How to make the most of GA4 for SEO

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a powerful tool for analyzing website and app traffic, offering valuable insights into user behavior and campaign performance. 

This article explores how SEO professionals can leverage GA4’s features to refine their strategies, from linking with Google Search Console to analyzing organic traffic and setting up custom events. 

We’ll examine specific reports and metrics that provide actionable data for improving SEO performance.

Link Google Search Console with GA4 for data analysis

By default, Google Analytics 4 does not automatically show Search Console data just by linking accounts.

You need to publish the reports manually to view this data in GA4, which is useful for analyzing organic traffic. (Learn how to link GA4 with Google Search Console in this article.)

Linking and publishing Search Console data in GA4 will allow you to have the following reports for analyzing queries and organic traffic:

• Queries report: This report shows metrics for search terms used by visitors from Google organic search. You can see impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR) and average keyword rankings.

• Google organic search traffic report: This report shows how individual URLs perform with traffic from Google’s organic search. You can analyze data by the users’ landing page + query string, country and device type.

Analyze your website’s organic traffic

Organic traffic is the traffic acquisition channel by which users reach a website through non-advertising links from organic search results. 

In GA4, in addition to Search Console data, there are other reports available that help you analyze your website’s organic traffic:

Measure organic traffic in GA4

GA4 account owners can analyze organic traffic from search engines using the GA4 Acquisition report. 

In this section, you can filter by different mediums (i.e., “organic”) and traffic sources (e.g., Google or Bing) and see how well these campaigns are performing.

Analyze specific website URLs

Organic traffic can be analyzed both broadly and at the level of individual URLs. This helps you evaluate the performance of specific pages.

The landing page report

In Reports > Engagement, the landing page report shows the first page visitors land on and the number of visitors to each page. This helps identify which pages get the most organic traffic and how they perform.

For example, you can filter and analyze visits coming from organic traffic, measure user interaction time and evaluate the percentage of users who engage with the content. 

On the other hand, you can also track the bounce rate, which indicates the percentage of users who leave the site without interacting further:

This report also provides insights into how users convert on each specific URL of the website. 

You can analyze the events, even filtering by specific events, that users perform based on their landing page. 

This can help you improve landing pages and prioritize those with better performance:

Pages and screens

Within the engagement reports, you also find the pages and screens report, which allows you to see the individual pages visited by users or screens, in the case of mobile apps.   

404 pages: Page not found

Not only can you analyze URLs with different levels of traffic, but this report also allows you to evaluate the performance of specific, priority URLs within an SEO strategy, such as the 404 page of a website.

Within this report, you can go further to gather not only quantitative data but also qualitative insights. 

By including the Page path and screen class dimension, you can study the user’s journey within the website when they land on a 404 page. This allows you to identify where 404s are.

You can replicate this process with any potential website analytics page. This can be automated via the path explorations reports.

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Set up events and parameters

Beyond analyzing visits to a website, it’s possible to understand how users interact with it to refine SEO strategies. 

This can be done through events, which are metrics that measure specific user interactions on a website, such as loading a page, clicking on a link or submitting a form and parameters that provide additional information about those events.

In Reports > Engagement > Events, you can see the total number of events achieved according to the users’ highest priority (such as purchases, form submissions or adding items to the cart).

Find out more on how to track and set up events and conversions in Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager and how to set up event parameters.

Events let you review how strategies are performing and the quality of web traffic. You can also create custom events, such as:

Event: Search results

Analyzing these metrics provide insights into the most popular search terms users look for on a site’s search function.

You can filter according to the users’ country or other interesting dimensions for companies.

This data lets you design content strategies and even refocus the architecture of a website:

Event: Product comparison

If you have a product comparison page, you can create an event to determine which products or features users most frequently compare. 

Based on these insights, you can create content (such as blogs, videos, etc.) that responds to their most common actions to resolve their questions. 

This might include topics like “What is the difference between Product A and C?” or “Discover the top functionalities of Product B,” if you identify the most popular features.

Leverage other traffic channels to boost SEO 

You can use campaign data in GA4 from other channels, which can be useful for designing SEO strategies.

For instance, Google Ads Keywords Reports, created through Exploration, provide valuable insights. 

Specifically, the Google Ads query dimension shows the search queries that led to sessions, while the Google Ads keyword text reveals the matched keywords that triggered those sessions.

This data helps you to analyze the results of Google Ads campaigns and find inspiration for new content ideas or keyword clustering strategies on the site.

These examples show that many GA4 reports and metrics can help inform your SEO campaigns. With so much information available, it’s important to have clear objectives to focus on the most important data for analysis.

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Google updates deepfakes search algorithms and controls and expands About this image

Google announced a number of image-related Search features today, including updates to how Google Search handles deepfakes and expanding the About this image feature to Circle to Search and Google Lens.

Deepfakes in Google Search

Google has updated Google Search around deepfakes in two ways; (1) updated its ranking system to help ensure deepfake content does not rank highly in Google Search. and (2) making it easier to remove deepfakes from Google Search.

Show news articles instead. Google’s search ranking system for queries where there’s a higher risk of explicit fake content appearing in the Google Search results. Google is rolling out “ranking updates that will lower explicit fake content for many searches,” Google wrote. When you search for this type of content for people’s names, Google Search will “surface high-quality, non-explicit content — like relevant news articles — when it’s available,” the Search company added. Emma Higham, Product Manager at Google said the changes they made already made improvements in this area by 70%.

Real nudes vs. deepfakes. Google also said it made improvements to differentiating between explicit content that’s real and consensual, such as actor nude scenes, versus explicit fake content such as deepfakes. Google said this is not an easy task but it is “making ongoing improvements to beer surface legitimate content and downrank explicit fake content.”

How does Google do this? Google said it can detect patterns amongst sites and “generally, if a site has a lot of pages that we’ve removed from Search under our policies, that’s a prey strong signal that it’s not a high-quality site, and we should factor that into how we rank other pages from that site,” Google explained. Google thus ends up demoting sites that have received a high volume of removals for fake explicit imagery.

Removing deepfakes. Google also improved the process to remove deepfakes form Google Search. When an individual successfully requests the removal of explicit non-consensual fake content featuring them from Google Search, “Google’s systems will also aim to filter all explicit results on similar searches about them,” Google wrote.

In addition, when someone successfully removes an image from Google Search, Google will scan for, and also remove any duplicates of that image that it has in its index.

About this image expands to Circle To Search and Google Lens.

Google also expanded About this image feature to Circle to Search and Google Lens. About this image launched about a year ago, and it is like the About this result for normal text-based search results. The about this image will show you when the image and similar images were first indexed by Google, where the image may have appeared first and where else you can see the image, such as on news, social or other sites.

“About this image” is rolling out to Circle to Search and Google Lens, “giving you more ways to quickly get context on images that you see wherever you come across them,” Nidhi Hebbar, Senior Product Manager at Google announced.

