Winning an industry award can seriously impact how customers, clients, and colleagues regard your brand. Showcase your achievements and celebrate your professional excellence by entering the Search Engine Land Awards – the highest honor in search marketing!
For the past 10 years, the Search Engine Land Awards have honored some of the best in the search industry – including leading in-house teams at Wiley Education Services, T-Mobile, Penn Foster, Sprint, and HomeToGo – and exceptional agencies representing Samsung, Lands’ End, Stanley Steemer, and beyond.
This is the 10th anniversary of the Search Engine Land Awards, a program designed to celebrate individuals, agencies, and internal teams within the search marketing community who have demonstrated excellence in executing organic and paid search marketing campaigns.
Applying is easier than ever – send us an executive summary that showcases, in 750 words or less, the award-worthy work you and your team performed this past year.
Completing your application empowers you to reflect on an impressive year of work, featuring its successes and lessons learned – an invaluable exercise for you and your team.
Winning a Search Engine Land Award is a unique, rewarding, and cost-effective way to put your organization a step ahead of its competitors, gain well-earned publicity, boost company morale, and more.
Submit your application by May 23 to enjoy Super Early Bird pricing – just $395 per entry ($300 off final rates!).
Don’t miss your opportunity to participate in the only awards program recognized by Search Engine Land, the industry publication of record. Begin your application today!
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/sela25-header-dpGnZ9.jpeg?fit=1138%2C234&ssl=12341138http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-14 14:54:002025-04-14 14:54:00Make 2025 the year you take home the highest honor in search
SEO reporting transforms raw data into actionable decisions. It shows clients and teams exactly what’s working — and what isn’t.
But here’s the painful truth:
You can waste hours each month collecting data from various platforms. Like copying numbers from Google Analytics, Search Console, and rank trackers into spreadsheets.
Then struggling to make it look presentable.
Oh, and this is for one website. If you’re managing many projects, reporting can get VERY tedious (and costly).
That’s why I’ve handpicked a list of four dedicated SEO reporting tools that:
Save time by automatically collating data from your favorite SEO and analytics platforms
Help you build client-ready reports without starting from scratch every time
Let you track and visualize SEO performance in a way that actually makes sense for you
Here’s a quick rundown of our favorite SEO reporting tools:
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok Ads: Combine all your social media ad metrics with SEO results in one report
Note: You can connect Semrush to Looker Studio for free. Many other third-party connectors need a separate paid subscription.
Report Fast with Templates or Build Custom SEO Dashboards
Looker Studio gives you the flexibility to choose how you want to set up your SEO reports. Whether that’s in a streamlined or more hands-on way.
Here’s how:
If you want a quick start, you can use pre-built templates from the gallery.
For example, you could choose a Google Search Console performance template.
It visualizes impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position:
With this template, you simply need to connect your Search Console account, and you’re good to go.
But if you need something more tailored, you can easily build custom dashboards from scratch in three simple steps:
Choose exactly which metrics to show
Pull in multiple data sources (Google Analytics, Semrush, Shopify, etc.)
Design the layout to fit your team’s or client’s needs
Tip: If you’re showing these reports to clients, you can also fully customize your SEO dashboards to reflect your (or their) brand. Do this by adding logos, brand colors, and any visual elements specific to your projects.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Visualizes data with interactive charts, scorecards, and tables
It’s primarily a visualization tool that relies entirely on other data sources for its reports
Refreshes data in real-time — you can set up the report and forget about it
Option to embed interactive reports on your website
2. Semrush
Best for SEO professionals who want an all-in-one solution to track, analyze, and report SEO performance in one place
Pricing: Starts at $139.95 per month; Backlinko-exclusive 14-day free trial available
Semrush’s My Reports lets you build customizable SEO reports. It’s designed to help you merge data from across Semrush’s various tools and present it in an easy-to-understand format.
Here’s what I love about My Reports:
Combine Multiple Semrush Tools in One Report
Semrush’s My Reports tool lets you pull data from across the platform’s entire SEO toolkit and present it in a single, cohesive report.
You can include insights from tools like:
Position Tracking to highlight keyword performance
This feature is perfect if you want to avoid bouncing between separate dashboards. Or manually merging data sources.
With everything in one place, it’s also easier to spot patterns and draw connections. Like how ranking improvements might correlate with new backlinks. Or how technical issues could be holding your keyword performance back.
Create SEO Reports from 20+ Marketing Data Sources
You can go beyond just Semrush data by connecting 20+ other marketing data sources to further enhance your reports.
For example, you can pull keyword rankings and backlink data from Semrush. Then combine it with Google Search Console data to highlight clicks and impressions.
All in one report:
This makes it easier to present a holistic view of your SEO performance. And show not only where you rank but also how those rankings translate into actual search traffic.
Save Time with Ready-Made Templates
If you’re short on time and don’t want to build your SEO reports from scratch, Semrush has you covered with ready-made templates:
These templates help you quickly generate reports for common SEO tasks.
For example, you can select:
Monthly SEO Reports: Use these to update clients about your SEO performance
Site Audit: This gives you a quick overview of your domain’s technical health
Backlink Audit: This lets you analyze your website’s backlink profile and spot new link opportunities
You can use your selected template as is:
Or you can customize it further with the drag-and-drop tools.
Quickly Build SEO Reports with Drag-and-Drop Widgets
Semrush’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to build your own custom reports or build on templates.
Just drag the data widgets you need from the left panel and drop them wherever you need them.
Let AI Summarize Your Report
One of the standout features of My Reports is the built-in AI Summary tool.
Once you’ve built your SEO report, you can click “Add AI Summary,” and Semrush will automatically generate a clear, concise overview of the key takeaways:
You can also choose whether you want the AI to generate a brief or detailed summary, depending on your audience:
Easily schedule recurring reports and receive them via email
You can’t edit the AI-generated summary
White label reports with your logo and branding
Share reports as a PDF or via dashboard link
3. AgencyAnalytics
Best for freelancers and SEO agencies to share real-time reporting dashboards with clients
Pricing: Starts at $79 per month; 14-day free trial available
AgencyAnalytics is a reporting platform built specifically for agencies managing SEO and digital marketing clients.
It lets you create customizable SEO reports by pulling data from 80+ tools, including:
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Semrush
Moz
Bing Webmaster Tools
Here’s what I like most about Agency Analytics:
Choose From Four Report Starting Points
AgencyAnalytics gives you four ways to start building a report:
Blank report: Start fresh and create a fully customized SEO report
Smart report: Auto-generate a report with your connected integrations (like Semrush, Shopify, Google Search Console, and Salesforce)
Template: Use a pre-made reporting template
Clone existing report: Copy any report you’ve already created
If you manage multiple clients or create recurring SEO reports, cloning an existing report is a HUGE time-saver.
You can duplicate the layout, data sources, and widgets from any previous report. This way, you don’t have to start from scratch every time.
And if speed is your priority, the Smart Report option gives you a great baseline. It pulls in data from your connected tools automatically.
But if you’re building something new or one-off, starting with a blank report or a premade template still gives you all the flexibility you need.
Track Your Client’s SEO Goals
AgencyAnalytics lets you set and track specific SEO goals for each client. You can then keep track of the progress in your reports.
Whether it’s hitting a target number of organic sessions, ranking for priority keywords, or increasing revenue, you can define it as a goal.
Simply choose the metric you want to track and set your conditions.
Let’s say your goal is exceeding 100k sessions per month:
You just drag and drop that goal into your report to track it alongside your SEO performance:
And just like that, you can track your goal right next to your current performance.
Have Full Control of How Your Reports Look
AgencyAnalytics also lets you adjust the size and placement of each widget to fit your reporting style.
You can resize and rearrange your charts, tables, and graphs to fit your preferred style and showcase what’s most important to your audience.
This level of granularity lets you fully customize your SEO reports to make them visually appealing and easy to understand.
Give Clients Real-Time Access to SEO Dashboards
AgencyAnalytics also lets you create custom logins for your clients. This gives them real-time access to their SEO dashboards any time they need.
You can also adjust permissions for each user individually to control exactly what each client sees:
This gives clients a transparent view of their performance. And it cuts down on back-and-forth reporting requests.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Set and track specific SEO goals for clients
A bit of a learning curve
Schedule reports and track delivery history
Give clients real-time dashboard access with custom permissions
4. DashThis
Best for creating customizable SEO dashboards and helping clients understand what the data means
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month; 15-day free trial available
DashThis lets you create SEO reports fast, or fully customize them when you need more control.
In other words: it’s suitable for those that want a streamlined solution OR a highly tunable one.
You can also pull data from 30+ tools. These include the usuals like Google Analytics, Search Console, and Semrush. But also the likes of Google Ads, CallRail, and YouTube.
Here’s what I love about DashThis:
Build an SEO Report Your Way
DashThis gives you multiple widget types to build exactly the kind of SEO report you want.
Whether you’d like to craft a report quickly or need full control, DashThis gives you this flexibility:
For example:
You can drop in preset widgets that auto-populate common SEO key performance indicators (KPIs):
But if you need something specific, you can use custom widgets to pick your graph type, tweak the settings, and fully control how your data looks:
You can also use static widgets to add context or structure to your report.
For example, you can:
Add a custom header
Write comments
Upload a CSV to add more data to your report
Manually enter numbers
You can also use widget bundles to quickly add a group of related widgets at once.
For example, you can add a bundle of five related widgets that give you an overview of your image or organic search performance:
This makes it easy to quickly set up important reports.
Leave Notes in Your SEO Dashboards
DashThis lets you add notes right inside your dashboards. This way, you can explain what’s happening without sending a separate email to your client:
You can use notes to:
Call out key wins
Clarify sudden traffic drops
Guide your client through the data
Comments live right next to your charts. So clients can see your notes in context as they review their performance:
Add Formatted Insights
At the end of your report, you can drop in a rich text comment block.
