In the age of data privacy regulations and increasing consumer concerns, brands must find ways to use first-party data while protecting consumer rights.
Join experts who will dive into the power of first-party data and how to use it in a privacy-first manner. The panel will explore the importance of transparency, consent, and data security and offer practical tips for implementing responsible data practices.
Google Ads is introducing a new policy to combat scams and help prevent misleading ads.
The platform will now have a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers it doesn’t know well. During this time, Google Ads may limit how many impressions unfamiliar advertisers receive.
The Limited Ads Serving policy will apply when an advertiser targets specific brands in their campaign but the relationship between the ad and brand is unclear, Google said.
This gradual rollout aims to curb bad actors while giving legitimate advertisers time to clarify their branding strategies on the platform before they’re rewarded with full reach.
Why we care. Implementing stricter ad policies could build user trust, giving people more confidence to click on buy from brands advertising on Google. The actual impact will likely be small for advertisers, but this could help some brands by reducing the reach of low-quality advertisers targeting them.
What’s next? Google Ads will notify advertisers impacted by the new policy. Those advertisers will get guidance on meeting the requirements to reach what Google calls “qualified status.”
Google Ads plans to slowly phase in enforcement before gradually expanding the policy’s reach.
Measuring trust. Google Ads shared how it will gauge an advertiser’s trustworthiness based on its track record:
User feedback: Google Ads will closely monitor user feedback and consider negative and positive reviews.
Advertising history: Google Ads will analyze whether advertisers have a good track record of adhering to its advertising policies.
Advertiser Identity Verification: The platform confirmed that completing this step is an “important” factor in establishing trust between users and advertisers.
Help for advertisers. Google Ads stated that it will provide advertisers with advice on how to create clear ads – for example, pinning their domain to the title of the ad, especially if they are not a widely known brand.
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What Google is saying? Advertisers without a record of good behavior could have their impressions limited under this policy until they build their track record, a Google Ads spokesperson told Search Engine Land:
"While we want to allow users the opportunity to interact with relevant and helpful ads, this policy will reduce the chance that they'll see a misleading or confusing ad from an advertiser with an unproven track record."
"It’s important to us that we keep our platform open to new advertisers and give them the opportunity to deliver a helpful experience. This policy won’t block or remove any ad from our platform, and any limitations on an ad will only apply in certain scenarios like when a user could be confused by an advertiser's brand identity. We’ll be rolling out this policy gradually and making adjustments to ensure it’s working effectively."
“Search is coming to Threads,” according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg shared the news via Threads about an hour ago, but it’s unclear when it’s coming. But if he’s hyping it up, Threads search must be near.
Why we care. The Threads app launched without several basic and expected features – such as the ability to search for posts using words. We have been frustratingly limited to only searching for accounts, but it seems that will finally change soon, which means more opportunities for your posts to be discovered.
Search being tested now. Threads Search is now being tested in New Zealand and Australia, TechCrunch reported. Search will rollout to more English-speaking countries but we don’t yet know when.
What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot for a Threads search for [tennis], via TechCrunch:
What Meta is saying. “We are actively listening to the community’s feedback and working on more features to improve the search experience,” the company said in a statement.
Better late than never? Threads took just five days to get 100 million users. However, in the weeks since, engagement has declined. We’ll soon find out whether launching the web version of Threads and having actual useful search can help reverse Threads’ downward trend.
We have used machine learning and AI in our day-to-day optimization work to save time and improve performance. (Think automated bidding and recommendations, plus data-driven attribution.)
But how can PPC practitioners use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to boost their campaign management and optimization efforts?
ChatGPT can quickly analyze and deliver huge data ranges in many formats. Here are a few ways I use it daily.
1. Product research
One particular challenge for PPC practitioners is the struggle of not being a subject matter expert on every product, service, industry, or brand they work on.
Even in-house managers may have to rely on product managers and others to inform them of certain product specifications, applications, and technical terminology.