What it looks like:

Here is what it looks like on Google Lens:

Here is what it looks like on Circle to Search:

About this image does:

• How other sites use and describe the image: You can see how an image is used on other pages and what other sources, like news and fact-checking sites, have to say about it. This information can be helpful to assess the claims being made about an image, and to see evidence and perspectives from other sources.
• An image’s metadata: Metadata is data that gives you more information about an image (such as the creator of the image and some information about how that image may be created). It’s important to remember that metadata can be added or removed by the person who posts an image. When available, you’ll be able to see metadata that image creators and publishers have added to an image, including feilds that may indicate that it’s been generated or enhanced by AI.
• Digital watermark: About this image can identify if the image was generated using AI, provided it contains Google DeepMind’s SynthID watermark embedded within its pixels.

Where is About this image available. About this image is available in 40 languages globally, including French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Vietnamese. It is rolling out now on Circle to Search on select Android devices, like the latest Samsung and Pixel phones, foldables and tablets and on Google Lens, available in the Google app (Android and iOS).

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8 free tools for PPC reporting

Reporting is a crucial part of paid media management for communicating results to stakeholders and informing optimization decisions.

While there are a number of well-made third-party reporting tools, many are pricy and inaccessible to all PPC managers, either due to budget concerns or complex approval processes.

Additionally, various tools have different benefits, with some better suited to spreadsheet-nerd analysis and others for visually friendly reporting.

This article looks at eight free options you can use for PPC reporting. 

1. Looker Studio

Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio) is a full-scale tool for building interactive reports that can be viewed in a browser or downloaded as a PDF.

As Google owns this platform, it integrates by default with most other Google-owned properties, such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Ads 360 and Display and Video 360. 

For other platforms, you can export data to Google Sheets and sync it to a report. Several paid third-party tools also allow you to sync directly to a wider range of data sources.

You can create charts, graphs, tables and text boxes or include dropdowns and other elements to allow users to filter data how they’d like. 

Advanced users can blend multiple data sources together, such as combining Google Ads data and CRM data or reporting across multiple accounts.

For those just starting out, ready-made templates are free directly from Google and third-party providers to provide a basic reporting structure.

Dig deeper: 3 steps for effective PPC reporting and analysis

2. Google Ads/Google Sheets add-on

With this free add-on developed by Google, you can generate ad reports and then import them into a Google Sheet.

You can customize which columns to show and filter data (such as to show select campaigns or only those with recent impressions). 

The tool also allows you to set schedules for refreshing data at regular cadences.

This setup could be useful when sharing with individuals who want to see data in a spreadsheet format or for providing easily exported data tables that you can manipulate for other reporting.

3. Google Ads reports and dashboards

The Report Editor within Google Ads allows you to build reports with the precise metrics you’d like to see and save them for future use. You can effectively make a pivot table populated with the metrics and dimensions you want to include. 

In addition, several ready-made templates can help you quickly view performance by ad group, keyword, audience, content or other dimensions.

One handy tip is that you can include custom columns you’ve created, such as for seeing totals and CPA for individual conversion actions. 

Additionally, you can create dashboards containing data from multiple reports, scorecards for top-level metrics and notes for commentary. One recent use where I’ve found a dashboard helpful was tracking specific ad tests I’m running.

Dig deeper: How to approach weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual PPC reporting

4. Microsoft Advertising reports

Microsoft also contains its own robust reporting section, where you can view premade reports or build your own.

In addition to showing standard campaign data, a few practical uses for these reports include:

• Publisher reporting to see a breakdown of performance by website URL, which can’t be viewed in the main interface.
• Negative keyword conflicts to remove negatives that may inadvertently be blocking keywords you want to bid on.
• Ad extension reporting at keyword or ad level.
• User location reporting to view actual geography of individuals as opposed to targeted geography.
• Label reporting (useful for reviewing tests where ad variants may be labeled separately).

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5. Meta Ads reporting

On the social advertising front, Meta has a built-in reporting section, which can be found under the Ads Reporting section of the menu.

Options include a pivot table feature and the ability to build line and bar charts. 

You can save pre-built reports with the specific dimensions, metrics and filters you’d like to include. You can also break down data in various ways, such as by campaign name, device, placement and more.

6. Google Ads Editor

While this may not necessarily be your first thought for reporting, you can see performance data in Google Ads Editor.

When you first open it, you’ll see a graph and selectors for top-level metrics, with the ability to choose a timeframe. 

You can also pull data into the editing section via the View Statistics button in the top bar. Choose individual metrics, which you can then populate in a table within the Editor interface. 

Additionally, you can view a search term report or see the performance of individual search, display, app, or Demand Gen assets (including images and text).

These features could be useful as an alternative to the web UI for downloading data in spreadsheet format.

7. Microsoft Advertising Editor

Similarly to Google, you can also include metrics when downloading data into Microsoft Advertising Editor. 

Use the View Statistics button in the top bar and select the timeframe you’d like to see. You can also view the data directly in the interface or export it to manipulate in Excel or another program.

8. Google Analytics

A properly configured Google Analytics implementation is crucial for any PPC manager’s analysis. You’ll need to make sure website traffic from your ad platforms is being tracked properly (such as by connecting Google Ads and using proper UTM parameters across platforms). 

Reports built in GA4 can help show the performance of ad traffic tied together with website behavior metrics. 

If you’ve linked your Google Ads account and have auto-tagging turned on, you can view Google Ads data together with key events (events that you’ve marked as priority for your business, such as form completes, sales, etc.) under the Advertising section. 

Explorations offer a good starting point for building customized reports that can be segmented to include only specific traffic, such as that from paid channels, along with select dimensions and metrics.

For instance, you can create a funnel report showing how much ad traffic is getting to each step of the purchase process.

An added value of Google Analytics for PPC reporting is the ability to see how ads work together with other channels such as organic search, social, referrals and direct traffic in the conversion process. 

The Attribution section lets you see users’ paths across multiple combinations of channels and compare last clicks to data-driven models.

Dig deeper: How to combine GA4 and Google Ads for powerful paid search results

Start reporting

Even if you don’t have the budget for pricier reporting tools, there are many free options available.

If you haven’t tested some of the options reviewed in this article, take the time to check them out, play with features and see what reporting configurations may work for your needs.

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Google enhances ad creation with AI and transparency tools

Google is rolling out new features to boost creative results and transparency in its advertising platforms, particularly for Performance Max campaigns.

Why it matters. These updates aim to help advertisers create more effective ads, understand their performance better, and ensure brand safety across Google’s ad network.

Key updates:

• New reporting tools:
  • Conversion metrics in asset-level reporting.
  • YouTube video placement reporting.
  • Third-party verification for brand suitability on YouTube and Display.
• Enhanced AI-powered creative tools:
  • Expanded image editing capabilities, including object removal and addition.
  • Improved asset generation for multiple campaign types.
  • Easier access to creative tools from the “Create” menu.
• New partnership:
  • Integration with Typeface for seamless asset creation and implementation.

Between the lines. Google continues with its move to leverage AI to help advertisers create more diverse and high-quality assets while providing more transparency into ad performance and placement.

What to watch. The rollout of these features across different campaign types and languages, and their impact on ad performance and advertiser adoption.

The big picture. As digital advertising becomes increasingly complex, Google is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for advertisers, offering both creative tools and performance insights.

