The importance of reducing index bloat

When it comes to being discovered online by prospective customers, websites want to make sure that their sites have the best possible digital presence. This includes ranking highly on the SERPs for relevant queries.

Unfortunately, sometimes index bloat can disrupt SEO plans and make it harder for brands to create the user experience they wanted.

What is index bloat?

Index bloat occurs when Google accidently indexes pages they were not supposed to. Consider an ecommerce site that has filter options for people searching for a particular type of product. When you click on the option to sort by color, for example, you automatically generate a new webpage. This new webpage, however, does not actually contain any new content and you do not want to have it indexed separately by the search engine. 

Index bloat can also come from situations such as poor site migrations from HTTP to HTTPS, expired content, or even poorly organized page archives.

Why is index bloat a problem?

Index bloat can cause a variety of problems for sites from an SEO perspective. To begin, it can drain crawl budget. Google decides how much and how often to crawl a particular site based on its popularity and perceived value. Draining the crawl budget can result in Google missing out on indexing pages of the site that have considerably more value for your target audience.

It can also confuse Google about the value of the content on the site, making it appear as though the site actually contains a lot of duplicate content. The search engine might also not always know which version of the very-similar pages it should rank for a particular query.

How do I monitor my site for index bloat?

You can monitor your site through Google Search Console and the Google search engine itself. On the search engine, make occasional searches using the site: operation, which will allow you to search only your domain. You can use this command as site:example.com to see how many pages Google claims to have indexed on your site. You can also monitor your indexing through Google Search Console.

Use these two tools to regularly watch for sudden increases in the number of pages indexed. Dramatic increases provide a good indication that something is likely amis with your indexing.

How do I fix index bloat?

Once you uncover a problem of index bloat, you want to work as quickly as possible to resolve the problem. There are a few different strategies to consider.

• Robots.txt and NOFOLLOW for links
• Meta Robots NoIndex tag
• Pagination
• URL removal

1. Robots.txt and NOFOLLOW for links. You can use a robots.txt file to disallow certain pages from the Google spider. This tells Google that you do not want these pages crawled. However, if the page is linked to from another page that does get crawled, you might end up with your page being indexed, despite the disallow order.

To prevent this problem, use a NOFOLLOW anywhere in your site where you link to a page that has been disallowed through robots.txt.

2. Meta Robots NoIndex tag. The ‘noindex’ robots meta tag provides search engines with very clear guidance about which pages should not be indexed. By using this tag, you prevent the indexing of the page and tell Google to deindex any page that had previously been indexed.

3. Pagination. If you have multiple pages that list products, for example, you will want to use pagination markup to make it clear to Google that these pages have a relationship. This tells Google that the pages are not duplicates of each other and encourages Google to reduce the indexing of the subsequent pages, which can help reduce bloat.

4. URL Removal. If you need to get a URL deindexed immediately, you can use the Google Remove URL tool. This will get the page deindexed quickly. However, you will still need to take action to make it clear that the page should not be indexed with one of the previous suggestions or it could end up getting indexed again in the future.

Preventing crawl bloat can help protect your SEO efforts and create an improved user experience for leads and customers. As you monitor your site, consider these strategies for ridding yourself of any unnecessary bloat moving forward.

Guide your audience with proper navigation

When customers arrive on your website, the navigation you provide has an immediate impact on how well they can move around your site and their likelihood of making a purchase. When customers can clearly see how to navigate the site and click to other content that might interest them, it provides excellent encouragement to entice that person to further engage.

A well-constructed website navigation also makes it easier for users and search engine spiders alike to discover all of the pages on your website, ensuring that nothing is overlooked or forgotten.

Quality navigation demonstrates how all of the different pages of your site intersect, helping users and search engines to understand the level of depth you have to offer while also guiding visitors to other pages that might be relevant to their needs.

How to construct a quality site navigation

Site navigation should make sense. You want to think of the pages of your site that best can be grouped together. For example, you may have product pages and blog topics that can be tied together through links, even though they deal with different aspects of consumer nurturing.

Creating content hierarchies can help to organize material into firm categories can help to demonstrate the depth of your content. As you construct these hierarchies, make sure that they contain links between the different categories to help potential customers move between your site areas.

Your site should also contain clear menu and other site navigation options for customers to use as they move around the pages. A site map should simplify the customer’s understanding of where they are in the site and what else they can find on your domain. Breadcrumbs can also help customers see how the page they are on connects to the rest of the site and helps them find the content they want.