One solution is to spend hours researching and reading about each specific area you are marketing. Another is to use generative AI as a starting point for your research to save valuable time.
Here is a good example of expediting your initial research as you attempt to learn more about a product you are marketing (in this case, bulk industrial citric acid).
This research method requires critical thinking.
It’s a good starting point to understand topics in which you do not have a strong background but need working knowledge to develop a PPC strategy.
With 15 headlines and four descriptions in every responsive search ad, we can simultaneously develop and test many ad copy variations.
Manually drafting ad copy can be time-consuming, though. Additionally, it can be challenging if you are still learning about that particular product.
In this example, if you give the tool some specific guidelines around character count, it will generate options for you to carefully review and adjust as needed while saving you time upfront.
Additionally, you can get even more specific and ask it to incorporate some of the competitive advantages you want to highlight.
ChatGPT will rarely deliver perfect ad copy.
But again, this is a significant time saver and will likely generate many more variations and incorporate more keywords than you might have done manually.
Researching new keyword variations is another way to utilize AI to help you think outside the box and save time.
There are many keyword research tools out there, both paid and free, but ChatGPT can bring a new angle to keyword research.
It can be as simple as asking for initial ideas as you build a new ad group.
Try different prompts and get specific about what you are looking to get out of your research.
The goal is to use the tool to help you think of new angles.
In the example above, maybe I hadn’t gone through some of the qualifying keywords it suggests, like “one-day” or “black-tie”.
Broad match keywords might help you capture a wider range of these fringe keywords, but this research might be helpful in other areas like ad copywriting or landing page copy.
4. Audience and persona research
Audiences have become more important than ever as we attempt to send the right signals to campaigns, especially Performance Max campaigns.
Beyond applying audiences directly to campaigns, understanding the target audience as you create landing page experiences and draft coordinated ad copy is not to be overlooked.
Using AI, you can conduct quick and dirty persona research and better understand some primary audiences you should consider.
This prompt might help you in many different ways, such as:
Identifying specific demographics you want to target or bid differently.
Considering a new angle to take when creating different landing page copy for A/B testing.
Finding new keywords and ad copy that might help you create new ad groups altogether.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can save us from the mundane and inefficient tasks that take up significant resources to get right.
In the same way automated bidding improves bidding effectiveness and saves time, tools like ChatGPT and other AI functionality will still improve how we market and create paid strategy.
As PPC practitioners, the key is to learn how to use it to deliver the most effective advertising strategy we can.
Effective marketing strategy, in general, still requires human thinking and problem-solving.
Computers will make mistakes. But if we use their power and speed, we can dedicate more time to the important stuff and less to the rest.
Many agencies are built on the backs of referrals; however, trust can be quickly eroded, leading to ongoing problems maintaining growth and building a healthy, self-sustaining business.
While most agencies will say that trust is important, we often encounter things that may inherently lead to a lack of trust, even if they feel like they could be good for business.
For example, we’ll hear of other agencies:
Locking clients into long contracts with no out clauses.
Not providing clients with access to their own ad accounts.
Taking on work they don’t have expertise in, or developing dashboards that leave out critical elements like spend or cost per order/lead.
These may make your agency feel secure in the short term but won’t lead to a trusting relationship.
This article will explain why maintaining client trust is critical to building a strong agency and culture.
How trust is built
There’s a trust equation that includes three important components leading to trustworthiness:
Credibility: Do you have the knowledge or capability to execute or provide relevant information.
“I can trust what he tells me about SEO, he has deep experience in this area.”
Reliability: Do you do things when you say you will?
“If he says I’ll have this report by Friday, I can trust that he will have it to me that day.”
Intimacy: Do clients feel confident that you can be trusted?
“I can trust them with this project. They are always professional and maintain confidence in sensitive situations.”
Combined, these items represent trust. Any one of them can destroy or diminish trust.