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Website migration checklist: 11 steps for success

Website migrations are a part of an enterprise’s natural evolution. Companies may migrate because they’re rebranding, going to the cloud to scale their site easier or numerous other reasons.

However, while migration may seem simple on paper, one misstep can lead to SEO problems, such as:

• 404 errors.
• Lost rankings.
• Missing content.
• Lost revenue.

Before beginning your migration, you’ll want to run a site crawler to inventory your pages. The goal is to have a list of all pages that you can refer to when the migration is complete to verify that everything is migrated correctly.

You’ll also want to identify when your site traffic is highest so you can avoid performing a migration during these hours. Once you’re ready, it’s time to move on to the first part of your planning stage.

Communication plan

I see most guides go right into the pre-migration phase, and while this may be fine if you’re a one-person owner, it’s not OK when multiple stakeholders are involved. 

A basic communication plan is necessary, and it should include:

• Internal communication and insights into the migration, when it will occur, who it will impact and what team members may assist you.
• External communication to alert clients and customers of the migration and potential downtime that may occur.

Make sure everyone knows what’s going on to avoid any critical issues that can disrupt the migration or someone else’s work in the organization.

Pre-migration planning

Screaming Frog is a great tool to help with collecting data on your site before the migration, such as:

• Comparing crawls.
• Staging.
• URL mapping.

But you’ll need more data than this. You’ll also want to gather a list of your rankings before and after the migration. Ahrefs and Semrush allow you to easily track and export your keywords.

You can – and should – create an annotation inside your Google Analytics to mark the pre–migration data so that you can refer to it when you’re done with the site migration.

Once you’ve created your list, you’re ready to move on. The following are 11 steps that will help you successfully migrate your website.

Caution: Do not delete your old site. It’s good to have a fallback if your new site fails for some reason.

Dig deeper: 12 SEO pitfalls to avoid during a website platform migration

Step 1: Setup hosting, DNS, CDN, mail

Migrations have a lot of moving parts. First, make a backup of your site and database. If something goes wrong, you’ll be thankful that you have a backup to restore your site. Ideally, you’ll also create a staging site to test the migration to reduce any initial hiccups that can occur along the way.

Staging environments allow you to test out the migration and identify any critical errors that can pop up. If you’re migrating a well-known site that receives a lot of traffic and may even generate revenue, staging is very important.

Business stakeholders will want answers from you if something goes wrong, and the presence of a staging site helps you prevent unwanted issues in production.

Use the staging environment to test redirects, duplicate content and the numerous other parameters mentioned throughout this article.

Once you’re done with the staging site, you’ll want to:

• Set up your hosting environment and transfer all files.
• Set up the DNS information.
• Change your CDN information.
• Change mail parameters.

Complete these preliminary steps before moving into your redirects.

Step 2: Create a list of redirects

Internally, you and your team should have a list of redirects that you need to create and ones that already exist. You’ll refer to this list to ensure that all existing redirects are in place on your new site.

Thankfully, if you don’t have many redirects and are changing domains, you’ll need a single redirect to redirect the site.

Dig deeper: How to speed up site migrations with AI-powered redirect mapping

Step 3: Review your SEO structure

SEO specifications should be put in place. You’ll need to check the following to make sure the migration is successful:

• Crawlability.
• Custom URLs.
• Alt text.
• Canonical tags.
• Robots.txt.
• Sitemaps.
• Internal links.
• Hreflang.
• Structured data.
• URL structure.
• Mobile setup.
• Pagination.

Review your current site’s SEO structure to ensure that you can check it when the migration is complete. The key to site migration success is creating lists and reviewing them multiple times.

Step 4: Run benchmarks

Benchmarks are going to tell you a lot about your migration and site. From a technical SEO standpoint, you’ll want to view the following data:

• Page load speed.
• Page indexing rates.
• Crawl errors.
• Keyword rankings.

You’ll be returning to these benchmarks multiple times over the coming weeks. If you notice that the site speed is slow or you lost rankings, you’ll want to look through your site more to pinpoint the issue.

If you have this data available, you’ll also have something to show your client (if you’re working with one) that can highlight the success of the benchmark.

Technical SEO benchmarks

You want your users to have an exceptional experience on your site. To achieve this, crawlability needs to remain high and speeds must also be monitored. A few of the tools that can help you with these are:

• Mobile-friendliness: Sites need to be mobile-friendly. Two tools that can help you verify that users across mobile devices can use your site seamlessly are Bing and Website Grader.
• Site speed: Your site speed also matters, so you’ll want to run tests before and after the migration using PageSpeed Insights.
• Duplicate content: Sometimes, migrations go wrong, and duplicate content pops up. You want to verify that you don’t have a bunch of duplicate pages.

Running Screaming Frog when the migration is done will allow you to identify errors that you’ll need to correct to avoid any crawlability issues that may pop up, including duplicate content.

Step 5: Analyze key site pages

Your key site pages are the most important revenue-generating pages and should be the first that you target. Analyze these pages to make sure that they’re running properly. Even if you have 1,000+ pages, choose the top 5% pages and go through them one by one.

These are pages that:

• Have high keyword rankings.
• Generate the most revenue.

When you look through your analytics, you’ll want to keep a close eye on these pages while continuing through the rest of these steps.

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Step 6: Rerun site crawlers to compare

Rerunning your crawler is a good idea at this point. You’ve already gone through most of the tedious steps, but now it’s time to compare your old site crawl to the new one. The goal is to check the following:

• Broken site links (404 errors).
• Redirects.
• Meta titles.
• Meta description.

Compare your metadata to ensure that everything migrated properly. Sometimes, metadata is lost during the migration, especially if you change content management systems that try pulling data from a database column or table that doesn’t exist.

Step 7: Audit the site

Audits come next, and you can also use some of the data collected in the last step. Your audit should include checking:

• Redirects.
• Internal links.
• Server response times.
• Noindex/index information.

You’ll also want to create your robots.txt file, set up canonical tags and ensure that your key pages are running well.

Step 8: Set up Search Console and Webmaster Tools

If you’re changing domains, add your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. You’ll want to follow this up by requesting that your site be indexed and submitting your XML sitemaps.

Google Search Console allows you to change your site address. You can set up the change of address by going to Settings (Gear icon) > Change of address.

The Search Console’s change of address allows you to alert Google of your site’s address change. However, you will need to verify that you’re the owner of both sites before submitting your change of address.

Step 9: Run usability tests

Usability is one aspect of a site migration that people overlook. Your site may maintain its rankings, yet you’ll lose revenue if usability diminishes. 

Manually testing key areas of your site is the next step, and these tests should be performed on mobile and desktop devices.

Check the following areas to ensure that they’re working properly:

• Downloadable content.
• Forms.
• Full checkout process.
• Live chat function.
• Mailing lists.
• Navigation.

You want to ensure that all of your site’s features run properly. If you come across any issues, correct them as necessary.

Step 10: Monitor analytics and perform any necessary cleanup

Over time, you’ll want to look in your Google Search Console for errors and warnings. Review your analytics or keyword rankings for your top pages. 