Remember the importance of nurturing leads through the funnel

Create your site navigation to encourage people to move through the buyer’s journey. For example include CTAs at the bottom of your site content that make sense based on what customers have just read and where they might want to go next.

Track customer movements

As people visit your site, track how they move through the pages so that you can see how they navigate. Compare this to how you have set up your site navigation and make sure that you provide customers with the most convenient system for moving throughout your website.

Improving your website’s navigation can help you encourage people to further engage with your content. This, in turn, can increase your ability to build a relationship with them and turn them into a lead and then a customer. Use the tips above to think carefully about how you organize your site and what you want it to encourage customers to do.

Artificial clicks are preventable

When it comes to paid advertising, one of the most common forms of promotion lies in PPC ads. With PPC ads, companies create an ad and then pay based on the number of clicks the ad receives. These types of ads can appear on a variety of different platforms, particularly search engines, where they can be displayed at the top of the search results. Brands appreciate the power of PPC marketing to help get their brand’s content to the top of the SERP, even if they struggled to get their organic content to rank that highly.

However, sometimes these ads can be susceptible to a type of fraud known as click fraud. With click fraud, artificial clicks are generated for a particular ad, so that the brand has to pay for the click without receiving the opportunity to genuinely engage with a potential customer. Those who engage in click fraud might do it for several different reasons.

1. They might want to waste a competitor’s budget to force them to spend money unnecessarily.
2. Many campains set daily maximums, which indicate the most the organization should pay per day. Therefore, clicking on the ad incessantly at the start of the day can run out the daily budget much faster, leaving more open room for competitors to move in to promote their own ad.
3. It can even be the result of a disgruntled customer who wants to force the company that they feel ‘wronged’ by to spend unnecessary money.
4. Sometimes, unscrupulous ad publishers will also click on the ads that appear on their site to generate more income for themselves.

Whatever the reason may be, uncovering and preventing click fraud can help brands save money and avoid gathering irrelevant data from their PPC campaigns.

Fighting back against click fraud

Many major search engines, including Google, have taken steps to try and sort out click fraud to avoid charging brands for clicks that were not genuine.

Google’s anti-click fraud system works to sort through clicks and uncover potential false clicks before the ad owner gets charged. The search engine giant also conducts manual reviews of clicks to further verify that the clicks occurring on ads come from true searchers.

Finally, Google will also receive a particular case if you gather evidence that specific clicks arrived through an ad to your site through a fraudulent means.

What can brands do to reduce their click fraud problem?

To personally look after the clicks your own website receives through PPC does require a bit of research. To track this information, you will need the IP addresses of the visitors who come to your site.

You can use this data to look for repeat visitors that might have suspicious origins. Depending upon the platform where you host your ads, you might be able to secure information regarding the time when that particular IP address clicked on your ad as well as the time when they completed an action on your website. High levels of ad clicks from a certain IP address with low levels of action may indicate click fraud.

If you find your brand has been hit with high levels of click fraud, you can try to use social media to reduce the problem. PPC ads on the social channels, which target ads based on demographics rather than keyword searches, can make it harder for competitors to find the ads and can offer a bit more protection.

Additionally, if the fraudulent IP addresses tend to come from certain areas, such as particular countries where you do not do a lot of business, you can also consider blocking those regions from your ad targeting.

Finally, if you uncover specific IP addresses that are guilty of click fraud, you can also block those addresses specifically on many PPC platforms.

Click fraud makes it harder for brands to accurately engage with their targeted audience. It can result in a waste of money and drained marketing budgets. Understanding what the search engines do to combat this problem, as well as what marketers themselves can do to protect their websites, can help combat this problem.

Master E-A-T for better rank

As the internet continues to mature and the amount of content available online grows, Google has begun to increasingly focus on using the E-A-T acronym to identify the top quality content and the websites offering it.

E-A-T stands for ‘Expertise’ ‘Authoritativeness’ and ‘Trustworthiness’ and it describes the features that the search engine tries to identify in the websites and the content they rank highly for on the SERP.

As Google increasingly looks to these important features, websites will need to think about how they establish themselves as the source to go to for answers. Simply aligning keywords within content no longer provides significant lift in SERP rankings. Instead, brands need to demonstrate that their website as a whole provides the leadership and answers that customers can rely on.

Here are what brands need to keep in mind as they work to boost their own website.

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

1. Expertise. Google wants to identify the experts in particular areas. If the author of a particular article has credentials and experience that helps to establish them as a trusted expert in the field, then Google wants to display this person’s content to those making relevant searches.

