to mature and grow with users and the development of new technology, experiments with personalization will continue. Customers want to reach their prospects directly and provide them with a user experience that encourages them to return.

Before you spend all the time, money and effort you've laid aside for SEO, consider this: your site architecture might be negating any effort you spend in offsite SEO. In fact, poor site architecture could be causing you to throw away your money. You've got to be sure that your site is set up in a way that will not only bring in visitors but keep them there long enough to generate a lead, make a sale, sign up for your newsletter or become an active member of your community -- and site architecture is key to those goals!

What Exactly Is Site Architecture?

Ten or more years ago, there were very few ways to set up a website. Perhaps you had directories with relevant names, or your directories may not have been named well. All your files might have existed in your root directly, and you may have used file names and page titles that only made sense to you. However, the Internet has come a long way from that point, and how you set up your site is important.

Site architecture is a way to group and organize content on your site which encompasses URLs, directories, file names and navigation. The way you set up your site ensures that both computers and humans can find everything on it with ease. But if you do site architecture wrong, you're actually make it more difficult for your readers and search engines, which could seriously hurt your bottom line!

One of the biggest components of site architecture is the number of clicks it takes to achieve a task. Once upon a time, webmasters assumed that readers would click infinitely, but the opposite has proved to be true. If it takes too many clicks to find an article, check out from your store or sign up for a newsletter, your readers might simply leave your site. This is especially true with mobile users.

Although traditional site architecture uses nested directories in a practice now known as silos, this required more clicks to find pages. The pages further down the silos had fewer links to them than the articles further up the silo. While grouping your pages in directories named with keywords is helpful for SEO, you'll want to ensure you're not making them click too many times to find the "bottom" pages. Think of ways you can reduce clicks to any page on your site to three to four clicks at most without decreasing the usefulness of silo structure.  

Keyword Research in Relation to Site Architecture

Although Google no longer favors sites simply because the domain contains a keyword, choosing page URLs with your relevant keywords will certainly help your users as well as crawlers. Good keyword research will indicate topics & themes to be included in your site architecture and page URLs. This URL structure will also help you manage content in respective directories and sub directories.

Before you can give your files, directories and links their proper names, you have to determine a method for naming that will benefit your site. These are the words that searchers would use to find your business. They revolve around industry, services, products and sometimes location if you serve a specific geographic area. But if your website exists mostly to educate visitors, the appropriate keywords will differ than if you're selling something to consumers.

Many webmasters and SEO experts become too focused on short keywords. Yes, they're easier to think of, but there's also more competition for those short keywords coming from similar sites and businesses. This is why long-tail keywords, which are longer keyword phrases, can be so beneficial. In comparison, long-tail keywords have less competition and might get fewer clicks, but visitors who use them are more targeted likely to convert to customers.  

Using Keywords in Directories, File Names, and URL Structure

Once you identify keywords, you'll want to use them in page URLs, categories, post titles, anchor text, file names and image alt attributes, among other on-page locations that benefit SEO. This ensures that your visitors know exactly what to expect from the address of the page. Search engine robots use these same cues.

It's important for more than just your pages to use keywords, however. Images, videos and even archives that you provide for download should use human-friendly keywords. So you'll want to take the time to rename videos and pictures from the automatic names that your camera gives them. Anything that you download from the Internet and upload to your website might need to be renamed, too.

For example, the popular blogging platform WordPress offers several options for formatting your links. However, the default format uses post and page IDs, which are virtually useless to Google and your visitors. A URL such as http://yourdomain.com/successful-site-architecture-seo is preferable to http://yourdomain.com/?p=123 because your visitors know what to expect simply by looking at the address bar.

 

Link to Your Own Content/Internal Links

By now, you're intent on enabling Google and other search engines, not to mention your visitors, to find all your content. In the past, SEO has focused heavily on backlinks -- links from other sources -- but this isn't the only way to do that. In fact, linking to your own content, a process known as internal linking, is just as important as external back-linking. Internal linking helps to spread link value on your own site, but it also ensures that no content becomes lost and impossible to find for crawlers as well as your visitors.  

What Does Bad Architecture Look Like?

You've read plenty of advice to help you structure your site in a way that's useful to readers and beneficial to your search engine optimization efforts, but how do you know if you're using it right? Is your current site architecture failing you? Here are a few examples of poor site architecture:

• Site directory contains numbers and not user friendly words. Example – YourSite.com/shoes/mens vs. www.YourSite.com/1234/shoes-page
• It takes more than three or four clicks to get to any page from the index
• Images and files do not use keywords in names, images lack alternative text
• Small sites have unnecessary directories that cause confusion for users
• There are too many links on the home page or navigation
• Navigation changes between pages or sections on the site
• Pages exist that aren't linked to from multiple sources
• Page URLs misuse long-tail keywords, which can be vital to a site's success
• There is no sitemap (page) or, if there is, the site architecture cannot be adequately shown in the sitemap

In fact, devising a site map is one way to quickly locate the weaknesses in your site architecture. If it takes more than three clicks to get to a page on your site, a sitemap will quickly illustrate this. Not all loopholes will be revealed with this method, but it’s one place to start! If you want your website to stand out from the competition, you'll need more than "About Us" and "Contact Pages." In fact, when you become comfortable creating strong site architecture, you might look for a reason to use it. Adding a blog to your eCommerce website, for example, is one way to use and improve those skills while boosting your site's SEO. But even if your website is small, you'll be remiss if you don't pay attention to site structure and what it can do for SEO.