Traditionally, you’ll want to view your highest traffic-generating pages and see if they’ve experienced a loss in traffic. If they have lost significant rankings and traffic, start analyzing key issues, such as:

• Improper redirects.
• Slow load times.
• Lost internal links.
• Missing meta tags.

You’ll want to keep a close watch on Google Search Console’s Coverage tab, which will show you any critical errors on your pages and warnings. As these errors pop up, go through them one by one and fix them.

Step 11: Post-migration monitoring

Post-migration monitoring is necessary for the first few weeks, but most changes will be immediate. A few items that you’ll want to add to your monitoring checklist are:

• 403/404/etc. errors.
• Analytic setup verification.
• Setup Google Search Console.
• Submit sitemaps.
• Verify third-party licenses are transferred.
• Verify that the caching system is working properly.
• Make sure email is working properly.
• Check the navigation to verify that it works.
• Run Screaming Frog to identify errors. 

You can use this template, which I’ll keep updated to help you verify your migration.

Ensure a smooth site migration with these key steps and tips

Website migrations require considerable diligence and time to execute properly. While a few steps may be added to the list above to streamline the migration process further, they’re a good foundation to build on.

Dig deeper: How to run a successful site migration from start to finish

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Better RSA creation and optimization in 3 steps

Whether you’re a seasoned PPC marketer or just starting out, creating and optimizing Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) is challenging.

At SMX Advanced 2024, I highlighted the biggest pitfalls marketers face with RSAs, which make a difficult task even harder. Explore these common RSA mistakes and catch the full session replay to turn your ads around.

Mistake 1: You’re looking at the wrong metrics

You’ve heard a million times that you need to use the “right metrics,” but there are so many competing scores, metrics and diagnostic tools for evaluating RSAs that it can feel impossible to know what your KPIs should be. 

“Isn’t the job of the ad to get the click, not to drive sales?”

“What if the best ads have the worst ad strength?”

Let’s set you up for success by clarifying a few ideas:

Your KPIs should align with business growth

Ask most business owners how they gauge the success of a Google Ad and they’ll likely say it should drive more clicks and sales.

On the surface, those metrics seem to go hand in hand; more visitors to your site means more potential customers.

The reality is that there’s often an inverse relationship between click volume and conversions.

The average CTR is up 5% year-over-year, while the average conversion rate is down -1%. Last year, conversion rates fell by -10%, despite an increase in CTR.

In other words, we’re getting more ad clicks than ever, but those clicks aren’t turning into sales.

Most accounts will benefit from running ads that better qualify the click, filtering out wasted clicks from your anti-audience and driving more conversions with less spend.

This Google Ads statistic table shows metrics for an ad that’s been optimized for conversions:

Impressions, clicks and click-through rates are all down compared to the previous period. However, conversions, cost per conversion and conversion rate have all improved.

It’s rare to improve click volume and conversion efficiency simultaneously, so know your KPI for your ad and don’t expect it to lift every metric at once.

Ad Strength is not a factor in Ad Rank

If you’re struggling to balance ads that drive results with ads that have an “excellent” Ad Strength, there’s good news: your Ad Strength is not a factor in the auctions.

Ad Strength measures four categories:

• Number of headlines.
• Uniqueness of headlines.
• Keyword relevance of headlines and descriptions.
• Uniqueness of description lines.

Source: Responsive Search Ads: A Guide to Writing Ads that Perform

Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin explained: 

“Ad Strength is not used in Ad Rank and is *not* a ‘factor in stopping a keyword from going to auction due to Ad Rank’.”

Remember, Google makes money when your ad is clicked, while you make money when your ad drives sales or conversions. Their definition of an “excellent” ad will be different from yours.

The best way to measure the impact of your RSAs is how well they’re helping you grow your business.

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Mistake 2: You aren’t using a brief

In the “golden age of advertising,” successful ad campaigns always started with a strategic brief.

Today, most marketers don’t have the budget or resources to create a brief. Ads get written on the fly, often aided by AI, with no foundation in strategy.

We end up with head-scratcher ads like this:

This nonsensical, keyword-stuffed ad is absolutely real, but it would never have existed if the process had begun with a strategic brief. 

A brief takes into consideration details about your brand, audience and goals before you ever start writing. It can be modified to your own needs and will typically include categories like:  

• Background and objectives.
• Target audience and consumer insights.
• Creative requirements.
• Media and campaign strategy.
• Message and tone.
• Success metrics and reporting.
• Compliance and approvals.

While the challenge of budget and resource constraints remains, generative AI can help solve that.

Here’s an example of a prompt you could ask ChatGPT to discover more about your target audience without investing in focus groups:

• “Please list 5 reasons a person might be looking for a {your product or service}. For each reason, explain what a person would need to know or believe about a company in order to make a purchase decision.”

Using generative AI to help build a brief is a fast and affordable way to make sure your ads connect to your audience’s needs and campaign objectives.  

Mistake 3: You’re phoning in your ad copy

We wish this weren’t the case, but Google Ads has never been harder than it is today. Marketers face:

• Mad Libs-style ad creation with limited control and ambiguous asset reporting.
• 15 headlines and four descriptions, resulting in over 40,000 ad combinations per RSA.
• Conflicting goals, incentives and advice.

It’s no wonder many marketers are giving up on messaging ownership, relying instead on Google’s “best practices” to serve the best combinations of ad assets.

While this benefits Google, it’s not ideal for advertisers.

Here’s another real-life plasma ad, this one checking the boxes of what most marketers would agree are best practices:

On the plus side, this ad manages to avoid gibberish and features a compelling benefit.

Yet, despite following the conventional wisdom of what makes a good ad, it fails to help prospects know if the plasma center is right for them.

The text is redundant, repeating “get up to $800” four different times and ignoring potential pain points or anxiety that might keep prospects from converting.

How to fix it

Using the ChatGPT prompt shared earlier in this article, we can find out what prospective plasma donors are likely to care about. The list may include things like:

• Financial compensation: Offers fair compensation and transparent policies.
• Health monitoring: Provides thorough health screenings in a safe environment.
• Regular donating as a routine: Efficient processes and comfortable donation experience.

An effective RSA will define and differentiate the offer, making it more likely your target audience will click.

Here’s how we could write a well-defined and differentiated RSA for a plasma center:

Our competitor’s ad focuses only on earning potential, but ours emphasizes comfort, safety and convenience in addition to the $800 payout. By addressing these concerns, our ad stands out from the competition, making it easy for a nervous new donor to see the value in our offer.

This is how you go from generic to compelling.

Dig deeper: 7 ways to elevate your responsive search ads

Watch: RSA mastery: Messages to maximize conversions

Find more RSA insights, prompts and examples in my SMX Advanced session:

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The quickstart guide to marketing automation by Edna Chavira

Is your marketing team overwhelmed and underperforming? It’s time to harness the power of automation.

This free guide from Act-On provides a step-by-step blueprint to transform your marketing efforts. Learn how to:

• Streamline your workflow: Reduce manual tasks and focus on high-impact activities.
• Personalize your messaging: Deliver targeted content to the right audience at the right time.
• Generate more leads: Convert website visitors into qualified prospects.
• Improve sales productivity: Align marketing and sales for maximum impact.