For example, if you have a lot of knowledge about a subject but never deliver projects on time, your clients (and colleagues!) may feel you can’t be trusted.
However, self-orientation is another important component in the equation.
The first three items we covered – credibility, reliability, and intimacy – build trust.
However, being perceived as self-serving or motivated by your own interests can destroy trust.
In other words, even if you are really smart, and do what you say you will do on time, people who perceive you as motivated by your own self-interests won’t trust you as much.
“I don’t trust him – it seems like he is only doing this to get recognition, not because he cares or wants to help me.”
Why should agencies focus on building trust?
Now that we understand what leads to the perception that you are trustworthy, let’s address practical and business-oriented reasons agencies need to focus on building trust:
Client retention
When your clients stay with you, new business becomes accretive instead of simply offsetting churn.
If you are constantly losing clients, you can continue to stay flat if you are good at bringing in new accounts but will struggle to grow.
Former clients will bring you with them
When your clients trust you and switch to a new company, they will likely want to partner with you again.
Referrals to new prospects
In your initial years of growth, your business may stem more from word of mouth than proactive business development. Building trust is likely to lead to more referrals.
Expanded services and growth
A high level of trust will generally open doors to selling clients additional services or increasing spend on accounts. Growing your business by increasing share of wallet within an account can lead to rapid growth.
Marketing material creation and references
Certain prospects will ask to speak with references or want to see testimonials and case studies. Clients who trust you will gladly share their experience with your prospects.
Happier employees
Your employees want to feel trusted, so make sure you do things necessary to help them be seen that way.
If your team feels good about their work and is more likely to want to stay engaged with the client, you’re likely to have a lower voluntary turnover rate.
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Monitor client churn and the percentage of clients using you for multiple services as additional measures of success.
Building trust with clients starts during the sales process but continues through management
Kickoff meetings are the first opportunity for your team to build a healthy foundation for trust.
Start with a welcome email.
Build a kickoff questionnaire that shows your interest in getting to know their business and team, not just what they do in marketing.
Introduce yourself and your team, and begin to build credibility.
Follow up with next steps to start showing that you will be reliable by meeting stated dates.
Best practices for building trust with your clients
Consistent and reliable service: Cover the breadth of strategy and execution, and be responsive to requests. That doesn’t mean you should drop everything, but it does mean that you should acknowledge receipt of requests.
Do what you say, and when you say you’ll do it: Not being reliable is a quick way to destroy trust.
Be proactive and transparent with communication: Use agendas to set the stage for a great discussion.
Deliver measurable results: Offer transparent reporting and discuss weekly highlights and improvement areas. Ensure that tracking is as accurate as possible.
Set clear expectations and timing: Following up meetings with summary recaps can help build trust.
Own challenges and mistakes: Mistakes will happen – whether small, like a typo in reporting, or large, like an overspend. Own it, explain what you will do to prevent it from happening in the future, and if appropriate, offer a credit to make up for the inconvenience.
Provide feedback and ask for it: Open and honest feedback loops with clients should be positive, empathetic, and action-oriented.
Trust is built over time and doesn’t require you to be perfect. It requires you to be transparent when you aren’t perfect.
Tips for surviving challenges or breaches in trust when they occur
Get in front of credibility and reliability issues early
For example, consider how you’d feel if you received this note on a Wednesday instead of on a Friday morning:
“I know that I committed to getting you this report by Friday. It’s taking us longer to get the right data, so we will need an extra two days.”
If you send that a couple of days or weeks ahead of time, the client will likely believe you. Send it on Friday morning? They’ll assume it’s an excuse or that you procrastinated.
Create a solution-based plan for mistakes
As long as you’ve built a good, trusting relationship, you’ll likely be forgiven for an occasional mistake, as long as it doesn’t happen more than once.
“We found an error in a formula in the last report that was sent out. Going forward, a second person will be checking reports when formula edits are made”
Offer credits if needed
This should be reserved for only highly unusual or extreme situations, but if someone on your team overspent, nothing says “I own this” like a credit, especially if your contracts don’t require them.