Here, you can write your own notes, style the text, add images, and even structure sections with bullet points:
It’s perfect for:
Summarizing key takeaways
Highlighting recommendations
Making your report easier for clients to act on
Group Dashboards to Stay Organized
If you manage lots of SEO dashboards, you can organize them into groups. These work like folders for easier navigation.
For example, you could create a group for each client (e.g., “Client A — Monthly Reports”).
Or you could create them for different report types. Like “Local SEO” and “Ecommerce SEO.”
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
In-line notes and comment blocks to add insights and context for clients
Somewhat outdated overall design
White-label your reports
Plenty of flexibility
Ready to Choose Your SEO Reporting Tool?
The best SEO reporting tool for you really comes down to how much flexibility you need, and how quickly you want to get things done.
If you’re comfortable with a bit of setup, Looker Studio gives you endless customization.
But if you prioritize speed and being able to work with just one tool for many key SEO tasks, Semrush’s My Reports is the better option.
AI is changing how people find and engage with content – but the core signals that drive visibility haven’t changed.
This article shows how search marketers can stay competitive by combining proven SEO and content strategies with AI-powered workflows to build authority, trust, and reach across platforms.
Why authority still wins in the age of AI search
If you work in marketing, you’ve probably heard the same questions repeated throughout the past year:
“What’s AI’s impact on organic search?”
“How can my brand appear in AI-driven search results?”
Whether you’re using Google or ChatGPT, both platforms strive to surface the most authoritative, relevant content on a given subject.
They do this by identifying which entities (brands or sources) have provided robust subject matter expertise (contextual relevance) backed by strong third-party authority signals (e.g., citations from trusted sources).
In other words, the fundamentals that make your content rank highly on Google – expertise, authority, and trustworthiness – also increase your visibility in AI-generated answers.
If you’ve paid attention to effective content marketing strategies over the last decade, keep creating unique, valuable, educational, and engaging brand content enriched with proprietary data and expert insights.
This approach:
Builds credibility and provides fresh expertise beyond what AI alone can produce, which all channels seek to surface.
Earns coverage and citations from authoritative sources across diverse platforms.
Strengthens your brand’s authority, diversifies visibility, and drives qualified traffic and cross-channel conversions.
Meanwhile, if you’re simply using ChatGPT to churn out regurgitated content for top-funnel informational queries – you might as well burn your marketing budget.
In 2025, it’s critical not to get lost in another “SEO is dead, long live […AI]!” echo chamber.
We’re 14 years into this recurring, sensationalized industry news cycle, yet search interest is still growing.
AI tools like ChatGPT are expanding search behavior, not replacing it.
Up to 70% of ChatGPT prompts involve collaborative, custom tasks like code debugging or meal planning, per a recent Semrush study.
These are things classic search wasn’t built for.
Regardless of what we dub this era of “AI optimization,” one thing remains true: the value of cross-channel, inbound marketing reigns supreme, as it has since the dawn of digital.
Agency goliaths are starting to invest in their own content strategies around it.
Most brand channels rely on similar ranking principles.
So, instead of panicking about the latest platform shifts, challenge your team to pause and reflect.
How do you use AI to scale effective, cross-channel marketing strategies and workflows to sustain your brand’s visibility?
Specifically:
How are we building content ecosystems that establish topic authority while earning trust and driving engagement across multiple platforms?
Have we done audience research to understand where our target market resides, and are we effectively using AI to scale cross-channel content syndication to those platforms?
Where else should we seek to apply AI to automate our proven marketing workflows to improve efficiency, reach, and ROI?
Here’s how my agency uses prompt engineering, custom GPTs, and proprietary AI agents to streamline digital marketing – and how your team can, too.
1. Using AI to create newsworthy campaigns with strong E-E-A-T
One of the highest ROI activities your brand can invest in now is proprietary research that produces insights AI can’t replicate.
This type of content gets cited by publishers, builds domain expertise, and increases your chances of influencing AI training data itself.
You don’t need to build bleeding-edge agentic workflows to see real impact from AI in your marketing.
Even teaching your team simple prompt engineering and having them build custom GPTs can help streamline your workflows.
AI can handle tedious tasks – like deep research and data analysis – so your team can spend more time on strategy and creative thinking.
Below are a few examples of AI-enhanced content workflows any brand can adopt.
Reactive PR campaign prompts
Use AI to research and brainstorm campaign ideas based on breaking news that aligns with the brand’s vertical and target market.
For example, you might prompt ChatGPT to take on a digital PR persona tasked with scanning breaking news in your industry from the past 24-72 hours and generating timely campaign ideas.
This kind of AI-assisted brainstorming ensures your content ideas are timely and poised to earn media attention without waiting for time-intensive human research and ideation sessions.
Sample prompt
Role: You are a digital PR strategist for [Brand], tasked with identifying trending, high-authority news stories in [Topic/Industry/Region] from the past 24-72 hours and generating timely, data-driven campaign ideas that use the brand’s expertise to secure mainstream media coverage.
Campaign criteria:
Trend-driven: Focus on viral/trending topics from major outlets, TikTok, Reddit, X, Google Trends.
Brand-relevant: Align with [Brand]’s domain expertise.
Timely and actionable: Campaign can be executed within 24-72 hours.
Data-backed: Use rapid methods – pulse surveys, social scraping, Google Trends, proprietary data.
Emotionally compelling: Ideas must be timely, educational, emotional, or entertaining.
Campaign structure:
Title: A concise, engaging campaign title.
Description: Explain the campaign idea, key insights/questions, target audience, and tie to current news + brand’s expertise.
Methodology: Outline how you will gather and analyze data (e.g., surveys, social scraping, government datasets, trends).
Consider training a custom AI model on your own archive of successful content marketing campaigns (or case studies from your industry) to generate fresh campaign ideas.
An internal ideation agent could be fed thousands of past campaign briefs, articles, or link building projects along with their performance outcomes.
The AI can then generate new ideas tailored to your brand’s vertical, following patterns that historically earned high authority backlinks and engagement.
You might guide it with criteria. For instance, the idea must:
Have a high likelihood of attracting authoritative .edu/.gov/.com links.
Be data-driven and unique.
Align with your business goals.
Be timely or seasonal.
Include a visually engaging component.
This way, the AI isn’t pulling generic ideas from thin air – it’s remixing elements of proven hits to suggest the next big content piece.
Sample prompt
Role: You are a creative data-driven PR strategist, tasked with generating newsworthy, high-authority campaign ideas that earn backlinks from top-tier media (.com), government (.gov), and educational (.edu) sites. You focus on creating unique, engaging, and data-backed campaigns tailored to [Brand]’s specific vertical (e.g., education, tax, aviation, hosting, creative industries).
Campaign criteria:
High-authority potential
Data-driven
Creative and unique
Aligned with goals
Timely
Visually engaging
Approved methodologies:
Campaign structure:
Title
Description
Methodology
Ideation scoring prompt
Another valuable use of AI is evaluating and refining newsworthy brand content at scale.
Marketing teams constantly brainstorm ideas for data journalism campaigns, blog posts, and social content.
Based on learned criteria, an AI agent can rapidly assess each idea for “newsworthiness” or virality potential.
For example, you can program an AI to act as an editorial panel that:
Scores ideas on a scale for promotional viability.
Suggests which statistics or angles would make the idea more compelling to the press.
Even recommends how to execute the methodology more rigorously.
This doesn’t replace your decision-making, but it helps streamline a recurring process that has a proven framework that AI can help scale.
Sample prompt
Role: You are a data journalism and PR expert tasked with evaluating the newsworthiness and promotional viability of data-driven campaign concepts, including surveys, studies, meta-rankings, and analyses. Your role is to rate the idea’s media potential, suggest the best promotional angles (headlines/takeaways), and refine the methodology to ensure data accuracy and media appeal.
Evaluation process:
Promotional viability score
Potential headline-worthy takeaways
Suggested name
Methodology recommendation
Beyond these examples, dozens of other AI applications can streamline your content workflow.
Forward-thinking teams are deploying custom AI assistants for tasks such as:
Writing survey questions.
Building campaign briefs.
Identifying typos or brand guideline violations.
Discovering unique data sources or variables for new research.
And so much more.
An AI agent can improve any repetitive or data-intensive part of content creation.
Once you’ve used AI to assist in creating high-quality, E-E-A-T-rich content, the next step is to ensure that the content gets in front of the right audience.
This is where AI can also play a game-changing role in distribution and PR.
2. Scaling digital PR with AI
Building your brand’s authority and trust through earned media has become more critical in an era of AI-driven search results.
Google’s algorithm and AI models prioritize widely cited and trusted content, favoring brands with strong E-E-A-T signals.
Digital PR helps secure high-authority backlinks and trusted media mentions that improve search rankings.
These efforts also increase the likelihood of being featured in AI-generated results, as LLMs are trained on well-cited, newsworthy sources.
In short, earning mainstream news and authoritative, niche-relevant brand coverage simultaneously strengthens your visibility across search, social, and emerging AI platforms.
AI holds enormous potential for PR teams. It can:
Research journalists.
Personalize outreach.
Even draft pitches in seconds.
Still, we must pair scale with skill.
Relying too much on automation can lead to spammy, robotic pitches that journalists ignore (or resent).
Rather than blasting out “just another AI-generated pitch,” smart PR teams use an AI-powered, human-perfected workflow.
AI handles the heavy lifting – research, pattern-based tasks, and first drafts – while humans focus on strategy, messaging, and real relationship-building.
The key is scaling the repeatable parts with AI and reserving human effort for creativity, judgment, and authentic personalization.
Here are a few high-impact ways PR professionals can use AI today.