Inside this guide, you’ll discover essential steps to build a strong foundation for marketing automation success and tips for launching a successful pilot program. Follow the steps and you’ll be well on your way to achieving marketing automation success. Download The Marketing Automation Quickstart Guide today!

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Google streamlines ad creation with Merchant Center-Ads integration

Google is rolling out a new feature that bridges the gap between Google Merchant Center and Google Ads, enhancing the ad creation process for e-commerce businesses.

Why we care. This integration allows advertisers to leverage their existing product images directly within Google Ads’ AI image editor, streamlining the creation of high-quality visual assets for campaigns.

Details:

• Advertisers can now link Merchant Center feeds with Performance Max campaigns.
• The AI image editor in Google Ads can access and enhance product images from Merchant Center.
• Edited images are saved to the Asset Library for use in campaigns.
• Performance Max campaigns can include up to 20 images.

How it works. After linking Google Ads to Merchant Center, advertisers can import product images into the Asset Library through the AI image editor’s media picker.=

Between the lines. This feature aims to simplify the ad creation process, potentially saving time and resources for advertisers while improving ad quality.

What to watch. The impact of this integration on ad performance and adoption rates among e-commerce advertisers.

First seen. We were first alerted to this update from Dario Zannoni’s LinkedIn:

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Teams that train together, win together. Send your team to SMX!

Successful search marketing requires thoughtful coordination between diverse teams responsible for SEO, PPC, analytics, and beyond.

Get your team on the same page, speaking the same language, and working towards a shared vision of success: Attend the SMX Master Classes – online August 21-22 – as a group to sharpen skills, broaden horizons, and learn actionable tactics that drive measurable results… and save up to 20% off* while you’re at it!

(Can’t attend live? Same-day on-demand access is included for free!)

With seven exclusive courses to choose from, the learning combinations are endless. Attend the same class to unify and bond – or attend different classes to dive deep into respective disciplines and report back with armloads of insights and next steps.

Click on a class below to learn exactly what you’ll learn – including a close look at the curriculum, actionable next steps, and each day’s training agenda.

• Powering advanced SEO success with Bruce Clay – $299
• Mastering advanced Google Ads with Brad Geddes – $299
• Leveraging technical SEO and AI to drive growth with Eric Enge – $299
• Mastering generative AI for SEO and PPC with the SMX all-stars – $299
• Dominating Google Analytics 4 and reporting with Colleen Harris – $299
• Crafting SEO content for today’s Google with Heather Lloyd-Martin – $299
• Designing landing pages that convert with Brian Massey – $299

Each Master Class is $299 per person – but the bigger your team, the bigger your savings:

• Groups of 3-5 save 10%
• Groups of 6-11 save 15%
• Groups of 12 or more save 20%

No matter your setup or schedule, attending as a team is a win-win:

• Working from home? Training together with your colleagues will foster a feeling of camaraderie that’s essential to high-performing teams, especially remote ones.
• Tuning in from the office? Embark on an invaluable shared learning experience that will fuel creative brainstorms and collaborative projects for months to come.
• Train at your own pace – and watch and rewatch for deeper learning – with the convenience of on-demand access, available until December 20, 2024 (120 days).

This is your chance to transform your team into a veritable search marketing Swiss Army knife. Email reg@thirddoormedia.atlassian.net to receive your exclusive group discount code and get your team signed up today.

Attending alone? Book your Master Class now!

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What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Change is the only constant in today’s rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape. Keeping up with the latest innovations isn’t just a choice – it’s a necessity for survival. 

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the latest major development revolutionizing the way people search and interact with information online. 

As GEO and its effects on SEO and digital marketing continue to evolve, we’ll cover the basics to equip you with the knowledge to navigate these dynamic changes and stay ahead.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide: 

• What is GEO? 
• How GEO differs from SEO.
• Why GEO is important.
• Key benefits of GEO.
• How generative AI/answer engines work. 
• How GEO works.
• Future potential of GEO. 

What is GEO? 

GEO stands for “generative engine optimization” which means the process of optimizing your website’s content to boost its visibility in AI-driven search engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. 

GEO positions your brand to appear in AI-generated results when users search for queries related to your products, services or areas of expertise.

As search behavior evolves, achieving better visibility in AI-generated responses is key to your brand being discovered in this new era of digital marketing. It’s not just about being seen; it’s about engaging potential customers, clients and audiences in meaningful ways, regardless of where they begin their search journey. 

Ultimately, the goal of GEO is to increase your website’s visibility, attract more targeted traffic and turn visitors into loyal fans of your brand who return time and time again. 

GEO vs. SEO: Similarities and differences 

Both GEO and SEO are cornerstones of modern digital marketing. 

While SEO has traditionally helped brands increase visibility on search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing, GEO is transforming how brands appear on AI-driven platforms. 

Understanding how GEO and SEO align and differ will help you optimize your content for both traditional and AI-driven searches. 

Let’s break down the similarities and differences and how using both can enhance your online presence.

How is GEO similar to SEO? 

GEO and SEO share several key objectives and methodologies:  

• Visibility objectives: Both aim to enhance the visibility of content online, ensuring it reaches the intended audience effectively. 
• Keyword strategy: Both involve the strategic use of keywords to improve discoverability and relevance. 
• User experience: Both prioritize creating content that is engaging, easy to find and navigate. 
• Content quality and relevance: Both emphasize the importance of high-quality, relevant content that meets user needs and adheres to E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) principles. 
• Data insights and analytics: Both use data insights and analytics to refine strategies, understand user behavior and market trends and optimize content performance. 
• Technical optimization: Both require attention to technical aspects like load speed and mobile friendliness, as well as ensuring content can be effectively crawled and understood by search engines. 
• Authority building: Both build authority through credible content and relationships, focusing on enhancing trustworthiness and reliability.
• Continuous adaptation: Both involve ongoing adaptation to changes in algorithms and technology to maintain and improve content visibility and performance.

How is GEO different from SEO? 

SEO primarily targets traditional search engines like Google, whereas GEO is designed for the dynamic world of generative AI and answer engines. 

These engines use advanced algorithms to gather and present information in a more contextually relevant way, which means we need different strategies to optimize for them.

Here are some key aspects that set them apart: 

• Response generation: SEO optimizes for traditional search engines that provide a list of links in response to user queries. GEO optimizes content for AI systems to synthesize and prioritize information, generating quick and comprehensive responses.
• Content contextualization: SEO optimizes meta tags and content with keywords to improve search rankings. GEO ensures that content is clear and contextually relevant, enabling AI algorithms to generate accurate and comprehensive responses. 
• Information synthesis: SEO aims to improve the ranking of individual pages. GEO focuses on how AI integrates and synthesizes content from multiple sources to provide comprehensive answers. 
• User intent understanding: SEO matches keywords to user queries to drive traffic. GEO uses advanced AI to interpret and anticipate user intent more accurately, delivering more nuanced and precise responses. 
• Algorithm adaptation: SEO practitioners continuously adapt to updates in search engine algorithms. GEO requires ongoing adaptation to the evolving capabilities, preferences and methodologies of AI technologies. 
• Content formatting: SEO optimizes content for traditional search engine formats. GEO crafts content that can be easily parsed and utilized by AI, including structured data and formats friendly to natural language processing. 
• Research-driven strategy: SEO relies on keyword research and technical analysis to inform optimization strategies. GEO requires analyzing AI-generated content structures, topics and citation patterns and how they evolve over time to refine strategies, ensuring alignment with AI content processing and prioritization. 
• Performance tracking: SEO tracks keyword performance, rankings and other organic search metrics to apply to optimization strategies. GEO tracks referral traffic from AI engines, cited sources and response structures to understand how AI-driven platforms prioritize and display your content, informing optimization tactics. 