While the focus of this article has been on building and maintaining client trust, these same principles apply to building trust with employees, as well.
If you’re a manager of a team or agency and are interested in additional ways to build a high-performing team, you may enjoy the book 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.
The foundation of any successful team – whether between a client and agency – or internal team is trust.
Reddit is rolling out Keyword Suggestions – a new feature to boost its ad targeting capabilities.
Why we care. This functionality could save you time on keyword research, letting AI take on the heavy-duty work. Having easy access to a list of new targeting possibilities could also increase the reach and efficiency of campaigns.
What is Keyword Suggestions. It’s a new tool available in the Reddit Ads Manager. It uses machine learning to generate relevant keywords, then ranks each suggestion by monthly Reddit views while filtering out unsuitable content.
What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot Reddit provided:
How it works. Reddit’s Keyword Suggestions use advanced technology like machine learning and natural language processing to provide the most relevant suggestions. It also analyzes the original context of each keyword to ensure that only those in a brand-safe and suitable environment are offered to advertisers, Reddit said.
This involves machine learning doing the hard work, selecting Reddit posts and conversations that align best with each advertiser’s requirements. This will help advertisers display the most fitting ads to the most relevant Reddit users.
You will see the AI-powered overview answers have these down-arrow icons; when you click on them, Google will show you the relevant webpages used to help form that part of the answer.
“Starting today, when you see an arrow icon next to information in an AI-powered overview, you can click to see relevant web pages, and easily learn more by visiting the sites. This is launching first in the U.S. and will roll out to Japan and India over the coming weeks,” said Hema Budaraju, Senior Director of Product Management at Google Search.
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of an example of what this feature looks like:
Google also shared a GIF showcasing how it works:
Previous tests.Google started testing links within AI-generated answers in SGE in three different formats earlier this month. Google paused the test 16 days later, but continued testing the down-arrow cards test. Now, Google has decided to go with the down-arrow format with link cards.
Google said it will continue to test various formats:
“We’ll continue testing different ways of presenting results and listening to feedback, while prioritizing approaches that continue to drive traffic to relevant websites.”
Launching in Japan and India. Google also said that SGE is launching as a beta in more countries and languages, including Japan and India. While Japanese users will be able to use generative AI capabilities in their local language, Google said in India users will be able to use SGE in English and Hindi.
Voice search. Google said SGE will also allow voice search “so users can simply speak their query instead of typing it and listen to the responses, which are both popular preferences in both countries.”
Ads. Ads will remain to be seen in the dedicated spots in the SGE AI-generated answer interfaces.
Early data from SGE. Google also shared some generic feedback on its “earliest experiments” with SGE.
Searchers have a positive experience.
18- to 24-year-olds enjoy the SGE experience the most.
Searchers enjoy the follow-up questions within SGE, letting them refine and explore their queries more.
Ads are also helpful, according to Google, specifically that they are placed above or below the AI-powered overview helpful.
Why we care. It is great to see Google officially add links to webpages in the SGE AI-powered answers. The lack of citations has been frustrating for search marketers, publishers and searchers in general. Google added it will continue “prioritizing approaches that continue to drive traffic to relevant websites.”
You see Google News surfaces every day. Top stories carousels, the Google news tab, site or app. But how do you get your content to consistently show on these surfaces?
But your content will only reach its full potential across Google News surfaces if a well-optimized Google Publisher Center account backs it.
In this advanced SEO guide, it’s presumed you have an existing Publisher Center account. If not, don’t worry. You can learn how to set up your account right the first time.
Let’s dive into the intricate details of configuring Google Publisher Center to amplify your articles and videos on Google News surfaces.
Google Publisher Center settings
It’s clear Google didn’t put their best UI designer on the Publisher Center project.