AI pitch strategy prompt
One of the easiest prompts to create is a digital PR strategy generator that mimics the pitch templates your team uses to earn authoritative brand coverage.
Incorporating training guides, sample pitch templates, industry pro tips, and other proprietary knowledge is crucial.
This is key to building a GPT or agent that helps your PR team stand out in a sea of sameness.
Below are the areas you should hone in and expand when designing a PR strategy prompt.
Role: You are PPS savant, a digital PR Expert specialized in generating a complete pre-pitch strategy (PPS) for data-driven PR studies and media outreach. Your job is to extract the most compelling statistics from a provided study or campaign and generate a fully developed, press-ready outreach strategy, including subject lines, email copy, and a targeted media list.
Distill:
Compelling statistics
Subject lines
Email pitch structure
Follow-up pitch structure
Targeted media outlets
Tone and focus
Media list builder
Finding the right outlets and contacts is a time-consuming part of PR that AI can dramatically improve.
Instead of manually searching media databases (or paying for expensive platforms that quickly go out of date), an AI-driven media list builder can scan recent articles and news to identify journalists and publications relevant to your content.
For example, given a summary of your campaign or a PDF of your research, an AI agent could compile a list of the 30–50 most relevant publishers and reporters, including:
The outlet name.
A link to a recent similar article (to prove relevance).
The journalist’s name and beat.
Even metrics like the outlet’s traffic.
This increases the odds of getting interest and saves thousands of dollars that might have been spent on static media databases.
Sample prompt
Role: You are a digital PR publisher expert who analyzes brand studies to identify the 40 most relevant, high-authority news outlets based on the provided resource. Your focus is on matching the content (attached PDF) to vertical-specific, top-tier outlets and ensuring maximum relevance and link potential.
Beyond mainstream media outlets, much of the “long tail” of PR success comes from niche blogs and industry influencers who syndicate or share your content.
Here, too, AI can make a huge difference.
To solve this, we built a “blog search agent” that runs a semantic search across 20,000+ active (non-spam) blogs from Kagi’s Small Web to help uncover niche-specific influencers who regularly update their smaller, mid-tier sites for highly relevant audiences.
By using AI in these ways, PR teams can significantly increase the speed and quality of their outreach, leading to more authoritative coverage.
Top brands already use these tactics to land stories in national newspapers and specialized trade publications.
More than algorithmic efficiency, effective PR requires credible, newsworthy content and authentic human relationships.
AI can help you write 10 pitches in the time it used to take to write one.
Still, if the core story isn’t strong or you haven’t bothered to personalize it, journalists will delete your email.
3. Streamlining social content syndication with AI
New search and social platforms will inevitably rise and fall.
However, one principle remains constant: marketers must repurpose and syndicate their best content across the diverse platforms where their audience engages.
In the age of AI, diversification is key for building defensible brand visibility and traffic.
A blog post that earns links and ranks on Google can be adapted into an X thread, a Reddit post, a LinkedIn article, a TikTok script, or a YouTube video.
Each extension reinforces your expertise and reaches new pockets of your audience.
Consistent cross-platform visibility boosts SEO and engagement and trains AI models to recognize your brand’s authority everywhere.
Many content teams excel at creating high-value content, but they often lack the bandwidth or distribution tools.
By automating parts of the syndication process and optimizing content for each channel, AI ensures your work actually gets seen.
Here are a few ways AI can amplify your cross-channel content strategy.
Reddit advice tool
With Reddit dominating the SERPs, it’s a crucial time to evaluate this social platform as another avenue for your content syndication.
This agent helps your social team:
Identify relevant subreddits for your brand content.
Develop suggested titles and justify why that style would resonate with each specific community.
Generate article summaries to get you started.
AI image creation
AI is making creating eye-catching graphics, illustrations, or photos to accompany your content easier than ever.
A few of my personal favorites include DALL-E 3, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, which can produce custom images that were unimaginable a few years ago.
Still, the key difference is the quality of your prompt engineering.
Often, the best prompt designers are those with a creative eye, like graphic designers, who will know how to coax the model toward a desired style or factual accuracy.
The result: your content stands out in crowded feeds without the cost or time of a full photoshoot or graphic design cycle for every piece.
Diversifying and repurposing content across channels is no longer optional. It’s essential for building a resilient brand presence.
AI makes this far easier by taking on the heavy lifting of format adaptation.
Your most valuable content assets can live multiple lives: a research report can spawn dozens of social posts, videos, and media pitches.
A single great insight can become an infographic, a blog, a webinar, and a Reddit AMA.
With AI handling the transformation and distribution at scale, you can ensure that no piece of content potential goes untapped.
The payoff is greater reach, more engagement, and a brand that appears ubiquitously wherever your audience (or the algorithms) might look.
AI tools and agents will transform 2025 marketing strategies and workflows
If there’s one overarching lesson in all of this, it’s that AI isn’t replacing great marketers – it’s amplifying their proven workflows and freeing up time for even greater innovation.
The brands that outpace their competition in the next 1–3 years will use AI to scale proven marketing workflows.
Humans will stay relentlessly focused on driving creativity, building community, and establishing trust.
Forward-thinking teams are already investing in comprehensive AI toolkits that touch every aspect of marketing:
Content research and clustering.
Content optimization.
Digital PR outreach.
Technical SEO analysis.
Social media scheduling.
Sentiment analysis.
And much more.
These early adopters recognize that nearly every marketing workflow will have some element that AI can improve.
By experimenting now, they’re building a foundation of AI-augmented processes that will be standard practice for everyone else a few years later.
The message for marketing leaders is clear: don’t wait.
Encourage your team to pilot AI in different parts of your operation and see what boosts your efficiency or results.
Create internal case studies of what works (and share these insights with peers, contributing to industry knowledge).
Remember, the goal isn’t to hand everything over to machines. It’s to let machines do what they’re great at so that humans can do what they’re great at.
The winning formula is AI + human, not AI vs. human.
In 2025 and beyond, success in SEO and cross-channel marketing will come down to this balance.
The hype cycles will continue – new tools, algorithms, and platforms – but the fundamentals remain.
Know your audience.
Create real value.
Earn trust.
Be everywhere your audience is looking.
AI is simply the newest (and arguably most powerful) set of tools to help you execute on those fundamentals at scale.
Those who embrace these tools thoughtfully will:
Safeguard their brand’s visibility.
Reclaim precious time to focus on strategy and big ideas.
Foster the human connections that truly build brands.
And that’s a winning playbook, no matter how search evolves.
Bottom line?
AI will boost your growth strategy if you don’t shy away from being an innovator on the technology adoption curve.
Your 2025 brand goal is simple.
Repurpose your most valuable content to achieve cross-channel brand visibility, authority, and engagement where your target market resides.
Hedge against the rapidly evolving AI landscape that will reshape consumer behavior over the next 12-36 months.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/sel_1920x1080_live_event_b1-6GmfDE.jpeg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-07 20:20:002025-04-07 20:20:00The uncontested paid search problem—and what it’s costing you by Edna Chavira
We aim for every article we publish to meet — or exceed — Google’s helpful content standards.
And you can, too.
After reading this article, you’ll have 10 Google-approved strategies for creating people-first content.
You’ll also see examples from real sites that excel at creating helpful content.
Plus, you’ll get a free checklist to ensure your pages meet Google’s quality standards.
Let’s start by understanding what “helpful content” is in Google’s eyes.
What Is Helpful Content?
Helpful content delivers what a searcher needs, whether they’re seeking information, researching options, or ready to buy.
It’s content written for people — not search engines.
But what was the Google Helpful Content Update (HCU)?
First launched in 2022, Google’s helpful content update was designed to reward people-first content while filtering out pages created primarily for search engines.
According to Google, helpful content does the following:
Provides trustworthy information backed by genuine expertise
Delivers substantial value compared to competing results
Demonstrates firsthand experience with the topic
Creates a satisfying user experience
Serves a purpose beyond just ranking in search
Google uses a site-wide classifier. It checks your whole domain, not just single pages, for helpfulness.
This means a significant amount of low-quality content can drag down even your best pages.
The biggest changes to this algorithm update took place in late 2023 and early 2024. Some sites lost A LOT of organic traffic.
Google confirms it reduced low-quality content in search results by a staggering 45%.
The sites hit hardest by these updates were:
Content-only websites with no actual products or services
Sites creating articles purely for search traffic
Affiliate sites with thin content and/or a high monetization-to-informational content ratio
The HCU aftermath sparked lots of debate about whether or not these updates were truly “helpful.”
And if the declines and deindexings were warranted.
And as the makers (and breakers) of rankings, following their guidelines is essential.
As of March 2024, the helpful content update is no longer a thing.
But helpfulness isn’t going away. The HCU is now integrated into Google’s core ranking systems.
Bottom line?
Creating helpful content is vital for your survival in search.
10 Ways to Create Helpful Content That Google Rewards
There’s no sugarcoating it:
Creating exceptional content is hard work.
But it can pay off through high rankings and targeted traffic.
Download our Helpful Content Checklist to follow along as you read. Use it before hitting publish to ensure your content meets Google’s quality standards.
1. Incorporate Firsthand Experiences
Want to instantly make your content more helpful?
Add personal stories and examples (real ones — not AI-generated).
Why?
Because it shows you actually know what you’re talking about — which is exactly what Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) prioritize.
Google advises against generic, regurgitated advice on its website:
By including personal experiences in your content — including your successes and failures — you’ll create the kind of content search engines reward.
And your target audience wants to read.
Take this backlink guide from Backlinko founder Brian Dean, for example:
Brian didn’t just give generic advice like “create great content” or “reach out to bloggers.”
He shared specific tactics and advice that actually worked for him, including:
Real email templates he’s used for outreach
Screenshots showing actual results
Step-by-step instructions
Tool recommendations
Specific case studies with traffic metrics
The result?