Integrating GEO with SEO 

While GEO can be considered a digital marketing strategy with its own set of processes, it should be integrated with SEO as the baseline methodology for effectively increasing online visibility. 

There is a significant overlap between GEO and traditional SEO, as they share many core principles and practices. 

Traditional SEO techniques often lay the essential groundwork for GEO, and when combined, they can create a powerful digital marketing strategy that maximizes your online presence. 

Strategies for effectively combining GEO and SEO: 

• Unified content strategy: Create content that works for both traditional search engines and AI-driven platforms. Ensure your content is high-quality, relevant and aligned with principles like E-E-A-T. 
• Holistic keyword research: Conduct keyword and semantic research that covers traditional search terms, long-tail keywords, natural/conversational queries and contextual phrases relevant to AI algorithms. 
• Technical excellence: Keep your website technically sound to meet the needs of SEO and GEO. This includes optimizing for load speed, mobile friendliness, structured data and natural language processing. 
• Continuous learning and adaptation: Stay updated with the latest developments in both SEO and GEO. Adapt your strategies to align with changes in traditional search engine algorithms and AI technologies. 
• Data-driven decisions: Leverage integrated insights from SEO and GEO research and data analysis to refine and enhance your optimization strategies.

By leveraging both GEO and SEO, brands can deliver an unparalleled user experience. SEO ensures your content is easily discoverable and ranks high in traditional search engine results. 

GEO enhances your content by presenting it in a relevant and engaging way on AI-driven platforms. This ensures users receive precise and comprehensive answers, attracting and keeping them engaged, which fosters loyalty and trust.

Dig deeper: How research on learning can help you understand advanced SEO concepts

Why GEO is important 

GEO is becoming increasingly vital as AI-driven search continues to grow. 

The initial excitement surrounding AI in search has settled, and we’re now witnessing a phase where public trust is stabilizing and technologies are reaching maturity. 

In this competitive landscape, Google, once the undisputed leader, now faces serious competition from Bing’s AI integration, ChatGPT, Perplexity and other innovative AI-driven platforms. 

Impact on organic search 

AI is reshaping the landscape of organic search, forcing businesses to rethink their marketing strategies. 

Gartner predicts a significant drop in traditional search volume by 25% by 2026, with organic search traffic expected to decrease by over 50% as consumers embrace AI-powered search. 

Additionally, 79% of consumers are expected to use AI-enhanced search within the next year and 70% already trust generative AI search results. 

Traditional SEO alone won’t cut it anymore. Brands must adapt by integrating GEO into their strategies to effectively capture and retain user attention on AI-driven platforms. 

Evolution in user search behavior 

GEO is essential because AI-driven search is transforming how people find and consume information. Users are now starting their searches on AI platforms for information, product research and purchases. 

For example, ChatGPT has over 180.5 million monthly active users, while Perplexity AI’s search volume has surged by 858% in the past year and it now has around 10 million active monthly users. 

This shift shows the growing trust in AI to give accurate, personalized and relevant information quickly. As AI becomes a bigger part of our daily lives, these platforms are becoming the go-to place for people to find information. 

By optimizing for AI engines, you can make sure you’re meeting users where they are and providing the high-quality, relevant content they expect. This is crucial for staying visible, engaging users and staying competitive.

What are the benefits of GEO? 

Here’s why GEO is essential and the key benefits it offers: 

• Increased reach: Optimizing for generative AI increases your visibility beyond traditional search engines. As users turn to AI platforms, having optimized content ensures you capture a broader audience. 
• Enhanced user experience: GEO optimizes content so AI can provide quick, relevant and personalized answers, improving user satisfaction and loyalty. By understanding context and user intent better, AI platforms offer more personalized information. 
• Competitive advantage: Early adoption of GEO can position your brand as a leader in this new landscape, setting you apart from competitors and establishing your brand as a forward-thinking authority. 
• Brand authority and credibility: Optimizing for AI platforms helps establish your brand as a trusted source. As these platforms synthesize information from multiple sources, having your content included enhances your brand’s credibility. Additionally, focusing on entities (specific topics, people, places, things) ensures your content is accurately represented by AI, further reinforcing your brand authority.
• Data-driven insights: GEO offers nuanced metrics and insights to refine strategies and improve engagement, providing a deeper understanding of how users interact with your content. By leveraging this data, you can refine your strategies to better meet user needs, improve content relevance and drive more effective engagement. 
• Future-proofing your SEO strategy: As search technologies evolve, adopting GEO ensures your digital marketing strategies remain effective and adaptable, safeguarding your brand’s online presence and competitiveness. 

GEO benefits in action  

To illustrate the potential of generative engine optimization, let’s dive into the initial study conducted by researchers from Princeton, Georgia Tech, The Allen Institute of AI and IIT Delhi. 

This extensive study, analyzing 10,000 search queries, aimed to pinpoint key factors influencing GEO effectiveness and offer actionable insights for content creators (Aggarwal et al., 2023). 

The research explored various tactics specifically designed to enhance content visibility. 

Evaluated tactics 

• Keyword enhancement: Integrating relevant keywords naturally throughout content. 
• Citing sources: Enhancing credibility by linking claims to reliable sources. 
• Adding statistics: Supporting arguments with quantitative data. 
• Including quotations: Using expert quotes for depth and authority. 
• Simplifying language: Making complex concepts understandable. 
• Fluency otimization: Ensuring smooth and error-free text. 
• Using unique words: Enriching content with specific vocabulary. 
• Incorporating technical terms: Showcasing expertise in niche queries. 
• Authoritative content: Using persuasive language to build credibility. 

Visibility improvements 

The study found that certain tactics could significantly boost source visibility: 

“Specifically, our top-performing methods, Cite Sources, Quotation Addition, and Statistics
Addition, achieved a relative improvement of 30-40%… These methods require minimal changes
but significantly improve visibility in GE responses, enhancing both credibility and richness of
content.”

– GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (Aggarwal et al., 2023)

Domain-specific optimization 

The study also highlighted that the effectiveness of these strategies varies across different domains, emphasizing the need for domain-specific optimization: 

• Debate, history and science: Adding technical terms and authoritative style adjustments increased visibility. 
• Business, science and health: Fluency optimization made content clearer and more engaging. 
• Statements, facts and law and government: Credible citations were crucial for factual and legal accuracy. 
• People and society, explanation and history: Quotations from reputable sources enhanced visibility. 
• Law and government, debate and opinion: Relevant statistics provided valuable insights. 