To get to the basic setting, scroll down to the base of your Publisher Center homepage to the More Options section.
Click the Manage your publication and your organization down arrow and Modify publication settings.
Publication settings
Ensure the publication name is the official brand name. Not “BrandName Blog” or “BrandName Magazine.”
When you create a publication, you have an opportunity to corroborate key facts about your brand.
But if you don’t use the official brand name, Google may have difficulty connecting the two.
The facts you can confirm include:
Geographic target with country.
Language of your audience with primary language.
The parent organization. If this is relevant, ensure your parent company name also uses its official brand name.
The canonical domain has a verified primary URL and syndication partner relationships with additional URLs.
Visual brand identity with logos. Communicate the official logo (upload light and dark variants and use a transparent background) and the square variant, ensuring it matches what is used on social media profiles and app icons. Google “recommendations” on size and format should be interpreted as instructions.
Fonts are purely a branding decision, and they will not impact your Knowledge Graph brand entity or the visibility of content across Google News surfaces.
Content labels
Going back to the More Options section, you will see Add content labels.
Google offers five labels that can be assigned either sitewide or a specific site section.
Use these for opinion or satirical content. This can help Google correctly classify and apply E-E-A-T signals of content pieces, which, if authentically assigned, has the potential to give a visibility boost.
In the case of press releases, blogs and user-generated, this increased understanding may do the opposite on Google News surfaces. Test it if you are methodically minded. Otherwise, I’d steer clear of these three labels.
On top of these foundational settings, Publisher Center offers up to three products:
Google News publications.
Reader revenue manager.
News showcase.
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A Google News publication formally submits your content to Google News surfaces. The choices you make during setup can significantly impact performance.
General
Publication category provides another opportunity to inform the Google Knowledge Graph.
You can also limit distribution to a specific country or Google property, although this is not advisable if your goal is visibility.
Sections
Sections will appear as tabs in your Google News app publication.
At the bare minimum, you should have two sections:
If you are not publishing in video format, you are missing out on a significant opportunity to reach your audience.
To achieve the highest visibility, show the full extent of your content coverage by:
Setting up a section to match each of your website parent categories. This highlights to your readers and Google what topics you cover.
Having at least one of these sections tailored for local news to enter local exclusive placements.
Adding sections for trending topics that are expected to have some longevity.
Including a Personalized feed section.
Once you have all these sections set up, drag and drop them into an optimal order.
For article sections, a key question is whether to use Web location or Feed.
If you have development resources available, the answer is feed. Why?
A feed gives you the ability to select what articles are included. You may want to leave out sponsored content or specific syndication partners. It also allows manually deleting an article in the Google Publisher Center section management interface or triggering a manual refresh.
As for web locations, the order of articles is determined by Google ranking. With a feed, you control the order. You can show at the top the most recent, most popular or those which drive the highest engagement.
Web locations can show content only after Google has indexed it. Googlebot fetches feed content approximately every 30 minutes – or instantly if you use Websub. This makes Google News feeds a powerful tool for crawl optimization.
An often under-utilized feature of Google News is the ability for your audience to follow your publication.
Google doesn’t currently offer an API to allow readers to follow your publication directly on-site. But a simple Google News follow button graphic linked to your publication URL will increase followers.
It can also be promoted through other marketing channels, such as social media posts, email newsletter banners, push notifications or even CPC if you want to double down on Google News as a channel.
This “news publication starring” greatly increases the chance your content will be shown in personalized placements on Google News.
This can lead to higher click-through rates, impacting the algorithm to show the content to new readers who might not have discovered it otherwise.
And supports reader retention as the increased access to your audience on Google surfaces will build a more loyal readership.
Boost your Google News visibility with an optimized Publisher Center account
Nailing your Google Publisher Center setup is essential to visibility in Google News.
Ensuring the right settings and building a strong following will give your articles and videos the best chance in the cutthroat world of content.
As an added bonus, it helps establish your brand entity in the Google Knowledge Graph.