To build a reputation for expertise, brands should focus on creating content that demonstrates they are the ones to listen to in the field. Any relevant credentials of the author should be included, keeping in mind that Google recognizes that what makes an ‘expert’ varies widely depending upon the field.

The content itself should also align well with user intent and be built to anticipate the next potential questions of customers. Let them know that they have found a source of information that can solve their problems.

2. Authoritativeness. Building authority around your website and your brand focuses on credibility. You want to demonstrate to Google and potential readers that your website is credible and ready to help people solve their problems.

Building backlinks from other reputable sites can help establish your place in the industry. You can also help get your main content authors to publish guest posts on other authoritative resources within the industry.

Creating original research and publishing it can also demonstrate through thought leadership and your place at the front of the industry.

3. Trustworthiness. Google also wants to know that the sites it recommends to readers can be trusted. Building this trust centers around showing that your website has been built for users. Using HTTPS to provide additional security will help to establish your brand as a trustworthy one. Focusing on content and headlines that revolve around providing information and helping users - rather than trying to attract clicks through ‘click bait’, and citing sources and linking to information that supports what you say will also contribute.

Building the E-A-T reputation of your site can help to demonstrate to Google and users that your website should be trusted when it comes to providing information and solving pain points. See how optimizing your site for these factors can help build your reputation and increase your website’s visibility.

Utilize A/B testing and get to know your audience

A/B testing provides brands with valuable insight regarding what leads and customers want to see from your website. It provides brands with an excellent means of maximizing the the clicks and engagement they get with their content.

There are a wide variety of factors that influence whether or not someone is going to click on a particular piece of content. Seemingly simple criteria, such as the placement of a call-to-action, the phrasing used in the lead magnet, or even the image selected to go along with a gated item request form can all impact the likelihood of someone completing the call-to-action and being a lead or customer.

A/B testing provides brands with a means of testing the arrangements and criteria that matter the most to their customers. You can see what your particular customers respond to best and use that insight to build your leads and fuel your growth.

Building an effective A/B test can help you across your marketing campaigns, including creating better ads, improved landing pages, building email engagement, and even boosting purchase rates.

• Know what you want to test
• Identify a particular goal you want to achieve
• Determine what your sample size or test duration will be
• Interpret your results and take action

1. Know what you want to test. One important first step in creating an effective A/B test lies in picking a single variable to test. If you try to run an A/B test on two versions of the content that have enormous differences between them, it will be harder to know exactly why a particular piece of content performed better than another. Instead, you want to pick a single feature to test. This might be the placement of a CTA button or the image paired with a download form, for example.

As you prepare to run your A/B test, you should have a firm control and variable. Your control will be how the landing page, ad, or other test piece of content looks now. The variable is the adjusted version that you want to compare to the original.

2. Identify a particular goal you want to achieve. Next, you want to identify your goal with running this test. Do you want to boost click through rates or conversions? What will be a significant enough difference in the results for the two pieces of content to warrant making a change?

3. Determine what your sample size or test duration will be. Now, you want to determine exactly how big you want your test to be. For example, you might want to show two different versions of an ad to 1000 customers. If you test a landing page, it can be harder to determine the number of people who see each version, so you want to consider how long you want to run the test.

Make sure that the people who receive both versions of the content come from similar enough populations to warrant comparison. If you are testing two versions of an email message, for example, you do not want to have one version go to your segmented list for medium-sized businesses while the other goes to the large businesses.

4. Interpret your results and take action. After the test has been run for enough time to collect relevant data, you now need to collect and interpret your results. Look back on your goals with the A/B test and see how the results turned out. See what the test results indicated about the preferences of your customers.

Use this insight to make a decision regarding the version of the content you should move forward with. If you did not get statistically significant results, then consider modifying another area of the test and creating a second A/B test to boost the content’s performance.

A/B tests provide valuable insight regarding what customers want to see from organizations and what they respond to when online. Use the insight from these data-driven tests to make the best decisions for your content.

Close your bottom-funnel leads

Leads at the bottom of the sales funnel have reached the point where they are just about ready to buy. They have evaluated their different option and narrowed down their prospects to their last company or two. Now, they focus on making sure that this investment they are about to make will fully solve their pain point.

Targeting customers at this stage, therefore, revolves around putting their hesitations to rest and providing a well-thought out effort to help them overcome any remaining obstacles so that they can hit the ‘buy’ button.