Critique and validation 

Despite this study’s promising results, it has faced some criticism regarding its methodology and conclusions. 

Concerns include potential biases, the use of simulated data and the introduction of new content, which might have skewed the results. Sandbox SEO’s critique raised concerns about the study’s findings and noted the overlap between GEO and traditional SEO practices, challenging the uniqueness of GEO (Sandbox SEO, 2023).

Nevertheless, it provides a valuable starting point. Both research and practical applications show that leveraging GEO strategies can significantly enhance visibility and engagement. 

Advanced methods and key strategies beyond those covered in the study can further optimize your results, and this guide will delve into additional tactics that can be implemented to maximize your success. 

How generative AI/answer engines work 

Generative AI engines synthesize vast amounts of data to provide concise, comprehensive responses to user queries. 

Using advanced machine learning models that understand and process natural language, these engines deliver relevant and contextually rich answers. Unlike traditional search engines, which simply list web pages, generative AI engines create conversational and nuanced responses.

Here’s a breakdown of how generative AI engines work:

• Data collection: The engine gathers huge amounts of data from various sources to create a comprehensive knowledge base. 
• Preprocessing: The collected data is cleaned and formatted to be ready for training. This stage involves standardizing data, removing noise and ensuring consistency. 
• Model training: Machine learning models are trained on this preprocessed data to understand and process natural language. This involves teaching the model to recognize patterns, understand context and interpret language. 
• Inference and fine-tuning: The trained models are fine-tuned for specific tasks to improve their performance on certain queries. Fine-tuning adjusts the model parameters to better handle specific types of questions or topics. 
• Content generation: The AI engine takes the trained model and uses it to generate responses to user queries. During this process, the AI synthesizes information from its vast knowledge base, combining relevant data points, contextualizing them and forming coherent, comprehensive answers. The output is not just a list of facts but a well-structured, conversational response that directly addresses the user’s question. 
• Evaluation and optimization: The content generated is evaluated for quality and relevance. Feedback from this evaluation is used to further refine the model, improving future responses. 
• Prioritization: The AI prioritizes content based on its relevance, quality and context.  

Understanding this process allows content creators to tailor their strategies to meet AI requirements, ensuring their content is effectively synthesized and ranks highly in AI-generated responses.

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How does GEO work? 

GEO is a cutting-edge strategy designed to optimize content specifically for generative AI platforms. GEO aims to ensure content is high-quality, contextually relevant, easy to understand and highly accessible to AI, increasing its likelihood of being prioritized.

Here’s a high-level overview of the fundamental elements that make GEO work:  

1. Generative AI research and analysis 

Generative AI research is the foundation of GEO, offering critical insights into content prioritization, structure performance, keyword strategies and the competitive landscape. Understanding how AI systems prioritize and interact with content allows you to fine-tune your GEO strategies.

Key areas of research to enhance GEO strategies include: 

• Keyword and semantic research: Identify and target keywords relevant to generative AI queries. Focus on long-tail keywords, natural language queries and conversational phrases. Use semantic analysis to extend traditional SEO research and identify related concepts, addressing user intent more effectively and enhancing content relevance.  
• AI Overview response analysis: Determine key queries that trigger AI-generated overviews. Study topics, response structures and cited sources to identify trends and preferred answer formats, such as paragraphs, lists, videos or tables. 
• Competitor research: Identify businesses featured in AI search responses for your top queries. Analyze their strategies to uncover strengths, weaknesses and growth opportunities. 
• Brand perception research: Evaluate how AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity perceive your brand, using this understanding to positively influence AI-driven perceptions and enhance your brand’s reputation. 
• Content research: Analyze preferred content types and formats prioritized by AI-driven search engines. Align your content with these preferences to ensure prominence, focusing on structures and formats that resonate with AI algorithms. 
• Response analysis: Monitor the evolution of AI-generated response structures, topics and citation patterns. Refine strategies based on these insights to maintain alignment with AI content processing and prioritization. 

Once you’ve gathered key insights from your research, use them to align your content with the preferences of AI algorithms. 

Continuously update and refine your strategies based on ongoing research, evaluating how generative responses evolve over time to keep your content effective and prioritized.  

2. Content quality and relevance 

GEO enhances your content by aligning it with the specific criteria that AI algorithms use to determine relevance. Key factors to consider when creating and optimizing content are: 

• Contextual accuracy: Ensure your content directly addresses the user’s query and intent. Provide relevant and meaningful information, free from off-topic details, to improve the relevance and quality of search results. 
• Semantic relevance: Use keywords and phrases that are semantically aligned with the topic and user’s intent. Understanding the relationships between words and entities ensures your content matches search intent and enhances relevance for semantic search. 
• Comprehensive responses: Provide thorough and detailed answers that fully address user queries. AI-driven search engines will more likely prioritize high-quality content offering in-depth information. 
• Informative and engaging: Create content that is informative, engaging and easy to digest. Focus on comprehensive guides, detailed articles and interactive content that provide clear answers and actionable insights. 
• Multimedia integration: Diversify your content by incorporating visual and interactive elements like videos, infographics and quizzes to engage both human readers and AI-driven search engines. 
• User intent focus: Always prioritize user intent in content creation. Understand the different types of queries (informational, navigational, transactional) and tailor your content to meet these needs. Aligning with user intent enhances your visibility on AI platforms.
• Content freshness: Regularly update your content to signal to search engines that the information is current and relevant. Fresh content improves rankings and visibility by demonstrating alignment with current trends and user interests. 
• Authority and credibility: Establish your site as a trusted source through reputable citations and demonstrated expertise. Cite reliable sources, include expert quotes and use relevant statistics and data in your content to build credibility and improve site ranking. 
• Entity optimization: Focus on key entities (people, places, concepts) in your content. Use precise terminology and provide context to help AI understand their relevance. Link to authoritative sources, use descriptive language and mention entities meaningfully to enhance AI recognition and prioritization of your content. 

3. Content structure and clarity 

GEO ensures your content meets AI algorithms’ standards for understanding, interpreting and prioritizing information. Here’s how to structure your content effectively: 

• Content clarity: Ensure your content is clear and concise, emphasizing the most important information early on. This helps AI quickly grasp the core message and improves user engagement. Use straightforward language and avoid jargon to communicate your key points effectively. 
• Introductory sentence: Start each page with a clear and concise introductory sentence that highlights the main purpose or topic. This sets the context for both AI and users, improving engagement and understanding. 
• Content readability: Enhance readability by using headings, bullet points and multimedia elements. This structure satisfies both user queries and AI’s need for organized, relevant information. 
• Structured data: Use structured data, such as schema markup, to help AI understand your content better. Markup elements like articles, reviews and products to improve how your content is displayed in search results and increase the chances of appearing in prominent features like knowledge panels and snippets.  
• Direct answers to queries: Provide direct and concise answers within the first few sentences of your content. AI favors content that quickly addresses user questions, increasing the likelihood of being featured in AI-generated responses. 
• Highlight key information: Use bullet points, numbered lists and tables to emphasize important points, making it easier for AI and users to scan and understand your content. 
• Optimize headers: Use clear, descriptive headers to organize your content. This helps AI algorithms understand the hierarchy and main points, improving relevance and readability. 