Google Ads has been around for 23 years and is arguably the most complex PPC ad platform within digital marketing.
Over the past few years, there has been a conscious effort to consolidate campaign settings and simplify the available levers within an account.
On the one hand, I think it reduces friction on campaign setup for the less marketing savvy.
However, as someone who has dedicated their professional career to digital marketing, it can cause frustration. In some cases, the tools and features I had before are slowly disappearing.
After using Google Ads for over a decade, there are a few areas that I think most advertisers or agencies don’t utilize enough.
This guide aims to bring light to some of the lesser-known tools and areas of the platform that can pack a big punch when implemented right.
1. Dynamic product remarketing
The first and the most underutilized Google Ads feature is checking a little-known area called “dynamic parameters.”
The premise is that dynamic product marketing is only made possible by making sure you are passing through the right parameters via the Google Tag.
For some reason, there is an expectation that dynamic product remarketing with Performance Max is automatic. But this is only true if your pixel is set up properly.
For ecommerce, we believe it’s a huge miss if you are not dynamically remarketing to your potential customers, specifically when a customer visits a potential product(s) and does not purchase.
The ideal strategy is to allow Google to have visibility into which products each customer looks at.
In a way, it generally does, but to get the best results, you want to ensure that you are passing through the “id” value in your pixel.
This is a critical variable that the Google Ads tag needs visibility into so it can properly remarket.
I suggest using the Datalayer checker plugin for Chrome. This will help you and your developers identify the correct variables you want to pass through.
Where to access this in Google Ads
Click on Tools and settings > Audience manager > Your data sources > Details.
Review the ‘id’ parameter.
If you don’t have one, then you’ll need to work with a developer to make sure you’re passing it through.
If you see IDs passing through, make sure that they match Google Merchant Center. If they don’t, then dynamic remarketing will not work.
2. Seasonality adjustments
In the age of smart bidding, most marketers rely entirely on the algorithm to do the job.
However, a computer cannot anticipate or understand outside factors in many instances.
If you’re using smart bidding, you will want to know the next hidden setting, seasonality adjustment.
This lesser-known tool within Google Ads allows you to give the smart bidding algorithm a heads up on what’s to come.
This is the most useful if you know definitively that conversion rates will increase or decrease significantly.
By inputting these dates and the expected conversion rate variance, smart bidding will use that in the process.
Where to access this in Google Ads
Click on Tools and settings > Bid strategies > Advanced controls.
Navigate to Seasonality adjustments, then click on New seasonality adjustment.
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In the same area, you'll see my next hidden feature, data exclusion.
This tool lets you exclude specific dates across an account, campaign, or campaign type. As Google states:
“Data exclusions are meant to account for outages or major issues related to conversion tracking. Using them often or for long periods could negatively impact Smart Bidding performance.”
This is extremely useful if you experience a conversion drop or the pixel is over-reporting.
If you can identify the issue, you can remove that data from the algorithm. This can save you a lot of potentially wasteful spend if you encounter a tracking issue.
Where to access this in Google Ads
Click on Tools and settings > Bid strategies > Advanced controls.
Navigate to Data exclusions, then click on New data exclusion.
4. Account-level automated extensions
A few years ago, I started to get an influx of screenshots from clients saying, “What is this?” and then I’d scratch my head in confusion.
They would share an image with an asset (formerly extensions) I didn’t recognize or set up.
These extensions will automatically be generated based on your website, ranging from site links and callouts to longer headlines.
I generally will turn these off for many clients because we want to control the messaging (sorry, Google).
Although Google will tell you that these improve performance, I haven’t necessarily observed that myself, except for a few.
If you are fortunate enough to have a lot of Seller reviews, that has made an impact on click-through rates.
Using dynamic images, we have also observed a lift in click-through rates for larger retailers. Dynamic images will crawl your site and apply relevant imagery to your ad.