Content that feels like you’re learning from someone who’s been there, done that — not canned advice you can find on any site.
No wonder this guide has maintained high rankings for years.
And generated 31.5K backlinks.
Pro tip: When sharing personal experiences, focus on specific outcomes and measurable results. Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines value demonstrable expertise. So, don’t just say, “This worked for me,” explain exactly how and in what timeframe. Include photos and screenshots when possible to back up claims.
2. Add Expert Insights and Quotes
Expert quotes add authority and new perspectives to your content.
They also help you meet Google’s helpful content expectations by providing insights readers can’t find elsewhere.
Even if you have personal experience with a topic, expert opinions add dimension and alternative perspectives that make your content more comprehensive and helpful.
Expert quotes strengthen your content in multiple ways:
Add credibility to your claims
Provide unique insights
Create content that’s difficult for competitors to replicate
For a great example of this in action, look at pet company Chewy.
Their content often contains insights from board-certified veterinarians and animal behaviorists.
This makes it more authoritative and trustworthy.
Source expert insights through:
Original interviews (via email, phone, or video)
Reaching out to experts on LinkedIn, X, or industry-specific sites and forums
Attending industry events and networking for insights
As Nate Matherson, head of growth at Numeral, says:
When writing blog posts, I often source expert insights from leaders in the SEO industry for my weekly SEO podcast, Optimize. For example, after interviewing Ethan Smith, the CEO of Graphite, on my podcast, I repurposed one of his quotes about topical authority to use in a blog post on the same topic.
3. Create Content That Meets Search Intent
Understanding and satisfying search intent is fundamental to helpful content.
For example, if someone searches “how to fix a leaky faucet,” they want clear, step-by-step instructions — not a sales page for plumbing services.
Content that addresses their actual goal (fixing the faucet themselves) will be considered more helpful.
But first, you need to understand the four main types of search intent:
Informational: Seeking knowledge — “how to fix a leaky faucet”
Navigational: Looking for a specific website — “Home Depot plumbing”
Commercial: Researching options — “best tankless water heaters”
Transactional: Ready to buy — “buy Moen touchless kitchen faucet”
Not sure if you’re creating people-first content that meets search intent?
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal? Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
If the answer to either question is “no,” your content isn’t fully addressing search intent.
To better meet search intent:
Analyze the current top-ranking pages for your target keywords
Note what format dominates (guides, lists, videos, etc.)
Demonstrate topical authority by addressing all relevant subtopics and common pain points in your content
Start your keyword research
Explore the largest keyword database.
4. Use Reputable Sources
Using high-quality sources (and citing them) is important for all sites.
It signals to readers and search engines that the information you’re sharing is reputable, accurate, and verifiable.
Well+Good, a wellness site, demonstrates this in its article about medication safety:
They support every health claim with information from:
Board-certified psychiatrists
Professors of psychiatry and behavioral sciences
Peer-reviewed medical journals
Reputable health resources, like .gov sites.
When evaluating sources for your content, follow these best practices:
Prioritize recognized authorities in the field (major universities, established publications, industry leaders)
Check publication dates to ensure information is current
Check that you’re referencing the original source of the information
Look for potential conflicts of interest or bias in the source’s funding or affiliations
Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines place heavy emphasis on trustworthiness.
And nothing builds trust faster than showing readers you’ve based your information on solid, reputable sources.
5. Hire Writers with Topical Experience
When it comes to helpful content, experience matters.
So, prioritize writers with backgrounds in your niche over generalists.
This will benefit your content in multiple ways:
More practical, nuanced advice that only comes from hands-on experience
Insider tips that readers can’t find on other sites
Real examples and case studies that build immediate trust
For example, Harvard Health Publishing features physicians as their content creators.
These writers have impressive qualifications.
Including clinical experience, research credentials, and specialized knowledge in their medical fields.
This level of expertise is particularly important for Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) topics, where accuracy directly impacts reader well-being.
But experienced writers are valuable across all blog niches, from beauty to travel.
For instance, Family Vacationist, a travel blog, features contributors who have personally visited the destinations they cover.
This is evident by the insider tips they give.
Including advice on the best rides for kids, the tastiest treats in theme parks, and which hotels to stay at and why.
Family Vacationist also highlights its writers’ experience in bios.
Including relevant publications where they’ve been featured.
Even if you already have experienced writers, an expert review process will add another layer of credibility to your content.
Have subject matter experts fact-check your information
Include reviewer credentials directly in your content
Highlight your review process on your editorial standards page
For example, home services company Angi has experts review its content and features them prominently with a byline.
The expert reviewer also gets a bio to highlight their qualifications.
Investing in topic experts signals to readers and search engines that you’re committed to delivering accurate content and genuine value, not just ranking for keywords.
Pro tip: Create a database of expert reviewers categorized by specialty, experience level, and publication history. When new content needs arise, you’ll know exactly who to contact for a review.
6. Provide an Optimal Page Experience
Page experience is a critical component of helpful content.
If your page loads slowly or is hard to navigate, readers will leave. It doesn’t matter how good your information is.
But as Google states on its website (in slightly different words), doing the bare minimum won’t cut it.
For the best results, cover all aspects of the page experience rather than focusing on isolated elements.
Here’s how:
Analyze Your Current Performance
Use PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report to establish your baseline metrics.
If your assessment fails, follow the tool’s recommendations to improve these metrics.
Like reducing unused JavaScript and third-party code.
Pro tip: Use a tool like Semrush’s Site Audit to get weekly updates about your site’s technical performance. You’ll get automatic updates about issues affecting page experience, including loading speed, crawlability, broken links, large files, and more.
Optimize Images
Compress images without sacrificing quality using tools like TinyPNG, ImageOptim, or built-in CMS optimizers.
This will keep your images from dragging down your page speed.
Test Across All Device Types
Ensure your site has a responsive design that works across desktops, tablets, and various mobile screen sizes.
Use Chrome DevTools or BrowserStack to test how your site performs on popular devices and browsers.
Pay special attention to touch targets on mobile.
Check that buttons and links are easily tappable without accidental clicks.
Improve Security
Use HTTPS across your entire site to build user trust and meet Google’s requirements for secure browsing.
Google Search Console’s HTTPS report will tell you if your pages are secure. (And what to fix if they’re not.)
You’ll also want to configure proper SSL certificates and ensure all resources load securely.
Optimize Above-the-Fold Content
Prioritize loading essential above-the-fold content (aka content that appears on a webpage before scrolling) to capture web visitors’ attention.
And draw them to your most important content or assets.
Minimize unnecessary elements that push key content below the fold, especially on mobile devices.
Balance Monetization with User Experience
If you use display ads, ensure they don’t trigger layout shifts, overwhelm content, or create friction points for readers.
Reserve space for ads in your layout to prevent content jumps when they load.
7. Seek Information Gain (aka Bring Something New to the SERPs)
Google hasn’t said that “information gain” is a ranking factor, but it aligns with their emphasis on adding value to search results.
Information gain means adding something new to the topic. Something readers can’t find anywhere else.
I’ve mentioned some information gain methods already, like firsthand experiences and expert quotes.
But there are other ways to achieve information gain, including the following:
Original research: Survey your audience or industry and publish the findings
Proprietary frameworks: Develop your own scoring system or methodology
Product testing: Go beyond specs to share real-world performance
For example, the finance site NerdWallet goes to great lengths to thoroughly review different financial products.
Like credit cards, savings accounts, and personal loans.
As part of that effort, they created a NerdWallet star rating methodology.
But they don’t use a one-size-fits-all rating system.
They created separate methodologies for each financial product category.
Why?
Because different factors matter for different financial decisions.
They also published detailed explanations of how they weigh different factors in their rating system.
This helps give their star rating system more credibility.
You’ll see these ratings on various NerdWallet reviews to help readers choose the best products for their needs.
Like this one for a credit card:
The key takeaway here?
Information gain often requires a significant upfront investment.
Whether in time, money, or both.
But it leads to something valuable: content that competitors can’t replicate overnight.
8. Refresh Existing Content
Creating new content isn’t always the best strategy.
Sometimes, updating what you already have delivers better results with less effort.
Fresh, comprehensive content shows Google you’re committed to quality and accuracy.
It can also help boost your rankings.
In my experience, updating existing content often delivers faster traffic gains than creating new pieces. A blog post I wrote for Positional about title tags basically sat in the same SERP position for nine months. After revamping the post with additional information, it shot up in rankings almost immediately — and the ranking and traffic gains have held.
When refreshing content, prioritize these improvements:
Update statistics and examples with current data
Enhance visuals and formatting for a better user experience
Incorporate new expert insights or research
Fix outdated advice or recommendations
Target evolving search intent
Warning: Updating old content with a new date to appear “fresh” without substantial changes won’t fool Google. Focus on genuine updates that add new value, insights, or relevant information to improve the reader’s experience.
9. Create Helpful Graphics and Videos
Helpful content doesn’t just mean the words on the page.
Graphics and videos can also be valuable additions that improve reader comprehension and engagement.
When creating visuals for your content:
Focus on clarifying complex ideas, not just adding decoration
Create custom graphics rather than using generic stock images
Ensure videos add unique value beyond what’s in the written content
Google Ads has 718 reviews on TrustPilot with a 1.1-star rating.
That’s a shockingly low score for a platform that has helped countless businesses grow and created entire careers in digital marketing.
Let me preface this by saying that this isn’t meant to be an angry rant.
Google Ads has provided incredible opportunities, but the overwhelming number of negative reviews clearly shows that advertisers face serious frustrations daily.
Poor support, unexplained account suspensions, rising costs, and a lack of transparency have left many users feeling helpless.
These aren’t just isolated issues – they’re widespread problems that need attention.