4. Content distribution and engagement 

GEO enhances your content’s reach and impact by ensuring it is distributed and engaged effectively. 

In the era of AI, content distribution is not just about getting your content out there but about strategically placing it where AI systems can easily access, process and prioritize it. Here’s how to implement these strategies: 

• Distribute across platforms: Large language models (LLMs) like those used by AI-driven search engines are trained not just on content found in blog posts but also within communities like Reddit and Quora. Distribute your content through these channels to maximize your ability to influence the stories and responses generated by AI systems.  
• User-generated content (UGC): Encourage reviews, testimonials and social media posts to add authenticity and diverse perspectives to your content. UGC makes your content more relatable and trustworthy, boosting engagement and signaling activity to AI platforms. Regular updates with UGC align with user queries and improve search discoverability, as AI systems prioritize fresh and relevant content. 
• Leverage social media: Share your content on social media platforms to increase its reach and engagement. Generative AI also uses signals from social media to rank and index content. By maintaining an active presence on social media, you can ensure that your content is being picked up and promoted by AI-driven platforms, enhancing your visibility and engagement. 
• Community building: Create and nurture a community around your brand through forums, social media groups or dedicated platforms. Engaging with your community can lead to more user-generated content, feedback and brand loyalty. Active communities provide a steady stream of fresh content and interactions that AI systems can analyze and prioritize, further boosting your content’s visibility. 

5. Brand authority and credibility 

GEO enhances your content’s visibility and trustworthiness by building and maintaining brand authority and credibility, which appeals to AI’s emphasis on authoritative and credible sources. 

Here’s how to do it effectively: 

• Consistency: Ensure your brand’s messaging, data points and key information are uniform across your website, social media profiles and other online platforms. Consistent information builds trust and authority, helping AI algorithms generate accurate responses and reinforcing your credibility. 
• Offline reputation: Maintain a positive offline reputation, as it directly influences your online presence. Just as Google’s algorithm factors in offline brand reputation for online rankings, AI platforms also consider your brand’s overall reputation. Strong offline credibility enhances your authority in the GEO space, ensuring your content is perceived as trustworthy and authoritative.
• Backlinking: To boost your content’s credibility, acquire high-quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant sites. Engage in content marketing efforts like guest blogging, creating shareable infographics and publishing original research to attract organic backlinks. A robust internal linking structure also helps AI understand content relationships on your site. 
• Ethical and transparent practices: Ensure all content is ethically created, avoiding manipulative practices that could lead to penalties. Be transparent about data sources, affiliations and sponsorships to build trust and credibility with users and AI. 

6. Technical SEO

GEO integrates with traditional technical SEO practices to ensure your site is technically sound and accessible, which is essential for it to be discovered and prioritized by AI algorithms. Key components include: 

• Optimizing HTML tags: Using appropriate HTML tags like title tags, meta descriptions and header tags to improve content structure. 
• Mobile optimization: Ensuring the website is fully responsive and provides a seamless user experience across all devices. 
• Improving loading speed: Implementing best practices for faster loading times, such as compressing images, leveraging browser caching and optimizing code. 
• Fixing crawling and indexing issues: Regularly checking for and resolving issues that could prevent search engines from crawling and indexing the site effectively. 
• Enhancing site security: Using HTTPS to ensure a secure connection, which is favored by search engines and provides better user trust. 

7. Experiment and iterate 

GEO will continue to evolve, requiring marketers to stay flexible and creative. Here’s how to keep up: 

• Try different content types: Mix things up with various formats, such as articles, videos, infographics and interactive elements. If you usually write blog posts, try creating a video series or infographics to see what resonates best with your audience and AI platforms. 
• Continuous testing: Use A/B testing to find what works best and keep tweaking to improve visibility on AI-driven platforms. Continuously experiment with different content formats and structures and stay informed on how AI algorithm preferences and response patterns are evolving for your key queries. Additionally, AI favors fresh content, so frequent testing provides more updates, which can enhance your visibility.
• Learn and adapt: Pay attention to which content gets the most engagement, refine your strategies based on these insights and make data-driven decisions to stay effective. Be prepared to quickly adapt to new trends and changes in AI algorithms. 
• Stay updated: Follow industry blogs, attend webinars and join forums to keep up with the latest trends and technologies in AI and GEO. Engage with the community to exchange insights and stay informed about emerging practices and developments. 

In essence, continue to experiment, learn and adapt. Approach each challenge with curiosity, seeing it as an opportunity for improvement and growth. 

8. GEO is ongoing 

GEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous exploration, tweaking and fine-tuning. It’s not a one-time task but a dynamic journey to ensure your content stays sharp, relevant and ahead of the curve in the fast-paced digital world. 

Regularly review your content’s performance to see if you’re meeting your goals. Stay flexible and adapt your strategies to keep up with ever-evolving AI search algorithms, using data and user feedback to fine-tune your content.  

Bottom line?

Listen to your audience because they know what they want. 

Future potential of GEO 

The potential of GEO is vast as AI technology continues to advance and more people integrate generative AI into various aspects of their lives. 

A recent McKinsey survey shows that 65% of organizations now regularly use generative AI, almost double the number from ten months ago. 

A glimpse into the future of AI search 

• Sophisticated AI capabilities: Imagine a future where AI not only answers queries but also anticipates user needs before they arise. Advanced natural language processing capabilities will deliver increasingly precise and nuanced responses, transforming our interactions with information. AI will become proactive, providing suggestions and insights that users may not have explicitly searched for, enhancing the overall search experience. 
• Voice and visual search: The integration of GEO with voice and visual search technologies will revolutionize user interactions. Voice search will become more prevalent as AI improves its ability to process and understand spoken queries. Similarly, visual search will enable users to obtain information by simply capturing images, making information retrieval more intuitive and accessible. Optimizing content for these formats will be essential for maintaining visibility and relevance. 
• Seamless integration: The fusion of GEO with technologies like augmented reality (AR) and voice search will further enhance user interactions. Envision users receiving AI-enhanced, real-time visual guidance, making information more accessible and engaging. This seamless integration will blur the lines between online and offline experiences, creating a more cohesive and interactive digital environment. 
• Hyper-personalization: AI will offer deeply personalized experiences, tailoring responses to individual user preferences, behaviors and contexts. This level of personalization will redefine user engagement, making each interaction feel uniquely tailored and impactful.  
• Multimodal search evolution: The expansion into multimodal search will enable AI to integrate text, images, audio and video seamlessly, providing users with richer, more comprehensive search results. This approach will cater to diverse user preferences and learning styles, offering a more versatile and engaging search experience. Content creators will need to optimize across multiple formats to ensure their visibility in these enhanced search environments. 

The journey of GEO is about more than keeping pace with AI; it’s about pioneering the future of digital engagement. The future belongs to those who are willing to harness the full potential of generative AI and transform their digital presence.  

Key GEO takeaway

Innovate, adapt and lead.

Those who seize the opportunities presented by GEO today will be the trailblazers of tomorrow’s digital world. 

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