Where to access this in Google Ads
Click Ads & assets > Assets > More options > Account-level automated assets > More > Advanced settings.
5. Your data insights
The last one is more insightful but can be actionable depending on how you want to use it. I think many of my clients are always super interested in this one.
The hidden feature is called Your data insights, which takes your pixel data and lets you get a read on your customer base.
There are two primary areas that we like to look at:
In-market audiences we’re indexing highly for.
Affinity segments we index high for.
This information can help shape customer profiles and personas and be used for targeting. All of the segments can be used in some campaigns to bid again.
You can also use this information to help adjust for ad copy or creative. Seeing some of the interests or affinities you wouldn’t expect is fun. You’ll see what I mean when you look at it.
Where to access this in Google Ads
Click on Tools and settings > Audience Manager > Your data insights.
Maximizing your Google Ads results with overlooked features
Many useful areas are tucked away in Google Ads – options that many advertisers may be entirely unaware of.
Each one of the features I mentioned should provide a bit more insight and control over your campaigns. I hope this article will help you find different ways to influence your Google Ads performance.
Advanced Data Analysis, formerly known as Code Interpreter, is an official OpenAI plugin that uses Python to allow for file uploads and downloads. It’s available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users as a beta feature.
This plugin is a big deal for SEO professionals. As someone who has been using Python for years to help with data analysis and automation, this essentially rules a lot of my code defunct – but in a good way.
This enables us to tap into the latest and greatest AI technology to help us analyze large files much faster.
How to access Advanced Data Analysis on ChatGPT
ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis is only available to paying customers using ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise. (If have not yet subscribed, trust me, it’s worth it!)
To get started with it, here are the steps to access the Advanced Data Analysis plug-in:
Step 1: Log in to ChatGPT and select Settings & Beta.
Step 2: Select Beta features in the submenu and activate Advanced Data Analysis. (This is also a good opportunity to activate Plugins and explore those.)
Step 3: Start a new chat and hover over the option for GPT-4, and you’ll see a menu appear with the option to select Advanced Data Analysis.
Step 4: Once you’ve selected Advanced Data Analysis, you should see a plus button on the left of the input box, allowing you to upload files. From here, you’re all set to get started.
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The possibilities for this new feature are still being explored, so I encourage you to explore and share with the world what you find.
Below are some ways I’ve gotten immediate value from this new feature.
Visualize internal linking
Perform server log analysis
Identify themes in keywords
Optimize titles and meta descriptions
Automate redirect mapping
1. Visualize internal linking on a website
With the plugin, you can take your tracked internal link data and let AI do its thing.
You can have it create visuals or even point out opportunities that you’re missing.
The prompt to use
Your file can be formatted however you want. ChatGPT is pretty good at interpreting your column headers, but you can provide additional clarification.
Below is my recommended starting prompt.
“Uploaded is an internal linking report that tracks the internal links across my website. Please do the following:
1. Analyze the different columns and understand their purpose.
2. Create a chart that shows additional internal linking opportunities
3. Using the link position column, create a relationship chart that shows where most of the internal links are coming from
4. Create a table that shows which destination links are getting the most and least internal links
5. Create a relationship chart that shows the relationship between anchor text and number of times it appears as anchor text for an internal link. Please only use this for link positions that equal Content.
6. Create a relationship chart that shows the relationship between anchor text and link position
The output should be an HTML file that has all of this information with the ability to hover over the charts and see the tooltip information.”
Make sure you’ve uploaded your internal link file, and let it run!
The results
When asking for multiple charts, I like to have ChatGPT's Advanced Data Analysis export the results in an HTML file with the ability to hover. This makes it easy to really customize for reporting screenshots.
Here are some examples of visualizations you can get from this prompt. Internal linking heatmap
This chart lets us quickly identify pages that could link to other pages. The chart is set up as follows:
The x-axis represents the destination pages.
The y-axis represents the source pages.
The color intensity represents the number of links between pages.