So, what exactly is going wrong? And more importantly, how can it be fixed?
Here’s a breakdown of the most common complaints about Google Ads – and what could be done to improve the platform.
Poor customer support
Users frequently report that customer support is unresponsive, slow, or provides generic, unhelpful responses.
Many of us have experienced the customer service loop of Google Ads:
Contact support.
They submit a ticket.
Ask you to allow 3-5 days for a resolution.
After eight days, you contact support again, and the process repeats with no resolution.
Several weeks or months later, the issue may be resolved – or not.
It’s unclear what the internal protocol is for Google Ads support; it doesn’t seem to follow the standards of most major companies.
There appears to be a lack of account notes and follow-up.
Users report contacting support for the same issue, opening a ticket, but receiving no further response.
Another ticket is then opened, and the cycle continues.
If a customer support representative remembers, they may send an email with the reference number.
When contacting support a second time, little to no information can be provided using the reference number.
Support often says, “There is no update on your ticket; please allow 3-5 more days.”
This is a nightmare for business owners, freelancers, and ad agencies trying to manage their Google Ads accounts and resolve issues quickly.
If Google Ads consistently sent feedback surveys, it could significantly improve customer support.
However, many users are no longer receiving the surveys – either after a phone call or because the link is not sent after a live chat.
If you do receive a survey via email or see one pop up in your account, be sure to fill it out thoroughly.
We can’t expect to improve customer service without providing constant feedback.
Account suspensions
Account suspensions without clear explanation and slow response times are common complaints with Google Ads.
While Google Ads needs to suspend accounts that blatantly violate their policies, they should be handled more quickly for accidental violations that can be resolved with a simple ad rewrite.
Many new accounts are suspended quickly but approved slowly, often taking weeks or months, if ever – despite the issues being corrected to comply with Google Ads’ policies.
When accounts are suspended, the explanation is often vague.
Customer support representatives typically just read what’s on the screen, offering no further explanation, resolution, or assistance.
A frequent reason for account suspensions or ad disapprovals is a “Policy Violation,” but the specific policy is rarely cited.
Even after the user resolves the issue, the account or ad may still be delayed in approval, sometimes taking weeks or months.
For advertisers in sensitive categories (i.e., mental health services, supplements, housing, employment, recruiting, technical support services, or financial services), quick suspensions and slow resolutions can be devastating.
These businesses often have everything in place to comply with Google Ads’ policies but may have made a minor mistake during ad setup.
Another common suspension reason is “Circumventing Systems Policy,” but once again, the explanation is unclear, causing frustration over the lack of transparency in enforcement.
This often happens with businesses that hire multiple agencies or freelancers over time, leading them to be unaware of how many Google Ads accounts were set up under their name.
Even worse, Google Ads support typically fails to explain this situation clearly, making it difficult for businesses to track who created all the accounts that got suspended.
If these agencies or freelancers are responsible, are they now banned from running ads on Google across any account?
This policy and review process urgently needs rethinking.
“Reps can no longer help with some of the things they were able to help with in the past. For example, we have a client whose account was suspended – but our reps can’t do anything to help us.”
“While I believe that Google’s intentions are good, the reality is that many accounts get suspended incorrectly with no recourse.”
Google Ads can improve by following the lead of other software companies and offering in-depth tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform.
Collaborating with industry experts outside Google to create tutorials would also help users make informed decisions about their ad spend.
Currently, Google’s advice often contradicts guidance from industry-leading publications.
Instead of conflicting guidance, open collaboration could align best practices, ensuring users who invest time in learning Google Ads can actually apply their knowledge effectively.
The running joke is that learning how to run Google Ads from Google is like learning how to play Blackjack from the casino – they don’t have your best interests in mind.
PPC industry leader Brad Geddes specifically calls out “Recommendations I always ignore,” which, ironically, are the same recommendations that Google Reps and account notifications often advise users not to ignore.
A collaboration between industry experts and Google Ads could be mutually beneficial, helping both the platform and its users.
If new users take Google’s tutorials and certifications only to lose substantial amounts of money on Google Ads, they may not continue investing in the platform.
It’s unclear why the worst advice on running Google Ads comes directly from Google Ads and its reps.
Rising costs
Advertisers have also voiced concerns about the rising costs of Google Ads, which have become even more problematic in recent years.
“Google is officially making it fair game to have more than one spot on the SERP. I have thoughts on this, but I want to see how performance actually shakes out in Q2.”
We will have to wait and see if this helps with rising costs or hurts them.
Issues with Google reps and Teleperformance
Many Google Ads users also express frustration with Teleperformance, Google’s outsourced customer support team.
Complaints often include poor advertising results due to Google Reps’ advice, overly aggressive outreach, and generic or scripted responses.
“We get calls daily from reps that have been assigned to our client accounts. It’s very convoluted, and when we don’t engage – because we can’t possibly engage them all – they try to go directly to our clients instead!”
“This happens regularly. And the scare tactics they use are quite ludicrous.”
The simple solution for Google Ads would be to train their reps to provide useful advice and assign them to a smaller number of accounts.
An even simpler solution might be to remove the program entirely, given the overwhelming amount of negative feedback.
So, what can we do?
Direct feedback is the best way to push for change.
While posting frustrations online might feel satisfying, it’s unlikely Google Ads will see or act on them.
Instead, be sure to complete the surveys Google sends via email or within your account, offering detailed and constructive feedback.
If you want to voice concerns publicly, you can share them on platforms like TrustPilot (Google Ads TrustPilot page), Reddit, industry forums, or social media – but always keep it professional and solution-focused.
For direct communication, use Google’s official feedback and support forms:
With customers now discovering content across traditional search engines, LLMs, social media, and beyond, the need for an integrated, omnichannel strategy is more important than ever.
Relying on isolated channel strategies no longer works.
Customers engage with brands across multiple touchpoints before making decisions, and they expect seamless, personalized experiences.
An effective omnichannel approach aligns all marketing efforts – ensuring consistency, maximizing visibility, and driving meaningful interactions.
As omnichannel marketing continues to evolve, integrating SEO across all channels is essential for sustained growth.
This article explores why a unified strategy is critical and how SEO can work across channels to enhance the customer journey and drive results.
Why an omnichannel approach to SEO is critical in 2025
Here are seven trends that make an omnichannel approach vital to business success and growth.
1. The shift away from third-party cookies
The decline of third-party cookies has made it harder for brands to track users across the buyer journey.
An omnichannel approach to data collection and centralization helps mitigate these challenges and lays the foundation for an effective strategy.
2. Growth of LLMs and AI-powered search
The growth of alternate avenues for audiences to find information adds to the complexity of the buyer’s journey.
This presents additional attribution challenges.
3. Zero-click searches and decreasing top-funnel traffic
Due to the rise in zero-click searches,traffic to websites from top-of-the-funnel information-seeking terms is declining.
4. Importance of SEO
Despite the growth in zero-click searches, SEO remains the primary source of traffic for most businesses and the channel with the highest long-term ROI.
AI Overviews and AI-generated results mainly pull information from the top organic results.
5. Search is multi-modal
This means written content is not the only content you need to optimize.
Personalization is key to customer engagement. Up to 71% of consumers expect it, while 76% find generic content frustrating, per a McKinsey study.
Businesses that prioritize personalized marketing can see up to a 40% increase in revenue.
An omnichannel approach ensures marketers focus on customer intent rather than marketing channels.
7. Unified customer experience with agent economy
The growth of artificial intelligence has resulted in the emergence of an agent economy, where AI agents are beginning to revolutionize marketing and digital experiences.
They can easily connect dots across multiple channels to deliver a unified customer experience.
Tackling the visibility dilemma in customer journeys
With all the changes in the industry, consumer behavior, and technological advancements, we need to answer important questions that marketers are confused about.
How can you learn about audience intent even when they do not visit the site after a search?
How do you gather data on your audience’s behavior after they leave your site if they do not convert during their first visit?
How can you develop effective SEO, paid, zero-click, and content strategies with limited visibility into the customer journey and insights into customer intent and personas?
How can you provide personalized experiences without third-party data, limited traffic, and visibility into your customers’ journeys?
This is where an omnichannel approach can help businesses enhance visibility, drive meaningful interactions, and create a seamless path to conversion.
Building blocks of an omnichannel strategy
A true omnichannel strategy is no longer limited to traditional marketing channels like SEO, paid, email, social media, etc.
Today, it is about delivering a unified experience at every stage in the customer journey at every touchpoint.
It includes effectively using channel-agnostic strategies and tactics, such as personalization, AI agents, conversion optimization, A-B testing, and co-optimization.
Here are five building blocks for creating an omnichannel strategy that truly engages your audiences consistently across touchpoints in an AI-powered world.
Reliable data
Ensure you have the necessary infrastructure to gather and segment customer data accurately.
Having a digital asset manager that lets you centralize, optimize, and distribute all your digital assets across marketing channels is key to ensuring consistency and reducing duplication.
Search-friendly infrastructure and content management system are crucial for effectively crawling and indexing your content, and delivering an engaging, personalized experience to your visitors.
9 steps to integrating SEO into an omnichannel customer journey
You can start developing your omnichannel strategy while closing any gaps you have identified in the building blocks.
Step 1: Audience and intent mapping
Start with your audience and intent. Identifying target audience personas and their intent is the first step in audience mapping. It is important to review:
Content performance: Evaluate performance of page types or templates to understand gaps in content strategy (e.g., category pages vs. product details pages vs. location pages vs. blog content).
Search engagement insights: Search console data can help identify high-intent terms with low click-through rates. This information can inform zero-click and CTR optimization strategies.
Channel overlaps: Identifying how visitors overlap across channels is key to crafting an integrated and unified experience. For example, paid and organic channels must work together to saturate the full funnel and maximize ROI from both channels.