Know where customers are

Leads at this stage will likely engage with your brand virtually and on a more personal level. A dedicated sales team will be having an ongoing conversation with these prospects, helping them understand why they should select your product. This lead will also be interested in whitepapers and books that help them understand the results they can expect to receive when they buy as well as demos that can help them start to see the full picture of your product or service.

Creating content for prospects at the bottom-of-the-funnel

As you create content for this stage of the journey, here are some ideas to get started.

• Sales team insights
• Competitor insight
• Customer insight

1. Sales team insights. The sales team will play an important role in this process. Since they will likely already be in a dialogue with the lead, you will want to maintain an open conversation with them about the type of content you need to produce. They can take into account what customers typically want to see as they get closer to making a purchase. The sales team can thus make content suggestions for the different types of materials you produce.

Your sales team will also play an important role in distributing the content. Since the material at this stage will likely be more specific to your brand and have less of a search volume, those actively engaging with the lead will play an important role in guiding prospective customers to answers through the content you have created.

2. Competitor insight. At this stage, you also want to continue to monitor your competitors and see what they offer their prospective customers. Since many customers will be comparing one or two companies as they prepare to make a purchase, you want to know the type of content that the other main competitors have to offer and the impact it has on the buying decisions of leads. The more information you can gather about their bottom-of-funnel material, the more prepared you will be to make sure that your material out-performs theirs.

3. Customer insight. Once you do successfully convert customers, ask them about their decision-making process and what helped them to understand why your product or service would provide the most benefit. Learn about the content or the conversations with the sales team that helped persuade them to take that final step and convert.

The better you understand what encouraged one customer to convert, the more prepared you will be to create material that will help others as well.

Creating content for the bottom-of-the-funnel provides a critical part of the buyer's journey. It encourages people who have reached the stage to buy to complete the process and end their pain point with the help of your organization. As you begin to lay out your funnels and create material to target your end-of-the-funnel leads, consider the advice above and see how it can benefit your brand.

Win over your mid-funnel leads

When people move to the middle-of-the-funnel, they have already been researching their pain point and have begun to understand their various choices. A few company names start to stand out to them as they begin to form a ‘short list’ of potential companies that they want to buy from.

When you want to target customers at this stage of the marketing funnel, you will need to understand their comparison process. You want to create a strong sense in their mind that you are the authority on the subject and the solution they need, and that thus they should trust you and what you can offer them.

Know where your customers are

Your first step in targeting customers in the middle of the sales funnel lies in understanding what platforms you can use to engage with them.

The presence you nurture on the SERP and the authority on your website continue to be important factors. Customers may look for downloadable whitepapers and ebooks. Your email list and the content you promote to email subscribers will also play an important role.

Your social media profile should also offer a strong presence where you demonstrate a willingness to actively engage with prospective customers and answer their questions or address their concerns as they arise. Here are some places to begin.

• Target leads with content
• Understand main competitors
• Website traffic
• Conversations with customers

1. Targeting leads with content. As you build your presence on these different platforms, you need to know how to generate topic ideas that will interest your customers and continue to nurture them to conversion.

2. Understanding main competitors. Spend the time developing a thorough understanding of your competitors. Know what appeals to customers who elect to buy from them and how they nurture their leads towards sales. This can offer valuable information about strategies that you can try as well as potential gaps that you can capitalize on to grow your business.

Remember that leads at this stage have also begun to create a short list of companies they may buy from. Therefore, knowing your top competitors can also help you plan content that focuses on pointing out why your brand offers a better solution than the product or service offered by the other brand.

3. Website traffic. Your website itself can also offer valuable information about what people at the middle of the marketing funnel want to see from organizations. Look at where customers click on your website and the types of content that seem to engage them the most. Monitor the types of email messages that get the most click throughs and the content that encouraged people to click around the site.

This information will help you gain a more complete picture of what customers want to see and what interests them the most on your site. This information can help inform the content creation process as you focus on the most relevant material.

4. Conversations with customers. Your customers can also provide helpful information about what they want to see. As you build relationships with your customers, ask them about their buying process. See what mattered to them the most as they headed into the mid-funnel area. Uncover potential topic ideas and themes as you create material that will also encourage new potential customers to learn more about your company and what you have to offer.

As leads progress through the top-of-the-funnel stages into the mid-funnel stages, you want to provide them with strong motivation to keep coming back to your organization. Creating content that helps to set you apart from the competition can build your business. Encourage people to submit contact information so that you can nurture these leads further plays a significant role.