That light yellow color on the right shows several spots for internal link opportunities.
Link placement distribution
This chart is relatively easy to break down. It simply shows where the majority of your internal links are.
I tested this on my personal site, so it’s really small, which is why the navigation is the majority.
On larger sites, you may want to flip that to have the content section be the most link dense.
Most common anchor text
This can easily be done by downloading your Screaming Frog report and running a pivot table. But it’s cool to see ChatGPT able to generate similar charts like this.
Relationship between anchor text and link placement
We want to see our more valuable keywords as anchor text within the content section. This can help point that out.
2. Perform server log analysis
There are several tools on the market to help monitor server log analysis, many of them freemium.
Using ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analysis enables you to bypass many of the limits of the freemium tools and generate charts.
This technique can help investigate how Google is crawling your site and what their experience may be like.
The prompt to use
“Attached are access log files from my website's host. Please do the following:
1. Analyze them for hits from any useragent that contains “google”.
2. Create a chart that shows how Google crawls my site over time. Include a metric for status 200 hits and non-200 hits.
3. Create a diagram to visualize the pages that get hit the most.
4. Tell me the pages that get the least hits from Google.”
The results
Hits over time
This chart helps illustrate how many times Google crawls your website over time.
Additionally, I added a separation to show status 200 hits versus non-200 hits. (You can request ChatGPT to change the colors if they’re too similar.)
Top hit pages
This chart shows the top 20 pages crawled by Google on the site during the time period.
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However, using Advanced Data Analysis removes many complex elements and makes it more user-friendly.
This process helps quickly analyze large sets of keywords, highlight recurring themes, and even group keywords into similar topic clusters.
The prompt to use
“Attached is a large list of keywords and their search volume. Please do the following:
1. Analyze all of the keywords.
2. Group them into topic clusters and create a visualization to display the results.
3. List common themes that occur throughout.”
If you have several thousand keywords in your list, you may need to warn ChatGPT and ask it to implement error-handling procedures to prevent memory-limit errors.
The results
I took a sample list of 6,257 keywords and ran it through ChatGPT several times. ChatGPT struggled to process the larger list due to memory limits.
But because I gave it a heads-up, it was able to set up the necessary data batching required to get through the list. It even named the clusters for me.
AI can be your friend if you run a large site and need to optimize title tags and meta descriptions in bulk.
Yes, doing them manually will ensure better quality, but if you need a quick fix, this may be your solution.
This can help specifically when you have titles and meta descriptions that may be too long or too short.
The prompt to use
“Attached is a list of titles and meta descriptions that need to be optimized.
- Please keep the titles between 50-65 characters.
- Please keep the meta descriptions between 150-165.
- Please create a CSV export of the results.”
The results
ChatGPT was able to work quickly and create an optimized CSV export for me.
5. Automate redirect mapping
How annoying are redirect maps? Important, yes, but so tedious.
What if we could automate the process to get 60% of the way there?
By tapping into ChatGPT, we can help automate the redirect map process.
Now a huge downside here is that ChatGPT can’t crawl webpages without using a plugin. Right now, we cannot combine plugins and the Advanced Data Analysis.
We’ll have ChatGPT look at the URL slugs to map the pages to get around this.
The prompt to use
“Attached are two lists of URLs. I need help creating a redirect map of the old URLs to the new URLs. Rely on the slug of the URL to find the closest match. The lists may not be the same length. The goal is to find a matching URL for every URL on the old URLs list. Please export the results into a CSV file. Column A should be the old URLs and column B should have the corresponding URL from the new URL list. Column C should have the similarity percentage.”
The results
Making SEO analysis more straightforward with ChatGPT
The future's looking pretty bright for SEOs leveraging AI.
We're on the brink of a new era where AI isn't just some fancy tool but a game-changer, making our jobs much easier.
Sure, we're just getting started, but from where I'm standing, the view's pretty amazing.