Conversion optimization: Content with high engagement can provide insights into visitor intent. This can help define A-B tests, UI/UX enhancements, and personalization strategies.
Step 2: Define clear strategic goals
The next step is to have clear and smart goals that you want your omnichannel strategy to achieve:
Set specific, measurable business objectives (revenue growth, customer retention, growing market share, etc.)
Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for channel-specific and overall performance. For example, if the goal is to improve visibility, the primary KPIs should be around impressions, clicks and rich results visibility. Traffic or conversions can be secondary KPIs but should not be the primary success criteria.
Create baseline metrics to measure improvement against current performance.
Develop a measurement framework that accounts for cross-channel attribution challenges.
Step 3: Map the customer journey across all touchpoints
Traditional funnel is changing rapidly.
Brands should be ready to respond to customers across all touchpoints fast and with quality.
Develop a comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with your brand:
Create detailed personas representing your target audience segments.
Identify patterns in cross-channel journeys using path analysis in analytics and create common use cases.
Aggregate and centralize data across customer touchpoints (website analytics, CRM, sales data, app usage, etc.)
Segment customers based on behavioral patterns rather than just demographics.
Quantify the value/attribution as a combination of different journey paths and touchpoints.
Measure channel preference and effectiveness across different customer segments.
Step 4: Omnichannel audit
Based on your goals and journey maps, evaluate your current channel gaps and capabilities:
SEO audit: Analyze search visibility metrics, technical health scores, and overall SEO performance.
Content audit: Measure content performance data, topical and entity coverage, competitive gaps, engagement rates, conversion impact, and cross-channel content effectiveness.
Local presence assessment: Evaluate local search visibility metrics and location-specific engagement.
Experience audit: Analyze drop-off points and measure cross-channel friction.
Data and technology assessment: Evaluate data collection and measurement framework to optimize your data infrastructure.
Full-funnel audit: Learn from your visitors. Past visitor data can provide meaningful insights into audience segments, what visitors engage with, and where they drop off in the conversion funnel. This can help identify opportunities for co-optimization, A-B tests and delivering personalized experiences across channels.
Step 5: Develop your integrated channel strategy
Here, focus on aligning your channels to ensure they work together seamlessly and support your overall business goals.
Prioritize channels according to attribution data and customer value metrics.
Leverage machine learning and predictive analytics to forecast the impact of each channel.
Use predictive analytics to determine the optimal channel mix.
Set channel-specific targets that ladder up to overall business objectives.
Create frameworks for continuously testing and validating channel effectiveness.
Define how channels will complement and support each other across the customer journey.
Step 6: Content orchestration strategy
While a content strategy focuses on what content is needed, a content orchestration strategy also encompasses distribution frameworks that enhance audience interaction with your content.
Friction analysis
Analyze how your audience engages with your content to identify friction points. This process helps you identify, rectify, and optimize:
Inconsistencies.
Intent misalignments.
Delivery mechanisms (text, images, video, etc.).
Content intelligence
Assess the performance of your existing content across various channels and identify competitive gaps and opportunities based on audience personas and business goals.
Here are a few steps to evaluate content gaps and refine your strategy:
Identify underperforming content for optimization.
Spot gaps in content that need to be addressed across channels and stages of the customer journey.
Recognize cross-linking opportunities to create content hubs.
Prioritize new content to close competitive gaps and achieve business goals.
Cross-channel content strategy
After identifying friction points and content gaps, develop a tailored content strategy for each channel, prioritizing based on business goals:
Broader informational content to enhance awareness during the discovery stage of the customer journey (e.g., social media, blog content).
Comparison content for the consideration stage (e.g., product pages).
Landing pages focused on specific buying-intent terms during the conversion stage.
Content optimization
Optimizing content extends beyond targeting the right keywords. Your content optimization strategy should include:
Closing topical gaps in content that create friction.
Developing an entity optimization strategy to maximize content discoverability.
Implementing a click-through rate (CTR) strategy to enhance traffic from discovered content.
Optimizing visual content.
Establishing an engagement and conversion optimization strategy that includes personalization, calls to action optimization, A/B testing, messaging strategies, UI/UX optimization, and conversion rate optimization (CRO).
To give your content the best chance of being crawled, indexed, understood, and featured in search results for the right terms, focus on the following:
Fix technical SEO issues related to crawling, indexing, and user experience.
Ensure mobile optimization across all digital properties.
Deploy nested schema markup to enhance search visibility.
Improve page speed for all web properties and optimize Core Web Vitals.
Prioritize web accessibility by following ADA and WCAG guidelines to enhance user experience and search visibility.
Step 8: Engagement and conversion optimization
Utilize unified customer data to enhance user engagement and drive conversions:
Deliver personalized content at scale for each audience segment in real time. Personalization strategies can be based on various factors such as marketing channel or campaign, visitor location, search intent, and past behavior.
Identify and deploy AI agents that assist audiences in quickly finding information, engaging in meaningful interactions, and making real-time decisions.
Develop remarketing strategies informed by visitor behavior.
Implement A/B testing across channels, ensuring consistent test and control groups.
Measure performance across channels and optimize based on business goals and success KPIs.
Step 9: Continuously test, measure, learn, and optimize
Refine your strategy through ongoing testing and data-driven adjustments to improve performance across all channels.
Monitor performance metrics across all channels. Establish BI dashboards that connect and integrate data across channels.
Implement attribution models that effectively account for complex customer journeys.
Regularly test new channel integrations and enhancements to the customer journey.
Gather feedback from customers regarding their cross-channel experiences.
Refine your strategy based on evolving search engine algorithms and changing customer behavior.
SEO’s role in delivering a unified, cross-channel experience
Integrating SEO into the omnichannel customer journey isn’t simply for improving search presence.
Ultimately, it’s about creating discoverable, unified, and personalized experiences that guide customers naturally toward conversion.
By implementing this nine-step framework, you can:
Break down departmental silos.
Align cross-functional teams around customer needs.
Build truly seamless engagement models that drive sustainable growth.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/why-omnichannel-approach-to-seo-xkXmmH.jpeg?fit=1920%2C410&ssl=14101920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-07 12:00:002025-04-07 12:00:00Integrating SEO into omnichannel marketing for seamless engagement
There is so much you can do to optimize your online store, whether for users or Google. To help you cover all your bases, we’ve written this ecommerce SEO checklist. It doesn’t cover absolutely everything, but if you at least start by optimizing all the aspects in this post, you will definitely be doing a great job!
The first part of our ecommerce checklist is all about changes you can make site-wide to make sure your online shop is up to scratch. Some of these tips will help with your ecommerce SEO, but — more importantly — they will give users a better experience when they visit your site.
1. Use consistent branding
The first thing you should be aware of is that you should always use consistent branding. Ensure your brand or logo is visible on your homepage and page title. This will build trust and help promote and build your business, helping trigger recognition offline and in search engine result pages.
2. Add social buttons and newsletter sign-up
Newsletters and social media are the easiest ways to get return visits from your customers. Be sure to draw attention to your social profiles and newsletter signups throughout your website. Add your social profiles to your footer at least (use icons, links, and social widgets), but if you have space left in your header, that would also be a great spot for them. Promote your newsletter in your sidebar and use scroll-triggered boxes to draw attention to it. A nice giveaway always helps motivate people to subscribe.
3. Take care of site navigation essentials
Make sure users can navigate to your most important pages from your site menu. It should always be easy to reach shopping pages and the shopping cart, as well as customer service information and FAQs covering essential information like shipping costs and payment options. If users can’t find these pages, they’ll find it difficult to shop on your site.
4. Use SSL and security seals
Here’s one vital thing about creating trust: If your site has an SSL certificate, it will have that nice green padlock in your visitors’ browser address bar, and you’ll let them know they are shopping in a safe environment. These things will help customers confidently insert their home address, credit card details, or other personal information you ask them to provide. You could also add security seals. Find more tips like this in our trust article.
5. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
Don’t forget mobile users! Making purchases via mobile is a popular option for many shoppers. So be ready for them and don’t miss out on those transactions. Read our ultimate guide to mobile SEO to get started.
6. Get things up to speed
When we say speed, we mean the performance of your site. People have short attention spans, and we’ve all got used to faster internet everywhere. However, many places worldwide have to make do with less-than-perfect mobile connections and a small data allowance. Don’t take your situation as gospel. Also, Google tends to rank websites faster, which is another reason to make sure your website is as fast as possible.
7. Add an ‘About us’ page if you don’t have one
People like to know about the company they’re buying from. Who is behind it? What’s their story? What motivates them? If we share the same values and beliefs, people are likelier to return to that shop and buy more products. Adding an about us page, and perhaps a team photo will help build a connection between your company and your customers. If you want some inspiration, Patagonia and Dopper are nice examples.
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While you don’t necessarily need to optimize the homepage of your ecommerce site for SEO, you shouldn’t just ignore it completely, either. There are a couple of things you can do to make sure any visitors landing there will continue to shop and make a purchase:
8. Show featured products
You also need to reserve a prominent spot on your homepage for featured products or something similar, usually your core products or the items you currently have on sale. This will provide an immediate trigger for visitors and a good way to let them know whether or not they have come to the right online shop.
9. Include a compelling call to action
Your homepage needs a compelling call to action. This may change if you want to promote particular products or run seasonal promotions like a Black Friday sale. But whatever your CTA is, you need to make sure it’s always easily visible and meets your visitors’ needs and expectations.
Product search and categories
Having a great site is one thing, but if visitors can’t find the products they want to buy, it won’t be much of use to anyone. That’s why the following section of our ecommerce checklist is all about making your products easy for customers to find when searching on your site.
10. Add a search option
Every online store with more than 20 products should have a search option. Make sure you put the search option in a visible spot, as this will probably be the navigation of choice for your visitors. Besides optimizing your search option, be sure to give the search result pages some TLC. More on that later.
11. Use product categories
How you set up your categories and make these accessible to visitors matters – a lot. Categories help visitors get to different groups of products as quickly as possible, especially those who aren’t sure which specific products to buy. Amazon has a large list of categories (or departments), but makes the kind of products a category contains as clear as possible. That has much to do with naming these categories and logically using subcategories. Put yourself in the place of your visitors and go over your shop’s categories. Do they make sense? Are these the terms a visitor would use? If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track.
12. Add introductory content on category pages
Besides being clear about the name of your category, be sure to add a nice introduction to your category pages as well. This introduction is like the glue that holds the collection of products on that page together. This is really helpful in determining the subject of the page, especially for search engines. This also helps the category pages function in a similar way to cornerstone content.
13. Add thumbnail images for your products
In most cases, product images say more than a thousand words. This is especially true for those pages that simply don’t have space for a thousand words about a single product, such as your category or internal search result pages. Adding a stunning thumbnail image of that dress or painting will encourage more clicks to that page. Good thumbnail images make it easier for visitors to choose from a wide variety of products in category or search result pages.
14. Include calls to action in overviews
Besides having killer product thumbnails, your overview pages also need a call to action for each product, which means the visitor can add that product to their cart right from the category or search result page. Although it isn’t always possible for every product, you should do this wherever you can. There are online shops that allow you to choose the color and size of jeans, for example, without having to go to the product page. Choose the option you like, click add to cart, and proceed to checkout, all from the overview page.
Product pages
You’ve probably already put much effort into crafting your product pages. But are you sure nothing is missing, and nothing can be improved? This section of our ecommerce SEO checklist will help you ensure your product pages look the best they can.
15. Add great product images
Be sure to add great product images to your product pages. They should be zoomable and give multiple views of the product. Remember that even the filename and alt text of the product image matter for SEO. There’s a lot more on this in our detailed article on product images.
16. Write a fantastic product description
Optimizing your category pages is often much easier than optimizing all your product pages. If you’re selling bolts, screws and nails, adding an awesome and unique product description to each page is a lot of work. If you need your product page to rank as well, be sure to invest some time and effort in optimizing your product descriptions for the product name and/or SKU. Our Yoast SEO plugin will be useful if you have a WordPress site or a Shopify store.
17. Be clear about pricing
We can’t emphasize this enough: be clear about your prices. Adding surprise costs like shipping or taxes later in the checkout process will backfire, and shoppers may abandon their purchase. Be clear about these additional costs (if any) right from the start. You could even leverage this by offering free shipping on orders of more than a certain value, say $20 or $50. Surprise costs are a major turn-off, and they are illegal in the EU.
18. Show product reviews
Creating trust is a good thing for all online shops. Genuine product reviews help a great deal with this. One thing we would recommend for websites that include user reviews from third parties is to copy a couple of those reviews to your own website. Including third-party reviews in, for example, a widget, would be a great solution. Add these near your call to action for the best results.
19. Promote related products
When you’ve got their interest, leverage it. If someone buys an iPhone from your site, chances are they’ll need a cover and might even want a pair of those expensive wireless ear pods. But they might feel a bit less expensive when a customer has just paid full price for a new iPhone! Adding a related products section or an ‘other customers also bought’ section to your product page will trigger upsells, allow for bundles, and much more. We highly recommend adding these.
20. Add a call to action on your product page
Your visitor needs to click the Add to Cart button on your product page to start the purchase. Don’t hide that button! The number of shops that accidentally disguise the Add to Cart button is lower than it used to be, but we’d still like you to look at that button and make sure it stands out. This is especially true when you have a secondary call to action like ‘Add to wish list’. Making sure that the Add to Cart button stands out the most and is the largest and first major button on your product page is essential.
21. Show stock availability
These days, the availability of a product drives sales. With online shops everywhere, people want to buy things at a shop that will deliver the products they want tomorrow or even the same day. If you tell users a product is in stock, people are likelier to buy it. But this isn’t just about competition; it’s about managing expectations. If your website shows something isn’t in stock, people can still decide to buy at your shop and know they’ll have to wait a bit. If people buy at your shop and won’t get the product for three weeks because it’s out of stock, they’d likely have bought it elsewhere. Not making availability clear also badly affects your brand, by the way.
Shopping cart and checkout
It can be easy to overlook the details of your shopping cart and checkout process. However, these parts of your site are vital to the customer journey. In this section of our ecommerce checklist, we encourage you to take some time to ensure everything is working seamlessly.
22. Make the shopping cart easy to find
Regardless of how noble your intentions are, in most cases, your main goal is to make as much money as possible, and that money is made through your shopping cart. For this reason, your shopping cart should always be available and visible – don’t make people look for it. We recommend adding the number of products in the cart to the cart icon. It will help people remember if they have already added products to the cart.
A recognizable shopping cart icon that shows how many products are in the cart.
23. Show the payment options early on
Like in number 16 of this ecommerce SEO checklist, this one is about preventing surprises. It’s frustrating to get to the end of the checkout process only to find that your preferred payment option isn’t available. And again, if your ecommerce shop is in the EU, it is now a legal requirement to display your accepted payment methods to customers before they get to the checkout.
24. No account needed
Always allow customers to buy without forcing them to create an account. We think that making customers create an account is bad practice. It’s only valid if creating an account gives customers perks like easy license renewal, managing recurring payments, etc. These are tasks customers probably would want to do in a secure environment, so they wouldn’t mind setting up an account, but when they’re shopping for clothes, having an account only makes sense for convenience reasons (not having to fill in address details next time and so on), and therefore it should be optional.
25. Set longer cookie expiration times
Perhaps ‘cookie expiration times’ are too narrow for what we’re trying to say. Our article on shopping cart abandonment will tell you a lot about how people use your shopping cart. Read that entire article, and you’ll discover why using longer cookie expiration times for your cart is better.
26. Use discount codes wisely
Discount codes and vouchers can be a great way to increase sales. But before you put a field to add a discount code on your checkout pages, consider whether you want to do this carefully. Once users see the option to add a code, they will want a discount code. And often, that means they’ll stop mid-transaction and search for one! So, if you want to offer discount codes, it’s a good idea to make it easy for users to find a discount (even if it’s to remove the delivery costs from their order). If you’re not planning to offer discount codes soon, leaving the discount code field off your checkout pages is probably better. Otherwise, it might increase your cart abandonment rates.
Search and social appearance
All right, by now, your online shop should be ready to go. One thing left to do for our ecommerce SEO checklist: make sure your site looks its best wherever it appears. That could be in the Google search results or social media, so be ready to make a good impression!
27. Optimize your SEO titles and Meta descriptions
With ecommerce sites, more so than all other websites, SEO titles and meta descriptions serve a very important purpose. Where Google is probably able to come up with a proper and keyword-related invitation to your website for information pages, the chances are your product page doesn’t have enough product information, or it contains details about your customer service or warranty that Google might use instead. Add a product-focused meta description to your product pages to encourage Google not to show the wrong text in search results! Use Yoast SEO Premium’s AI tools to speed up the creation process.
28. Add structured data to your pages
We recommend adding structured data to your product pages for technical SEO reasons. Schema markup will help search engines and Google Shopping understand your page’s contents better, and it might even help your page stand out in the search results!
Add at least schema.org/Product and schema.org/Offer, and see if you can extend this to even more detailed schemas. Adding structured data markup is more technical than optimizing your product description, so if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, please ask your web developer for help. You can also use our WooCommerce SEO plugin or Shopify SEO app, making it much easier!
Besides structured data, be sure to add OpenGraph and X Cards. Again, Yoast SEO can help you add images to your page to be displayed on social media. With Yoast SEO Premium, you can even preview those! These ensure that when people share your content or products, they will be displayed as attractively as possible. This and more are explained in our article about product page SEO.
Adding structured data to your pages with minimal effort? Check.
Extra features for WooCommerce with our dedicated WooCommerce plugin? Check.
And for your Shopify store? Check.
Try Yoast SEO for WordPress (available in free and Premium versions) on your site today. If you’re using WooCommerce, add on our WooCommerce plugin for the ultimate ecommerce optimization. Alternatively, if you’re working with Shopify, try our Yoast SEO for Shopify app instead.
Lastly, boost your ecommerce SEO expertise with our ecommerce training at Yoast SEO Academy! You can follow a trial lesson for free or unlock the full course when you buy Yoast SEO Premium, Yoast WooCommerce SEO, or Yoast SEO for Shopify. Still want more? Check out our ultimate guide to ecommerce usability.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-03 08:00:322025-04-03 08:00:32Ecommerce SEO checklist: 30 tips for a better online store
Roblox unveiled a new immersive video advertising format on its platform and announced a strategic partnership with Google to expand its advertising business reach.
Google will roll out these ads across AdMob and Ad Manager, creating significant new revenue opportunities for publishers while giving advertisers contextually relevant ways to reach engaged audiences.
Big picture. The gaming giant is introducing rewarded video ads up to 30 seconds long that offer in-game benefits, marking a significant evolution of its business model beyond traditional gaming revenue.
These ad formats are designed to blend seamlessly into virtual environments – appearing as billboards in digital cities or on screens during virtual sporting events – creating less disruptive advertising experiences that maintain user engagement.
By the numbers:
85.3 million: Daily active users on Roblox.
Majority: Users aged 13+.
30 seconds: Maximum length of new video ad format.
Between the lines. This move addresses a key challenge in gaming advertising: maintaining user engagement without disrupting gameplay experiences. As Google executive Scott Sheffer noted, “traditional ad formats haven’t always been the right choice” in gaming environments.
The Roblox partnership also represents a strategic pivot for Google’s advertising business toward emerging virtual spaces where younger audiences spend significant time, positioning them ahead of industry shifts toward more immersive digital experiences.
What Google is saying. Google announced it’s extending Immersive Ads capabilities to more publishers following successful testing, with Roblox becoming a cornerstone partner for the technology.
Why we care.This partnership opens access to 85.3 million daily active users, predominantly Gen Z—a notoriously difficult audience to reach effectively. The rewarded video format offers a non-disruptive way to engage with these highly attentive users, creating authentic brand interactions rather than intrusive interruptions.
Additionally, integration with Google’s ad platform dramatically simplifies campaign management, allowing advertisers to incorporate Roblox into their broader digital strategies without learning new systems.
What’s next. Brands will soon be able to purchase ads directly or through Google Ad Manager, with additional formats like billboards due in the coming months. Partnerships with measurement firms Cint, DoubleVerify, and Nielsen will help track campaign performance
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SEL-Blog-2025-04-01T160200.739-800x458-KpNcLm.png?fit=800%2C458&ssl=1458800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-01 16:40:142025-04-01 16:40:14Google partners with Roblox on video ads
Automatically sets your bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget.
Useful for top-of-funnel campaigns where the goal is to drive traffic to a site.
Example: “This campaign is designed to drive as much traffic to our new blog post as possible.”
Enhanced CPC (ECPC)
A semi-automated bidding strategy that adjusts your manual bids to try and get more conversions.
Google Ads adjusts your manual bid up or down based on the likelihood of a conversion.
Example: “We are using manual bidding but want to use Google’s signals to increase conversions where possible.”
Viewable CPM (YouTube)
Focuses on maximizing viewable impressions of your display or skippable in-stream video ads.
Ideal for brand awareness campaigns where the goal is to get your message seen by as many people as possible.
Example: “We want to ensure our brand message is visibly displayed to our target audience on YouTube.”
Cost Per View (YouTube)
Optimizes bids to get the most video views or interactions within your budget.
Best for campaigns focused on driving engagement with your video content.
Example: “We are running a video campaign on YouTube and want to maximize the number of views we receive.”
It’s crucial to understand that while setting a Target CPA or ROAS provides strategic direction, achieving those exact targets isn’t guaranteed.
I’ve had situations where a media planner pushed for an immediate switch to a specific CPA goal.
They wanted the target set at four times and wouldn’t budge or try to understand why the campaign was set at two times.
A common misconception is that simply setting a desired metric will automatically yield the desired results.
In practice, achieving optimal performance often requires a nuanced approach.
This may involve:
Gradual bid adjustments.
A willingness to accept temporary fluctuations in ROAS for broader account health.
A comprehensive evaluation of multiple factors, including budget, historical campaign performance, and keyword strategy.
It’s essential to understand that Smart Bidding strategies, while powerful, require strategic oversight and a holistic understanding of account dynamics.
Success should be measured within the context of overarching account objectives, not solely focusing on individual campaign metrics.
Understanding manual, automated and smart bidding in Google Ads
Manual bidding allows you to control bid adjustments completely, making it ideal for certain industries, such as legal or home services, where fluctuating competition requires ongoing oversight. However, it requires more time and effort.
It’s like driving a car where you control every gear shift and pedal movement.
Automated bidding simplifies bid management by using algorithms to adjust bids.
While automated bidding can save time, its generic approach doesn’t account for nuanced conversion goals.
Think of this as engaging cruise control. You tell the car (Google Ads) your general desired speed (goal), and it adjusts the engine (bids) to maintain that pace.
Smart Bidding, however, takes automated bidding further by using real-time signals and advanced machine learning to predict the likelihood of conversions and their value, tailoring bids to individual auctions.
It’s especially effective for campaigns with clear conversion goals and sufficient historical data.
This is like having a self-driving car with an incredibly sophisticated navigation system.
It’s important to know that while all Smart Bidding is automated, not all automated bidding qualifies as Smart Bidding.
Automated bidding covers a wider range of strategies, some of which are more basic and don’t rely on real-time signals or advanced machine learning.
In essence:
Manual: You control every bid.
Automated: Google’s algorithms handle bid adjustments based on your chosen strategy.
Smart: Google’s machine learning optimizes bids in real-time for conversions and conversion value.
There are significant advantages to using Smart Bidding.
Improved efficiency: Saves time by automating bid adjustments.
Auction-time optimization: Factors in user intent, device, location, and other data points to optimize bids for each auction.
Goal alignment: Customizes bids to match your campaign objectives, whether it’s maximizing volume or focusing on high-value actions.
While Smart Bidding offers significant advantages, missteps in implementation can lead to underwhelming results.
Here’s how to avoid common pitfalls and optimize your campaign performance.
Data dependency
Smart Bidding algorithms rely on robust historical data to make accurate predictions.
Campaigns with fewer than 30 conversions in the last 30 days may struggle to optimize effectively.
Start with manual bidding or Maximize Clicks to build a data foundation before switching to Smart Bidding. Boris Beceric, a Google Ads consultant and coach, said:
“I guess most try Smart Bidding too early – without enough conversion volume. What usually helps: consolidate campaigns so you get more data flowing through a single campaign. Portfolio bidding – kinda the same, but consolidation takes place at the bid strategy level.
“Micro conversions – try to add in the micro conversion that had the most volume and is closest to the ‘real’ conversion. Bonus: Reverse engineer CVR and conv value from micro to macro conversion and adjust tCPA accordingly.”
Goal misalignment
Using the wrong bidding strategy can hinder performance.
For example, applying Target ROAS to a new campaign with limited data can set unrealistic expectations and reduce reach.
Align bidding strategies with your goals.
When prioritizing profitability, use Maximize Conversions for volume and Target ROAS or Target CPA. Harrison Hepp, owner of Industrious Marketing, said:
“I had a client who was hybrid ecommerce and lead gen (they sold products, but high-priced deals were lead gen), and they insisted on tracking purchases and leads in every campaign. We constantly battled major fluctuations in the campaigns as they’d swing back and forth between getting purchases or leads and trying to optimize to both.
“It also made bid strategy selection really hard, as conversion value bidding would deprioritize leads (no value was tracked), but CPA bidding wasn’t efficient for purchases because of differences in product prices. It really showed how aligning your goals and bid strategy is critical for steady performance. It also underlined how the right bidding strategy can prioritize success in campaigns.”
Monitoring is non-negotiable
Despite its automation, Smart Bidding is not a “set it and forget it” tool.
Failing to monitor campaigns can lead to wasted ad spend and missed optimization opportunities.
Regularly review performance metrics, adjust campaign parameters, and stay proactive in managing Smart Bidding strategies.
“Custom columns/Segment views: We want to measure efficiency, so things like conv value/conv, search impression share, etc.” said Ameet Khabra, owner of Hop Skip Media.
Even with the most advanced AI behind Smart Bidding, performance optimization requires vigilance.
Regularly review the following metrics to ensure your strategy is working as intended:
CPA: Is your Target CPA being met?
ROAS: Are the conversions driving sufficient revenue?
Conversion rates: Are conversions coming from the right audience segments? Or are you paying for competitors to download your white papers and marking that down as a lead?
Search term reports: Are irrelevant keywords consuming a significant portion of your budget? Unprofitable keywords can be why a campaign is not meeting goals.
Conversion tracking accuracy: If conversion tracking is improperly implemented, Smart Bidding will optimize based on inaccurate data, reducing effectiveness.
Double-check your conversion tracking setup. Assign accurate values to conversions to reflect their true business impact. Khabra said:
“My favorite saying lately is ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ and that is definitely a large component of conversion tracking. Ensuring that we’ve identified the correct conversions that move the needle is half the battle. Implementing the tracking and double-checking that it is correct – collecting conversions – is the second half.”
Budgetary awareness
Strategies like Maximize Conversions and Maximize Clicks will attempt to spend your entire daily budget.
If your budget is set too high, this can lead to overspending.
Start with smaller daily budgets and gradually increase them while monitoring performance.
Realistic targets
Setting overly aggressive Target CPA or Target ROAS goals can limit your campaign’s reach, as the algorithm will avoid auctions it deems unprofitable.
Begin with realistic targets slightly higher or lower than your current average. Allow time for the algorithm to learn before refining the target.
Best practices for Smart Bidding in Google Ads
To ensure optimal performance, follow these best practices for implementing Smart Bidding in your Google Ads campaigns.
1. Feed accurate data
Ensure your conversion tracking is set up correctly.
Assign meaningful values to conversions – whether it’s a purchase, lead form submission, or newsletter signup.
2. Leverage seasonality adjustments
Use seasonality adjustments in Google Ads to guide Smart Bidding algorithms for short-term changes (e.g., holiday sales or promotions).
This prevents excessive or insufficient bids during periods of fluctuating demand.
3. Start with conservative budgets
Begin with smaller budgets and avoid aggressive bid caps that may limit auction participation. Allow the algorithm to learn and adapt gradually.
4. Prioritize business value over conversion volume
Align your bidding tactics with broader business goals. Instead of focusing solely on conversion volume, consider how each conversion contributes to revenue or lifetime customer value.
5. Test and adapt
Use Google Ads experiments to test different strategies.
For example, compare Target CPA with Target ROAS to identify which delivers better results for your campaigns.
Google Ads Experiments let you directly compare bid strategies in real-world scenarios.
Duplicate your campaign, allocate a split percentage to a new strategy (like comparing Target CPA vs. Target ROAS), and see concrete results with statistical significance.
Final thoughts
Smart Bidding isn’t just about knowing which technical settings to adjust.
It’s about understanding how to make Google’s automated tools align with your business goals.
The digital landscape evolves quickly, so it’s essential to stay adaptable, continuously monitor performance, and make adjustments as needed.
Nail the strategy, stay proactive, and you’ll set yourself up for long-term success.
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